#I have another one of these I wanna post that I fear skates too close to my genuine interest in the real historical joseph pulitzer | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

heyheydidjaknow · 4 years ago

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I would’ve posted this earlier but, alas, I passed out early. This is a longer one, but tumblr got its act together so I can post it all in one part. You guys know where the other chapters are, and if you don’t, they’re at the end of the chapter. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go eat straight Nutella.

Chapter 10

“I’m thinking about getting some gloves.”

He looks over at you as he laces up his skates. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you nod, smiling slightly to yourself as you look your hands over, trying to imagine what they would look like. “Like, badass, fingerless gloves.”

He smiles. “Dude, those would look metal as fuck.”

“Totally, right?” Your smile widens. “With studs and shit.”

He gets to his feet, hopping onto the ice. “Hell yeah.” He drops a puck to assault as you go back to your backed-up coursework the best you can—your handwriting has gone to hell, but you are working with what you have.

You flinch at the crack of his stick, the cross of the T ending up underneath the letter somehow. A cheer from Casey tells you the rubber cylinder’s fate.

‘I swear I learned this.' You squint at the basic algebra, the pencil, crudely held in your fist, hovering over the packet. ‘Why can’t I do this?’

“How’s your pile coming along?” Another crack.

“It’s comin’.” You run your fingers through your hair. “Just… trynna remember how to do ne—… subtraction.” ‘Not debate. Negating is debate.’

He laughs. Another crack. “Man, that thing really fucked you over, huh?”

“Thoroughly.” You decide against continuing to torture yourself, having been at it for the past five hours—most of it in the library before Casey invited you to watch him practice some more— and set the large stack of homework back in your bag. “Are you actually making the shots?”

“Casey Jones doesn’t miss shots.” Another crack.

“Pardon me, oh almighty king of the ice.” You stand on your good leg, grabbing the side of the wall to watch as he went back to collect his pucks.

You two have managed to bond over a mutual respect/love of heavy metal and hockey and, seeing as you are staying out of the Hamatos’ hair for a while—not upon request, but out of courtesy—you have managed to spend a lot more time with him than you may have otherwise. Your school has not assigned Biology any big projects yet, so, until you are assigned it, you do not have anything other than your health to stress about.

“Pardon accepted.” You watch his form as he performs another slap shot.

“You…” you trail off, trying to remember what you were going to say.

“What?”

You shrug. “Dunno.” You lean your head on your arms. “I’ll remember eventually.”

He drops the second puck. “Got any plans after this?”

You sigh. “Nope. Probably gonna head home and try not to cut my fingers making dinner again.”

He takes another shot. “Then let’s go out after this. You and me.”

You smile. “What, don’t have any plans either?”

“Nah.” He drops the third. “Dad doesn’t care if I’m home late anyway.”

“True, true.” You have decided against prying into his home life; it is not your place and does not concern you in the slightest. “Where do you wanna go?”

“Wanna catch a movie? Heard there was this new pizza place just a couple blocks down if you wanna try to sneak it in.”

You snicker. “In the box and all?”

“Yes.” He grins mischievously and hits this one off the walls. Some way, somehow, it still makes it into the goal. “I bet your sweatshirt is big enough to stick the box under.”

You stick your tongue out at him. “Not in the mood for burns on top of scars, Jones,” you reprimand him teasingly. “That just ain't it.”

“Then you can wear mine under that one and—”

“Your sweat-soaked hoodie you’ve been practicing in all day?” You cringe at the thought. “Over my dead body.”

“I mean…” he licks his teeth, smile widening, “it’s not exactly like you’re in the best—”

You laugh. “So not cool!”

He puts his hands up in defense, gliding over. “I mean, am I wrong, though?”

“That is completely besides the point, you ass.” You balance on your foot, crossing your arms. “Damn. Making fun of the girl with the broken leg.”

He leans against the wall. “Man, you were dying before the crash.”

You roll your eyes. “Alright, whatever, Jones.” You lean against your hand. “How’s Johanna,” you sing.

He presses his hand against your face, pushing you away. “Annie is doing fine.”

You grin, steadying yourself on the wall. “Do you feel her, Johanna?”

“I’m gonna tell her you call her that if you don’t quit it.”

“Do you think that walls can hide her? Even when you’re at her window?”

He pushed his arm all the way out. You hop back.

“Her name isn’t even Johanna.”

“But she is Johanna,” you whine in protest, not bothering to hide your mirth. “She has the hair, the voice, the disposition. She’s an ingénue and you know it.” You have been teasing him about this for a while now: the girl in question—Annabelle Halshaw, a year below you two—had caught his eye when he had heard through the grapevine that she was the lead singer in some indie band. When he had shown you a picture and told you the story, you insisted on calling her Johanna for her golden hair and soft, sweet singing voice he had proudly had you listen to.

“She’s not.”

You roll your eyes, sitting back down as you grab your bag. “Lie to yourself all you want,” you goad, “but deep down, you know in your heart that the truth,” you put a finger up, “is apparent.”

He hops off the ice, sitting next to you as he unlaces his skates. “Whatever.” He smirks. “How’s The Don?”

You avert your gaze. “I haven’t seen ‘im.”

“Boo.” He tied the laces together. “Some girlfriend you are,” he ribs.

You go red. “Not my boyfriend. Not even friends with benefits.”

“Yeah, sure.” He sets the skates into his bag. “That’s why you already know his family.”

“That—”

“And why you’ve had him over to your place.”

“If you don’t cool your tits, I’m telling Lucy you’re crushing on her friend.”

“Don’t you dare!”

“What,” you simper, “think I won’t?”

He grabs his bag. “If you do, I’ll show her that video.”

You laugh, following him out of the rink. “You’re the worst.” You note how strange it is that he spent so little time on the ice as you two walk out, but you do not say anything about it.

“Hey, you’re the one throwing threats around.”

“Yeah,” you argue, “but my threat is clearly better.”

He rolls his eyes, pushing you again.

You two keep chatting on the way to the theatre about anything and everything, from new bands to upcoming games to the newest blockbuster horror movies. You are not personally on the hockey team, but, as his friend, it is your duty to care. Besides, you figure, it gives you something to look forward to.

The movie is fine. You convince him against sneaking an entire pizza in, you split a bucket of popcorn, and you give him shit for getting freaked out by the disembowelment scene. It is payback for him teasing you about crying during the last movie you two went to a couple of days ago.

You two stand at the streetlight.

“Dude, it’s like eight,” he groans. “It’s not even late.”

“True,” you agree. “Counterpoint: I still have another week’s worth of work to do by Friday on top of the homework I’ll have to do anyway, so unless you wanna help—”

“Forget I asked.” He pulls his hood up against the autumn wind. “Need me to walk you back?”

“Nah.” You shrug. “If someone mugs me, they’ll give me an excuse to not do my homework.”

“Murdered?

“I’m already halfway there.”

He grins. “See ya tomorrow, Y/N.”

“See ya, Jones.” You wave as he runs off.

The walk home is quiet and considerably easier than it was a couple of weeks ago. Seeing as you now get queasy whenever you get into a car, you have been limited to taking the subway and walking, which, among other things, has contributed positively to your physical strength. You know that you should probably at least try to take the bus or a cab around town to build your tolerance up, but the last time you tried, you had almost tripped and fallen from how shaky your legs were getting out. Oddly enough, you note as you go through the door, you do not have a considerably larger fear of heights than you did before, or of fire, but cars were tripping you up, even though you were the one that crashed it. You feel thankful that, at least, you do not think your fear is crippling. At least, you reason, you can still get into the car.

You lock the door behind you, debating whether you feel like adding to the collection of cuts you now possess— they are self-inflicted, but not intentionally so; you stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the fact that you physically cannot use your hands to cut things. You decide against it tonight, tossing your bag on the bed as you sprawl across it, admittedly exhausted. You allow yourself a couple of seconds with your eyes closed before you pull yourself up with a groan and get back to work.

A part of you wishes that you had the physical energy to stay out longer. You are always trying to find excuses not to sleep, and although the mountain of homework and readjusting your timelines for things you missed is certainly one way to keep yourself preoccupied, it is not exactly what you would consider fun. Then again, reliving your greatest traumas while you sleep is not exactly fun either.

You catch yourself peeling at the newly applied bandages on your fingers, fingernails catching under the crudely applied adhesives. Applying bandages properly requires more dexterity and patience than you currently possess, and you are hardly going to ask someone else for help with something as stupid as that. You have lasted this long without needing too much help. People can live by themselves. You will live, probably. Well? Not your concern.

‘I should eat something.’ Your eyes strain to focus on the piece of paper in front of you, your mind wandering aimlessly as you try to impress the actual importance of finishing this upon yourself, but you find that is an insurmountable feat.

You drop your bag off the side of the bed, reaching down and pulling your shoe off, leaning back into your pillows, the weight of the day practically immobilizing you. Fumbling hands switch the lamp off, bathing your room in momentary, blissful darkness before the gravity of your decision sets in.

“Alright, me,” you breathe to yourself. “What’s it gonna be today? My folks? Bradford? What’s his face? Hell,” you chuckle, “why not all three? I’m sadistic enough, I’m sure.”

You close your eyes. “Give me your worse,” you challenge as you slip into unconsciousness.

Two weeks.

He had kept his distance for about two weeks. It was not as if he did not care or was not morbidly curious what the crash had done to you—his glances through the curtains did not tell him much-- but, after some debate, he had figured you needed time to recuperate before you would want his company. Two weeks, he figured, would be enough time for you to get back on your feet or, at least, for you to start wanting company.

His excuse to see you had come in the form of his brother’s newfound prideful boasting. Feigning insult was as good an excuse as any to go see you; after all, he just so happened to be in the neighborhood anyway, and it was normal to pop in to see someone if you were already just a couple blocks down, right? Sneaking away was easy enough—they would not mind his absence—and he, after much prep work, knew exactly how and why he was going to say the things he would to get in your good favor. The plan, he knows, would have gone swimmingly.

His plans seem asinine when he hears you crying.

His brothers do not cry much. He does not, either; it was a habit that they had all thoroughly bullied themselves out of when they were much younger and, if they still did, he knew nothing of it. His master did not encourage this, per se, but talked, then, frequently about the importance of maintaining a more stoic disposition and not allowing emotions to cripple you in battle. Practically, Donatello was satisfied with that explanation, having not properly cried for more than a year now. To hear the sound again, especially coming from you, was novel.

Novel, too, is how you are crying. The sound is less of actual sobbing and more of you being strangled, quiet gasps for air escaping your lips as you shake on the bed, curled in on yourself and clutching at your chest as if whatever pain you are experiencing is centered and can be relieved by something between your collarbones. His eyes, for the first time, trace the lines on your skin, your sleeves riding up your arms to reveal them to him, tears racing down and along the gash in your face. Everything about the scene, from the soft gasping of panic to your position to the heavy scarring, is completely foreign to him, rivaled only by one or two particularly hard nights when he and his brother were much younger.

He slides in through the window, leaning onto the bed. His fingers flick your lamp back on as he grabs your shivering shoulder tightly, shaking you awake as he mumbles words of encouragement. He is not sure if his help will be appreciated, if snapping you out of it was even what he is supposed to do in this situation, but now is not the time to think of that. You are in pain. He can offer you this kindness. “Wake up,” he pleads, not thinking of how this would look until your eyes snap open to look at him.

Immediately, the reality of the situation sets in, and he scrambles off the bed. ‘Why did I think that would be a good idea?’ Panic. ‘You just walked into her room like a fucking creep. See, now she’s going to—’

“Sorry.”

He blinks, looking up at you from his place on the floor. “Huh?”

You clear your throat, wiping the tears from your eye with your sleeve quickly as you bring your knees to your chest, voice hoarse. “Sorry,” you repeat. “That you… I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for, but I know I should be apologizing.”

He is completely dumbfounded.

Your eyes glance to the open window. “I should probably start closing and locking my window, right?” You rub the back of your neck, voice clearing the longer you talk. “It didn’t occur to me since I’m so high up, but if you guys can get in, The Foot can too, right?”

‘Why is she apologizing?’

You push the hair out of your face. ‘You need something, right? I—uh—need to stop saying ‘right’ so much.” You shake your head to clear it. “’ Sup?”

He hears himself mumble some bullshit out about being in the neighborhood.

You sigh. “Sorry.” You close your eyes. “I’m usually up later; I’ve been so tired lately.”

‘Is she serious right now?’ He is completely lost. ‘She was just crying her eyes out in her sleep and now she’s apologizing? Did I miss something?’ You are smiling now, eyes still bloodshot, as if the whole thing is a figment of his imagination, still shivering where you sit.

He rises to his feet, kneeling in front of you on the bed. “What was it about?”

You blink, seemingly confused. “Huh?”

“Your nightmare,” he clarifies. “You were crying. What was it about?”

You avert eye contact. “Nothing too crazy,” you shrug. “Just about the crash. Nothing too exciting.” If possible, he thinks the bags under your eyes are worse than the last time you saw him.

He takes your hands loosely, turning them palms up to look, for the first time, at the patchwork quilt that is now your skin. “What happened in it?” He runs his thumb along the lines, keeping his voice low; he remembers how that used to help when Mikey used to have fits when they were younger. Leonardo and Raphael were never good at that; they took better to being more violently snapped out of their moods, but, then again, they never had this kind of breakdown; theirs were always more driven by loathing, self or otherwise.

You pause, still not looking him in the face as your muscles relax. He remembers, vividly, how he had done something similar when you two had first met, how much better, health-wise, you looked. ‘How long has it been since then? Three months? A little less?’

You take a deep breath. “Just… family shit,” you mumble, eyelids drooping as you trace his frame loosely. “Fire.”

Your gaze is piercing as you finally look at him properly. He feels something catch in his throat as you bow your head.

“It’s my fault, you know.” Your voice is so soft, barely a whisper. “That they’re dead, I mean.”

The air is a suffocating blanket that smothers you both.

“I never told you, did I?” Your focus does not shift as it might have a bit ago. It is locked solely and intensely on him, taking in every detail of his expression. “How I died? How they died? Why I died?”

Hesitantly, he shakes his head. He thinks it best to just be quiet and let you talk. He does not think he has ever heard anyone speak in quite the same tones, ever looked at him quite the same way you are.

You take another breath. “I wanted to try my hand at baking.” You force your eyes to stay focused on his. “I was—still am—not good about sleep. I always slept bad, and never at the right times. I used to take pills for it, to try to get myself back on track.”

He sees where this is going.

“I thought I could still stay up as late as I was used to.” You glance to the side, stealing yourself a second before focusing back on the boy in front of you. “I sat down in my room, turned on a movie. I set a timer. I fell asleep.” You swallow, hands shaking in his. “I can’t smell well, either. I must not have smelled the burning.” Your lips curl in a bitter smile. “Sure as fuck felt it, though, when I woke up.”

He lets you finish.

You try to blink the tears out of your eyes. “They were asleep,” Your voice rises ever so slightly. “I fell asleep at two something. I woke up when they started yelling.” You purse your lips, face reddening in shame as your nostrils flair. “They were trying to get someone out of bed when the roof caved in above them. My door got blocked.”

You feel yourself smile.

“So,” you strain not to cry, “that, Donatello, is why I’m here and why I’m dead, and why I really do deserve to burn again.” You laugh. “Hell, my body count is rivaling some serial killers, so that’s… that’s certainly something.”

He lets go of your hands, face blank.

You lean forward, placing your hands on your knees. “I don’t blame you,” You wipe a wayward tear out of your eyes, trying to swallow the frog in your throat. “Fuck, man, I’d think less of me, too, if it were me.” You nod towards the window. “I get it if you want to leave, but I thought you might want to know why—”

He stops you mid-sentence, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you to him.

Your arms lay slack at your sides as you try to process what is happening.

He does not say a word.

You break.

You burry your face into him, tears welling in your eyes as you let out a strangled sob. You hold onto him tightly as you struggle to breathe, body shaking as you wrap your own arms around him the best you can. The sound roars in your ears like thunder, the deafening quiet of the apartment punctuated only by your own cries. He gently holds you there, resting his head on top of yours. Each sound you make sounds as though you are physically being choked by your guilt, and his chest feels as though it is being crushed by an invisible hand as he listens to your pain.

Neither of you knows how long you stay like that.

He considers telling you a story from a long time ago, about some training he and his brothers had back then, but thought better of it; he does not want to upset you any more than you already are, and being in good company with someone like him may not be exactly what you need right now. Granted, he does not know what you do need, but he knows listening to him talk about bashing brains would not help your sensibilities any.

Instead, he stays quiet.

You pull away after a while, wiping your face off again as you mumble out an apology.

“Don’t apologize.” He clears his throat. “It’s good to cry; it releases endorphins.”

You smile at that. “Well,” you giggle tearfully, “if it releases endorphins.”

He smiles back, face flushing. You look good, he thinks, even with your face all red. He knows that, scientifically, there is probably a reason, but he cannot think of it right now.

He stands up. “I’ll get—”

You grab his hand tightly.

He looks back at you.

“Can I ask a favor?”

He blinks. “Of course,” he agrees easily. “Anything.”

You glance off. “Promise not to take it weird?”

He feels his heart rate increase. “Y-yeah,” he nods.

He feels you pull him gently back on the bed. “Can you stay here tonight?”

His eyes widen as they flicker between the mattress and you. “What,” he clarifies breathlessly, “like sleep with you?”

You nod.

“In the same bed?”

You hesitate, nod again.

He clears his throat, face heating again. “Like, actually?”

“If it wasn’t actually, I wouldn’t ask, would I?” You grip his hand tightly. “I just really don’t want to be alone tonight.”

‘Oh.’ He mentally kicks himself. ‘She’s scared. Don’t make her uncomfortable.’

“It’s alright if you don’t—”

He is extremely quick to reassure you that he is more than happy—‘Bad choice of wording.’—to stay tonight until you fall asleep, but that he would not stay the whole night as to not worry his brothers.

You nod in agreement. “That’s fine.” You rub the back of your neck. “Not sure I would be good company when I wake up, anyway; I still have class.”

“Oh, right.” He nods in understanding, pushing himself further onto the bed. “Which side…?”

You shrug. “Which way do you face?”

“I usually lie on my stomach.”

“Then it doesn’t matter.” You slide your sweatshirt over your head after a bit of squirming around, tossing it onto the couch.

His face is now scarlet. “Okay then,” he mumbles, laying down on the side away from the window. ‘Is she going to—no, stop that.’

You look over at him, face down on the mattress. You can almost feel the heat coming off him. “Are you alright there, buddy?”

He nods.

You shrug, laying down under the blanket and curling into him, facing the window. “Mind getting the light?”

He reaches over, clicking it off.

You sigh in content, turning to face him, teetering on the edge of the mattress. “I’m not venomous,” you inform him teasingly. “I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: of the two of us, you should not be the one who’s a nervous wreck.”

“You dunno that.” His voice is muffled by the bed.

“You’re the strong one,” you argue.

“So?” He turns his head to look at you. “I’m the guy laying in the—I’m just gonna stop that sentence.”

“It’s only bad if it isn’t consensual.” You smile reassuringly. “I invited you to lay with me, right? So, unless I make you uneasy, then we’re all good.”

He breaks eye contact. “So,” he clarifies, “you don’t mind if I move closer to you?”

You shake your head.

He hesitantly slides himself further onto the bed. “Can I move closer than this?”

“You’ve already seen me bawl my eyes out. You’re doing me a service. Move as close or as far as you want.”

He moves to press his side against you. “Is this fine?”

You nod. “Look, how about this?” You rest your arm under your head. “If you do something I’m uncomfortable with, the safe word is pina colada.”

‘We already have a safe word?’ He was not sure if he is on cloud nine or just terrified of you.

You are very confused why he looks so warm. “Do you need me to turn the AC on?”

He shakes his head. “I’m good,” he assures you tightly. Slowly, he reached an arm out and over your waist, pulling you closer. You do not seem to resist in any way, wrapping your good leg around one of his to pull him closer.

‘Conscious touching.’ He glances down at you, trying to act cool. ‘Conscious, intentional touching. She smells so nice and she feels—okay, this is not going to work if you keep being a perv.’

“Thanks,” you mumble, humming softly. “I appreciate this more than you know.”

Cloud nine. Definitely on cloud nine.

“Every time.”

You giggle.

He blinks. “What?”

“Every time,” you note, already nodding off. “Like in that book.”

‘Which one?’ “They wrote it down for a reason, right?” The longer he spends like this, the smoother he feels.

“Totally.” You smile, closing your eyes. “Just know that this goes both ways, alright? If you ever need help like this, you know who to call.”

This is new. ‘Help like this? What, like crying?’ His eyebrows furrow as he tries to understand what you mean. ‘Or he means if I ever need company in my—what did I just say?’

You pick up on his confusion. “Emotional help, I mean.” Your fingers trace the indentations in his shell absentmindedly. “I mean, I know sometimes I didn’t want to go to my family about stuff. I dunno if you have that…” you trail off, realizing that you might be unintentionally bashing his brothers. You sincerely do not want to blow this.

“I mean,” he says after a bit, “I think I get what you’re talking about.” He sighs. “You mean stuff that they’d make fun of me for, right?”

You nod.

He feels his heart melt a little. “I’ll have to take you up on that.”

You forgot how safe he makes you feel. “Goodnight, Donnie,” you mumble sleepily.

“Goodnight, Y/N.”

You pass out not long after that. If he has to estimate a general amount of time, he will clock it in at about five minutes. He does not move, however, until about thirty minutes before sunrise, too busy listening to the sound of your breathing and memorizing how exactly your body feels next to his. As he slips out of the window, early morning air waking him back up completely, he wonders if, someday, he could stay to see you wake up next to him. Not out of necessity, but just because you both wanted to stay like that for a while more.

‘I hope so. It’s a nice dream to have, anyhow.’

Table of Contents

Chapter 9

Chapter 11

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littlestarlost · 4 years ago

Text

what happened.

All this hunger is Always following us Out where we survive under poisonous skies They’re dreaming, but nobody’s sleeping Just coked hearts speeding See all the gold teeth gleaming See all the young, healthy free men Just move into nothing

(CW: discussion of mental health, trauma, PTSD)

A version of this post has been sitting in my drafts folder for ten months. I know this, because I originally began to write it around late January, just in time for the one-year mark to have passed since I’d last updated Setting Sun. When I posted that most recent update, I had just turned 30 years old, and I promised that it would not be another year before the next update. I wanted, so badly, for that to be true. In hindsight, it’s honestly better that I failed to keep that promise; I fear it might have exacerbated the damage that’s already been done, and made the healing process that much harder.

It’s been nearly two years. I want to talk about what happened.

I first began to write about Yuuri Katsuki and Victor Nikiforov because I recognized myself so keenly in them; Yuuri’s high-achieving anxiety and imposter syndrome, and Victor’s quietly functional depression. When I found YOI, I was in grad school; I was winning awards, the top of my class, and utterly terrified that it was all a sham. Being able to channel those emotions through these characters helped me realize my own greatness, to embody it and walk with confidence and bravado. It allowed me to go into my post-degree job search with my head held high, trusting that all the lessons I had learned would lead me to professional success. Yuuri and Victor walked through life with me, two shadows of my own psyche, two people who helped me understand myself.

The first few months of the job were fine. Then things became less than fine, and then continued to descend into the kind of mundane nightmare that only multinational corporate legal firms could manifest. Setting Sun, a story about love and self-acceptance and joy, began to twist around in on itself. I don’t want to go into detail, but suffice to say that I spent nearly two years being gaslit and abused, told I was worthless, constantly having panic attacks as I desperately tried to exert control over things that were way over my head. My body betrayed me; I was in so much pain I couldn’t walk, so stressed I couldn’t bring myself to eat unless I’d smoked weed to calm the nausea. I began to believe that I had peaked in grad school, that I was fooling myself, that I was going to be trapped in that cubicle for the rest of my life, doing grunt work without challenge or interest, in the kind of workplace where you get reported to HR for sighing too loudly. That is a thing that actually fucking happened to me; nobody asked why I might be sighing, and nobody stopped by to check in when I spent most days in tears. This was a place where less than half the people in the room put up their hands when asked if they had ever been creative as kids. This was a place where I almost never got to see the sun.

Because I was massively overqualified and even more massively underworked, I spent a lot of 2018 writing fanfic--my zine pieces, my zutara pieces, all sorts of creative things. I also began to write horror AUs; two stories, in particular, gained a fair amount of traction on this particular platform. When I look back now, I see them for the coping mechanisms that they were; in the case of the crossroads AU, where Yuuri is willing to sell his soul to the devil just to escape his commute, it wasn’t even particularly subtle. I poured all my energy into creative pursuits; it’s been my outlet my whole life, and for a while it helped. By the time I hit the SCP-9874 AU, I burned out so profoundly and utterly that it destroyed my relationship to YOI and cauterized the pieces. SCP-9874 was one of the most creative things I’ve ever done, but it also involved what is, in hindsight, a shocking level of violence and horror inflicted on these characters who were such a close part of me. I was doing this to them because I was hurting, all the time. I now recognize it as the cry for help that it was, and to this day I fantasize about taking down all the SCP-9874 posts and excising that portion of my legacy as much as possible.

I wrote Setting Sun’s 21st chapter in honour of my 30th birthday, in late January of 2019. Somehow, at the time, I didn’t realize how rough it was. How much it implied about me and how I was doing. How much it reflected the true extent of the damage I was suffering. I left Victor and Yuuri in an abandoned apartment with more questions than answers and more regrets than they or I had ever thought possible, and I thought, somehow, that this was a good turning point. Little did I know at the time that the worst was still to come.

I was able to finally escape that toxic office last October, when I found a new job that paid nearly double and was everything I wanted to do in life and more. But Yuri on Ice hurt too much to think about, even as time marched forward and I began to heal. I had PTSD flashbacks to the old office; I dealt with echo upon echo of terror that everything would fall away to reveal I was trapped in the same old nightmare again. In January 2020, I actually took a few days off for my birthday and reread Setting Sun from the beginning, and I’d somehow forgotten how funny it is, how sweet it is, how hopeful. I had completely forgotten; it had been burned away by twenty months of agony. That realization hurt more than all the other ones put together, I think. I had a good long cry over that.

