#I even met them briefly at the stage door to get my program signed :)

[cafenervosa]

"Oh, Mary!" 🍦

[ID in alt text]

[iexistinmanyforms-blog]

Okay, so this is how I think how things would go if Kocho Shinobu was chosen as the human representative in the exchange program in Devildom. This has been a reoccurring thing in my head for a while now and I wanted to type this down since I didn't want to end up forgetting it.

When Shinobu first appears in the Devildom, she was moments away from dying because of her fight with Douma. Her injuries magically disappear but the shock of her actually surviving all that just immobilises her for a good minute or two. When she comes to her senses, she wishes she had died instead.

Diavolo introduces himself as the demon prince of Hell ("Devildom", as he liked to call it), and Shinobu doesn't hesitate to either fight or flight because she can tell that he wasn't joking. She's a Hashira, one who has more than enough experience in her belt to be able to discern a demon's strength just by one look alone. And right now? Every demon in the room could kill her in an instant and she wouldn't be none the wiser.

If she chooses to fight, which is highly unlikely, I think Shinobu would go after the weakest first... which would be Beelzebub. Her speed and action shocks them briefly, but it doesn't take long for them to incapacitate her and take her nichirin sword away—she ends up injuring Beelzebub, which is an even bigger shock, and although it wouldn't really leave a mark it still kinda hurt. Emotionally, anyway.

If she chooses to flight, then she will only be able to run fast enough to reach the door. In which Beelzebub would be the one to catch her, but just barely...

In both outcomes, Shinobu is forced back in her original spot and gets reprimanded, in a way. Because while Diavolo, Lucifer, and Barbatos expected that kind of reaction from her, being a highly-skilled demon slayer and all, it didn't really register that she'd be able to cause any sort of harm. In my scenarios, this was the first sign she was greatly underestimated, and even looked down on, in Devildom.

Diavolo, Lucifer, and Barbatos knew about her... occupation. None of the applicants can get through the system without being debriefed by them. Lucifer was against the idea of her being an exchange student in the first place, for obvious reasons ("She's a demon slayer, Lord Diavolo, a very high-ranking one at that.")

Diavolo believes that she wouldn't be able to cause much harm (the fool), and her being in the exchange program might even help in its early stages. It made just enough sense for her to end up being accepted.

As that was happening, Satan is by the sidelines observing Shinobu very closely. He can sense her hatred, her wrath, and it either amuses him, or makes him immensely curious. Both, in the worst case scenario.

Asmodoeus is intrigued and maybe even thinks that she's adorable—with her height and all. He, along with the rest, puts his guard up a bit more but otherwise sticks to just observing Shinobu and her actions.

Beelzebub thinks she's tiny and a tiny bit menacing—also fast. The fastest human he's ever met, actually. His strong sense of smell detects the poison coursing through her veins, and any thought of devouring her goes flying out the window since he thinks that she would taste like Solomon's cooking. Unless...?

They explain the situation to her, as calmly as possible as to not set her off again, and Shinobu's mind begins to run a million different thoughts all at once.

(She's alive, but not for long, she's not safe here;

she might not survive long enough to finish the exchange program and go back home;

said exchange program is stupid—and stupidly underplanned;

there's a possibility that Douma is here and she does not like that one bit;

there are demons here infinitely stronger and older than muzan;

and they can walk under the sun;

how can she flip this situation around to her and the corps' advantage?)

After the clarification, Shinobu becomes quiet and... attentive, is one way to put it. Satan immediately notices that something is different but says nothing—and with how everything went down him, Asmodeus, and Beelzebub don't get properly introduced until much later.

(This thing has been in my drafts for MONTHS and I just had to post it now to get rid of my guilt. Unfinished work be damned. Though if people take interest in it, I guess... I'll continue it??? lol)

[xbaepsae]

heartbeat | part two (m)

“You want to be angry with him, hate him; but you can’t. And why is this? It’s stupid, but the truth—because your heart still steadily beats for him, despite you not wanting it to.”

[musician!yoongi x reader | jeongguk x reader]

genre: angst, smut

word count: 13.5k

a/n: & here is part twoooo. the final part of heatbeat. going back and rereading this series has made me get the feels all over again lmao. i hope you guys enjoy this and thank you to everyone who left messages on part one--they were all really sweet! xoxo

part one | part two

To say that confusion plagues your mind would be a total understatement. Because honestly, what the hell was your life?

You think about the cards fate has dealt you and you’re speechless; life was absolutely cruel and merciless in the way it had treated you. First of all, you were cursed to love someone who did not love you back. But secondly, you learned to move on and you met someone else who made you smile. However, and thirdly, life wasn’t done with you yet and now has you questioning everything you’ve believed for yourself.

Although you aren’t sure about many things, one certain thing is that you love Jeongguk—you really do. He is the sun and so, so good to you. But as present as the sun is in your life, there is a shadow that is Yoongi. And with him, comes the love that you thought you had buried long ago.

It has resurfaced once again.

***

“What time do you get off tonight?”

You turn around and see a disheveled Jeongguk standing in the doorway of your bedroom. As he rubs the sleep out of his eyes, you can’t help but briefly think about how adorable he is. “My shift is short today; I get off around four.”

He nods, “Want to grab an early dinner?”

“Don’t you have a job of your own?” you muse, reaching to grab your house keys.

“All I do is program computers and shit all day,” he says taking steps closer to you. “Besides, I’d rather hang out with my favorite person.”

You smile when he’s close enough to wrap his arms around your waist. “And who might that be?”

He smiles down at you and leans to press a chaste kiss to your lips, “Her name is y/n, have you met her?”

“Lucky girl,” you say and look at the clock to see that you’re already running late. “I’ve got to go. But if I see her, I’ll make sure to let her know.”

Jeongguk kisses you one last time before letting you walk out the door.

Your walk to the music store doesn’t take very long and you make it there just as your shift is about to start. Clocking in, you greet your manager before walking out into the front of the store. There, you begin to organize the various music racks and add the newest CDs in the standing displays. You’re nearly done when you hear the door chime open. Looking in the direction of the door, you smile widely.

“Hello, welcome—” you begin to greet whoever walked in, but you suddenly stop and find that the words are lost to you when you see a flash of pink hair.

“Y/n?”

You struggle to breathe properly, “Y-Yoongi.”

He lets the door close behind him and walks closer to you. “What are you doing here?”

“I work here.” You point to the nametag on your shirt for him and offer an awkward smile. He stares at your nametag for a brief second before raising his eyes back to yours.

“Have you been working here long?”

“Just a little over a year,” you say, playing with the album in your hands. “What are you doing here?”

“I just came to buy a few of my albums,” he says, and your immediate response is to ask why. “Because everywhere I go I like to buy a few, sign them, and give them to fans who maybe don’t have the money to purchase one. You know, especially since those fans used to be me.”

You watch as Yoongi walks to the alphabetized racks and grabs every one of his CD’s off the shelf. He walks to the checkout desk and you follow, ringing up the albums. You let him know the total price and he hands you the money to pay for it. Throughout this entire exchange, neither of you really talk. And although you don’t know what to say, you wonder what is rolling through his mind right now.

“Can I have a sharpie?” he asks and you rummage through a few containers and hand him one.

As he signs each album with his stage name Suga, you can’t help but ask, “Why are you here?”

He stops writing, “I’m buying—”

“No,” you interrupt, “why are you here? Why are you home?”

Yoongi caps the sharpie and looks at you, “Why? Am I not allowed to come back home?”

He holds your gaze for what seems like an eternity. And under his scrutiny, you feel so incredibly exposed. Yoongi has always been able to read you well; from all the years of your friendship, no one knows you better than him. Whether that was a good or bad thing, you really didn’t know anymore.

“That night in the club,” you begin and his eyes darken, “you said that you missed me, is that true?”

“I told you it was true,” he sighs.

“Then why didn’t you call me?”

You don’t remember how many times you asked him that question when you saw him for the first time again, but you just wanted to know exactly why.

He runs a hand over his face, “Because I was a coward, is that what you want me to say?”

“But you promised me,” you say through shaky lips.

Yoongi looks away from you, down to the CD in front of him. “I’m not proud of many decisions in my life, but I’m not lying when I say I regret not calling or coming back to see you.”

And as much as you try to suppress the growing pressure in your chest, you struggle and sense the overbearing urge for tears to spill over. You clench your hands into tight fists and feel the beginnings of deep crescent indentations in your palms.

You wanted to believe Yoongi, you really did. But you remember how hurt and depressed you were when he left; it’s an experience that you’ve tried to put behind you, but it never seems to go away. His departure from your life has changed you immensely, and you aren’t the same person he once knew before.

“You can say that you miss me all you want, but I wasn’t kidding when I said that I’ve moved on. I really did get tired of waiting.” Yikes. Even your own words sound harsh to your ears.

He looks back up, jaw tightening. “Yeah, I saw you leave with that guy.”

“He’s my boyfriend,” you correct him.

“I thought you said that you loved me,” Yoongi says, slamming the permanent marker down on the counter.

“I thought you said that you didn’t feel the same way.” And your words cause him to stop, taking a step away from you. Just as Yoongi moves away from you, you hear footsteps coming close and you turn to see your manager. You bow immediately, preparing to be scolded.

“Y/n, what is going on out here?” your manager asks, crossing his arms. But before you can explain the situation, Yoongi speaks up.

“It’s my fault, sir,” he says with a bow. “Y/n didn’t do anything wrong.”

Recognition spreads across your manager’s face, “Aren’t you Suga?”

“I am,” Yoongi nods and holds out a hand, “nice to meet you.”

“I can’t believe Suga is here in my store,” your manager looks down to see the signed CD’s in front of him, “and you’re signing albums!”

Yoongi smiles, “It’s nothing, really. I actually like to purchase my albums and give them out.”

“It’s everything!” your manager smiles before turning to you. “Y/n, you can leave.”

Your mouth drops, “What?”

“I think you have caused Suga enough trouble for the day.”

This is unbelievable. What did you do wrong? If anything, he should ask Yoongi to leave since he was distracting you from work. “Then, who is going to work?”

“I’m thinking a last minute meet-and-greet, what do you think Suga?” your manager looks at Yoongi expectantly. But you see that his eyes have gone wide. “Therefore, I can handle everything.”

“Wouldn’t a meet-and-greet mean needing more help?” Yoongi suddenly asks. “I mean, you can’t possibly do everything on your own.”

For a moment, you think that maybe his mind has been changed; however, your manager just waves him off, “Nonsense, I have a new hire coming in today around two.”

“Is that why my hours have been shit?” For the past month or so, you’ve started noticing that you haven’t been working as much as before. You thought that maybe it was because business was just slow, but now you know the real reason.

“Your per cap sales have been declining lately y/n…”

You nearly fall back from this news. Ever since you started working here, you have given it your all and this was how your manager repaid you? How unfair. And now you were being replaced with a new employee. Your hands begin to tighten again before a string of words leave your lips. “I quit.”

“Y/n!” Yoongi calls your name, sounding concerned. But you don’t even look at him. Instead, you rip the nametag off your shirt and drop it on the floor before running to the back to grab your things.

With your bag in your hands, you briskly walk towards the front doors and push it open. You are greeted with bright sunshine, but you feel like shit. Pulling out your phone you press the messenger app and begin typing.

10:58 AM | You: i just quit lol

Within seconds, you see the text bubble pop up.

10:58 AM | Jeongguk: WHAT

10:59 AM | You: long story…heading home

10:59 AM | Jeongguk: want me to head over?

10:59 AM | Jeongguk: i can bring some take out

You smile at his message.

10:59 AM | You: nah it’s okay

11:00 AM | You: you’re probably busy

11:00 AM | You: come over after work

11:01 AM | Jeongguk: okay babe. hope you’re okay

And then he proceeds to send a bunch of emojis that have you laughing. Your only reply to them is a smile and you stick your phone into your bag.

You find yourself waiting at a stoplight when it suddenly hits you: you don’t have a job anymore. This was definitely reckless and totally unlike you—at least, the person you were trying to be now. You haven’t always had your life figured out, but at least you kind of had a direction you wished to go in. Now, you were simply headed into the unknown. The light is still red when you suddenly feel a hand press onto your shoulder. You turn around and realize that Yoongi is inches away from you.

“Why did you quit?” he asks, breathing heavily.

Your eyes are wide, but you just shrug. “It just felt right, I guess.”

“God, y/n,” he sighs, dropping his hand.

“Aren’t you supposed to be there? I mean, you know for the impromptu meet-and-greet.”

Yoongi scratches the back of his ear, “I may or may not have cursed that guy out for letting you just walk away.”

“You did what?” you ask, not really understanding him.

“Let’s just say, I’m never going back to that music store again,” he shakes his head. “I also kind of stole these.”

You look down and see a few albums in Yoongi’s other hand. At first, you want to remind him that he already paid for his albums; but then you realize the albums aren’t his own—they’re from different artists and were on the standing displays. Suddenly, you don’t know what comes over you but you burst into laughter. In fact, you laugh so hard you nearly fall over onto the pavement. But fortunately for you, your body doesn’t hit the floor; Yoongi catches you before you can.

“I’ve missed your laugh, y/n,” he says, eyes boring into yours.

Your face flushes and words are lost to you. And you swear Yoongi is leaning closer to you, but he freezes when a phone begins ringing. He pulls away and you realize that it’s your own ringtone and frantically search your bag. Once you find it, you realize Jeongguk is calling you.

“Jeongguk?” you answer and Yoongi visibly tenses up in front of you.

“Y/n, hey. Are you home yet?”

You scrunch your eyebrows once, “No…not yet. Why?”

“Well,” he breathes, “you said we should just meet later, but I couldn’t help it.”

“What are you talking about?” you ask.

“Turn around.”

You hesitate, not so sure what he means; but you do end up turning around and see Jeongguk standing on the other side of the street. He drops the phone from his ear and waves to you with a bright smile. And although you should be mad that he’s ditching work to see you, you smile back anyway.

The street lights end up turning green and he jogs over to you. Once he reaches you, he pulls you into a hug and presses a kiss against your forehead. Warmth fills your insides immediately at his touch and you squeeze him back, but you’re pulled back into reality when someone coughs behind you. You move away from Jeongguk and look at Yoongi; in a short span of time, his eyes have narrowed into slits and his jaw has tensed up.

“Jeongguk this is Yoongi…” you hesitate, “an old friend.” At that moment, you realize you’ve never mentioned Yoongi to Jeongguk before. “And Yoongi this Jeongguk, my boyfriend.”

Both men look at one another before Jeongguk’s eyes round in interest, “Hey, aren’t you that rapper Suga?”

“Yeah,” Yoongi’s body becomes a little less tense. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” Jeongguk replies, looping an arm around your waist. He looks down at you with a smile, “Ready to go?”

You blink, “Sure.”

With that, Jeongguk tells Yoongi goodbye and pulls you away. You look back at Yoongi once and see that he has already begun walking in the opposite direction. So, you look forward and try to shake this entire situation away. But if you would have looked back again, you would’ve seen Yoongi stop walking and turn around only to meet the gaze of Jeongguk.

If you would have looked back again, you would’ve seen the two of them share a look that screamed whatever just happened between the three of you, was only the beginning.

***

Jeongguk ends up taking you to his place, where you know for a fact that there is no food at all. The reason you had this knowledge was because if he was hungry, he ordered pizza or came over to your apartment. He didn’t cook very much, so why need food at all?

“Damn, we should’ve grabbed food on the way here,” you say as you step through his front door.

“We can grab food later,” he says, throwing his keys onto a table next to the door.

You shut the door behind you with a nod and proceed to take your shoes off. Just as you kick your shoes to the side and place your bag next to Jeongguk’s keys, he picks you up as if you weigh nothing and throws you over his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” you ask, eye-to-eye with his ass—it was a very nice ass, by the way.

But your boyfriend doesn’t say a thing and before you can become too lightheaded, you’re suddenly flipped onto his bed. You lean up on your forearms and blow a few strands of hair out of your face. And as you do so, you notice Jeongguk leaning down to press a kiss against your lips. It’s a bit unexpected, but not unwanted; you respond back and move your lips against his own.

He lifts his lips off of yours after a bit and begins trailing kisses down your chin, to your jaw, and then to your neck. Jeongguk begins to softly suck on the skin below your ear before whispering, “I want you.”

And although his voice does send your body into a frenzy, you’re confused. “It’s literally noon, Jeongguk…and you’re horny?”

He doesn’t say a thing, only softly nuzzling his head against the crook of your neck.

“Jeongguk,” you say his name again, “what the hell?”

With your words, he stops and roughly snaps his head up. The sultry eyes that had stared at you just moments before have now narrowed, becoming closed off and cold. Jeongguk separates himself from you, moving a few steps from his bed. This newfound space allows you to sit up and fix your shirt that has unknowingly slipped up a bit. As you fix your hair, you realize that Jeongguk is still giving you that look. You ask him what’s wrong and he rolls his eyes at you.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” he scoffs. “You should be asking yourself that.”

You scrunch your eyebrows. “What?”

“Why don’t you want to have sex?” he asks, crossing his arms.

“Like I said, it’s noon…and I’m hungry,” you widen your eyes, not understanding him right now. Jeongguk and you have never argued about being intimate with one another, so you’re confused as to why it has suddenly become an issue.

“Is this because of Yoongi?”

Now your eyes are really wide, “What the fuck, Jeongguk?”

“How do you even know him?”

You can’t believe that he is really bringing Yoongi up right now. “I told you that he was an old friend of mine.”

Jeongguk’s hard gaze doesn’t waiver, “Then why have you never talked about him before? I mean, I’ve told you about all my friends. I figured you would tell me about yours too, considering the fact that he’s kind of famous.”

“I haven’t talked to him in years; why would I bring him up?”

“I don’t know, y/n,” he begins to raise his voice, “I just want us to be honest with one another.”

You clench your fist into the bedsheets. “There’s nothing to say.”

“Really?” Jeongguk stares at you like he knows you’re hiding something from him, and you can feel your heart pounding against your ribcage. He needs to let this subject go.

“I’ve already argued with Yoongi today, I don’t need shit from you too.”

“Oh,” you can hear the mockery in Jeongguk’s voice, “so the two of you have that close of a relationship.”

“Why do you even care?” you practically yell, feeling frustrated.

Not only are you becoming increasingly mad at him, but you’re also mad at yourself. Why can’t you just tell Jeongguk everything? What is holding you back? Everything was becoming too much, and you don’t know how much longer you can suppress the growing turmoil inside of you.

“Because you’re my girlfriend,” he says it like it’s so simple, and it honestly should be. You don’t know why it feels so complicated to you.

“Then you should care about me, and not us having sex or Yoongi.”

His jaw visibly tightens, “Well, that’s kind of hard when I saw the way he looked at you.”

Your breathing stops momentarily; he saw that? When? You think back to your interactions with Yoongi and when Jeongguk could’ve possibly seen anything, and you realize he must be talking about when he met up with the two of you on the street earlier. And suddenly, you feel embarrassed at how wrong things must’ve looked to him—how close Yoongi had been to you, and all.

“It was nothing,” you say, getting off the bed and walking out of the room.

Jeongguk follows you into the living area. “It wasn’t just nothing, y/n.”

“Let it go, Jeongguk.”

“I’m not fucking blind, y/n,” his voice getting louder by the minute.

“I said let it go!”

“It wasn’t nothing because it’s the same way I look at you.”

You stop where you are and nearly fall to the ground at his words. You feel dizzy, disorientated; like you can’t see anymore and the world has just collapsed onto your shoulders. You can barely breathe. You can’t think. It’s like everything you have been keeping buried inside has suddenly exploded.

