#I didn’t realize how much his proportions changed from the sketch to the drawing | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sehunniepotwrites · 4 years ago

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sakura kiss | n.yt

PART III OF FOR YOU IN FULL BLOOM: THE HANAHAKI COLLECTION

🌸 synopsis—the four times you noticed yuta’s love for flowers and the one time you realized it was not the flowers he was in love with

🌸 genre— would you be so kind? universe ; hanahaki!au, university!au, flower shop!au, angst, romance, slight fluff, mutual pining, strangers to lovers!au 🌸 pairing— art student/florist!yuta x art student!reader (f) 🌸 word count— 9000+

🌸 warnings — cursing; mentions of coughing, vomiting, hospital visits, death (no one dies!!), two idiots in love

🌸 author’s note—so i finished a fic with my favorite trope in time for my birthday today (dec 11th) and i’m posting to celebrate! it all started with this tweet that said yuta used to work at a flower shop and enjoyed drawing the plants during his free time!

this was a fun write and it takes place in the same verse as wybsk, which is linked above! you can read sakura kiss as a stand alone or after wybsk to get a better understanding of two scenes! to those you came from my mark fic, i gave yn a name (kira)!

but here she is! enjoy and be sure to tell me what you think!! i love feedback uwu

Nakamoto Yuta, you noticed, was an unusual fellow. He was your senior in the art department, a fourth-year preparing for his graduation while you were a couple of semesters behind him. Other than his small circle of friends, the foreign exchange student kept to himself, burying his handsome face in his sketchbook. You had classes together before but those were large lectures with over fifty students in the room— this was the first time you shared a small studio lab with him.

Barely interacting with him in the past, you were determined to change that no matter how intimidating Yuta was.

Were you intimidated by his extremely good looks or his unmatched talents in the fine arts? Both. Definitely both. He turned heads without fail and when he smiled, oh my god, you thought he was the sun. Yuta was pretty, beyond pretty even, with his striking face, brown eyes, and perfect body proportions.

To add on top of his perfection, his art style was immaculate. The artist never failed to steal your breath away with a couple of strokes and a swipe of his blessed hand. Anything he touched turned to gold. Never sharing those thoughts with him in the past, you made a firm decision to tell your senior this coming semester.

Yuta sat at the easel next to you, barely two feet away from your station. His sketchbook and drawing utensils were already splayed out on the holder. He was fiddling with his phone to pass the time, his painted nails rapidly hitting his touchscreen. How did Yuta make something so mundane as checking his phone look so ethereal? The inner most thoughts in your head cursed whatever beings lived in the beyond for not endowing you with such looks.

You gulped, gathering up the courage to talk to him. “Hey,” you greeted shyly.

Hey? That was the best you could do?

Yuta turned towards you, gaze shifting away from his phone. “Hey,” he said back with a slight curve of the lip.

“I don’t know if you remember me but we had a couple of classes together last semester,” you forced yourself to say with an awkward smile.

He grinned and his teeth sunk into his bottom lip, almost like he was holding back a laugh. “Yeah, no, of course, I remember you.” Your name slips from his mouth, causing your awkward smile to turn into a genuine one. His tone is kind and his voice is low, sending shivers down your spine.

You tried your best to keep the conversation going, wanting to finally compliment him on his work but your professor entered the room and called for everyone’s attention. He handed out the syllabus to a student upfront and around the papers went, signifying the start of your first class. Yuta shot you an apologetic look, conveying that you could always continue the conversation later.

The overview of the course’s syllabus was always the boring part of the first days. Your eyes glazed over, still not fully awake from rising early, and you tried to shake the sleepiness away. Stealing a glance at Yuta, you almost laughed at how his easel was angled in a way to hide that he wasn’t paying any attention. His syllabus outline was discarded off to the side and Yuta’s hands were moving rapidly, sketching out a large tree in full bloom in a page of his notebook.

It looked like flower petals raining from the branches and a person leaning against the tree trunk, hiding underneath the shade. His sketching speed and quality amazed you— how exactly did he sketch that fast and that beautifully?

You made sure your professor wasn’t looking in your direction before nudging Yuta’s side to grab his attention. He snapped out of his drawing daze and turned to you with widened eyes. A red seeped into his ears and pale cheeks, but you missed it completely, eyes zoned in on his quick draw.

“Hm?”

“That’s really good,” you whispered.

He rubbed the back of his neck at your compliment. “It’s just a quick sketch,” Yuta tried to play it off. He was never one to take compliments so well.

You leaned over to get a closer look. Noticing you almost falling off your stool, Yuta shifted his easel slightly closer to yours. “Is that a cherry blossom tree?”

He nodded, “Yeah, they’ve been on my mind a lot.”

“Do they remind you of home?” you asked. You couldn’t imagine being an exchange student in a foreign country— you would miss home too much.

“Yeah but that’s not really the reason why I’m drawing them,” he replied. His eyes shifted to a look of pain or discomfort as if he was reminded of a scarring memory. You watched him closely to make sure he was okay. He cleared his throat before letting out a couple of concealed coughs, face digging into his shoulder.

“You alright, Nakamoto?” You were too embarrassed to call him by his first name.

“Yeah, I’m good. Just a little cough.” Yuta gave you a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, “And you can just call me Yuta, you know?”

“Right, noted,” the name felt so foreign on your tongue.

“I have cough drops in my bag if you want some,” you offered, already reaching down to grab your backpack. He quickly dismissed you, telling you it wasn’t necessary.

Continuing to watch him sketch, you admired the way Yuta fussed over the smallest details— the lining, the shading, etc. It was nothing more than a simple sketch but if it was gifted to you, it would be framed and hung for the world to see.

He really was an artistic genius.

“Cherry blossoms are my favorite flowers,” you said.

You were too absorbed in his drawing to hear him mutter, “I know.”

“You say something?”

Yuta cleared his throat again with a pained expression. His hand held his neck for a second before shaking his head. “I said, they used to be mine too.”

Huh, you never really picked him as the flower loving type.

—🌸—

This was the third time Nakamoto Yuta had flowers growing in his chest and he hated it.

It was less painful the first two times around, probably because they were nothing more than fleeting crushes. He was in high school then, wholly infatuated with two different students during those years. Yuta followed them around like a lovesick puppy, all smiles and waiting on their hands and feet. He coughed a couple of petals out and it caused some uneasiness, but after being rejected harshly, Yuta pushed himself to move on.

The pain of high school rejection could never compare to the dull ache he was feeling as he looked at you. There you were, the person he secretly admired for the past two semesters, merely two feet away at your own easel.

You looked so in your element, eyebrows knitted and pencil in hand as you sketched away. A sight so captivating, Yuta almost forgot to breathe. Being an artist himself, he wanted to preserve that image on a canvas but he didn’t think his hand could do you justice. No pencil sketch, no painted canvas, no marble or clay sculpture could even compare to you.

This was more than puppy love. More than infatuation. Yuta was sure of it but how was he to let you know? You barely knew each other and a confession out of nowhere wouldn’t be the best way to get acquainted.

Perhaps another time, he thought to himself, before turning back to his sketch.

You would’ve never guessed that Yuta Nakamoto had a thing for flowers but he did.

Then again, you didn’t really know what he had a thing for to begin with— your friendship just started to bloom. It was like a bud barely opening under the sunlight; with each interaction, there was something new you learned about the quiet yet charismatic art major.

You knew he was a Japanese exchange student that majored in art, that was a given. You recently learned he loved cherry blossoms and that watercolor was his favorite art medium yet you still wanted to learn more.

The first time you ran into him outside of class was in the university library. Yuta sat at one of the tables, his space surrounded by books on flowers. There were books on the language, arrangements, and gardening tips. His face was deep into his sketchbook once again, back bent over the desk but his focused eyes darted back and forth between his drawing and his page of reference.

Yuta didn’t even notice as you hovered over him, debating on whether you should say hi. Even with your shadow casting over his body, his deep concentration never faltered.

His page was filled with various plants and flowers, little notes in a messy scrawl right under their pictures. He was currently drawing cherry blossoms, the page he was referring to showcasing the anatomy of the famous flower.

“Cherry blossoms again, Yuta?” you broke the silence.

Your voice startled him, causing his pencil to slip from the artist’s grip. It made an accidental mark and you whispered an apology as he clicked his tongue.

“Don’t worry about it, nothing an eraser can’t fix,” Yuta reassured you as he rid his paper of the unwanted mark. He blew the eraser bits of his page, hand sweeping his surface clean. He offered you the seat next to him and you gladly took it.

“So, why are you always sketching flowers?” you posed as your hand gestured to all the books he had on his person.

“They’re beautiful, don’t you think?” he answered with another question. He gave you a cheeky little grin, his lips widening to show off his beautiful pearly whites.

“Well, yeah.”

“It’s a shame they die so easily,” Yuta said, fingers running over his sketches. “Beautiful but fleeting.”

“But that’s life, isn’t it?”

“I guess it is.”

You hummed at his answer. “You’re really passionate about flowers, aren’t you?”

“Something like that. I actually work at a flower shop nearby, maybe you’ve seen it?” Yuta fiddled with the front pocket of his backpack to pull out a business card. “I like learning about the meanings to help the customers in the shop, amongst other things.”

You took the card from his grip, examining it. For You in Full Bloom was printed largely on the thin piece of cardboard. Staring at the name, you wondered why it sounded so familiar until it hit you.

“Oh, I pass by it everyday while walking to campus! I live two blocks away from the shop.” Your smile grew wider and he smiled back for a second before his face contorted into one that conveyed pain.

Yuta turned away from you to cough into his hand, his free one hastily digging into his pocket. He pulled out a handkerchief and began to cough into that. Shocked by his sudden sick fit, you quickly patted him on the back, hoping it would help him hack out whatever was lodged in his throat.

You saw him peek into the small square of fabric and wince at whatever it caught. He cleared his throat before turning back to you. “Sorry,” Yuta muttered, rubbing the front of his neck to soothe it. Placing a cough drop in his hand, he took it without complaint and popped it in his mouth. The relieved sigh he let out made you feel slightly less worried.

“You’re still sick?” you frowned. “You should really get that checked out, you know?”

He waved you off, “It’s nothing serious, I swear. What were we talking about again?”

“Cherry blossoms?”

“Your favorite flower.”

“And yours,” you added.

He hummed, “And mine.” There was a solemn tone behind his words but before you could press on the subject, he coughed again.

“Did you know that they’re also a symbol of renewal?”

Shaking your head, you urged your classmate to continue.

“Cherry blossoms hold the bittersweet meaning of life and death but they also bring the message of new beginnings.”

—🌸—

Yuta just wished when it came to you and him, the flowers meant the start of something new but no— instead, they just reminded him of the ache in his chest.

They reminded Yuta of how alive he was but also how he was one step closer to his grave.

Yes, you were merely classmates but he felt like he knew you solely from all the stories that were shared by your mutual friends in the art department. Ten and Taeyong sang praises on how thoughtful you were, always helping professors clean their studios after hours. Sicheng brought up how passionate you were about your major— Yuta himself bore witness to this many times during lectures and he wanted to know more about you.

A lot of charm filled your figure and it was enchanting, it really wasn’t that hard for him to fall.

Yuta fell for you much like the blossoms from the cherry trees.

And just like the blossoms, his time was fleeting but you were so completely unaware.

You left the library first, having forgotten that you had office hours with a professor. He watched you leave, eyes fixed onto your back.

Someone once said that you become miserable if you love someone too much. Yuta believed that to be true. There was a pang in his chest, heart racing against his rib cage as a stronger nausea attack hit him.

He gasped for air as his weakened stomach turned with sickness. Something was rising, working its way up his body. Yuta quickly slapped his hand over his lips as he hurled. Instead of bile, cherry blossom petals rained out of his mouth and into his palm.

He chuckled under his breath. Was it sad that he found beauty in his suffering?

Yuta thought himself to be crazy as he quickly shoved away the pain to begin sketching the petals in his hand.

For You in Full Bloom— what a nice name, you thought to yourself as you entered the shop with your friend Sicheng right behind you. The light ringing of the bell attached to the front entrance alerted the people at the counter of your presence. You picked up on harsh whispers before the tall male worker rushed to the back, forcing the young girl to assist you.

“Hi, welcome in!” the girl smiled brightly at you. “How can I help you today?”

Before you could reply, Sicheng stepped forward to answer, “Kira, we’re looking for Yuta— is he here?”

“Oh, Sicheng, hey! I didn’t even see you,” Kira exclaimed. “He’s, uh, not here right now.” Kira shot Sicheng a frustrated look, eyes darting to the back. Your companion sighed, done with his friend’s stupidity. You missed the quiet interaction, being too preoccupied with your surroundings.

“We’ll catch him another time then,” you answered her.

The small and quaint store was filled to the brim with flowers and your hands ghosted against the magnificent displays in the front window. The petals felt soft and the pleasing smells overwhelmed your senses in a good way. There was beauty all around you— there was no wonder why people loved visiting flower shops.

Various watercolor pieces were framed on the wall and you examined every artwork displayed. They were simple paintings of the plants that found a temporary home in the store. Some pieces were the flowers by themselves and others were of the many arrangements offered. They were vibrant, bright, and so incredibly detailed.

“I’ll tell him you stopped by,” she paused to ask for your name. You replied with a smile before turning back to take in the art.

“The paintings are a nice touch,” you commented, finally turning to look at her.

“Oh those? Yuta painted them,” Kira grinned, her body straightening up with pride. “He paints a lot when the shop is slow and my mom, the owner, loves to hang them up.”

“I should’ve known.” You took a closer look and spotted Yuta’s signature at the bottom of every picture.

“He’s very talented, isn’t he?” Kira hummed. Sicheng snorted for some unknown reason and you slapped his shoulder in response. There was nothing funny about Yuta’s skills and he knew that.

“Yeah, his skill is unmatched. I admire him for that.”

“Have you ever told him that?”

“God, no!”

“Why not?” Kira pressed. Sicheng joined in on the pressing and you moaned, an embarrassing heat creeping up your face,

“I don’t know. We talk but I find him to be a little intimidating,” you leaned against Sicheng’s shoulder and looped your arm through his. “I can’t just go up to him and fangirl over his work, can I?”

“But you want to,” he groaned. “And I’m tired of hearing you go on about it. Just tell him.”

A whine left your lips and you pinched your friend’s arm at the comment. He yelped and Kira just watched as the bickering continued.

“Yuta looks intimidating, yeah, but it’s just his resting bitch face, I promise. He’s just a softie,” Kira laughed and Sicheng agreed. “You should definitely tell him. He would love hearing it, especially from you.”

There was this knowing smile on both of their lips and it just seemed like they knew something you didn’t. You tugged on Sicheng’s arm as an attempt to ask him the florist meant by the last bit of her sentence and he tried to shrug you away. You just clung on tighter to your friend with a playful smile with Kira keeping a close eye on you.

You heard a cough come from the back of the store, causing both Sicheng and Kira to look up with concern. The coughing fit grew louder and louder, leaving Kira to excuse herself for a bit.

“If the other florist is sick, they should be at home resting,” you tutted with a frown.

“Some people are stubborn,” Sicheng threw back with a bit of distaste. Picking up on your friend’s bitterness, you wondered why he felt so strongly about it. You waved it off when a small display of sunflowers and red roses together captured your attention. Holding it in your hands, you admired how the two vibrant colors compliment each other.

Kira swung her way around the counter, “You like that bouquet?”

“It would be really pretty to paint,” you say, still spinning it around in awe.

“Yuta put it together himself yesterday, he’s pretty good at arrangements,” the florist beamed.

“What can’t he do?” you scoffed.

“Apparently, open his mouth and say what he needs to say,” Sicheng muttered beside you. Kira elbowed his stomach and he lurched over in pain.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Kira laughed nervously. She worked her way to you and gestured towards the flowers, “It’s yours, on the house.”

You rejected the offer right away. “Oh no, I couldn’t,” is what you reply, attempting to shove the arrangement into her hands. With a kind grin, she persisted for you to take it and just asked you to buy from them the next time you visited. “I’m sure Yuta would love it if you took this one off our hands.”

With a promise, you hesitantly accepted the bouquet. Sicheng was snickering in the background and you had to hold yourself back from whacking him with the flowers. Thinking you’d taken too much of the florist’s time, you quickly said your thanks and headed out the door with a coy Sicheng trailing behind you.

—🌸—

“They’re gone,” Kira yelled towards the back of the shop. Yuta made his way back to his spot at the cash register while wiping at his mouth with his uniform sleeve. He quickly pulled out his art supplies from underneath the counter, setting everything up to resume his painting. Taking a seat on the stool, his body was slumped over his makeshift desk as he messed with his pencils.

His coworker rolled her eyes at him as she began to work on a bouquet of blue cornflowers and daisies— good fortune and new beginnings. Her nimble hands hastily worked their magic with ease as if she’s done it a million times before. Yuta observed her, quickly sketching her hands at work.

“You’re ridiculous, I don’t get why you had to hide.”

“I didn’t want her to see me like this,” Yuta said, his pained eyes covered by the long bangs that drooped down over his sketchbook.

“Like what?” Her hands went to her hips. “Sick and hopelessly in love?”

“Yeah, let’s put it that way.”

“There’s a solution to this, you know,” Kira pressed with furrowed brows. “You don’t have to keep suffering.”

This. Hanahaki is what she meant— the disease of unrequited love.

“I’m fine, Kira,” Yuta hissed with a bit more annoyance than he intended to. She flinched at the tone but still pushed on when he coughed again. He felt the discomfort of something being lodged in his throat and his body had the urge to hack it out. Suddenly, he was leaning over the counter with cherry blossom petals littering the cash register.

Yuta practically hacked up a storm, body curling in pain. One hand was clutching his stomach while the other had a death grip on the edge of the counter. The dizziness returned and he felt lightheaded as the retching subsided. A weakness took over his athletic body and Kira rushed to assist him back onto the stool. There was a bottle of soothing eucalyptus oil sitting right on the counter and she scrambled to open it before shoving it under his nose.

“You’re obviously not fine. You need to go to the hospital to get checked,” she said as Yuta took the small bottle from her grip. He dabbed a couple of drops onto his hands and rubbed it on his nose and throat. “Why won’t you accept any help that’s offered to you at the hospital?”

“I’ve gone through this before, Kira. Don’t worry about me.”

“Sometimes you forget I’ve gone through this, too!” she yelled. “I don’t want you to end up on your deathbed like I was at one point.”

Yuta couldn’t argue with that. He was hired back when she was in the hospital recovering from the final stage of the dreaded disease.

“We’re all worried about you here. Mom, Jongin, Mark? And your friends— Sicheng, Ten, and Taeyong? We all hate seeing you like this!” her voice grew louder and louder with each word, causing him to flinch at the shrill tone. Deafening noises plus nausea and headaches never meshed well with him.

“You don’t see how much it hurts seeing someone you care about suffer like this, Yuta. It hurts even more when we can’t do anything to help you go through this.”

Silence filled the room.

“Have you seen Dr. Kim lately?” Dr. Junmyeon Kim was the Hanahaki specialist that Kira recommended. He eased her back into normalcy after her scare.

“I will soon, I promise,” he said through haggard breaths. She guided him through a couple of breathing exercises and it calmed his racing heart down.

Kira sighed. With a quieter tone, she said, “It’s a shame the world made us experience heartbreak this way, isn’t it?”

Yuta smiled sadly at her— it was a shame.

The front door of the shop opened and the bell rang. They both turned to see Kira’s boyfriend Mark walk in with a cute grin. He clumsily hopped over the counter to plant a sweet kiss on her cheek. “Well, at least you got your happy ending,” he muttered too low for his coworker to hear.

Yuta knew there was a chance of having it too, he was just too afraid to speak.

If one were to look at him at that moment, his features hid nothing. Nakamoto Yuta was slowly ripping at the seams with the sakura branches poking their way out of his built figure and although multiple options were given to him, he still felt so unbelievably helpless.

It was the middle of the semester when you caught Yuta wandering the halls of the main art building. A grin found its way to your lips as you saw him with his messenger bag and a tubed container slung over his shoulder. Running to catch up with him, you slipped your arm into his free one. Your classmate yelped at the sudden contact and you let out a loud giggled that echoed in the empty hallway.

You finally felt close enough to initiate contact after sharing supplies with him during one studio session. That being said, it didn’t mean you were comfortable with revealing the feelings you harbored towards him— you wanted to keep that a secret for a little bit longer.

“What are you doing here? I thought you didn’t have classes in here today,” you asked.

“Oh, it’s just you,” Yuta sighed. You felt your heart drop at his words but you played it off with a scrunch of the nose and a teasing tone.

“Were you expecting someone else, Nakamoto?” you nudged his stomach and he avoided it, already predicting your actions. Yuta held back another series of coughs, quick turning away from you to cough into the handkerchief always kept on hand. He looked in pain as he continued to hack into the small piece of cloth and you brought a comforting hand to rub at his back.

“Every time I see you, you’re coughing,” you frowned. “You really need to get yourself checked, it’s been months.”

“No, no, I promise you I’m fine,” he replied with the shake of the head, his dark hair moving along with him. Even when ruffled and out of sorts, he looked good. He attempted to clear his throat by downing some water.

Your lips pursed at his words, not satisfied with his dismissive answer. “If you say so. Promise me you’ll see someone if it gets worse though.”

He agreed but you suspected it was to stop you from nagging. “To answer your question before you went all mom on me, I was here to talk to the department about my senior project.”

“Have you decided on your theme for your exhibit yet?”

Yuta smiled wistfully, “Flowers.”

“Should’ve known— it’s always flowers with you. It’s like you’re in love with them or something.”

He let out a scoff at your words. When you shot him a questioning look, he dismissed the act completely.

Time spent with Yuta always passed so quickly; one moment you were on the top floor of the building and the next, you were already at the bottom of the staircase. Ever the gentleman, he held the front door open for you and you thanked him with a smile. His brown eyes shrunk into little slits and whiskers appeared at the corners as he grinned back with a little chuckle.