Fast forward to now, and people have started to find Setting Sun again. They’ve found it on and off in the months since I updated, and for a very long time I would read the truly lovely comments people wrote--thanking me for writing it, hoping I’d come back someday, wishing me well wherever I was--and I would dissolve into tears because I just...couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to go back to this story that I could no longer recognize myself in. And nowadays, when new commenters come, I will warn them about that last chapter I wrote, because I can recognize it as the outlier it is.

But something has very recently changed.

I couldn’t necessarily tell you exactly what. Maybe it’s that I passed the one-year mark at my new job, and the last of the poison has finally been excised. Maybe it’s because I’m looking at all my writing with new eyes as I prepare to try doing this for a living. Maybe it’s because it’s 2020, and the rules aren’t really relevant anymore. I don’t know. But I can say that, two weekends ago, I opened Setting Sun, and realized that it didn’t seem impossible anymore. I realized that the boys had been through more than enough. We’ve been through more than enough. We deserve the happy ending I always planned to give them, going back four whole years when I first planned out this massive weird tale.

It’s been a very long time. It’s been exactly long enough.

I can’t promise exactly when the final chapter of Setting Sun will arrive. I’m walking back onto previously thin ice, and my footsteps are more than a little hesitant, so as not to cause any undue cracks. But I can remember the joy and humour and fun again; I can conceive of jokes and silliness and sweetness again. My playlist is filling up again, with songs of hope and love instead of anguish and sorrow. The Yuuri and Victor who sit inside my heart are skating; the music is carrying them, the wind is rushing past their ears, their feet feel light again and they want to jump and take flight and make beautiful things.

I have bookended this post with lyrics from a song that’s been on the maybe list for Setting Sun for nearly as long as Setting Sun has existed. It’s a song I love quite profoundly, a song that means a lot to me personally, but I could never manage to make it fit. It’s a song about running away to the big bright city, about being broken on the world’s wheel, and about realizing you just want to go home. It’s a song that’s ostensibly about the tragedy of this process, but right now I’m sitting at my desk, listening to the line I, I, I wanna go back, back, back, back, with grateful tears running down my face, and I’m realizing that it’s not part of Yuuri’s story, nor Victor’s; it’s part of mine. Home may never be the same as when you left, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t waiting for you with open arms.

So that’s what happened.

Put my body on a wagon And carry me off to the ocean Let me float on into the eastern sun Out where tomorrow has just begun Where I used to be wild, back in my time Now I just fight to sleep at night So render me up into the elements Lay me in a light that I can trust Lay me in a light that I can trust Lay me in a light that I come from...

(Gold Teeth, by Hey Rosetta!)

#personal #yuri on ice #writing #minimally edited

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sparkywanderer · 4 years ago

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Parallels in SK8 The Infinity: Why Renga will (probably) get a happy ending

So uh. I had a ton of thoughts after the recent episode. So I wrote a thing about parallels and stuff and not gonna lie it’s kinda long (I get sidetracked like 5 times and have not edited this to be concise so it’s really bad???). Here it is, though, if you would like to read my rambling anyway!

Spoilers for Episode 8

Sk8 really likes its parallels. Whether it be how many times it likes to group Langa and Adam together as the “talented ones” or equals or whatever, or how the writers put Cherry/Joe and Adam’s separation with Langa and Reki’s in episode 7 practically back-to-back, it’s clear that they’re all tied up together in some specific way. Not only that, but Miya’s story of losing his friends due to his skateboarding talents rings eerily similar situation-wise to how Reki isolates himself from Langa due to the latter’s talents (though of course there are major differences and such, but other posts could probably explain way better than me so let’s ignore that for now).

Episode 8 adds another parallel to the mix with the reveal that Tadashi actually taught Adam skateboarding in the first place, because well, guess who taught Langa skateboarding? Guess who else enables the skateboarding of someone else, in Tadashi’s case handling Adam’s other work as a secretary and driving him in/out of S, and in Reki’s case building a skateboard for Langa? And not only that, but guess who else is compared to a dog (albeit more for the sake of a bet than anything)? Think back to the whole bet with Miya.

(I think there’s a manga panel that shows that Langa sorta thinks of Reki as similar to one too, but I’m too lazy to find it tbh)

Tadashi and Adam’s relationship is still a little unclear from episode 8, so there definitely could be more of these parallels, but what we do know is this: these are both pairs that were very, very close, sharing a mutual love for skateboarding, before eventually drifting apart as one became far more engrossed in the sport than the other to the point of danger. The writers portray this through Langa’s incredibly high speeds in Episode 7, and the flashbacks of Adam getting into highly dangerous situations with other people which cause them to get badly injured. Both of them don’t fear the thrill of this wild style of skateboarding, enjoy it even, while others like Reki, Cherry Blossom and Joe clearly do-- setting them apart as similar people, as Adam remarks. Langa mirrors Adam and Reki mirrors Tadashi, which bleeds into their equally mirrored relationships.

Going more in depth on Reki and Tadashi specifically, both of them are not the best at communicating their feelings. In Reki’s case, he bottles up all of his doubts and anxieties about his relationship with Langa until they eventually culminate into one scene and force them apart. In Tadashi’s, he doesn’t stand up against Adam’s father about letting him continue to skateboard even when he clearly wishes to. They’re different, of course, but both of them are clearly the type to put a mask over how they actually feel: in Reki’s case with an “It’s nothing!”, and in Tadashi’s case with an “I have no opinions”.

(One of the few times smiling Reki brings me Suffering instead of serotonin)

But what’s the point of this all? What’s the point of drawing out all these random connections between Adam and Langa, and Tadashi and Reki? The purpose isn’t showing the similarities, but the differences. Given everything that’s similar, it’s a lot easier to see what’s distinct, and in my opinion that is what will ultimately set these two relationships apart.

Because here’s the thing: Langa actually cares about Reki. Even if they’re so different in terms of skateboarding skill level (which is not necessarily true, but that’s a whole other thing), Langa cares enough about Reki to not leave him behind. The writers blatantly show this in Episode 6, when Langa stays behind and looks for Reki despite the tantalizing offer of a race with a bunch of very talented skaters right in front of him. (It could be argued that he DOES take the offer instead of focusing on Reki by breaking the promise with Reki in episode 7, but the thing is he also assumes Reki will understand and still support him, clearly surprised at his reaction, so it’s not really the same.)

Meanwhile, just think about what Adam does to Tadashi when he’s so focused on his stupid tournament, in contrast. Using him as a scapegoat for his own goals with no shame whatsoever.

(someone free this man. someone free this man please)

Not only that, though, but his passion for skateboarding isn’t just in the sport itself, but a major part of it is the people he spends time with. Before with snowboarding, it was his father, and when he was gone Langa stopped finding joy in that sport altogether. And now it’s Reki who’s gone, and he’s quickly realizing skateboarding that no longer brings the same thrill that it used to-- as made evident with the sudden shift to snowboarding in that scene, and the absence of his heart beating quickly, which could represent a lot of things but the point is he’s not having fun. Oh wait, that's another parallel.

On the other hand, Adam accepts that he’ll leave some people behind with his talents, dismissing them as unworthy rather than taking the time to actually try and recognize any flaws within himself or his way of thinking. This is perfectly exemplified in the first scene of Episode 8, where he shows little to no concern whatsoever over someone he’d been considering a possible match just a couple of seconds ago. Because it’s as he says: to him, when the perceived “distance” between two people is too great, to the point where it is “unreachable” for one of them, there can be no “real love”.

(oh yeah they both have blue hair too i guess)

But remember, Langa’s not like that. He isn’t willing to so easily give up on Reki like that, as seen with how he consults his mother for advice and still constantly checks to see if he’s there to talk to. He’s not going to so callously give up on him like Adam does with those he skates with, because his version of love isn’t nearly as twisted as his. Instead, he’s going to try and fix things, “repent and make efforts” (though of course neither of them are entirely at fault here), and communicate, as foreshadowed by the latest episode.

Reki, on the other hand, doesn’t show as many signs of wanting to try and reconnect with Langa, as of Episode 8 anyway. But I still have faith in him, because he seems to be having some doubts given his actions-- and more than that, remember what Cherry was talking about when he found him, words that he probably at least kind of listened to! Eventually he’s going to realize that he’s cut off a really good relationship for the wrong reasons, and he’ll have to apply some of these teachings and make efforts to actually communicate once he begins to realize it.

(Also, just take a moment to appreciate the bi calligraphy.)

So what can we take away from all this? Adam said Langa was the same type of person as himself. And sure, maybe that’s true in some ways, but it’s not entirely, and if the anime wants to have any clear thematic messages about relationships, it will most definitely reflect the results of their differences one way or another. At the very least, Reki and Langa will not turn out like Adam and Tadashi did. Because what’s the purpose of constantly comparing and contrasting characters in eerily similar situations, if their differences don’t have any actual effect on the story and the message that it’s ultimately attempting to convey, especially in a short 12 episode anime?

But anyways, if you actually did read this far for some reason, thank you! If I missed anything, you wanna add anything else, or just idk talk about this anime in general, let me know :D

(TLDR: Adam and Langa are sort of similar but also really different because the latter cares for Reki, so therefore this is yet another sports anime that will probably be about the power of friendship/love, and I Pretend I Do Not See whatever death flags there are for Langa I DO NOT SEE THEM!!!)

#sk8 the infinity #sk8 the infinity analysis #not me wriitng a whole fucking essay on this skateboarding anime...#im probably just reading too much into things as usual aha #sidenote: rewatched episode 7 as I wrote this and can confirm it was Not any less painful than the first time I watched it #seriously though this is a comedy sports anime. no ones gonna die. right haha #tbh idk what the point of all of this was when y'all probably already know that but MAN am i hyperfixating hard on this show #and im gonna make it everyones problem #(sorry)#sk8 spoilers #reki kyan #(my beloved)#langa hasegawa #i am in no way qualified to do this analysis by the way sorry for that too #anyways the moral of the story is idk what im doing don't take this too seriously

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hawthornsybil · 4 years ago

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You’re Gonna Have a Great Time

Title: You’re Gonna Have a Great Time

Summary: Chris leaves a list of 20 things Buck can do to cheer Eddie up while he's at camp; somehow it turns into a 20 steps plan to woo Eddie.

Read on AO3

So, I read these amazing posts and just had to write something for it. Thanks to @theleftboobgrabber @pan-buck for letting me use their ideas as prompts. I hope you both like it! t when they walk inside the house.

The thing is, Eddie forbade him from going to see Chris off to summer camp because he didn’t think Buck would keep it together but Eddie has yet to learn how to say no to Buck and Chris when they team up. So, they strike a bargain where Buck will be allowed to have Chris for the afternoon before he leaves for camp. After having visited the zoo (for the third time), getting ice cream, and catching a movie, they’re now sitting together in Eddie’s living room waiting for him to come home.

“You sure you packed everything?”

Christopher rolls his eyes (something he totally learned from all the times Eddie has rolled his eyes at Buck) and then pats Buck on the knee. “I have everything I need.”

Buck has been high strung ever since Eddie told him about the camping trip and as much as Chimney has turned his overprotective act into just another thing to tease him about, Buck has no shame in caring so openly for Christopher. Plus, he figures that if he shows how worried he is, Eddie will either feel compelled to keep his cool (because Chris seriously doesn’t need them both to fret) or will feel supported in his fears.

“And did you remember to pack the mosquito spray?”

“Yes, Buck.”

Buck ticks it off the list he’s made on his phone and watches confusedly as Chris gets off the couch and heads to his room.

“Chris where…”

“I made something for you,” Chris answers on his way back.

He climbs back up on the couch and leans against Buck’s side. “I made a card for dad and I have one for you too.”

Buck always thinks he can’t possibly love this kid any more than he already does, and then Chris does something like this, and Buck ends up loving him that much harder.

He takes the purple card Christopher hands over and opens it, already excited about what sweet message he may find inside. He stares confusedly at the list in his hands.

“Chris, what is this?”

“It says at the top.”

Such a sassy kid, another thing Buck knows he takes after Eddie.

At the top of the card, scribbled in yellow crayon, Chris has written how to cheer up Dad while I’m at camp. Speechless, Buck looks between the card and Christopher’s determined face.

“Daddy said you’re going to miss me even more than he does,” he shrugs, pats Buck on the knee again comforting in a way no 9-years-old has any business being. “So, you can cheer up daddy and take care of him instead of missing me.”

“Chris…”

The front door opens before he can find the words to say, Eddie’s voice calling cheerfully from the hall, “I’m home!” He rounds the corner to the living room and his face softens when he sees Chris plastered to Buck’s side and Buck’s teary face. “Buck, we talked about this.”

“It’s okay daddy, I was just telling Buck how much I’m going to miss him.”

Eddie smiles and comes over, ruffling both his hair and Buck’s. “You guys had a good day?” They both nod. “I’m going to hop in the shower and then we can order dinner, okay?” He heads off when they nod again.

Chris turns to Buck and looks at him seriously. “Don’t tell dad.”

Buck nods solemnly, carefully folds the card, and puts it away in his pocket.

***

coffee with TONS of sugar so it’s not gross

It takes Eddie approximately one day to start losing his cool and collected demeanor. They’ve just got back to the station after a call where a kid had fallen in the pool and Buck can see Eddie continuously checking his phone.

Buck thinks back to the list Chris left. Point number one was making Eddie coffee and that’s easy enough. He leaves Eddie to go change into dry clothes and heads up to the loft to start off the coffee machine.

He idly chats with Chimney and Hen while he waits for the coffee to brew and by the time Eddie has changed and has joined them, a steaming mug is sitting on the table.

“Buck made you coffee, isn’t that sweet?” Chimney teases them.

Eddie ignores him completely. “Did you put…”

“Five spoons of sugar, yes. Just drink it.”

They’ve made each other coffee enough times to know how they take it, so he finds Eddie’s distrust appalling. Buck stares as Eddie takes the first sip and seems to relax a little bit. He smiles when Eddie looks at him.

2. tell him about your day - he smiles when I tell him about school and stuff

Eddie takes a fall while on a call and Bobby sends him to the hospital to get checked for a concussion. He’s fine but gets signed off for the next shift so the others have to deal with Buck on their own.

Chimney tells him at least twice that he’s insufferable when Eddie is not at work and Hen tells him to go run some drills to kill time. Bobby takes pity on him and tells him he can help with the cooking.

At the end of the day, he puts on his jacket and is heading out when he remembers the card still in his pocket. Number two on Chris’s list is telling Eddie about his day so that’s what he will do. He calls him from the car, his voice barely carrying over the sound of the wind as he drives.

“Today was horrible,” he starts off by saying, even before Eddie has time to say hello. “I was bored, we had one call, that was it, can you believe it?”

Eddie chuckles. “You’re insufferable when you’re bored.”

“Yeah, that’s what Chimney said too. How was your day honey?” he asks sarcastically.

“I finished painting abuela’s porch, then I painted mine. Were you really that bored?”

Buck stops at a red light still undecided on where he’s headed. “Yeah, I mean it was nice to have a quiet day, but you know, I need my adrenaline fix.” The light turns green and he makes a split-second decision to turn left instead of right. “Hey, are you home now?”

“Yeah, wanna come over?”

Buck smiles at that. “Turning in your street now.”

Eddie is waiting by the door when Buck pulls up to his house, an amused grin on his face, arms crossed as he casually leans against the doorframe, long legs crossed at the feet.

“What if I had someone over?”

He does a very bad job of masking his laugh at that. “I’m the only someone you ever have over.” He playfully bumps him with his shoulder and makes his way inside. “Wanna hear about all the different ways I’ve annoyed Chimney today?”

Eddie can’t do anything but follow.

3. ICE CREAM

Buck loves LA and has done all the touristy things except taking one of those tours where they show you where famous people live, but he has to admit, he fell in love with the city all over again when he started showing it to Eddie.

Walking alongside Venice Beach in the evening with the warm breeze coming from the ocean has to be at the top of his favorite things to do. He checks Chris’s list daily and when he saw that today’s idea was ice cream, he knew exactly where to take Eddie.

Their shoulders bump every other step, drawn together in a familiar way. Buck is eating his ice cream from the small cup Eddie made him order (“you’re gonna get chocolate all over your shirt if you get a cone, Buck”).

“Chris called from camp today.”

Buck perks up at that. “You didn’t tell me”

“You were in the shower after that last call.”

Buck wants to tell him that that was no excuse, he could have still gone to get him but decides to let it go. “What did Chris say?”

“That some of the other kids are staying until the end of the month.”

He can guess what he said to that from Eddie’s dejected sigh. “You said yes.”

“Of course, I did, I’m not a monster, Buck.”

Buck bumps into him again and inadvertently makes Eddie drop his cup. “Buck!”

“Oops, here.” Buck scoops up some of his ice cream and shoves it in Eddie’s mouth before he can object. He can’t cover up his laugh at Eddie’s outraged face. “We can share my ice cream, don’t worry.”

Eddie pushes him playfully and when a girl skating by almost runs into him, Eddie closes his hand around Buck’s wrist pulling him back close to him.

It feels like a date, that’s all Buck can think about as he stares at Eddie stealing Buck’s cup, mumbling about not giving it back because it’s all Buck’s fault if he doesn’t have his anymore. Buck would happily let Eddie steal everything from him.

4. draw him a picture!!

He’s never been good at drawing anything, not even stars which everyone seems to be able to do, but Eddie has been staring forlornly at the drawings Chris made appositely for his locker and so here Buck is, at twenty eight, trying to come up with an idea for a card.

“Whatcha got there, Buck?”

He shrugs at Hen’s question, so she comes over to the table and stares from over his shoulder at the crumbled pieces of paper in front of him.

“Are you trying to draw something?”

“Yeah” he replies sheepishly. “It’s for Eddie.”

She smirks and shakes her head. “Of course it is. Why don’t you go for a stick figure and a simple message? Can’t go wrong with that.”

He ponders it for a moment and then nods. “Thanks, Hen.”

When half an hour later Buck sees the smile on Eddie’s face as he opens his locker and Buck’s card fall out of it, Buck feels just as accomplished as if he had just rappelled down a building for a rescue.

5. tell him a joke - I got a book of jokes for my birthday last year you can borrow it if you want buck / 6. tell him a knock-knock joke - I don’t have a book of knock-knock jokes :-(

“Hey, Eddie, have you heard about the new restaurant called Karma? There’s no menu: you get what you deserve.”

Eddie looks at him as if he’s finally lost it. They’re in the middle of a call and really, Buck should be paying more attention but all he has to do is hold a bar in place while Bobby saws it, so no big deal.

“What the…”

“It’s a joke,” Buck says with a big grin. “I’ve got another one. Did you hear about the claustrophobic astronaut? He just needed a little space.”

Eddie snorts and tries very hard not to show that he’s laughing but Buck sees it.

“Aren’t I supposed to be the one with the dad jokes?” He asks.

Buck shrugs, unrepentant. “I’ve got more.”

“Why?”

Bobby finishes with the saw and looks amusedly between the two. “Maybe wait until after we’re done saving someone, yeah?”

“Copy that, ‘Cap.” Buck does a little military salute and Eddie can’t help but laugh at him again.

Two hours later, while they’re laying in their bunkbeds trying to sleep between calls, Buck continues.

“Hey, Eddie?”

He gets a grunt in response and that’s enough for him to proceed. “Did you hear about the actor who fell through the floorboards?” He waits for dramatic effect and then goes, “He was just going through a stage.”

“Buck, I swear to God…”

“Knock, knock.”

Eddie grunts again. “Buck…”

“You have to play along. You can just not answer when someone says knock-knock.”

Buck hears the bedsprings creak as Eddie shifts in the bed next to his.

“Eddie?”

“Who’s there?”

Buck grins broadly. Eddie can’t ever say no to him doesn’t matter how annoying he’s being. “Leon.”

“Leon who?”

“Leon me when you’re not strong!”

He gets a pillow thrown in his face which makes the book of jokes he borrowed from Chris’ room last time he was over and the phone where he was looking up knock-knock jokes, fall from his hands and hit him right in the eye. “Ouch.”

“That’s what you get, Buck,” Chimney’s voice pipes up from the other side of the sleeping quarters. “Go to sleep.”

Buck doesn’t even mind because he hears Eddie sniggering from the other bed.

7. ask him a funny question - one time I asked him if dogs know they’re dogs, and he smiled a lot!!

“Do you think cats have regrets?”

Buck’s question is so random that Eddie’s face turns into that confused squinty expression he always makes that Buck absolutely loves.

They’re on day 9 of Christopher being away at camp and Eddie is particularly grumpy. He’s snapped at the woman they were trying to save because she kept trying to tell them what to do because she’s a big Chicago Fire fan and thought she knew better.

Chris hasn’t called since the time he asked to stay at the camp longer and Bobby keeps shooting looks at Buck that say “fix it” so Buck took out his list, checked what was on the agenda for today, and asked the first question that popped into his head.

“I would love to be in your head for a day,” Eddie tells him, but Buck can see at least a bit of tension leaving him; he’ll take that as a win.

“I mean, think about it,” he continues, closing one of the compartments on the truck once they’ve finished expecting it. “You see so many photos of dogs looking ashamed because of something they did, but cats will maintain eye contact while dropping your favorite trophy off the shelf.” He shrugs. “What’s your take on it?”

Eddie stares at him as if trying to understand whether Buck is being serious or not. Buck looks back, an expectant grin on his face, and Eddie can’t help the laughter that starts bubbling out of him.

“I swear, this is why you and Chris get along so well.”

Buck looks proud of himself as he watches Eddie completely fail to remain grumpy.

8. watch a movie with him - his favorite is emperor’s new groove I think

It’s not often that they don’t have the same days off together, but it can happen. Buck ends up covering someone on third shift and doesn’t see Eddie for two days. So, as soon as he’s done with his shift, he heads straight over to Eddie’s. He knocks once and then lets himself in and he’s not surprised to find Eddie laying on the couch, a film playing on the tv that Buck knows he’s only half watching.

He places the six-pack he brought over on the coffee table and Eddie startles. He’s wearing his old army t-shirt and grey sweatpants, one foot resting on the floor and the other on the armrest. Buck forces himself not to stare for too long.

“When did you get here?”

Buck rolls his eyes. “Nice to see you too.” He kicks Eddie’s foot until he gets the message and lifts his legs, barely waiting for Buck to be sitting down before he unceremoniously plants both his feet in his lap. “Is this seriously how you’re going to spend your day off?”

“I’m only on film 3 out of 8.”

It’s then that Buck looks at the TV again and realizes that Eddie is watching Harry Potter.

“Do you think they let the kids watch films at camp?”

Buck snorts, hands subconsciously closing around Eddie’s ankles. “I’m pretty sure that would go against the child labor program they have in place.”

Eddie kicks him and rolls his eyes. “Growing vegetables and then eating them is not child labor, we’ve been over this.”

Buck’s fingers dig into Eddie’s ankle and he lets himself relax against the couch. “Agree to disagree.”

He’s never seen the Harry Potter films prior to meeting Eddie and Christopher and watching it now without the youngest Diaz is making him think about all the other things he has never done before Eddie appeared in his life, stripping in slow motion in the middle of the fire station (he knows that’s not exactly how it went but that’s how he remembers it so sue him).

“This is making me sad.”

“The Prisoner of Azkaban cannot make you sad,” Eddie retorts.

“Whatever. Let’s watch something else.” He remembers Chris’ suggestion and he smiles. “You know what we haven’t watched in a while? Emperor’s New Clothes. I like that one.”

Eddie glances at him and studies him for a few seconds before grinning back. “Okay.”

9. clean up - sometimes when he looks stressed, I clean my room and he smiles??

Carla told him once that Eddie hates it when she helps cleaning around the house, so she discretely helps out but leaves enough that Eddie thinks she hasn’t done it just so Eddie can then spend his days off tiding up. Buck knows that when you join the army they drill it into you to keep everything tidy and so he knows how important it is for Eddie.

However, with Christopher off to camp, Carla hasn’t been around in a while and Buck can see that there’s a load of laundry to do and Eddie’s clothes were left in a pile after being in the dryer. But Eddie spoke with his parents that morning and Buck is not privy to what was said in the conversation, but he can see how stressed Eddie has been ever since getting off the phone.

Chris’ list has a suggestion for what to do in this case too, so, while he’s at Eddie’s waiting for him to come back from having gone to the shops to get beer and food, Buck starts tidying up a little. He puts the clothes in the washing machine, folds the ones Eddie left out and puts away the dishes that have been collecting dust on the drying rack.

When Eddie gets home, Buck looks at him like a deer caught in the headlights, plates in his hand halfway through being put away. Eddie frowns for a second and then darts his eyes around, goes to check in his room, and then comes back.

“Did you tidy up while I was gone?”

Buck shrugs, unsure if he’s overstepped some boundary. Eddie just stares at him, shoulders sagging and eyes searching.

“Thought I could help a little. You’ve got enough on your plate.”

Eddie walks over to him and hugs him, and Buck hopes Eddie can’t feel his heartbeat accelerating.

10. play some video games - but don’t let him win he always knows when you let him win

Buck hasn’t played the ambulance simulation game in ages and he’s always been horrible at it; Hen can be his witness but playing with Eddie is different. He’s probably the only person who’s worse at it than he is but he was mopey after talking to Chris, so Buck wants to cheer him up which means he has to fake being worse than Eddie and let him win.

“Oh no, drove right into the pedestrian.” Buck was never a good actor.

Eddie looks at him suspiciously. “Buck, I know you’re letting me win.”

“Oh c’mon, I’d never do that to you.”

Eddie doesn’t even dignify that with an answer just drops his controller and lets the ambulance drive off the road and into a building.

“Well, that will be hard to explain to the Chief,” Buck jokes.

He only has a moment to take in Eddie’s unimpressed face before Eddie tackles him and starts digging his fingers into Buck’s sides.

“Yield!” Eddie orders, unrelenting in his tickling.

Buck can barely breathe. “Okay! Okay! I will play for real now.”

Eddie pulls back but stays close in Buck’s personal space, eyes full of mirth and a little dopey, and Buck can’t look away, not until Hen walks past and throws a pillow at them.