Silence seems to pass infinitely between you and Jeongguk, neither one of you know what to say. But you do turn around and see all the emotions that pass through his eyes—anger, confusion, hurt. And you can’t begin to catch them all.

“I…” you don’t even know how to begin to explain everything. You bring a hand up to swipe a few loose strands of hair behind your ears and notice something hot and wet pooling beneath your eyes and down your cheeks. How pathetic of you to be crying right now.

“What is he to you, y/n?” Jeongguk’s eyes are wide, voice demanding to be answered.

You try to find the words to say that Yoongi means nothing to you anymore, but they’re completely lost to you. Besides, it would be a lie to say that you no longer harbored feelings for the man who once broke your heart. Everything was too confusing and you just don’t know what to do. So you run. Slipping your shoes on, you grab your things and bolt out of Jeongguk’s apartment. And as you run, he calls out your name but you don’t stop to hear what he has to say or if he’s even following you.

As you make it onto the street, you’ve nearly forgotten the reason you ended up there in the first place: you don’t have a job anymore. And the reality of how fast everything has changed in the last few hours is enough to make you curse the world and horrible it is.

***

You don’t answer any of the phone calls from Jeongguk.

But it’s not like you really even know if he calls anyway, especially since your phone ran out of battery two—maybe three; you’ve lost track—days ago and you haven’t bothered to charge it. If you were being honest with yourself, you haven’t been doing much of anything at all. Day after day, you find yourself stuck in bed. You can’t remember what day it even is, how much time has passed—or the last time you even showered. It’s like you have lost all motivation to do anything, and that includes talking to your boyfriend…was he even that to you anymore?

From the closed door of your bedroom, and underneath all your covers, you swear you hear knocking at the door at least three times a day. Do you get up to answer it though? You don’t budge a muscle. Although you don’t see who’s at the door, a part of you knows that it’s Jeongguk; however, you can’t bring yourself to face him.

You feel stupid, really. Mainly because somewhere in your mind, you thought that you could just live your life with Jeongguk. It seemed simple in your head; he obviously loved you and you felt the same way—so why was it suddenly not what you had previously imagined? This game of house the two of you have been playing for the past few months did not include Min Yoongi walking back into your world.

Yeah, you feel really stupid. And you’re such a coward. Yoongi had called himself a coward earlier, but now you believe that perhaps you’ve been the real coward all along.

Also, it didn’t help that you quit your job at the music store—that move was even stupider. Now, you don’t have a thing to do; it was both a great feeling and the absolute worst thing ever.

“Great job at fucking everything up, y/n,” you say to no one but yourself.

Although life was currently pretty sucky, you had much to weigh on your plate. You kind of need another job; you had some money saved up, but that can only last so long. Also, you realize that you can’t stay cooped up in your room forever. Eventually, you have to talk to Jeongguk again and sort out what happened.

So you finally pull yourself out of bed and plug your phone to its charger. Walking to the bathroom, you switch on the lights and proceed to strip out of your clothes and hop into the shower. You let the hot water wash away whatever has been plaguing your mind these last few days. And when you’re done, you get out and brush your teeth. As you do this, you stare at yourself through the fogged mirror; despite being in bed for the past however long, a person with dark eye bags stares back at you.

Who have you become?

You barely recognize this person you see in the mirror.

But before you can stare too long at yourself, you hear a series of rings and vibrations coming from your room. Your phone has turned back on and those are all the messages and missed calls you’ve received.

Walking back to where your phone lays on the floor, you sit down and pick it up—that’s when you notice that it’s just past eight in the morning. And this morning alone, Jeongguk has called you five times. You scroll through the older notifications and see that he’s called and texted every day since you ran out of his apartment, which was almost five days ago. Fuck—you were MIA longer than you originally thought.

You click through the messages and notice that they’re all pretty much the same.

11:08 PM | Jeongguk: i’m sorry

11:09 PM | Jeongguk: call me back

12:01 AM | Jeongguk: i miss you

02:22 AM | Jeongguk: i fucked up

All the messages revolve around those four phrases and you’re speechless for a second. It seems like there are hundreds and hundreds of messages from him. You switch to the phone app and realize that there are equally the same amount of voicemails waiting for you.

You listen to a few of them before deciding that you should probably just call him back. The phone rings only twice before he picks up, “Y/n?”

His voice sounds melancholic and rushed, and your heart aches a bit at the fact that you’ve hurt him.

“Y/n?” he repeats your name, much softer this time.

You clear your throat before answering, “Hey.”

“I was beginning to think you’d never call.”

“I’m sorry,” you apologize, bringing a band up to run through your damp hair. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“You don’t have to apologize for anything!” he immediately says. “I shouldn’t have brought that subject up—you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want me knowing.”

Fuck, why is he like this? Always so good to you. “No, I should tell you things like that. I was wrong for not saying anything and overreacting.”

“Forgive me?” he asks you.

“Of course,” you reply, “the real question is: will you forgive me?”

And for some reason, you know he’s smiling on the other side of the phone. “Always; I love you.”

Your heart skips a beat, “Love you too.”

“Hey, meet me for coffee in an hour?”

“Sure,” you say, nodding even though he can’t see you.

He suggests a café that you’re familiar with, which you agree to meet at, and then says he’ll see you later. You return the sentiment before hanging up the phone. And after you do, you drop the device from your ear and release a breath you didn’t even realize you were holding in.

You take a minute to compose yourself before getting up. As you do this, you suddenly remember you’re still only wrapped in a towel. You quickly move towards your closet and open it up. Jeongguk wanted to meet in an hour, which really didn’t give you much time to get ready at all. You get the chance to glance through all the various clothing items in your closet once before you hear your phone vibrate again.

A curse leaves your lips at the fact that Jeongguk probably texted you again. Did he change his mind? Did he still want to be mad at you? Rushing back to your phone, you pick it up and the name that lights up your screen isn’t the person you thought. It was actually a text from Yoongi, which makes you want to curse even louder.

You contemplate about what to do before deciding to see what his text says. It was shocking enough that he even still had your number saved onto his phone. You thought that after he made the move to Seoul, he would’ve gotten a new phone and number. That would’ve made you feel better about the fact that he never contacted you. Pushing past that fact, you swipe at his name and read over his text.

08:36 AM | Yoongi: hey y/n, idk if this is still your number…but if it is, watch channel 4 tonight around 9 if you want a better explanation than the shitty ones i’ve given you.

A better explanation.

It would be a lie to say you weren’t even vaguely interested in whatever Yoongi was trying to pull by sending this text because you really want to hear what he has to say. Even though you keep questioning why and begging for answers that aren’t being given, a part of you has already forgiven him for doing all of this to you. You want to be angry with him, hate him; but you can’t. And why is this? It’s stupid, but the truth—because your heart still steadily beats for him, despite you not wanting it to.

***

This feels so weird. Your nerves are buzzing and you can’t seem to stop fidgeting with the cup of coffee in your hands.

The fact that you’re even nervous annoys you; this is Jeongguk—the person who has seen all sides of you. You shouldn’t feel so anxious, but you are and you don’t know what to do with yourself. Checking your phone, you notice that it’s just a bit past nine-thirty; which is the time Jeongguk wanted to meet up.

You arrived at the quaint little café earlier than you were supposed to, ordering two coffees and settling yourself in a small corner of the room. Business is relatively slow; there isn’t anyone else here besides you and the barista—except for the random person that walks in, ordering a coffee to-go. So you sit there and stir your coffee, waiting for Jeongguk to walk in. And every time the door chimes open, your eyes fly to where bits of sunlight pool in and expect to see him there but he isn’t.

Soon, nine-thirty becomes nine-forty-five, and nine-forty-five becomes nearly ten o’clock. And he still isn’t here. You’re becoming more and more restless at this point.

Then, your phone rings and Jeongguk’s name lights up your screen.

“Where are you?” are the first words out of your mouth as you accept his call.

You hear him sigh on the other side, “I’m sorry.”

“What?” you aren’t sure you’re hearing him right.

“Something came up and I can’t make it to the café.”

Jeongguk begins to explain that he has to go to work to fix an issue, which means you’ve been waiting at this café all this time for no reason. He apologizes profusely, promising to meet you another time. “Maybe tomorrow?”

“Sure,” you try to force a smile through your words, although you can feel your body trembling a bit. “That’s fine.”

“I’m sorry, y/n,” he apologizes again before hanging up, and you’re left feeling even more alone than before.

You set your phone down and bury your face into your hands. This day was not turning out the way you had hoped. You imagined yourself spending the day with Jeongguk, explaining your entire situation to him. And in your head, he takes the whole conversation well and everything is okay. But now—now you don’t know if you’re going to get to explain yourself at all.

The anxiety you felt just minutes ago is now replaced with a tinge of annoyance—you’re annoyed at Jeongguk, but mostly at yourself for finally getting out of bed and coming here only to be disappointed.

After finishing up your coffee, you throw the second wasted cup away and bid the barista goodbye before walking out of the café. You could stay annoyed and disappointed in that café, but the day was rather beautiful so you decide to leave.

Maybe the day will turn for the better.

***

You end up taking a walk by the river for a while before going into the city to scout for new jobs.

Although you don’t find many openings that interest you, you pick up a few brochures detailing a life abroad which you do find rather intriguing.

By the time you return home, the sun is just beginning to set and you feel much better than when your day first started. You make yourself dinner and then settle yourself on your couch, switching your tv on. That’s when you remember it’s Tuesday, the day you and Jeongguk usually dedicate as movie night.

This thought pangs you a bit and you briefly consider calling him, but you stop yourself and pick a random movie to watch instead. As the movie rolls through the previews, you take a moment to scroll through your phone and delete all the notifications from Jeongguk that you haven’t touched. And as you’re about to delete the ones from today, you see Yoongi’s name in bold and remember that he wanted you to do something.

Checking the time, you’re relieved to see that it’s five till nine and you have time. You change the TV from movies to regular cable and scroll until you find the one he was talking about. And when you find it, your eyes go wide and you immediately turn the volume up.

It was a music show in your city that many other famous artists have gone and performed on, and now Yoongi was a guest. You vaguely remember him talking about the show years ago, and how one day he wanted to perform on the same stage as so many have before him. The fact that he has achieved this brings a smile to your face.

Is this what he wanted you to see? How leaving for Seoul was actually the best for him?

Suddenly, you feel a bit selfish for your thoughts. All you’ve ever wanted was for Yoongi to reach his dreams; how could you be mad at him for leaving to pursue that?

You watch as he lifts the mic to his mouth and begins to speak, “Good evening, everyone.”

The audience in that room cheers for him and he smiles wide, the curve of his lips revealing his gummy smile that you haven’t seen in forever. You can’t help but smile wider too, the joy blooming from him is contagious.

“I’m going to be performing a new song,” the crowd screams louder, “and I wrote it for an old friend of mine…who means the world to me. I was just bad at expressing how I felt, and I hope you will forgive me.”

As Yoongi says this, he looks straight into the camera and in that instant, you can’t look away.

“I’m also going to invite a singer because you know, I rap,” Yoongi says as someone you don’t recognize walks on the stage, settling into the far left. “This is Seokjin, a friend I made in Seoul.”

You watch the young man, who has wide eyes and an angelic smile, wave to the crowd. And then the music begins.

“I empty my drink but it gets filled with loneliness. I should’ve just given in, why did I argue all the time?” Yoongi raps, voice filled with passion and you can’t look away from him. He has you trapped in his spell. “I can only see you. I can only see you alone.”

Is Yoongi talking about…you?

“Hold me tight, hug me. Can you trust me? Can you trust me? Can you trust me?” Seokjin sings. “Without you, I can’t breathe. I’m nothing without you.”

And immediately you flashback to reckless eighteen-year-old you running down by a bridge, with Yoongi trailing behind you. He was laughing his ass off at you and god, who even remembers what bullshit you were spewing. But what do you remember is that you wanted to feel the breeze in your hair. That meant you had to climb on the railing of the bridge, yet you hesitated.

“I’ll help you,” Yoongi offered and you slowly climbed up.

“I better not fall off into my death, Min Yoongi.”

“Can you trust me?” he whispered as he clutched you tightly. And you also remember that you felt extremely flushed at that time, warmth pooling through you from his touch.

“I think of you without stopping. I hate it all, I hate every single day. It makes me cry,” Yoongi raps and your mind focuses back on the present time.

For some unknown reason, you begin to feel tears pool underneath your lashes. Were you seriously crying right now? It was just the lyrics that are making you emotional…right?

“If there’s a chance, I’ll catch you. I’m running, it’s starting, count down. I’m ready to be cut by your rose-like embrace,” he continues and your heart is pounding against your chest.

As much as you want to, you can’t tear your eyes away from him. Even when Seokjin sings, you can’t spare him a single glance. Yoongi has your full attention and you breathe in his words like they’re a drug.

“But I can’t let you go. Don’t talk, don’t leave—just quietly hold me,” he practically whispers these words out.

You listen as Seokjin finishes up the song with a final, so I can feel you, hold me before the stage goes black. Immediately, the crowd erupts in cheers and screams. Tears are still streaming down your face and you can feel a sob threatening to make its way out of you. Gradually, the lights flicker back on, and Yoongi and his friend bow once before exiting the stage. Quickly, you wipe the tears from your face and search frantically for your phone. You have to call him. Now. Dialing his number, it rings a few times before he breathlessly answers.

“Y/n?”

You swallow, “Was that song for me?”

He sighs, and it sounds more like relief than anything. “You saw it.”

“Yoongi…” you start, “I don’t even know what to say.”

“The fact that you watched it means everything to me,” he tells you. “I’ve never been very good at explaining myself. Music is what I know best.”

You understand that now. “I’m sorry.” For being so angry, for not listening.

“I had to perform that song before I went back to Seoul,” Yoongi says. “It’s you, y/n. It has always been you.”

“You’re going back?” It feels like you just got him back, and he was leaving you already. But you guess Min Yoongi was never really yours to begin with.

“Tomorrow.”

You’re quiet at this news. Yoongi just spilled everything through a song and he was leaving like he never came home at all.

“Come see me tonight before I go back,” he breaks your thoughts and your breath hitches. “Please.”

And you don’t know what makes you say it, but you do. “Okay.”

***

Come to the old studio.

After you showered and made sure you looked decent, you walked somewhere you never thought you would be again—Namjoon’s studio. Since Yoongi left, you haven’t had a reason to be here. But despite the time away, you still know exactly where it is; the location is forever ingrained in your memory.

Walking past the ramen shop and down the stairs, you stand in front of the studio and breathe once before pushing the doors that are never locked open. Inside, the studio looks the same as it always has—that dingy old couch still sits by the window. The only thing missing is Namjoon. For a brief moment, you wonder how the guy is doing but that thought fades when you hear someone shuffling in another room.

You follow the noise and find Yoongi in his old room. The second you step through the door, he looks up and stops whatever he is doing.

“What are you doing?” you can’t help the small smile that lights your face.

“Just looking through old stuff,” he says, mimicking your smile. “You actually came.”

You walk closer to him. “Of course.”

“I just—I didn’t expect you to. You know, since you have a boy—”

“Did you mean everything you said in that song?” you cut him off. You watch as Yoongi sets down the papers in his hands and looks into your eyes.

He nods once, “All of it.”

And then before you know it, you close the distance between the two of you and kiss him. You can feel your heart pulsating through your chest.

With Yoongi’s lips against yours, you’re on top of the world—floating above the clouds to pure and utter ecstasy. He responds the second you make contact with him, magnets seeming to pull the two of you closer together. With gentle hands, he brings one to cup your face and another to curve around your hips.

And he begins to push you backwards, until you feel a wall pressed firmly behind you. Here, you move your hands from his waist, feeling the hard ridges of his body, up to his pink hair. You fist his soft strands in-between your fingers, tugging gently; and when he moans, you can’t help but smile into the kiss. Yoongi lifts his lips off of yours, letting you breathe for a moment, before leaning further down to press kisses to your jaw and neck.

“I could fucking kiss you, everywhere, forever,” Yoongi breathlessly whispers against your skin, raising the hairs on your body.

All you can feel is heat, all over your body. His words ignite this flame inside of you and it’s incomparable to anything you’ve felt before. You’ve shared this experience with many others before him, but you never thought that you’d actually be here with Yoongi right now and it’s already better than you’ve imagined.

And you’ve imagined it a lot.

He continues to press the slightest of kisses all along your skin while you become putty in his hands. You feel his lips everywhere, until he reaches the top edges of your shirt—there, his fingers maneuver their way down your body and underneath your shirt. The fabric lifts over your head and falls to the floor. And with only your bra covering the top half of your body, Yoongi begins to piano his fingers all over your abdomen; wherever his fingers graze, his lips do the same.

You expect him to suddenly take you there against the wall, it’s an image that has burned hotly in your fantasy, but he doesn’t move; he just stares at you. His eyes leave a trail as they begin slowly from your toes all the way to your eyes. And the look Yoongi gives you makes you feel wanted; he looks at you like you’re Aphrodite herself. The blush that suddenly pinks your cheeks can’t be stopped and he presses another kiss to your lips before leading you away from the wall and to the black loveseat further into the room.

He sets you down on your back and proceeds to take his clothes off. As Yoongi lifts his shirt over his head, you see black lettering etched onto the skin above his left hip bone and you gasp. “You have a tattoo?”

You can barely make out what it says, the majority of the tattoo still concealed by the rest of his clothes.

Yoongi chuckles, pulling the waistband of his underwear down. “For the last year, yeah.”

Sitting up to get a closer look, your fingers lightly press against his skin, and your eyes narrow at the tattoo. They were numbers, and you read them out loud. “What does it mean?”

Looking up at Yoongi, he smiles a bit sheepishly before bringing a hand to caress your face. “It’s kind of silly, really.”

“What?” you smile. “Tell me.”

“Well…” he bites his lower lip, “these numbers represent my heartrate…how fast my heart beats…when I think of you.”

Your mouth drops. “Really?”

He nods, “I had to go to the doctors a few months after I got to Seoul, nothing serious, but they ran some tests and had me react to different words—like sadness or music. And when they said the word love, I immediately pictured you in my mind and,” he laughs, “my numbers were off the charts.”

And you suddenly don’t know why, but you cry. You just can’t believe that this has been bottled up inside of Yoongi for so long, and you never had a single clue. He wipes your tears away and presses more kisses against your lips. You both take the opportunity to peel the rest of your clothing off—your jeans become discarded on the floor and he languidly slides your underwear down your legs. The entire time he does this, his eyes don’t dare to stray from yours and you swear that nothing this hot as ever happened to you.

“Yoongi,” you whisper his name once you’re completely bare to him. A part of you should feel awkward being so naked, but you’re strangely not.

You undo his jeans and slide them down his legs and then pull his hard member out, eagerly taking him into your mouth. Yoongi hisses at the way your lips envelop the tip of his cock, gently licking and sucking. “Fuck, y/n.”

This goes on for a while before he hastily pushes you back down and whispers that it’s his turn to please you. The moment his lips latch onto your sensitive clit, you nearly scream. Your hands immediately reach for his hair, moving your hips against his tongue for the most amount of pressure you can get. Moans leave your lips like a song and that only pushes Yoongi to work his mouth harder and faster along your core. But just before you topple over the edge into paradise, he stops and raises his head.

Your juices coat his lips and it’s the most arousing sight you’ve ever seen.

His lips find your own again and you taste yourself, pushing him closer to you. The two of you mold your bodies together until you can feel his erection graze your stomach. Yoongi lifts his body off of you for a moment, sliding a condom on, before aligning himself at your entrance.