How you longed to sketch that image.

A strong breeze blew through, causing a couple of leaves and fallen petals to fly around your figures. You crossed your arms around your front to keep the cold from seeping in and shut your eyes to keep debris out. Peeking at Yuta, you saw him cover his eyes with a calloused hand and he gently pushed you behind him to use his body as a makeshift shield. As soon as the breeze stopped, his grip on your arm loosened but the grip he had on your heart was still as strong as ever.

He whirled around to make sure you were alright and next thing you knew, his hand was lingering above your head. “You have something in your hair, do you want me to take it out?”

Yuta looked down at you with cautious eyes and you just noticed how close you were. Heat radiated off his body and your cheeks as you nod in approval. One dry hand moved to delicately clutch the side of your head as the other plucked a leaf out of your hair.

Your breath hitched as his fingers ran against your skin and tucked a stray piece of hair behind your ear. There was a sudden pounding in your ears that matched the drumming rhythm of your heart.

“There,” he whispered as he let you go. With a smile, Yuta added, “good as new and pretty as a picture.”

“Pretty enough to paint?” you fired back with sarcasm.

“Definitely worthy of being displayed for the world to see,” he winked.

Was he flirting? It seemed like he was.

Maybe, Sicheng was right— Yuta could have feelings for you. But it could also just be wishful thinking.

Were you flirting? Is this how flirting works?

“Speaking of displays,” Yuta started nervously as he walked you to your car. He slowed down his walking pace and you easily matched it, your steps moving in time with his. The main walkway on campus was devoid of people, seeing how it was later in the school day. The path from the art building to the lot you parked in was short and you wished there was some way to extend it so you could spend more time with him.

“Will you, uh, come to my show?” he asked, his hand scratching the back of his head. His hair flopped with the wind and his unsure grin made him look so incredibly endearing. “I know it’s still too early to give you a set date but I’d love to see you there.”

“What? Of course I’ll come!” you said, stopping to slap his arm.

He winced at the contact. “Ow?”

“I would’ve gone even if you didn’t ask me,” you proceeded on the path with a smile. “I have to go and support my friends.”

There was a coughing fit coming from behind you and you whirled around to see Yuta hacking into his handkerchief again. It looked more painful than the last attack he had a few minutes ago. His breathing was shallow and he clutched his chest as the coughs continued.

“Oh my god, Yuta!” You were pretty sure you heard him gag as you rubbed his back. “Okay, I’m taking you to the hospital. You’re clearly not alright.”

He lifted a hand to tell you to stop. “No, no. I’m fine. I just—I gotta go,” was all he said with his hoarse voice before jolting away.

Staring at his strong back as grew smaller and smaller, you almost missed the fallen piece of cloth on the ground. Keyword: almost.

“Wait, Yuta!” you shouted, bending down to pick it up. “You dropped your hanke—” As soon as you lifted the handkerchief, perfectly preserved cherry blossom petals fell out of its hold. They rained towards the ground, decorating the sidewalk with the prettiest shade of pink.

Yuta was long forgotten. You were too lost in your confusion of the flowers.

“Cherry blossoms?” you asked yourself. “They’re not in season yet.”

—🌸—

Yuta heard you calling for him but he refused to turn around. He pushed himself to keep running despite the tight pain in his chest. Pulling out his phone, he sent quick text messages to Sicheng and Kira with his location, asking them to stop by and help him. The disorientation hit faster this time, causing him to tumble into a bench. He gripped the iron lining as he hurled and for the first time, it was so painful that it brought tears to his eyes. His mouth trembled as he let out a cry.

Yuta tasted the bit of blood that poured out of his lips.

Wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket, Yuta ignored how the crimson stained the fabric. A butter chuckle escaped him.

“Pink goes good with red,” he whispered to himself as another stinging pain made its way up his body.

He felt the branches slowly poking his lungs, climbing a path up his chest. It was just as Kira described— it was piercing like a sharp arrow to the heart. The arrow pressed and pressed and pressed until he was exploding with petals, blood, sweat, and tears. It was aimed to kill. He thought arrows to the heart were supposed to fill him with love, not a heart-wrenching pain that tempted him to rip the beating organ out of his chest.

This was all too much to bear.

The full flowers and the scratching of wood tickling his throat.

The lack of oxygen and struggle for air.

He felt it all. He wished he didn’t.

Yuta wished he was one of the people that found their soulmate with that ridiculous red string of fate tied to the end of his pinky. They were blessed with a lifetime of happiness while he was cursed with what felt like an eternity of agony that his weakening body could no longer withstand.

Yuta knew you didn’t love him but he adored you anyway.

This wasn’t a shoujo manga, Yuta knew that. This was real life. No one was going to kiss, kiss, fall in love with the blink of an eye.

Picking petals off of flowers wouldn’t solve his problem. He wished it did, though.

If only it was that easy.

The rest of the semester flew by quickly with midterms and mid-semester projects keeping you at bay. You barely saw Yuta, yet alone the rest of your friends, if not for your classes. All of you shared the same appearance: dark circles, eye bags, sunken cheeks, hunched backs, and glazed over eyes. Your group survived the weeks with a crazy amount of caffeine and not enough food.

With the school year finally over and graduation season starting, that meant one thing for the college of fine arts at your university— exhibitions. The music and dance departments already had their concerts and showcases. Final showings of the theatre department’s newest production just wrapped up yesterday; the only thing left were the senior art exhibits.

Dressed to the nines and not at all like a struggling artist, you paced back and forth at the entrance of the student art gallery with a bouquet of irises in your hand. Sicheng, your emotional support for the day, stood as you walked the same path with annoyance. You couldn’t exactly pinpoint why you felt nervous— it wasn’t even your exhibit, it was Yuta’s.

Ten and Taeyong wrapped up their exhibits the week prior; Yuta’s was the last one.

“Are you done freaking out? Can we go in now?” Sicheng cocked a brow at you with his phone in hand. “The others are already inside.”

Wringing your hands together, you took in a deep breath. “Okay, let’s do this.”

Sicheng rolled his eyes before opening the doors to the gallery. Stepping inside, you were immediately welcomed by paper flowers of all sorts hanging from the ceiling and the quiet chatter of the gallery’s visitors. To the right, you saw a sign displaying the exhibit’s name: Efflorescence. A brief description of the exhibit was placed below it and you took the time to read it before stepping further in.

Snapshots of his life told through the appearance and language of flowers.

Ten and Taeyong, your seniors and close friends, were waiting for you off to the side.

“Sorry for the wait, you guys.”

Sicheng grumbled, “Took her long enough to calm down.”

Ten laughed, “Were you nervous for him? You weren’t like this for our final exhibits.”

“Oh, leave her alone,” Taeyong hushed the other two. Wrapping an arm around you, he pulled you close, “She’s nervous because this is her crush we’re talking about.”

“For heaven’s sake, say that any louder and he’ll hear you!” you screeched. The boys chuckled at your embarrassed state as you went ahead of them, ready to walk your way through the large room. From the corner of your eye, you saw Yuta smiling by the exit, surrounded by people singing praises about his work.

You weren’t in a rush— you wanted to take the time to appreciate every piece before talking to him about why he chose to display each work. Talking to the object of your affection could wait.

The first few paintings were of his childhood and the flowers that accompanied each scene all had similar meanings— innocence, purity, etc. You noticed that most of his paintings were done with watercolor, which made complete sense.

It seemed like he was always prepared to paint something, brush and paint always at the ready. The genius basically carried his foldable watercolor palette and pad everywhere he went, not wanting to miss an opportunity to paint a beautiful picture if he were to pass by one. That was another thing you admire about him— Nakamoto Yuta saw beauty in everything.

Deeper into the gallery, you found more familiar scenes and faces. There was a landscape of the fine arts department, with daffodil petals scattered across the canvas and it was titled New Beginnings. You passed various portraits of your friends, their beauty rivaling that of their birth flowers that shared the same space. Marveling at how realistic his paintings looked, you made a note in your brain to relay that thought to the artist later. He captured the essence of each person perfectly in a painting, breathing life into it, and you honestly couldn’t understand how one could do that.

Spotting Kira’s familiar face admiring a painting up ahead, you quickened your pace to catch up to her. Feeling the light tap you placed on her shoulder, she turned around with a surprised look that turned into a genuine smile upon seeing your face. She released her hold on her companion, a cute boy with doe eyes and bright smile, before giving you a hug.

“You’re here!” she squealed. Taking notice of the flowers in your hand, she winked, “Irises, huh? Nice touch.”

“I stopped by your shop beforehand looking for you and an older guy wrapped them up for me,” you smiled sheepishly. “Should’ve known you would be here and not working.”

“My brother, Jongin,” Kira said. “And of course, I wouldn't miss Yuta’s exhibit for the world. He’s done a lot for me and my family.” She shared a fond look with the boy next to her and he squeezed her hand in return.

“This is my boyfriend, Mark, by the way,” Kira gestured to the boy next to her.

“Yo, nice to meet you, dude,” Mark extended his arm out towards you and you gladly took in your hands to give it a shake. You laughed at his casual greeting; it was charming.

“Back at you, dude,” you giggled back.

Turning to take a peek at the picture they were admiring, you couldn’t help but break out into a wide grin. It was the two of them with the flower shop as their background. Yuta had painted Kira seated on top on the counter, eyes closed with glee and hands clutching a small bouquet of blue flowers. Mark, on the other hand, leaned towards her with fingers gripping the table top and looking at her with a loving smile.

You could feel the love pouring out of it and it warmed your lonely heart. “Wow,” you whispered.

Kira leaned her head on Mark’s shoulder and he placed a tiny kiss to her temple. “I’m buying it from him once this is all over,” she said.

Knowing each flower played a part in Yuta’s paintings, you tried to distinguish what flowers she clutched in her hand. “They’re cornflowers,” Mark answered the question that lingered in your head.

“Why cornflowers?”

“Oh those things put us through a lot— a little pain sprinkled in with their beauty,” Kira smiled, leaving Mark to chuckle lovingly at her comment. It felt like a secret between the two of them and you were invading in their space. “They were what got us together in the first place.”

Her sentence made you cock a brow. How could flowers be painful? That was awfully cryptic, even a little unsettling but it sounded a little familiar to you; it was on the tip of your tongue.

“Yeah, they’re pretty special,” the boy grinned, gaze still glued to the person wrapped under his arm. “Cornflowers are my favorite.”

“They’re starting to become one of mine, too,” she returned the look.

Mark’s bright brown eyes were shining with the love you wish someone had for you. It was a sweet sight, to see such a young couple in love. A part of you was jealous that they found a love like that so early in their lives while you pined after an artist that was so infatuated with flowers and their meanings.

Wanting to leave them in their moment, you excused yourself with a smile. There were only four paintings left to see.

The first was a design you recognized. It was a more detailed painting of the sketch you had seen Yuta draw on the first day of the semester. A girl was seated on the grass, leaning her back on a trunk of a cherry blossom tree. Her hands were outstretched to the sky, trying to catch the falling petals in her hand. Stealing a glance at the title, Yuta titled the piece, Wishful Thinking.

Moving to the next piece, it was a close up of Yuta’s hands. His palms were pressed together, cupping cherry blossoms in his hand. Petals and full flowers were scattered around the canvas, filling out all the empty spaces. The bright pink stood out against the color of his skin. You admired the amount of detail this piece had— the wrinkles on his skin, the gradient found on the petals. It held your interest, leaving you to wonder what this piece titled Inside meant to him.

Yuta’s self-portrait was showstopping. He borrowed the flower shop’s name, calling this piece For You in Full Bloom. The painting brilliantly depicted him in all white, his eyes closed with pain and hands clutching at his throat. The blossoms were spilling out of his mouth, the petals tainted with a blood red. You could feel the sadness and the suffering emitting from the picture and it pained you to see such a vulnerable depiction of him.

Putting two and two together, you figured it out.

Hanahaki. You had read about the disease before, one of the artists you admired had it. They created art as a way to tell their story. It was their escape from the suffering, a way to ease their pain, and the one course of action they took to be remembered after their death.

The only piece of information you lacked was who made him tolerate such pain.

Skipping the last painting of the exhibit, you made your way through the crowd to find Yuta. He stood at the end with a polite smile, thanking everyone who attended his exhibit. Onlookers were showering him with compliments, leaving you to wait until the small crowd cleared out.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?” you breathed out with a concerned look. You couldn’t even spit out the name of the disease.

His smile widened into a genuine one, eyes gone soft at the sight of you. “You made it.”

Spotting the irises in your hand, he gestured towards the bouquet. “Are those for me?”

Still in shock that the person you were in love with was suffering all this time, you handed them to him without a word.

“Irises mean ‘congratulations,’ nice choice,” he laughed, trying to steer the topic away from his illness.

“Who?” you asked. “Who is it?”

Cocking his head, he answered you with another question. “You didn’t see the last one, did you?”

Shaking your head negatively, Yuta took you by the hand and the feeling made fireworks explode in your chest. Your heart was beating rapidly as he led you a few steps away. Nodding his head towards the last frame, he whispered, “Take a look.”

You felt his hand break out into a sweat and you wondered why this last one made him so nervous. Glancing at the title, you read the words Love Me Now.

Taking a deep breath, you mentally prepared yourself to see the person who had a hold on Yuta’s heart. Unlike him, you thought yourself strong enough to take the heartbreak— after all, you weren’t the one with flowers blooming inside you. Shifting your eyes over, you gasped as soon as you spotted whose face was framed on the wall.

Staring back at you was the most beautiful painting of yourself. It was a you that you had never seen before. He painted you in flourishing pastels to match the happy look on your face. He captured your smile lines, the curve of your eyes, and the scrunch of your nose in such detail; it amazed you beyond belief.

There was movement in your hair, the strands swaying in the wind along with the petals behind you. Your hands held a branch of your favorite flowers, half of them covering part of your face.

Captivated by seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes, you couldn’t tear your gaze away.

“Your smile makes flowers grow in my chest,” Yuta’s voice came from your side. You turned to see him wear a strained smile. Yuta’s huge eyes that were usually filled with kindness were taken over by something else— pain.

There was pain in his words and you hear the ache in his voice. His tone is hoarse, like his throat is unbelievably dry or irritated.

“I— I don’t know what to say.”

Everything was extremely overwhelming.

He shook his head to tell you that it was okay; he just needed to get the words off his chest. “It’s so beautiful and enchanting and it makes my heart clench and flowers take over my lungs.”

“Cherry blossoms,” you found yourself saying. You couldn’t believe this was happening. There were words you wanted to say but you were struggling to find them.

“Sakura,” he repeated in his native language.

“My favorite flowers.”

“Your favorite flowers.”

“You were never in love with flowers,” you stated, still in a state of shock.

Yuta released this low, almost bitter sounding chuckle that comes from deep within his chest. “Never.”

“Then, you’re in love with—”

“You.”

“—me.”

Just like the artist you admired, Yuta painted his way through his pain of loving you.

Nakamoto Yuta felt like he had been in love with you for the longest time. He had loved you before he could even muster the guts to let you know it, to invite you to this exhibit that displayed art dedicated to you.

He really hoped that you would show so he could take the chance to confess. Sure, you had promised but sometimes, people never intended to keep them. If he didn’t get it off his chest, he would never be able to breathe and Yuta desperately wanted to.

Yuta wanted to fill his lungs with breaths of fresh air and just breathe you in. That was all he longed for.

“Oh,” was all you could breathe out.

“It’s okay that you don’t feel the same,” Yuta tried to comfort you, getting the wrong idea from your lack of words. “I just needed to let you know.”

The sharpening ache that became so familiar to him was building up in his chest again, preparing him for the worst. Yuta swallowed thickly, already feeling the petals working their way to his mouth. His airways began restricting, his breaths growing more haggard by the second. He had so many things to say and he was determined to let it out before the petals escaped. The words spilled out his mouth, his lips running like a motor, “I used to be afraid of being in love and being happy with a person that I loved because it hurts.”

“Yuta—”

He stopped you with a lifted palm.

“Happiness never lasted with me, the flowers always ripped it away,�� he explained, his trembling eyes focusing on your portrait and not the real person beside him.

“But then I met you and felt things I have never experienced before. So, I pushed my way through the pain just to be with you because I felt like I reached for the stars and touched the sky when we were together.”

His words brought tears to your eyes. You couldn’t believe someone would sit through the pain just to spend time with you nor thought you were worth it but here Yuta was, proving you wrong.

“There were times I wanted to beg you to love me, just so the hurting and the bleeding—just everything— could stop but I was too much of a coward and it led me to this.”

Here he was, pouring his heart out to you with his images and words, and you couldn’t let out a single noise. You forced yourself to move forward, to slip your hand into his. The sensation of your fingers intertwining with his brought Yuta out of his daze to look at you.

“Yuta,” you said with trembling lips. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”

“It’s not your fault,” he replied with a sullen tone. You squeezed his palm and he gave you a light one in return. “If I don’t get this off my chest now, I’ll never be able to breathe and I really want to.”

“There’s no reason for you to lose your breath over me.” A sniffle escaped you and Yuta turned to see you crying. He bent down to wipe your tears away, his finger swiping against your skin ever so gently.

“Why are you crying?”

“Because you suffered because of me and you didn’t have to,” you shot back with a whimper.

“You couldn’t have known, it’s okay,” he tried to reassure you.

“No, no,” you interrupted him to his confusion. “It’s not that.”

Your voice was so soft under your quivers, he could barely hear you over the loud chattering of the other guests in the room. Yuta guided you just outside his exhibit to a bench and dried your eyes with the sleeve of his sweater.

“What’s wrong?”

Yuta’s question made you laugh through your tears and at all the time wasted. He had been in pain for so long because he was yearning for you just as you were for him. The mutual yet silent pining took you down this route and it could have been avoided if you had just stopped being a coward and spoken up like Sicheng pushed you to.

“There’s nothing wrong,” you said with the dismissing wave. You willed yourself to look him in the eyes and bring a hand to his cheek. “It’s just that I think I’ve been in love with you as long as you have been in love with me.”

Your confession caused him to freeze in his seat. His brown eyes were blown out wide and mouth dropping in shock. Giggling as more tears fell, you quickly slide the hand cupping his cheek down to his jaw to shut his mouth closed. Running a thumb against his lips, you felt his pulse quickening at your touch.

“You’re in love with me?” he asked, voice as gentle as the breeze. There was uncertainty and disbelief behind it. Yuta wanted to hear you say it again.

—🌸—

“I’ve been in love with you for a while now.” Your earnest words were music to his ears.

He felt this comforting rush take over this body and it sent tingles down his spine, traveling all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes. Your confession worked like magic, spelling him with this high that made him soar to the skies.

Yuta thought you were a witch, entrancing him with a love charm so strong that it brought instant relief to his pain. His heart was trying to fight its way out of his chest and the ache of his airways dulled. The muscle was pounding so loudly against his ribcage, he could hear it in his ears, and he swore you could hear it too.

His lips upturned into the biggest grin, he felt like his cheeks were about to burst.

Was this how a requited love felt? If it was, he never wanted to go without it again.

Yuta rushed to pull you in his arms and sighed when you nuzzled your head into his neck. He shivered when he felt them whisper the three words he longed to hear into his skin. His body shook with laughter as he placed a lingering kiss at the crown of your head, reveling at the feeling of you encased in his hold.

You tried to fight your way out of his grip but he only tightened his arms, not wanting to let you go. The action left you giggling into his neck, causing him to squirm until his hold loosened. Your hands trailed their way from his waist up to cup his face and suddenly, his eyes were locked onto yours. Just as you were getting lost in the deep sea of brown, his gaze flickered to your lips before looking back at you. His lips quirked up as you did the same.

He felt your breath hitch as he leaned in to slot his lips against yours and the overwhelming rush returned. It seemed like his heart was racing against time, beating erratically as you kissed him so tenderly. Your lips were so soft and they tasted like the vanilla flavoring of your color, leaving him to chase after you every time you pulled away for a breath.

Yuta fought the strain in his airways as he pursued your lips again and again, loving the way you felt and tasted. He picked up the smell of your cherry blossom shampoo and laughed into the kiss. The feeling of having you was so addicting— your love was his drug and he was forever hooked on you. He would devote himself to nothing else but you.

The sensation of Yuta kissing you and smiling against your lips sent you into overdrive. There were butterflies in your stomach, fireworks going off in your head, tingles down your spine and you loved it all.

In the past, you only noticed Nakamoto Yuta’s undying love and admiration for flowers but this was the first time you finally noticed his love for you and it was nothing short of wonderful.

It was the start of something new.

🌸 author’s note— that’s it! it came out a bit more angst than i intended, definitely lacked the fluff i was expecting but i’m still satisfied with the ending uwu i loved writing my little markie and kira in the fic, i’ve missed them! but yes!! that’s the end of my little bday present to myself! i hope y’all loved it! please leave some feedback; i would love to hear what you thought of it!! i think i literally fell in love with yuta while writing this.

🌸 taglist— @danishmiilk @hyunjins--laugh @littleflowercrown13 @orange-nimon-cross @radiorenjun @ncteaxhoe @chancrispy

#cznnet #neowritingsnet #nct scenarios #nct imagines #nct fanfic #nct angst #nct x reader #nakamoto yuta #yuta #yuta x reader #yuta scenarios #yuta imagines #yuta fanfic #yuta fluff #yuta angst

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a-n-conrad · 3 years ago

Text

Painting (Steve Rogers x Reader)

[Summary: You decide to paint your friend, Steve Rogers, realizing that no one had ever painted him without his uniform. However, things start to get heated after you start to daydream during your painting session. (She/Her pronouns)

Warnings: SMUT (18+, but with emotions), Not Canon Compliant (Because fuck you, Marvel.), Swearing, unprotected vaginal sex

Request: From my request survey (https://forms.gle/D9rsJtkERoBPaKvv8)]

You and Steve Rogers were widely considered to be an unlikely pair. There were a lot of things that you didn’t exactly agree on. Steve was a lot more social, being bold and outgoing. You were a bit quieter, preferring to avoid the company of a crowd. Steve was prone to waking up early to exercise. You stayed up into the quiet hours of the night, choosing instead to get a majority of your sleep in the morning. You weren’t exactly fond of Steve’s workout routines either, though you would join him on a short jog on occasion.