11. the aquarium!! he really likes going to the aquarium with me!

“I haven’t been here since the last time we brought Chris.”

Buck had shown up at Eddie’s that morning and dragged him out without even telling him where they were headed.

Since it’s a Wednesday, there are not many kids despite it being the summer holidays, so they’re enjoying a leisure walk between the various exhibitions.

“Did you know that a blue whale is the largest living animal on Earth?”

Eddie looks at him with a fond expression when Buck asks him that. He shakes his head, falls into steps with Buck and their shoulders bump as always. “No, I didn’t know that, Buck.”

They stop in front of the penguins and Buck stares at them, not feeling Eddie’s gaze on his face. “I used to think that penguins were really big, you know?” he glances up and catches Eddie’s eyes, finds himself blushing a little under the scrutiny. “Like as big as people and then I watched Madagascar and my mind was blown.”

“I’m more surprised that you watched Madagascar if I'm being honest.”

Buck smiles at him. “It’s one of my favorites. Maddie and I sneaked out of the house to go see it when it came out.” He feels himself grow nostalgic at the memory and looks back at the penguins so he doesn’t have to see Eddie’s expression. “It was one of the last things we did together before she married Doug.”

He’s not ready when a hand lands on the back of his neck, Eddie’s thumb pressing down on his pulse point.

“When I watch it with Chris, he makes me do the King Julian dance,” Eddie confesses.

Buck appreciates the distraction more than he’d be able to express. He turns his head to the side, his cheek coming to rest on the back of Eddie’s hand. They’ve been more tactile lately but, this makes Buck feel as if it’s just the two of them in the world in that moment.

“I’m going to have to see that,” he teases just as a little kid comes running straight into his legs and almost knocks him over.

12. LOTS OF HUGS

The minute Eddie is out of the building, Buck shrugs Bobby’s hands off and runs up to him, pulls him into a tight hug even as Eddie starts coughing against his shoulder.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Buck…”

“No, we’ve been over this, we can’t both be reckless.” He pulls back, starts opening up Eddie’s turnout coat to check him for injuries. “Next time Bobby says to fall back, you fall back, understood?”

Eddie grabs Buck’s wrists and squeezes hard enough to get his attention. “Buck, I’m fine.”

Buck’s eyes are still wide and his pulse is racing, he knows Eddie can feel it where he’s holding him, but Buck hasn’t been this scared in a long time. He pushes forward, wounds his arms around Eddie’s neck, and hugs him again.

“You’re an idiot.”

Eddie’s arms come up, hugging him back briefly before Buck is pulling away and Eddie’s hands slowly fall to his hips. This is Buck’s favorite thing about hugging Eddie, how he always leaves one hand on Buck’s flank. Buck is not used to being hold; Maddie is not a big hugger and unless Chris is around, the only person he ever gets hugs from is Eddie.

“I’m okay, Buck.”

He wants to drag him home and make him rest but Bobby calls out to them, tells them to start packing up and it takes Buck a lot longer than a second to be able to look at anything but Eddie’s face.

Eddie doesn’t look away either.

13. do something adulty with him - I don't know buck I'm 9

So, the thing is, Buck has been crushing on Eddie for the past two years. Maddie likes to tease him about it all the time, it’s all in good spirits and it’s mostly about how Buck pretty much imprinted on Eddie the minute the guy told him how good he was at his job. So, these feelings, wanting to kiss Eddie, wanting to hold his hands, nothing new there. They’ve had bumps in the road, Buck tried and failed to date someone else and it hasn’t been easy, but Buck is done waiting for what he wants. He knows Eddie enough to be sure that even if he’s been reading the signals all wrong, they will be able to move on from this.

When he checks Chris’ list and sees the point about doing something adulty, Buck’s mind goes straight to one thing because he wants to date the shit out of Eddie Diaz and goddamnit he will.

So, when they’re halfway through their shifts, Buck flops down on the sofa next to Eddie and asks. “There’s a new restaurant near my place, do you wanna check it out?”

Perhaps he should have phrased it better, but Eddie makes him nervous.

“Yeah, sure.” Eddie barely looks up from his phone where he’s texting Lena.

Buck is like 80% sure that Eddie is not getting it. “We can go home and change and then I’ll come to pick you up.”

Eddie frowns, looks at Buck in confusion. “Why don’t we just go together from here?”

“I’m coming to pick you up,” Buck insists.

He can feel Chimney staring at them and when he looks in his direction, Buck finds him with a spoon halfway up to his mouth that might as well be popcorn considering he’s looking at them as if he was watching a movie.

“Can I help you, Chimney?”

“No, no,” he raises his hands in surrender. “Carry on.”

Buck looks back at Eddie raising an eyebrow expectantly.

“Okay, you can come to pick me up.”

Several hours later, halfway through their dinner, Buck realizes that the issue with spending so much time together is that this won’t feel like a date because they do this all the time. Eddie is dressed in a flannel shirt over a black shirt and well-fitting black jeans and Buck loves the look, he honestly does, but he’s thanking whatever deity made me forgo the suit he had originally planned.

Eddie trails off in the middle of what he’s saying and stares at Buck. “Are you okay? You’ve been glaring at your food for the past five minutes.”

“All good, you were saying?”

Buck drives him back home, and Eddie asks him if he wants to come inside, and apparently Buck is a sucker for punishment because he accepts even though he knows that Eddie didn't get that Buck had asked him out on a date.

14. ask abuela how she makes the Magic Soup - dad really likes it

Buck has had Pepa’s number saved on his phone for the past two years because sometimes he’s the one going to pick up Christopher from their place. This time he uses it for a different reason. Eddie has canceled on him because of a cold or so he says, but Buck is pretty sure that it’s just the fact that Christopher has been gone for almost three weeks now. So, he texts Pepa and asks if he can drop by so Isobel can teach him how to make the magic soup Eddie loves.

She says yes and Buck finds himself standing between her and Isobel a couple of hours later, attentively following all the steps and taking notes.

“This is really nice what you’re doing, Buck.”

He shrugs because praise always makes him feel so out of depth. “Thank you, Isobel.”

“How many times do I have to tell you to call me abuela?”

He can’t help but smile at her. “Sorry, abuela.”

“Thank you for taking care of Eddie while Chris is away.”

“What else would I do?”

She smiles warmly at him, pats him on the arm, and then goes back to guide him through the next steps.

Two hours later he’s letting himself in Eddie’s house. “Honey, I’m home!” he calls jokingly while he uses his foot to close the front door.

When he walks in the living room, he doesn’t see Eddie, so he puts the soup down in the kitchen and then checks Eddie’s bedroom and finds him curled up under the covers watching Netflix on his phone.

“Are you actually sick?” he asks, leaning against the door.

“Maybe.”

Buck scoffs. “What if I told you that I have your magic soup waiting for you in the kitchen?”

That gets Eddie’s attention. He lets his phone fall on the bed and looks suspiciously at Buck. “How?”

“I might have stopped to Pepa and Abuela’s house.” He walks over, reaches out, and grabs Eddie’s wrist pulling a little. “C’mon. It took us hours to make and you have to eat.”

Eddie looks at him in a way that makes Buck think he’s about to be pulled down into bed in retaliation, but the moment passes, Eddie tugs his hand free and stands up. “You better not be lying, Buck. How did you even get her to give you the recipe?"

Buck scoffs. "You should know by now that Diaz's can't resist this face."

Eddie can't say anything in return.

15. cuddles on the couch

Buck is a cuddly drunk, he usually turns into some sort of over joyous puppy who walks around and starts up a conversation with anyone who will give him attention. Eddie had to quite literally drag him away from where he’s explaining in detail to a couple what a compound fracture is.

“I’m sorry about him.” Eddie grabs him by the back of his shirt and pulls him out of the bar and pushes him towards Buck’s jeep. “Get in, I’ll take you home.”

Buck stumbles five times while attempting to get in his car, but his size seems to be too big for his drunken self so Eddie has to help him in. He dozes off leaning against the window as soon as Eddie turns the ignition on and doesn’t wake up until Eddie is pulling him out of the car once they’ve reached his building.

“Buck, c’mon, help me out.”

He blinks slowly and then more or less manages to follow Eddie all the way up to his apartment. Eddie helps him lay down on the couch and goes to get him water and painkillers. He’s about to leave when Buck grabs his wrist and tugs so hard that Eddie falls on top of him.

“Chris said to cuddle you on the couch.”

“What?” Eddie tries to push himself up, but even drunk, Buck is strong enough to maneuver them around until Eddie is laying with his back against the backrest, and Buck is perched precariously on the edge.

“What, what?” Buck sighs, face squished against Eddie’s neck.

Eddie has no choice but to wrap an arm around Buck and pull him closer; it’s either that or letting Buck fall off and bang his head against the coffee table.

“Shhh, Eddie, sleep time.”

He can’t help but smile and grip Buck a little bit tighter.

16. build a fort! / 17. cuddles IN the fort!!!

Buck and Eddie are laying on their backs, staring up at the string lights that Buck has attached to the top of the pillow fort.

“Why are we doing this?” Eddie asks.

Buck had shown up, going on about how he had found a guide on how to build a pillow fort on IKEA’s website and how they had to practice because Chris was coming back and he wanted to be the best at it by the time that happened.

Eddie had helped him out, going around the house collecting pillows and bedsheets and now there they are. It would be big enough for Christopher and another child, but two adult men are a tight fit.

Eddie shifts, his shoulder bumping into Buck’s chest.

Buck is beyond pleased with himself. “Chris is going to be so proud of you at his next sleepover. He loves pillow forts.”

Eddie turns to look at him and when Buck turns as well, their eyes meet. The twinkling lights are making Eddie’s eyes look brighter, but his face looks younger and softer. Buck really wants to kiss him right now, but he’s read the rest of the list and Chris put kissing for last so Buck looks away.

“He already knows how to build a fort, Buck.”

“I know, but this is like pro pillow forting or something.”

Eddie shakes his head at him. “So, what’s the plan, what are we doing now that we’re in here?”

“Well, I’m getting us snacks, you’re putting on a movie and we’re going to pretend we’re not boring adults for one night.”

“You never became a boring adult.”

Buck crawls out of the fort, throwing a pleased smile over his shoulder. “I know.”

When he gets back and lays down next to Eddie, Buck is hyperaware of how little space they have and he fidgets around until Eddie grabs his arm and makes him turn on his side, his chest pressed up against Eddie’s back.

“Stop moving,” Eddie orders him and Buck doesn’t have to be told twice.

He settles down and leans his chin on Eddie’s shoulder so he can look at the screen. Every once in awhile, Eddie will raise the bowl with the popcorn so Buck can get a handful and they don’t talk, they don’t need to. Buck is more aware of all the places where his and Eddie’s bodies are touching than what’s going on the screen, but he doesn’t mind.

He’s not sure when Eddie falls asleep but gradually his body goes slack in Buck’s hold and Buck can’t help but rest his head on the same pillow, his forehead touching the back of Eddie’s head and his arm tightening imperceptibly around Eddie’s waist. He closes his eyes and lets Eddie’s breath lull him into sleep.

18. tell him it’s gonna be ok

Buck finds him leaning against the side of the truck, pensive as his eyes stare at the phone in his hand. The bay is quiet, and the sun is warm. Buck hands him a cup of coffee and leans next to him.

“That Chris?” he asks, nodding to the phone.

“Yeah.” Eddie puts the phone away and takes a sip of coffee before sighing heavily, leaning his head back and closing his eyes.

They’re at the end of their shift, one hour to go before they’re free and Buck feels just as exhausted as Eddie looks.

“Is he okay?”

“He sounded happy. Kinda got the impression he doesn’t want to come home.”

Buck can’t stop staring at him, kind of wants to take all his worries away, help him carry the weight. “Well, on the bright side, he has to live home for at least the next nine years.”

Eddie snorts. “Why do I get the impression you’ll be the one doing the shovel talk once he starts dating?”

Buck feels his heart double in size at the thought that Eddie thinks Buck will be around in the distant future to see that happening; very distant future because Chris is only nine and he has to stay a kid for as long as possible.

“I’m bigger so I can totally intimidate these future dates.” He puffs out his chest waddling around in an awkward robot dance that makes Eddie laugh. He takes a step closer, right into Eddie’s personal space and he feels like they’ve been dancing around this for the past month to the point where Buck is pretty sure Eddie is just waiting for him to take the first step.

“Hey, Eddie?”

Eddie arcs an eyebrow and hides his smile in his coffee. “Yes, Buck.”

“It’s going to be okay.”

Eddie’s answering smile is everything to him.

19. tell him you love him!!!

Buck stares at the nineteenth point on Christopher’s list and tries to figure out a way to make it happen. As far as he’s concerned, he feels like he’s been telling Eddie he loves him since he introduced him to Carla and Eddie had given him that smile in return. He’s been saying ‘I love you’ since Eddie told him that it wasn’t his fault Doug had gotten Maddie, ever since he argued with Maddie until she let him go to Eddie’s shield ceremony despite the broken leg and the pain he was in; ever since he organized a Christmas party so they could be together with Chris, ever since he’s built the skateboard, ever since he tried to dig at the ground to get to Eddie. He’s been saying ‘I love you’ for so long he doesn’t remember what it felt like before.

He spends the day observing Eddie, seeing him joke around with Hen, giving Chimney advice on fatherhood, looking annoyed when Bobby doesn’t let him help with lunch.

Buck is just so in love with him. But the words are stuck somewhere in his throat, scared because he’s never felt this way about anyone ever. He knows that if Eddie asked him to jump, he’d only ask how high, but even more than that, he knows he would stop taking risks at work if Eddie asked him not to because he wants to stick around.

So instead, he tells him he loves him without words.

He gets up from where he’s sitting at the table in Bobby and Athena’s garden and goes over to where he’s animatedly talking with Karen. He puts a hand on his lower back, jumps into the conversation they’re having, and smiles softly at Eddie when Eddie looks at him.

20. try kisses??

Christopher is coming back tomorrow, and this is it. Last day. Eddie has been brimming with excitement at the idea of having his kid back home and it’s all he can talk about. He doesn’t shut up about it during calls, and neither does he while they’re grabbing a drink with the others. Buck lives to see Eddie this happy. Buck is talking to Albert or at least trying to because his attention keeps being pulled over to where Eddie is dancing awkwardly while sandwiched between Chimney and Karen.

“So, how long have you guys been together?”

Buck does a double-take when he realizes that Albert is speaking to him. “What do you mean?”

“Eddie and you. I asked Maddie but she just giggled and said to leave it.”

Buck rolls his eyes. “Ignore whatever she says. Eddie is my best friend.”

Albert nods solemnly. “They always say the best relationships are born from friendships. They also suggest to marry your best friend.”

Buck, who was in the middle of taking a sip, chokes on his beer. He coughs loudly, and before he knows what’s happening, Eddie is right beside him suddenly alert and sober.

“Buck, what is it?”

“He was just drinking,” Albert intervenes. “He’s okay.”

Buck coughs once more and rubs the middle of his chest but he can’t look away from Eddie’s panicked look. “I’m okay, Eddie.” He grabs Eddie’s hand and tugs to bring him out of whatever panic he's slipping into.

“I think we should go,” Eddie says, already pulling away from Buck and getting his jacket.

Buck frowns but if he’s being honest with himself, he’s tired and he’s more than happy for them to leave now.

Albert gives him a look like he knows something is going on.

They quickly say goodbye to everyone, and they step outside the bar. Buck follows Eddie over to his truck ready to tell him that he’s only had one beer so maybe he should be driving when Eddie stops and turns around so suddenly that Buck ends up bumping into him.

“Are you sure you’re okay? We can stop at the hospital on the way home.”

Buck shakes his head, rests his hands on Eddie’s shoulders to get his attention. “I’m okay, I just want to go home, okay?”

Eddie scrutinizes him and Buck lets him look for whatever it is he needs to see to believe that Buck he’s okay. After a minute, he finally nods and pulls away. “You drive.” He tosses his keys at Buck.

They don’t talk on the way over to Eddie’s and they’re still silent when they walk inside the house.

Buck heads for the living room but Eddie grabs his wrist, turns him around, and hugs him. His arms are clutching at him tightly and his nose is buried against Buck’s pulse point and Buck knows there’s no way Eddie is not feeling his heart pick up.

“I didn’t think you were okay.”

Eddie’s voice is nothing but a whisper and Buck finally hugs him back, understands where Eddie’s mind went at.

“I’m okay, Eds.”

Buck is not sure how long they stay like that but when Eddie pulls back, his eyes are clear and determined as he stares at Buck, and Buck can’t help himself. He cups Eddie’s cheek with one hand, uses the other around Eddie’s hip to push him back until his back hits the wall, and finally, finally, after months, maybe years of buildup, Buck kisses him. He swears every sound disappears and all he can feel are Eddie’s hands gripping his shoulders, fingers digging in enough to hurt but Buck is all muscles and strength.

He has pictured kissing Eddie in his mind about a million times and nothing, no dream or hope or fantasy ever even came close to what he’s feeling now with Eddie pulling him in closer, their lips moving together slowly, kiss growing deeper and deeper.

Buck pushes him a bit harder against the wall and they knock one of the frames down and they couldn’t care less.

Eddie’s hand slides up into Buck’s hair and his fingers scratch his scalp and Buck has to pull back and breath or he’s going to drown in this kiss.

Eddie’s eyes are half-lidded, his lips shiny and swollen and Buck wants to kiss him again immediately and so he does because now he can.

***

Chris throws himself into Eddie’s arms the minute he’s off the bus. Buck has been allowed to come to pick him up and he can’t stop smiling, trying his best to stop himself from nudging Eddie out of the way so he can have his hug.

Chris looks at him from over Eddie’s shoulder and god but has Buck missed this kid.

“Buck!” he screams, right by his father’s ears.

He comes over and the second Chris has freed himself from Eddie’s hold, Buck is scooping him up. “How are you doing, little guy?”

“It was awesome.”

Eddie picks up Chris’s luggage and the three of them start making their way back to Buck’s jeep. While they’re walking, Chris leans closer to Buck and whispers in his ear, “Did you use the list?”

“Yes, thank you so much for it.”

“And did you guys kiss?”

Any other time and Buck would have blushed but he’s so happy that all he can do is nod. He and Eddie haven't decided how to tell Chris but Buck assured him that it wouldn't be a problem.

Chris looks delighted and pats him on the cheek. “I told you it was going to be okay, kid.”

#buddie #daily buddie #buddie fics #911 #my fics #eddie diaz #evan buckley #evan 'buck' buckley

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therainroguefanfiction · 4 years ago

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🍂 Bracing Weather (Morisuke Yaku)

Genre: Fluff, Slice of Life, Autumn

Word Count: 2,234

Pairing: Reader x Yaku

World: Haikyuu!!

Prompts: “[x] is trying to rake their leaves, but reader may have… another idea. Bye bye leaf pile.” and “Reader and [x] go to a pumpkin patch but the reader picks up an ugly pumpkin and says ‘this is you.'”

Author’s Note: This was written for the “Leaves in the Wind” collab over at the BNHA Sanctuary discord server. You can find the masterlist post [here] – make sure you check it out to read the other awesome entries for this collab! Thank you very much @smol-enby for hosting this collab and thank you @ambershaydeoffical for giving me the caramel popcorn line lmfao Happy Autumn everyone!

As soon as you stepped outside that morning, your mood instantly shot through the roof. The wind was blowing through the trees, the leaves skating across the pavement as if they had somewhere important to be. It was brisk outside, the sky covered by a sheet of light grey and the air damp with a soft mist of rain. Birds were cawing in the distance as they danced on the breeze, clearly enjoying the new weather.

The neighborhood was quiet and peaceful, as it often tended to be, the streets littered with fallen leaves in vivid shades of orange and brown. They crunched and crackled beneath your feet before being swept away by the wind. It felt like you were high, walking on a cloud as you soaked in the weather around you.

It was invigorating and you soon found yourself dancing down the street, your cheery laughter echoing through the empty neighborhood.

People looked upon you strangely as you passed them, but you simply didn’t care. How could you when your spirits were so effervescent? Autumn was, in your opinion, the very best time of the year. The time when your mood was the highest and your smile the brightest.

How you made it through the woes of life was quite simple: you would tell yourself that, one day, Autumn would once again settle over the land and all of your worries, fears, and stress would disappear for a short time.

Try as you might, you were certain that there were no words in any language that could properly represent just how happy the season made you feel and you had certainly tried on multiple occasions to do so.

When you reached the Yaku residence, you found your boyfriend in the front yard attempting to rake up the leaves that were scattered across the grass. A large pile of them sat in the center but, as he raked over the last of the fallen leaves, a gust of wind sent the top of the pile flying across the yard. His nose wrinkled in frustration and you quietly laughed behind your hand.

‘Well, since the wind is already doing it…’ you took a step back, a grin sliding onto your face as you pushed off the ground, rushing straight for the pile. Morisuke looked up curiously when he heard your laughter but his mahogany eyes quickly widened when he realized just what you were planning.

“Y/N! Don’t you dare!”

But you couldn’t stop now even if you wanted to, which you certainly did not want to. You had made your choice and you were going to commit to it, even if that meant facing an angry libero later on. You were positive that the experience would be well worth it.

“Yahoo!” you cheered as you jumped up into the air, letting gravity do its thing as it pulled your body downward – straight into the pile. Leaves went everywhere, flying up into the air, and seeing its chance, the wind picked up at that exact moment, carrying the leaves to the opposite end of the yard. Russet, saffron, and scarlet were now splashed on the wooden fence, stuck in the gutter and pinned to the windows like decorations.

Morisuke’s eye twitched as he looked upon the mess you had made before he turned his glare to you. Despite the annoyance that he so rightly felt, his gaze softened at the ecstatic expression upon your face.

“Mori, look look! It’s so kaleidoscopic!” you grinned brightly before flipping over onto your back, making an angel in the pile of leaves.

He sighed as he approached you, one hand on his hip and the other propping up the rake on the ground. “Couldn’t you just have admired them when they were nearly piled up instead of ruining the pile that I spent two hours raking.”

“That’s no fun,” you pouted, pulling yourself up into a sitting position with your legs crossed beneath you. Leaves clung to your clothes like excited children, tangling into your hair which resembled someone that had been headbanging for a good hour.

He started to laugh, dropping the rake so that he could clutch his stomach. “You look ahaha like a haha scarecrow!”

You grinned proudly, folding your arms over your chest. “The most awesome scarecrow in the neighborhood!”

“You keep telling yourself that,” he wrinkled his nose in amusement. “You’re helping me clean this mess up!”

“But -”

“No buts!”

You leaned to the side, eyes sliding down to his backside. “Yep, definitely no butt.”

“Y-Y/N!” his cheeks bloomed with color and he turned away in embarrassment, the back of his hand covering his mouth as he muttered under his breath. “Why am I even dating you again?”

You chuckled, pulling yourself to your feet so you could wrap your arms around his body from behind, chin resting on his shoulder. “Because you love me, obviously.”

Morisuke’s expression softened as he turned around in your hold, his own arms finding their way around your body. His forehead was warm as it rested against your own, eyes shimmering with love and affection. “I can’t deny that. You’re the love of my life, you know. Even if you drive me crazy sometimes.”

You snickered, your hand sliding through his sandy brown locks, cold from the weather. “I love you too, babe. Even if you don’t have an ass.”

His blush worsened, spreading to the tips of his ears and he groaned, pulling away from you. “You’re such a jerk, Y/N.”

“I know,” you responded proudly.

“Just for that, you can start raking while I go and make some hot chocolate.” He poked you in the forehead, giving you no chance to respond before he headed into the house.

With a scowl, you scanned the mess of leaves scattered across the Yaku property. Why must having fun come with such annoying consequences?

“Hey, babe?”

“Hmm?” Morisuke glanced up from the assignment he was working on, his pencil stilling as he focused on your form across the table.

Your own notebook was open in front of you but the pages were blank, unmarred by the pencil. Your upper body was sprawled across the table, arms stretched out on either side of you as you balanced the pencil between your upper lip and nose.

Despite having called out to him, your attention was trained on the kitchen window, watching the trees swaying back and forth. You hated being stuck indoors when the weather was so amazing outside, but your boyfriend has insisted (read: forced) you inside to work on your homework, knowing that if he didn’t, it most likely wouldn’t get done.

It was the weekend, though, time to unwind and have fun from the stress of the week. Why should you have to be punished because the teacher was a sadist that likes to give a bunch of homework on a Friday? Like always, you were content to just binge it all on Sunday, but your boyfriend clearly did not approve of that approach.

“Can we go to the pumpkin patch?”

“Now?” he quirked a brow. “If we get a pumpkin now, it will be rotten by the time Halloween arrives. It’s best to just wait.”

You pouted at him but he had gone back to writing his essay, the pencil scritching across the paper. “I know that but I really want to get out! We don’t have to buy one, I just… I don’t know.”

He looked over at you, following your gaze to the window. You honestly looked miserable like a feral cat that had been converted to an inside cat and he knew you wanted nothing more than to just be outside.

Personally, he didn’t enjoy the brisk weather or the strong wind whipping around his body. He’d much rather be indoors with the heater on full blast, but this made you miserable and he hated that. He’d much rather sacrifice his own comfort if it meant being able to see you smile.

He snapped the notebook closed, setting the pencil down beside it as he stood up, the legs of the chair scraping against the wood. You sent him a curious look and he smiled in return. “Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s get going!”

Your eyes lit up and you jumped off the chair, throwing your arms around him and claiming his lips. His cheeks blossomed with color at the sudden assault but he didn’t hesitate to embrace you, tilting his head in order to deepen the kiss.

When you pulled back, your eyes were trained on his lips, making him shift uncomfortably. “What is it?”

“Your lips are super soft, Mori,” you pouted, running your tongue along your own lips that were slightly cracked from the cold weather. “Do you use chapstick or something?” He nodded, reaching into his pocket to produce the object in question and you took it, popping off the lid. “Ooo, it’s strawberry flavored!”