Biting your lip, you both don’t say a word as he begins to slide in. There was no need for any extravagant words at this moment—you just wanted him inside of you already. And the stretch feels amazing; you can barely contain the breathy moans that leave your mouth as Yoongi moves himself in and out of you. His pace is painfully slow, dragging this moment out for as long as possible. And he also doesn’t hold himself back vocally; he isn’t afraid to tell you how you’re making him feel.

“Fuck—you feel so good,” Yoongi flicks out his tongue to wet his lower lip, beginning to move a little faster. You offer another moan as a response.

Soon, he begins to build a faster pace; your hands run along his back, nails marking little crescents into his skin. You tell him that you need more, feeling your orgasm approaching. But instead of doing what you say, he pulls out and you’re confused. “Yoongi…”

He doesn’t explain what he’s doing, but suddenly flips you over so you’re on your stomach with your ass in the air. And then without a warning, he enters you again and begins slamming into you. Yoongi’s hands dig into your hips, you’re almost positive there’s going to be marks there in the morning, while simultaneously squeezing your cheeks together. Another string of curses leaves his lips and he tells you again how great you feel wrapped around him.

With each thrust of his hips, you moan and tell him that he’s making you feel so good.

“Yeah? It feels good, baby?” he practically coos to you.

And you almost want to cry at the pleasure, “S-So good.”

Before you know it, that same overwhelming pressure begins to build inside of you again. Your hands fist whatever you can of the couch as your head begins to spin. You tell him that you’re close, feeling your orgasm approaching, and he presses a few gentle fingers on your sensitive little nub. His touch is all it takes to send you over the edge.

“Yoongi!”

With tightly shut eyes, you scream out his name. You lose the strength to hold yourself up completely and fall into the couch. Behind you, you can feel Yoongi continuing to thrust into you and you turn around to see him smirk a little at you. “Did you think we were done already, love?”

“Oh fuck,” you moan as Yoongi’s pace slows. He slows down to the point where his cock pulls out of you and then pushes into you, completely bottoming out each time.

“I’ve been waiting forever for this moment,” he grunts before flipping you back onto your back.

At this point, you don’t think is possible for you to come undone again but you see the determination in Yoongi’s eyes. He begins moving his hips faster, hands latched onto your breast.

“Oh my god…” you moan, “I’m close.”

“Come on, baby,” he says, his cock deeper inside of you.

His body lowers down until his head is nestled into the crook of your neck. And he continues to fuck you like that until you reach your climax and let out the most beautiful sounds Yoongi has ever heard. After a few more strokes, muttering fuck, fuck, fuck, Yoongi also reaches his own climax.

For a minute, all that can be heard are the both of you trying to catch your breaths. Once your breathings become even, it’s quiet in Yoongi’s old studio.

Suddenly, he gets up and you turn your body asking him where he’s going. He offers you a smile, telling you that he’s just grabbing a towel to clean up the mess. And as he walks over to the other rooms, you can help but stare at his cute ass.

“So why did you dye your hair?”

Yoongi laughs as he walks back to you, “You literally just gave me the best fuck of my life, and you’re curious about my hair?”

His words flush your face pink, “I-I mean…I’m just curious.”

You watch as Yoongi wipes you down, looking into your eyes the entire time. It’s a simple act, but the thought of him being inside you again crosses your mind more than once. Unfortunately, you suppress such lustful thoughts and keep your hands off of him. After he’s done, you slip on his discarded shirt and sit up on the couch. He settles next to you, pulling his jeans back on, and pulls you into his arms. And as cliché as it sounds, being in his embrace is the best feeling ever.

“Well,” he begins, “I was actually blonde for a while before I decided to go pink. Let me show you.”

Yoongi fishes in his pockets for his phone and pulls up a picture; and sure enough, he’s platinum blonde. You voice that he looks good with that color, but he just laughs.

“Why pink?” you ask.

He shrugs, “I guess I just wanted to do something a little different.”

“I’ve always loved you with your natural black hair too,” you smile. “But seeing you with all these colors makes me realize you’d probably look good in anything—just don’t let all your hair fall out.”

“Of course,” he says and then leans down to presses the faintest of kisses on your forehead. Suddenly, a yawn escapes your lips and you realize how late it must be already. You’re exhausted from the rollercoaster of emotions you’ve had. “Sleepy?”

You shake your head, yawning again, “No…”

He laughs, “Sure…go to sleep, y/n.”

And you do—you fall asleep to the steady beating of Yoongi’s heart.

***

You wake up in tangled limbs and a blanket over the two of you.

As you open your eyes and look around the room, Yoongi is still peacefully asleep next to you. His lips are slightly parted and a gentle snore is released with his inhales. You smile at how soft and sweet he looks here, at this moment. The number of times you’ve imagined waking up beside him are countless; you wish that things can always be like this.

But that’s not realistic and life isn’t how you imagined.

It never really is.

Despite sharing your soul with Yoongi last night and his love confession, you’re unsure of everything. Life might be perfect right now, but what happens when you walk out of this studio? What happens when you both return to your lives?

In the back of your mind, hidden away the moment you turned on the TV last night, Jeongguk’s name is lit up brightly—flashing like one of those neon signs. Your stomach sinks; do you regret what you did with Yoongi? You look at his beautiful sleeping face, your heart clenching a bit, and you know for sure that there are no regrets there. A part of you does feel for Jeongguk, but you will never regret anything to do with Min Yoongi.

After all, he is the reason your heart beats.

You stare a little longer at his face, trying to carve it into your memory. And after you’re nearly positive that you’ve memorized every little freckle and perfect imperfection, you gently lift his arm that’s laying over your waist up and off your body. You get up from the couch, put your own clothes back on and search for your phone.

When you find your things, you quietly begin to walk out of the room. You only look back once, to make sure he isn’t awake yet and thankfully he isn’t. When you’re out of the old studio room, you run out of the building and into the early rays of daylight.

You let out a deep breath and wipe the single tear that falls from your eye.

This is the best thing. Besides, isn’t Yoongi leaving for Seoul again anyway? What were the odds of seeing him again before or after that? Seeing him during his short stay back home was just a small gift life decided to give—it’s not going to happen again. While you are here, still trying to figure life out…Yoongi was successful and would be just fine without you. And you finally understood that.

Life gave you what you always wanted—for Yoongi to love you back. And now that you knew, you’re good. That was all you needed.

As you walk back to your apartment, you pull out your phone and see a series of messages from Jeongguk. Your eyes scan their contents, the majority of them apologies again for the no-show yesterday. And as you pull up the most recent one, you notice that he asks you to come over today if you’re free. You text him back, letting him know that you’ll be there as soon as you possibly can.

You continue home and once you get there, you immediately walk into the shower. While you wash off Yoongi’s scent that still lingers on your skin, you try to clear your mind and think positively. You weren’t sure of many things, but you knew that you had to tell Jeongguk everything today.

He deserves to know.

Quickly, you get out and dry yourself down before slipping on some casual clothes. You head over to Jeongguk’s place, feeling anxious and nervous. And you don’t really know why you’re feeling this way; it wasn’t like you two were strangers. Yet somehow, it feels like it’s been so long since you’ve seen his face.

What are you even going to say to him?

Are you going to hug? Kiss?

All of these normal things the two of you did now feels foreign. But before you can ponder further about seeing Jeongguk, you’re at his front door. You hesitate to push the key you have into the door—do you even have that right anymore? So instead, you ring the bell.

Jeongguk answers within seconds, pulling the door open to reveal a rather disheveled version of him. He looks…tired; there’s no better way to describe it. He looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks.

“Hey,” he says, scratching the slight stubble that has begun to grow along his chin, “come in.”

You awkwardly duck underneath his arm and take your shoes off. “Hey.”

“How are you?” he asks, and shuts the door behind you.

“I’m…okay,” you turn around and offer a small smile. “You?”

He smiles back, “I’m doing okay, too.”

The two of you walk into the space where his couch and TV are set up. He tells you to go ahead and sit down, while also asking if you want anything to eat or drink. You tell him the usual and watch as his eyes light up for a brief moment before he leaves you sitting there alone. The usual is the little cans of coke you placed into his fridge—you know Jeongguk never drinks those because the first time you did it, he drank them all and you were mad at him for a week. The memory must’ve crossed both of your minds just now.

As he leaves you there to stare at blank white walls of this room, you can feel that anxious feeling returning.

Footsteps paddle across the wooden floor of Jeongguk’s apartment as he walks back to you—a coke in one hand and his own drink in the other. Before he is even beside you, that pressure reaches its max. And when he is beside you, you can’t even bring yourself to look him in the eyes. “What’s wrong, y/n?”

He must notice how tense you are because you don’t even move. Jeongguk brings a hand down to your shoulder, but you flinch away. He retracts his hands away instantly, taking a step back from you. As a sigh leaves your lips, you muster up what little ounce of courage you have and look at him.

When you look at him, you see the dark circles that taint his wide eyes; he looks restless and it’s all because of you. You’ve changed him, and not in the good way.

“Jeongguk…we need to talk.”

“If this is about yesterday…I said—” he begins, but you raise a hand to stop him.

“No…it’s—it’s more than just that,” you try to get the right words out, but fail miserably.

“Is it him?” Jeongguk asks, dropping the drinks and fisting his hands. “Is this all because of Yoongi?”

You finally look at him, “Of course not!”

“Then what did I do wrong, y/n?” he falls to his knees, reaching for your legs. “Tell me how to fix this…”

You try to pry his hands away from you, because it will only make this all harder. “There’s nothing you can do, Jeongguk.”

“Just tell me what I did wrong,” he says, eyes swelling with tears, “and don’t give me that it’s not you, it’s me bullshit. I love you...don’t you love me too?”

Tears begin to swim in your vision, “I do…I care about you deeply. You make me smile, but I can’t love you the way you deserve to be. Jeongguk, you’re too good for me…I-I am a shell of the person I used to be. I gave myself away to someone who didn’t love me back and then you came and—and I thought it would be fine. Enough. But…”

Jeongguk grabs your hands, “No one is too good for you, y/n.”

“You are,” your tears are no cascading down your cheeks, “you’re way too good for me.”

He drops your hands and begins to wipe the tears away from your face.

“See!” you exclaim, showing him that everything he does for you is something you can’t give him.

“It’s called being a nice person,” he sighs.

You shake your head, “Not everyone’s willing to love a girl who can’t give her whole heart to them.”

“So, who has the parts of your heart that you can’t give to me then?” You don’t even have to answer him; Jeongguk is no fool. You watch as his jaw begins to clench. “Over and over again, you say that he’s not the reason why…but he is.”

He was partially right, but there was still was something he didn’t get.

“When you met me, I became this person that I wanted to be for you. I wanted to be as good to you as you were to me,” you say, “but that girl you fell in love with…wasn’t genuine. And you don’t deserve that.”

It’s quiet in the room after that.

“Are you…” Jeongguk takes a deep breath, “breaking up with me?”

You swallow the tears that are threatening to spill over and look away from him. Why was this suddenly so difficult? “You deserve someone better than me.”

“Are you choosing him over me?”

“I’m not choosing anyone,” you tighten your hands into fists.

Jeongguk runs a hand through his hair, “So after this, you’re not going to run to him?”

“No,” you look back at him, letting the tears escape freely.

Suddenly, he pulls you into his arms and you crumble. Your sobs make themselves apparent and you let out everything you’ve held inside of you since Yoongi left you for Seoul. As Jeongguk’s arms tighten around you, he whispers continuous words of comfort until you’ve said everything you needed to say and the tears subside.

And for a while, the two of you just stay like that—you wrapped in Jeongguk’s arms. It’s comforting in the most platonic way and also bittersweet; when will you ever get to be like this with him again?

“I’m sorry,” you break the silence.

“It’s okay,” Jeongguk replies, “if it’s meant to be, it will be…right?”

You take a deep breath, “Right.”

***

You leave Jeongguk’s apartment with a final hug.

The embrace the two of you shared probably only lasted a few seconds as most, but it felt like one of the longest moments in your life.

Even though you’ve accepted everything, you are surprised that Jeongguk let you go without another objection. You were sure that he was going to beg you to stay with him; but as you make your way home, you realize that Jeongguk was just being himself—even after all this, he was still too good to you.

The moment you walk back into your apartment, it’s like a huge weight has been lifted off your shoulders. You fall onto your bed with a deep sigh, feeling very different all of a sudden. For the first time in what seems like forever, you feel…okay. Nothing is plaguing or filling your mind with anxious thoughts. You feel free, and you never thought that you would feel this way.

And Jeongguk was right, what is meant to be will be. You weren’t lying when you said that you weren’t choosing anyone.

Being with Yoongi in that emotional way was enough for you; you didn’t need anything else from him. And the fact that he loved you too was all that you needed to live a happy life. But you couldn’t be with Jeongguk after everything either. It would’ve felt like a lie. Both of them deserve the best things in life, and that is more than you can offer.

Now, instead of worrying about both of them and how the hell your life tied into theirs, you’re ready for the next step.

First things first, that job situation. Pulling yourself off your bed, you grab your laptop off the floor and begin to scroll through different job listings. What did you even want to do? What could you even see yourself doing? Working in that music store was a way for you to connect with Yoongi, which now seemed honestly so silly of you, but it was all you could ever really see yourself doing.

Just as he crosses your mind for the briefest of moments, your phone begins to ring somewhere. You ignore the call, mind preoccupied already. But it doesn’t ring just once. It doesn’t take you much to guess who it must be. You get up to check anyway, finding your phone sandwiched between some clothing, and see Yoongi’s name lighting up the screen.

You could answer the phone—god only knows how shocked he must’ve been when he woke up and you were gone—but you ignore the few phone calls he makes to you because you can’t talk to him. If you hear his voice again, you’ll run back to him and that would not be the greatest idea.

Was this too cruel of you? To just suddenly ignore him when all you’ve wished for these past years is to have him in your life? Turning your phone off, you chuck it somewhere and find those brochures you grabbed absentmindedly yesterday. Looking at the brochures again, you see the traveling abroad ones at the very top. For a second, you imagine yourself somewhere else other than here. Because what did you even have here in this small town?

Leaving has never been on your agenda. It wasn’t like you hated living here, but there really wasn’t anything for you. Granted, some of the best things have happened to you here…but perhaps, a little change would be okay.

Perhaps, it could be even great.

***

two years later

“I can see your passport is nearly full, ma’am.”

You offer the airport attendant a smile, “I’ve been…busy these last few years.”

She stamps one of the few empty spaces in your passport before handing it back to you, “Last stop in your journey is South Korea?”

“Just going back home,” you say.

“Well, I hope you have a great flight there.”

You walk further into the airport and to your gate, handing the flight attendant your boarding pass. And as you walk into the airplane, you settle into your seat and let out a breath you’ve been holding.

After that rather eventful day, you decided to make something of your life. You sold almost everything you owned, except for a few things you could carry in a backpack, and bought a one-way ticket to Paris. It was reckless and honestly so unlike you, but it was also one of the best decisions you’ve ever made in your life.

Even though there was no real destination or course you were traveling on, it was still a wonderful experience. You kind of liked the fact that you were not on a specific schedule. Because of this, you’ve been able to go all over the world. You were able to spend a few weeks in Paris, a month in London, another month or so in Cairo. It was absolutely wonderful.

On the few phone calls you made back home, mainly calling to appease the worries of your mother, everyone said you must’ve been so nervous about the uncertainty surrounding your trip. But you assured everyone by saying you weren’t worried—you just lived.

As you fly home, you stare out the windows of the plane and remark on all the different places you’ve been. It has opened your eyes to realize how small you really are compared to the vastness of the world. And you have also met a lot of interesting people. For one, you met that adorable couple in Rome and that boy in San Francisco who also spoke Korean. What was his name again? Jimin, you think.

Things between you and Jimin had been strictly friends with no benefits, but he reminded you so much of Jeongguk and Jeongguk always made you think about Yoongi.

You often wondered how they were doing. One of the phone calls you made abroad were to Jeongguk, which surprised even yourself. It was probably six months into your trip and you just called to see if he was okay. And he was great—more than just okay. You two couldn’t talk forever, it’s fucking expensive to make calls overseas as someone with no money, but what you did talk about was extremely reassuring. He was over whatever tides had risen between the both of you.

“I don’t hate you, y/n.”

You remember just letting out the biggest sigh of relief, “Really? You’re one-hundred-percent positive?”

“You’re quite possibly the greatest person I’ve ever met…how could I hate you?” he said.

You probably could’ve cried at that moment. The phone call ended with you promising him a coffee date once you returned from your spontaneous trip. “You have to promise me.”

“I have no idea when I’ll be back,” you told him honestly. “You can’t possibly wait forever.”

“So, what? You’ll come back home eventually—I want to know what you’ve seen and been up to.”

“What if everything’s different then?” you asked.

He paused for a moment before saying, “The only different thing is that we’ve changed. But we’re also still the same—I’m still the same Jeongguk you met at the music store.”

Jeongguk was contradicting himself, but making some sort of sense still. He was right, you guessed; the two of you had changed a lot, you’ve grown in these last two years and you’re sure he’s moved on with his life as well. But inside, you both are still just y/n and Jeongguk.

You haven’t talked to him since then, but sometimes you managed to get hold of the internet and search up his social media. You deactivated your phone before you left, so you just purchase a phone card when you need it. The last time you looked, he posted a picture with the prettiest girl—a potential girlfriend, perhaps? Whoever she might be, you’re happy for him.

He didn’t need you to breathe after all.

***

The moment you land and walk onto Korean soil, you see his pictures taped on nearly every wall. You have no idea how old they are, but they can’t be too old since his hair isn’t pink anymore.

Since you deactivated your phone, you have no idea what’s up with him anymore. Granted, you have looked up Yoongi’s name online and from what the internet told you, he was doing quite well. But you kept things extremely surface-level—no digging into his personal life like you’ve done with Jeongguk.

You also didn’t call him while you were away, and you don’t know why. Maybe it’s fear? You’re not entirely sure. But what you did know was that these last two years seemed to go by faster than the previous two years. Wasn’t it a bit ironic that you were now the one who left him after he left you?

Walking through the airport, you call a taxi to take you to the train station.

On the train back to your hometown, it feels surreal that you’re actually back after so long. What are you supposed to do now? For one, you managed to call your old landlord and rent out your apartment again. It was a relief actually; when you decided to come back home, you were kind of freaking out about where you were supposed to live again. Thankfully, since you’ve been gone, no one else has rented out your small place. Or if someone did, they didn’t stay for long.

So, at least you have a place to live.

That was a start, right?

After a few hours, you begin to see the scenery of your hometown. And surprisingly, you begin to feel a bit nostalgic all of the sudden. As much as you don’t really want to admit it, you missed home while you were away. Two years isn’t that long, but at the same time, it is.

Getting off the train, you walk down the familiar streets you grew up on and can’t help but smile. Everything looks different, new buildings and streets, but feels exactly the same as it did when you left.

And although you’re somewhat unsure what lies in the future, you honestly are excited to see what life has in store.

***

A few days after you get situated back into your apartment, you finally decide to hop on that phone situation.

Since you’re back, for now at least, you might as well get a phone. On your trip, you were able to save what little money you made from taking on miscellaneous jobs. It wasn’t much, but it’s brought you this far. You get the first phone the worker tries to sell to you and all is well in the world.

And with a phone back in your life, you give Jeongguk a call to fulfill the promise you made him a while ago. Thankfully, his number hasn’t changed at all and he’s more than excited to meet you for coffee. The two of you decide that tomorrow afternoon will be a good time and you swear that you can’t sit still until then.