While you were technically considered an Avenger, you were really only brought out to fight for emergency circumstances. You had some incredibly powerful, incredibly volatile powers, but you really had no interest in using them unless it was completely needed. So you ended up making a few deals. You’d be treated like an Avenger, but you were basically benched unless some drastic, world-ending issue came up. So until then, you were kept on hold in Avengers Tower, spending most of your time painting in the studio that Tony had gotten set up for you.

Despite this power, and despite your title as an official Avenger, you were still a bit of an outsider among the team. You tended not to talk to them a lot, becoming a bit easily overwhelmed by the chaos that the team seemed to radiate. But surprisingly, you and Steve got along incredibly well.

You had originally bonded over your love of art. You loved Steve’s drawings. You admired the linework and shading in his drawings. He could do so much with just a pen, let alone if you gave him a few colors. He admired the amount of emotion you managed to instill into every single painting that you made. No matter what you painted, whether it was a portrait, a landscape, or something entirely different, it was always filled to the brim with the emotion that you had felt while painting it. It was like looking through a window into your soul. It was so honest and refreshing.

Eventually the two of you started to talk a bit more while you worked. It started pretty tame, just discussions of how your day was or general questions about each other like “What’s your favorite color”. But eventually you moved on to the harsher topics of your lives. Steve would talk about how exhausting it was to be the face of America, to be held on such a pedestal while also being expected to sacrifice everything at the drop of a hat. You talked about how cold and dehumanizing it felt to be seen by the American government as nothing more than a weapon, a walking nuclear bomb.

Your struggles overlapped at certain points. You both spent a lot of your time being used by the government. You were both seen as tools more than you were seen as people by a lot of the general public. You were a weapon and he was an idol, some sort of trophy. So you bonded a lot over your shared struggles as you talked to each other and worked on art side by side. And when the hard stuff got a bit too heavy, you’d sit and talk about art. About subjects that you just loved to add to all of your work. About what each shade of every color meant to you, about the emotions that you saw in every tiny color shift.

It was so nice, for both of you, to have something like that. The studio that you spent time in was so safe and peaceful for both of you, since the other Avengers tended to avoid it. And the two of you had started to see through each other’s masks enough to truly get to know each other. Steve couldn’t remember the last time someone had known him as Steve Rogers more than they had known him as Captain America. He had Bucky, but Bucky was far too busy with his own issues for Steve to even consider burdening him with anything else. But with you he could truly be himself, even if that meant getting angry, sad, or frustrated.

So the two of you had become incredibly close, despite your differences. And every day that you had some free time without any big meeting or mission, you would be in the studio helping each other with art. It was a good way for you to relieve stress, just relaxing with each other. It was one of those days that you came to a realization.

- - - - -

“Has anyone ever painted you?” You asked suddenly one day as the two of you sat side by side in the art studio. He looked a bit surprised, and then he looked confused.

“Of course. There are murals of me up all over the place, (Y/n).”

“No, there are murals of Captain America,” you responded, shaking your head, “They don’t really look that much like you. You really only look like that when you’re working as Captain America. So has anyone ever painted you? As Steve Rogers?”

He looked surprised again. And you could tell as the emotions cycled through his face that he didn’t really know how to respond. You supposed it was a bit of an odd question. And you knew that it was a bit odd to think of someone and their superhero persona as two different people, but Steve couldn’t disagree. He wasn’t Captain America all the time, and he loved that you understood that, “I suppose I’ve never really thought about it, but I guess not.”

You hummed a bit, “That’s a shame. It feels like a waste that everyone paints a costume. You should let me paint you sometime.”

You said it in a way that he wasn’t sure if you were serious. Your face was entirely serious when you said it, but you said it so casually, not even really looking at him, “Really?”

You finally looked up at him, noticing the pure confusion on his face, “Of course. I mean, you’d have to sit still for a while, but honestly, you could probably just sit and sketch for a while. You just seem too good of a subject to not be painted without the costume.”

Steve wasn’t really one to blush, but it was quite the compliment coming from you. He had women trying to hit on him all the time now, being Captain America, but that never really felt heartfelt. It had been a fairly long time since he had actually felt a real connection with someone. But to hear you compliment him, thinking of him as Steve Rogers instead of Captain America, made his heart flutter a bit. And the fact that he knew that you were rather picky about the subject you painted only made it more effective.

“I, uh, think that’d be cool,” He responded as soon as he was sure that he could trust his voice not to crack, though he couldn’t hide the slight stutter. It was honestly endearing how much his personality changed when he wasn’t working. While he was still headstrong and stubborn, he was a bit less confident. He knew he could win a fight. He knew that he looked good on television. But he didn’t really know how to interact with people in the new modern age. He was lucky to have the friends that he did. At least, that’s how he felt about it.

“Wonderful,” You hummed, starting to put away all of your supplies, “Why don’t we pack it up for the day and I can start painting you tomorrow if we aren’t too busy?”

“Yeah, sounds like a plan.”

- - - - -

The next day was surprisingly slow. You had to say that you were thankful. You had been looking forward to getting to paint Steve, even though you knew it was making him a little nervous. You were honestly excited to have a new project, and part of you was excited for the opportunity to stare at Steve for a bit without it being considered weird. He was easy to admire, both physically and on a personal level, so you found yourself staring more often than you’d like to admit. You were pretty sure that you had been lucky enough to avoid being caught though.

He was physically gorgeous. Obviously. But something about the way that he looked when he was drawing was nearly angelic. The way he furrowed his brows just a little and turned his paper at odd angles to make sure that the proportions of his sketches were right was adorable. The look in his eyes when his work started to come together made your heart melt. When he got a bit frustrated and would run a hand through his hair you could feel your heart skip a beat. You felt a bit dumb to be drooling over your friend, but you had to admit you were falling pretty hard for him. So you’d use this painting as an excuse to admire him without any questions.

He was already blushing a bit when he came into the studio, and you had a feeling that part of it was from Tony teasing him. He had a habit of giving the two of you a bit of a hard time about how much time you spent together. But the blush was still adorable. Something about Steve when he was nervous stole your heart. He was surprisingly soft when he had the space to be.

“So, uh, what’s the plan?” He asked as he strode over to your work station that you had already gotten set up.

“Just pull a chair up in front of me. You can get comfortable, start sketching, and I’ll get a base outline and block out as much as I can. Just let me know if you need a break and try not to change your pose too much. At least until I can get all of the base shapes right,” You instructed, trying to keep your voice even. You were surprised at how well you managed to hide the fact that you were completely lovesick.

“Alright, sounds good,” He responded, pulling up a chair and getting himself situated. He crossed one of his legs over the other, resting his ankle on his other thigh to give himself a place to set his sketchbook. You tossed him his pencil once he got himself settled, and then you got to work.

You had to admit you had started to get a bit frustrated with how easily you managed to get distracted by him while you were trying to paint. You had hoped that maybe painting him would help. You had no reason to get distracted from your painting when you were painting him. At least, that’s what you had thought before you started sketching out the form.

You felt yourself losing focus as your brush moved smoothly, the incredibly thin, light paint building a form that you found yourself wanting to know a bit more intimately. You tried your best to stay focused on the canvas in front of you, but you couldn’t stop your mind from drifting. You imagined what his body looked like under his clothes as you blocked out the lights and shadows of the fabric that rested over his abs. And the vivid image in your brain, the detailed picture of his body that you had conjured up in front of you, followed your brush as you worked.

The brush slid smoothly across the canvas, outlining his muscles, almost all of which showed through his thin t-shirt. Your brain almost instantly conjured up a matching image, the fantasy becoming more and more dynamic as you went on. It shifted from regular images of what his abs looked like when he was shirtless to more detailed images. Thoughts of his biceps flexing a bit as he held himself over you, his arms covered in sweat. Thoughts of his hands sliding across your skin. It only got worse as you moved down, eventually reaching the point between his legs.

“(Y/n)? Are you alright?” Steve’s voice finally broke you from your thoughts, his eyes which had been focused intently on his drawing when you had last looked were now trained on your face, scanning for any sign as to what was causing you to space out, “You don’t normally get distracted when you’re painting, is everything alright?”

“Oh,” You tried your best to pull yourself back to reality, though the fantasies seemed to be burned into your brain, “Yeah, sorry. I was, uh, spacing out a bit.”

“Do you want to take a break for a bit? Maybe we should get up and stretch,” He suggested. You nodded in response, hoping it would help you refocus on your painting.

It didn’t help much, though, as Steve stood, stretching his arms above his head. His shirt lifted up just enough to show some skin, and his pants were riding fairly low. Your eyes almost involuntarily moved to look at him, landing right about the button to the jeans that he was wearing. The muscles in his hips and stomach formed an almost perfect V shape leading into his pants.

“(Y/N)?” You had been caught staring. You tried your best to look casual, relaxing your posture. Your mistake was to try to lean on the table, setting your hand directing on your palette, which was covered in paints.

You froze, and Steve’s eyes landed on your hand, the red and blue paint gushing out from the sides. You felt like an awkward teenager, doing stupid ridiculous shit in front of your crush. You watched intently for a reaction from Steve, not really knowing what to do and hoping that the way that he reacted would give you something easy to respond to.

He raised one of his eyebrows at you, a look of confusion, with a small hint of amusement under the surface painted across his face, “You seem to have set your hand in your paint.”

“Uh, yes, it would seem so,” You responded awkwardly, finally lifting your hand out of the paint. You still really weren’t sure what to say, and not knowing where to put your hand so that you wouldn’t smear any paint anywhere wasn’t really making you feel any better. You cleared your throat a bit, trying to think of something smart to say, something that wouldn’t signal exactly how far gone you were into your fantasies, but instead you just signaled to Steve how flustered you were.

You knew that Steve had never been the biggest ladies’ man. From what he had told you, he was actually pretty awkward growing up, but the confidence that washed over him as he finally figured out what was getting you so flustered was visible. He walked closer to you, standing close enough to emphasize how tall he was, “Got something on your mind, sweetheart?”

“Oh, uh,” You stuttered, not sure what to say. You could tell that he knew from the smirk on his face, but you could feel your face heating up as you thought about explaining your fantasizing to Steve. He smirked even more as you got visibly flustered.

“It’s okay, honey, I don’t mind if you stare a little,” He said, standing a bit closer, his hand moving to hold your chin. You swallowed deeply as his fingers brushed against your skin softly. Your eyes locked with his as his hand tilted your chin up just a little.

As much as he was keeping up his confident, masculine persona, you could see the complete warmth in his eyes. He softened completely when you looked at him, pure admiration in your eyes. He had to admit it warmed his heart to see you looking at him like that, like he was your whole world. And maybe it was because he felt the same way. He had been falling in love with you slowly, and as he looked at you, he wanted to find every way possible to express it.

“Can I kiss you?” He whispered, his voice soft.

“Please.”

His lips were much softer than you thought they’d be, but you didn’t think about it too much as his lips moved against your own. It was soft at first, but it began to escalate quickly, getting rough and more passionate. His hands moved to your waist, pulling your body into his own, and your hands moved to his face, too focused on the kiss to notice the fact that you were smearing paint across his cheek.

He pulled back, allowing you to get a breath of air. That was when you noticed the red and blue streaks across his cheek, “Shit, sorry.”

“Don’t worry about,” He brushed it off, before pulling you into another kiss. He truly didn’t seem to care at all about the paint, choosing instead to focus on you.

This kiss started off much more passionate, building even further. Before long he pulled away again, pulling a groan from your mouth as you instinctively wanted more. Your complaints were silenced, though, as he began to kiss down your neck, nipping slighting at a few select spots, leaving marks for you to see later.

“If you want me to stop, just say it,” He said, as his hands started to move towards the hem of your shirt. He was moving slowly, giving you the chance to stop him at any point. You didn’t.

Before long, your clothes were entirely discarded, scattered haphazardly across the floor. Steve’s followed shortly. Neither of you could keep your hands to yourself, feeling the curves of each other's bodies as you continued to kiss. Both of you were desperate, the tension that neither of you even realized had been building finally crashing to the ground around you, any sort of restraint being thrown out the window.

However, you had to take a few moments to admire his body. You knew that it was perfect, he was a super soldier, of course it’s perfect, but you didn’t really know how perfect until it was right in front of you. There was no way you could’ve imagined it in a way that did it true justice. The warmth under his skin, the pace of his breathing, the firm feeling of his grip on your waist. Those were things that you could never have imagined fully.

He lifted you up without any issue, placing his hands under your thighs, carrying you to the work table and setting you on a clear section of the table without breaking the kiss. His hands slid across the tops of your thighs before grabbing your hips. Yours moved from his cheeks to rest on his bare chest, smearing a bit more paint across his scalped chest. You could feel his erection brush against your leg as he leaned over you, the two of you trying to get as close to each other as possible.

You were breathing heavily, your brain clouded with need, both new and left over from your earlier fantasies. Fantasies that were coming true, “Please, Steve.”

“What is it, Sweetheart?” Steve asked, looking down at you, his pupils blown wide with desire, “What do you want?”

You began to grind against his thigh without really thinking about it. He had to admit that something about you needing him this much turned him on, but he wanted to wait until you said it before he did anything, “Please fuck me.”

He would’ve liked to have a bit more foreplay, but both of you were so needy, having built up to this for so long with so little release until now. So he complied with your request. He pulled you quickly to the edge of the table. You were forced to lay your upper body down completely so that he could pull your hips to hang over the edge a bit. He took a few moments to rub himself against the entrance to your pussy, coating the head of his cock with liquid that was practically dripping from your pussy. Finally, he pushed himself into you slowly, making sure to monitor your reaction for any sort of discomfort. You were indulging in the feeling of him slowly stretching you out, completely enjoying the feeling of having him as close to you as possible.

He started moving after he was sure that you were comfortable, his hands beginning to wander your body, squeezing at your hips and breasts, basically any part of you that had a bit of squish, something for him to grab. His mouth latched on to the base of your neck, leaving a deep, dark hickey. You could feel every movement of his hips, his cock brushing against your internal walls again with each thrust.

You couldn’t hold back your moans as he found the perfect spot to hit, one of his hands gripping one of your hips tightly to hold you in place as his thrusts gained momentum. He started picking up speed a bit, taking care to continue to hit the spot that made you moan the loudest. His other hand slid down further, his fingers making their way between your folds. He was surprisingly quick to find your clit, not that you were complaining. Your eyes practically rolled back in your head as he started to rub small circles over it, keeping pace with his thrusts.

You were practically putty in his hands, falling apart as he found every way to make you moan. Touch, squeezing, kissing, and biting exactly where you needed him to. You had no idea how he knew exactly what you wanted, but you didn’t really care as a knot began to build in the pit of your stomach.

You practically screamed his name as the knot finally snapped, Steve continuing his motions, continuing to rub your clit, as you rode out your climax, your whole body feeling as though fireworks were shooting through your veins. Your walls tightened with the waves of your orgasms, the fluttering feeling clear to Steve as he continued to bury himself inside of you. Soon after your climax finished, you could feel his thrust begin to get a bit sloppy, focus clear on his face as he tried his best to hold on longer.

He couldn’t hold on that long, though, soon giving in to the building pleasure. He came hard, his hips snapping into your own and his head being buried in your neck to hide his curses as he came completely undone. You could feel the thick hot ropes of his cum coating your insides as he finished. You both stayed like that for a few moments in order to catch your breath.

As you started to come back to reality, you finally noticed the mess you had made. Steve’s hair was a mess, blue paint sticking some of the tips together. You couldn’t even remember when you had grabbed his hair, but the paint smears left a clear map of where your hand had wandered. The blue and red stripes across his face and chest were clear, too. In fact, you had gotten paint all over his sculpted body, the blue smears outlining his muscles.

“We should probably clean up and get back to work, huh?” He eventually sighed, his eyes never leaving your body.

“I suppose.”

(A/N: Thanks for reading! If you want to send me a tip for my writing feel free to tip me over venmo! My venmo is Al3x13l. Tips aren't required, but as a broke college student, they are appreciated.)

#steve rogers x reader #marvel x reader #marvel #steve rogers #captain america #captain america x reader #smut #friends to lovers

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corpsentry · 4 years ago

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january: an art retrospective

i did some stuff last month (but it’s a lot of stuff and there’s a photodump + some Serious Fucking Reflection, so it’s all below the cut)

so ok, let’s start with this. here are some heads. each head has a red arrow. that red arrow is what i call the red line of the devil. it’s the slope of the face from the side of the eye to the cheekbone and then down towards the chin. up until like 2 weeks ago, i couldn’t draw it. i couldn’t fucking draw it. i would edit over that part of the face over and over again until i was frustrated and tired and i had a raging homosexual headache and it still never looked right. notice that each head is different. notice that each head looks wrong.

at the start of 2021 i finally admitted to myself, as per the image above, that i was deeply, deeply unhappy with my art. what was the problem? i dunno. but i decided i was going to fix it and i was going to do so via another one scribble a day event wherein for every day of january i would find a photo of a human head, and i would draw it.

january 1st, 2021. i was embarrassed to tweet this even on my private account where like 5 friends and a rock would see it. in retrospect, you can also see all of my bad habits emerging like dicks from a hole in the ground. it’s disproportionate. the brows look flat. the eyes are slanting upwards. the entire drawing looks flat, like this isn’t a 3d person but a caricature of one.

january 2nd, 3rd, 4th:

on the 2nd i decided to start a separate thread for doodles and applied learning. here’s the first set of tests

the rest of the week is kind of uneventful so we’re going to skip those. fast forward to january 11th

this one is especially bad. i am acutely aware, suddenly, that i am not changing anything at all. i’m stressed and miserable about it because i’m still trying to see people as people and trying to draw people that look attractive and proportionate and hot. my friend, leny, reminds me that i need to think about faces in terms of planes. i have a moment. my other friend masha sends me some links to anatomy tutorials. i have another moment.

january 11th. applied sketch

january 13th is when i start the troubleshooting process. the link above drives me mad because i’m pretty happy with the face but then i realize that there’s something very fucking wrong with the shape of the head LOL and then i realize that i’ve never had any idea what the proportion of the face to the rest of the skull is so i grit my teeth and i open a new canvas and i

bald studies. it seemed like the right thing to do. can’t draw heads? ok draw some heads. look at some photographs. i traced each photo but tried to stick to straight lines so that i could replicate the shapes more easily. i broke each face down into shapes. i thought about airplanes

i got really excited. i started doing studies, then applied studies, then stylized studies.

sketches. i’m not sure what’s going on (as always) and it’s very rough, but they look different from the sketches i did on january 2nd. that’s a start

january 16th’s daily study. looks more like a person now. juuuuuust a bit

more applied studies

on the 18th i take a break and go stare at some lips because i don’t understand how the fuck they work. again, i focus on shapes, on volume, on the fact that these things exist in 3d. holy fuck lips exist in 3d. holy fuck we are real

january 19th. i’m working on it.

january 22nd. some sketches + a daily study. it has finally occurred to me that heads can tilt up and down and that things look different accordingly. yes i was not aware of this before. yes i have been drawing for over a decade.

january 23rd. by this point after doing my daily sketch i almost always go back and do an applied study which is basically to say i drew a lot of fucking links. this one looks kind of okay. i’m kind of proud

january 25th. links. trying to make sense of everything i’ve learned

26th, 27th, 28th. daily studies

january 1st. january 31st

The End Of The Photo Dump (dab)

ok NOW i get to talk about what i discovered while studying the shit out of human beings

FIRST OF ALL, there is something precious and magical about drawing shit without the explicit knowledge that you’re going to tweet that shit out to 45 people later. it takes the burden of perception off your shoulders and that does something to you, or at least that’s my theory. i told myself i wouldn’t post any of this stuff until the end of the month (if i wanted to post it at all) and kept everything off my public social media accounts and that meant i could draw ugly as hell without worrying about who would point and laugh, which i absolutely fucking did. a lot of these are fucking trainwrecks. most of these are fucking trainwrecks. why do they look like that?? why??? this doesn’t look like the work of someone who’s allegedly been drawing since they were in kindergarten, does it?????

here’s why: because that person took a huge motherfucking swing at everything they’d ever known about art and spent a month building something new in its place. the abstract explanation is that i grew up on shoujo and weird old anime and my understanding of anatomy was unironically kamichama karin and while i love kamichama karin, when kamichama karin is your rule even if you try to break it, you’re going to end up going nowhere. “you have to know the rules to break them”, yeah? well i didn’t know shit. the abstract explanation is i’ve been miserable about my art for a few years now because i saw other people doing things effortlessly which i couldn’t and instead of going back to the basics, i tried to do what they did (not plagiarism, mind you, i mean i literally tried to copy the red line of the devil i mentioned above because i couldn’t even make that happen) and then i fucking failed.

the simple explanation is this. i had to unlearn everything, and relearn it again (like some kind of new renaissance clown, what the fuck is this?)

take this for example. all my life i’ve drawn faces in the order: eyes, nose, mouth, face shape, head. this works for some people, im aware, but it was something central to how i had always drawn, so i decentralized it. i said fuck you to the old me and changed the order up. now i start with the nose, then the eyes, mouth, the chin line, and the sides of the face. now i force myself to think about the human head as a series of parts interacting with each other instead of a bunch of disparate features which i want to look pretty.

or let’s use this zelda from last year. something about this looked wrong last october, the way something about all of my drawings looked wrong, but i couldn’t pinpoint it for hell the way i couldn’t articulate Any of my feelings about the visual arts. now, looking back, here’s what i see. that nose is sticking out far too much given how she’s not really facing very far away from the camera. that ear at the back shouldn’t be there. her forehead is too big. she doesn’t have a forehead. what the fuck is up with the shape of her head?