His gaze shifted to the side. “I know it’s your favorite…”

You realized that he chose to use this chapstick for you and it made you smile, heart fluttering. You gently cupped his face with your hand before running the chapstick gently across his lips. Before he could question your intent, you leaned forward to press your lips against his, carefully rubbing against them to collect the substance.

When you pulled away, you could feel the wax-like coating on your lips and you grinned. “I should apply chapstick like that more often~”

“L-Let’s not,” he coughed, using his hand to try and cover his burning face as he started toward the front door.

You followed him with a chuckle, slipping your shoes onto your feet before reaching for the doorknob. He stopped you before you could pull the door open, his fingers curling around your shoulder. You blinked at him. “What is it?”

“Put your jacket on, dork.”

“But I don’t wanna,” you responded simply. “I like feeling the wind on my skin.”

He huffed, hand finding his hip. “I’m not going with you if you don’t put your jacket on.”

“But it’s not even that cold,” you frowned. He turned on his heel, starting to pull his shoes off and you groaned. “Fine! Let’s compromise, okay? I’ll bring my jacket but I’ll wear it around my waist instead. Okay?”

He thought it over for a moment before sighing. “Fine.”

You nodded, wrapping the jacket’s sleeves around your waist before slinging the door open hard enough to bounce against the wall. “Let’s go~!”

A smile tugged at his lips as he watched you run outside, arms spread out and a burst of cheerful laughter bubbling from your lips.

You slowly walked down the rows of pumpkins, hands clasped behind your back as your eyes scanned the pumpkins of varying sizes and colors dotting the clearing – tall ones, fat ones, baby ones, even ones twisted into strange shapes. You could already imagine the different patterns of carvings in each one and it got you feeling excited for Halloween next month.

Morisuke was walking a few steps behind you, hands buried in his pockets to keep them hidden from the icy wind. His eyes were trained on you, content simply to just watch your happy expression as you scanned the pumpkins, darting from row to row. How you could be so content doing so, he simply couldn’t understand.

When your eyes landed on a small, caramel-colored pumpkin nestled between two thin, tall ones, you rushed over to it with a grin, settling onto your knees. You picked it up gently, showing it to your boyfriend. “Look, Mori! It looks just like you!”

“How do you figure?” his brow shut up as his eyes raked over the pumpkin.

“It’s the color of caramel, just like your popcorn hair for starters,” you snickered. “Plus plus, it’s small and cute just like you~ It was even nestled between two super tall pumpkins. This white one on the right here is clearly Lev while this reddish-orange one is Kuroo! It’s got a spikey leaf just like his hair.”

He really wanted to be annoyed by your comments and by the fact that you had just compared him to a pumpkin, but when his eyes met yours, shimmering with a childlike excitement, he could only smile softly at you. “It’s… cute.”

“Right?” You stood up, approaching him with the small pumpkin still clutched in your hands. “I know it won’t last, but… can we buy it? Pretty please~?”

His fingers tugged a small leaf that had caught in your hair before his fingers brushed against your cheek. “Sure, why not.”

“Our first child!” you chirped happily, clutching it to your chest as you jogged over to the small tent. It had been set up for the employees to escape the wind and keep the money tucked into a safe place.

Morisuke’s face burned brightly, steam rising from his ears at the thought of having children with you. The way you had phrased it made it seem as if you already planned to have children with him in the future or, at the very least, had given thought to the idea. His heart raced within his chest as you waved him over.

As he slowly approached you, he couldn’t help thinking about how he truly did want to spend the rest of his life with you.

📜 Read more by checking out my masterlist 📜

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okaybutlikeimagine · 4 years ago

Text

PREVIEW: Will You Take Me as I Am?

i’m working on a fic for @biillys for something long overdue that i almost feel embarrassed talking about bc?? it was so long ago that the fundraiser has since been cancelled! have i apologized enough yet??? i don’t think i have!!

ANYWAY the title is “Will You Take Me as I Am?” and it was supposed to be super light and fun and happy and it will be but it’s also going to be angsty bc Quarantine is doing some Shit to me over here ~♥ BUT it will have things including, but not limited to:

- Billy, Steve, Max, and El bickering over music

- big long road trip to Cali

- stupid roadside attractions

- sunny summer days in San Diego

- Billy’s friends from back in the day (bc he had them and we need to talk about that!!!!)

- Max Max Max Max and Max bc Max is so good and we need to talk about her too

- Tony fucking Hawk

it’ll hopefully be done soon! this is just a super tiny snippet bc i feel awful for not having it finished yet and i need to post something or i’ll cry. so!! @biillys, i love you so much and hope you’re well and it’s COMING but until then, have this slightly sad but also heartfelt scene with our little Disaster Siblings! ♥

(title from California - Joni Mitchell bc DUH)

~ ♥ ~ ♥ ~ ♥ ~

Driving Max to school doesn’t set Billy on edge anymore.

“And it’s just so stupid because Cindy swears to everyone that she looks like Molly Ringwald. She doesn’t stop talking about it! Like anyone even cares.”

As irritating as it might be to hear about 9th grade gossip.

“And she still makes fun of my hair. Because it’s not the ‘right’ shade of red? What the hell?”

Billy smirks and listens vaguely and thinks about a few months ago. He remembers when the fall air bit him hard. When it felt invasive and aggressive and piercing rather than just present and embracing and knowing. The chill doesn’t hurt him anymore. The sound and smell of the farms doesn’t boil his blood anymore. The idea of Max having a life here doesn’t grind away at his memories anymore.

He’s laughing without hearing her. He vaguely hopes she doesn’t take too much offense by it, but the rest of him doesn’t really care. She’ll just hit him and grumble and he’ll give a vacant yet amused apology and they’ll continue on their car ride listening to Joan Jett.

Except she doesn’t hit him. His chuckles die down and the only sound through the car is Joan Jett wailing and Max tapping her fingers on her jeans.

It’s got Billy curious. He looks over quickly and sees her mouth moving- mumbling to herself.

“Telling yourself secrets or something?”

She glares, but it’s half-hearted. She chews on her lip and then she’s looking back down at her lap.

Billy’s just a little tempted to just let it all slide, but...

“Alright, what’s up?” He caves.

The quiet of the car makes Billy nervous. The air is whipping past them through the slightly rolled down windows, shoving itself into the absences of their conversation. Billy’s fingers start fidgeting with nerves and he’s on the verge of cutting in before she can get any words out, but then Max is speaking, hurriedly and with a furrowed brow as she says-

“How old are you again?”

Billy pauses.

“The hell kind of question is that?” He asks, looking over at her incredulously, confused at the question. She’s still trying to glare.

“Shut up! Just… you’re like… graduating soon… right?”

Billy raises an eyebrow at the road.

“No, Maxine.” Billy says with dripping sarcasm. “I love high school so much I was thinking of just staying there for the rest of my life.”

“Let me talk!”

“I am letting you talk! You’re just saying stupid shit!”

“Augh, you are so annoying!”

She’s crossing her arms now, and for some reason Billy can’t find it in himself to be amused by it. So instead he heaves a little sigh and bites his lip and waves for her to continue.

She sighs back.

“It’s just… my birthday is kinda close. And yours is like, right after that. And I was… just thinking. The other day...”

She trails off, hands fidgeting and head turned to the window. She doesn’t pick back up the conversation. Iggy Pop is howling through the radio, now.

“Thinking? Pretty dangerous thing to do when you’re-”

Max hits Billy with the hardest glare yet of the car ride. He concedes.

“Alright. What were you thinking about?”

The glare softens. Her eyes fill with worry… and nerves. Billy finds something vaguely reminiscent in them, even if it’s not exactly the same as in his memory. He knows he’s being a little shit but he hasn’t done anything to warrant fear... has he? He racks his brain while they sit in the silence she lets settle between them.

“I was just thinking about… well… remember that one birthday?” She’s had a few birthdays while they’ve shared a roof. A couple of them he’s purposefully decided to forget-most notably that first one. “When you took me to the boardwalk?”

That one he definitely remembers, with more color than most memories. She was turning 12- it was right before they found out they were moving. Things had been going so well. That birthday saw them walking down the boardwalk together to pick up some ice cream sundaes and talk about friends. Old ones and new ones. Gossip and interests. Max has mentioned that birthday a few times before- she says all the time it was the first time Billy treated her like a real person. Like a sister. He used to roll his eyes at her confession until he stopped. Because he realized maybe she was right. Maybe before that, “sister” wasn’t really in his vocabulary- not with a real definition and most definitely not with a face.

It was a nice day. They skated down the boardwalk and he taught her a couple of tricks on her board and he bought her something from the knick-knack store at the corner where the boardwalk met the street. She smiled at him genuinely for the first time ever. It seemed like they could be friends.

He chews the inside of his lip. He doesn’t like to think too far past that memory.

“Yeah, I remember.”

She’s fidgeting still. He wants to slap her hands to get her to stop because it’s making his leg twitch.

“Well I was just thinking about it. And… and… well…”

She’s picking at her cuticles. He winces whenever he sees her do that. He used to do that too. Used to bite at them when he was nervous, so much it’d make his fingers bleed. He’s stopped for a year or so now. She’s still doing it. He wonders sometimes if she picked it up from watching him and his shifty eyes. He can’t take watching her so nervous and he’s starting to feel on edge and-

“Spit it out, Max.” His voice is a little snappy, but he really doesn’t mean it. She sighs rather than glares.

“Are you still gonna move out to California?” She asks, all the words slurred together like they’re one but it doesn’t matter, because Billy understands them all.

He loses his breath for a second. When he looks over, he sees her eyes are screwed shut, but then she opens them and there’s tears there. He hates seeing tears there. Something squeezes his heart at the thought that he’s responsible again... only this time he doesn’t even know what he’s done.

“Uhm-”

“Like after you graduate.”

“Uh-”

A tear falls down her cheek.

“Shit.”

She looks down at her lap. Billy looks back at the road and has to hit the breaks hard when he realizes he’s about to run a stop sign. He takes a deep breath.

“Maybe. I dunno.”

“Take me with you.”

It’s sudden. He’s staring at her and she’s staring at her hands, picking at her cuticles viciously. It’s the faint sound of someone honking behind them that gets Billy to start driving again.

“Not like… forever...” Max says in such a small voice Billy is speechless. “Just for… a little bit.”

They ride in silence for a bit. They’re almost at school. Billy almost wants to stop the car because Max is going to cry and she’s gonna be pissed about walking into school while crying.

There are too many thoughts swirling through Billy’s head, some of them colored like a carnival, before Max is speaking again.

“I just… I miss home.”

It punches Billy in the gut. His memories fade to the sand and the waves and teaching Max how to break through the surf. He’s swirling down into thoughts of ice cream and babysitting her and walking along the boardwalk and telling her to make sand castles while he ran away with his friends. Tanned skin and sun-bleached hair and darker freckles blooming on their faces.

“It was stupid.” Her voice cuts quickly through the fog of memories. “Forget I said anything.”

“What? No.” Billy can’t forget. He doesn’t know how to answer but… but she’s crying and he’s not going to pretend like that’s not something he should be worried about.

“No, it’s stupid. You’re gonna be going with Steve. I don’t even know how I’d get back… it’s fine-”

“Are you trying to live with your dad?” Billy asks because it’s the only thing that makes sense to ask right now. She shakes her head vehemently.

“No no… I wanna live with my mom. I wanna stay here. I just wanna… visit, I guess…”

He so often forgets she’s still such a kid. She’s four years away from where he is. She’s four years away from being able to be independent. From having the ability to leave. They moved and Billy felt like he had been put in a cage. The word “landlocked” was the cruelest, harshest, most disgusting word imaginable to him because to him the only synonym was “trapped”. He knew it meant staying for another two years. He didn’t think about how for her it meant six. For her it was either plant your roots or let them dry out and crack in the Indiana sun. He couldn’t see that as he screamed at her back then.

“I dunno, I just miss it.” She says, but it’s quiet as she wipes at her cheek with the back of her hand.

Billy pulls into the school and picks a spot in the back of the lot, even though the bell is gonna ring soon and it’ll probably take too long to walk onto campus. She’s still sniffling a bit and his heart is squeezing tight. His chest is constricting. He’s watching Max right now and thinking about how the Billy he was a few weeks ago and even beyond was making a whole plan to just fuck off to California with Steve. How he didn’t even give a thought to leaving Max behind with the knowledge that he’d be back in the San Diego sun. He’d be back where the world made sense and she’d be here still shoving her roots in the ground to find some comfort.

Now suddenly he can’t imagine ever doing that.

“Well uh…” He starts, but his voice is bubbled. He clears his throat and tries again. “I still gotta convince Steve… I was planning on taking him just for a trip over there. Just so he can check it out and see if he likes it.”

He hasn’t even extended an offer yet, but she turns to look at him and the only way to describe her face is glowing. She’s so hopeful. Her eyes are wide and her mouth is slightly tilted up into a smile, open a little in shock. He just shrugs it off, even though it lights up his chest.

“I guess we can squeeze you into his fancy little car.”

“Oh Billy thank you.”

She reaches across the center console to wrap him into as good a hug as she can. He rolls his eyes, but he pats her back as he does it.

“Yeah yeah… chill out.” He sounds tired to his ears, pulling away from Max and getting ready to leave the car when-

“We should take El, too.”

“What?”

Max crosses her arms, suddenly looking pretty bossy for a girl with tears still shining in her eyes. Billy can’t say he’s exactly surprised at seeing her capable of that.

“We should take El too.”

“You just invited yourself and now you’re inviting other people?”

Her brows furrow.

“She’s my best friend! And she’s like... your sister now, right?”

“Yeah yeah, but-”

“I’m going to be there all alone with just you and Steve! I’m gonna need someone to keep me company while you two try to suck face.”

“Okay I get it-”

“Plus she’s never seen the ocean! She’s never left Indiana… she’s barely left Hawkins! She needs something like this-!”

“Al-right! Alright, I get it. I’ll ask Hop, alright?”

Max seems to let up, taking a deep breath and sitting back in her seat from where she was getting dangerously close to the edge in her excitable anger.

They sit in the quiet for a second before Billy elbows her and mutters: “Trying to guilt trip me, huh?”

Max shrugs, but she’s chewing her lip and picking at her cuticles and she’s giving Billy a side eye and-

“I just wanna show her around…” Max shrugs again, like she can’t think to do anything else. “It was my home too, Billy.”

She’s still picking at her cuticles and her leg is bouncing and she… she’s so young. He’s not sure how he could forget so quickly. She left a home behind, too. And family and friends. She left a lot behind. He always forgets.

“Billy…” Max starts, voice trailing.

“Yeah?”

There’s a small beat of silence where Billy waits breathlessly.

“We’re going to California.”

It’s a statement- like there’s no doubt in her mind that it’s happening. It’s going to happen. He hears her certainty and feels it too. She’s starting with concentrated eyes down at her lap but she’s so sure it looks like it hurts.

She sniffles and his heart nearly cracks. He rubs her shoulder kind of harshly and rather than a glare she gives a sort of grateful smile. That is, before she pushes at Billy’s hand and wipes at her eye and gripes about how “we’re gonna be late.”

Billy snickers.

#billy hargrove #max mayfield #stranger things #fic #preview #biillys #i'm the worst i admit it #i've also taken up needle felting recently for when i get stressed #i made a whale today #.... anyway #disaster siblings #it's gonna have a few OCs i've made just for this just bc it ??? really needed to #they're not going to cali and NOT meeting Billy's friends... that's just not happening #i really hope you like the finished product my dear!!!#angst #fluff #i'm working with a plot bc i don't usually have any kind of plot at all when i write #and quarantine has made me a Changed Woman #also #bratty billy #♥#summer doesn't end until the 22nd of sept where i am #and i wanted this done before the end of summer #but it'll DEFINITELY be done before the end of YOUR summer in aus!!!#good lord it definitely will #anyway i love you hun #and i love all of you!!!#buhbye~

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criminally--reid · 5 years ago

Text

library lovers

I h8 the title- n e ways... here's the fix that's been promised to be posted at least twice a week for the past month 😌✋🏽also if u want untagged yk who u are smsbsj lmk,, i just thought id use the anon tag so u could see it snsbsj n e ways let's get on wiv d shit show

warnings: awkward chaotic gay, general smutty stuff y'know, mutual masturbation, i’ve never written mxm fic before so yonkers :|

word count: 2.6k

Pairing: bi!spencer x (dom-ish)male!reader

//a.n.\\ somehow the reader ends up in charge and i kinda like it tbh. i'm shit at storylines, but honestly,, highschool homophobe masturbating with spencer reid? Call that character development

`°•○●○•°`

You hadn't seen Spencer in years. Remembering the terms the two of you ended on, you weren't surprised either. All throughout highschool, you were the movie-esque tormentors of the frail, nerdy kid. The bully that wasn't actually supposed to exist. The absolute nightmare that had kids like Spencer trembling, dreading to relive the same terror another day.

Shock couldn't even begin to cover what you felt the day you watched him walk into the library you now owned. You had been working on forgetting him since graduation. Just when you thought the remnants of Spencer had dripped entirely from your memory, everything came flooding in the matter of milliseconds the moment he walked through your door. All the times you watched him eat alone, pick his things up alone after someone had thrown them out of his hands; all the times you could've stepped up and just chose not to. You promised yourself you'd be different. Now was your chance.

You subtly watch Spencer as he looks through the many isles of books. Beginning at young adult, trailing quickly to non-fiction, and eventually ending up in the classic section. He doesn't spend much time amongst the books - 5 minutes at the most since he walked in - before bringing a stack of 6 books up to the counter; you anxiously waiting to scan him in.

"Did- did you find all your books alright?" You manage to ask. Spencer merely nods his head, crossing his arms and bringing one of his hands up to his mouth, chewing on his fingernails. His brows furrow and you're worried he's about to say something.

"I'm a little surprised to see you working here actually." This throws you off. You did not plan for this- this confrontation.

"I take it you remember me?"

"I'm not really one to forget things, you know." Fair enough.

"Well, yes. I actually run the place now. My grandfather had passed it on to me."

"Oh he's…? I'm so sorry for your loss."

Spencer's look of sincerity throws you off. After all the years of you being his worst fear, he still had room in his heart to be genuinely kind towards you.

"It's fine, really. It was so long ago now. And besides- now I have this grand, ancient bookstore." You end with a chuckle and finish scanning the barcodes in each of his books.

"Thank you- uh actually, could you help me find something else?"

"Of course! What're you looking for?"

"Everyone keeps recommending me Donna Tart, where could I find some of her work?"

"Follow me," you gesture and move from behind the counter.

You walk him over to the very back of the store where all the dark academia-esq books are. While sifting through the books, he asks you a question that catches you completely off guard; his voice nothing above a whisper.

"And I take it that you don't still hate me-"

You immediately know what he's talking about. How silly of you to think the past wouldn’t be brought up.

You clear your throat before speaking up. "I- n-no of course not. I- I uh- I know this is extremely cliche, and I'm not trying to excuse away any of the horrible things I did to you but- I was hiding."

"From what?" Spencer chimes in quietly.

"I just didn't know how to feel about myself. Gay this and gay that- it was all so negative. I didn't want to be known for something that was apparently so wrong. I definitely couldn't let the football playing circle jerkers I called my friends know about how I felt towards other guys. An-and I saw how they treated people like you and I didn't want that, so I joined them."

"So you're gay?" Spencer asks, and you nod slowly. "And you and your 'circle jerking buddies' tortured me because you all thought I was gay?"

"Well- I- we uh- that's what they said. I knew it wasn't good, but I didn't do anything because of what I was. I know the word 'sorry' will never make up for anything I've ever done or said to you, but I am so so sorry, Spencer."

"You guys just knew I was gay? -Gaydar that strong, huh?" Spencer ends in a chuckle, easing up your tension, allowing you to slip out a soft laugh, too.

"Obviously, it wasn't too good. I somehow managed to skate by for four years."

"That you did." For the first time in years, when you look at Spencer, he doesn't look upset. A content, lazy smile accompanies his happy eyes as he. "Well- actually, I'm not entirely gay so I guess their gaydar needed some tweeking, hm?"

"Oh, you're-" you attempt, but get cut-off.

"Bi? Yeah. I realized I was bi when I realized I had a crush on you and your tenth grade girlfriend. What about you?"

Still skimming the pages of a Donna Tart book, never looking up from it. So nonchalant. Him being so upfront with you was honestly exciting. You never imagined that you'd be remotely friendly with Spencer Reid, let alone him revealing he had a crush on you. "Ah, about junior year, I figured out I kinda had a thing for you."

"Say, uh," Spencer started, tucking his hair behind his ear and slipping the book back onto the shelf. "I liked you; you liked me. Why don't we hang out sometime or something-"

You could tell Spencer was trying hard to mask his enthusiasm. You were too.

"Erm- yeah totally! I get off in about an hour actually; I could call you, and we could grab coffee or something."

"Sounds great," Spencer says hurriedly as he fishes around in his pocket, drawing out a small slip of paper and drawing the pen from his shirt pocket. He hands you the freshly used paper with his number inscribed on it in smudged black ink.

The next hour, excitement coursed through you. You're bustling around, fidgeting, unshelving and re-shelving books, sweeping, mopping - anything to keep your mind off of the end of your shift. The busiest yet slowest hour of your life. Your shift ends and your excitement reaches its peak. Your finger hovers over the call button at the bottom of your screen, hesitating. For a split second you get the courage to press call, but then you immediately regret it - that is until his hurried, excited voice slips through the speaker.

"Hey, y/n! It's Spencer! Uh- you know.. that.. of course. Anyways, uh there's this coffee shop about a block away from my place. I wondered if maybe you'd wanna go and have an early dinner or something."

You can't help but chuckle at his excitement; trying to calm down your own. "That sounds great, Spencer. What's the place?"

"Café Negra-"

"What?!" you cut him off "I go there all the time! How have I never seen you?"

"What? That's insane. How have we not crossed each other there?"

"No clue.. Anyways I'll meet you there- uh about 20?"

"Perfect." Spencer hangs up without any formal goodbyes, but you couldn't care less - you couldn't wait to meet him at the coffee shop.

The date - which neither of you bothered to assign that title to the event, but you both knew it was, in fact, a date - went impressively well. It's like you two had never been enemies in the first place. Those four years in high school wiped clean of any hard feelings as the two of you drank coffee way too strong for 6p.m., ate double chocolate muffins, and laughed away.

When it comes time to leave, Spencer stands up first, throwing away his cup and muffin wrapper; you follow quickly and do the same.

A mutual agreement was somehow made to take it back to Spencer's place. Maybe it was the lack of goodbyes that he seemed prone to. Whatever it was, the evening didn't feel finished.

Once inside his cozy apartment, he welcomes you to his couch before maneuvering to the tv stand, kneeling down and pulling out three movies. He gestures for you to choose one, and you choose Titanic. Not the greatest choice of the three, but you had a feeling you wouldn't be focused on the movie too much anyways.

He puts the disc into the player before joining you on the couch. About twenty minutes into the movie, he moves closer to you, resting his shoulder slowly, cautiously as if asking permission. You ease his nerves by welcoming his head on your shoulder and leaning against him in return. The next half an hour is full of stolen glances, light touches, and snuggling. All innocent until Spencer slides his hand up your thigh. You try not to mind it much. Maybe he's just absentminded in all the contact. He doesn't know what he's doing. You try to focus on the movie and not on his hand getting ever so dangerously close until you just can't anymore. Looking down at him, he's already making eye contact with you, driving you wild. Instinctually you connect your lips with his.

Spencer shuffles over and straddles your lap, never disconnecting your lips. Your hands roam around his shoulders and back before dipping underneath the hem of his shirt and pulling it off. He makes quick work of returning the favor. After a few more chaste kisses, he stands up, pulling you up with him, and pushes his pants to the floor with you following suit. Spencer places his fingers under your chin, bringing your face up to his in an attempt to place another open-mouthed kiss on your bite-swollen lips. However, you muster up a burst of courage and manage to flip the script. Placing your fingers on Spencer’s chest and holding him at arm's length, you keep eye contact while you take a seat on one end of the couch. You motion for him to take his seat at the other end.

Spencer, still unsure of the current situation, watches you move. He watches as you run your fingertips up and down your thighs. As you wet the palm of your hand with your tongue before running it up and down your shaft. Lightly tracing your fingertips over your reddened head, hissing at the contact.

“Your turn,” you say barely above a whisper.

Spencer’s eyes go wide, but he still obliges, wetting his hand and repeating your actions on himself. Hissing and cursing at the contact with his eager cock. He soon gets lost in his own world of pleasure. Moving faster and moaning barely-there profanities. Watching the show, you bring your hand back to yourself. Your eyes shut as you listen to Spencer; his pretty gasps like music to your ears.

“Y-y/n? I’m- I’m close.”

“Awh, so soon? You sure you can’t hold on for me just a little longer?”

Spencer lets out a strangled moan and forces himself to slow his pace. Watching him struggle to contain himself turns you on even more. His desperate whines and pleas for release getting you closer to the edge. “Look at me, bubbas,” you coax.

Spencer looks up at you, pushing a tuft of hair from his eyes. His other hand still desperately attached to the base of his cock, awaiting further instruction.

“Listen.. We’re gonna cum together okay?” Spencer only manages a nod in response so you continue. “I want you to move faster again; get closer. But I want you to let me know when you’re about to cum, okay?”

You’re met with a furious nod for an answer as he works at his waist, bringing himself closer to his climax; you simultaneously doing the same.

“F-fuck fuckfuckfuck! -M gonna cum. Shit! I’m cumming!” Spencer's cries of pleasure send you over the edge and you both spill over together. Your head dips back over the armrest of the couch as you try to catch your breath. You bring your head back up and look at Spencer, only to see him leaning sideways against the back of the couch, still out of breath and coates in a layer of sweat.

“Why don’t we go get cleaned up, hm?”

Spencer nods his head in agreement before getting up off the couch and leading you to the bathroom. You definitely aren’t going home tonight.

#criminal minds #spencer reid #gay #mlm #x reader #self insert fanfic #matthew gray gubler #mgg #cm #smut #fluff #spencer reid x reader #🕯anon

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leverage-commentary · 5 years ago

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Leverage Season 2, Episode 3, The Order 23 Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Dean: Hi, I'm Dean Devlin, Executive Producer.