Jeongguk tells you the name of a shop for you to meet him at and you arrive there first, getting a coffee for the two of you. When he arrives, you are equal parts surprised and relieved. He hasn’t changed at all. The moment he walks into the café, your eyes meet his and it feels like two years haven’t gone bye. It feels like you never left at all.

You don’t even know what you both talk about—probably nonsense—but you’re there for hours. And you guys laugh…a lot. It’s something you didn’t think you’d be able to do again with him. While you’re at the café, you learn that he is dating again and all you can feel is joy for him. He deserves someone good; someone who can give him the world. Jeongguk also asks about your love life, to which you say is nonexistent.

“I’m sure he’s out there.”

You laugh, “I’m actually super content with being single for the rest of my life. Like, these last two years have really shown me how to properly live and I don’t think I need someone to do that.”

“Have you called Suga—I mean, Yoongi?” Jeongguk asks, rather out of the blue, and you’re surprised.

“No,” you tilt your head to the side, “I haven’t.”

He takes a sip of his coffee, “Dude’s making it big these days.”

That was an understatement. In the time you’ve been back, it seems like you can’t escape Yoongi. His pictures are everywhere; he’s in his music prime. Every girl is obsessed with him, and every guy wants to be invited to his parties or be his friend. You can hear his music being played all over town as well. It’s absolutely crazy.

“I’m happy for him.”

“I think you should call him.”

You stare at Jeongguk for a moment, wondering why he is so intent on you calling Yoongi. “Why do you care so much? From what I remember, you weren’t fond of him at all.”

Jeongguk feigns indifference, shrugging. “I’m not his biggest fan, but I figured since we’re talking…you should try talking to him too.”

A part of you wonders if something went down between Jeongguk and Yoongi while you were gone. The moment from the street, the only time you remember both of them meeting, flashes across your mind for a second. You can still feel the tension rolling through the air from that day; you could tell that every word had been forced.

“I’ll think about it,” you say, and the conversation about Yoongi ends there.

***

Life works in mysterious ways.

About three weeks after your homecoming, there are three precise knocks on the door. Without even thinking, or looking into the little peephole of your door, you just open it. And time seems to stop. You didn’t know what to expect, but it surely wasn’t this.

“Hi.”

You stare at him before rubbing your eyes to make sure this is reality. Are you dreaming? When your hands fall from your face, he’s still there.

He looks a little different; dark hair lays tousled on his head instead of the pink you remembered. Damn, you were just getting used to it too. In fact, you kind of miss it now that you’re thinking about it. But it seems like time is on his side—he doesn’t look like he aged at all. It doesn’t even seem like fame has fazed him either.

“Hey,” to your own ears, your voice sounds off. Do you always sound like this?

“How have you been?”

“I…” As much as you’re still in mild shock that he’s standing in front of you, you’re confused. What is he doing here? Why is he here? How did he even know you were here in the first place? “I’m good…you?”

Yoongi smiles, “Better.”

“So…uh…what are you doing here?”

“Heard from someone that you’re back home,” he shrugs, “and figured I would come by. I can’t believe you live in the same apartment still.”

You roll your eyes, “This place is functioning, okay? Besides, I’m just thankful the landlord let me have it back.”

It’s quiet between the two of you after that. Yoongi just stares at you for the longest time before reaching out to push a strand of your hair behind your ear. “Why did you leave?”

“Are you talking about that night or Korea in general?”

“Everything,” he says. “Do you know how many times I called? I was so worried. I was so desperate for an answer I even called Jeongguk, and when he told me you broke up with him…god…I was so fucking happy—is that wrong?—but then when he said he had no idea where you went off too…I-I can’t even explain how I felt.”

“Now you know how I felt,” you mutter under your breath.

But Yoongi hears you, “Is this to get back at me for going to Seoul?”

“Of course not!” you tell him. “I’m not that crazy. I left because I thought it was best—I told Jeongguk that I wasn’t going to choose between the two of you.”

“Are you stupid? In what world did you think I would okay if you’re gone?” Yoongi asks and your mouth shuts. “Did nothing I say to you mean anything?”

“It meant everything.”

“But you still left.”

You rub your forehead, “Yoongi, I didn’t leave because I didn’t love you. I left so your life would be better. You don’t need me. Jeongguk didn’t need me. I was okay with loving you from afar and—”

You stop talking when Yoongi’s finger moves to your lips.

“Shut up,” he says.

All you can do is nod.

“You’re wrong,” he begins, “I need you in my life. I’ve been miserable for years without you…and I was a fool to believe otherwise.”

You nod again, “Okay…but let’s start over, yeah?”

With all the stress and heartbreak surrounding the two of you over these past years, it feels like it would just be better if you both begin this new chapter in your lives fresh. You want to get to know Yoongi again—not just who he used to be, but who he is now. Has his favorite food changed? How is Seoul? What does he do now during his free time?

Thankfully, a smile stretches across his face. “I would love that.”

“So, if that’s the case,” you return the smile and stretch out your hand, “I’m y/n.”

“Hi, I’m Min Yoongi.”

The moment your hands touch, you seem to feel everything. Blood rushes through your body, heart beating erratically. You’re excited about the future—a future with Yoongi was something you didn’t think was possible. And whether or not the two of you will be together romantically, who even knows, all you care about is the fact that he wants you in his life.

That in itself is the greatest feeling ever.

***

“Wait…aren’t you supposed to be in Seoul?”

“…Maybe.”

“Don’t tell me you took the train here. That must’ve caused an uproar since you’re oh-so-famous now.”

“I’m not that famous…and I took my private plane.”

“…you have a private plane?!”

“I’m kidding; I drove my car. Want to come with me to Seoul?”

“Are you asking me out on a date, Min Yoongi?”

“I think I am.”

[cosien]

Sanders Sides Ghost AU HC

What is this, the thousandth ghost au? Probably. Did that stop me from writing this? Nope! 

Warnings: Death but with ghosty bits, crying, wittle bit of anxiety, dat sweet sweet platonic LAMPT

Thomas is a spiritualist and works to help spirits fulfill their unfinished deeds so they can pass on

Thomas usually has one or two spirits around his house because of how often he finds them and how long helping them can take

He doesn’t mind the company though and gets a little sad when no one else is around. The company is comforting to him

Ghosts are tied to whatever location they had a strong connection with, which is usually the place they died but can move from that spot if a connection with a living person is made and then they’re tied to that person/ their house. Thomas has had a lot of spirits attached to him

As much as he enjoys helping spirits pass, once they leave it always hurts a little.

He keeps a journal of all the spirits he’s met with little pictures of them (he’ll get the pictures off the internet or draw them if he can’t find a good one/ one the spirit likes)

He got into spiritualism after a friend of his died and he started catching glimpses of them around his home

Roman died the day before a big theater performance where talent scouts were coming to watch him perform

Died the night before the show because his friends saw how he was stressing out and decided to take him out to take his mind off things

He had the main part in the play and once he died they canceled the production out of respect

Roman is upset that he didn’t get to perform but even more upset that the play got canceled

Logan died when he was out with friends who where taking him out to dinner and drinks before opening his college acceptance letter

He got the letter from his dream college and was nervously staring at it for an hour before his friends decided to take him out of the house

If he got in it was a celebration outing, if he didn’t it was a screw college outing

He slips away halfway through the night to open it and sits down with the letter balancing on his knees as he tries to psych himself up

The wind catches the letter and Logan chases after it, cursing himself for not hanging on to it tighter

He’s so focused on chasing it that he doesn’t even notice when it blows out over a large drop off and Logan plummets off it, dying on impact

It takes three days for his body to be found and the letter is nowhere in sight

Logan tries to pretend that it doesn’t bother him but he wouldn’t still be around if that were true

The others sometimes hear him cry in a distant part of the house

Patton died in front of his boyfriend and feels horribly guilty for scarring him like that

In the beginning he said that he died crossing the street to the dog park before he could pet the cute little doggies

He genuinely believes that’s why he’s stayed around (he’s in deep denial)

He was on a date with his boyfriend (going to a movie, getting ice cream, the works) when he spotted a dog park across the street

He got excited and started jumping up and down and pulling his boyfriend towards the park asking to go and when he said yes Patton sprinted across the street

He was hit by a truck that he didn’t see coming and got launched across the street

His boyfriend held him while he lay bleeding out and a small crowd started to form around them while the truck driver was on the phone with the police

Someone in the crowd even had a dog with them from the park but Patton died before he noticed

He’s always felt horrible about the event and what he put his boyfriend through but since he was told that spirits stay around because of something left unfinished/ unfulfilled he thought it was the dog thing

Virgil ended up in the hospital a week before a Panic! at the Disco concert and ended up missing it only to die the next day

He finally got his social anxiety under enough control to go to a concert for one of his favorite bands

He always wanted to go but his anxiety basically trapped him in his house

He also isolated himself from people because of this so he never had any outside motivators to go but he was excited about the people he’d meet there

After years of therapy and different medications he finally feels like he can go

Panic at the Disco concerts always looked like so much fun from the videos he’d seen on YouTube

Meeting

Thomas met Roman at his local theater and agreed to help him

Roman could often be spotted sitting in the empty seating during rehearsals or on the stage only briefly. No one has really gotten a good look at the theater ghost but most believe that he’s really there and will say goodbye to him as they leave for the night (the theater does have a ghost light and even though it just started as tradition, it’s now left on specifically for him)

Roman and Thomas go out to explore the town and get something to eat to get to know each other better

This is where the two run into Logan at the outskirts of town and he joins up with them

They spend the rest of the night getting to know each other and they finally go back to Thomas’ place

On one of Thomas weekly trips to the hospital (he goes there to seek out more spirits to help. It’s where he finds most of them) he spots Virgil and spends almost an hour trying to follow him and convince him that he only wants to help him. Virgil eventually gives in (half of it was just to get Thomas to stop acting like a fool in front of the staff (they’re used to it)) and they head home

On the way back Thomas sees Patton run in front of his car and slams on the breaks. He freaks out once he see that Patton is literally inside the hood of his car but calms down once he remembers ghost are a thing. Patton comes along excitedly

Thomas is quietly happy to have such a full house again

Ending

Thomas sets up Roman’s canceled play again, and even manages to get most of the original cast back. Thomas promotes the crap out of the show, drawing in a rather large audience with the added benefit of donating the funds to theater programs that put on plays for kids in hospitals. He even gets the talent scout to come back (Thomas has a lot of connections) as a guest. Thomas plays the main role and dedicates the performance to Roman. It’s the best play he’s seen and even though he’s not apart of it, to see what could’ve been gives him an warm tingling feeling in his heart. Some people might report seeing a crying man sitting in one of the empty reserved seats before disappearing but that would just be ridiculous

Logan’s letter is long gone but Thomas still is determined to find it. He gets in contact with the school and pulls a few strings to get a new letter sent out again. Once it arrives Logan is once again scared to open it so Thomas suggests going for a drive. They drive for a few hours, not saying much as Logan clutches the envelope and stares out the window. The car eventually stops and Thomas and Logan get out, simply walking around the large green laws of wherever they’ve stopped. It’s only after a half an hour that they stop at what appears to be front doors and Logan realizes where they are. A tear falls down his face as he reads the campus sign before ripping open the letter and quickly reading it. “I got in.” He all but whispers but them shouts it a second time, jumping up and down as he bawls uncontrollably, giving Thomas a tight hug before shouting his accomplishments over and over again

Thomas takes Pat out to the same dog park he wanted to go to all those years ago and they just walk around and laugh, reaching down to pet some dogs that zoom by or jump up to greet them. After almost an hour of playing with the pooches dose Patton realize he’s now alone. He looks around frantically and spots Thomas next to a large tree, talking to someone out of view. He runs over with a “why’d you’d run off kiddo-“ but cuts himself as he sees the other person Thomas is talking to. It’s been so long but Patton still remembers every aspect of his face like it was engraved into his eyelids. He’d missed him so much. Patton cries silently, just looking at who used to be the love of his life. He eventually starts to listen in on their conversation and lets out a choked laugh at the topic. They’re talking about him, specifically the time he tried to sneak a cat out from a pet shelter but his constant sneezing gave him away. His boyfriends laugh melted his heart and he just fonds over the other as the two talk about him. The conversation takes a turn though as Thomas asks how he’d dealing with it all and Patton just holds his breath, scared to hear about how he’s ruined his loves life. But his boyfriend instead tells Thomas a story about the people in his life. How he grew up in a dysfunctional household but the old lady next door always let him stay at her house and bake cookies, until she passed away in his teenage years. How the nice English teacher would always help him out with his school homework and was part of the reason he even graduated. How a nice family had bought him a pizza when he was short on change and had been struggling to make ends meet for a while. He explained that although these people where in his life for only a short amount of time, they changed him into the person he was today and he wouldn’t trade those moments for the world. “It’s the same with Pat. He... he made me into a better person. The world was so much brighter with him. I loved, I laughed, I was more myself then I’d even been in my whole life and it was all because of him. Him dying killed me inside. I felt hopeless and empty but… I can’t change what happened. I have to live my best and fullest life; if for no one else then for him. To show him how much better I’ve become. Our time was short, too short, but damn it, he helped me to be so much better and I refuse to let that go to waste.” He was crying now but a smile still shone proudly on his face as the sun started to set. Patton lost it, weeping from sadness and happiness and all he could do was go up and pull his boyfriend into a hug. His boyfriend shuttered slightly at what seemed to be a familiar touch but relaxed with the passing of a warm breeze.

Virgil seemed easy enough but ever since he died his anxiety had been through the roof. Thomas had already purchased the tickets but now came the hard part; getting Virgil psyched to go. It took some time but eventually Virgil’s excitement overtook his anxiety and he was soon bouncing off the walls with unbridled energy. That is, until the concert day showed up and his anxiety hit him again full force. Thomas didn’t know what to do and they had to leave in about an hour (not that he’d tell Virgil that) so he sat down and just talked with him, trying to get to the bottom of all this. Nothing seemed to be working until Virgil had muttered that he shouldn’t be so scared to go to a concert where he’d be accepted as he was, then it clicked. Every time Virgil talked about going to this thing, he talked about making new friends, being in an understanding environment, or having a place of his own, as he put it. It was never about the concert, it was about being accepted. Thomas pulled Virgil up suddenly and started pulling him towards the door despite his protests. “Stop, what’re you doing!” Virgil shouted and Thomas spun around and looked Virgil dead in the eyes. “We’re going out.” Thomas let out a sly smile, “as a family.” Virgil looked behind him to see the others standing there, waiting to go. Virgil let out a slight sniffle but covered it with the clearing of his throat. “Well, let’s go then.” And they all went out to the concert together. Afterwards they went out to eat and ended up at the restaurant until closing where they then changed locations to a grassy park where they laid out under the stars. The conversations were light and teasing and maybe it was now Thomas’ turn to let out a few tears as he realized how close he’d gotten with these spirits and how he was happy to call them his family.

They all go home and Thomas sits on the couch with them all and watches a movie together. He knows that they’ll all have to leave soon, pass on now that they have no ties to this world anymore but he pushes the thoughts away. Maybe avoidance will make their departure hurt less. He drifts off not too much later, trying to stay awake for their conversations but inevitable failing. Once he wakes up he sees the the living room is empty and just stares at the walls for a while, frustrated with himself for not staying awake to see them off and eventually letting the sadness fill his heart as the reality of the situation slowly sinks in. He’s alone again. Just these four walls, his thoughts, and the smell of pancakes in the air. Thomas freezes. Pancakes? Why pancakes? He slowly gets up and follows the smell to the kitchen, spotting Patton working at the stove, quietly humming with Virgil working on cleaning dishes next to him. Before Thomas can open his mouth he hears the heavy footfalls of Roman coming down the stairs and what sounds like harsh whispers between him and Logan (something about the best flavor of some type of jelly). Roman stops upon seeing Thomas up “Oh, you’re up. Sorry, we were trying to be quite.” Patton spins around at that and gives Thomas a huge smile, “good morning! We didn’t wake you did we?” Thomas just stands there, looking at them all as his brain tried to process it. They’re still here. They stayed. They’re with him and he’s not alone. “You ok kiddo?” But the only response Patton gets are tears rolling down Thomas face. “Oh no, what’s wrong?” Patton rushes over to him, giving him a big hug. Thomas buries his face into Patton’s shoulder and cries. He feels Roman come up behind him, his strong arms holding him securely. Logan and Virgil join a second later, hugging his sides (ha) and enveloping him completely in their embrace. “You stayed...” Thomas mutters out. “Of course we did,” Patton responds, “we’re FAMily!”

By the way, I have no intention of writing this so if any of you people want to take this idea and run with it feel free 

[nolookfive]

i will be your home, keep you warm when it’s cold

okay so! this one is for @dmigod​ because i wanna make her cry, @fourdrinkamy​ for giving me the idea to roll with the life calendar thing and also @elsaclack​ because i had a mental block and then i went back to read her fics and motivation hit me like a ton of bricks so thank u wizard em! cya later if you wanna yell at me for this then you know where to find me.

Jake doesn’t understand how his life manages to find loopholes to screw him over. He’s been through pain before; the pain of his father leaving, the pain of being separated from Amy for six months in the inexplicably cold heat of Florida, the pain of being separated from Amy again in the hellhole that was prison. He knows Amy felt that same pain; she told him about it one Tuesday night after a long stressful day where nothing was going right and an emotional breakdown was on the cards after Scully spilled a jar of coffee beans everywhere.

He knows she felt it. And he knows, just like him, she hasn’t felt this type of pain before. And he wouldn’t wish it upon anyone, ever.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Exactly seven months and four days after their wedding, Amy sits on the edge of the bathtub, staring at the counter impatiently. Her hands twitch, resisting the urge to reach up and twist her hair into wild braids.

It wasn’t as if they didn’t want children. They’d had that talk well before they got engaged. It was more the fact that Amy wanted to at least become a lieutenant before they even considered trying. Jake was aware of this and fully understanding - he’s been around her life calendar for years now. He knows what her plan is and he respects it.

But things on her life calendar haven’t necessarily gone fully to plan. Marriage was further down the line and that happened sooner than she expected. And a baby? Well, to be fair, they hadn’t exactly been very safe lately. By the time her second alarm went off at 6:45am, Jake’s hands would already be tugging her underwear down her legs, his lips ghosting over her neck.

“Who cares if we’re not at work on time?” he’d mumble as her third alarm went off, capturing her moans with his lips. The only problem with that third alarm, though, is it would be the same time she takes her birth control. And when she’s preoccupied in...certain ways, she tends to be just a little bit forgetful.

But this is first time she’s been over a week late.

She lets out a huff, standing up to see how much longer she has to wait when he phone lets off a jarring ring, signalling the end of the two minutes. She quickly turns it off and takes a deep breath, reaching for the small white stick when suddenly the bathroom door opens and Jake comes barreling in.

“Hey babe, have you seen my-” he stops, his eyes immediately drawn to the packaging next to the sink and the test just out of Amy’s reach. She stares at him, panic setting in as she watches him process exactly what she’s doing.

“Is that - is that what I think it is?”

Amy swallows. “Yeah.”

“Is it - I mean, are you-”

“I - I don’t know. I was just about to check.”

He can tell she’s freaking out, her eyes as wide as a deer in the headlights. He cautiously takes a couple of steps towards her and reaches for her hand, his thumb running circles into her palm. She looks up at him then, her heart slamming against her chest, and she thinks about this minuscule piece of plastic sitting behind her, potentially holding a result that could change their lives.

“Hey,” he says softly, his other hand stroking up and down her arm. “It’s okay.”

“I...” she starts, then shakes her head. “If it’s positive - I mean, the life calendar-”

“Amy, the life calendar hasn’t exactly gone to plan, has it?” he interrupts, holding up his left hand pointedly, a plain gold band sitting on his ring finger. “I mean - we wanted this to happen at some point, right?”