so apparently reject modernity embrace tradition has its roots in alt-right terminology and i’m not very horny for the alt-right (you understand), but the spirit survives here. you know sometimes you have to admit that you have no idea what the fuck you’re doing and draw people for 31 days. i’ve spent my whole life drawing stylized people and while again there are artists who have no issue with this, i veered off the track of the Good and the Holy and couldn’t get back on. i had no point of reference because i’d never thought about what an actual human being looks like, so i had no way to fix what i knew in my gut looked wrong but wouldn’t come out better.

this was hard. this was like oikawa tooru swallowing his worthless pride and admitting that ushijima wakatoshi had gotten the best of him for the last time in his high school career, but in haikyuu!! by furudate haruichi oikawa tooru fucks off to argentina and then joins the argentinean national team, and you know what, i think i’ve made it to argentina (not the team just the country). as per the golden rule of dont fucking move until you’re at least two thirds of the way through the month, i only started trying to draw Shit shit on like the 22nd or something, but i was happy with that i created. i am happy with what i’ve done. i’ve posted like 2 things this month that involve people with what i now call ~applied Knowledge~~ and they’re, like, not perfect obviously (perfection is an unattainable ideal), but i’m fucking proud of them. i didn’t spend 5 hours hunched over my laptop adjusting the red line of the devil because it’s not a devil’s line anymore. because i finally sorta get how people work. because i sat down and i said ‘we are not going to fuck with this misery shit anymore’ and then i did that. it’s just a line now.

here are 2 collages tracking my painstakingly carved out progress from january 2nd to february 2nd because i’m a slut for collages

and here’s what i’ve done to my art! the same person drew these but also Not Really! you know! for the first time in a year i don’t immediately hate what i’ve drawn. you know what guys? art is fucking fun. zelda’s forehead doesn’t scare me anymore because i know how foreheads fucking work now, and i don’t know everything, and i’m going to keep troubleshooting stuff as i go (i want to draw a skeleton. like a. i want to draw a goddamn skeleton guys) but i’m honestly and genuinely proud of what i’ve done in the span of a month, and i’m also in disbelief. i started this month-long challenge out as a last ditch effort to make peace with my art because i’ve been tired for a long time and i was ready to kick the bucket on drawing people altogether. i didn’t think anything would happen. nothing’s happened for years. i’ve been miserable for years.

this was the caption for january 1st, 2021. i was super, super fucking embarrassed and it looks like super fucking shit, but you know what, i think i did in fact triumph over the bullshit. surprisingly enough, when you put in consistent effort into something, You Will See Results. didn’t see that coming, did you? i know i didn’t.

this isn’t a success story. it’s a happiness story. i never gave a shit damn about the institute of art or whatever, i was just mad at myself because what i saw in my head didn’t match up with what was on the canvas. and now it’s getting better. now i’m calibrating the compass. now drawing not just backgrounds but also people is exciting to me, and i can stick my links in your face and tell you ‘they hot’. i’m going to keep doing that. i’m going to keep going until i drop off the side of the earth and then spiral towards mars like some kind of fairy, and then i’m going to create something beautiful.

thanks for reading. here’s a pr department link for sticking around until the end

#my stuff

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neocatharsis · 3 years ago

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Ten Lee Talks Art, Dance, and His New Represent Clothing Collection

"So what is the right answer for me? What do I have to do to really be the person I want to be? But then I realized that there's no right or wrong.”

A few days ago, musician and dancer Ten Lee — known for his work in K-pop groups such as NCT and SuperM, and the Chinese group WayV — shared a video of himself freediving in a deep pool. As Billie Eilish croons the opening to “idontwannabeyouanymore,” he launches into a somersault before swan diving easily onto his back, legs fluttering, arms outstretched, a mermaid embracing the open water.

The reason for the dive is a bit of a secret, he tells Teen Vogue, but not one necessarily related to forthcoming music with the groups he’s in. Rather, it’s one way he’s following his own artistic instincts. If he looks like he’s dancing underwater, that’s because he is, bringing to life a picture of a dance move that previously existed only in his head. “I have all these thoughts in my brain right now,” he says, “but I had to make it real.”

Though he floats seamlessly into different combinations of performers onstage, whether as part of the sensual WayV or the chaotic NCT or the maximalist SuperM, Ten has a fluidity and spirit all his own — especially in dance, where he thrives. Born Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul in Bangkok, Thailand, he joined SM Entertainment in 2013, debuting as part of NCT U in 2016. A turning point came in 2017, when he released his first solo single “Dream in a Dream,” a lovely, imaginative ballad that melds traditional East Asian instrumentals with woozy ambient pop, and has mesmerizing choreography to match. It was the first time he talked to the choreographers he worked with and shared his ideas of what he wanted to try. “I realized why all the hyungs sometimes like doing their own stuff,” he says. “It's because you’re putting your ideas in your own work.”

Now, he’s on the cusp of another turning point: earlier this month, he launched a clothing collection with Represent that features all of his original designs. Longtime Ten fans will know he’s into visual art, sharing regal sketches of his cats Leon and Louis and emotive, detailed doodles on his Instagram. (Fun fact: he toyed with the idea of designing cat clothes, but was concerned about how cats would clean themselves.) The new collection shows off his skill, of course, but it’s also a representation of his creative ethos, and who he wants to be as a person.

Titled “What is ??? THE ANSWERS,” the designs are explosive and bright, with symbols and metaphors galore. He draws various eyes, entranced by the way they show happiness, embarrassment, fear, the things people try to hide. In one design, he uses a cross, which has a double meaning: it’s the Chinese character for the number “10” and also a plus sign, representing the growth and potential he sees in himself.

Ten had long wanted to create a clothing brand, and when Represent approached him, he saw an opportunity to try something of his own. As a kid in Bangkok, he’d taken art lessons at the behest of his mom, who believed that studying art would help boost his IQ and improve his education as a whole. He didn’t really like it at the time, until he took the Cambridge IGCSE exam and tested highly in, you guessed it, art. “I was like, ‘Okay, I like art,’” Ten laughs. “Then I started drawing and trying to develop my own style.” Now, he turns to drawing when he’s feeling “negative energy,” like “when you're down or when you feel sad or when you feel like you're not good enough for something.” Drawing is a source of solace, and it also helps him focus and find clarity on more existential matters.

On Instagram, he wrote of the collection, “What inspires me to create these art pieces is to remind myself that there are no actual answers in what we do. I feel like we are creating all the rules and pressure ourselves with the word ‘standards.’ Who defines the standards of what is acceptable or not + what is right or not + what is enough or not??? The boundaries we draw might limit us from creating something we never knew were capable of.”

When he expands upon that Instagram artist statement, it’s with an interesting visual. “People try to make lines on you,” he says. It calls to mind something like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, a representation of perfect proportions and clean, graphed segments. An idealized image that hardly ever exists.

“I was thinking about my own stuff, the things I have to do to get what I want, like my goals. And, what people said to me, maybe about [my] appearance or about the skills that I had, or my personality, and they told me to change this, do this. I realized that they're just making their own lines on me. So what is the right answer for me? What do I have to do to really be the person I want to be? But then I realized that there's no right or wrong.”

He connects his drawing to his dancing in one word: freedom. Both allow him to lose himself in the moment of creating something real and personal. But in art, it doesn’t matter so much about finding the right answer, or unifying perfectly with other people the way a highly choreographed dance requires.

“Art is more of an individual pleasure,” he says. “If Mark [Lee, his bandmate] is next to me, and I say like, ‘Hey Mark, do you think that clothing is nice?’ He might say no, but for me it was, ‘Wow, that clothing looks so beautiful.’”

Ten might be homed in on individual artistic expression at the moment, but that doesn't mean that's his sole focus. He also yearns for the day SuperM can reunite after members Baekhyun and Taemin return from their military service. “I will fight for that," he says. "We had so much fun touring and then working with all the hyungs. I hope there's a new project for SuperM to work on once everyone is back."

#nct #wayv #Ten

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captainrexforever · 4 years ago

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Sketches

Hey guys. I meant to publish a full length fic today, but my imagination just hasn’t been cooperating. Instead, have this short drabble about our favorite sweetheart. I think this is set a while after the Season 2 Finale but who knows, this was begging to be written, regardless of continuity.

It’s late and Din has just returned from turning in the latest set of bounties. He’s in the cockpit, setting the ship on a new course before turning in for the night. You’re just about to turn in as well when Din’s modulated voice breaks your reverie.

“What’s this?”

You turn and your heart jumps into your throat as you panic just a little bit. He’s holding your sketchbook in his hand, and you realize you must have left it in the cockpit earlier. You’re a little embarrassed. In truth, you have no reason to be, but the thought of Din looking through your sketchbook is enough to set off your nerves. You like to think that you’re somewhat decent at sketching, but you’ve never had any formal training. And as a result, have never had a reason to show anyone else your drawings.

“Just a book.” You finally answer.

“I didn’t know you read hand-written books. Don’t you usually use your pad?”

Damnit, he’s right. Obviously he’s a faster thinker than you, and you flush when you realize you’ll have to tell him the truth.

“Actually, it’s a sketchbook.”

“Oh. May I?” He gestures towards the cover, and you note the questioning tone within his voice. Your heart swells and you wonder how you were ever nervous in the first place. You have shared every other part of yourself with him. A few sketches certainly won’t change how he feels about you.

You nod before capturing his hand and leading him to the side of the Crest where the small ledge serves as a bench of sorts. After settling yourself against his side, you reach a hand out to lift the cover. He grasps your hand gently, holding it while he lifts his other hand to his helmet. He raises it from his head, settling it beside him, before pressing a kiss to your knuckles. You blush and give him a goofy smile in response, allowing yourself to just stare into his eyes for a few moments. You will never tire of gazing into his face, watching as his eyes twinkle and his lids fall in lazy blinks. His responding smile has you captivated, and you suddenly forget why you sat down in the first place.

He breaks your trance by pressing his forehead to yours, then redirecting his gaze towards the book in his lap. You giggle at the silly sight, unable to stop yourself from admiring the features of his face again. He lets out a light chuckle, and joins you in your soft laughter before tucking you further into his side as he turns towards the book again. He holds it while your hand drifts to the cover again, and when you open it you hold your breath, a little unsure as to what the first image will be.

Oh, it’s one of your first attempts at sketching. A simple round sphere decorates the page, a tiny sun drawn into the top left corner to simulate the presence of light. The sketch was meant as a way to practice your shading skills. You risk a glance towards Din and see that he looks completely awestruck, and you can’t suppress a proud smile from overtaking your lips.

You flip the page, this time revealing a more ambitious project. It contains the face of a wolf, the shape a little too round, the lines a little too jagged, the shading a little too forced. The proportions are slightly off as well and you wince a little at the poor attempt. Din still looks interested though, so you continue to the next page. It reveals an eagle head and this time you feel quite proud, the sketch is one of your favorites and it has undergone some small additions throughout it’s long existence. Behind the eagle is a landscape of stars, a mountain range further in the distance that forms a complementary shape which frames the main sketch.

Din sucks in a breath and you smile at him when his gaze drops to you.

“I didn’t know you were so talented.”

You blush. Even after all this time, you’re still awkward with accepting compliments, so you settle for showing your appreciation through actions rather than words. You lean up, lips pursing, then meeting Din’s lightly stubbled cheek in a quick kiss. His mouth curves into a smile and you’re caught once again in the beauty of his gaze. Finally, you muster the strength to break the eye contact and tuck your head into the crook of his neck instead, watching as he flips through the rest of the pages. Some are sketches you remember fondly, others are not quite finished, but they all remind you of specific memories and mindsets. When he finally reaches the last page, you’re practically drifting off already, his warmth and comforting embrace leaving you even more drowsy.

“Still working on this one?”

Your eyes flutter open, and a fiery blush overtakes your cheeks when you take in the sight. The page is filled with different sketches of Din. One shows him wielding a blaster, looking handsome as ever, while he shields you behind his back. Another depicts you in his arms during a nighttime flight with the jet pack. There are dozens more, but the one that must have caught his attention is the most recent sketch. It shows Din on one knee as he offers a ring to you. The shading isn’t quite finished, some of the lines still rough and too light to be considered part of the final product.

“Can you blame me for wanting to immortalize that moment forever?”

He tugs you closer, planting a kiss on your forehead as he closes the book and sets it aside.

“I suppose not. It was the best moment of my life after all.”

“Mine too.”

You’re practically asleep now and he hums, lifting you in his arms as he carries you to your bunk. For it is your bunk now, as much as it is his. Within a minute, he’s tucked you both in, and he’s still wearing his armor, but you don’t mind, it’s as much a part of him as his skin. With a sleepy promise of love you tangle you fingers in his hair and drift off to sleep, safe in the arms of your handsome knight.

#the mandalorian x reader #mandalorian x reader #din djarin x reader #din djarin fluff #the mandalorian fanfiction #mandalorian fanfic #the mandalorian x reader fluff #mando reader fluff #mandalorian fluff #Mando x reader

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joonsrack · 4 years ago

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Masterpiece | KTH x KNJ

+PAIRING: Kim Taehyung x Kim Namjoon

+GENRE: Oneshot, crack, angst, smidge of smut, College AU, stranger to lover

+WORD COUNT: ~13k

+RATING: 18+

+WARNING: Taehyung has face blindness, NSFW, (very) foul language, overuse of the word penis and it’s synonyms, pinning, misunderstandings, Namjoon is like real’ dumb, a little hanky panky but nothing scandalous.

+SUMMARY:

“So let me recap here, you don’t know his name, his major, his department, his age, his number, nor his face. The only clue you have is this drawing, which basically looks like a textbook example of unrealistic body expectations. You apparently know every nook and cranny of his [REDACTED], but you didn’t have the decency to ask his name? You deserve this.” He cackles, angering Taehyung.

(OR the one where Taehyung has face blindness but that won't stop him from finding love. )

+A/N: Well, it’s been almost a year since I’ve posted anything, and almost as much time since i last wrote anything (except for the occasional guilt writing lmao). So this is me coming back with a vengeance (and the dumbest thing i’ve ever written). This is all thanks to (or to be blamed on) @minloop who put up with my non-stop messaging, gave me some plot ideas, and actually inspired me to finish this in three days. Thank you to my baby @emojihobi for the emotional support and the beta reading 💖

+Disclaimer: I got all my info on face blindness from google searches, so please forgive any inaccuracy.

Face blindness has definitely made Taehyung’s life difficult.

There’s the obvious problem of not being able to recognize your parents. Remember this childhood trauma of holding a random stranger’s hands in the mall, thinking it’s your mother or father? Taehyung had to live through that many, many times; except he wouldn’t realize until said stranger would shake his hand off, or until his parents would swoop in to get him. The fact that he’s never been kidnapped is down to pure luck, really.

Making friends, you guessed it, has also been a challenge. It’s difficult explaining to kids why you ignored them when you saw each other in the hallway. Kids don’t always understand “I didn’t recognize you” as an explanation, especially if you’ve been in the same class since pre-k.

But this? This is a new and unforeseen crisis.

His dorm room is very quiet, which is not unusual since he has a solo room. But he’s pretty sure he went to sleep with a plus one, and said plus one is nowhere to be seen.

Now, he isn’t a stranger to one-night stands sneaking out after he falls asleep. He likes to take night conquests to his dorm room for this exact reason; He can go right to sleep, while they take themselves out. Easy breezy no string attached-y. That’s usually the way he wants it to be.

But this time is different. Last night was different. Last night, Taehyung had the best night of his life, hands down. Best bangs of his existence. Bangs plural because they went more than once. How that’s even possible when his teenage years are long gone and days with multiple orgasms are less and less common, he has no idea.

He’s probably ruined for anyone else. Nothing could ever compare to the night he just spent getting his back blown out.

Now, Taehyung is a sculptor. A very gifted one at that (if his teachers’ praises are anything to go by). Taehyung knows body proportions, knows perfect rations, all that stuff. He knows it on marble bodies, in sketches, in painting. Not on actual human beings.

Until last night.

Last night, he witnessed the body of a god. He scratched at perfect skin, held on to beautifully defined and strong arms, rode perfect thighs. Last night, he shed a tear at the view of some perfect knees. Last night, he realized that art truly imitates nature.

And that’s not all.

Taehyung can admit he owns a nice dick; it’s decently shaped, the color is nice, and the size is slightly over average.

But what he witnessed the night before?

The Narcissus of dicks; the most beautiful dick on the planet. The most beautiful dick in history . Probably even prettier than Narcissus’ face himself. (But Taehyung doesn’t know what Narcissus' face looks like, so he’s only assuming.)

From the perfect red color of its beautifully shaped head to the gracefully intertwined veins leading to a sturdy looking hilt, peppered with well-kept pubic hair, ending in an exquisitely wrinkled ballsack. The girth was over average; big enough to make size queens (such as Taehyung) salivate, but not big enough to scare away enthusiasts. And the length? The dude is lucky he’s a grower and not a show-er, or he would never know peace. Mainly because the likes of Taehyung or Park Jimin would never let him be.

But where is that most perfect penis right now?

Attached to its perfectly shaped and mysterious owner, probably miles away.

Very problematic, indeed.

“So what you’re saying is, you fell asleep, and when you woke up he was gone? Isn’t that how it’s usually supposed to go?” Yoongi sounds disgruntled on the other end of the face call, face half mushed in his pillow, hair disheveled and eyes squinty. It’s not yet 1 pm after all, which is still considered morning for people like Min Yoongi.

“Noooo, not this time.” Taehyung whines,” This time he was supposed to stick around and ask me to marry him in the morning. Isn’t that obvious? We went at it four times for fuck sake, doesn’t that mean anything anymore?”

Jimin chokes on his matcha oatmeal milk latte, eyes going wide. “Four times?! Now that is a monster stamina. He basically squeezed your balls dry.” There’s a pause, then he says to someone off-camera, “It’s rude to stare, ma’am.”

“Stop ruining my morning with your screaming,” Yoongi grunts out, rubbing his eyes. “So what do you want us to do about this?”

Taehyung fumbles around his desk for a moment, looking through his piles of sketches until he finds it, his only clue.

“Do you two know this man?” He asks, pulling out a sketch he did quickly off his memory of the mystery man’s body. He pulls out a second one, this one is a close-up of his perfect penis. He might have gone off tangent with the shading, but he couldn't stop himself, that dick deserves all the shading.

“Jesus fuck.” Yoongi signs.

“Baby, I’m sure you’re aware that if I knew anyone with a body and a dick like that, you would never have been able to put your dirty paws on him.”

Taehyung turns hopeful eyes to Yoongi after glaring at Jimin for a good 10 seconds, but Yoongi only shakes his head no.

“I don’t have a habit of making my friends strip around me, sadly. I wouldn’t be able to tell even if I knew him.”

“You two are useless” Taehyung signs, his body deflating. Yoongi takes offense and hangs up. Or maybe he was going to hang up either way.

“So let me recap here, you don’t know his name, his major, his department, his age, his number, nor his face. The only clue you have is this drawing, which basically looks like a textbook example of unrealistic body expectations. You apparently know every nook and cranny of his penis, but you didn’t have the decency to ask his name? You deserve this.” He cackles, angering Taehyung.

“I was busy sucking his dick, asshole.” He spits, but Jimin only snorts in answer.

“Good luck finding the owner of Mystery Penis.” He quips back, before hanging up as well.

All hope is lost. Never in his life has he despised his face blindness as much as he does right now. Of course, it’s never been easy dealing with it throughout his life. He’s lucky he has two solid friends he can count on. Although Jimin regularly dyes and changes his hairstyle without warning to mess with him. And Yoongi basically has two hours of availability per week, usually arranged around his sleeping schedule.

But he knows they care for him, and he cares for them.

He drags his feet to class. He uses ‘class’ lightly; being a third-year means most of his courses are spent in the workshop, working on his graduate exhibition.

He’s got his trusty overalls on, covered in clay stains. He’s been working with clay for the last few weeks, using the medium for two of his exhibition pieces.

He greets his teacher at the front desk with a nod, before making his way to his desk. Today’s playlist consists of oldies, and he makes it to his desk just as Lionel Richie’s voice fills the room.

He snorts, rolling his eyes.

Hello is a classic of sculpting classes. No matter the teacher or the Instructor, they all love to play that song on repeat, and he usually doesn’t pay it any mind. But right now, isn’t there a more perfect song to taunt him?

Lionel Richie asks if it’s him he’s looking for, as he’s pulling his tool out of his bag. He unwraps the plastic wrap from around the latest project he’s been working on, already planning his next move.

He’s pretty sure the sculpting world is all over that song only because of the music video.

It’s obvious that the whole ‘blind girl sculpting’ thing–

Oh.

Oh dear god. The music video.

The music video.

Taehyung has an idea.

His hands move before he can fully realize the plan in his head, rewrapping his project, and getting some new clay from the front of the class.

His teacher looks him up and down in all his frantic and excited glory.

“A sudden stroke of inspiration?” He questions, sounding curious.

“Something like that.” Taehyung smiles, trying to act inconspicuous. His teacher won’t let him take the clay if it’s not for his graduate exhibition.

He makes it back to his station without any more inquiry and starts to work right away.

Jimin was right, he does know every nook and cranny of that penis. He spent hours getting acquainted with it, and he has an excellent memory (Except for faces, obviously).

All the other students are too busy working on their final projects to notice the massive penis under construction a few feet from them. If anyone asks, Taehyung will proudly answer that it’s a life-sized depiction. But no one is asking, so he simply works on bringing the piece to life. The students in his class rarely talk to him, since he hasn’t gone out of his way to develop any type of relationship with them. It’s easier like that.

Once he’s done, many hours later, he’s alone in the workshop with the sun setting outside.