John: John Rodgers, Executive Producer.

Chris: Chris Downey, Executive Producer and Writer, and this is: The Order 23 Job.

John: Writer of this episode.

Chris: Yes.

John: That's right, this is number two written, number two aired.

Chris: Yes. Now- yeah this is- we meet our bad guy here, in this scene. His name is Eddie Maranjian, he's played by an actor Melik Malkasian, and Dean, you discovered him.

Dean: Well when we got to Portland, we wanted to see some of the local talent, so we went to an improv group and he was really one of the outstanding performers in the improv group. So when you wrote the part, I saw that it was Armenian; I remembered that I'd seen an Armenian actor and he came in and he just knocked it out of the park.

John: Now this is about affinity crimes this episode. And this- and by the way, this happens- takes place in the fictional town of Bellbridge, Massachusetts, which we chose for episode two. Bellbridge, Mass has become our fictional city in Leverage where just bad things happen. In the season finale it’s actually-

Chris: It's a cesspool of evil.

John: It's a cesspool of evil and corruption and remember we like- we're gonna do an episode where an entire town is corrupt. Well, we've already slandered Bellbridge; might as well get our money's worth. Tell me why you chose an Armenian villain here other than your hatred of all things Armenian.

Chris: Well, you know, we were very influenced by the Bernie Madoff scandal, and one of the things that came out of that was people asking the question: how were these people duped into investing all their money and losing it in a Ponzi scheme? And the original Ponzi scheme was named after Charles Ponzi who was an Italian immigrant in 1920 who preyed on fellow Italian immigrants in a scheme- in a Ponzi scheme; subsequent investors of the scheme pay off the previous investors. And so we wanted to kind of explore - how could people be duped like that? And we kind of decided, well let's do an Armenian bad guy, kind of arbitrary, just to sort of, take a little bit of that-

John: Well it’s the same close knit community, a lot of financial- many people don't know, but a lot of America- a lot of big developments in the Midwest are actually developed by Armenians.

Chris: Yes. Yes.

Dean: Well this episode was directed by Rod Hardy, who in season one directed the terrific episode The 12 Step Job, and he, again, knocked it out. He's an Australian director, friend of our DP Dave Connell who introduced us to him, and he's really become a great friend of the show and part of the extended Leverage family.

John: Now this show, interestingly, really shows off the glory that is Portland. Because we had a court house episode last year, the Juror Number 6 Job, where we built the courtroom on our soundstage in an old aluminium milling plant in the valley in LA. Where they’re probably shooting porn now.

[Laughter]

John: Meanwhile, the lovely city of Portland gave us access to all these government buildings, so we can do long walk and talks down massive government corridors.

Dean: And real courtrooms.

Chris: Many cities have the old federal courthouse- there are great stately federal courthouses built in the early 20th century, the 1920s, and then the new federal courthouse. And the old federal courthouses just kind of sit there, and we saw this when we did a location scout before the season started, and it was in the back of my head when conceiving this episode.

John: This episode was also born of one of the first ideas we put up on the wall of cards. If you listen to first season commentary, you know Chris and I - before we hired the writers - started throwing around- just throwing up cards on a wall of just stuff we always wanted to do on heist shows. And one of the things we were talking about was a great old Mission Impossible episode where they convince a guy that the end of the world has come.

Chris: Yes.

John: They do so through a periscope and some cunningly developed models.

[Laughter]

John: We realized that, probably, modern audiences were too sophisticated for the telescope, but we took the idea of convincing a guy that the apocalypse had come and kinda ran with it a very cool post-modern way.

Chris: I mean, if you look at, sort of, the headlines that were running at the time this was conceived, it was Bernie Madoff and swine flu. And that basically, this episode is the marriage of those two things.

John: So as you can tell, it takes really no training to be a television writer. Just pick two random things from the newspaper and combine them and then you have an episode.

[Laughter]

John: They're talking about the cupcake, nice, soft federal prison he's going to. Interestingly, right after this, they stopped sending these guys to the prisons. Just because I think the idea that these guys had brought the entire world to the brink of financial ruin meant that they can no longer skate away- Bernie Madoff actually got into his first prison fight a little ago.

Chris: Oh, really?

Dean: In an argument over Wall Street.

John: Yeah, as happens. And how did we pick the Order 23? Where'd Order 23, the title, come from?

Chris: I don't know. I think it was, you know, just kind of a spooky number, I think it was, and we knew this- the con for this one was supposed to be built around sound.

Dean: And as I was saying earlier, about this episode being directed by Rod Hardy, we are now being joined by-

John: Rod Hardy

Chris: Rod Hardy! Yay!

Rod: My apologies, Hollywood traffic is always tricky.

[Laughter]

John: And he's driving on the wrong side of the road; it's just bad.

Rod: You people drive on the wrong side of the road.

John: I know, you wanna- I'm having my traditional Guinness. Do you want one?

Rod: I'd love one.

John: We will see what we can do. So the gentleman- we've just met our feds and our gentleman- the gentleman playing the two security guards - who are they?

Chris: Yeah, it's Victor Morris playing Deputy Marshal Robert Corville, and Joshua Sawtell is playing Charlie Merrill. Little fact about this show - this show is cast entirely in the city of Portland; these are all Portland actors.

John: Yeah, that's right; we didn't fly anyone up from LA for this one.

Rod: The cast really stood up to the line of anything. I mean Melik in particular- we were very, in one way, keen to find someone locally for a whole bunch of reasons, but he showed a true, sort of, level of performance that I thought worked really well in this episode.

Dean: Absolutely.

John: There's two things in this sequence that are interesting from a writing standpoint - other than the fun of seeing Beth Riesgraf in a ventilation shaft. One: poison in the water is, of course, an homage to You Only Live Twice, the Bond film, and the wire, by the way, is digital.

Chris: Yeah. Well this part is real, but that part is digital.

John: This is digital and the whole drop down. But two: where did the villain speech come from? Who was explaining that?

Chris: Oh, this is kind of the psychology of hedge funds, and it was- I believe it was from a column my dad sent me from the Wall Street Journal. You know how your dad sends you articles and things? And, you know-

John: ‘This would be a good movie.’ Yeah, I get that all the time.

Chris: ‘This would be good.’ I was going through it, and this is be all about why people invest in hedge funds; about the fear that other people make more than them. And fear was kinda the theme of this episode, so it kind of, sort of set it up here.

Rod: And I'm sure you mentioned before, but to me the wonderful thing about this story that brought it into today was that it was the Bernie Madoff story. In a way you want him to be Bernie Madoff.

John: Well the first season was really the Madoff variation.

[All Laugh]

John: First half of the season- because, you know, the show got picked up and were like, ‘Oh, second season - what are we gonna do? We hadn't really thought about it.’ And then the world economic system collapsed and, you know, ready made villains began to fall out of the newspapers.

Rod: Yes. The thing about Malik’s performance that I always found appealing was, when you first did the audition, was the fear in his eyes. You know, underneath all the sort of men with great bravado, there's a wonderful sense of fear. Which I think our bad guys always come to the floor with, which is terrific. Here it is; look at those eyes.

Chris: I love this shot here, too. I love- I just love the way you composed this.

John: Did you digitally fog that or-?

Rod: No, just put it out of focus. It’s easier; the DP is very good at that sort of stuff.

[All Laugh]

John: Oh, he's gonna be filled with rage. And then we take him- now this is interesting - this is one of the few locations. It really only happens in 2 locations: the courthouse and the hospital. And then we go back to the hospital.

Chris: The whole episode takes place- that was another thing I wanted to do, was do an episode that takes place entirely - not just in one day - but really in about 6 hours.

John: Now it was interesting - this was really the first episode where we started to hammer in on the second season theme, which we realize was the more you are constrained in time and space- because our team at this point is very, very good. People watched the first season; they know how incredibly talented they are. How do you challenge a super team? You have to keep throwing obstacles in their way. And rather than just complications, you kept making the situation more and more constrained. And this is also a great one. Tim really dug in on the whole ‘Oh, so I like hurting people this year.’ He really dug in on it.

Rod: I gotta tell you, I look at the show now, and I look at the difference between the LA versions and the Portland version - and I love the Portland version. It just feels different, and has a different sense to it, which is great.

John: It feels bigger.

Dean: And we have such access to such a varying architecture, varying designs. And we can shoot in places we would never be allowed to shoot in Los Angeles, and I think it adds to it.

John: Because of little things like safety regulations and employment laws. Meanwhile in Portland, we’re basically running a giant child labor camp and, yeah, starring the entire city of Portland.

Dean: I love your use of the bullet time here, and going down the hall, and through-

Rod: Well, so, it was your invention. And I just think it’s, unfortunately I do - when I go to work on other productions - never do I enjoy working on other productions better than this one, but I do try to steal that idea occasionally, because it is so clever and so wonderful.

[Laughter]

John: It just keeps the pace up and moving, because to a great- one of the things you do find in a show - it's a lot of people sitting around looking at computers. And in order to stop it- Now where- how did we wind up using sound so much in this? It was the-

Chris: Well the idea of this was, again, we mention it - great Mission Impossible where they convince somebody they were in a submarine or a bomb shelter. And the great thing about that is using sound. This was a con that was built around sound; about the noise in the hallway that was gonna slowly drive this guy insane, and-

Dean: You know, what's interesting about that, is when I saw the rough cut and we only had the temp sounds on it, I liked the episode, but it wasn't, for me, like, a super great episode. Once the sounds came in, it was suddenly, ‘Oh wow, this thing just took a big leap,’ because- well Rod, you had so well directed the actors to the sounds, that without the sounds there, it was like we were missing a character. And when the sounds came in, it was like the other character was in the room.

Rod: I say these days, sound to me brings in at least 70% of a movie. It's quite extraordinary. Where 20 years ago it was less than 50, now it's up above cause it creates the whole sense of where you are.

John: By the way, the speech that nurses don't wear the tight little white uniforms anymore, is actually a speech Beth gave up that we just wound up putting in the show.

[All Laugh]

Dean: Yeah.

John: Nice try guys. And this is one of the perfect examples of the bickering brother relationship. This really is the proto episode for that.

Rod: It’s that Lethal Weapon stuff which is great.

Chris: In my mind, they share an apartment with bunk beds and NFL [unintelligible.]

[All Laugh]

Chris: That's how I write it.

John: In your head, that's how they- they've been adopted by Mr. Drummond. Are they like the Different Strokes kids? Is that your theory?

Dean: I love this bit.

John: I also love the weirdly, and if we can talk about the actors for a moment, I love the weirdly disaffected face Beth always puts on when she's about to do physical harm to someone. Yeah, it really- if you ever notice in the ventilation shaft, she has poisoned someone and she is giggling; she is giggly. And in here, she's just kind of got these dead eyes when she's, ‘Oh, time to go give a man a skin rash to convince him he's dying.’ It’s another Thursday afternoon for Parker.

Dean: And these guys you got to play the cops are terrific.

Rod: They worked out really well, didn't they? I did notice the priest in the background there. I really wanted to work on- the first episode, I wanted to have a priest or a nun in everything, and unfortunately, I couldn't find the right place, but in the hospital it was great.

Chris: There’s another great bullet time.

Dean: Yeah, that was a really great one.

John: This also was another thing we did a lot first season, where we really became part of the pattern this year, which is to split them up in twos and threes. Is to- you know, last year, if you look, a lot of times they kind of fold over and cross in each other’s stories a lot. Well this year, in order to give each character a little room to breathe, we really started building- not really B stories, but physically- simultaneously, but physically separated.

Dean: But this part right here is a very interesting deviation from what we normally do, and it worked really well, which- normally the heart and soul of our show is the victim and their story, but here it switches to a new victim that we’re introducing here. It was quite the surprise, I thought, and became a very emotional part of the story.

John: Well that's cause the victim was in Act 0 in this episode. I mean, you start in the courtroom, which is very difficult to get the emotional hit of a lot of our other episodes.

Chris: Well, one of the things I think that- it kinda-

John: Wait a minute, Rod’s afraid to pop a beer.

Rod: It's never a good time for this. Is it now? [Opens beer.]

John: It is- it is traditional on all of our commentaries to usually hear me opening that, so it's good to hear you taking that over for me.

Chris: I was gonna say that one of the things we have typically in the con, is that one of the members of the team gets, sort of, over invested in the con. That's- we've done that as a sort of a source of comedy, but in this case it's kinda like Eliot sorta becomes- he becomes a cop in a sense. You know?

John: Yeah.

Chris: So I mean, like, it's when they wear the costume - sometimes one of them actually, sort of, becomes that costume.

John: And it's also interesting to see how fans react to any sort of storyline like this, where they just assume you're trying to reveal something about the character’s past or some sort of subtle hints that we’re laying in. It’s like no, Eliot doesn't like guys who beat up kids. It's not- I mean there's plainly other stuff going on that Christian chose in order to base his acting around...

Dean: This was the episode, though, where we all suddenly watched the dailies and said, ‘Christian’s really taking it up a whole other level this year’. And then he did. Because it was this episode, and then Tap Out, he took the character that he had built in season 1 that we had liked and were familiar with, and he added these real interesting layers to it that just, I thought, really elevated it.

John: Ah, the [in a Boston accent] Revere Claw there you go. That is Gina doing the great Route 1. I’ll tell you exactly from where Route 1 she’s up on - she's just past Mike Clarke’s Comedy Club up on Route 1, with the dealerships. That hair right there, is the [in a Boston accent] Revere Claw named after Revere, Massachusetts, to establish a certain socioeconomic and strata one might say, except it's actually in Revere. At least when I was growing up, it’s teased out so finely it’s only 5 or 6 hairs; it's really insane - it's like a fish’s krill mask.

Rod: I would love to see- I'd like to see a reel at some stage of all these characters cut together from each of the characters. Put on one of these DVDs, cause it would be such fun to see the journey you take them on; it’s fabulous.

John: Well the fans do that. That's part of the fun of watching the YouTube fan videos.

Rod: Well done fans.

John: It’s watching like, ‘Oh, I'd forgotten how cool that moment was.’ Yeah, because we're gonna make any of these by hopefully the end of the run. Even at this point, we’re 20 hours in and it’s- there’s gonna be moments you forget.

Rod: You know, the tricky thing about this episode also was, and I know it happens a lot in the series, but for me, you'd shoot a scene like such we’re watching now, but at the same time you have to get that security, sort of, version of it. so it was always- Dean’s always makes what he shows - it was always that much more difficult; there's so much to be done, which is just interesting.

Chris: There’s a lot of layers. Well an interesting thing that made me think, looking at Melik here was, and I - and this I gotta say to Rod - we, in day one of this shoot, I think, Dave went on day one and day 2, Melik had to go from arrogant to literally- I mean, on the verge of insanity. And I mean, maybe Rod, talk about how you had to get him there over the course of the first two days of this shoot. I mean, that’s a lot.

Rod: I used an old director’s tool, which was basically, ‘you'll never work again if this doesn't work.’

[All Laugh]

John: Ah. [In an Australian accent/mimicking Rod] ‘Now the way I want you to have fear here, is to be actually afraid of the fact that we're gonna fire you.’ That’s really- use the sense memory of unemployment.

Rod: That’s right. That's all true. My god, I have the same fears every time I work. You know, what's interesting here was, Day 1 he had to go from the beginning to the very end of the thing, so for an actor to- by the way, who has done the terrific things in his time, but nothing as quickly as we make this show. So I might say all power to him for being able to keep it going right to the end of the day. But it made that first day of our shoot really a tricky one, and one of the hardest of the whole shoot in a way, because he had- you know, you can shoot this stuff very quickly, but it's not just about shoots, it's about keeping the performances alive and real on the same level, and he was able to do that. But you know what? The way I was able to talk to him about it, a good thing was, he listened.

Chris: Yeah.

Rod: He just listened, and that was really helpful. We do this together. I mean, that's what the journey is - you do it together.

John: Now there's- we breeze past the speech where Tim is explaining to Beth Riesgraf- or, pardon me, Nate is explaining to Parker how they're gonna do this. How they're gonna basically hypnotize this guy. How they're gonna drive him to the edge. And we’d- you know, you'd done a fair bit of research and we'd just started reading Jonah Lehrer which is a lot of neuroscience, and we got a really nice email, actually, from a neuroscientist which was like, ‘Hey, you know what? Usually I call bullshit on television, but pretty good theory; that would actually work.’

Chris: Yeah. I felt pretty good about that. We got really interested in neuroscience in this beginning of season 2.

John: Well especially Apollo Robbins, who was our consultant who had actually lectured at the big neuroscience convention, you know, as they were starting to understand that magicians and illusionists have a very basic understanding of how the mind and eye track objects and understand things and perceive things, that neuroscientists can only do through experimentation. So there's this weird, cool melding now of the two fields. And yeah, we got totally sucked into it, but that's the great thing about writing.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Anything you think is cool, you can use. Yeah, you're right - Chris has an awful lot to do here because he's got to also sell this ‘don't call anyone,’ and he really does. He really digs in on it.

Dean: Yeah, I'll tell you, when I started watching this on the dailies I was saying to myself, ‘Chris is digging deeper this year’. And speaking of that, we also just went through Gina's scene - Gina, who showed up this season 2 pregnant; had to deal with going through pregnancy-

John: None of us knew that, by the way, none of us had anything to do with that. Just put that out there.

[Laughter]

Dean: But, you know, going through-

Rod: DNA test results are coming, by the way.

Dean: But going through that for the first time, and yet she then also stepped up and brought her characters to a whole other level, and all the characters she created this year were phenomenal. And this one, we'd never seen her do anything like this, maybe a little hint of this in the season finale last year- no I'm sorry in Homecoming, the airport scene.

Chris: It's the first time we've had her do, what I would call a ‘low status’ character. Generally she plays very high status professionals and, you know, it was just interesting. Oh yeah, here-

Dean: This is a great scene.

Chris: This is our ER scene.

John: This is actually- I actually- yes, you'll notice no one's running, which is a big complaint all ER nurses have; which is people always run in the scenes. I actually got food poisoning in college and this happened next to me. I remember us talking about this, yeah, the whole flatlining and shadows, it's a very-

Rod: You know what Chris? This is one of the hardest scenes I've done for a very long time, because it's all about perception. You know, the audience has to know one thing, but the character - who we have to really feel his fears is there thinking something else, and it was-

Chris: And then I love the way you frame this shot, just- You know, just him peeking out a little bit of the gauze and, kind of, now getting his POV.

John: It's very- this is a hard episode, very few spend this much time with the bad guy.

Rod: But you know what? I know I picked this episode up, and read it, and I could hear people saying, ‘this is the easy one; there's only two locations.’

[All Laugh]

John: This is one of the- that look she just gave is great. This is one of the times you have to remind Beth that Parker’s not as good of an actress as she is. It’s like, ‘that was perfect and Parker wouldn't be that good, but good!’ Now he's losing his mind. This- and by the way, this is- we've established in thief 101, each one has skills, and this was two fold: one, we love the fact there is a grabber claw-

Chris: Well that was- I have to give Apollo credit for that. I mean, we kinda ran this one by him and he literally sent me a picture of the grabber claw; there was a link on where you could buy it - he really supplied the whole thing.

John: Oh, well that's a lot of the tech people figure is unbelievable on the show. I remember they called last year about the credit card scanner on Beth’s thigh, and they said it was unbelievable. I said, ‘I have two on my desk. You want me to send you one?’ But the other one we needed to establish is - Hardison, can’t pick pockets. You know, each one has very specific uses, and even through the rest of the season, if you watch the DVDs, you can always see Gina or Beth does the lift - always. And it's always a handoff to Hardison or Kane. You know, it's- pardon me to Aldis and Kane. I'm only one Guiness in. I can’t -

[All Laugh]

John: I'm a lightweight. I have to go back to last year doing the commentaries. Get my levels back up. See last year we did these while we were shooting them and I drink while we shoot; that's my policy.

Rod: Now this is- What about this policeman with a ponytail? For god's sake. Truly, what is this?

[Laughter & Cross Talk]

Chris: The fun train is roaring down the tracks!

Rod: Now this kid was just terrific.

John: Yeah, this kid was great.

Rod: We will see something of this boy again. No lines. Watch his eyes; he's got such an awareness.

Chris: Now what was it like casting? I mean, did you just-? Because I wasn't there when you cast him. Did you just immediately see this and-?

Rod: I think John was there.

John: Yeah, the kid just stood out. Very, very good.

Rod: He just came out. He was just there were people that just do or don't, and this kid had a real sense of it, which was just great.

Chris: And here we have all the sounds.

Dean: I love how you moved into that super close up where it’s almost fisheye; that's just great.

Rod: The good thing about our cast is you can get to those close ups and things are going on in their minds. All the time, there's something going on in their minds.

John: Well that's the tricky bit, where you have to see the performances up, because it’s a con or heist show, so at no point have they gone and talked to the suspect, and they're hanging out for coffee. The tension is always there in every scene. The con has started - particularly in this one, we’re up and running from moment one.

Chris: Tim, here, really loved a lot of the neuroscience stuff and he improved the almond tonsils. Which I guess is the term for the amygdala - the fear center of the brain.

John: And that's also where we get into Sophie's bizarre relationship with cruelty. I don't even want to start- I don't even want to go into what that started on the web.

Dean: But it did set in motion an arc for Tim, which is that he's going into a strange darker place now that he's sober, and we played that out for the whole rest of the season.

John: The whole idea is that he can never not be addicted to something, and if it's not gonna be booze- Well, and that's the idea, the first half of the season, he's really replaced booze with control and that feeling of superiority, that feeling of righteousness. So when he then starts drinking again, he actually has a factor that wasn't in the first season. And as a result, he's a thousand times worse in the second half of the season than he was all last season. Yeah, because now he’s not just a drunk, he’s a righteous prick who's a drunk.

Dean: By the way, we also breezed by the setup of using Star Trek as a warning device. That is absolutely- what was the origin of that idea?

Chris: That came out in the room. I can’t- did you pitch that?

John: No, it was a room pitch that somebody came up with it.

Chris: I wish I could remember. This is Steve Coker, who is more of a comedic actor, and I think this was, you know, one of his first, kind of, real dramatic roles as the abusive dad.

Dean: Terrific in the part.

John: Yeah, good job. And also the way- I liked the way this ends. Yeah, you fully believe he’s gonna throw him off. I like the way that this ends, which is you have to leave town. That was another thing we kinda hit this year a couple times, which is, you know, each one of these people is beginning to realize that the way they live their life - they've left wreckage, and they've blown out of towns, and they've gone on their lives.

Dean: That's a great shot.

Chris: Look at his feet off the ground.

Rod: Hitchcock! It’s Hitchcock.

John: Don't tell them where you steal from! And also, this is another thing which is - we call up a mini speech of evil here, which is each time the villain explains why he's not a bad guy in his own head. Because nobody's a bad guy in their own head. So this guy smacks his kid around, he probably got smacked around by his dad. He turned out ok; what's the big deal? And like he says eventually, you know, Eliot's gonna blow town.

Chris: And the other thing here was, he talked about how he would get out of jail in 5 minutes. It sets up, kinda, the power. You know, even a small story like this, there are power dynamics that you don't expect.

Dean: Right there - just that little reaction that Christian does, it showed a vulnerability that he never showed last year. That was really interesting. That- I'm not sure how you got that out of him, but it started a very good trend.

John: And also, the sort of realizing he has to choose a different resolution path here. Like he can’t- he would just kill that dude. Like 5 years ago? He would just break that dude’s leg. I joked later that-

Dean: Well it's almost as though his heart started working again.

John: Yeah, and it's bothering him.

Rod: That's a good line; I like it.

Chris: That's another great shot. I mean, now he's really-

John: Okay, this guy.

Dean: Where did you find this guy?

Chris: Talk about this guy. Talk about this casting session.

John: When we were auditioning- When you become a Hollywood producer and it’s like then there's gonna be a casting couch and a casting room where you get to get people naked, and I'm sitting there with Rod and the skinny guys were coming in and Rod goes, ‘I'm very sorry could you take your shirt off?’ And I was like, ‘this is not the people taking their shirt off I thought it would be.’

Rod: You were gonna have to have-

John: And he had these poor bastards like shitless and scrubbing themselves in terror in the middle of the-

Dean: This guy was awesome.

John: By the way, that is a- I am going to claim, because it was so eerily similar, that that was a visual reference to the great George Romero movie The Crazies. Because if it isn't an homage to The Crazies? It should be.

[Laughter]

John: That- the whole hazmat suit and-

Chris: That’s real rain folks. We got a- we don't have to pay for atmosphere in Portland; that's real rain.

Dean: Now those hardcore Electric Entertainment fans out there, if you remember the show we did, Blank Slate, this was one of the first times we stole music from Blank Slate and put it into an episode.

[Laughter]

John: Use all the parts of a buffalo in cable television.

Dean: We believe in recycling.

Chris: Now this was-

Dean: I love this scene.

Chris: I love this too. I love the way you composed this shot, Rod. Talk about that.

Rod: And let me tell you, we’re in the kitchen of a disused hospital that was suddenly becoming a mortuary. So it was a real challenge all around, and the art department did a nice job of putting that together. And we’re turning the supposedly the simple good cop into, now, the bad guy, which was a lot of fun.

John: I also love- I believe it was in the room- well what would be in a murderer's trunk? and I whipped out the five things, and you were like, ‘that was way too fast.’ That-

[All Laugh]

John: ‘We’re gonna go out and look in your trunk right now.’ No and the- this is one of the times- cause again, we have to play with the conventions of the show in the second season, he doesn't have the earpiece in. And who’s in communication, who’s not in communication often begins to be the things they hinge around. This is- a lot of stuff happens in this one.

Chris: It sure does.

John: We drive the guy crazy, we kidnap a security guard.

Dean: And there's an assassin that he has to deal with.

John: Turns out this is an assassin, there's an abused kid. The hell's going on?

Chris: For how many minutes? 40?

John: 42:30?

Dean: That's a nice act out?

Rod: But it's a simple little show to do in seven days.

[Laughter]

Dean: By the way, great fight scene.

John: Lemme ask, if this is a kitchen-

Dean: Where do those come from?