“Right, but-”

“But what?”

“What if I can’t do it?”

Jake stares at her incredulously. “Are you insane? You’re Amy. Remember that jar of Armenian pickles Charles had in the fridge last week that he claimed was impossible to open?”

“Are you seriously comparing this situation to Charles’ lack of strength?”

“Oh my god.” Jake rolls his eyes. “The point is, you did what no one else could. You’re strong as hell. And if you think you can’t do that,” he points to the test, “I know you don’t like being told you’re wrong but in thiscase, you’re wrong.”

She studies him for a moment, then closes her eyes and leans against him, her forehead resting against his collarbone. “It might not even be positive,” she mumbles.

“Only one way to find out,” he replies, “do you want me to check it?”

“Yeah.” He pulls away, kissing her forehead and reaches around behind her, picking up the white stick. She’s scared, anxious, nervous, and somehow excited all at once. She watches him as he holds the stick up, his eyes scanning the length of it before looking intently at the spot that would change everything. His lips curl into a small smile as he turns the stick around.

And she’s met with the tiniest pink plus sign she’s ever seen.

“Looks like you’re gonna be a mom,” Jake says, watching her eyes well up as his smile gets bigger.

She can’t respond, the tears falling freely as she stares at the test incomplete awe. She has less than a second to compose herself before the excitement kicks in and she lets out a soft laugh, Jake’s arms going around her waist and pulling her to him tightly.

“We’re gonna be parents, babe,” he whispers into her hair, his lips pecking the skin behind her ear. She’s still speechless, wondering how two steps on her life calendar managed to happen in less than a year when she thought she’d had everything planned out. Jake leans back, his hands coming up to cup her face and kiss her gently. She melts into him, her hands curling against the collar of his hoodie, pulling him closer to her.

“We’re actually having a baby,” she says, more to herself as a confirmation that holy shit this is actually happening.

“Yeah we are.” Jake lets his hand drift down to her stomach. “You can do this, Ames,” he whispers, kissing her again. “I know you can.”

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

They tell their parents first, Jake’s in person and Amy’s over Skype. Camila Santiago instantly bursts into tears the second Amy holds up a picture from their first scan, their baby barely visible at only seven weeks but it’s there.

“Now, Amy, you need to start eating more fruit and vegetables. This way, your baby will be a girl and we need more women in this family, mija!” she cries, clapping her hands.

Needless to say, they ended that call fairly quickly(mostly due to Amy’s sudden lack of patience and the waves of irritation that have hit her in the last two days).

Karen and Roger are much more tame, letting out a collective gasp as Jake hands them the ultrasound photo. Roger slaps a hand against Jake’s back while Karen settles on the sofa next to Amy, studying the fuzzy print.

“Looks like you’re gonna be a dad just like me, bud!” Roger exclaims. Jake resists the urge to tell him to fuck off, ignoring the rage building up inside him when he shoots a look over at Amy.

“You’ll be better,” she mouths, giving him a small smile.

They tell Captain Holt next.

There was no build up to it, Jake had insisted that Holt doesn’t appreciate beating around the bush (Amy should know this, she’s halfway through binder number two of their mentoring program) so when they sat down in his office one Thursday morning, the easiest thing for all of them was to just throw it out there.

“Amy’s pregnant!” Jake blurts out. The room goes quiet, Holt looking back and forth between them, briefly glancing at Amy’s stomach hidden beneath her new navy blazer she intentionally bought one size larger.

“Congratulations,” he spoke, “make sure you take it easy from now on.”

“Don’t worry, babe,” Jake whispers as they leave his office, “he’s definitely stoked that his two best detectives got it on.”

“Shut up,” she groans, slapping a hand against her forehead.

And finally, they tell the squad. 

Charles had organised another detectives-only weekend away, this time at a holiday home owned by Genevieve’s distant cousin. By this stage, Amy is nine weeks pregnant. She’s been feeling nauseous for the last week and a half, and every second day has brought her headache after headache. The small bump beneath her shirt isn’t super noticeable but she feels it, absentmindedly letting her fingertips trace over the hard skin when no one else is watching.

She’s sitting at the island in the kitchen talking to Terry about an old case when she glances over at Gina, who is staring at her with narrowed eyes. Amy instantly knows what she’s looking at, she can see Gina doing the math in her head - the sick day she had the week before, orders of decaf coffee, denying free sushi from the deli down the street - and Amy can almost see a literal light bulb flashing above her head. She knows.

Gina smirks, disappearing into the kitchen and emerging less than a minute later holding two full wine glasses. “Alright, girl,” she says, plopping down on the stool, “which Amy are we going to see this year? I’m personally thinking Nine-Drink Amy should come out of her cave. Don’t get me wrong, Eight-Drink Amy is an icon, but we are minus a horse so we’ll have to make do without her.”

Amy glares at Gina as she slides one of the glasses in her direction, knowing she has to think of an excuse and think of it quickly.

“Actually,” she begins, sliding the glass back towards Gina, “It’s...only 4 o’clock. Some would say it’s too early.”

It’s code. Don’t say anything.

“Too early? Come on, Santiago, we’re on holiday!” Terry exclaims. “Treat yourself!”

“What are you guys talking about?” Jake asks, a slice of pizza in hand as he heads towards the fridge for another beer.

“Just trying to offer old Amy here a drink but for some reason, she’s not in the mood for an alcohol buzz,” Gina answers, her voice threaded with tease.

Jake whips around, his cheeks full of the cheesy crust he just stuffed his face with. “Why-mmph,” he grunts, quickly swallowing. “Why you doin’ that, Gina?”

“My sweet Jacob, some of us come on these trips to relax. Much like Terry and Charles, I come on these trips to get away from my kid. But also, I thoroughly enjoy witnessing drunk Amy,” Gina explains, giving him a knowing look and Amy can see it click in his eyes.

“Now, Amy, are you sure you don’t want this wine-”

“Gina,” Jake says sharply, making everyone look at him. “Stop.” He circles the counter, his hands running up his wife’s back to rub at his shoulders. “Ignore her,” he whispers in her ear.

“Alright, what’s going on with you two?” Terry asks, his voice suspicious as Rosa and Charles walk into the kitchen for a refill.

Amy glances over her shoulder at Jake with a defeated expression. “Let’s just tell them,” she sighs.

Charles gasps. “Did you finally try that couples hair-washing class I sent you the link to? Didn’t I tell you, Jake, it’s the most erotic thing ever, Genevieve and I tried it and-”

“No, Charles, that’s gross. I deleted that entire conversation, even my phone was traumatized.”

Charles frowns. “So what is it? You’re already married. And Amy can’t be pregnant, Jake said that’s further down your life calendar and we all know how strict you are with that, there’s no way you could...”

He trails off when he sees Amy bite her lip, resisting the urge to smile. He sees Jake’s arms curling around her shoulders, hugging her from behind as Amy’s hand presses against her bump again, which is much more noticeable now that all eyes are on her.

“No way,” Rosa deadpans, the sound of Charles hyperventilating filling the room.

“You’re - but you - and Jake - and - parents?”

Amy nods. “I’m nine weeks.”

“OH. MY. GOD!”

And then he passes out.

“Cheers to that,” Gina says, raising her glass.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

She’s ten and a half weeks pregnant and everything is fucking annoying, from Jake’s concerned gaze on the other side of her desk, to Charles giving her daily lists of multivitamins. She knew she’d feel a little tired but she had no idea that growing a baby would exhaust her this much and drain all of her energy.

“Can you guys please leave me alone, I’m fine,” she’d insisted, slumping in her chair and letting her eyes close for a second. The next thing she knew, she was being carried into her apartment and tucked into bed, her husband pressing a sweet kiss to her forehead and promising to call her later.

That was hours ago. The sunlight that shone through their bedroom windows had dimmed, the sky outside a deep blue with fluorescent spots of yellow from the street lamps below. She managed to get some sleep, cuddling the soft mink blanket to her chest as her hand runs across her stomach continuously, hoping her tiny nugget is as comfortable as she is right now. She’s about to doze off again when she hears the front door close and a set of keys being dropped on the bench. She waits for him to come to her, knowing that he’ll fuss over how she’s feeling and once again she roll her eyes and tell him to relax.

When he opens their bedroom door and peeks at her around the frame, the look in his eyes is mischievous. “Hey babe,” he says softly, “you feeling better?”

She stretches slightly. “Mmm, heaps better.”

“Good.” He pushes the door open, walking towards the bed holding a plain brown paper bag in one hand.

“Oh god, what is that?” Amy sighs as he sits down on the bed.

“It’s not bad,” he starts, watching her as she sits up, “it’s just a present. For you. Well, for the baby. And us. More for us, I guess.” He reaches into the bag and pulls out the smallest police onesie Amy has ever seen, laying it flat on the comforter in front of them. She lets out a gasp, reaching forward and letting her fingers trace the stitching of the soft material, her eyes tearing up for the fifth time today (damn those hormones) as she picks up the matching beanie, nuzzling her cheek against the fluffy material.

“So...you like it?” Jake asks, adjusting his position to curl his arm around her waist.

“Babe, it’s so cute,” she giggles, “where did you get it?”

Jake shrugs. “Charles and I were bringing in a suspect for questioning and we passed this baby store. It looked like it had just opened so I thought I’d go in and have a look on the way home and...yeah. The girl that worked there practically threw it at me when she saw my badge, said it was ‘fate’ or something. I think she was a bit of a space head. Brooklyn is full of weirdos.”

Amy smiles, kissing his cheek. “Even if she is a space head, this is perfect.”

“Our baby is gonna be so cool,” he mumbles, leaning forward to rest his cheek against her growing stomach. “You hear that, kid? You’ve got a badass detective for a dad and the prettiest sergeant for a mom. You’re already awesome and you don’t even know it.”

Amy cards her fingers through Jake’s hair as he continues to talk to the baby, their baby, feeling her face wet with tears she didn’t realize had fallen.

“Fucking hormones,” she mutters.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

She’s eleven weeks and three days when it happens.

Her eyes open wide, giving her no time to adjust to the darkness of their bedroom when she feels a dull but strong cramp in her lower stomach. She’s been feeling them for days now and all the baby books she read told her it was normal and just her body’s way of adjusting to the baby’s growth. She blindly reaches for her phone, the light of her lockscreen telling her it’s 1:49am. She groans quietly, rolling onto her side, hoping to relieve some of the pressure.

She’s about to fall back to sleep when it hits her full-force.

She sits up in bed immediately, her hands fluttering to her stomach as her face twists into a grimace. “Come on, kiddo, what are you doing?” she whispers to herself, rubbing her small bump delicately. She glances over at her husband sleeping peacefully next to her, his hair in wild tufts as he snores lightly.

Let him sleep, her subconscious tells her. It’s nothing.

She decides maybe going to the bathroom will help relieve the pain, quickly shoving the covers off her legs. She stands and the cramping suddenly feels ten times worse as she takes deep breaths, struggling to make it to the bathroom. When she finally gets there, she closes the door. Then there’s silence.

A few minutes later, she screams.

Jake’s awake now, shooting upright and instantly scrambling towards the direction of his wife’s cries, throwing the door open and freezing at the sight in front of him.

Amy is on the tiled floor, legs pulled to her chest, her arms wrapped around herself, her small frame trembling. There’s toilet paper everywhere and her cheeks are streaked with tears and Jake is about to ask what the hell is going on when he locks eyes with his answer.

Through Amy’s legs, her pajama shorts are saturated with blood.

“I - need - I - something’s - wrong,” Amy gasps, squeezing her eyes closed in pain.

Jake snaps out of his daze and runs back into the bedroom, throwing on his hoodie and grabbing Amy’s fluffy bathrobe and a towel from the closet. He snatches his phone and his keys off the bedside table and sprints back into the bathroom, sliding down next to Amy.

“I’ve got you, come here,” he hushes her. He slings an am around her waist, lifting her up enough to slip the bathrobe over her shoulders and wrap the towel around her hips. “We’re gonna get you down to the car, okay? Can you walk?”

She takes a couple of steps, letting out a yelp and if Jake wasn’t holding her, she would’ve collapsed on the floor right then and there. “Hurts - it hurts - so bad - I can’t,” she sobs, her arms folding against her stomach protectively. “Jake - the baby-”

“Ames, the baby is fine, you’re fine,” he replies, trying to keep his voice as convincing as possible despite how much he’s panicking. He hooks his arm under her legs, picking her up bridal-style and carrying her carefully through the apartment. “Deep breaths, babe, you need to stay calm, freaking out is going to make it worse.”

He carries her out of the apartment, down the steps outside their building and sets her down gently to unlock the door from the passenger’s side. He quickly helps Amy into her seat, before slamming the door and running around to his side. 

“J-Jake,” Amy stammers as he gets into his seat. He looks at her and she’s curled herself into a ball, still holding her stomach. She’s terrified.

“You’re alright, babe,” he assures her, his voice breaking as he starts the car, reaching over the console to grip her hand, “it’s gonna be okay, I’ve got you.”

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

He helps her back into bed with the promise that he’ll just be in the next room. She doesn’t say anything. She hasn’t spoken since they left the hospital.

He’s not surprised.

He calls her parents first, the words he speaks leaving an unfamiliar and unwelcome taste in his mouth. They promise to get on a flight to New York later that afternoon, her mother rattling off a list of rescue remedies. Jake mentally stores them in the back of his mind, wondering how she could possibly know all these things will help when she’s the one whose had a 100% success rate with eight kids.

He calls his mom next, the sound of her sympathetic voice breaking him down bit by bit. He balances the phone between his ear and shoulder as he pours milk into his too-strong coffee. “This sucks, Mom.”

“Honey, I’m so sorry. Do you need me to come over? Or do you want me to make some meals? I can whip up my infamous chicken and pumpkin soup? Amy likes that, doesn’t she?”

Jake rubs his eyes tiredly, the sun beaming through the kitchen window much too bright for 6:53am. “Actually, yeah. The soup would be great, thanks.”

“Of course, sweetheart. So how’s she doing?”

“She’s...” he falters and lets out a long breath. “She’s completely shut down. As soon as the doctor told us - I mean, she hasn’t said anything since they discharged her and I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to help her or what to say or anything.”

“You just need to be there for her,” Karen replies as he takes his coffee into the living room and sits down, “she’ll talk to you when she’s ready.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“And how are you?”

Jake frowns into the receiver. “What do you mean?”

Karen sighs. “Jake, Amy’s not the only one in this. You have to take care of yourself too."

He considers her words for a moment. “I'm - it hurts, Mom,” he says honestly, “I mean, it wasn’t planned but we were still so excited and talking about all the things we could buy and looking at getting a bigger apartment and now it’s just...nothing.”

“I know, honey,” Karen says soothingly, “it will get better but right now, let yourself grieve. You’re allowed to.”

“Yeah. Hey, I’m gonna go see if Amy needs anything, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay, I love you.”

He hangs up and once again he’s alone with his thoughts. He knows that at some point this morning, he’s going to have to go into the precinct and tell Captain Holt. They can’t just not go to work without an explanation. But when he tries to write a mental script in his mind of how to say it out loud, every option makes the situation more and more real. Captain, Amy and I need some time off. Captain, something has happened.

Captain, we lost the baby last night.

It’s the last one that gets him, makes him curse under his breath as he feels the tears roll down his face. He lets out a frustrated groan, wiping furiously at his eyes and picking up his phone to check the time. He stands up to make his way to their bedroom but when he turns around, Amy is standing behind him, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her fingers grip the edges of the material tightly, her eyes red from lack of sleep and pure pain as she watches him stare back at her.

“Hey,” he says slowly, “I was just coming to check on you.”

She doesn’t respond, her chest rising and falling with shaky breaths. It only takes him one step towards her for her to let out a sob that breaks his heart and he crosses the room quickly the wrap her in his arms, holding her tightly as her walls finally come down.

He lets her cry, says nothing as she hyperventilates into him, her hands clutching his shirt as he cocoons her, wishing he could protect her from everything that’s happened in the past few hours. Eventually he moves her to the sofa, lifting her legs over his lap, draping the blanket across both of them. Her sobs subside and the only noises she makes are quiet sniffles and deep breaths to steady herself. He stays quiet, waiting for her to speak when she’s ready and at least twenty minutes go by before she says anything.

“I don’t know what to do, Jake,” she rasps, her voice weak.

He presses his lips into her hair, trying to think of all the ways he could possibly take all of her pain and throw it a thousand miles away. “You don’t have to do anything.”

She lets out a breath. “I just - I don’t know why. They didn’t know why. They couldn’t tell us. I thought - I thought I was doing everything right. Why - what’s wrong with me?”

He pulls back and looks at her tear-filled eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Ames,” he whispers, stroking her hair gently. “Absolutely nothing.”

“You said I’d be able to do it and - and I couldn’t. I...” she trails off, avoiding his gaze as a fresh set of tears falls. “I couldn’t carry our baby. I lost our baby. This is all my fault.”

He tilts her chin up to make her look at him. “Hey, it’s not your fault, don’t say that.”

“Then why? Why couldn’t - why couldn’t I do it?”

Her voice is grief-stricken and he’s silent for a moment, trying to formulate a response in his head. “When I was 7, before my dad left, my mom got pregnant. Yeah, I know,” he says in response to his wife’s eyes widening. “I remember her explaining to me that there was a baby in her stomach and I didn’t really understand anything, except the fact she would keep telling me “you’re going to be a big brother”. And then one day, she didn’t pick me up from school. She got our neighbor to take me to her house until my mom came home. And when she did - even though I was young, I knew something was up. And when she told me...” he shakes his head, staring at the coffee table deep in thought.

“She said - my little brother, or sister, decided it wasn’t their time. That they weren’t ready to come into the world. And - saying it out loud now, I think that’s what happened with our baby.” He looks down at Amy, his fingers playing with the feathery ends of her hair. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Ames. You did everything right. Our baby just wasn’t ready.”

He feels dampness on the sleeve of his shirt and he knows she’s crying again, so he pulls her impossibly close to his chest, closing his eyes as he rests his cheek against the top of her head, feeling tears of his own fall free.

“Look. We can try again. We can wait however long you want to wait. We’ll stick to your life calendar. Either way, I’m here with you, I’m here for you. I’m on your team. We’re gonna get through this, I promise you.”

It’s quiet for a moment and he thinks she’s fallen asleep until she speaks.

“I love you so much,” she whispers, her long lashes fluttering against his neck.

He kisses her hairline, his arms tightening around her. “I love you too. Always will.”

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. But they’ll be okay.

[raywritesthings]

Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home 10/11

My Writing Fandom: Arrow, The Flash Characters: Oliver Queen, Laurel Lance, Quentin Lance, John Diggle, Felicity Smoak, Thea Queen, Roy Harper, Moira Queen, Joanna de la Vega, Dinah Lance, Eddie Thawne Pairings: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen, Thea Queen/Roy Harper Summary: Oliver returns to Starling City after the Undertaking only to discover that he’s not the only one who has absented it; Laurel Lance has seemingly vanished with barely a trace for the last four months. As he struggles to piece together the mystery of what caused her to flee the city they both call home, Oliver must also ask himself if he can make things right after leaving the woman he loves a second time. If he can find her at all. AO3 link

Eddie really could have picked a better week to start at his new precinct.

Rain continued to lash against his windshield, making it near impossible to see where he was driving with half the city’s lights still out. His siren did the job of getting everybody else out of the way as best as they could.

Their manpower was stretched to the limit as calls continued to flood in of accidents and emergencies resulting from the explosion. They’d been hit themselves, and Eddie had seen Allen loaded into an ambulance before heading out in his cruiser. Nobody had told West yet, as far as he knew, but there was backup on the way to his and Chyre’s location.