He ogles proudly at his masterpiece, the erect penis standing tall on his station, truly a creature of beauty. It’s a perfect replica, down to the ballsack wrinkles; down to the cute mole at the hilt. Of course, it’s clay-colored, and it probably won't change since Taehyung hates painting his creations, but he’s absolutely certain that everything else is exactly like the original.

The oven has been preheating for a while, so it’s hot and ready to bake some penis. The only thing left is to leave it to cure for a while. Any ol’ regular penis would have taken less than an hour to cure, but we’re talking about a monster cock here.

He pops it into the oven, sets a timer, just in time for a knock at the door to pull him out of his penis-induced craze.

“Yo, Tae,” Yoongi’s voice resonates from the door frame.

Taehyung grabs a rag from his station to clean his hand with before making his way to his friend. There’s someone with him, and Yoongi signals at his friend with a lazy wave of his hand.

“Remember Namjoon?” He asks, but it’s a rhetorical question. Jimin and Yoongi have taken to the habit of identifying the people they’re with, so Taehyung doesn't have to embarrass himself trying to figure it out on his own. That way, they don’t have to explain his condition to every single person that isn’t in his immediate friend circle.

(Is it even a circle if it’s two people?)

He sends a nod in Namjoon’s way and gets a wave back, and that’s as far as their exchange goes, as usual. Except today, his whole body language reads nervous and tense. But that’s none of Taehyung’s business.

“We’re going to see some juniors perform in a pub, you want to come with?” Yoongi asks him, and Taehyung knows he means well, but he also knows that Yoongi knows he doesn’t like crowded spaces.

He and Jimin have tried to get him to go out more, but the only time Taehyung steps foot inside any type of alcohol selling establishment is when he wants to get laid. And there’s only one place he goes to then; that crappy little Bar near campus that’s only frequented by broke students who also want to get laid.

He doesn’t like anywhere that’s dark where there’s enough people to make him lose sight of his friends. Something about losing his parents at the mall one too many times.

“That sounds nice, but I have to finish this piece I’m working on.” He answers, trying to sound as regretful as he can. It doesn’t really work, judging by Yoongi’s unconvinced humming.

“Alright, careful when you go back home.” Yoongi finally answers, patting him on the shoulder.

He starts walking away, but his friend, Namjoon, stays frozen on the spot, facing him. He’s looking at Taehyung in some kind of way, but face blindness makes it hard for him to read other’s expressions. He raises a single eyebrow in interrogation, and that seems to make Namjoon snap out of it. He turns on his heel without as much as a goodbye, which, rude .

“'Kay, bye.” He mutters after him.

But he can’t hold it against him. He knows that ‘Namjoon’ has been a long-time friend of Yoongi and that they’ve spent some time together by association. Taehyung doesn’t go out of his way to get to know new people, so there’s a high chance Namjoon might have tried to approach him with friendship in mind, only to end up frustrated by Taehyung’s lack of interest. Happens all the time. He can’t really help it, reading intentions is not in his toolbox.

He should probably tell Yoongi to share his ‘secret’ with Namjoon. He seems nice enough from what he heard, so he would probably be understanding. It should at least clear up the misunderstanding, and Taehyung might even gain a new friend, who knows?

He makes his way back to his station, works on his actual project while the oven takes care of making his penis nice and hard.

The next morning, he wakes up to ten texts from Jimin, one from Yoongi, and multiple missed calls and voicemail from his workshop teacher.

Asshole with pink hair:

9:40 am ur crazy

9:40 am CRAZY

9:40 am This is hilarious

9:41 am That’s why i love u

9:41 am That is a beautiful dick

9:41 am Like it was nice on paper, but the 3D version definitely makes me wonder about its owner

10:26 am All the student body is buzzing about the mystery penis

10:27 am It’s on the front page of the school newspaper

10:27 am omg you dumbass u didnt write your number

10:27 am you didn't write your number anywhere brb dying of laughter

Hyungie:

11:32 am You didnt write your infos dumb dumb

Taehyung bangs his head on his pillow, hoping for quick death. How could he forget to write down his infos? How is anyone supposed to contact him?

Namjoon has come to learn quickly that university isn’t always the most sanest place on the planet. Cramming, into a single building, that amount of genius with that amount of insanity is bound to create interesting events.

He’s stopped being surprised by most things, might be guilty of doing some of those surprising things from time to time. But today? Today is on a whole new level.

Somehow, his dick is plastered all over the school, in every hallway, on every door. Think Regina George distributing the burn book copy all over school but, multiplied by 50, that’s how many pictures of his dick are distributed around school right now. Not an actual picture of his actual dick, but an actual picture of an actual clay replica, with big bold yellow letters spelling out 'HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PENIS?', and nothing else.

It’s vaguely threatening.

He wishes he couldn’t tell that it’s his penis, then maybe he could laugh with the rest of the student body. But there’s no mistaking it. One look and he knew. The person who printed those flyers made sure to include all the possible angles, too.

It’s 100% his dick.

The slight curve is there, the mole is there, everything is there.

The intentions of the maker are unclear, but there’s one thing for sure: he knows exactly who’s behind it. He only knows one sculptor who has seen his penis, and that’s the current bane of his life, Kim Taehyung.

It’s not enough that Taehyung has been completely ignoring his existence before their night of passion together, he’s also been ignoring him after.

And now this? Plastering his dick all over school? For absolutely no reason? Did he not like the night they spent together? Was this a great big ploy to make fun of him? Is this Taehyung’s way to reject him? To tell him to stay away from him? He knows he’s never been really subtle with his crush, but isn’t this going way too far?

At least he had the very, very basic decency to forgo his name from the flyers, or Namjoon might have had to run away to the next town.

Namjoon is not dumb, he knows his ancient Greece lore and what they thought about big dicks.

Taehyung didn’t write this so people would look at the dick, he’s obviously calling him a dick. And for what, pinning on him for the last year? Can’t a man have a crush in peace?

Maybe he shouldn't have approached Taehyung that night.

One thing is for sure, Taehyung is sending him a very clear message to stay away from him.

He spent a fortune printing all those hands out, and now he has to reprint them all? Taehyung knows very well he can’t afford another round of mass printing. Plus the librarian probably won’t ever let him walk into the library again. She had to come and refill the printer at least three times in the hour he was there. The environmental club was even called on scene by one of the students waiting for his turn at the printer. Talk about a snitch.

He can’t afford to reprint everything, and there’s no way he’ll go around school writing his number by hand.

He listens to the voicemails from his teacher then, uncovering a new hurdle.

The first one goes like this:

"Kim Taehyung I know it’s you, you left that thing on your desk."

Then the second:

"Kim Taehyung, you will take down these handouts right this instant before the Dean can see them, you hear me? He'll put you on probation and my head on a stick."

Taehyung muffles his groans into his pillow. Maybe it’s a good thing he forgot to include his number. He should have thought of that before.

He throws on some clothes, heeding his teacher’s warning. He better get to school quickly.

He texts Yoongi and Jimin to take down as many as they can if they want to see him live for another day. Yoongi doesn’t answer and Jimin only texts back asking if he can keep one for his room.

Some friend circle he’s got there.

He makes it onto campus in under half an hour, and gets to work, taking them down as quickly as he can.

He’s got only a few hallways left to do when someone taps him sharply on the shoulder. He spins around, dreading the moment he comes face to face with the Dean. Not that he could recognize the Dean.

“Are you the Dean?” He stammers in a small voice.

“What? No- you. I swear to god. Just tell me if you hate me that much.” Stranger says, before putting his long leg to good use, striding away from him. He throws a bunched-up flyer on the floor before disappearing down the hallway as quickly as he’s appeared.

Taehyung is stunned for a good minutes, utterly confused

The voice sounds similar, but other than that he has no idea who just spit those words at him. He doesn’t hate anyone, and he doesn't see why anyone would believe he has those kinds of ill feelings towards them.

Now that his plan has miserably failed, Taehyung falls into hopelessness once again. He lays in bed, holding his precious sculpture to himself. It’s the only thing he has left from his fateful encounter. Or he thought it was fate, but now he’s wondering if that was life making fun of him.

Jimin is laying by his side, examining the sketch of the body with clear interest. It’s making Taehyung feel a little possessive.

“Maybe you should try again in the school gym, no one gets a body like that from not going to the gym. You could say you’re looking for a model or something.”

Taehyung stares at his friend with all the admiration he can muster.

“I would kiss you so hard right now.”

“We tried that once, remember?”

“Yes, and that’s why I won’t be doing it, but I would, just so you know.”

“Cool.”

He snatches the sketch out of Jimin’s hands to get to work on the shading, trying to get his drawing as realistic looking as possible. Making a whole body out of clay would take too long, so Taehyung will have to settle for his sketch.

Once he’s done, some 30 minutes have passed. He whirl around on his desk chair, waving the sketch around successfully, only to stop dead in his tracks. He finds Jimin with his precious sculpture halfway down his throat.

“Jimin!” He exclaims, fuming. “Get your dirty mouth off my penis!”

Jimin startles and chokes in surprise, but then bursts out laughing once the sculpture is safely out of his mouth.

“Sorry, sorry. I was just really curious about the size. You never cease to amaze me.”

Taehyung snatches his precious phallus back, grabbing some tissues to wipe off Jimin's drool.

“If I can’t find him, this is going up my ass, so don’t touch it.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jimin grimaces, rearranging himself on the bed. He grabs his phone to waste some time, probably ignoring his other responsibilities as the end of their final semester is quickly approaching. “You want to end up in the emergency room? Just use it to make a mold and replicate it with some silicon at least.”

Taehyung raises both eyebrows in astonishment.

“Jimin, your genius never ceases to amaze me.”

He successfully drags Jimin with him to the campus gym. Normally the prospect of hot sweaty people grunting, in various states of undress would attract Jimin like a bee to honey, but since he’s already banged or broken up with half the people that go there, Taehyung has to keep a firm hold on his friend’s wrist.

“Why do I have to come with you again?”

“It was your idea, so you’re taking responsibility.”

“I don’t like taking my responsibilities, they suck,” Jimin grumbles, but he stops trying to run away.

The moment they step into the gym, they’re assaulted by the musky smell of sweat and determination. There’s a high volume of people working out, probably wanting to channel their end-of-semester jitters into iron pumping.

Taehyung spots the front desk, putting his business smile on while reaching into his folder. He hears Jimin greet someone, going off by himself, but Taehyung bears him no mind and heads straight for the Woman working the counter.

“Hi there,” he says, charm on, “ I was wondering if you could help me out,-”

“Yes you can put your flyers up, no you don’t have to pay for it, no we won’t take it down before the end of the semester, yes I do have some tape.” She says without missing a beat, not looking up at him.

“Damn, maybe I’m here because I want to sign up for a membership.”

She finally looks up from her computer, assessing Taehyung from head to toe.

“No you don’t babe. Here’s the tape.” She says, handing him the tape while blowing a bubble with her pink gum. Multitasking at its finest.

Taehyung doesn’t feel like taking her on a debate, so he gets hold of the roll of tape and gets to work, spotting where other people left their flyers so he can put his right by them.

He scans the gym once or twice with a quick look, trying to see if, by a stroke of luck, Mystery Man could be there. No one that is shirtless has the body he’s looking for, and he sadly doesn’t have x-ray vision to check the rest. No amount of wishing as a kid made him grow that ability.

He puts up the first flyer, this time containing all his info, and stares at it proudly. He's got a good feeling about this.

Jimin finds him again as he’s putting up his last flyer, sounding excited about something.

“I had no idea Namjoon worked out. He’s got nice arms hidden beneath those sweatshirts.”

“Namjoon? Yoongi’s friend?”

“Yeah! And he changed his hair color, it looks really good on him. A little lighter than he used to have.”

Taehyung nods along, not really pressed to know more. He’s got other fish to fry.

Namjoon slowly counts to 30 after seeing Taehyung leave the premises, before he basically sprints to the nearest wall, spotting the flyers Taehyung has put up.

There’s a sketch on it, a sketch of a body. A body that looks strangely like his. He frowns, before reading the caption.

“Sculpting student looking for body model. Body must look like this. Call XXX-XXX-XXXX. Food as compensation. ”

Namjoon cannot believe his eyes. Taehyung knows he’s got that exact body type, yet he didn’t ask for his help. If he needed any other confirmation that Taehyung hates him, there’s one right there.

Just what did he do to the man to make him hate him so much?

Since he’s confronted him in the hallway, Taehyung still hasn’t reached out to him. It would be easy to do. He knows Taehyung has his number, they exchanged it when they first met, so nothing is stopping him. Unless he’s happy with the way things are.

Maybe Jimin is not as much of a genius as he thought. By the sixth person that walks in to be a body model, he realizes this is getting expensive in food bribes and studio fees. He has also stopped putting up the pretense of wanting to sketch anyone anymore.

But this time, It’s one Jung Hoseok who walks in.

“Have we slept together before?” He asks right off the bat, tired of wasting his precious time. It’s his new modus operandi; invite them in, ask the burning question, then send them on their way with the promised food to avoid complaints.

“I don’t believe so, but maybe we should fix that,” Hoseok answers, taking off his shirt.

“What are you doing?”

“Your flyers have a nude body on it, you made me come to a private studio, isn’t this a nude modeling thing?” Hoseok questions, but doesn’t stop undressing. He’s already reaching for his belt.

Something tells Taehyung this man would be really sad to be told to put his clothes back on. The way he’s unapologetically getting naked tells Taehyung everything he needs to know.

“So, why are you asking?” He inquires while posing, everything hanging loose and stuff. “Is that how you get laid? Asking hot dudes to model, then seducing them once they’re naked and vulnerable?”

Jung Hoseok doesn’t seem to be feeling very vulnerable right now, but Taehyung keeps that to himself.

“God no. Jesus that would be sleazy of me.”

“Not as sleazy as asking me if we’ve slept together 5 seconds into our first meeting.” Hoseok points out.

“ Touché. ” He admits, a soft chuckle escaping him.

Hoseok doesn’t press him for an answer, and they spend the next few minutes in silence, the only sound coming from Taehyung's pencil on the thick page of his sketchbook.

Jung Hoseok, standing confidently in front of him in all of his naked glory, has a certain aura around him. The way he holds himself, no hesitation to bare it all, head held high; it's like he never had to hide anything in his life. Like he never knew shame. To the point where it inspires Taehyung to utter the next words:

“I have face blindness.” He starts off, which gets his model’s attention. He keeps his eyes down on his paper to avoid eye contact, feeling rusty when it comes to revealing this part of himself. He continues quickly, “I had a one-night stand with this– perfect greek god. He had the perfect penis, too. Best sex of my life.” He's making good progress on his sketch, Hoseok’s body graceful and easy to put on paper. “I’m trying to find him, but I don’t know anything about him, and I can’t tell people’s faces apart." He chuckles deprecatingly, "The only clue I have is the way his body looks. So I put up this ad for body models hoping he would show up.”

Hoseok breaks his pose to slap his hands together, then pointing at him. “Oh my god, are you the one that plastered the whole school with the penis sculpture a few days ago? Was that your version of a ‘Wanted’ poster?”

Taehyung feels his cheeks warm up.

“Yeah, but I almost lost my diploma over that so let’s not mention it.”

Hoseok laughs with his whole body, clapping his hands together a few more times as if to express his excitement.

“That was the best thing to ever happen on this campus since 1993, thank you for that.”

His statement piques Taehyung's interest.

“What happened in 1993?” He asks, expecting anything but what comes outs of Hoseok's mouth next.

“My mom and dad conceived me in the bathroom of the literature wing.”

Taehyung chortles, surprising even himself with how loud it is.

“Now that’s a conception story worth telling your kids.”

“They didn't tell me; They got caught and got expelled the next day. They framed their expulsion letter, it’s still on display in the kitchen.” Hoseok’s voice is dripping with fondness, betraying his love for his family. “The thing is, I learned how to read at a very early age.”

Taehyung is possessed by another wave of uncontrollable laughter. He wipes a stray tear from his eyes, taking a second to compose himself.

“There, you’re looking a little better now. “

Taehyung looks up at the man, standing there in his birthday suit, going out of his way to cheer him up even though they’re perfect strangers.

(Maybe not so perfect since he’s seen him naked, but still.)

He chuckles again, going back to his sketching.

“Wait does this mean you don’t actually need models right now?”

“Well yeah," Taehyung answers, shrugging his shoulders, "But you looked like you would be really disappointed if I told you to stop undressing, so I just went along with it.”

Hoseok nods his agreement, going back into his original position.

“Good call. Now that we’re here you better get the shading of my calves right. They’re my pride and glory.”

“On it.”

Who would have thought that this whole ordeal would have somehow turned into Taehyung making a new friend.

He looks at the contact number in his phone staring back at him. It’s written 'Jung Hoseok' with a little sun emoji. He’s told him everything he needs to know to avoid misunderstandings, and Hoseok left with the promise to always greet him first when they see each other in the hallway. It’s sad that he only met the man in his last stretch before getting his degree, but as they say: better late than never.

He’s excited to get to know Hoseok, but he doesn’t know if he should text him first. He’s feeling a little socially rusty, having not approached anyone with the intention of being friends in a long, long time. Which is why he jumps with glee when he sees he’s got a text notification from his new friend. But then he reads the text, and the glee morphes into unadulterated excitement.

Jung Hoseok 🌞:

4:56 pm I think i know who your penis belongs to

4:56 pm can you send me a picture? I lost the flyers i kept from that time

4:59 pm You sent a picture

5:01 pm Yeah it’s really similar

5:01 pm Kim Seokjin, XXX-XXX-XXXX, probably currently working the counter at the campus coffee shop.

5:02 pm He’s tall, broad shoulders, awesome dick

Taehyung doesn’t even take the time to text back his thanks; he wraps up his project in a disorderly manner, wiping his hands on his shirt with no care in the world. He throws his backpack on and basically sprint to the coffee shop he usually tends to avoid. The owner is totally an evil capitalist, ripping off students with his overpriced coffee.

He gets there in record time, gasping for air as his poor lungs try to keep up with enough exercise to last him a lifetime.

He’s covered in clay stains, hair sticking to his sweaty forehead, clothes in dismay, lungs wheezing, so he should probably expect the next few events that unfold.

He walks into the coffee shop still out of breath, asks if Kim Seokjin is there to the first employee he sees. This is one of those times where he’s happy he can’t read people’s expressions, because he has a feeling he’s being judged very much right now.

“He… just got off his shift.” The man at the counter answers hesitantly.

“Can you tell me where he went?” And what he was wearing?” Taehyung may be sounding a little desperate, but he doesn’t have the time to care.

“He was still in his uniform, so green, and he went that way.” He indicates with a vague wave of the hand.

Taehyung starts running again, this time looking even more crazed as he scans his surroundings like a mad man, looking for someone tall with broad shoulders wearing green.

He spots him after running for a few minutes, thanking the heavens that the employee sent him in the right direction. He had every reason not to.

“Kim Seokjin!” He calls out, picking up his pace despite his lungs begging for a break. “Wait!”

He sees the man stop, take one look at him over his admittedly very large shoulders, then start sprinting away from him.

“No! Wait up!” He pushes himself harder than he ever has, his legs and lungs burning under the continuous strain, head feeling a little faint. “Please!” He calls out again in desperation. “Please look at my penis!”

This catches Seokjin’s attention, and he thankfully stops running, turning around as if to wait for him. Taehyung slows down to a jog, then to a complete stop, bending over gasping for air. Once his breathing is finally somewhat back to normal, he straightens up, only to come face to face with a bottle of pepper spray.

“W-wait!” He stutters, falling on his ass. “I swear I’m not a creep!”

“That’s exactly what a creep would say.” Seokjin answers, hovering over him threateningly, aiming the pepper spray directly at Taehyung’s face.

“I swear I just need you to look at my penis.”

This was the wrong thing to say apparently, because Seokjin gives the bottle a good shake as if to activate it. “That doesn’t sound as reassuring as you seem to think.”

“No! Wait!” He pleads again. “Not my penis.” He takes off his backpack, frantically digging through it until he finally pulls out his sculpture. “ This penis.”

Seokjin doesn’t look totally convinced, but he finally lowers his weapon. “That’s a beautiful cock.” He admits after a moment of staring in silence.

“Thank you. Is it yours?”

"I don't remember owning that sculpture."

"Not the sculpture; the Penis."

Seokjin frowns, extending his hand, and Taehyung gingerly deposits his precious sculpture into his palm. The man finally puts away his pepper spray to free both his hands. He examines the penis under every angle, trying out the hold, measuring the testicles with his palm, staring at it long and hard.

Taehyung takes the opportunity to stand back up, keeping his distance this time.

“It does look very similar,” he concludes, hands going to his chin. “But this is not my penis. I don’t have a mole there.”

Taehyung deflates. He still asks, just in case. “So we haven’t slept together?”

Seokjin gives him back his sculpture with a snort. “You don’t look like anything I've ever slept with.”

Taehyung realizes the state he’s in. He must look ridiculous right now.

“I’m from the sculpting department. I didn’t have the time to clean up. I don’t usually go around looking like I just rolled in the mud.”

“Explains a lot.” Seokjin nods, looking him up and down.

He dusts himself off as best as he can, but he can’t do much more cleaning up than that. He’ll probably have to go back home looking like that.

“So what’s your name?”

Taehyung feels dumb, he didn’t even have the decency to introduce himself before pulling out his penis. His social skills are frankly lacking.

“I’m Kim Taehyung. Sorry about all that, someone told me you could have the original version of this sculpture.”

“I’m flattered. It is pretty similar. Can I ask why you’re going around asking people to look at your– At this penis?”

Taehyung sighs deeply, looking down at the penis in his hand. He did it once, he can do it again.

“Long story short I had an amazing one-night stand with the owner of this beautiful creature, but I have no idea who he is and the only clue I have is my perfect memory of his penis.”

“Sounds like a proper modern-day Cinderella story. But how come you don’t remember his face?” Seokjin questions, a hint of worry in his voice that would make sense in any other situation than Taehyung’s.