Rod: We built those. Everything was put in; we kept sort of two or three of the walls and put in those.

Dean: The drawers.

Rod: The drawers. Yeah, only two of the drawers would open, but that’s okay;

John: That’s all you need.

Rod: That’s all you need for this show.

John: This is a particularly brutal fight scene. I love the fact that he's like, ‘wrong day’. Yeah, slamming people’s hands in drawers, I think I took that from Queen & Country script.

Dean: But it's just so great. He's in such a bad mood over this kid. He couldn't kill the other guy; this guy he can take out.

John: And then the spinning the bowl thing.

Dean: I love the Jackie Chan reference.

John: It’s very Jackie Chan. I'm fairly sure it’s from the one where he's a cook, I can’t remember the- Who Am I?- no it’s not Who Am I?, it’s a different one.

Chris: Rod, I think you said we need to put a body on this gurney here to throw him on. I think originally mine said empty gurney and you said let’s put a body on there.

Rod: If there's a fight in a mortuary, there's gotta be a dead body somewhere.

[Laughter]

Dean: And then throwing him on top of the body is just awesome.

Chris: Here it is on top of the body.

John: You know this like, nice person, has passed away after years of peacefully dedicated-

Chris: Oh, they were a terrible person.

John: We only dump our guys on terrible people.

Rod: Come back to the man screaming.

John: This one really ramps up.

Dean: Look at that. He went for it, he really went for it.

John: Is that the 10 millimeter that gives you the-?

Rod: Yeah it is, and a lot of actors, who were much more experienced than him, wouldn't have gone as far as he did, which is one of the reasons I knew he'd be right.

Chris: But I'm saying that credit to you, because I remember you getting there and you were like ‘man there’s- there's spiders on you!’ I mean, you really just brought him to the brink.

John: And then he threw the spiders on him.

Rod: Exactly the way I felt waking up in my hotel room you guys put me in. I understood his fear.

[Laughter]

John: His fear of dirt.

Dean: I love the whole fact that his nose is bleeding just off the suggestion-

John: Yeah, I've seen in hypnosis, boils have been raised, blisters. That's absolutely possible.

Dean: Tim was terrific in this part, too.

John: Tim loves- all actors love a death scene. Even if it's a fake death scene.

Rod: That's a good fall.

John: That's a good fall. Yeah, he's absolutely out of his mind at that point.

[Laughter]

John: Handcuffed, people dying around him.

Dean: Look at the feet! The feet are what makes that shot so good.

John: Wait, was that a dummy or did we actually have a stuntie?

Rod: No, they were actual rubber feet.

John: And then getting yelled at.

Dean: Wrath of Khan.

John: Wrath of Khan, yeah. We actually went through on the day. It’s like, ‘now is the rule that the good ones are the alarm or the bad ones?’ We went back and forth for a while. I know it's the- it’s one of the little geek cred things you have to watch. Once you establish a character like Hardison is a geek - you can never let it go. Because I hate, as an actual geek, watching television and they've got some 1988 version of what a computer nerd looks like. You know, and that's so- he has to know his Doctor Who and he has to know his Star Trek pretty well.

Chris: This was like a change from the first draft to the second draft, I think. In the first draft- because I just had Nate die, it was like well, we’ve already seen Sophie die, so what's worse?

John: That’s a repeated beat.

Chris: What's worse is that he's just being locked-

Dean: To die.

Chris: To die with this guy.

John: We've also built up - the army's coming. This is The Crazies, we’re doing The Crazies.

Rod: What other show do you get this kind of madness? For god's sake, it’s just-

Dean: In our writers room.

John: It's a very tiny writers room, with a lot of booze and heat, and it really creates this. Yeah, I just realized that this is The Crazies; this is now the army is coming to destroy- now actually, by the time you're hearing this, The Crazies the remake is already out, so you probably know exactly what I’m talking about. But there's a great, horrifying- an old George Romero movie from the 70s-

Dean: I love Tim’s switch right there. And done.

John: ‘And, I’m up.’

Dean: And this guy was great.

John: It’s kinda parallax feel, too. It's a very 1970s paranoid vibe to the whole thing. And look, there's that walk again; that look when the emotions she's supposed to have as a human are gone. And what the hell? The hell’s going on?

Dean: And another great bullet time. And the head coming out.

Chris: The great thing is it gives you a sense of geography. You know, like, where he's coming.

John: Well, we actually talk about something in the show called the heist head. The hardest thing about writing cons in a heist is the geography; you have to understand the geography. It's like writing bedroom farce; it's all based on going in and out certain doors at certain times.

Rod: By the way, shows with two locations like we had, make it more difficult to shoot in a way; you gotta keep the audience aware of where they are, but at the same time make it more interesting.

John: Absolutely. And that's the big challenge is resetting the geography so the audience doesn't have to stop and think, ‘wait, where are they?’ Because at that point, whatever emotional response is gone.

Chris: Now here- this is the scene I talked about; how this scene affected the shooting-

John: Yeah.

Chris: Afterwards.

John: By the way, these cops, I believe, he beats up in the season finale.

[All Laugh]

Dean: Christian really dug in for this scene, you know, and -

Rod: But it's what makes this show worth it. That these guys can go through all the Robin Hood stuff, but they get into that emotional line and that's what makes it really, to me, a fun thing to watch.

John: It's also fun, because if you know Chris Kane and you see kids around him, Chris basically- kids basically treat Chris like Batman. So seeing him interact with a kid in this way, is very much the way Chris actually talks to kids in real life. You know, he's very honest with them, he's very direct, and it's a very real scene; it's a better scene than I've seen in shows that this for real-

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: But there's a turn he makes here, which is really interesting. He starts off, like, really confident that he's just gonna solve this and talk to the kid, and when he realizes his impotence in this scene, it, again, his heart comes to the surface, which is something we hadn't really seen before with this character.

Chris: It's true. And his impotence comes out when Hardison touches him, I mean, you see his reaction then.

Dean: He's not used to not being able to handle something.

John: But this is a better version of this scene than I've seen in shows, like hospital shows, where you're supposed to be with the big orchestral moment. And yeah, this is a believable, great bit of acting by two very good actors. That kid is great. He actually didn’t have braces; we actually screwed those braces on him.

Chris: And right here, and I love this shot, too; him scared in the frame by the two of them.

Rod: He's arm was broken, but we had to break it for the show.

John: Again, the great thing about shooting in Portland. You know, tax credits, but Oregon really looks the other way, I find.

Chris: Now, and just in terms of the ending, there was another that was written that was more a traditional ending, where the team’s together and pays the victim the money. And after we saw the scene shot, I remember I talked with Rod the next day. You know what? That's the emotional high point of the show. Let's just- let's end it on closing that story and that's the end of the episode.

John: Yeah, I mean, that's to a great degree; a tough one on this, is that the B story kind of takes over most of it. But you never know that. You never know that until you see the performances; til you see the cut.

Chris: This is a great turn back for him, back to evil.

John: Back to- and he's evil again. He’s- you know, you can't keep a good evil man down.

Chris: Now Rod, please tell us- this is an amazing shot.

[Laughter]

Rod: This all came out of nowhere, with 20 minutes to shoot it and, I might say, the genius of our DP David Connell, added with my genius, and a long lens. Because you can create many things.

Chris: It's a movie shot; that is a movie shot right there.

John: Also, this is the- I think this it’s referenced later, but it's unclear, this is the bad guy. This is the assassin’s car; that’s why there’s actually keys there, because they have set this up for him in order to- And did we shoot that with the suction cup mount while driving?

Rod: Yes.

Dean: And I love the jump cutting in there that just puts you on edge with him. This is a beautiful shot right there.

Chris: Oh and he really fell.

Rod: This guy threw himself into it so much .

John: Now there was also- and again this is super, super intimate. So he has hidden the money back from his trial back in this courthouse, right? And we make a point of the fact that there's, and she's learned to fight this year, too, which I love. And there's another episode where you show that Eliot has actually been teaching her how to fight. The fact that this place has not been refurbished is because this is a very low budget town, which is in a lot of financial trouble. And that's actually- in the-, although the scene that was cut, explained how he got the gun into the courtroom, because they had not refurbished the metal detectors. That's actually a plot point in the season finale that all the security that was supposed to go to the town was stolen.

Chris: Oh that's right, you’re right.

John: Yeah no, no I totally did that intentionally.

Dean: It's explained at the end of the things.

John: If you watch the season finale and this episode they actually- Bellbridge has a continuity.

Rod: This bit I love. When they let him go, I think is just so terrific.

Chris: And this is an iconic shot in the show, Rod. I mean, they- we used this shot of them-

Dean: A lot in trailers.

Rod: Is that right? Good.

John: And they know he's screwed. Look at the face like, ‘yes, yes your infinite raging, yes; and do exactly what we predicted.’

Rod: Fell and slipped again.

Dean: That shot right there.

John: And they all make a nice choice; each one of them looks at Nate in a different way. This is- and I love, by the way, that who on earth would think would work? ‘I'm in my underwear; I'm running around in the street; I've escaped from the police; who will believe me?’ Yeah, this is a very Twilight Zone, this a very William Shatner look out the window: ‘he's right there!’

Dean: It is, yeah.

John: It's all local actors for the cops.

Rod: Everybody in this show.

John: Yeah there was no one from LA, holy smokes.

Dean: It just goes to show what talent depth there is in Portland. We had no idea. Originally we thought we were gonna be bringing up 4 to 5 people per episode and we really averaged one.

John: And they bounced him hard off that.

Rod: This show would be the only one you didn’t bring anybody into.

Chris: Yes.

John: But the other ones we only did really one role an episode.

Chris: I like the way you did this, too; how you came off his back and around tells the whole story. And then-

Dean: And then transition; terrific.

John: It’s like you thought about this. Like you spent hours preparing.

Rod: It’s like it was planned.

[Laughter]

John: Ahh gimmick security footage. Where would we be without gimmick security footage? Leverage relies on the fact that this is a surveillance society. And this is- we use this a couple times - the guy looking out the cop car window. It’s sort of that William Shatner looking at the thing in the window, that's exactly what it is

Dean: Well it's the rule we have in the show; it’s not enough-

John: This is Dean’s big rule.

Dean: Yeah, my big rule is the villain can't just lose, he must suffer.

Rod: Right. Yeah, yeah.

Dean: He must suffer, otherwise it's not good enough.

John: He’s humiliated.

Chris: And also the gloat; you want the gloat.

Dean: The gloat, you want the gloat. Now where is this-? This scene seems very you, the lawyer-

John: Oh, he totally wrote this. Every now and then on the law stuff, he digs in.

Chris: Well I was trying to marry the notions of the law and neuroscience, and I'm not sure it was entirely successful here.

Rod: Well can I just make a comment? I’m not sure if I understood what it meant.

[All Laugh]

John: He still directed the hell out of it.

Chris: It was about the nature of intent, really, in a crime and that’s-

Rod: I think we may have shot this about midnight or one am and I said to you, ‘what does this actually mean?’

John: It’s Latin, just keep moving.

Chris: It’s Latin, yeah, exactly.

John: And Parker has the money. This is actually- this is a character that Chris does on a regular basis when he plays roles. When he has Eliot doing the role, it's always an ‘aw shucks I'm just here to help you’ guy. He very rarely intentionally frightens people. You know it's a very interesting choice that is, ‘yeah I'm just your pal; this is all good news; we’re all- we just all wanna go home’. So this is- only two drawers worked, this one and which one?

Rod: That's it, the other side.

John: The other side.

Dean: I love this. I love that he smacks him.

John: Yeah.

[All Laugh]

John: ‘We all saw that.’

Dean: I love their relationship.

John: Yeah, because, you know, he’s gotta make sure that as annoying as Hardison is, he's not gonna get hurt.

Chris: And the other thing that's not important here is another kinda late addition in the script, was we wanted to- you know they manipulate the US Marshals here, but we wanted them to have a win. We wanted to give them something, so that it’s not- they're not just chumps.

John: It's very tricky, in the room we talk about, when we manipulate innocent people, they should be rewarded.

Chris: Especially law enforcement.

John: Especially law enforcement. Because you know he's not- he didn't do a bad thing, you know. And in the end, he's a good Marshal and he's gonna bring the guy in. So, you know, we always wanna make sure they always fall on the side of angels. And it's not always easy. They leave wreckage behind, yeah, and this was also nice - the moment he gets the favor out of him.

Chris: Yeah, he owes him.

Dean: And what's nice is that he comes up with it as it's happening, as opposed to having this planned out. You see it really, like, you see the idea just enter his brain.

John: And there.

Chris: That's a great acting moment.

John: Now originally, by the way, Chris, you had the- I would like to note, the drivers license of the evil father found with the assassins car so that the-

Chris: I think I did.

John: The evil father not only lost custody of the kid, but went down as an accessory for assassination and murder.

Chris: I think I did have that, that might've been- I think that was too far.

John: Your original payoff was a bit more ruthless. But he's great, by the way, that's Victor. He's great in that scene. Cause look, he’s warm with the kid and then he basically puts on the cop eyes, and it's like ‘do not even try. Do not even try’. Yeah, it's a great performance.

Chris: And then here this last bit was the- was what we added as the- as the new ending. Which was, we wanna make sure that the audience knows this kid is gonna be safe.

Dean: And I think the first time we ever ended on the show on Christian.

John: Yeah. I would like to know the first time we saw this, the lights came up and I said, ‘oh he's going in there to kill that dad.’

[All Laugh]

John: It's just like, ‘oh man he's going in there, he's gonna choke him into unconsciousness, shove a pretzel down his trachea, and make it look like an accident and let him choke to death on the floor. Ahhh, kid’s out of the way.’

Rod: This stuff happens at the end because you allow the story to unfold. And we talked about it as we were shooting, but you guys allow it to unfold, so it has a natural sort of tempo. I really liked it.

Dean: Well thank you, again, for being on the show season 1, 12 Step, my favorite episode. You killed it again with this. And thank you so much for being here.

Rod: I'm gonna be there for seasons 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11.

John: God bless - that’s 6 more than I'll be there for.

Dean: From your mouth to our accountants’ ears.

Rod: It was fun.

Dean: Thank you.

Chris: Thanks a lot.

John: Thanks a lot.

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Elliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 2 #Episode 3 #Season 2 Episode 3 #The Order 23 Job

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twoidiotwriters1 · 5 years ago

Text

Starcrossed Losers XV (Josh Wheeler xReader)

A/N: My eyes hurt from editing this thing so late at night, please enjoy

Words: 4,700

Warnings: None!

Previous chapter // Next chapter

What’s up, I’m officially fucked.

I don’t know how to narrate everything as it went down, I don’t have superpowers and I didn’t see it from above, also I was too busy trying to not self combust while Josh was kissing me.

I’m stupid. You knew that don’t pretend this came as a surprise, I’m dumb. I gave up my last braincell for my overalls, I have nothing left.

That’s not important right now, I’ll go back to tell you the story, just be warned: Things don’t get prettier.

So Josh just kissed me, I’m standing there avoiding physical contact until a voice inside my head (one that sounds a lot like Wesley) screams to me: MAKE YOUR MOVE!

I pull him down by the collar of his shirt and close my eyes tightly, kissing him back. All I can think right now is “Please, don’t regret this after it’s over” and I mean it for both of us.

The problem is that I suffer a little bit of post-traumatic stress, so when He kissed my mind went: ‘Oh fuck he just did the same thing that Alex did, what if he doesn’t feel good after, what about me? How am I feeling?’

The answer is: I’m terrified. I feel so many things, great things, beautiful things, but I’m scared shitless.

After he steps back, eyeing me up like he’s waiting for a reaction.

I’m trying to collect myself. I’m panicking, What the fuck did just happened?

“Shit,” It’s the first thing that Josh says.

I keep my eyes closed, I feel that I will start crying if I look at him. It won’t be a sad cry, it’s more like I’m so scared of what I’m feeling right now I regret every decision I’ve ever taken. I don’t wanna hurt Josh by saying something I don’t mean just cause I’m scared, my whole body is shaking and I’m so cold that I’m not even blushing, I can’t move.

“Y/N?” Josh takes another step back, I hear him a bit further away than before, “Are you... are you okay?”

I take a deep breath, I have to be brave. I slowly open my eyes but keep them fixed on the ground where Josh is standing, all I can see it’s his shoes.

“I’m fine,” I rasp, “... I could use a moment to calm down”

“I blew it,” Josh’s feet move, walking in circles, “Y/N I’m sorry, I’m so sorry please don’t get mad, I did it without thinking. I mean I was thinking but fuck I just wanted to kiss you, I-”

“Josh,” I speak up, closing my eyes again and holding the bridge of my nose, ‘Please don’t say you regret it. Don’t say you don’t have feelings for me’, “you don’t get it”

His footsteps come into a halt.

“Then explain it to me,” He says softly.

“I-”

“Y/N! Josh!” I look up and I meet Angelica’s glare, “Don’t fucking disappear like that!”

“Sorry, An,” I apologize, walking over to her and putting a hand on her shoulder for comfort, “we’re making sure the limits of the mall are safe again, you know, from bombs or something”

“They didn’t put things, they took them,” She says, fuming, “you need to come back inside right now”

“Okay,” I frown.

“We’re right behind you,” Josh is standing next to me. I feel a shiver run down my spine.

Angelica nods and goes back to the mall without even noticing how stiff Josh and I look. I turn to him, still not able to look at him in the eyes.

“I’m not upset... many things happened tonight and I think we should take care of that first. Don’t you?”

“Totally, I agree” Josh replies, I know he’s lying.

“Let’s go back,” I mumble, walking away.

Okay, then Josh likes me and I like him back. Why am I scared?

I’m scared cause this takes my freedom away, if I take it all in that means I’ll stay with Josh, cause I like him. There are things that I’ll never be able to change, if I start something with Josh I’ll do everything to make him happy. Everything.

My loyalty scares me.

I have to learn how to control that part of me, to not give myself away so easily. What if he tries and fails to be a better man? I’ll be in love with an asshole, I’ll be blind to his acts.

Or... maybe I won’t.

Josh doesn’t try to follow me when we enter the mall, he goes to the mattress store and says something about changing his clothes. I do the same.

I feel safe with my overalls back on, instead of my lime-green skates I put on the baby-blue sneakers, and since it’s still late and I’m freezing I look around for a jacket, I find a black hoodie. I think it’s a man’s hoodie since it reaches my butt and the sleeves are gigantic. It makes me feel safe though, so I keep it.

My hair feels odd so I tie it and then make my way back to the main hall. Most of the kids are there, picking up some things and sharing sad looks of weariness.

“Y/N?” I look to my left, a girl that I think it’s Leila approaches me, she has a deep cut above her eyebrow, “Can you help me?”

“Sure,” I give her a small smile, “let me find Alex and I’ll meet you back in the pharmacy, okay?”

She nods and walks away, I feel a different kind of fear as I watch her go. These kids are sort of our responsibility now, all of them. They almost died because of some stupid beef Turbo has with Wesley and Josh, that’s not right.

Did we save these kids, or did we just turn them into Turbo’s next target?

I find Alex already in the pharmacy, he’s curing kids, still wearing his suit. When he notices me I see relief in his eyes, maybe he thought that I had been taken. Either way, I’m here and ready to help.

Leila appears soon after, I ask her to sit on the bench in front of me and I start to clean her cut.

“Are you alright, Al?” I ask while looking for bandaids.

“I could ask you the same thing,” He replies, finishing up with a kid and waiting for the next to sit, “How’s your hand?”

“Not that bad,” I’m honest this time, it’s not hurting as much as the side of my head Maya so kindly stepped on, “I didn’t get to use it much”

“I’m fine,” Ales shrugs, “a few bruises but nothing I can’t handle.”

“You should change, we’ll be here for a while,” I tilt my head, watching as most of the kids form a line, all to get their wounds treated.

“I’m not uncomfortable”

“You’ll be, eventually,” I give him a severe look, “c’mon, I can handle this on my own for a while, the kids won’t go anywhere... I won’t go anywhere”

“...Okay,” He sighs, nodding towards the boy in front of him to let him know he’s done curing his cuts, “I’ll be back soon”

“Sweet,” I respond without paying much attention.

The line moves slowly as I clean and take care of cuts, bruises, and even a few broken fingers. Those were tricky, luckily Alex came back and used his boy scout skills to make several splints. That took us most of the night. Once we were done I saw Alex’s intentions of asking me if I had taken a decision so I escaped with the excuse of counting our supplies things that were lost. I did the same with the people.

I finished the list and handed it to Angelica.

The final result was this:

They took our food and water, along with Jayden, girl Jaden, Gabriel, Zoey, Carly, other gay Josh, and Jayden. Angelica said she would go tell Josh so I decided to go over to where Eli and Wesley are and have a chat with them before things get uglier.

“I don’t think you understand exactly how much you just fucked our group,” I say as soon as I get to them.

“No no, I don’t think you understand how fucking dumb locking us up is,” Eli retorts, “We were just trying to protect the kids”

“By killing a guy?” I scoff, “That’s not fair to Josh”

“Who cares?” He asks, “Josh never did shit for us, did he? I had the mall first! He didn’t find them a home, he just took it from me”

“You’re still not over that?” I roll my eyes, “You almost kill Josh over the stupid mall? Seriously?”

“No. I almost kill Josh because that was the right thing to do, considering that Turbo has the strong, fully armed tribe”

“You have no morals. Who cares if Turbo had all that? He still lost, you know. We wouldn’t have had to fight if Wesley had spoken earlier,” I look over at Wesley, who is deadly quiet, “Josh would’ve understood. He would’ve helped you find a solution.”

“Josh being nice to you doesn’t mean he’s like that with everybody,” He replies indifferent, “maybe he would’ve tried to help me, but this wasn’t his problem, it was mine”

“When Sam was missing it was only Josh’s problem and you helped him find her”

Wesley shifts uncomfortably in his place, not looking at me.

“Y/N, You don’t get it.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” I say harshly, “I thought you had changed, Wesley. I was wrong, you’re still backing up the wrong people. And Eli,” I look at the boy, sincere hurt spreading on my chest, “I voted for you, you know? I never forgot it was you who got the mall first, I was thankful for that”

Eli avoids my stare, he maintains his attitude of not giving a shit, but I notice that his fists are tightly closed.

Angelica’s voice gets closer and I turn around to see her with Josh beside her. He looks terrible, I just hope is not my fault.

“Don’t blame us,” Eli interrupts their chat, “we tried murdelizing Josh so this wouldn’t happen”

“That’s a confession,” Says the girl that I think it’s Jessica.

“I didn’t say blit,” Eli frowns.

“You said you tried to kill Josh,” Angelica adds.

“Not what I said”

“It is”

“The you misheard me”

“I recorded it”

As they argue I keep my eyes fixed on them until Josh’s stare is impossible to ignore. I turn to him with my voice caught in my throat, unable to say anything, a joke, or a comforting phrase. Josh is frowning but is more a worried frown than an angry one.

He probably has a lot in his head right now, disappointed that things aren’t going how he wanted. Well Wheeler, that’s another thing we have in common.

“If you’re looking for bad hombres then look around,” Eli’s voice brings me back and makes me look away from Josh, “these kids are here illegally. They didn’t come through an authorized port of entry. They didn’t apply for asylum. This is an invasion”

“You are so not helping yourself right now,” I reply, stepping closer to him as Josh steps away to see Wesley, “these kids could save your ass from being kicked out”

“You can’t kick me out of MY mall!” He defends.

“The mall is not yours only!” I exclaim, “We all deserve to be here!”

“You didn’t put all the safety traps, I did. You didn’t make sure everything was still working when the nuke dropped. I did,” He leans closer, “I have the right to stay”

What upsets me the most is that he has a point, we kind of invade his place. Although it’s big enough for all of us and he should be less whiny about it, he did make all the hard work for us.

“I trusted you,” Josh speaks behind me, “we were friends”

“You know how you’d do anything for Sam Dean or Y/N?” Wesley asks, “I get that”

I try to ignore the fact that he added me into the question like I’m on the same level as Sam, like Josh is that interested in me. Right now it causes me nothing but distress.

“It’s just,” He continues, “you don’t know Turbo the way I do”

“What else have you lied to me about?” Josh asks bitterly.

Something weird happens, it’s brief but I notice. Wesley looks at Angelica and I see her flinch, she steps in to interrupt them.

They’re hiding something.

“We should make sure Triumph is still locked up,” She says, “I’ll go check”

“Alright,” Josh mumbles.

“You can’t go alone,” I interrupt, “I’ll go with you”

“No, we need you here,” She shakes her head, then leaves without waiting for a response.

“Who?” I ask in confusion.

“What are we gonna do about them?” Asks Jessica.

“Why are you asking this dope?” Eli sneers, “Josh is such a wuss, his cock dropped off, hitchhiked to San Diego and is now getting his realtor’s license, all just to get away from Josh”

“Sometimes I wonder how were you so smart to put all those traps when all that comes from your mouth is so disgustingly stupid,” I say tiredly.

Josh gives him one exasperated look before turning back to Jessica.

“Why are you asking me?”

“I was asking to the both of you,” Jessica says, now looking at me as well, “we trust you”

Josh and I share the same startled look, he’s the first one to react.

“I don’t know what to do about these assholes,” He half-laughs, “look I’m not a judge or a lawyer. I’m just a kid, same as Turbo except... Turbo’s a spoiled brat who throws temper tantrums.”

“I still can’t believe he did all of this just cause he had a jealous fit,” I cross my arms, “he hurt innocent kids cause he thought Wesley was cheating, what kind of sick idiot does that?”

“He is never gonna leave me or us alone,” He looks back at me, “I don’t know if you saw her, but Maya was with him too. She’ll do anything to get back at you”

“I know,” I nod, feeling my mouth dry, “she tried to kill me last night, if it wasn’t for Alex...”

“I know,” Now he’s the one avoiding my eyes, “I don’t know how, but we need to take him out for good”

“Tyler told me Turbo got hurt by one of his weapons,” I reply, “that means we are not the only ones trying to get rid of him”

“What are you suggesting?” Jessica asks.