“Any units in the vicinity of 6th and Crossway?” Dispatch came over on the scanner which they’d only just got back up running when he’d left.

Eddie looked around for a street sign. It was a good thing he’d taken the initiative to tour through the city and look over some maps in his preparation for the move. “I might be close,” he announced.

“Caller says a woman’s collapsed on the sidewalk. Witnesses don’t want to move her. They think she’s pregnant.”

“Ambulance on the way?” He took the next turn sharp and had to swerve this and that way around cars either abandoned or stuck on the road.

“Closest one could be half an hour.”

“Okay, I found Crossway. I’m on it.”

Eddie pulled the cruiser up as close as he could to where several people were stood around on the sidewalk. Some of them turned as his door slammed.

“She’s waking up, officer,” a woman said.

Eddie hurried past them all. “Ma’am? Can you hear me?”

She was on the ground, blonde hair falling over her face and her arms still wrapped protectively around her middle. If Eddie had to guess, she looked to be around his age. Her eyes squeezed shut as a hiss of pain left her.

Eddie helped her to sit up slowly. “Try not to make any sudden movements. You had a fall.” He began checking her over, first for a concussion, but fortunately she didn’t look to have hit her head. “I’m Detective Thawne. Can you tell me your name?”

“What happened?” She asked instead. “There was this- this wave—”

“I know, but it’s alright now. I’m gonna want to take you to a hospital so they can check for any internal damage, but you seem—”

The woman gasped. “The baby.” She looked down “Oh my God, I think my water broke.”

“Oh my God,” said Eddie without thinking. She turned panicked eyes up at him. “I mean, uh, are you- are you feeling contractions?”

“I can’t be. This- this can’t be happening.”

Eddie felt perhaps the most out of his depth he’d ever been on the job. “Okay. Let’s just get you to the hospital, and they can confirm.” He slowly got her onto her feet and ushered her past the staring crowd back to his cruiser. Eddie grabbed a blanket out of the trunk and passed it to her before climbing into the driver’s seat and switching the siren back on.

They had marginally better luck with the traffic, and he kept pushing through any gap he could safely find. Every few seconds, his eyes jumped to the rearview mirror to check on her.

“This can’t be happening,” she kept repeating. Eddie started to worry she was going into some kind of shock.

“Everything’s going to be alright, ma’am—”

“Miss.”

“What?”

“I’m twenty-eight years old, I’m a single mom, and I am going into labor two months early,” his passenger listed off through clenched teeth. “It’s. Miss.”

Eddie gulped. “Yes, ma’am — er, miss. Sorry.”

He pulled straight up to the emergency room, siren blaring, and left his cruiser parked there as he helped her inside.

“I need an obstetrician or somebody! She’s having a baby!”

Even with all the chaos, his dramatics got them into a room soon enough. He learned from a nurse’s questioning that the woman’s name was Laurel Lance and that she was only about seven months along.

“I can’t have the baby yet, can I?”

“At this stage, there’s a high chance of the baby being healthy. And since your water has broken, delaying labor has a risk of infection. The doctor will be here soon, and we can get started.”

“Oh my God,” Laurel Lance repeated. Her eyes screwed up in pain for a moment. He wavered on the balls of his feet, unsure what he should be doing.

The nurse turned to him. “Are you the father?”

“What?” Eddie rapidly shook his head, eyes wide. “No, no I am not. We just met. I’m a detective with the CCPD.”

“Well, Detective, if I can ask you to remain while I step out for a minute. Encourage her to breathe.”

“Uh, right.” Eddie watched helplessly as the nurse strode from the room, hopefully organizing equipment and personnel necessary to deliver a baby. He didn’t even know what all was necessary for delivering a baby.

He turned back to the expecting mother. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Could you call my mom?” She gestured to the pile of her clothes on a chair, which she’d had to trade for a hospital gown.

“Of course.” He fished out her phone and stepped out into the hallway.

There were only two contacts in her phone, both labeled as parents. Eddie couldn’t help frowning in a little worry, but hit the button for the mother nonetheless.

“Laurel? Is everything alright? All the streetlights went out, it’s an absolute zoo downtown.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Lance. This is Detective Eddie Thawne. I had to take your daughter to the hospital. She’s gone into an early labor.”

“Oh, God. Is it Central City General?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Are she and the baby—?”

“The doctors are optimistic. I can stay with her until you get here.”

“Yes, thank you. Thank you so much, detective.” Mrs. Lance hung up and Eddie checked in briefly via radio to let the precinct know his status. Then he marched back into the room.

“How’s the breathing going?”

“It’s good,” Laurel grunted. She looked up at him then, and a breathy laugh left her.

Eddie was feeling very confused now on top of the nerves. “Is there something funny?”

“No. Not really. You just do sort of look like him. The father.”

“Oh.”

“He should be here.” Laurel’s head fell back onto the pillow, a tear leaking from the corner of her eye and down the side of her face. “I’m so stupid.”

Eddie didn’t really know what to say to that. There was a lot about her situation that concerned him as a cop. Why the lack of contacts in her phone? Why had she been alone when the accelerator went off? And just where was the father of this baby?

He winced in sympathy as she gave another hiss of pain.

“I know it doesn’t fix anything, but I’m here. I can, I don’t know, hold your hand if that helps. Till your mom arrives?”

She blinked up at him for a moment. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Eddie.”

She smiled, though it wavered slightly. “Thanks, Eddie. I could use some help right now.”

Just as he took her hand, the nurse returned with a doctor.

“Miss Lance, we’re hoping to get started as soon as possible, but there may be a slight complication. The hospital is running low on pain relievers.”

“Oh great,” said Laurel. She may or may not have huffed out a laugh.

“We’ll do everything we can, but the volume of patients that have come in tonight is unprecedented.”

Laurel looked up at him. “I hope you don’t like your hand.”

“Your mother can tap in if you’re in danger of crushing it.”

He ended up getting very lucky, because Mrs. Lance showed up just before they were getting Laurel ready to start pushing. Eddie was ushered out into the hall with a hurried thanks, but that didn’t do much to block out the pained yells coming from the room.

She really did have a voice on her.

—-

“Quentin?”

He slowly blinked his eyes open to spot one of the nurses in his doorway. When had he dozed off?

“Your landlady stopped by to drop off a package that came for you,” she continued despite his lack of greeting. “Looks like someone thought you could do with a little holiday spirit.”

“No one’s sending me presents this year,” he stated. Because of him Hilt was gone, Sara was still on the run from that crazy cult that wanted her back, and Laurel…he fixed his gaze determinedly on the ceiling and waited out the familiar stinging at his eyes. Maybe there was a bright side to his being hospitalized over the holidays; without his daughter there was no one else to help him home from the bar. “Probably got the address wrong.”

“Well, I’ll leave it with you. You can open it whenever you feel up to it,” the nurse struggled cheerfully on. At the least she did just that and mercifully left him alone again. Quentin sighed, then with a bit of effort pushed himself up with one hand while grabbing for the small package with another. Settling back against the pillows he looked it over. Plain brown box, no return address. Could be considered suspicious.

Quentin couldn’t find it in himself to care. He tore the box open. Inside was another, smaller box gift wrapped in Christmas colors. With growing impatience he ripped open the paper and set the lid aside.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” he grumbled upon seeing the phone sitting inside. What, had the Arrow decided he needed an upgrade for the New Year?

He powered it up, not surprised at all to find a contact pre-programmed in. It was even displaying a text already. But then he read the words.

Merry Christmas, Daddy.

The phone slipped from his fingers to land in his lap.

It couldn’t be. After all these months, all this time, and nothing. Here, now, was the proof that his daughter was alive, was still out there?

That she wanted to speak to him?

Quentin picked up the phone again and made the call. The phone rang and rang and rang. He started to wonder if there had been a mistake, or this was some kind of joke someone was pulling on him. But then the line was picked up.

“Hello?”

His mouth fell open, and it was a struggle for him to respond. “Dinah?”

“Oh, Quentin,” she said. He thought he could hear her voice shaking. “Quentin, I’m so sorry.”

“Dinah, what is this? What’s going on?”

“I’ve wanted to tell you for some time. But you have to understand, I needed her to trust me, or she would’ve gone off on her own again and we would’ve lost her.”

“Dinah—”

“Laurel’s been staying with me.”

The air left his lungs in a great rush.

“About two months after she disappeared she showed up at my door. Quentin, I couldn’t turn her away, and I couldn’t make her come forward, not after everything I’d already done. And then things started getting so dangerous in Starling it didn’t seem a good idea at all to encourage her to go back. You have every right to be angry with me,” she added when he remained silent.

But did he? Did he have that right? If he wasn’t so exhausted he probably would have let loose with a thousand recriminations — how could Dinah think she had a right to hide Laurel from him when he was the parent that had been there with her all her life?

And yet he was hiding Sara just the same.

“Why didn’t she want to come home?” He heard himself ask instead. “Was she in trouble?  Was it something I did?”

“No, Quentin. She just didn’t want to disappoint you.” Dinah paused a moment longer, then said, “She was pregnant.”

He clutched the phone even tighter. “Was?” He asked, voice hoarse.

“She went into labor just a few hours ago.”

“She- she did?”

“It was early, Quentin. Laurel meant for you to get the phone in time to be here. If you wanted, that was.”

An early labor. Laurel herself had been just under a week early. He’d used to say that she hadn’t been able to wait to take on the world. He hadn’t said much of anything like that to her in a long while.

Then the rest of Dinah’s words caught up to him. “Of course I’d wanna be there. I’m her father.” He knew it was his own fault that hadn’t been enough to allow Laurel to feel safe telling him this. He’d told the Arrow as much. “I’m- I’m gonna be a grandfather.”

His breath had nearly failed him there. For a single moment, the pain both physical and emotional seemed to lift, and he could remember the good things about life again. Sara was alive. Laurel was safe. She was having a baby.

“Yes, Quentin.” He could hear the smile in Dinah’s voice. “Laurel’s still in labor. It’s not too late. She would want you to be here.”

“I can’t.” It was a struggle to force the words out through a throat that was determined to close up. Frustrated tears leaked from his eyes. “I’m in the hospital. There was a raid, went bad.”

“I hadn’t heard. Are you alright?”

“I’m not so bad,” he dismissed. “But they won’t let me discharge myself, even for this. Damnit.”

“Do you want me to tell her?”

“No, I don’t want her to worry. Just say I’ll be there as soon as I can. I promise. You should get back in there, she shouldn’t be alone.”

“I only stepped out to take your call. There’s a detective from the Central City Police Department in there right now.”

He wanted to ask what a detective had needed to be there for in the first place, but the longer he delayed her the longer Laurel was without any family. “Get his badge number. I’ll have to let his Captain know he’s a good cop.”

“Of course. Take care, Quentin.”

“You too.”

He hung up, and all the quiet sounds of the hospital slowly filtered back in. Stuck in a hospital while Laurel was in another hospital 600 miles away. That just figured, didn’t it?

There was no telling when they’d release him. And all the while he’d be worrying; Laurel would tell Dinah not to give any bad news over the phone. If he could just send somebody to make sure she was okay...

There was only one person he knew he could call in on this.

Quentin fished around for his actual phone on the little bedside table. From there it took a bit of scrolling to find the number he wanted.

Hopefully the Queens wouldn’t mind a surprise for Christmas.

—-

Oliver barely spared his mother and Thea a hello once he returned to the manor. He instead continued straight onto his room and took out a bag which he started packing with clothes and other supplies. The first possible lead he’d had in weeks, and he was hoping it was wrong. But he couldn’t discount the idea that Laurel might be in Central, even if they’d just suffered a disaster the likes of which no one had ever seen before.

Thea pushed open his door without even knocking. “What’s going on? Thought we were doing Christmas.”

“Change of plans. I’ve maybe got a lead on Laurel, and I have to go out of town. Can you make something up to tell mom?”

Thea’s eyes had lit up, and she nodded several times. “Okay, yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”

He’d only just finished zipping the bag closed when his sister came running back in.

“Ollie, mom says there’s a phone call for you. From Officer Lance.”

For a moment, he stood frozen. If Lance was calling, he had to have news. Whether it was good or bad…

The next thing he knew, he was taking the steps two at a time and grabbing the phone right out of his startled mother’s hands. “Officer Lance?”

“Queen. Listen, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I heard from Laurel. Well, her mother, actually.”

Her mother. His instinct had been right. Oliver had to fight down the panic that threatened to rise up.

“Is she alright?”

“Yeah, for the most part. Thing is, she...she’s having a baby.”

Oliver felt his heart stop for a single beat. His mouth had fallen open but he made no sound.

“I guess she thought I’d be ashamed of her. Maybe I would’ve, I don’t know. With Merlyn dead, the whole thing’s a mess.”

Tommy. Oliver did the math in his head and squeezed his eyes shut. No wonder Laurel had felt she had no one to turn to. Her cryptic emails suddenly made a perfect amount of sense. I’m running out of time. Running out of time to decide what to do about the baby.

His eyes squeezed shut, and he reached out for the banister, trying to ground himself. “But they’re okay?”

“As far as I know. I talked to Dinah, but I’m stuck in this hospital till they discharge me.”

Oliver winced. Lance was only hurt because of him, and now it was keeping him from his family. From his new grandchild.

“I wanted to ask if you could go down for me.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, well, you’ve changed a lot this last year or so. Told Laurel that, actually, one of the last things we talked about before the whole Undertaking business. And I know you care about her.”

“Of course.”

“Just let me know how she’s doing.”

“I will.” Oliver hung up. There wasn’t anything else that needed saying, not until he knew how Laurel was.

Laurel and the baby. A baby. Of all the reasons, he’d somehow never even guessed.

“Did they find Laurel?” It was his mother who asked.

“Yeah. But Lance needs me to go in his place. He’s in the hospital.” He turned an apologetic look on his family. “I have to go.”

His mom didn’t even look surprised. “Of course. Call us as soon as you can.”

“Thank you.” He hefted his bag back onto one shoulder and walked to the door.

“Wait, Ollie!” Thea rushed down the remaining steps. “What’s going on with Laurel?”

He didn’t stop. Oliver went straight to the garage and to his bike. Within minutes, he was speeding down the drive. It would be a long night and morning, but he was determined to get there as soon as possible.

The hospital was one of many places in Central that resembled a zoo in the immediate aftermath of the city’s particle accelerator explosion. As such, Oliver did his best to navigate the building via the signs posted every few feet while dodging around harried staff members and other visitors alike. Eventually he found his way to the maternity ward. Steeling himself with a deep breath, he began to walk down the ward scanning each room for a familiar face, the same face he’d been searching for the last two months.

But halfway down the ward was the nursery, and standing in front of the glass partition was a Lance indeed.

She looked away from the rows of infants at the sound of his approach, her eyes bright and warm. “Oliver,” she greeted, stepping forward to wrap him in a hug.

“Mrs.—”

“It’s Dinah, please. Thank you so much for coming. It’s such a shame Quentin couldn’t make it yet. How is he?”

“He’s supposed to make a full recovery,” he reported. “Is the- the baby…?”

“Second row, three from the left,” she told him quickly. Oliver dutifully followed her directions, getting his first look at the child of Dinah Laurel Lance. She was sleeping, her tiny balled up fists just poking out from her blanket, and a single tuft of hair, blonde in the light, was escaping from under the pink cap.

“Wow.”

“She’s just under two months premature,” Dinah was telling him, and Oliver worked to tear his eyes away from the tiny bundle in her cradle. “The doctors think the shock from whatever happened with that explosion induced an early labor, but they’ve reassured us she should be fine.”

“That’s good. That’s- that’s really…I’m glad to hear that. She looks healthy. She looks beautiful,” he said with earnest feeling. Any child of Laurel’s would be beautiful, he’d never doubted that, but to be seeing her here, now…

He hadn’t anticipated this. The closest comparison he could draw upon was a memory nearly two decades old; his father’s hand had been laid on his shoulder as they’d walked up to his mother’s hospital bedside, and Oliver had taken a first peek at the infant nestled in her arms, the little sister he’d spent hours upon hours complaining to Tommy about prior to that very moment. Then Thea Dearden Queen had blinked her baby blue eyes up at him, and he’d fallen in love.

And somehow he was feeling that again. He didn’t understand it, it was simply happening, a warm tide of feeling threatening to bubble up and overtake him at just the sight of that little baby. It didn’t seem to matter that he was here as an envoy for Quentin Lance, a stand-in for family. Maybe it was just that through all the years and ups and downs, the Lances were family. And now this newborn life, she was part of it.

He exhaled a shaky breath and blinked to hold the moisture gathering in his eyes at bay. Dinah didn’t seem to mind the overly emotional response; perhaps she was glad to have someone here to share in her joy of becoming a grandmother. Oliver was finally able to dredge up a grin to match the kind smile playing at her lips.

“So, another Dinah, right?”

The older woman chuckled. “Yes. But her middle name this time.” She turned back towards the glass separating them from the infants. “Laurel was very sure. She named her Olivia.”

Oliver froze. The world narrowed down to this maternity ward in this hospital, him and Dinah Lance standing in front of the nursery with Laurel resting in a room down the hall, and absolutely nothing else. None of the rest of it mattered. His mind had gone completely blank save for the words she named her Olivia over and over again.

“Olivia.” His voice didn’t sound his own, hoarse and light with something like hope woven into it. The baby—Olivia—lay there in her crib, and he could not possibly take his eyes off of her—Olivia.

His math had been off by two months. Laurel’s daughter was named Olivia. She had been very sure. Sure enough to name her daughter after him.

“Why don’t I give you a moment alone? I need to check on Laurel. She’ll want to know that you’re here.” He hadn’t even registered when the older woman had placed a gentle hand on his arm, but he felt the brief squeeze before she let go and only faintly heard her shoes against the tile signaling her retreat.

It was for the best; trying to split his attention right now between Laurel’s mother and her daughter required more effort than he was willing to spare. One of his hands had come up to the glass while the other he pressed to his mouth. He needed to feel grounded. This couldn’t be real.

Laurel’s daughter…his…?

Dinah had been happy to see him, had told him everything he could possibly need to know about the baby, had told him the name Laurel had chosen for her. And Laurel would want to know he was here, would be…happy?

“Olivia,” he breathed again, just to hear it. The infant slept on with no change, but he couldn’t seem to get enough of looking at her. He couldn’t imagine not standing here watching over this small, helpless child. His child.

How could he not have realized the instant he laid eyes on her? How could he have ever thought otherwise? These last two months of searching, of worrying, of very nearly giving up hope, only to culminate in this. A daughter. A miracle.

Oliver took a large gulp of breath before pressing his lips tight together, trying in vain to hold in the swell of emotion threatening to overtake him. All those years on the island and as a vigilante, teaching himself control, suppression, stoicism, none of it had prepared him for this.

And he was so glad. All the things he’d done, all the damage he’d endured, it hadn’t tainted this. Nothing could take this moment from him.

Oliver Queen stood in front of the nursery with shoulders shaking, eyes misting over and, for the first time he could remember, let go completely uncaring of who might be watching. He’d never known he could cry for feeling so full.

[multipleservicelisting]

A Vaccine Road Trip

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Good morning. The Biden administration has a huge amount of work to do to get the virus under control.

I took a 1,600-mile road trip this week that has left me even more amazed at how poorly the United States has handled the coronavirus — and more worried about how much work the Biden administration has to do to get it under control. I want to tell you that story this morning.

The U.S. now faces two main virus problems. First, our efforts to minimize the virus’s spread remain halfhearted, with many Americans refusing to wear masks or practice social distancing. Second, the early stages of the mass vaccination campaign have been a mess, far behind schedule and full of frustration for people trying to get shots.