“I…. have face blindness, it’s this whole-”

“Ah, Yes, Prosopagnosia, I heard about that in class.”

“Oh. Well, yeah, so this is my only way of finding him.”

“So the Penis Flyers-”

“Yeah, that was also me. Forgot to write down my info, got caught by my teacher, that was a whole mess.” Taehyung admits, feeling discouraged.

“So now you’re basically going around town asking every man to try on the metaphorical glass shoes.”

“Basically.”

“Maybe don’t start off with ‘please look at my penis’ next time?” Seokjin recommends, which makes sense.

“I’ve been told that asking if we’ve slept together first thing is making me sound sleazy.”

“Yeah well, asking people to look at your penis isn’t better.”

“I’ll take good note of that.”

He drags his feet all the way back home.

He sees, pushed in the corner of his room, the material he got to make a mold, and wonders if now is the time to give up.

His exhibition is coming up, this whole thing made him late on his projects, and now he’s certain he’ll never reunite with Mystery Man. Maybe Mystery Man just doesn’t want to be found. Maybe he’s seen all his attempts and has simply steered clear, avoiding him all along. Maybe it’s time for Taehyung to make himself a silicon version and move on. He’s exhausted all his options, he’s out of time, and out of ideas.

He’s reading through the molding instruction, glad that this should be easy since he’s using a sculpture and not an actual living and breathing dick, when he realizes he hasn’t exhausted all his options. There’s still hope.

He jumps in the shower, picks out an outfit befitting of his destination, and goes off with hope in his heart.

The Bar isn't too busy, this being the middle of a school week, but there’s still some people going about, sharing drinks and being loud, in total denial of the oncoming train that is the end of a semester

Taehyung spots the barman, beeline for him.

“Hey, do you know who usually works on Sundays?”

“That would be me.” Mr.Barman says, convincing Taehyung he finally has luck on his side.

Mr.Barman is on the tall side, with nice tattooed arms and wavy over-bleached hair tucked behind his ears. He’s making his forearm bulge seductively by polishing some beer glasses, and if Taehyung wasn’t on a mission to find his possible Mr.Perfect, he would be actively trying to get into his pants.

“Do you, by any chance, recognize me?”

Mr.Barman doesn’t miss a beat.

“You’re a regular. And you gave me a blowjob once. Why are you asking?”

Well, Taehyung might have many flaws but at least he’s consistent.

“I was wondering if you remembered seeing me a few weeks ago– I was with a dude, about this height, with this body,” he adds, pulling out the sketch. He looks a little crazed, once again. But it’s ok, he’s reaching for straws here. “He had dark hair, but that’s all I can tell you. See, I have face-”

“-Blindness, I know, you cry about it every time you get drunk.”

Hm. And Taehyung thought he was a character full of mystery.

“I do know who you’re talking about. He’s a regular too.”

The irritation Taehyung feels is only momentary, everything melting away with this new bit of information. Someone saw them, someone knows what his Mystery Man looks like. He didn't hallucinate the whole thing.

“Do you know his name??” He asks, pleading with his eyes. His heart is thumping wildly in his chest, desperation tangible.

“No. And he hasn’t been here since that night.” He says, crushing every hope and dream Taehyung mustered up in the last five seconds. He pauses his polishing, head tilting to the side. “But I do remember his face. I can try and draw him if you want.”

10 minutes later, Taehyung is looking at his disability in the face.

“Wow, you did it. You perfectly illustrated how people with face blindness see others.” Taehyung says, looking down at the drawing Jungkook (he asked for his name) quickly scribbled on a piece of napkin. It looks exactly like how he sees others.

Jungkook being good-natured, only laugh it off. “I can’t do much here, I’m working. But if you give me your number, I can try and do a better sketch once I get home. I’m from the painting department.”

“You would do that for me?” Taehyung asks, feeling deeply moved by Jungkook’s kindness.

“Sure, it’s good practice for my portrait class anyways. You can take this as a thank you for the blow job.”

Taehyung nods to himself.

“I do give amazing blowjobs.”

Jungkook, like any good art student, does not appreciate being rushed.

After a whole week of being told “it’s not ready yet”, Taehyung stops asking.

He also wakes up one morning and realizes he only has a few days left before his exhibition.

Not only is he not done with all his pieces, he still hasn’t started studying for his finales which happen to be the week before his exhibition, meaning, the next day.

He pushes aside any thought of Mystery Man (except when he hugs the sculpture at night, heart yearning for the original), and jumps straight into his cramming strategy, which consists of hitting himself with the books until he’s absorbed the material. If he’s not studying, taking a finale, or sleeping, he’s huddled in the workshop with the other students of his department, functioning on coffee and eating various shades of sculpting material for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This is not what Taehyung expected when he was told that artists live from their arts.

The day before his exhibition, he’s barely feeling human, he’s got dried clay in places clay should never find itself, he doesn’t know words anymore and he has basically forgotten his own name.

No matter how fast he works, he realizes he won’t be able to finish his last pieces in time. He’s wracking his brain for a solution, thinking long and hard about just what he could do, when it hits him.

The solution is right underneath his nose;

His penis. It was always his penis.

He’s supposed to expose pieces that he finds impactful, and if there’s anything that had a big impact on his life in the last few weeks, it’s his sculpture.

He can’t tell his teacher, he’ll categorically refuse. Not after the stunt he pulled with the flyers. Plus he wouldn't understand the cultural reset it was for Taehyung, finding and crafting that beautiful creature.

So he sets to work in secret. It shouldn’t be too hard, he hasn’t printed his labels yet. Plus the students are in charge of installing their own corner, meaning he can wait until the very last moment before the opening to put his penis on display.

He needs to find a name for his sculpture, so he texts his friends for help, but as usual, they are unhelpful.

Asshole with pink hair:

6:45 pm ‘ Suck on that’

Hyungie:

6:45 pm why are you asking me idk

Jung Hoseok 🌞 :

6:50 pm “ Long lost lover”

He’s glad to see that his new friend will fit right in once he introduces him to everyone.

He isn’t satisfied with the answer he gets, so he sends more text.

Kim Seokjin:

7:05 pm “Is this your penis?”

7:06 pm Or better yet, “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PENIS?”

7:06 pm that way people will understand how current your art is

7:10 pm Also I didn’t give you this number to chitchat

7:10 pm after we find out his identity im cutting all ties with you

7:11 pm Im just feeling invested right now

7:11 pm that’s all

7:17 pm Where’s your exhibition again?

Jeon Jungkook barman and artist:

9:56 pm idk

9:56 pm im almost done with the portrait btw

9:56 pm you mind if I use it for my exhibition

9:56 pm im really proud of it

So not much more help on that side either.

The next day, Taehyung is busy setting up his corner and feeling emotional over his last exhibition.

He’s done with uni. He can go off into the world and live from his art. Or more like, he’ll first find a side job that’ll suck the life out of him, to pay for his art. Then he’ll spend a few years regretting every decision that led him to be an artist, but just as he’s about to give up, his sculptures will be noticed by a mysterious millionaire that’ll commission him thousands of dollars at first. He’ll refer him to his rich friend who will be all over his art and will throw their money at him.

Yeah, it’s a nice pipe dream.

He makes sure all the labels are in place, the lights are hitting his pieces in all the right way, and that no one notices him putting his penis in the middle of his space 30 seconds before they open the doors.

By the time his teacher notices, it’s already too late; the place flooded with friends, family, and even the occasional art critics that the university invited.

It’s not like his penis feels out of place in his setup. Most of his pieces are on the theme of the human body; studies of movement, skin texture, whatnot. If you look at it as a whole, you almost have a whole body. The only thing missing is a face, which is extremely fitting for Taehyung.

The wave of people coming is not preferable for Taehyung, since he doesn’t like crowded places. He’s never been a fan of their exhibition opening nights over the years. He keeps himself busy by trying his best to merge with the wall while people circle his pieces. His friends know he won’t be able to recognize them in the crowd, so they’ll come to him by themselves, he simply has to make himself visible.

“Hey babe,” Jimin says with mirth in his voice, “Is that greek?”

“Yeah” Taehyung answers, fixing his eyes on his most beloved and central piece.

“I didn’t know you knew greek”

“I don’t, but Google does.”

The Penis is standing directly underneath his own spotlight, looking like a beacon of light, grabbing the envious stares of the people around it.

There’s a little white label by its base:

Kim Taehyung

πέος, 2021

Red Clay

(if you recognize this penis, please ask for the artist)

“ What does it mean?”

“ Penis ”

Jimin hums, crossing his arm over his chest. “I guess I was not expecting anything less.”

Yoongi chooses that moment to appear, whistling his praise.

“So you did work this semester.” He jokes, bobbing his head with approval.

“Har, har.” Like he’s one to talk. He basically spent the last few months becoming one with his bed.

His phone vibrates in his pocket, and he expects it to be Hoseok or Seokjin telling him they’re here, but instead it’s from Jungkook, and it’s a picture.

A little gasp of surprise escapes him.

His hands shake as he opens up the text app, his heart thumping as the picture loads. He presses on it once it’s ready, taking up the full screen, and Taehyung can finally-... well, Taehyung can’t do anything with that. His case of face blindness is pretty severe, so even drawings are unrecognizable for him. But it’s something! A new clue! He can make a flyer out of this! He can-

“Why do you have a portrait of Namjoon on your phone?”

Time stops.

Yoongi’s voice echoes in his head, mocking him, but also stealing the carpet right from underneath his feet.

Why do you have a portrait of Namjoon on your phone?

A portrait of Namjoon

Namjoon

Namjoon, who stood in front of him silently, that day Yoongi invited him out, probably expecting some kind of reaction from Taehyung.

Namjoon who frequents the campus gym.

Namjoon, who’s tall and broad-shouldered.

Namjoon, who’s been around Taehyung for a while but was never told about his condition.

Namjoon, who probably thinks Taheyung has been ignoring him all this time.

“Jesus fucking christ, My Mystery Man Is Kim Namjoon.”

Both his friends voice their confusion as Taehyung tries to rip his hair from his head.

“This penis belongs to Kim Namjoon, who doesn’t know I have face blindness, and who probably think I’ve been ignoring him all this fucking time.”

“Holy shit,” Yoongi says at the same time as Park Jimin, that prick, starts cackling uncontrollably. Taehyung always knew he was evil.

“This is- I’m so sorry but- This shouldn't be funny– But I can’t, it’s too funny.” He wheezes out in between laughter. “He was right there, probably confused as hell as to why you were showing his dick to everyone- I’m sorry this is so funny but also so, so sad. You never- oh my god.”

Under the attention of about half the gallery, he wipes the tears from his eyes, body convulsing with laughter.

“What the fuck are you waiting for.” He finally manages to say, taking a deep breath. “Hyung, didn’t you drag him here tonight?”

That seems to snap Yoongi out of his stupor.

“Fuck, yes he’s here, he’s... There!-” He says pointing somewhere, but then his voice dies down. “And now he’s leaving...”

Taehyung spots the man with a black cap currently walking out the exit with an angry stride. He reacts on instinct, running after his Not So Mysterious Man Anymore.

Kim Namjoon is having a very no good, very bad day.

Not because of school, no. He aced all his finales, he doesn’t even need to get his grades back to know.

Not because of the weather either. No, it’s a beautiful spring day, and there’s a hint of cherry blossom in the air, wrapping the world in a romantic tint.

No, the reason he’s having a very no good very bad day, is because he can’t, for the love of God, get Kim Taehyung out of his head.

It started with a very interesting dream, clearly drawing inspiration from the night they spent together. It woke him up at the crack of dawn, sweating up bullets and hard as a rock. Finding sleep afterward was nearly impossible, meaning his first precious day of vacation started way too fucking early.

Now music theory never sleeps, so he simply spent his morning trying to forget his dream, channeling all his energy on composing.

But then Min Yoongi, long-time friend and co-compositor, had to go and ruin his fragile peace of mind by reminding him he had two tickets for the sculpting department exhibition, and Namjoon was obligated to show up. Meaning he would inevitably run into Kim Taehyung; Meaning he would agonize about him all day; Meaning , that he would be thinking about Kim Fucking Taehyung all day.

But it’s ok, because he was finally starting to come to terms with that too. Taehyung would probably ignore him again, and all he needed to do was circle the gallery once and get the fuck out.

But no.

Oh no.

Life had better plans.

Because right into the center of Taehyung's exhibition space, is his very own penis, standing proudly, mocking him.

He can recognize it from the flyers, so he knows instantly that it’s Taehyung’s work.

He’s stunned by the audacity, wondering once again what he did to draw Taehyung’s ire upon himself. The flyers were not enough, no he had to go and put it on display as his final fuck you to Namjoon. Even wrote 'penis' in greek as a title, confirming Namjoon's theory that this is all a ploy to make fun of him.

Namjoon has had enough, he’s getting the fuck out of there.

He spins on his heel at the speed of light, taking advantage of every inch of his long legs to walk out as fast as possible. He ignores the call of his name that follows after him, readjusting the cap on his head.

He’s fuming, feeling tears of frustration building up. He doesn’t deserve this. He’s been nothing but respectful of Taehyung. He’s been staying away from him too.

He doesn’t deserve this.

He makes it a few blocks before his phone starts going off every 5 seconds with incoming texts, forcing him to finally look at it.

Yoongi Hyung:

6:14 pm Before anything, know that Taehyung suffers from severe face blindness.

6:14 pm I know you know what that means you wikipedia rat

6:15 pm I didn’t tell you cause it’s none of my business who he chooses to tell

6:15 pm But the dumbass has been trying to find you for weeks using your dick because he had no other way to identify you

6:15 pm Your pinning hasn't been exactly subtle either

6:16 pm he ran after you when you left but I bet he’s pleading with the wrong person in the street right now

6:17 pm Nice dick by the way

He rereads the series of text to try and make sense of them. Only after the third read, does he finally understand.

Well, shit.

“Please Namjoon listen to me, you have to listen to me, I didn't mean to ignore you, I just didn't know it was you!-” Taehyung pleads, holding on to his sleeve.

“Can you please let go of me?!”

His voice sounds a little older than what Taehyung remembers, but he doesn’t have the time to think too much about that. Maybe he’s got a cold or something.

“-I can explain everything if you can just give me two minutes-”

“I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not this kind of person.”

Taehyung isn’t deterred, holding on to him desperately “-Please I swear just two- no, one minute, even one minute is enough-”

Someone clears their throat, tapping him softly on the shoulder.

“Sorry sir, I believe my friend here is mistaking you for me.”

Now that’s a familiar voice. A voice he recognizes from many occasions.

Taehyung lets go of his poor unsuspecting victim, taking a step back which is all it takes for them to run away from him.

He finally comes face to face with the source of all his past weeks' torment.

The height is there, the shoulders are there, the body proportions are there, the hair color is completely different, but Jimin did mention he changed it recently. He’s got the black cap on, the one that made Taehyung mistake a perfect stranger on the street for him.

It’s him. He found him. It’s his Mystery Man, his cinderella. He’s got him.

“Namjoon?”

“Yes, that’s me.” He confirms, voice gentle.

“Kim Namjoon.” He repeats, trying the name out on his tongue. His body is filling up with butterflies, and he can’t feel his toes.

“And here I thought you just could never remember my name.”

“I can explain–” He rushes, eager to get rid of the misunderstanding.

“It’s ok, Yoongi told me.”

“And about your penis–”

“Yes, Yoongi told me about that too.” Namjoon cuts him off, the tip of his ears getting pink.

“I’m so sorry– I should have asked your name then. I mean– you made me come four times .”

Namjoon chuckles, catching one of Taehyung’s hands mid flail and holding it with both of his, making his heart jump.

“We’ve basically known each other for years, so maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t. I don’t think I would have appreciated it then.”

“I guess that’s true. I’m still sorry.”

“I’m sorry too, I could have come up to you first. I mean, I’m the one who sneaked out in the morning. I had an 8 am class, by the way. I didn’t leave because I wanted to. But you have my number so… I assumed you would call me. ”

“I have your number...?” It's pretty vague, but it does ring a bell. He's got a blurry memory of time, around their first meeting, when Namjoon and he had exchanged their numbers for Yoongi related reasons. “That’s right, I do have your number. Fuck.”

“Well, I know now this wouldn’t have changed anything for you, since you simply didn't know it was me you were with.” Namjoon snorts, but not unkindly. More at the situation.

But Taehyung still feels terrible.

“I’m so sorry.” He whines, feeling like burying his face in Namjoon’s chest. But they’re not there yet. “I tend to keep people at a distance to avoid misunderstandings.”

“It’s ok, I get it now. I guess I wish I knew before, but I get it now.”

“Good. I should have told you sooner. I was actually planning on doing it soon if that’s any consolation.”

“It is.” Namjoon murmurs, inching closer to him.

“Cool, cool cool.” Taehyung blurts out nervously.

This is it. This is his chance. Everything that has transpired in the last few weeks is leading up to this moment.

"So," Namjoon starts when Taehyung has been silent for too long. "Yoongi said you were looking for me... Any particular reasons?"

"Well, yes." He answers but stops. All of this means nothing. It doesn't mean that Namjoon will accept to go out with him. He has no idea how Namjoon feels about him, and he sure as hell cannot tell by his facial expression. He's going in blind, no reason to believe that Namjoon wants to have to do anything with him. For all he knows, Namjoon is only here to settle the misunderstanding, and then be on his way. Maybe he's even mad about the penis flyers.

But then he also remembers that Namjoon is holding his hand right now. It's now or never.

He takes a deep breath for bravery and goes for it.

“Kim Namjoon, can I please take you out on a date?”

Namjoon doesn’t let him second guess himself, word leaving his mouth as fast as a blink.

“Absolutely.”

Apparently, they’ve gathered a crowd because there’s cheerful hooting and shouting erupting around them. But Taehyung pays them no mind as he goes in for a hug, Namjoon meeting him halfway.

“Wait, wait,” Namjoon says, suddenly, taking a step back. “I still don’t know why you put my penis on display at the center of your exhibition.”

Taehyung chuckles, bringing Namjoon back in.

“Simple, ‘cause it’s a masterpiece.”

2 months later

There’s a knock at the door, which throws Taehyung off. He’s getting ready for his date with Namjoon– their actual first date– and is not expecting anyone. Jimin knows the code, so it can’t be him, unless–

“Hello sir, would you be open to receiving the words of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ?”

“Jimin, I swear to god, I can tell it’s you by your voice. And no one from church would dress like you do, slut.”

Moving in with Jimin is as much a blessing as it is a curse. A blessing because, well, they’re best friends. A curse because his best friend’s favorite hobby is to try and prank him. Taehyung almost misses the time where Jimin was treating his face blindness as a taboo.

Almost.

The last two months have been a whirlwind of life-changing events for Taehyung.

First, moving in with Jimin is a pretty big deal. Not only has Taehung been living alone for the last three years, living with someone is sometimes a challenge for him. Wondering why a stranger is standing in your kitchen at 3 am, brain slowed down by sleep and the weak lighting not helping, isn’t always a recipe for success. But he’s slowly getting used to it, and Jimin, as much as he can be a prick, is being patient with him.

The second big event is, well, his current job. Somehow his workshop teacher, even after everything, recommended him for a job at a sculpture academy. He now teaches different types of sculpting medium to children, four nights a week. Pretty sweet gig.

At first, he was going crazy out of his mind worrying about working with children, but four weeks in and he’s feeling confident. He sat down with the kids the first week to explain to them what face blindness is, and although the children were initially confused, they now enjoy switching names with each other for the duration of his classes, to mess with his head.

Jokes on them, Taehyung also called their parents during that first week. So far, none of the children have noticed that their parents have been making them wear certain accessories every time they leave for the academy. Checkmates.

And the last big event, of course, is Namjoon.

In between moving, his new job, and Namjoon’s own busy schedule, they have yet to go on an actual full-blown date. But they’ve slowly been getting to know each other. They make time to go on quick coffee dates sometimes, and they text none-stop. Namjoon hasn’t seen his new place yet, but they’ve hung out at Namjoon’s plenty of time.

His boyfriend (he gets giddy thinking about that word) also showed up at the academy a few times to walk him back home (The first time he kept it as a surprise, but he quickly realized Taehyung didn’t like surprises; especially when it means having a tall stranger approach him in the dark without saying anything. Now he texts beforehand.)

“Do you like this outfit? Or should I go with my floral button-up?” He asks Jimin, who’s lounging on his bed after his failed prank attempt.

“Why are you so stressed? It’s not like it's the first time you two see each other.”

“Because the chances of me getting laid tonight are extremely high and I want to look good.”

“Oh?” Jimin perks up, knowing full well Taehyung and Namjoon have been taking their time to get to know each other. “Should I sleepover at Hobi’s tonight?”

Another new development from the last two months: Jimin and Hoseok’s instant attraction. They’ve been dancing around each other since the exhibition, but it looks like it’s finally getting ‘ sleeping-over-at-each-others-place ’ serious.

“...Good idea,” Taehyung answers, not because he wants the house to himself (though it’s a nice perk), but he likes giving a little push to love sometimes.

His friend circle can finally be called a circle now. Somehow, Hoseok, Seokjin, and Namjoon just naturally fit into his now actually social, social life. Namjoon was the easiest since he already knew Yoongi and Jimin. Hoseok got it easy by becoming Jimin’s more-than-friend, and Seokjin just showed up one day with a video of that time, outside the gallery, when Taehyung thought an older gentleman was Namjoon because of his black cap.

He looks at the time, curses when he realizes he’s going to be late. He grabs his wallet and puts on his shoes in a rush, and makes it out the door accompanied by Jimin shouting “Don’t you dare fuck on the couch or you’re buying a new one!”

He makes it to the Bar with only a few minutes to spare, and as luck would have it, Jungkook is working. He’s come to recognize his tattooed arm and bleached locks instantly.

Namjoon would have texted him if he was there, which means he’s cutting it close as well, so he sends a quick ‘here 💖’ text before sitting down at the Bar with a big smile.