“I... I don’t know,” I’m frustrated with all these roads that take us nowhere, “we could look for a way to reach the right person, talk to them and convinced them to help... I just don’t know how or who”

“What about Wesley and Eli?”

“I think...” I look over my shoulder to see my former friends.

I know I don’t have the courage to kick them out, not after Wesley got the medicines I needed to cure Josh and Eli’s right about how he arrived at the mall first.

“I think we have enough problems, better to lock them here instead of kicking them out. Keep your enemies close, right?”

I hear a few whispers of agreement and I feel a wave of relief washing over me. One less thing to worry about.

“Jessica, could you stay and keep an eye on them?” I ask, “I’ll send Alex your way in a moment with food for them and more indications”

“Okay,” She nods, sitting in front of the store.

The rest of the kids scatter and I’m left with Josh, who is back with the intense stare. I feel calm enough to talk now. I’m still afraid, but it’s better if I also fix this once and for all.

“Can we talk?” I turn to him suddenly, making him jump.

“Yes,” He replies, quickly taking my good hand and walking to where the storage elevator is.

Once we’re there he lets go of my hand and stands as far as he can, I get the message that he thinks that I’m mad, or maybe he’s the one who’s mad.

“Listen I-”

“I don’t want-”

We speak at the same time and we stop, waiting for the other to start again, then I nod to him so he can speak first. Josh takes a deep breath.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you without asking first,” He says, “I let my emotions take over me again and before I knew it I was kissing you. I’ll understand if you want to stay away from me for a while, or if you want to go somewhere else with Alex.”

He’s not looking at me and his arms are crossed. He’s defensive because he thinks I’ll reject him.

I don’t know if I’m going to reject him.

“Things are complicated,” I nod, “not only between us, is complicated outside too. Turbo wants your head and Maya wants mine, they’re working together against us. If you really think about it the kiss is the least of our problems”

I try to make him laugh but I fail miserably. Josh is really upset about this whole incident.

“It’s the only thing that I really care about,” He replies, “Y/N when I met you things were different and we wanted different things, we didn’t mean to stay. Things happened and we started talking and... maybe I changed my mind”

“What do you mean?” I say, though I definitely know the answer.

“I like you,” He looks up, “really like you. I like being around you, I feel like I have someone that gets me and I get you. Things just seem... easy”

I feel weird, I could hug him forever but also I’m about to have a breakdown.

“How long have you felt this way?” I say with a shaky breath.

“Long enough to know is real,” Josh shrugs, “I was going to ask you to the dance and all... but Alex did it first.”

Before I can reply, Josh starts rambling.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this when I know you don’t like me, it’s stupid. Alex is here now and all I’m doing is making you uncomfortable. You were being a good friend and I was stupid enough to think that maybe there was something going on between us-”

“You’re right,” I interrupt him, “I mean, you’re wrong about me not liking you. You’re right about the something between us.”

“What?” His arms fall to his sides.

“I have a massive crush on you, Josh.”

Saying it outside my head is weird, this is the first time I’ve ever confessed directly to a boy. It took me a while but I’m doing it... now what?

“You do?” He frowns.

“I was already into you when you recovered from your severed finger,” I chuckle nervously, “and I chose that stupid song for the soundtrack of our lives cause it made me think of us”

“It did?” Josh’s brain has short-circuited, considering he’s only capable of saying two words every time he opens his mouth.

“It’s cheesy” I shrug, “I thought that you’d understand what I was trying to say but I guess I was being too cryptid. Who could’ve guessed that anyway? I was just being dramatic. My head is too full of fanfic crap”

“I...” Josh struggles to find words, I’ve noticed that happens when he’s under a lot of stress, “wait, give me a minute”

“Alright,” I move closer, “don’t pass out right now, we’re in the middle of something here”

“Yeah, I know sorry” He bends over to support his hands on his knees, “I’m just trying to understand how am I such an idiot”

“I was oblivious too,” I add, trying to calm him down.

“I thought you and Alex were dating now”

“But I told you we were just friends,” I giggle.

I’m obviously so nervous that I’m about to pee my overalls.

...That’s something I never thought I would say.

“You went to the dance with him and got matching outfits. Who does that?” He inquires, “I thought that maybe after everything that happened you decided to give him a second chance"

“Holy shit,” I gasp, “Alex and I love being dramatic, the matching outfits is something common between us... this is our second chance, Josh. Alex and I are giving our friendship a second chance”

“So... you’re not dating him?”

“I am not”

“But when I kissed you...”

I know it’s the worst time to think about the soundtrack of my life, but at the back of my head, I keep hearing the chorus of this one, product of our bizarre conversation.

“I kissed you back,” I admit, suddenly our mutual anxiety makes this conversation easier, “you know how I feel about being tied to someplace, or someone, if I’m being honest I got scared, I felt all these things and I don’t know how to deal with them. Worse yet, I didn’t know how you would react after. Alex told me he knew he didn’t like me after he kissed me, you did the same thing so I was afraid because...”

“I know I'll stay, I know I'll stay Right there with you...”

“That I would realize I’m not into you?” I look away, he steps closer and then his fingertips touch my skin, “Y/N, when I kissed you I felt a lot of things. All of them were positive.”

“That’s good to hear,” I reply in a high-pitched voice.

“You’re still scared about what could happen if we... you know, if we start something?” Josh asks me, I feel his hand moving from my wrist to my shoulder.

“If I don't know The wind will carry me So just hold tight”

“I don’t know,” I look down to his lips and then back up at his eyes.

“Okay, here’s a thought,” He says lowly, “What if we just don’t think about it? What if we just... do it”

I have few seconds to respond to that, I use them hurriedly, forcing something out of my mouth.

“It sounds difficult,” I feel my heart thumping against my ribcage, “but I’m kind of tired of boys stealing kisses from me and never coming back”

“It’s your choice,” His breathing is slow, his hand is softly touching my cheek, moving little hairs away from my face “whatever you want, I’ll follow”

We hear rushed steps towards us and I jump back. I was supposed to send Alex to Jessica.

“Fuck, I have to send Alex with Jessica,” I pass a hand over my face, trying to get rid of the fuzzy feeling in my brain.

Angelica and Crumble appear, they’re on their way to see Triumph.

“Hi losers,” Angelica watches us carefully, “were you making out in here?”

“Get out of here,” Josh huffs, I can see him blushing.

“I was just asking,” Angelica rolls her eyes, “see ya in a bit, Crumble is coming with me”

“Be careful,” I reply.

They walk out and Josh and I share a look. The moment is hella ruined, yet there’s this buzzing feeling around us, one that the experts would call: Sexual Tension.

“We should go back,” I mumble, pointing over my shoulder with my thumb.

“Yeah,” Josh sighs, then he walks past me and smiles briefly.

I smile back.

I don’t know what’s going on inside my body but sure is something big, I don’t even feel like I have organs in there anymore. More like a mush of melted butterflies... that does not sound nice at all. I’m so sorry. I was trying to explain with other words that I’m freaking out.

Not relevant! The point is... I think Josh and I are almost a... couple?

I won’t put a label on it yet, I’ll just wait and see what happens from here.

And what happens from here will surprise you! Click on the next page to find out.

...

Bad joke? I’m sorry, I do awful jokes when I’m nervous.

I go over to Alex and tell him he needs to stay and watch over Wesley and Eli while we find a way to fix this. My indications come with a list of four kids that will take turns with him so they can take long breaks. It has my signature at the bottom, so they know he’s not making things up. Then he asks me about Josh.

“I talked to him but I don’t actually know if something will happen between us”

“But?” He smiles, “C’mon! I know that face, something happened”

“He kissed me last night,” I cut him off before he starts screaming, “We aren’t together! I think we’re not. It’s complicated.”

“You will be,” He smirks, “it’s just a matter of time, I can see it. There’s no way he won’t fall in love with you”

“Shut up, nerd.”

“Fair enough,” He shrugs, “mark my words though”

“Go with Jessica.”

“Fine. See ya,” Alex looks over my shoulder and his smile grows, “enjoy your date”

“My what?” I frown, turning around I see Josh walking up to me. I roll my eyes, “Alex for fuck’s sake...”

He’s gone now, so he doesn’t hear me. Josh stops in front of me and puts his skateboard on the table on my right.

“Is it broken?” I ask, leaning closer to examine it.

Josh shakes his head.

“I’m just restoring a few parts”

“How long have you had it?”

“Since the nuke, about... Seven months?”

“I see,” I settle with just standing there next to him. It’s enough, I don’t even feel awkward about it.

I should though, I’m staring at him like a creep. Luckily he doesn’t seem to mind and starts to make small talk. We chat casually and act like nothing’s changed.

My brain doesn’t agree with us since its screaming “KISS HIM! KISS HIM! I LOVE HIS FACE!”

It’s embarrassing and I’m glad he can’t read minds.

You can read mine though, so uh, I’m sorry for that.

KJ appears beside us, I see her struggle with something and I’m about to ask what’s wrong when she speaks. In English.

“You’re right. Turbo needs to go.”

I look at her with wide eyes, Josh looks up, slowly realizing who is talking to him.

“And now it’s the perfect time to do it. When he’s injured, hit by an arrow during the battle,” She speaks quickly, like she doesn’t want the rest of the kids to hear her, “Unfortunately, these mall kids are pure priss. They’re not even the kids who got picked last kickball. No, these are the kids who had a doctor’s note to get out of gym because they’re allergic to dander”

Josh takes a second to process what’s happening, then he asks:

“You speak English?”

“We are in America,” KJ replies matter of factly.

“English?” He replies, raising his voice.

“Josh!” I exclaim, looking around.

“You knew this?” He looks over at me, utterly confused.

“Yes?” I say nervously, “She didn’t want anyone to know so I kept it a secret...”

“That was nice of you,” KJ smiles politely, then looks back at Josh, “we all do what we need to survive. Suburban whities ignore anyone who doesn’t look and sound like you. People say anything around me because they think I don’t understand shit and that nets me information”

“That’s better than hiding in giant trash containers,” I agree.

“What?” Josh looks over at me.

“That’s how I used to spy on people.”

“Intel is the only currency that anyone can trade on,” KJ continues, ignoring my comment, “You wanna take out Turbo? You need a tribe with skills”

Josh stares at her for a few seconds.

“English?” He asks again, loudly.

KJ sighs heavily and rolls her eyes. I grab him by the arm and pull him with me, then I put my other hand on KJ’s shoulder and take them to a more private area.

“This will take a while...”

Taglist.

@letsbloodmagic @slythermyg @loving-u-3000

#twoidiots writing #daybreak fanfic #eli cardashyan #daybreak #josh wheeler xreader #josh wheeler #ms crumble #kj karen jane #wesley fists #angelica green

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claudiafm · 4 years ago

Photo

𝓿𝓸𝓰𝓾𝓮 𝓲𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓿𝓲𝓮𝔀𝓼 ~> 𝔠𝔩𝔞𝔲𝔡𝔦𝔞 𝔬𝔯𝔱𝔢𝔤𝔞

in this issue of vogue we have the honor of interviewing fashionista and bassist Claudia Ortega, in a 4 part series, where she delves into her musical and fashion inspirations, personal life and past

PART 2.

we ask claudia about her love life, crushes, past lovers, and she shares with us another playlist

Feelings - lauv And I know, and I know that it hurts sometimes that it hurts sometimes when I'm with you. And I know, and I know that it hurts sometimes that it hurts sometimes, but I miss you. And I know, and I know that it's on your mind that it's on your mind when I kiss you, but I wanna do whatever you wanna do

“Have you ever been so in love with someone, that you’ll do anything to be with them? Even if it hurts cause you know they don’t love you back? You just wanna do anything with them, holding on to any little thing.”

Stupid - Brendan Maclean And if you weren't so ugly, I could've loved you. It's something I tell myself when down to get high, Lord. If you made me a coffee, I could've loved you, and I'd make you hot chocolate, and anything you wanted Tell me who is invited? So fuckin' delighted to see all the boys you see, tell me why don't I fight it? What does it say about me? And let's not be friends or else this'll never end

“Who ever wants to blame them self? You just come up with any reason they don’t love you, they’re stupid, they’re busy, whatever, but then you see them with others, and it hurts. What is it about me that you don’t love?”

Brand new key - Melanie I asked your mother if you were at home, she said yes, but you weren't alone. Sometimes I think that you're avoiding me. I'm okay alone but you've got something I need. Well I've got a brand new pair of roller skates. You've got a brand new key, I think that we should get together and try them on to see, La la la la la la la la La la la la la la. Oh I've got a brand new pair of roller skates, you've got a brand new key.

“sometimes you think you have someone, but then you start to see them fall in love with someone else, and they spend less and less time with you, but they still have your heart, no matter how you grow. I wanna share my life with you, but you’ve started to shut me out, and share it with someone else.”

Skinny love - Birdy (cover) And I told you to be patient, and I told you to be fine, and I told you to be balanced, and I told you to be kind, and now all your love is wasted, and then who the hell was I? And I'm breaking at the britches, and at the end of all your lines. Who will love you? Who will fight? Who will fall far behind?

“maybe i’m too controlling in my relationships, i expect a lot, i ask a lot, and read too much into things. i’ll always fall behind, always a little forgotten.”

Normal Girl - SZA Wish I was the type of girl that you take over to mama. The type of girl, I know my daddy, he'd be proud of yeah, uh be proud of, yeah uh be proud of, uh be proud, you know, you know. Wanna be the type of girl you take home to your mama, the type of girl, I know your fellas they'd be proud of uh be proud of, uh be proud of, uh be proud of, boy you know. Normal girl, oh I wish I was a normal girl, oh my, how do I be, how do I be your baby? Normal girl, oh, oh, oh I wish I was a normal girl I'll never be, no, never be uh, oh

“maybe if i was ‘normal’ people would like me more, if i was more agreeable, less fashion obsessed, would people love me? maybe, but i don’t wanna let go of those parts of me, i just wish i was in the first place.”

Wanna be missed - Hayley Kiyoko I wanna be missed like every night, I wanna be kissed like it's the last time, say you can't eat, can't sleep, can't breathe without me. I wanna be held, fragile like glass, 'cause I've never felt nothing like that, say you can't walk, can't talk, go on without me. Want you tired every day 'cause I run through your brain, hold me down, keep me safe. This is as good as it gets don't you dare second guess, only want you saying yes

“oh i haven’t been someones first choice in a while, but it’s all i want, i want to be missed, more than a ‘oh i haven’t seen you in so long!’ but in late night calls cause they miss my voice, planning trips together years in advance, I just want to be wanted”

Common Sense - Fallen Pine You know the way you make me smile, but can you do it to yourself? Break me down and make me fodder, just care the way you treat yourself. Don't ever ask yourself If what you're doing is the right thing to do, don't ever think about it, just let it die and sit alone in this room. (I really want to) Forget your common sense, just think about everything else. Forget your common sense don't think about it (Hey) I would do anything for you, I would do anything for you, I would do anything for you, I would do anything for you

“it’s beautiful to be a relationship where you just forget everything, and just be, make one another smile, and encourage one another to be happy. To not even think, to do anything for the other, i miss it.”

Les Funérailles (Prologue) - Left at London My apologies, no way to behave, being bitter will not make you be saved. 'Cause I am abhorrent', cause you remain dormant, 'cause I probably messed up again. We could've been worth it, I could've been listening to your plight and we could've been perfect, but your brand of perfect isn't quite as kind to all of my regrets

“we all have our secrets, our regrets, I’ve messed up plenty, and sometimes you can’t be forgiven, you can’t make it better, no matter how you act.”

Arrow - Andrew Applepie I'm so in love, so in love, so in love, so in love, oh, how it hurts, how it hurts, yes it hurts when it burns. What have we done, what have we become lately, now I'm so dumb, I'm barefoot on the ground, oh, talk to me. I'm feeling, not breathing, a terrifying fear haunts me, twisting my soul around. Fuel me, revive me a shadow plays a burning. And I'm an arrow in the sky, I'm a tantrum, I'm an arrow in the sky, 'Cause I'm a tan-trum

”it hurts sometimes to be in love, it can be scary too, you don’t know whats gonna slip up and ruin the relationship. Talk to me, but I don’t even want to breathe, my lungs full of love and it hurts, but god i’m not letting go”

I’ve Got All This Ringing in My Ears and None On My Fingers - Fall Out Boy You're a canary, I'm a coal mine, 'cause sorrow is just all the rage. Take one for the team, you all know what I mean. And I'm so sorry but not really, tell the boys where to find my body. New York eyes, Chicago thighs, pushed up the window to kiss you off. The truth hurts worse, than anything I could bring myself to do to you. The truth hurts worse, than anything I could bring myself to do to you. Do you remember the way I held your hand under the lamp post and ran home this way, so many times I could close my eyes?

”If i told the truth, I would ruin myself, I would ruin the relationship, my canary would be dead, evacuate the relationship. I’ve grown to accept my position, but I’m so aware of my words, and how one slip could be it for me. The years have only strengthened how I feel, the air in the coal mine is getting worse, but as long as i can breathe, as long as I keep my distance, keep the bird alive, I’ll be ok, right?”

listen here

exit- claudia

#~claudia~ musing #hhhh hope y'all like my cover i worked wayyy to hard on it #if you look up the madonna vogue cover you can see my inspo #i swear my next one won't be a playlist #thinking of doing a 73 questions??#open to suggestions here lads #also all the music here is great. you can see more of my indie tastes #pls listen to left at london if no one else #shes the girl from the what about nascar vine

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until-theend-oftheline · 5 years ago

Text

The Start of Something Amazing

Pairing: Sebastian x Reader

Warnings: Ice Skating (Seb thinks that should be a warning), first date jitters

Square Filled: Friends to Lovers for @marvelfluffbingo

Word Count: 1500ish

A/N: This is thought part of my LLL universe but as always it can also be read as a stand-alone. It takes place in December 2011.

This is written for @jewels2876 challenge. I hope you like it, hun!

Betaed by: @blacktithe7 thank you, sweetie!

***My fics are not to be saved nor posted on any other sites without my express written permission.***

You were incredibly nervous as you changed your clothes for the third time getting ready for your date. It wasn’t like you to get this worked up over a first date, but it also wasn’t just any first date. It was Sebastian. That fact should make it easier, but it had the opposite effect.

You scolded yourself as you looked in the mirror. You had been out with Sebastian a million times before as friends. You were alone with him all the time. This situation wasn’t new. Except that it was. You had kissed for the first time a few days ago, and Sebastian had asked you out on a date. This wasn’t two friends spending time together. This meant something. He meant the world to you.

In the past you hadn’t made the best choices concerning men. Your last ex especially was a horrible choice, but Sebastian was unlike any man you had ever been with. He was sweet and caring. Even as your best friend, he always took time for you, and he always put you first. He made you feel safe and loved. You laughed together, and you listened to each other whenever you needed someone to share your life with. He had so quickly become one of the most important people in your life, which was one of the reasons this date made you nervous. You didn’t want to lose that, but Sebastian was also worth the risks. You were deeply in love with him, and knowing he felt the same way about you, you couldn’t let this chance pass you by.

You groaned as you heard the doorbell ring. Your hair was a mess from the amount of time you had changed your shirt, but you couldn’t just leave Sebastian to stand outside as you fixed it. You quickly ran for the door, buzzing him up and opening the door.

“Hi, Seb. The door is open. I’m just in the bathroom,” you called, smiling when you heard him chuckle over the com.

“Hi Y/N/N.” You could hear the teasing in his voice, and you rolled your eyes, smiling. Hearing his voice was all it took for your nerves start to settle.

“Am I half an hour early?” Sebastian teased the moment he walked through your door, and you couldn’t help but laugh as you stood in front of the mirror brushing out your hair.

“Actually you’re late as always. I’m just worse,” you shot back, smiling as you heard him laugh.

“Hi,” Sebastian smiled at your through the mirror as he leaned against the frame of the open door to your bathroom.

“Hi,” your eyes met his in the mirror as you put down your brush before turning around to face him. You practically beamed when you saw the adoring look in his eyes and he took a step towards you.

“You look beautiful,” he spoke softly. He reached out taking your hand and gently tugging you into his arms, pressing a tender kiss to your lips. Warmth rushed through your body as he kissed you, and you instinctively wrapped your arms around his neck, returning his affection.

“Are you ready to go?” Sebastian smiled down at you. You felt the blood rush to your cheeks with how loving he looked, so you quickly looked away, giving him a quick nod.

After tugging a hat down your ears, Sebastian kissed your cheek, making you blush even deeper, and he chuckled as he took your hand. He gave it a small squeeze when you quietly walked out of your building after locking the doors behind you.

“Are you okay with this? If you changed your mind…” Sebastian started nervously, and you quickly looked up at him interrupting him.

“No, no. No Seba. I’m just nervous for some reason,” you stopped, tugging his hand so he was facing you.

“I know. Me too. I don’t wanna mess this up,” Sebastian confessed, and your jaw dropped. Everything you had been feeling, he was feeling too.

“You can’t,” you assured him. “I know you. You’re my best friend. We’re just being silly.” You smiled up at him and Sebastian seemed to relax. He pulled you into a hug and you relaxed against his chest. Neither of you cared you were standing in the middle of a crowded New York street. It was just the two of you in the world at that moment, and that feeling lingered even after he let you go. It lingered as you got on the subway and as you laughed and chatted having lunch at the Rock Center Cafe.

Sebastian wanted to show you a real New York Christmas, and one of the first stops apparently was the Rockefeller Center. You loved the food and the lights, but Sebastian seemed nervous as he kept glaring out at the skating rink outside the window. You weren’t sure what he was thinking. Not until you were leaving the warmth of the cafe, and Sebastian stopped outside the rink, giving it a weary look.

“Seb? Do you wanna go skating?” you asked with a frown. You were pretty sure he had mentioned something about fearing skating in the past.

“Ye… I… Going ice skating is really New York. I promised you a real New Yorker Christmas,” he explained, and you couldn’t help but laugh. You quickly cupped his face in your hands, tugging him down to press a kiss to his lips.

“You don’t have to do that for me. I mean I would love to go skating, but I can do that with Chris when he visits next week or my sister the week after.” You tried to put him at ease, but it didn’t help. Actually, it only seemed to have the opposite effect.

“No,” Sebastian looked uncharacteristically stubborn as he tugged you towards the rink to get the two of you a set of skates each. You had to bite your lip to not laugh at the focused look on his face as a war was clearly going on inside his mind when the two of you put on your skates.

He looked out over the ring, growing paler by the second before he had even gotten back on his feet. You reached out, given his thigh a small squeeze to draw his attention back to you.

“Seba we don’t have to do this,” you tried again, only to realize your mistake when he got up, looking even more stubborn than he had earlier.

You had to bite your cheeks to not giggle. You hadn’t seen this side of him before, but you didn’t mind it one bit. He was stupidly doing this for you, and you couldn’t help but love him a little more for it, even if another part of you wanted to tell him he was being an idiot.

He stopped by the edge of the rink, and you could hear his breathing speed up a little. You knew there was no talking this stupid, sweet man out of conquering his fear right now; so instead, you stepped out on the ice, spinning around so you were facing him. You held out both your hands to him and waited patiently for him to take them.

“Do you trust me?” you asked, giving him a small smile, and Sebastian’s eyes instantly left the ice and met yours.

“Of course.” He spoke without a flicker of doubt in his voice, and you felt your heart swell with love.

“I won’t let you fall,” you promised. “One round, and we’ll leave, okay?”

Sebastian took a deep breath and nodded. He slowly stepped out on the ice along with you. He wobbled a little before he found his balance, gripping your hands a little harder. You stayed steady as you urged him to look at you instead of at his feet. You slowly started skating backward, keeping your hands locked with Sebastian’s as you began making it around the track. Halfway around, Sebastian seemed to start to relax. Before you knew it one round turned into two. On the third round, Sebastian seemed to have overcome his fear, and you were now skating side by side. Your hands still locked not because Sebastian still stumbled once in a while, but because neither of you wanted to let go of each other.

An hour later Sebastian was laughing with you as you made it off the rink, and his arms closed around you from behind as you were leaving the center.

“You’re amazing. You know that right?” Sebastian’s hot breath fanned across your neck, making you shiver pleasantly before you tilted your head looking back up at him with a cheeky smile.

“Does that mean I get a second date Bash?” you teased, and Sebastian’s face split into a huge smile as he leaned down.

“Most definitely,” he whispered, before kissing you deeply in front of the crowded Center, and you smiled against his lips. You loved Sebastian more than you had ever loved anyone else, and you were sure this was the start of something amazing.

Please reblog; help me spread my work - Leave a comment. Feedback is fuel

Sebastian Stan Tag Team

@feelmyroarrrr @sleepretreat @thejourneyneverendsx @roxyspearing @jewels2876 @hellaqueerangelofthelord @danijimenezv @cd1242 @mizzzpink @rumoured-whispers @becs-bunker @janeyboo @smoothdogsgirl @blacktithe7 @ifyougetkilled-walk-it-off @jae-sch @grace-for-sale @scarletlingeries @mizzezm @readitandweepfics @averyrogers83 @captainsamwlsn @sebs-potato @sorenmarie87 @docharleythegeekqueen @erosbellarke @the-wayward-robot @super100012 @myfanficlibrarium @lucifersbird @achishisha @hp-hogwartsexpress @winchesters-favorite-girl @awkwardfangirl2014 @igotkatiepowers @dottirose @panicatttckiss @captainsherlockwinchester110283 @le3h4 @deathofmissjackson

#sebastian stan x reader #sebastian x reader #sebastian stan imagine #sebastian stan fanfiction #sebastian stan fluff #sebastian stan #lll

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gukyi · 7 years ago

Text

ice prince | jjk

⇒ summary: when, due to inexplicable and total clumsiness, your reliable, talented ice dancing partner of five years breaks his leg right before the largest competition of your life, desperate times call for desperate measures. and for a brief, brief moment, you think that everything might actually end up not-that-shitty, until you find out that the aforementioned desperate measures go by the name of jeon jungkook.