The second of those problems was the reason for my road trip. I live in the Washington, D.C., area, where the vaccine rollout has been even slower than in most places.

I hear maddening anecdotes from neighbors and friends all the time, and I imagine you’ve heard similar anecdotes. Many Americans who qualify to receive the vaccine — like people over 65 — don’t know what they are supposed to do to sign up. When they try, they often find that all the slots are filled.

Millions of doses, unused

My mom, who’s 74 and has been living with my family for the last few months, was one of the people trying to figure out how to get her shot. And it felt impossible. Fortunately, she had an alternative. She normally lives in Colorado, a state with a somewhat better vaccine rollout. By checking repeatedly online, she got an appointment in Colorado.

So the two of us got in the car and spent a couple of days driving west (to spare her the risk of contracting the virus on a plane). My sister, who lives in Denver, drove east, and we met halfway, in St. Louis. I then drove back to Washington, and my sister and my mom drove to Denver. We are all grateful that she is about to receive her first shot.

But it’s worth pausing to reflect on what an indictment of our society this story is. The world’s richest, most powerful country has almost 20 million vaccine doses that are sitting unused. Meanwhile, people are desperately trying to sign up — and often failing. Many families don’t have the resources or flexibility to make it a full-time project.

For some, the consequences of the bungled rollout will be fatal. More than 3,000 Americans a day have been dying from Covid-19 recently. Some of them would not have contracted the virus if the Trump administration and state governments had kept the vaccination program anywhere close to on schedule.

President Biden announced his plans yesterday for a “full-scale wartime effort” to speed things up — including the construction of mass-vaccination centers, the involvement of drugstores and an accelerated manufacturing program. You can read the details here, as explained by The Times’s Sheryl Gay Stolberg. How well Biden succeeds will help determine how many Americans survive this pandemic.

‘Required’ and ignored

The other big factor will be how hard the country tries to reduce the virus’s spread while the vaccines are being rolled out. In the short term, masks and social distancing probably matter even more than vaccines. “The brutal truth is it’s going to take months before we can get the majority of Americans vaccinated,” Biden said yesterday.

But I came home from my trip shaken by what I had seen.

Almost everywhere I stopped — gas stations, rest stops and hotels, across Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois — there was a sign on the door saying that people had to wear masks to enter. And almost everywhere, most people ignored the sign.

At a Fairfield Inn in Ohio, a middle-aged couple sat unmasked on a lobby sofa for hours, drinking beers and scrolling through their phones. The hotel staff evidently did nothing about it. At a convenience store in Indiana, a hand-drawn sign on the door read: “Face masks are required. Please do not enter without one!!” Customers did anyway.

Nationwide, about half of Americans are not wearing masks when in close contact with people outside their households, according to a survey released yesterday by the University of Southern California.

Wearing a mask isn’t much fun. It’s hard to speak clearly, and if you wear glasses, the fogging is annoying. But the inconvenience sure seems worth the benefits.

Study after study has shown that masks reduce the virus’s spread. Yet millions of Americans have decided they would prefer more Covid — for their communities and potentially for their families and themselves — to more masks.

The persuasion problem

The Biden plan to accelerate vaccinations looks promising, many experts say. But the new president does not yet have a cohesive plan for changing Americans’ minds about safe behavior in the meantime. Repeating the same pleas, like Biden’s request that people wear masks for his first 100 days, seems no more likely to work than the signs I saw on my road trip.

What might work better? Perhaps a prime-time Oval Office address that’s light on policy and focused on a simple call to action. Or maybe the calls to action can come from a diverse array of celebrities, politicians and business executives. As behavioral psychologists often explain, the messenger can matter more than the message.

For now, I feel like I just drove across a country that is losing a winnable fight.

THE LATEST NEWS

The Virus

The drug maker Eli Lilly said that a treatment usually used to fight Covid-19 symptoms also prevented healthy people in nursing homes from contracting the virus.

A more contagious variant of the virus is forcing Britain’s hospitals to ration oxygen. “We’re practicing medicine in a way we never have,” one nurse said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said that working with the Biden administration was “a liberating feeling.”

The Biden Administration

Congress overwhelmingly approved a waiver to let Lloyd Austin, a retired Army general, serve as Biden’s defense secretary. The Senate appears set to confirm him today, making Austin the first Black American to lead the Pentagon.

Biden is planning more executive actions today, including one that aims to send additional federal aid to families struggling to afford food.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, will ask Democrats to delay former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial until February.

Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s choice for transportation secretary, pledged to prioritize climate policy. Here’s how he could do so.

When the Bidens arrived at the White House, they briefly encountered a closed door — awkward. “The delay in opening the door did puzzle me a bit,” a former White House curator said.

Trump did what many older New Yorkers do: He retired to Florida. Not all of his Palm Beach neighbors are happy.

Other Big Stories

Morning Reads

Modern Love: A mother becomes her daughter’s dream partner in the pandemic.

From Opinion: Columns by Farhad Manjoo and Jamelle Bouie.

Lives Lived: Charles R. Saunders’s fantasy works reimagined the white worlds of Tarzan and Conan with Black heroes and African mythologies, giving Black fans of the “sword and soul” genre champions with whom they could identify. Saunders died in May at 73.

ARTS AND IDEAS

The rise and rise of “Drivers License”

Most songs that debut at No. 1 on the Billboard charts come from stars, who often benefit from coordinated efforts by superfans. How, then, has “Drivers License,” a brooding debut single by the 17-year-old actress Olivia Rodrigo, rocketed to No. 1, broken Spotify streaming records and reached the top spot on Apple Music in 48 countries?

The answer is a mix of old and new techniques. Rodrigo, who stars on a “High School Musical” spinoff series on Disney+, is following a path similar to those of acts like Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus, who also had built-in fan bases from their Disney roles. The song’s lyrics, alluding to a love triangle involving a co-star, have helped too, fueling gossipy online chatter. And the song has received endorsements from Taylor Swift on Instagram and from TikTok tastemakers like Charli D’Amelio, helping it explode in popularity on the platform.

“TikTok videos led to blog posts, which led to streams, which led to news articles, and back around again,” Joe Coscarelli wrote in The Times. “The feedback loop made it unbeatable.”

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook

The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was plaudit. Today’s puzzle is above — or you can play online if you have a Games subscription.

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: 50% (four letters).

And what do you think is happening in the photo below? Take this week’s news quiz, and see how well you stack up to other Times readers.

    Multiple Service Listing for Business Owners | Tools to Grow Your Local Business

www.MultipleServiceListing.com 

from Multiple Service Listing https://ift.tt/3sPpVwU

[ciathyzareposts]

The Black Gate: The C.S.I. Effect

The Fellowship has managed to infiltrate Britannia with the closest thing this world has ever had to a church.

         For a game that gets really good, Ultima VII does not start promising. Particularly disappointing was the character creation process. This is the first Ultima since II not to allow any importing of characters. Character creation had of course reached its peak in Ultima IV, where the gypsy’s questions sorted you into one of eight classes and determined your starting attributes. Ultima V and VI lowered the number of classes to functionally three (fighter, bard, and mage, with the “Avatar” class a kind of synthesis of the three) but still let you go through the gypsy exercise, the specifics of which were retconned in VI. You could choose a female Avatar for the first time, and select from about half a dozen portraits whether male or female.

Ultima VII offers the fewest options of any of the games in the series. You can only type your name and select your sex, and there’s only one character portrait for each sex. And they’re both horrible–although the male Avatar does fit with the canonical portrait ORIGIN has been pushing on players since VI, including the two Worlds of Ultima spin-offs.

I briefly considered playing a female character, which I never do for the Ultima series, but I didn’t feel like looking at her portrait for dozens of hours, either. Why did ORIGIN reduce character customization? Was it just a matter of not wanting to spend the programming time to vary the portrait that shows up in dialogue? That’s a lazy approach for a company that did such a meticulous job with everything else.

           The female Avatar has Evil Resting Face.

             I sighed and chose the male portrait, naming him “Gideon”–my official alter-ego for any character I’m really invested in. 

The opening moments beyond character creation are as chaotic as anything, especially for a new player. We start with a street scene in what turns out to be Trinsic. Two characters, one of them white-haired, are standing outside a stable and trading laments over some horrid event. Suddenly, the red moongate appears and spits the Avatar onto a paved (or at least cobblestoned) street with gas lamps–the first sign that Britannia isn’t the same Dark Age kingdom we last saw. 

           Where were moongates that open inside the city in the last couple of games?!

         The white-haired, bearded man turns out to be Iolo, who immediately recognizes the Avatar despite not having seen him in–as he quickly reveals–200 years. Iolo and Dupre and Lord British are still alive because they originally came from Earth. No explanation is given for the longevity of the rest of the Avatar’s companions. The time jump isn’t really necessary at all, except perhaps to explain why Britannia looks more Colonial than Medieval. I don’t buy the rapidity at which the Avatar returns to his friendship with people who haven’t seen him in two centuries. I had some good friends when I was in my 20s, but I doubt I’d recognize them if I lived to be 220, nor would I attach a lot of significance to our friendship given all the other people I would have met, and all the other things I would have done, in that intervening time.

I soon learn that “something ghastly” has happened in the stables. The other person is introduced as a stablehand named Petre. I am encouraged to go and look in the stables for myself, which sounds fine to me. All I really want to do at this point is turn off the damned music. But I don’t have time to do even that, let alone enter the stables, because there’s a sudden earthquake. Iolo pipes up and suggests that Lord British might know the reason behind it. The tremor, we later find out, is caused by the events of the Forge of Virtue expansion. But, damn–did it have to happen immediately? This is like modern Elder Scrolls and Fallout games where you buy the expansions and you get 8 pop-up messages the moment the game starts telling you where to go to start the DLC missions. Could they maybe be spaced out a little?

Recovering from that, I’m about to move when suddenly the mayor of Trinsic comes hustling in from stage left. Iolo introduces him as Finnigan. Finnigan is doubtful that I’m the Avatar at first, but he ultimately relents and asks me to solve the murder that has just occurred. At this point, all my Avatar wants is a quite room and an Advil, but he gamely accepts the quest, which immediately prompts a dialogue with Petre. When can I finally turn off the @#$&ing music!? Not only do I find it repetitive and annoying, I suspect it’s responsible for the fact that the dialogue keeps freezing.

           It’s a choice, but “no” just gets you trapped in town.

           It becomes clear that in fact two people have been murdered: someone named Christopher and a gargoyle named Inamo. After some more dialogue that I miss because the game froze and implemented all my clicks when it un-froze, I finally have control. I turn off the music and save the game, and immediately things start to improve. The first thing I notice is that, with the music gone, there are background noises. I’m a big fan of games that use sound effectively to create a sense of immersion, and ambient sounds are a big part of that. We have a couple of different types of birds chirping in the distance and waves crashing on the shore to the east (Trinsic is a coastal city).

As we discussed last time, the interface has gone almost all-mouse, something I find maddening given that Ultima pioneered the efficient use of the keyboard. You right-click and hold to walk, with walking speed increasing the further you get from the Avatar. You left-click to do almost anything else. Single-left-clicking looks; double-left-clicking talks and uses; clicking and dragging moves and picks up.

           The Avatar’s attributes.

          There are still a couple of useful keyboard shortcuts: “I” to open inventories, “C” to enter and exit combat mode, “S” to save and load, ESC to close windows, and the venerable “Z” to bring up character statistics. It’s here that I found my Avatar has 18 in strength, dexterity, and intelligence. There’s a “combat” statistics for the first time, and I’ve started the game at Level 3 with the ability to train 3 attributes. Iolo is also Level 3 and has about the same statistics.

The inventory has been much discussed. You get an image of your character with lines pointing to slots for left and right hands, legs, armor, boots, gauntlets, rings, helm, neck, missile weapon, cape, and backpack. Ultima VII: Part Two will turn this into a proper “paper doll” screen where the character image itself changes to reflect what’s equipped. For now, you click and drag things in and out of those slots. The Avatar has started with leather boots, leather leggings, leather armor, a dagger, and a backpack.

          The Avatar’s inventory and pack.

           It’s the backpack where things get crazy. You can stuff a lot of things into it (as well as bags and other containers), and the little icons freely overlap. Finding a small object like a key in a backpack full of torches, reagents, documents, and other objects is at least as hard as it would be to find a real key in a real stuffed backpack. Even though it’s been almost 15 years, I remember that the last time I played, I organized items strictly by character–the Avatar has all the quest items; Iolo has all the food, and so forth–so I wouldn’t go crazy.

      So far, it’s not so bad. The Avatar has started with a map, three lockpicks, a torch, 10 gold pieces, a cup, an apple, a bottle of wine, and a bread roll. I don’t think the cup serves any use at all; although a lot of items can be used together in this game, pouring the wine into the cup doesn’t seem to be one of the options.

     All right. Time to explore dialogue. I double-click on Iolo and get six options: NAME, JOB, TRINSIC, STABLES, LEAVE, and BYE. These still aren’t really “dialogue options”; they’re just keywords. And I frankly preferred it when I had to type them myself, then watch for the response to see what other keywords I might use. Now, the keywords just spawn automatically in response to the dialogue. When Iolo tells me that his JOB is adventuring with the Avatar, I get AVATAR as an option. Clicking my way through them all, I learn that Shamino has a girlfriend who works at the Royal Theater in Britain and Dupre, who was recently knighted, is probably in Jhelom. (Have I been knighted? If not, why the hell not?!) Britain has grown to encompass Paws and the castle and dominates the east coast. Lord British will probably want to see me. 

              Dialogue options with Iolo.

              Petre has wandered off somewhere, so I finally enter the stable. This is accomplished via a “remove the roof” interface that I believe was pioneered by Charles Dougherty in either Questron II or Legacy of the Ancients. (I wonder if ORIGIN licensed the “look and feel” of this game element from Dougherty.) The interesting thing about Ultima VII‘s approach is that entering one building removes the roofs of all buildings, so you can see items and people inside adjacent structures even when there’s realistically no way your characters would see into those locations.

Inside the stables is perhaps the most gruesome scene in any RPG so far in my chronology. (Well, no. I forgot about the two Elvira games.) The aforementioned Christopher is lying spread-eagle on the floor, each limb tied to an unspecified “light source,” his body hacked beyond recognition. A nearby bucket is filled with his blood. The gargoyle Inamo is in a back room, pinned to the wall with a pitchfork.

             It’s cool that we’ve reached the point that such complex scenes can be graphically depicted.

            Several tools are strewn around the stables, including a rake, a shovel, another pitchfork, and a pair of tongs. A key lies next to Christopher’s body, and near Inamo is a sack with some bread, a torch, and a few gold pieces. Footprints are all over the dirt floor and head out the rear door. As my character investigates, I’m conscious of how much authentic role-playing I’m now doing. I mean, I already know basically where the plot is going, but I still take the time to go over everything in the stables. I move objects to makes sure nothing is underneath them. I click on things I’m not sure about to get their names. I investigate, realizing as I do so that this is one of the few RPGs up until this point to offer a level of graphical complexity and object interactivity detailed enough to make such an “investigation” possible. This is the future of role-playing in RPGs, I think. Sure, it’s not bad to have dialogue and encounter “options” that let you maintain a consistent characterization or morality, but when the very interface of the game allows you to make decisions consistent with your character, you have something special. Unfortunately, Ultima VII will not only be one of the first games to support this kind of gameplay but also one of the last.

Petre the stablehand wanders in said rear door. He says he’s the one who discovered the bodies. Inamo was apparently his assistant, and lived in the little back room. (Wingless gargoyles, I recall, are less intelligent than their winged brethren and used mostly for manual labor.) Christopher was a blacksmith who made shoes for the horses. Petre assumes the murderer was after Christopher (a logical guess given that his body was the one posed) and that Inamo was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

       We follow the footsteps out back and around the corner, where we soon come to the city gate. The gate is down and a guard patrols the room with the winch. His name is Johnson, and he says when he arrived for his shift, he found the previous guard, Gilberto, unconscious on the ground. This suggests the murderer made his escape through this gate, knocking out poor Gilberto on the way. I’d like to leave the same way and scout the outskirts, but apparently I need a password to leave the city (the manual alludes to this) and I don’t have it. He suggests I ask Finnigan. I do climb up to the city walls and see the docks just beyond the gate. I have to wonder if the murderer didn’t flee via boat or ship.

           No clues this way.

         Finnigan has taken off, so I settle in for a systematic exploration of Trinsic’s streets, starting by heading right out of the stables. I note that double-clicking on the street signs gives me street names, and I’m pleased to find that I can still read the runic writing without a guide. The stable is on Strand. Slightly to the west, we come to (in non-runic writing) the Avenue of the Fellowship and, right in front of us, the Fellowship hall. Might as well get it out of the way. I take a deep breath and enter.

        I’m a little concerned, on a role-playing level, that the Avatar technically hasn’t been exposed to the Book of the Fellowship and thus has no reason to be cautious in his exploration of their hall. This concern is lifted when I find a Book of the Fellowship on a table right in the entryway. I imagine the Avatar reading it, asking Iolo, “What the hell?”, and getting a shrug. 

The only person in the hall is a woman named Ellen, who says she runs the branch with her husband, Klog. She goes through the Fellowship philosophy and suggests that I see Batlin at the Fellowship headquarters in Britain to join. She claims to know nothing of the murder, having been home with Klog all night. I resist the urge to ransack the Fellowship hall and move on.

            Hand-feeding my characters out of the backpack.

           The Avatar complains about being hungry as we leave, so I feed him some bread. This is one of the legendary annoyances of the game. Characters have to be hand-fed throughout the game even though it’s trivially easy to find food–one of several examples of a game element created for want of a true purpose.  

Up the road is the shipwright, Gargan, who offers deeds and sextants, neither of which I can afford. The notepad comes out and the “to do” list begins. Gargan has nothing to offer on the murder.

              I was going to object to the name of the ship, but apparently some eels have scales.

        I note that his house is filled with chests and containers. This is going to be true of a lot of houses in the game. Ultima VI was the first game in which the Avatar had an incentive to steal liberally from such containers, but this game is the first with no karma consequences. Instead of waiting until I have 80 gold pieces to buy a sextant, I can just remove one–and a gold bar besides!–from the pack in Gargan’s bedroom. You can steal things right in front of the occupants–clean out entire stores while the owners stand mute in the center of the room–with no consequences. Well–almost none. Eventually, Iolo starts making some alarmed remarks.

              Stop complaining about how hungry you are, and I won’t have to steal a roast.

          Heck, even the damned Guardian has something to say about it:

           Really? Burglary is where you draw the line?

           And I think maybe Iolo and your other companions leave you if you steal enough. The neat thing is that there’s a real incentive to steal. You start the game broke, and the nature of your mission doesn’t leave a lot of time for extensive wealth-gathering. But I’m going to stick to my tradition of taking my role as the Avatar seriously. I’ll do it the hard way. The sextant and gold bar stay in Gargan’s case.

     I think you get the idea, so we’ll speed things up from here:

             A young woman named Caroline is on the streets recruiting for the Fellowship. She says that they have their meetings at 21:00. It turns out that Christopher was a Fellowship member.

There’s a two-story house on the west side of town with a parrot on the first floor. No one tells me that it’s Christopher’s house, but the key we found with his body opens a locked chest on the second floor. The chest has a Fellowship medallion, 100 gold pieces, and a terse note that says, “Thou hast received payment. Make the delivery tonight.” I take the gold and note.

Markus the trainer runs a store south of Christopher’s house. He offers to train in combat skill. I decline, not having enough money, and forgetting how training works in this game. I’ll revisit it later.