“You make me want to puke,” Jungkook says, disgust dripping from his words.

“Hey now don’t be jealous, I’m sure you’ll find yourself a monster cock as well one day.”

Somehow, he and Jungkook started texting on a semi-regular basis. It’s mostly Jungkook begging Taehyung to introduce him to Seokjin (apparently he’s been crushing on the man since he first saw him at the coffee shop), which Taehyung has to find excuses every time to avoid telling Jungkook the cold, harsh truth.

(“I don’t date men with bleached hair, it ruins my whole aesthetic.” Jin said after the first time Taehyung asked. Which aesthetic he’s talking about, Taehyung has no idea.)

But that also means that Jungkook has heard all about his very fascinating and blooming love story with Namjoon.

“Did you tell Seokjin I said hi?”

“Dude, just go and ask him out. You know where he works, you know where he studies, you even know his birthday, which is really creepy when you two have never talked by the way. Just, go ask him out, he won’t be able to resist you once he actually sees how attractive you are.” He pauses for a second, then adds for safety measure, “But if he reaches in his pocket, just run the other way.”

“What?”

“Don’t ask, just trust me.” Taehyung has some unpleasant flashbacks of a bottle of pepper spray being waved in front of his face. He shakes his head to try and get rid of the memory.

“And how would you even know that I’m attractive, you don’t actually know what I look like.” Jungkook retorts.

“Shut up, just go and ask him.”

“Just go and ask him what?” A familiar voice asks from behind him, and Taehyung's smile is back full force. He rotates on his chair and jumps into Namjoon’s arms, hearing him groan under the strain of his weight. He can hear Jungkook fake gagging behind him, the actual child.

They share a quick kiss before they both sit down at the bar.

“You’re not seriously thinking about having your date here, are you?”

Taehyung snorts, tempted to mess with Jungkook, but Namjoon is the one to answer.

“No we just wanted to get the evening started with a nice drink, but we have a reservation to an actual fancy restaurant, paid graciously by Taehyung's actual serious adult job.”

“Is it a serious adult job if he had to stop a kid from eating his donut-shaped clay yesterday?”

“Shut up. If you keep being like that I’m going to order the most annoying thing on the menu.”

Jungkook scoffs and walks away, without actually taking their orders.

They both watch him do a big show of ignoring them, answering other customers without turning in their direction.

“Let’s just get out of here.” Namjoon whispers in his ear. “We can go waste time walking around aimlessly, hand in hand.”

“God, you’re so cheesy,” Taehyung mutters, but he actually loves it.

His dating experience before Namjoon amounts to an enormous zero, but it’s not because he’s one of those unattainable, i-don’t-believe-in-love types of people that live rent-free in Hollywood movies. He simply never thought it would be possible to get close to someone romantically with his condition. But since officially meeting Namjoon, he’s been researching, and turns out, he totally can.

There are even people, artists like him, who've noticed that repeatedly drawing or painting their loved one has made them actually able to remember their face (not 100% of the time, but he’ll take what he can get.). So he’s been sketching, using pictures, trying out different angles. He’s planning on using clay at one point. He’s totally the girl from Lionel Richie’s music video. Which makes Namjoon Lionel Richie.

“Did you know that I was inspired by Lionel Richie’s music video to sculpt your penis?”

Namjoon chuckles under his breath, squeezing Taehyung’s hand just a little bit more. The hot summer air is making their palms sweaty, but they both don’t care.

“Where is that thing, by the way? It’s been a while since I’ve last seen it.”

“I put it on my bedside table when I moved in and I haven't moved it since. I’m thinking about making it into a lamp. I have to keep it out of reach of Jimin and Hoseok, they both seem a little too interested.”

Namjoon grimaces. Or Taehyung is assuming that’s his grimacing face.

“Please never let it fall into their hands.”

“I swear on my honor, I shall protect your penis.”

“Thank you, I feel better now. I still can’t believe they put it on the first page of ‘Sculpting Now’. Crazy how all of your friends and the sculpting world know what my dick looks like.

“It’s a masterpiece. If it was mine I would never keep it in my pants, I’d always want to show it off.”

“How are you not in prison right now?”

“I don’t have your dick in my pants, sadly. Did you know that Seokjin almost pepper-sprayed me the first time we met? In retrospect, having a stranger run after you, pleading for you to look at their dick is a good excuse to pull out your pepper spray.”

“Wait, you did what?”

“It was all in the name of love.”

Namjoon shakes his head, probably disappointed in him.

Namjoon is utterly enamored. Every time Taehyung recalls a story from when he ran around school trying to find him, he falls a little bit more in love.

He was so nervous for their first romantic date that he couldn’t eat during the day, but Taehyung is making him feel at ease, as he usually does, so hunger is coming back with a vengeance.

“Should we go to the restaurant now?” He asks, pulling Taehyung along with him. "It's almost time."

“Let’s.” Taehyung agrees readily, “I’m ravenous.”

They quickly make their way to the restaurant, only to find its door closed. There’s a sign in the window reading “Closed for vermin infestation”.

“Oh.” Namjoon says, “Dammit. That’s not good.”

There’s this awkward silence, filled with growling sounds from both their bellies. It’s too late to make reservations anywhere nice, and anywhere else risks being too loud for a romantic Rendez-Vous. Namjoon is scrambling his brain for a solution when Taehyung’s shy voice interrupts.

“Hum, if you want to– Jimin told me he wouldn't be home tonight, so… You want to come over? We can pick up some ramen on the way.”

Taehyung’s face might be neutral, but the blush growing on his cheeks is anything but. Namjoon takes a moment to appreciate the sight that he makes, burning up in embarrassment. Without the blushing, Namjoon would have believed he’s only inviting him for ramen, but the angry red of his cheeks is definitely betraying Taehyung’s intentions.

He nods his agreement, feeling anticipation replace hunger in the pit of his stomach.

Having Namjoon in his space is a new experience.

The apartment is still messy from their move, boxes lying around, but they’ve managed to make it quite homey. Everything that is necessary to their everyday life has been unboxed, only the odd objects being ignored by Jimin and him.

He puts on some soft music to set a nice mood, and Namjoon is humming along straight away, which is all the approval he needs to feel confident about his music selection. Music Theory graduate approved.

He gets to work on the ramen while he directs Namjoon on where to find a cheap bottle of wine and some wine glasses. He sets the table, trying to make it as nice as possible, but it’s really just a pot of bubbling ramen and two bowls with some chopsticks.

They eat in comfortable silence, the music playing in the background mixing with the sound of their eating.

But then Namjoon dumps the content of his wine glass on his tan-colored pants, and it’s downhill from there.

“Damn it!” He curses, jumping to his feet. He grabs some napkins to try and pat some wine off, but it’s already been absorbed by his fancy suit pants.

“Quick, take them off,” Taehyung says, not thinking too hard and only reacting to the situation at hand. “Let’s rinse them in the sink.”

Namjoon complies, taking them off in record time, passing them on to Taehyung like it’s a relay race.

Taehyung deposits them straight in the sink, opening the tap and letting the water hopefully get rid of most of the stain. They both stand there for a minute, staring at the water filling up.

But then it hits Taehyung that Namjoon’s thighs are currently bare and in his vicinity. He sneaks a quick peek to satisfy his horny brain, but he’s quick to snap his eyes back to the sink to avoid doing anything stupid.

Like, let’s say , dropping to his knees.

He can feel himself blushing, his cheeks, ears, and neck feeling hot. He knew exactly what he was doing, inviting Namjoon for some ramen, but now that he can act on it, he’s suddenly feeling very shy.

Plus, not being able to read facial expressions never really impaired his ability to get laid. He used to just– go to the bar, wait until someone would offer him to get out of there, and go for it.

But this is not a bar, and Namjoon won’t ask him if he wants to get out of there. He has no idea how to tell if Namjoon wants to jump into bed with him. Or not.

He takes matters into his own hands.

“So, as you know,” He starts, staring intently at the water flowing out of the tap, “this whole face blindness thing– I can’t really read your facial expressions. So in the future, it’ll be hard for me to figure out if you’re angry or happy, or sad, or… or horny. I’ve never done this whole– Romantic relationship thing, but I’m guessing we’re going to have to be really vocal with how we’re feeling, what we want, whatnot.”

He lets his statements hang in the air, staring at the stain that doesn’t seem to want to go away. He’s thinking maybe this will have to be removed professionally.

But then, Namjoon chooses that moment to drop a soft kiss on his nape.

“Are you asking me, right now, if I want you?”

Taehyung turns around, letting himself be cornered against the counter. Namjoon has his nicely defined biceps, somehow peeking through his suit vest, on each side of him. He absolutely loves it.

“Yes. I am.”

Namjoon kisses his neck once again, and Taehyung is this close to losing it.

“I absolutely want you.” His boyfriend finally answers, landing a heavy kiss on his lips, sucking all the air out of Taehyung’s lungs.

After turning Taehyung’s inside to mush via lips on lips crime, he returns to his assault on Taehyung’s neck, peppering the skin he can reach with sweet kisses, each one sending electricity straight to his groin.

“Do you want me?” Namjoon questions softly into his ear, making Taehyung's eyes roll back so far he’s scared they’ll never come back.

“Fuck yes.” He grinds out, voice turning to a whine when Namjoon, emboldened by Taehyung’s enthusiasm, rocks his pelvis into his in a languid motion.

He sees white then, bringing Namjoon’s mouth back to his, smashing their mouths together in a wet and messy kiss.

“How important are your pants?” He inquires in between kisses, enjoying the slow grinding Namjoon has going on. He’s still in his suit pants, but Namjoon only has the thin cotton of his boxer brief as a barrier. Taehyung can clearly feel his monster cock waking up from its slumber.

“Not very important.” He finally answers, hands letting go of the counter to firmly grab at Taehyung’s ass.

Taehyung can proudly say he’s got a fat ass, and Namjoon seems to appreciate it if the growl that escapes him is anything to go by.

He gets to work on the buttons of Namjoon’s dress shirt, Namjoon getting the message and taking his vest off by himself. Soon he’s standing there in only his boxer briefs and socks, while Taehyung is still fully dressed.

It’s kind of hot.

They slow it down a little, Taehyung pushing Namjoon away so he can take a good look at him.

The light of the kitchen falls almost gracefully over Namjoon’s defined chest, creating shadows that chisel out his muscles even more. It’s a sight to behold.

He drags his hands down Namjoon's body, teasing a nipple as he goes with a flick of the thumb, mapping out his taut stomach with the tip of his finger, then coming back up to hold onto his strong shoulders.

“You know, I’m like, really good at massages. I feel like this is something you should know.”

Seems like this is all the time Namjoon will allow him away from him. He reels him back in with an arm around his waist, the other taking hold of one of Taehyung’s hands and bringing it to his mouth. He nips at his fingers, maintaining eye contact while he uses his tongue to soothe the sting.

How he’s even real is beyond Taehyung.

“Do you need help undressing?” Namjoon teases, reaching for his belt.

“Let me close the tap and we can move this to my room.”

Namjoon doesn’t give him a response, only cages him once again against the counter, plastering the full length of his warm body to his. He reaches behind Taehyung and moments later, the soft ambiance music is the only thing they can hear again.

Taehyung leads him to his bedroom, taking off his vest as they go. Somehow Namjoon already got his belt buckle, so he unceremoniously drops his pants to the floor, then jumps on his bed.

“Welcome to my room. That’s my desk, that’s my bedside table, that’s a replica of your penis, but I heard the original is planning on making an appearance tonight. This is my bed. Hope you enjoyed the tour.” He finally gets to the final button, looking up eagerly as he sends his shirt off to the side, wondering what’s taking Namjoon so long to get on the goddamn bed.

He finds his lover completely captivated by his penis duplicate.

“You’ve got the same one in your pants, you know. Get you your ass over here.”

“Sorry I was just thinking… it’s crazy how similar you made it only from your memory.”

“Excuse me?” Taehyung objects, crossing his arms over his chest. “They’re not just similar, they’re identical.”

“Only one way to check, is there?” Namjoon taunts, before finally, finally getting rid of his briefs, releasing the Kraken.

Except he also grabs hold of the sculpture, bringing it close so he can do a side-by-side comparison.

“You’re right, it is identical. How did you even manage that?” He says, awe in his voice. “Have you ever used it on yours–”

Namjoon loses his train of thought as he takes in the sight of Taehyung, laying in bed completely naked, pumping himself at a leisurely pace and looking very unimpressed.

“No, I haven’t. But if you don’t get into bed in the next 5 seconds I just might consider it.”

Namjoon doesn’t have to be told twice.

#bangtanidx #bangtanarmynet #houseofddaeng #mikrogalaxynet #boymeetsmxm #bangtanxm #kim taehyung #kim namjoon #min yoongi #kim seokjin #park jimin #jung hoseok #jeon jungkook #bts fic #taejoon #taejoon fic #taehyung x namjoon #v #rm

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ryuichirou · 4 years ago

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Okay I kind of want that essay now on Levi being a cutie just so I can see the manga caps 🥺 hope you’re having a good day! ❤️❤️ your art is stunning btw 💕

Thank you for your kind words about my art!

You want an essay – you get an essay! ❤️ Thank you very much for being interested in my long posts! And I’m sorry it took so long.

So yeah, why I think Levi is cute and how manga canon supports this claim.

This argument might sound subjective, but I feel like Levi resembles a cat a lot.

His personality, his movements, his body proportions: he is muscular and very strong and agile, but he also looks rather slim and almost elegant when he moves. He’s very fast and extremely strong, but he is also very small.

He looks aloof at first, but he likes talking to others from time to time. Sometimes he’s even too talkative. You can notice this type of behaviour in cats too from time to time, when they’re just present in a room just because all the people gathered there. That’s a silly comparison, but facts about Levi here can stay anyway.

I feel like people usually see him as someone who’s strict and somehow aggressive, but this isn’t quite the case. He’s caring, he’s tender, he often thinks about how people around him feel both physically and mentally.

Sometimes he doesn’t know how to express that he cares, but those close to him just know that, and they know what he’s trying to say.

I love this scene for a lot of reasons, but Erwin’s little laugh as a reply to Levi’s threat is my best thing ever: he KNOWS what Levi’s trying to say and that Levi’s worried.

Ok this is a very sad start of the post lol, let’s continue with something more fun.

To me, Levi’s constant bitching also feels very cute. Especially the fact that he is self aware about this side of him and he straight up just says “yeah I’m just being a jerk, let me bitch a little ok, I just have to whine this is my ritual”.

And boy o boy does he bitch A LOT.

vvvv This one is also cute because he made a silly joke about Erwin just to start a conversation with Eren, he legit tried to cheer him up a little. Adorable. Levi always knows when Eren feels down, he’s very sensitive to his mood and pays great attention to it.

Ok so this is where we’re entering the Zevi Territory. I’m sorry, but his chemistry with Zeke is something else, they flirt so much it’s almost scary.

As we all know, they bicker quite often, since I think Zeke is the only person who actually reacts to Levi’s snarky little remarks. That’s the first time in a while when someone’s able to do that + Levi can’t just beat the shit out of Zeke for that, so that’s why we have so many dialogues. What Zeke also does is teasing Levi to the point when he just MUMBLES CUTELY AND QUIETLY TO HIMSELF.

What was this response, Levi?? You know damn well you didn’t have to answer that stupid remark about being popular, but you did anyway huh. Because you got shy, you cutie. How do I know this is a cute reply? Because the Japanese sentence was noted to sound surprisingly cute, he used a cute wording there, so even Levi’s Japanese fans got surprised.

And as far as I know this isn’t the only time when Levi mumbled something quietly while being kind of embarrassed. When I was trying to find something on some kind of jpn forums/blog sites I’ve seen people mention that he uses surprisingly cute wording in these situations, but I can’t explain anything here – I don’t know Japanese lol and used a translator for the article. You can check it out yourself, it’s number 8 on this list. My point is that it’s one of separate reasons why fans love Levi, so my guess is that it’s at least somewhat important to his character.

Moving on to his appearance. After rereading the manga we realized that Levi’s face is actually very… round-ish. He doesn’t have a strong chin, his nose is small, his lips are small. He looks exactly like his mother.

And I have to mention the most obvious thing. We all know that Levi is smol, but when you actually look at him you start to realize HOW SMOL HE ACTUALLY IS. Sometimes I think that Maybe I’m exaggerating, but then I open the manga and see this.

Guys.

He’s very small (look at the level of their shoulders).

And what I love about is that it gets acknowledged, but this isn’t his only personality trait. It’s very subtle, but it’s there. Isayama LOVES to tease him about it, and this is always so funny to me. When Levi is just too small to fit into the frame with the rest of the gang, it’s so cute and hilarious at the same time. This happens quite often, I’m sure there is a compilation of these panels somewhere lol. If there isn’t, I need to make it...

And this…

“H o w d a r e y o u”

And yes I HAVE to mention the clown incident. I just have to. The man was straight up mistaken for a child. Once again, he’s being cutely teased by the manga and I love it lol.

And when Levi turned around, the clown CONTINUED to treat him as a child even after seeing his face. This situation at least shows that Levi’s face is not old-looking.

Isayama also LOVES showing how small and cute Levi is on the official art as well.

And yeah I know, zevi territory again, but please look at how PATIENT Levi is being here. He just lets Zeke backhug him. And of course he’s looking at the camera like he’s in “the Office”, but to me this situation has such a strong “being bread is fine actually, I don’t care anymore” vibe lol. I love this image so much. It also shows that Isayama doesn’t treat Levi (or any other character) seriously and that he most likely has tons of fun while writing their arguments.

Speaking of Isayama, let’s look at his sketches of Levi.

You know what I’m going to say, right? LOOK HOW CUTE-

But seriously though, I know Yams doesn’t have a reputation of the best artist out there, but I think these sketches are a good example of how he sees Levi’s character. He’s being rather passive, patient, mumbling something and just chilling. In one word, being cute.

What I also wanted to mention is Isayama’s remarks on how he created Levi from that Shingeki no Kyojin Encyclopedia thingie. I don’t know what word he used in the original (if somebody knows, please feel free to throw it at me, I’m interested; my guess is 綺麗, kirei), but I think that the word “pretty” is very specific. They used neither “beautiful” nor “handsome”, they chose PRETTY.

So yeah, I think that Isayama views him as grumpy old man who is also a cute little bean, and he never forgets about it.

Just… ugh look at it. What kind of baby sling situation is this. AND I KNOW I ALREADY MADE THAT JOKE D:

In conclusion, yes, of course Levi is strong and important and stoic (not all the time though lol), I know he has muscles, I know he seems intimidating to other characters sometimes, and I love him to death, but I don’t think taking him too seriously is a good thing. Taking any character too seriously isn’t a good thing.

Isayama doesn’t hide that he created a pretty smol boi character when he first drew Levi, he doesn’t hide that he thinks Levi is adorable. And funny. If Isayama wanted to change the way he drew Levi, he would’ve already done it a long time ago. He knows how to draw manly man faces.

And I love it about Levi. I wouldn’t want him to be any other way.

#replies #levi ackerman #snk meta

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spiritsonic · 5 years ago

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Yo, I have some questions about the IDW Sonic comic character design if you don't mind! When you're designing characters like, say, Dr. Starline or Tangle, how much creative freedom do you have? Are characters' abilities determined before or while you're creating design concepts? If their powers are determined beforehand, do you get to pick the species or do others get a say? Lastly, roughly how many versions do you go through before the final design is picked?

Hello! Sure, I can take a stab at it.

First off, I should clarify that so far I have designed Starline and Whisper for IDW but I didn’t design Tangle-- that was Tyson Hesse.

In my experience with Sonic books, I’ve always been working with one or two editors, and Ian Flynn as the writer (or me as the writer, but checking my creative decisions with Ian to make sure I wasn’t contradicting his future plans for the world). The material I’m given to work with can range from a short bio blurb to a rough design and reference sheet (drawn by either Ian, the editor, or Aleah Baker, Ian’s wife and collaborator). They almost always contain a few key points:

-Character’s name, approx. age, and their species

-Their immediate role in the story (usually not backstory)

-A rough description of their personality

-Their abilities, and any special requirements in the design (such as Starline’s glove with the Warp Topaz on it, or Whisper’s Variable Wispon)

Other than that, I’m left to my own devices to gather inspirational material and start roughing things out. I’ll draw not just from pre-existing Sonic media, but from any outside source that feels interesting to me.

I’ll usually to one initial pass to send in, then everybody involved gets to throw in their two cents and I’ll split the design off into a few variants, combining and including as many ideas as possible. Then we reconvene and pick the one or ones we all like, and I’ll mush those together. A round or two of that usually gets us something good, then we send that off to Sega/Sonic Team to see what they think! They’ll give us some notes on changes to make sure it fits in with the world and doesn’t break any of their design preferences. Once their notes are applied, I’ll make a detailed reference sheet and we’re good to go!

Here’s how it went with Starline:

STEP 0: Collect reference! Starline's original style inspiration board. I also looked at real-life platypuses, and references from other Sonic media.

STEP 1: The first pass! I was angling for a mad scientist thing, I didn’t know he was more of a psychologist type of doctor. I’m throwing all the spaghetti at the wall at this stage.

STEP 2-3: Diversify! After checking with the crew, I reeled it way back towards normal Sonic-y proportions and made variants emphasizing different elements of his personality. There are pages and pages of ideation sketches that lead to these. Note that I label everything clearly, so we can call them out easily in email conversations.

(Version 3 consisted of different combos and color palettes, and testing them alongside Eggman. 1C down there is my favorite from this pass, but it doesn’t really fit Starline as we know him in the books)

STEP 4: Refocus! After batting around the design above and nobody really feeling it, I took a couple steps back and pulled some of the energy from the original into the later designs. I also knew his character better at this point, and I knew how I liked to draw it. As you can see, this is really close!

Oh, Sega gave some suggestions on version 2-3 that led to this one. You can actually see their suggestions listed by me on the sketch: pallid complexion, thin/tall build, intellectual-shorthand props, and a sleeker glove. I realized that these notes were leading back to the first pass, so I went with my gut and leaned into that!

(This is when he got his signature Benjamin Franklin/Jareth the Goblin King energy. Very important.)

STEP 5: Cleanup! Sega gave some more minor notes on do’s and don’ts to tidy up the design, and I did a few final fixes of my own. He was gonna have the zigzag-cut boots but they were HELL to draw so I made new ones at the last second. Also, fixed some color stuff and put the hair stripe back in.

This whole process can take a while, with stuff getting bounced around so much. It’ll often take several weeks to wrap it all up. My last few designs have gone through around 4-5 iterations, though certain elements may get more attention than others; I like to pick a few features that won’t get changed with every go-round, so the design stays focused.

Sometimes I get to have some input into the character’s backstory or personality, depending on how I design them-- this happens organically as we’re brainstorming design options. Whisper is a great example of this; in the design prompt, she didn’t have a mask at all. That was something I added as a costume option, and Ian, and I came up with the idea that it’s a tool that she uses alongside her Variable Wispon. It’s also become a huge part of how she expresses herself, and emblematic of the character in general!

I hope that helps!

#IDW Sonic #Dr. Starline #starliiiine tiiiime #long post

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dr-astormylasthurrah · 5 years ago

Text

spam’s character design tips!

(various designs I’ve done! adopt characters belong to their owners, I only include them here as examples and claim no current ownership.) *disclaimer: it was 9 pages before i added pictures so i’m not inaccurate

If you would rather read this as a Google Document, please click here! (The document has more examples as well!)

Hey! My name’s Spam and I write Danganronpa: A Stormy Last Hurrah! You may also have seen my art for various stories and users around the Internet, including RATS: 252 Chances at Redemption and the Alca Ronpa series! You may ALSO also have seen my character designs, including those for ASLH as well as certain characters in Alca Ronpa and Kill the Joker: AnotheR Game! I sell adopts fairly frequently as well and have miscellaneous designs floating around the web, so I figured I may as well write something about my process. This is mostly oriented towards human OCs! So hopefully this helps someone!!

Before starting this guide, I’d like to give credit to gaiacseas/gokuhara’s “How I Design OCs: Do’s and Don’ts”! When I was designing the ASLH cast, I found myself coming back to this guide again and again. A lot of my points are the same as theirs, but I talk a bit about my own process, especially when it comes to characters that I revamp and redesign.

All uncredited art was done by me, including character designs. Characters belong to their respective owners. All other art is credited.

So let’s get started!

CONCEPTS

The first thing I’m going to say is that my character designs, especially those for myself, take absolutely FOREVER. I usually go through many, many pages of concepts and color tests before I find something I’m satisfied with. It’s a long and very constructive process, and if I’m designing a character for someone else, it can take weeks before we can find something we’re both satisfied with.

Alexei Ilyich Bazhanov, ASLH’s SHSL Birdwatcher, was a design-first character, meaning that I came up with his design first and built his personality around it. Although to be fair someone who constantly wears a feathery halfmask in public is inevitably bound to be kind of dramatic, so there’s only so many ways his personality couldn’t be influenced by his design. However, his design took a bit of a downgrade from his initial design to his current iteration, largely because of his initial design’s similarity to Tatsumaru Harai, ASLH’s SHSL Kabuki Actor.

In Tatsumaru’s concept sketch, you can also see the inspirations I cited for their design! I don’t consume much media, so the characters I cite as reference are often OCs in my friends’ stories. Here, I cited Minami Tachibana (Danganronpa: Dead on Arrival), Alix Murasaki (Ultimate Danganronpa: Supernova at Sea), and… Rhanahad Electricrone (Alca Ronpa 2), for some reason. I… actually don’t remember how or why any of those influences connect to Tatsumaru at all? Actually, for almost all of the ASLH characters, I scribbled down some notes on design influences and proceeded to ignore them. So maybe don’t listen to me actually. But design influences are good! Just don’t straight up copy them.

ANYWAY, as you can see, Alexei and Tatsumaru both had longish coats with balloon pants. However, I had better reason to keep these traits for Tatsumaru than Alexei, because kabuki acting actually uses these elements in its costumes. Thus, it made more sense to change Alexei’s design, although I do think that he would still actually wear that original outfit. It’s very himcore.

The point is that this ended up in many, many more drafts of concept sketches until I found something I was satisfied with. Like, six pages. It was kind of insane. It’s worth it in the end to make a polished product, though!

BODIES

(Admittedly, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the best when it comes to drawing distinct body types. It’s a weakness of mine that I’m getting better at, but I’m still not great at it.)

The #1 tip I can give here is to use shape language! This is what people use in pretty much all Western cartoons - ever think about how hard it would be to take Bill Cipher seriously if he was a circle? gaiacseas goes over shape language and silhouettes in far more depth in their tutorial, so I really advise looking at it! The basics are:

CIrcles/ovals convey softness and gentleness

Rectangles convey solidity and strength

Triangles convey sharpness and distrust

Combine shapes to modify the image your character conveys!

Also, just a tip: if you’re designing a cast of characters, please don’t just make them all the same body type! In real life, if you got any random sample of people, they’re not all going to be the same body type. Diversifying your body types helps a lot to distinguish characters from each other, too. Imagine if all of these characters had the same proportions as each other - even though they all have distinct outfits, you would have a much harder time perceiving them as different people.

If you’re going to draw characters of a body type you’re unfamiliar with, good for you! But first, take the time to look up guides on how to draw those body types. Studying real people also helps a lot to understand the vast varieties of body types. Just look at this picture of Olympic and Paralympic athletes from the 2016 Rio games - there’s already a ton of variations in “muscular” depending on what their sport is, and each athlete is optimized to their sport! It’s like that for literally everyone on Earth with literally every body type. There’s millions of ways to be skinny (bony? lean? malnourished?) or fat (most fat around their stomach, arms, legs?) or muscular (tall like a basketball player, dense like a weightlifter?) so make them count!

Also consider making characters with disabilities! My commentary on this as an abled person is fairly limited, but I will say to please note that what you think you know about disabilities is not necessarily true. This is in regards to their experiences having a disability, but can even apply to things you don’t think about - the wheelchairs most wheelchair-bound people use are not usually medical wheelchairs, for example. Research!!

On a related note, please don’t make racial caricatures or draw all your characters with the same facial features. People of specific ethnicities tend to (but not always) have certain features that are common to people across a regional area, but that’s no excuse to veer into drawing in the same way old racist cartoons are illustrated in. Again, there’s plenty of guides to help with learning about these! Or just look at the people around you and draw real people as practice. You’ll find the world is much more diverse than you think.

And speaking of references!! I’ve seen a lot of really good guides these days for drawing different body types and features! Go check them out go check em go!!

sdkay’s guide on drawing different facial structures (original post was deleted)

kenzandfriends’ guide on drawing fat people (original post was deleted)

nsfwbutts’ guide on drawing fat people (guide isn’t nsfw but their blog is so this is a reblog)

mel-lion’s guide on drawing black features

chuwenjie’s guide on drawing East Asian faces

“world of averages” - composite images of thousands of portraits of people from different places (re: certain facial features being common to certain ethnicities!)

calvin-arium’s guide on drawing characters in wheelchairs

Honestly if you’re looking for help just literally google “how to draw [character trait] and I GUARANTEE you there is a guide out there for you. While people not belonging to the demographic you’re drawing will probably not notice if you don’t portray groups accurately, those who are part of that demographic will be absolutely delighted.

MOTIFS

Motifs are a really neat way to make your character stand out in a crowd, especially if those motifs have meaning behind them! I mostly do this for adopts, but one of my favorite designs was Ophelia Zhang, a character I designed and proceeded to do absolutely nothing with.

She’s Medusa-inspired, as is obvious because of the snake motif on her jacket and the green hair/yellow eyes combination! Maybe you didn’t notice it until I pointed out, but now that I did, it raises intrigue about her character and her connection to the myth, doesn’t it?

Aside from Ophelia, most of my (own) characters aren’t very motif-heavy, but I like having common themes and patterns that run throughout their outfits at least. It just makes the outfit blend better. Some examples of this include Claude Bates, ASLH’s SHSL Violinist, and Chiyo Kumoshita, ASLH’s SHSL Cellphone Novelist.

Nonstandards are a great way of making a character Become Their Motif! Claude is based on snakes, specifically grass snakes - he’s got beady eyes, fangs, a grass snake pattern on his pants, and the combination of weird vesty jacket thing and striped shirt creates a belly scales effect. HOWEVER, he’s also got violin motifs! Most obvious are the f-hole patterns on his coat, but a more subtle thing is that his shirt has 5 stripes - a music staff (which sheet music is written on) is made of 5 lines!

(“so spam shouldn’t he have only 4 stripes on his shirt, for the 4 spaces on a music staff” shut up i realized i messed up his design too late. my orchestra director is going to kill me)

Chiyo, on the other hand, has a distinct cloud motif! This primarily is to match her surname (雲下 are the kanji for “clouds” and “under” respectively), but the other reason Chiyo has a cloud motif is because of ASLH itself - ASLH is loosely themed around the Shakespeare play The Tempest, and Chiyo, being ASLH’s protagonist, gets a “clear skies” motif. Neat!

OUTFITS

(“Incinerate” is the base for Puppet from Kill The Joker: AnotheR Game!)

There is SO MUCH that can be said about outfits and how I design them. The #1 tip I have is to look at what other people wear, and then decide what it is about that outfit you like so much! If you go somewhere where people are dressed differently from what you’re used to (a distant city or a foreign country), take notes! For me, some elements I come back to a lot include collared shirts, sweaters, oversized overdecorated overcoats, and cloud/sky patterning.

So here’s a little about what makes outfits distinct from each other!

Colors:

Bro this is SO IMPORTANT. There’s a lot that can be said about color theory, and gaiacseas says more than I do on the topic, but basically color conveys a lot about the character. Muted colors convey a muted personality, and brighter colors convey a brighter one! As gaiacseas says in their guide, however, this sets up a great way to subvert expectations about your character.

Protip! If you’re having trouble with a color scheme, just color pick from an existing picture! I don’t have any examples of this on hand, but I do know that sunset pictures are very yummy and I have a lot of pink/orange colored designs. Coincidence? I think NOT.

The number of colors you select is of course up to you, but personally, I don’t use too many individual colors for ease of creating reference images. Of course, realistically, no one’s going to wear clothes the exact same color as each other. Unfortunately for that realism, I am lazy and don’t want to color pick 10 colors, so this is how I live.

Layering:

This is the absolute #1 best way to build texture and silhouette in your characters! Step one, find a funky garment. Step two, find another funky garment. Step three, put them on top of each other. Step four, PROFIT.

The easiest garments to do this with is of course jackets, but they certainly aren’t the only garment that can be layered! Layering is just a matter of looking at clothes you would not usually wear together and going “I wonder what would happen if you wore this together?” In real life this is usually a disaster. But in the world of art and hypotheticals everything is fair game and NOTHING makes sense!

Patterns:

For when layers just don’t cut it! As far as patterns go, they could tie into motifs or just be a nice pattern. For example, Mal Jenkins is a painter, so the patterns on his sleeves, pants, and bag are based on Monet’s “Water Lilies”.

On the other hand, patterns could just be a pattern or recurring motif! The world is your oyster!

Materials/textures:

When combined with layering, clothes of different textures and weights can add a lot to a design! I mentioned before that I like designs with jackets, let’s look at a couple different hoodies! Featured here is Tristan McRae, ASLH’s SHSL Video Game Designer, and Hayato Kikuchi, Ultimate Parkourist (submitted to rebootmon’s Danganronpa: Zetsubou Panic!!).

You can see that Tristan’s jacket is made of much thicker material than Hayato’s, which is very baggy and loose. This already makes their designs a lot more distinct from each other! (They’re also wearing totally different colors so that helps too.)

Other textures I like to do include adding holes (like Spring from KTJ:ARG has holes in her coat), adding things onto fabrics (like Tsukino Chisaki, ASLH’s SHSL Flight Student, has studs on her coat and boots), and adding visible stitching (like Brendan Valdez, ASLH’s SHSL Flight Student, has patches on his coat).

Clothes:

Having a general idea of what clothes actually exist is a very good start! Such as:

Tops: t-shirts, collared shirts, long sleeve/short sleeve shirts, tank/tube tops, cold shoulder shirts, blouses, sheer mesh shirts…

Bottoms: Skirts, gym shorts, denim shorts, jeans (with and without holes), leggings, culottes, kilts...

Dresses: Prom dresses, casual dresses, ball gowns, formal full-length gowns…

Undergarments: tights, fishnets, garters, long socks, short socks, gloves, bras/bralettes...

Coverings: Hoodies, cardigans, overcoats, denim jackets, capes, ponchos, vests, suit jackets…

Shoes: Slippers, flip-flops, sandals, high heels, sneakers, athletic shoes, slip-ons, boots...

Accessories: Hats, barrettes, hair ties, jewelry, bags, headbands, belts, chains, suspenders, buttons, glasses...

So from there it’s just mix and match! Keep in mind the different styles of clothing as well - you can swap out things like collars and edges to create variety! There’s different types of boots, different types of skirts, different kinds of bags. The sky’s the limit!

No, I Meant Like Clothes Inspiration:

Oh. Again, keep an eye out for specific art inspirations! If you see a cool character design or outfit on social media, bookmark it! Just remember not to copy clothes exactly, because that’s called art theft! I have a storage Discord server where I keep screenshots and links of art and outfits I come across while scrolling social media.

I find that the best original outfits are a combination of different outfits. Take certain elements that you find cool in each outfit , then add a few elements of your own and stick them all together! It might take a few passes to work as cohesively as you’d like, but keep trying! The best outfits that take inspiration should look so seamlessly blended and original that they should only look like the references if you compare them to each other.

I also have a few characters inspired by songs, so sometimes I’ll incorporate the motifs of MVs for those songs into their outfits. I don’t really recommend this unless you’re 100% prepared to be called out on where the outfit came from, and I ESPECIALLY do not recommend lifting the outfit exactly. Again, that’s art theft.

Isaku Umitsu, my SHSL Kyudoka, is based on the Hitotsume-sama, Bun-chan, and Kulukulu characters from utaite Eve’s music videos Literary Nonsense and Outsider. Looking at them side by side, the inspiration is obvious, but when taken out of context, it shouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind unless you’ve watched Eve’s videos 100 times (like I have) (take my computer from me please).

References:

As for references! Here’s just a couple that I found digging through my Tumblr!

My main blog’s fashion tag!

moatdd’s layering how-to! This changed my life when I saw it.

OSF Costume Rentals - period accurate clothing!

leaf-submas’s hat and skirt style guide, feat. Napstablook!

Jfashionmagazines - Japanese street fashion!

If your mutuals have fashion tags or pages, that’s a good place to dig through as well! They almost certainly have different styles than you do, so you’ll get exposed to a lot of different styles!

Outfits are a lot of fun and my favorite part of designing characters! Hopefully it will be for you too! :D

REDESIGNING CHARACTERS/NEW OUTFITS

Ever got a character design you love, but then decided you weren’t feeling anymore? Or got a character from someone you ended up hating? Or you found character art from 5 years ago and decided you hated it? YEAH ME TOO TO EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE!!

ASLH has four characters who were adopts: Ririka Kashizaki (SHSL Nail Artist), Sentarou Sekisada (SHSL Seat Filler), Hirono Ekyou (SHSL Oendan), and Ryouji Atsui (SHSL Caterer)! For a “complete from scratch redesign” I’ll be talking about Ryouji, who was converted from an attempt at design to a fantroll to an original design!

As you can see, I had a lot of trouble with Ryouji’s design. (It probably didn’t help that I didn’t finalize his personality until basically the prologue though lbr.) I didn’t really know what I was doing, and though I had the concept for the vibes I was shooting for, nothing seemed right. Around the same time, I bought an OC design from my friend Marti, and I was having so much trouble I was like “y’know what let’s just fuse the two”.

My process for redesigning OCs, especially when doing something like humanizing a nonhuman character, is to pick the certain traits I’d like to keep and change the rest. For Ryouji, the elements of his concept art I wanted to keep were parts of the outfit (the apron and vest) and the elements of the fantroll I wanted to keep were his eyebrow scar and the squares pattern on the jacket. Thus, when redesigning him, I made him have all of these elements! This was probably one of my favorite designs to make ever, and I’m really glad other people seem to like it too.

Weirdly enough, as soon as I finalized his design for his first reference, his personality almost immediately materialized. Which really just goes to show how much design can influence character personalities.

(Fun fact, drawing Ryouji’s reference was the first time I drew his final outfit, so I’m extremely grateful it turned out as well as it did.)

Other characters, like Hirono, only need a quick outfit touchup. I loved Hirono’s design already, and it fit with what I had in mind with her personality. All I did to change her was the same process I use to make any other outfit, see above. She’s an oendan, so she gets a hapi coat and school uniform… though, honestly, that original outfit is still super cute. I should draw it again sometime.

Most of the characters that I redesign as heavily as I did Ryouji are fangems and fantrolls that I buy from my friends, because I know that they understand my mighty need to redesign things. I try not to redesign adopts I get from other sources because I don’t know how the people I bought them from would feel about my editing their design too heavily; Sentarou and Ririka fall into these categories, so when I got them I mostly changed their outfits.

For me, it feels weird to redesign already-existing human OCs, but it’s also not impossible - Tristan, for example, used to be white. No I’m not going to show you the sketches for that and all you need to know is that it sucked, mostly because I was having a lot of trouble making him look nerdy but also nonthreatening. I think how he looks now is a good balance. If you ever get stuck redesigning a character, a race or gender swap (if either is possible tastefully) can go a really long way, and can even subvert expectations about a character! Just keep in mind dynamics and messages as well - if you have a strong violent woman and go “hey she should be trans”, that’s really not the best stereotype you would probably want to display in your work. Be mindful!

2015 (og design) => later 2015? (RWBY AU) => 2017 (AR3) => 2018 (DE:OPH

CAST BALANCE: DESIGNS

I wasn’t going to talk about this but then I decided I was gonna talk about it! I mean this is kinda a guide for Danganronpa characters, but this applies to any cast that is presented in a group. The characters in ASLH fall into a few different categories:

Created for beta ASLH: Chiyo, Amal, Tsukino, Ririka, Kanemori, Tristan, Tiana, Claude, Iris, Aster

Created for current ASLH: Ryouji, Sentarou, Alexei, Tatsumaru

Preexisting characters: Hirono, Brendan

The largest problem I had putting all the cast members together was revising outfits so that, as seen with Alexei and Tatsumaru above, designs wouldn’t be too similar. For the most part, I had vague ideas of what I wanted for each appearance; even the characters whose designs materialized fully-formed (like Tiana and Brendan) were edited slightly for cast cohesion.

I wish I could say I was responsible in developing all 16 characters’ designs at once so I could keep an eye on their design consistencies, but I would be lying. Instead, I finalized them and then posted them one by one. This was a double edged sword. One, I couldn’t go back and readjust colors or designs without making a whole new reference (which I actually did for Tatsumaru). However, because I was able to take a birds-eye view of my cast, I could see what design elements I needed more of - ESPECIALLY for color scheme! You’ll notice that a lot of the first row in my cast pic is very dark and grey-dominant, so I made a conscious push to include more colors in the second row of characters.

My one regret is not doing more talent-related designs. For a majority of the ASLH cast, you wouldn’t be able to tell their talent from appearance alone. In some cases this would have been impossible anyway (how do you convey to a Western audience a SHSL Cellphone Novelist through design?), but the only really distinct and obvious talent related designs are probably Tatsumaru (who probably doesn’t count because kabuki acting is maskless); Claude; Iris Sumitama, the SHSL Honors Student; and Kanemori Shionaga, the SHSL Football Player. Can you guess who they are?

Also, Alexei’s outfit should have been more extra. I still regret not making it so.

TOO LONG, DIDN’T READ

Go look at gaiacseas’ thing.

I do at least a page or two of concept art before settling on a single design.

Pay attention to body types!

Motifs can make a character look really cohesive and thematic.

Pay attention to what you like in outfits, too!!

Color schemes give an at-a-glance idea of your character’s personality.

Layering creates distinct silhouettes and can be done with more than just jackets!

Varying materials and textures makes the same garments look distinct from each other.

Making interesting outfits is as easy as mixing and matching garments.

Find outfit inspiration, but don’t plagarize!

To redesign characters, take the elements you like and shift everything else until it looks the way you want it to!

Balancing cast designs is a tricky process; going one-by-one is possible but has its ups and downs.

A LAST NOTE

In general, when you make a character whose life is different from yours - especially those belonging to marginalized communities - for the love of GOD please do some research about the experiences those communities have. It is a very bad idea to make them into a mouthpiece for your views of the groups. (SHSL Activists that are portrayed as unreasonable SJW strawmen irritate me to no end.) If you don’t feel you can portray a character respectfully, through either drawing or writing them, either a) research and listen to people of these groups so that you can or b) don’t do it, and maybe reevaluate yourself and figure out what about making this character makes you so uncomfortable.

Which isn’t to say that you have to be 100% perfect at everything, of course. In general, so long as the misinterpretations are unintentional, people belonging to the groups you try to represent tend to be pretty happy that you’re trying at all. You have no idea how happy I am to see agender representation in fanganronpa casts, especially because the Danganronpa OC scene likes to stick to hard gender binary balances. So it is worth it if you want to try it!

GOOD LUCK

And happy character creating!

If you enjoyed this document, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi or checking out my commissions! Or, of course, read Danganronpa: A Stormy Last Hurrah.

#tutorial #art ref #tips #character development #danganronpa #danganronpa oc #dr #fanganronpa #fangan #my art #my ocs #not aslh #spam speaks #long post #q

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