A guy named Dell runs an armory in the southwest part of town. We do find a secret lever that opens a back room stuffed with weapons and armor, but again I decline to steal. I spend 50 gold pieces on a sword to replace my dagger.

In the far southwest part of town, we find the healer. Gilberto is lurking around his shop with a bandage on his head. He didn’t see his attacker, but he did note that The Crown Jewel was at the dock at the beginning of his shift and gone when he woke up from his concussion. He believes it was sailing for Britain.

          Everything seems to be channeling me towards Britain.

          The healer has a copy of The Apothecary’s Desk Reference, which reminds me of the standard Ultima potion colors. Black is invisibility, blue is sleep, orange awakens, purple conveys magic protection, white is light, yellow heals, green poisons, and red cures poison. I think I already had that memorized.

            Visitors from the NetHack universe are suspicious.

        The pub and inn is called the Honorable Hound. The owner and server, Apollonia, openly flirts with me. I buy a bunch of loaves of bread. The inn’s register shows that four people have stayed there recently: Walter of Britain, Jaffe of Yew, Jaana, and Atans of Serpent’s Hold. I suppose the murderers probably didn’t register, but you never know. We spend a night in the inn at the end of all of this.

                There are so few role-playing moments in which “murder” and “flirt” are equally valid dialogue options.

            I find Finnigan at City Hall in the center of town. He relates that he’s been mayor for three years. The Rune of Honor, which used to sit on a pedestal in the center of town, was stolen years ago by someone claiming to be the Avatar. It somehow found its way to the Royal Museum in Britain. Finnigan thinks this is symbolic somehow. The most important information from Finnigan is that he was present in Britain four years ago for a ritualistic murder with similar characteristics.

Finnigan’s office is hidden behind a couple of secret doors. I find them but don’t find anything incriminating in the office.

         This game is a bit odd in that it doesn’t hide secret areas; it just hides the means to access them.

          At 21:00, I peek in on the Fellowship meeting. It consists of Klug shouting the elements of the Triad of Inner Strength while the members shout things like “I believe!” and “I am worthy!” In between, Klug runs around lighting candles and occasionally genuflecting to the Fellowship icon behind the lectern.

                Spark is unmoved by the testimony of Fellowship members.

          The Guardian’s face appears to taunt me as I enter Christopher’s workshop on the south end of town. A boy named Spark–Christopher’s son, which no one bothered to mention–is clutching a sling and running around frantically. He’s supposedly fourteen, but his portrait makes him look about six. Spark tell us that his mother died a long time ago, so now he’s an orphan. The Fellowship had been harassing his father lately, and a week ago Christopher and Klog had gotten into an argument. Christopher had been making something for the Fellowship–something probably stored somewhere in the smithy. Either Christopher was a bit disorganized, or someone has recently tossed the smithy.

           Dick.

             Now that I know Christopher had a son, I feel bad about looting the gold. But Spark offers to give it to me for investigating his father’s murder. He says that he woke up from a nightmare the previous night and went looking for his father, and saw a wingless gargoyle (not Inamo) and a man with a hook for a hand hanging around the stables. He begs to join the party, and I agree. He comes with leather armor and a sling. Honestly, how were the first words out of Iolo’s or Petre’s mouths not, “Christopher has a kid. We’d better go see if he’s okay”?

             I don’t know when Iolo started calling me “milord,” but I confess I don’t hate it.

              Where Christopher is dead and his son is part of the party, I don’t mind taking things from the smithy. We loot about a dozen gold pieces and some clothing items. I try to make a sword by putting a sword blank on the firepit and operating the bellows, but I can’t get the sequence right. I think it’s possible. I don’t find whatever Christopher was making for the Fellowship, unless it was pants or sword blanks.

            Spark, you must have seen your dad do this before.

          My time in Trinsic closes with a return visit to Finnigan, who questions me on all I’ve learned and pays me 100 gold for what I’ve uncovered so far. He puts me through a copy protection exercise before giving me the password to the gates of Trinsic: BLACKBIRD. All signs point to visiting Britain next. We head outside. I find nothing at the docks except the fact (which I’d forgotten) that the developers managed to animate waves crashing on the shore for the first time in an RPG.

            Another first for the Ultima series.

            Continuing a theme started in Ultima V, the developers do a good job making Trinsic feel like a real place. Each resident keeps a schedule, including going to work in the morning, eating or stopping by the Honorable Hound for an evening meal, going to the Fellowship meeting (if a member), and tucking into bed at night. Every NPC has a house with personal belongings. When it gets dark, they light candles in their houses. During the day, they open shutters with comments to themselves like “Too nice a day for these to be closed!” They have brief conversations when they encounter each other. A dog and a cat roam the streets.

This is all admirable, but the problem of course is that this simulation has come so far that we can no longer regard the NPCs and buildings we see as a representative sample of the real number of NPCs in town. They’re clearly the entire population. The fabled city of Trinsic houses 10 people. By modeling daily life in such a realistic way, the developers call attention to the lack of realism inherent in population size. We notice the same problem even in modern games.

             Finnigan won’t let me leave town until I relate what I’ve learned.

           I’m hard-wired to create typologies out of everything, and this is something that needs a typology. Very few games in the 2000s adopt the “old school” model of towns-as-abstractions, which is most obvious in “menu towns” but also exists in games like Ultima II, where the geography of each city is just the broadest lines with the most important places (e.g., shops but no houses). BioWare has adopted what we might call the “matte background” model where the parts of the game that you can explore are just the most important parts, but the graphics suggest unending blocks of additional houses and buildings in the background. They populate the streets with a dozen generic NPCs to every important NPC, cleverly annotating the difference with sharpness of color and other indicators.

      Another model for which we need a name is the Assassin’s Creed/Grand Theft Auto approach where there is a realistic number of buildings throughout the geography, including houses. You just can’t go into most of them; it would take far too much programming time to give them all interiors. The streets are also teeming with generic NPCs with basic AI. It’s far more realistic than, say, one of the cities in Skyrim, but also a little disappointing when there are so many doors you can’t open.

        The Elder Scrolls follows the Ultima VII model. The developers’ philosophy is that you should not only be able to enter every building that you see but also find clothes in the closets and forks on the table. This comes with Ultima VII‘s drawbacks. Which model do you prefer, and can you think of a better approach (or one I didn’t mention at all)?

Time so far: 3 hours

*****

Potential bad news on Planet’s Edge. I’m running into a bug where if I try to beam down to Rana Prime, the game not only freezes but somehow corrupts the files so that I have to fully reinstall the game, start it, create a new save, and then load an old saved game to get my former party back. But then it corrupts again the moment I try to visit Rana Prime. No one else seems to be reporting the same issue, so I’m not sure what to make of it. Rana Prime does seem necessary to finish the game. I’ll keep playing with it; ideas appreciated.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-black-gate-the-c-s-i-effect/

[bazilton]

unfinished x/anl/ow au fic

Inigo is late.

Inigo is late because he’s stupid and forgot that he lives with the piece of shit known as the New York City Subway, and he didn’t realize the C train was diverted until he’d somehow managed to end up in the Upper East Side of all places, which is how he found himself on the A train instead, heading back down to Times Square while frantically texting his cast mates to please don’t let a swing go on in my place, please, I’m almost there, I swear.

His only consolation, at least, is that there’s some eye candy to tide him through the arduous journey. There’s a man sitting across him on the train, tall and blonde and broad-shouldered. Probably some Wall Street type, judging by the expensive-looking suit and even more expensive-looking watch and the fact that he’s dressed for work even though it’s a bright and early Sunday afternoon. But it’s okay, because he has a chiseled jaw and pretty hair and nice eyes, and Inigo lets himself stare openly, because he’s having a shitty day and he deserves this much at the very least, god dammit.

Except without warning Hot-Guy-In-Suit suddenly looks up, and Inigo doesn’t look away in time, and so there’s an awkward moment of sustained eye contact before Inigo finally regains enough presence of mind to drop his gaze. God, that’s embarrassing. He hopes he isn’t blushing. He keeps his eyes fixed to the floor for the rest of the train ride, refuses to look up even when he can see in his peripheral vision that Hot-Guy-In-Suit is looking back at him curiously.

And so when the train finally pulls into 42nd street Inigo doesn’t even hesitate before he grabs his bag and runs, out the train and up the stairs without even a single backward glance. After all, he has a show to catch.

He makes it in time, just barely, signs his name on the cast sheet with one hand holding onto the pen and his other hand braced against the wall while he tries to catch his breath. He receives his fair share of amused looks as he makes his way to his dressing room, and when he opens the door all he can think about is wiping the sweat off his face and getting into costume. Which is why when Owain unexpectedly claps him on the back he nearly jumps right out of his own skin.

“Owain!” Inigo yells. “What the fuck?”

“That should be my line,” Owain replies, slinging his arm over Inigo’s shoulder. “What’s the matter with you? Are you a Broadway star or not?”

“I’m not,” Inigo responds flatly, disentangling himself before dropping his bag soundly on his dressing room table. Owain follows closely behind as he shucks off his jacket and moves over to the costume rack to get dressed.

“Still,” Owain persists. “I can’t believe you actually made it. I thought our production manager was going to burst a blood vessel when she found out you were running late.”

“Yeah, well,” Inigo says absently as he grabs his costume from the rack. “Wouldn’t want to get the swings’s hopes up.” He starts pulling his shirt over his head, any semblance of dignity be damned, because when you’ve been dancing since the age of five, you kind of become desensitized to the idea of seeing your fellow cast mates naked in dressing rooms.

“You live life on the edge, my friend,” Owain says, sighing dramatically. Inigo isn’t looking at him, but he images Owain’s probably clutching his head for dramatic effect. “Fine, fine, I’ll let you change. You’d better hurry up, it’s places soon.”

“Thanks,” Inigo mutters, “I totally needed that reminder.”

Owain snorts before leaving the dressing room, probably to find someone else to bother, shutting the door behind him as he goes. Inigo’s left alone to try and shove himself into a stupid suit and squeeze his feet into a pair of tap shoes as quickly as possible. When he’s done, he looks up and finds himself staring at his reflection in the mirror. He’s still flushed from sprinting to the theater from the train station, and his hair is a mess, and he hasn’t put on any of his stage makeup yet so he looks like an absolute train wreck—but then he reminds himself, I’m on Broadway. I’m in a Broadway show. That’s all I’ve ever wanted since the age of eleven, and here I am now.

And then he straightens up, dusts his shirt off, and smiles.

-

Inigo has been in three Broadway shows, and counting.

He knows he’s lucky—it’s nothing short of a miracle that he’d managed to land a role on Broadway right after graduation. It’s even more of a miracle that he managed to get cast again in another show. And then another one. Sometimes Inigo finds himself struck anew by the magic of it all. He’ll be in the middle of a quick change, or standing in the wings waiting for his entrance, or scrubbing his makeup off at the end of a grueling two-show day, and it’ll hit him all over again just how fucking lucky he is.

And sure, he’s no star. He’s no leading man. But it’s okay. He gets to dance on Broadway eight times a week. And sure, it’d be nice to be a star. But he’s not. He’s a dancer.

And he gets to dance. And that’s more than enough for him.

-

The only thing Inigo loves more than dancing is meeting fans at stage door after a show. No matter how tired he gets he always makes sure to put on his best face afterwards, maneuver his way through selfies with teenage girls and smile while signing Playbills. There are always different types of fans: the seasoned veterans who come bearing vintage merchandise from the original 1954 production, the badly-dressed tourists who look far too excited about everything, the starry-eyed, slack-jawed theatre kids with big dreams and even bigger potential.

Even if the fans aren’t necessarily there for Inigo specifically, even if they don’t know his name, Inigo still loves being able to talk to them, look at their faces, listen to them enthuse about the show. It’s humanizing, in a way—being able to interact directly with audience members. It’s a reminder as to why exactly Inigo does this: the electricity of living in the moment, of knowing that there really is nothing more special than a night at the theatre. And. Well. Inigo also really likes flirting with people at the stage door. It’s fun. He doesn’t care if it’s earned him a bit of a reputation in the Broadway community. It’s harmless, and all the better to make himself memorable, he thinks.

Sometimes, though, there are really awkward stage door encounters.

Stage door starts off perfectly normal that day. Despite almost being late Inigo hadn’t faltered at all throughout the entire show, so he thinks he’s allowed to feel a little bit proud of himself for that. That’s probably why he’s in a particularly good mood as he makes his way down the line, smiles for photos, signs Playbills, says thank you for coming at least fifty different times.

And then he reaches the end of the line, and Hot-Guy-In-Suit is standing right there.

“Oh,” he says.

“Oh,” Hot-Guy-In-Suit says.

“Are the two of you acquainted?” a woman standing next to Hot-Guy-In-Suit asks, looking amused. “I didn’t know you knew anyone in this show, Xander.”

Hot-Guy-In-Suit (Xander? That’s probably his name, right?) turns to her, frowning. “We, ah. Met briefly,” he says.

The woman smiles like she’s just heard a joke no one else understands. Xander’s frown deepens. She turns to Inigo, presses her Playbill into his hands.

“It was a wonderful show,” she says earnestly. “My brother here and I really enjoyed it.”

“Your brother?” Inigo asks, smiling back. He uncaps his sharpie, signs his name on the corner of her Playbill. “And for a moment I wondered if you were already spoken for,” he adds, because he can’t help it.

“Oh, no,” she says, throwing her hair behind her and laughing. “And neither is my brother, just in case you were wondering.”

“Camilla,” Xander hisses under his breath. The tips of his ears are faintly red. It is actually ridiculously endearing. Inigo turns to him, smiles, extends his hand.

“Would you like me to sign your Playbill too?” he asks.

The glare Xander’s been throwing at his sister softens as he turns to look at Inigo. There’s a beat of silence where the both of them just look at each other; then Xander hands his Playbill to Inigo, and Inigo drops his gaze, dutifully signs it. He pauses, considering, and then adds the words for Xander right underneath his autograph for good measure.

“Thank you for coming to the show,” he says, handing the Playbill back to Xander. “I really appreciate it.”

Xander’s eyes widen as he looks at Inigo’s inscription. He looks up again, meets Inigo’s gaze.

“Thank you,” he says. “It really was an incredible show.”

And Inigo gets compliments like that all the time, but somehow he finds himself faintly embarrassed. He hopes he’s not blushing.

“Thank you,” Inigo manages to get out, smiling at Xander and Camilla. “It was nice meeting the both of you,” he says, waving awkwardly, and then excuses himself.

It’s only when he’s halfway through the long train ride home that he says, out loud, “Why the fuck did I do that?”

The girl sitting next to him gives him a weird look. Inigo ignores her.

This is all the New York City Subway’s fault. Fuck hot guys in suits, but most of all, fuck the New York City Subway.

-

Inigo resolves to forget about the whole thing. After all, he’ll probably never see Xander or Camilla ever again unless they come to see the show a second time, which probably isn’t going to happen anyway, so it’s fine. He’ll just never speak or think about it ever again, and it’ll be fine.

Which is why the first thing he does is to tell Severa all about it.

“He was so hot,” Inigo moans, lying down on the floor of the dance studio they’ve rented out for the day. Severa towers over him, looking down at him with her hands on her hips and a look of unmistakable disdain fixed on her face.

“I literally do not care,” Severa says. “At all.”

Inigo sighs. “Why am I even friends with you?”

“I ask myself that question every single day.”

Actually, the real answer to that question is that Inigo, Severa and Owain had all been in the same dance program in college, and they’d been the only tolerable people in a sea of pretentious assholes. They’d stuck together purely out of necessity at first, and then somehow managed to become actual, proper friends, and now here they are today.

Both Owain and Inigo ventured into musical theatre right after graduation. Severa was the only one who ended up applying to dance companies. She’s been with the same one for three years now, some avant-garde up-and-coming modern dance company. It’s small and fairly new, but that has its perks too, because Severa’s been able to choreograph a few pieces of her own and land herself some really impressive solos in the short span of a few years. Honestly, she’s probably the most successful of the three of them. Inigo’s really proud of her, although he’d rather die than admit it out loud.

Which is how they’ve ended up here today, bumming around in a rented studio space in the middle of SoHo on a Monday afternoon.  She’d dragged him over to help her out with a new dance she’s choreographing, and Inigo agreed because he’s a good friend, but. Well. There are more pressing matters on his mind right now.

“You don’t understand, Severa,” he groans. “He was… he’s so…”

“And so your instinctive response was to flirt with his sister?”

“Look, I never said I make good decisions when it comes to matters of romance—”

“Good, because if you ever said that, it would be an outrageous fucking lie.”

“Okay, now that’s a little bit harsh—”

“Do I need to bring up your latest ex again?”

“Listen, Peri wasn’t that bad—”

“She had hair like a Harley Quinn cosplay attempt gone wrong and ran a blog on Tumblr where she photoshopped flower crowns onto serial killers.”

Inigo opens his mouth, and then shuts it again.

“Point,” he says at last. Severa just rolls her eyes at him.

“Inigo,” she says, using her patented I’m-trying-to-be-patient-here-but-you’re-a-complete-fucking-idiot voice. “You made a fool out of yourself in front of one hot guy that you’re never going to see again. Big deal. Just move on. They invented Tinder for a reason.”

“I just want to add that I met Peri through Tinder.”

Severa kicks the back of Inigo’s head. He whines, sitting up and rubbing at the bruised spot while putting on the most betrayed look he can muster.

“Look,” she says. “I didn’t call you here so you could complain to me about how single you are, okay? Are we going to dance or not?”

Inigo thinks he could probably argue, but then decides it’s not worth it. He gets up, dusting off his clothes and turning to Severa with a grin.

“After you,” he says. Severa shoots him a glare, but slowly, it softens into a smile.

“Alright,” she begins, already turning towards the mirrors. “So I was thinking…”

-

Inigo walks out of that dance session with Severa feeling a lot better than before. In the following week he recklessly swipes right on Tinder, does a full eight shows with only very minor hiccups, signs a bunch of Playbills, and goes on a date that doesn’t end with his dismembered body being flung into the Hudson River. All in all, it’s a pretty good week.

So on Tuesday afternoon he finds himself running to the nearby Starbucks after a matinee show, ready to grab a cup of coffee. He has a couple of errands to run before heading back for the evening show, and he’s preoccupied with thinking about how long it’ll take for him to get back to his apartment and whether or not he’ll have to time to drop by SoHo and say hello to Severa for a bit. Which is probably why he doesn’t notice he’s about to walk into someone until he quite literally runs into them headfirst.

“Shit,” he says. “I’m so sorry—”

And then he looks up and sees Xander staring right back down at him.

Severa’s voice echoes in his head. You’re never going to see him again, she said.

Clearly, Severa is a complete fucking liar.

What are the odds? he thinks. This is quite literally the worst day of his entire life.

“Are you okay?” Xander says, breaking the silence.

“What? Oh.” Inigo realizes he’s still standing way too close. He takes a step back, blinks rapidly until he feels like he’s at least somewhat capable of rational thought again. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m fine! Are you okay? I’m sorry, I should’ve looked where I was going—”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Xander says.

More silence.

Shit.

“So what are you doing in the area?” Inigo asks, and then winces. Smooth, Inigo, he thinks. Real smooth.

“I had a meeting nearby,” Xander replies, and well. He’s still standing there, holding a cup in one hand and a suitcase in the other. And he’s not running away in the opposite direction, which is. A good sign, right?

“Sounds riveting,” Inigo says, and Xander smiles. Inigo’s heart does not flutter at the sight of it. It does not.

“As riveting as a business meeting can possibly be, I suppose,” Xander says.