⇒ figure skating!au, enemies to lovers!au

⇒ pairing: jungkook x female reader

⇒ word count: 22k (when will she (i) stop)

⇒ genre: fluff, very minor angst that probably shouldn’t even be listed

⇒ warnings: mentions of bruising + stuff from falling

⇒ a/n: i honestly don’t know what’s wrong with me. one day i’m finishing up a 28k jungkook enemies to lovers fic and suddenly two weeks later i have another 22k jungkook enemies to lovers fic on my hands. tagging @cinnaminsvga and @workofteaguk as a thanks for the support and my relentless screaming!

⇒ DISCLAIMER: i am not a professional figure skater and this does not accurately represent the lives of professional figure skaters. it’s a fic, for fuck’s sake. don’t take the logistics of it seriously.

check out the post-script drabble here!

It starts with a broken leg.

For someone so skilled at figure skating, so easily able to do leaps and twirls and lifts, Kim Taehyung is one hell of a klutz. He can’t walk without tripping over himself at least once on a good day, so imagine combining that with black ice on the roads from a terrible snowstorm the prior day. It’s the bad kind of snow, too, the kind that turns into slush when it hits the pavement, dirty slush that freezes over in the night to wreak all sorts of havoc.

Kim Taehyung texts you, two months before the biggest competition you’ve ever had in all of your years of ice dancing, and says:

[9:59 PM] rice dancer #1: remember how i was gonna go on that date after practice today?

[10:01 PM] you: o my god yes!!! how did it go!!!

[10:01 PM] rice dancer #1: it went pretty well rice dancer #1: he’s rlly cute and sweet n he wants me to teach him how 2 figure skate

[10:02 PM] you: dam bith look at she go!!! (she is you)

[10:03 PM] rice dancer #1: well,.,. on the way back.,. uh.. rice dancer #1: you know how it’s rly slippery rn

[10:04 PM] you: tae wtf did u do

[10:05 PM] rice dancer #1: i may or may not have slipped on the ice and broken my leg and currently be in the hospital getting a cast

[10:07 PM] you: TAE!!!!!!!!

And that’s the story of how all of your dreams shattered into a billion pieces right in front of your eyes, much like the bones in Taehyung’s leg.

The next day, you skip practice (much to Namjoon and Hoseok’s chagrin, you already know it) to go to the hospital during visitor hours. Taehyung told you he’d only need one day in the hospital before he’d be back on the one foot he’s allowed to use, so you’re making the most out of your visit. You pick up a bouquet of white roses from the local supermarket on your way. Once you register as a guest at the hospital, they bring you to his room, drab cinderblock walls lining the hallways on the way. When the nurse opens his door, you see him happily camped out in the hospital bed, bright orange cast elevated by fifteen pillows as he channel surfs through the hospital’s five different television stations. Taehyung sees you walk in with a murderous look on your face and quickly fumbles to turn off the TV.

“Y/N!” He cheers, though you can easily make out the fear in his eyes. “What… what brings you here?”

“I brought you something,” you say passive-aggressively as you waltz over to him, bouquet hidden behind your back. Taehyung’s face lights up at the notion of the gift, until you pull the flowers into view and hand them to him.

“White roses?” He asks, concerned as he looks down at them. “Don’t these symbolize death?”

“Yeah,” you say, nodding. “Because you’re fucking dead to me, Kim Taehyung!” Storming over, you start beating him with your fist, pounding his shoulders and forehead and chest as he curls into himself, shouting. You take all of your pent-up frustration out on him, not that he doesn’t deserve it.

“Stop! Stop! Y/N! I’m injured! How dare you!” He shouts in between your assaults, hands going up to protect his face from any more damage. You finally release him, standing up and exhaling heavily. You dust off your fingers before your arms cross in front of your chest.

“You deserved that,” you tell him honestly. “You little piece of shit.”

“I’m sorry, alright,” Taehyung says, wincing in pain as he adjusts himself so that he can sit up in his bed and face you properly. “Believe me, this hurts me just as much as it hurts you. And not just physically.”

“God, Taehyung,” you say, sighing deeply as your palms come up to your cheeks. You have no idea what the hell you’re supposed to do now that Taehyung’s incapacitated. Nationals is in two months and Taehyung, your ice dancing partner since you were fourteen, has a broken tibia. “What are we gonna do?” You ask him as you collapse onto his bed.

Taehyung leans over to rub your back. “We’ll be alright, Y/N. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

Everything is not okay. You walk into the ice rink, helping Taehyung hobble around on the crutches he claims are outrageously uncomfortable (even though when offered a wheelchair, he had declined and said he needs to keep being mobile), to some very concerned coaches. Taehyung’s still got a bright smile on his face, one to match his fluorescent orange cast, but it’s obvious that the both of you have had a rough twenty-four hours, and it’s about to get even rougher.

“Look at you guys,” Namjoon says as he walks over, baseball cap on his head and clipboard in his hand. “Such good sports.”

“Hey, Coach,” Taehyung says awkwardly as you walk him over to a nearby bench. “Sorry about the, uh, unexpected turn of events.”

“It’s okay, Taehyung,” Namjoon says, patting his back with the wood of the clipboard. “It’s not your fault.”

Taehyung turns to you with his eyebrows raised, petty look on his face as if to say, “see, at least someone knows that I’m not the one to blame.” You scoff, hitting him lightly in the shoulder. It’s definitely his fault. What a klutz.

“What do we do, Coach?” You ask desperately, turning to Namjoon.

His eyes scan from you, to the rink, to Taehyung’s cast, to his clipboard. “It’s up to you, really.”

“Can we still drop out of the competition?” You ask, eyes wide.

“Drop out?” Taehyung asks, brows knitted together. He shoots up, nearly toppling over on his shattered leg and grabbing your arm for support. You jump at the contact, hands darting out to steady his body so he doesn’t break anything else.

“Yeah, drop out,” you repeat, nodding as you hold onto him. “I don’t wanna do the competition when my partner’s in a cast.”

Taehyung gapes at you like you’ve just suggested you perform your ice dancing program in the Mars polar ice caps. “But you’re so close! Nationals is two months away!” He says, seemingly outraged at the fact that you want to leave the competition despite the fact that his leg is literally wrapped up in plaster.

“Nationals is two months away and you can’t even walk!” You exclaim in return, making a show of the crutches he’s hobbling around on. “I don’t wanna do the damn program without you. You’re my partner.”

“But you could win this year!” Taehyung insists, tugging on your arm in desperation.

You nod. You could win this year. The program that Namjoon and Hoseok have come up with is gold-medal-worthy. And the fact that Taehyung is standing in front of you with a cast on his leg and crutches under his arms makes tears well up in your eyes. It’s like running through a tunnel without the end ever appearing in your view. It’s like climbing a tree and never being able to reach the highest branch. It’s like seeing the finish line within your grasp but never getting there.

“I know, I know,” you say dejectedly, looking down to your feet. “But there’s always next year, when you’re better.”

Taehyung looks scandalized.

“Hoe, don’t do it,” Taehyung says, grasping onto your arm and looking hopelessly into your eyes. It’s easily the most romantic thing that the two of you have ever done together, and you’ve been ice dancing together for five years.

“Hoe, I’m gonna do it,” you say in response, placing your palm atop his. “I don’t want to perform without you.”

“You have been working really hard these past few months to perfect your routine,” Namjoon supplies unhelpfully, his reason getting the better of him. Can’t he just let you mope around about your lost gold medal in peace? “I would easily be able to recruit someone to be your partner in his place.”

“But—” You say, already knowing fully well that you’re eventually going to cave into their requests. The look on Taehyung’s face is too heartbreaking for you to have to keep staring at it, even if competing in Nationals means you won’t do it with him. What will he do without you? What will you do without him? You know each other’s bodies, motions, touches like the backs of your hands, you skate together so effortlessly, as if you were a single person. What will happen when that sense of security is removed? When you skate with someone foreign, a feeling you won’t recognize.

“Seriously, Y/N. You have a real shot at getting gold, and if not, at least being on the podium,” Namjoon continues. “You’ve never been more prepared for something like this.”

“But if I don’t compete, we’ll have more time to prepare for next year?” You suggest, grimacing as you hunch your shoulders. Taehyung, if possible, looks like he’s about to take his hand off of the crutch keeping him in place just to sock you in the side. It’s clear that you’re about to cave in and that any last-ditch efforts to drop out will ultimately fail, but there’s no harm in reaching for the unreachable anyway.

“Y/N,” Taehyung says, frowning. He’s staring at you with that disappointed look on your face, the one he always gives you whenever you make a terrible pun about ice skating or tease him about his love life. “Do it.”

“Why are you so adamant about this?” You ask him, a final attempt to see if you can sway him. “Your leg is broken and you can’t compete. What’s it to you if I do?”

“You’re my best friend, Y/N,” Taehyung says, as if he thinks you need some sort of reminder. You’re not gonna forget the fact that the two of you have been glued at the hip for years now, before you even became ice dancing partners. “You’ve been dreaming for years about getting gold, and it’s right in front of you. I’m not gonna stop you from achieving your goal.”

You look to him, shoulders sinking. You know you’ve lost, you know that Taehyung’s good-hearted nature, Namjoon’s sage words of advice, and your unrelenting desire to win are all keeping you in this competition, even without the one person you couldn’t replace if you tried.

“Fine,” you say, sighing as Taehyung and Namjoon high-five each other. “I’ll stay in the competition, but only because I know you’re gonna be whining about it for the next twelve decades if I don’t.”

Taehyung smiles. “Works for me!”

“I guess I need to go get geared up then, Coach?” You ask, your hand coming down to pat the duffel bag on your shoulder. You come prepared. “Who’s gonna be Tae’s replacement?”

“Go get changed,” Namjoon says, motioning to the locker room across the rink. “I’ll figure something out.”

“You’re gonna kick everyone’s asses, Y/N!” Taehyung calls as you trudge off, already regretting this decision. “Mine included!”

The pale blue door to the locker rooms opens ten minutes later as you walk out, skates and practice clothes on. On the other side of the rink, you see Taehyung and Namjoon talking with an indistinct third person, who you are assuming is going to be your partner for the next two months. You can’t quite make out who it is, but as you walk over, you quickly rack your brain for all of the other ice dancers that might be Namjoon’s choice, though you can’t come up with any that match the person in question.

Slowly, you approach the group, watching as Taehyung laughs to something that said indistinct third person has said. He must be an ice dancer, since regular figure skaters don’t know some of the tricks that ice dancers engage in and pairs skaters are too busy trying to throw themselves around on the ice to pay attention to ice dancing.

And then, he comes into view.

“Y/N!” Taehyung cries as he pulls you into his body, wrapping an arm around you as you’re pressed up against his crutch as it digs uncomfortably into your back. “Namjoon’s got your guy,” he says happily, motioning to him. “This is—”

“Jeon Jungkook?” You ask as your mouth drops open, eyes blinking wildly at the offending figure in front of you.

He’s standing there with his arms crossed in front of his chest, like him having to ice dance is such an inconvenience to the rest of his daily activities. You didn’t even know he could ice dance. For as long as you’ve known him, he’s always been the company’s top male figure skater, so skilled on the ice because his heart is practically made out of it. All of the awards he’s won have gone to his head at this point, and you make an effort every day you are at the rink to not have to interact with him in any way.

“Don’t look so disappointed to see me, Y/N,” Jungkook drawls, making you roll your eyes. This is why you try to avoid him at all costs, and here he is, as your future ice dancing partner. “I’m doing this for you.”

“You’re doing this because Coach is forcing you too, but alright, whatever helps you sleep at night,” you respond, avoiding his gaze.

“I’m willingly giving up my time as a figure skater to help you at Nationals and you don’t even care? Some partner you are,” Jungkook says, scoffing as he turns away from you. He’s tapping his guard-cladded skate on the floor in disinterest, each click slowly rapping away at each rational thought in your brain.

You exhale, turning to stare up at Jungkook with fire in your eyes and rage in your heart, and you storm out of the rink, marching off in anger since you know that any more time spent with him and you’ll probably explode. The biting cold of the winter air has no effect on you as you cool down outside, letting your breathing come to a steady beat as you close your eyes, taking in the breeze.

Of course, out of all of the people in the world, you had to be paired up with Jeon Jungkook. Your luck’s always been rotten. First, Taehyung breaks his leg, second, your replacement partner ends up being the one skater at the company you make conscientious efforts to avoid whenever possible. Sometimes, Life’s funny that way, how she teases you and makes you think that everything is going swimmingly before she dumps a whole bunch of oil into the water. That’s what this is, having to work with Jungkook or kissing your medal goodbye. Oil in the water.

You don’t hear the door open, too consumed in your own thoughts to care, until you feel a hand on your shoulder. Whipping around, you half-expect it to be Jungkook, coming out to give you some snooty remark about giving up before prancing back to his solo activities. But instead, it’s Taehyung.

“You okay?” He asks, a soft hand placed on your shoulder as the other clings onto his crutch for dear life. He’s still getting the hang of using them.

“I’m a little salted,” you say bitingly.

“A little?” Taehyung says skeptically, eyebrows raised as he takes in your vengeful expression. “Dude, you’re practically boiling over with N-A-C-L. You might want to tone that down a bit.”

“I just—ugh!” You cry, kicking the air with your skate and hoping that your guard hasn’t broken from the force. Nothing is going right, it seems, from Taehyung breaking his leg to you being coerced into staying in the competition to finding out that of all people on this godforsaken Earth, you’ve been re-paired up with Jeon Jungkook, Ice Prince. All you can do is resort to physical aggression as you punch and kick the world around you as a big “fuck you” to whatever higher being is up there, fucking with you. “This sucks ass. I wanna drop out again.”

“Y/N, come on,” Taehyung says, soft hand on the small of your back. “You don’t wanna do that.”

“I do,” you say, nodding. Maybe you’re being too impulsive, but right now you and Jungkook can’t even have a conversation without the biting ice breaking through his words, and you don’t necessarily think that’s the best way to build trust for a sport so reliant on teamwork. “I can’t fucking stand him, Tae. I didn’t even know he could ice dance! Since when would anybody want to work with him?”

“That’s it, Y/N,” Taehyung says in his best group therapist voice. He rubs your back to keep the rest of you grounded as your head flies off into outer space. “Get fucking pissed now so you won’t later.”

“Tae, I wanna pull a stereotypical pop-punk band member and drop out,” you whine, clutching onto his arm as you begin to sink down into a sad squat.

Taehyung tugs you up, his strength even with a broken leg as he balances two crutches much heftier than yours. “You don’t really wanna drop out though, do you?” He asks sincerely even though he already knows the answer. “There’s a reason Coach picked Jungkook. It’s because he’s a god on the ice, you know that. With him, you’re guaranteed a medal. Don’t you want that?”

“But is a medal worth all of the suffering he will inevitably put me through? Because if I skin him alive before we can go to Nationals, he’s gonna die and I’m gonna have to deal with the repercussions,” you remind Taehyung.

“Please don’t skin him alive, he’s got a hoard of fangirls swarming him and his social media on the daily,” Taehyung says, mildly alarmed especially considering your slightly sarcastic yet also totally serious nature. Sometimes, he can’t tell if you’re joking or not, and that’s kind of the best part. Like right now. “They’ll murder you in an alleyway and I’ll never be able to see your dumbass face again.”

“This is all your fault, you fucker,” you tell him sharply. “If you weren’t such a clumsy little—”

“It was slippery and he was cute, alright? He asked me for my number. That’s important,” Taehyung says in return, staring you down. “Are you saying that you would rather me die than get a love life?”

“I’m not not saying that.”

“He’s not that bad, Y/N,” Taehyung says, sighing. “You can get through the next two months with him no problem.”

“Don’t you dislike him just as much?” You ask, thinking back to a multitude of prior occurrences where Taehyung has voiced his disdain for the self-proclaimed Ice Prince, when you were walking out of practice, watching him on the rink, passing him by at regional competitions. This is why it’s so peculiar to see him encouraging you to follow through with this heinous plan, because it’s not like Taehyung likes Jungkook any more than you do.

Alright, maybe a little more. You don’t know what it is about Jungkook but his entire existence just rubs you the wrong way. Cold, aloof, entitled, and kind of a major asshole.

“He’s not as bad as I once thought he was,” Taehyung says warily, finally realizing that maybe he should be careful of what words he chooses to use in front of you when discussing whatever relationship you share with Jeon Jungkook, for the sake of his own safety if nothing else.

You smack his shoulder, mildly offended. Taehyung gasps, unable to rub his shoulder due to his inexperience with casts and the fact that he will definitely fall on his ass if he removes his hand from the aluminum. “You’re taking his side?”

Taehyung frowns. “I’m taking Coach’s side.”

If there was a way for your eyeballs to roll so far back in your head you would be able to hear them jingling around, loose in your skull, it would have already happened by now. “Don’t get all philosophical on me, Tae. It’s not that deep.”

“But Coach says that—and I agree with him—if you don’t do this, it’ll turn into a lost opportunity. You’re gonna regret this for the rest of your life if you don’t suck it up and do it,” Taehyung says softly, looking at you with delicate eyes.

You sigh, shoulders sinking as you slouch. “But he’s such a dickshit, Taehyung,” you whine, unable to come up with a better excuse for your desire to drop out once more.

“Damn, I don’t even think you’ve called me that,” Taehyung comments mindlessly. “Come on, Y/N,” he says, and he’s starting to get that antsy tone in his voice again, like a child begging their mother for a 25¢ gumball from the machine in the corner of the supermarket. “Please? I wanna see my best friend get a medal.”

He’s wearing you down and you know it, too, but you cross your arms and look away, refusing to give into his pleads.

“Pretty, pretty please? With a hazelnut Pirouette stick because I know how much you hate those candied cherries? For me?”

It’s always Taehyung that wears you down. He could, with enough whining, probably convince you to kill a man. Maybe this is a sign that you should stop being best friends with him, because you turn into putty in his hands every time he opens his mouth and he is a terrible person who abuses that knowledge and utilizes it to his advantage as much as possible.

“You’re a little piece of shit,” you say, but Taehyung knows you well enough to know that that’s code for “I give in, Taehyung you asshole,” and so he cheers.

“Yes!”

“I swear to the lord Jesus Christ and all of his dudebros that when you get out of that cast I’m beating you the fuck up,” you hiss, and Taehyung simply giggles. He knows you’re not serious, as menacing as you can be with glittery purple skate guards on your feet.

If Taehyung didn’t have crutches under his arms and a cast the color of a creamsicle on his leg, he’d probably be happily skipping into the skate rink. Reluctantly, you follow him inside after opening the door for him and spot Ice Prince and your coach chatting by the rink, Jungkook already geared up and ready to go.

“Got her!” Taehyung shouts loudly, causing several heads to turn to him as he meets Namjoon’s eyes with a crinkly grin. He motions to you, and you can tell that the contrast between his enthusiastic expression and your begrudging one must be amusing, if Jungkook trying to disguise his chuckles is anything to go by. “We got her, Coach! She’s in!”

“Shout it louder, would you? I don’t think enough of Antarctica has heard,” you say sarcastically, earning a teasing nose-scrunch from Taehyung in return as the two of you march up.

“Caved in?” Jungkook asks, sly smirk on his face as he looks you up and down, takes in your twitching features and glares back with as much force as you are him. “I suppose I’m not as repulsive as you thought I was.”

You scoff, brushing right by him as you tug off your skate guards and hop on the ice to warm up. If you’re gonna do this, might as well bite the bullet. “Oh, that’s sweet,” you call as you begin to skate figure-eights across the rink. “You think I’m doing this for you.”

Jungkook chuckles to himself, taking your arrival on the ice as something akin to a challenge. He removes his skate guards and joins you, gladly whizzing around on the ice alongside you as the two of you already find yourselves in a competition of sorts. This is precisely why you can’t work with him.

“Babe,” Jungkook says, catching your attention as you slow down ever so slightly—not enough for him to actually notice you paying attention to what words leave his lips—to listen to him. The pet name falls from his mouth with ease and sends shivers down your spine. “I don’t give a shit about whether or not you’re doing this for me, because either way I get another National medal to add to my collection. How many times can you say that about yourself?” Jungkook grins a shit-eating grin, and it makes you want to skate over and sock him in the jaw. “Oh, that’s right, none.”

You’re going to murder Taehyung once he gets out of that cast.

It’s obvious from the getgo that you and Jungkook cannot work together. Namjoon and Hoseok, your gracious and talented choreographer, had held out hope that you would be able to put aside your differences for three hours every day just so he could learn the routine and you could both move on with your lives, but it’s clear that’s not the case. Because the second time the two of you meet on the ice, you are forced to skate around holding hands to get a feel for the other’s touch, and you are stiff and cold the entire time.

Jungkook’s touch is too foreign for your taste. He is too foreign for your taste. He doesn’t feel like Taehyung, lacks his over-moisturized hands and the warmth that radiates from his body. He holds your hand with tension in his body, unnatural and distant. He doesn’t hold it like he’s supposed to, like how boys are supposed to hold girls’ hands, like how ice dancers are supposed to melt into each other’s touch. He holds it because he has to.

It doesn’t take a genius to note that the two of you are talented in your sport. You can both skate flawlessly, gliding around on the ice without clashing blades. It’s not difficult for the two of you to skate in time, in rhythm, but that means nothing if you cannot skate together.

And that is what Namjoon is thinking as he voices his concerns to Hoseok right next to him, as the two of them watch you and Jungkook skate gracefully yet emotionlessly around the rink.

“Should we be worried about them, Hoseok?” Namjoon asks, eyebrows knitted together as he watches the both of you. You’re talking, but it’s strikingly obvious that you’re not enjoying the conversation in front of you. In fact, you both look quite disgruntled in the presence of the other. This does not bode well.

Hoseok heaves, not taking his eyes of the two of you. He looks down at the way the two of you are holding hands, how unrealistic it seems, how contrived it appears, and he sighs. “We might need to be, Joon. There’s no chemistry whatsoever. In fact, it doesn’t look like they like each other very much at all.”

“Shit,” Namjoon says, a hand coming up to rub at his temple. He’s worked tirelessly with you and Jungkook for years to get you into your top spots, and he refuses to see you crumble now just because of an accident. “What are we going to do, Hoseok? We can’t have ice dancing partners that hate each other.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Hoseok says, and Namjoon can practically see the light bulb illuminating above his fading red hair. “We can use that raw emotion.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to re-choreograph their entire routine,” Namjoon says, eyes pleading.

Hoseok grins, standing a little taller with his hands happily planted on his hips. “I am. But only a little. I need a new song…”

Namjoon watches as Hoseok begins to wander off, pointer finger tapping his chin as he contemplates how he’s going to edit the routine to make it fit the meshing personalities of you and Jungkook. He will admit, the fact that Hoseok has decided to change the program with so little time left before Nationals has him nearly on the floor, but when he looks up and sees you bickering away with Jungkook as you skate laps together, hands glued shut, he supposes it might not be such a bad idea after all.

“Oh my God, I can’t do this.” You sigh in anger, skating away from Jungkook so as to cool down. You reach your hands up to rub at your temples, eyes shut tight as you let your frustration subside. “God, do you even know how to ice dance?”

“Do you?” Jungkook counters, clearly just as exasperated as you.

The very fact that Jungkook is even insinuating that after nearly fourteen years of skating and ten years of ice dancing you still lack the necessary skills to, you know, ice dance, makes you want to remove your skate from your foot and chuck it at his head. You roll your eyes, throwing your hands up to the sky in anguish as you glide up to Namjoon, who looks like he’s having a mid-life crisis.

“Coach, I can’t work with him!” You exclaim. “I can’t! There’s no connection. It’s like working with a robot on ice skates.”

There’s the sound of ice being shredded, and when you whip your head around you see Jungkook coming to a quick halt across the way.

“She’s not much better, you know!” calls Jungkook mindlessly, earning a glare from you before you turn back to face your poor overworked, underpaid coach.

“Do you see what I have to work with?” You ask, motioning to Jungkook as he launches off into some quads and twists, only further proving your point that he is a self-absorbed, entitled dickhead who, if he’s so good at single skating, should just go back to the category he wins in rather than wasting his time with you.

“Calm down, Y/N. Don’t get so worked up about this,” Namjoon says patiently.

“It’s been two weeks since Hoseok showed us the ‘new and improved’ choreography—” You begin, making hand quotes around the words to show your budding distaste for change, “—and we can’t get a single one of the lifts down.”

“At least the two of you can do the twizzles,” Namjoon supplies unhelpfully, always like him to search for the silver lining in this trainwreck of a performance.

“Woohoo,” you deadpan.

“Listen, Y/N, I trust the both of you. I know that the two of you can do great things together. There’s a reason that I selected him to be your ice dancing partner. You’re capable of greatness,” Namjoon insists, only making you roll your eyes further.

“Am I being punished for Taehyung’s clumsiness, Coach? Is that it?” You groan, your head tilting back in vexation. You know Namjoon means well, he really does, but you fail to see where on Earth he thought pairing the two of you up for a national competition would be a good idea.

“You’re not being punished,” Namjoon tells you.

“If you want to win gold for Nationals, don’t you think that maybe you should spend more time practicing and less time shit-talking your partner?” Jungkook’s voice rings out in the echoey ice rink, and it makes you sigh. Turning around, you see him casually executing a catch-foot camel spin, and it makes you want to knock him right off his center of balance and watch him crash into the ice.

“He’s right, Y/N,” Namjoon says as you begrudgingly skate back over to Jungkook, willing yourself to just through the next few hours by his side before you can go home and take a much-needed bubble bath.

Hoseok joins you not much later, happily skating on the ice as he begins to coach you through the choreography. It’s much more technical than you’re used to, aimed at getting you the highest score possible, but it’s also filled with an overwhelming amount of raw emotion, something you tend to shy away from when dealing with programs. Hoseok’s always been known to step out of the box, though, so this really should come as no surprise.

With the feeling of Jungkook’s frozen hands on your waist, Hoseok guides the both of you around the rink.

“Five, six, seven, eight, one, two, up—!”

“Ow! Not there, you dumbass!” You cry when Jungkook pinches you a little too hard, causing you to stumble and fall on your knees. “Jesus H. Christ,” you say, frowning as you get up and dust yourself off.

“You okay, Y/N?” Hoseok asks, reaching out a hand as you skate to warm yourself up again.

“’M fine,” you say, albeit a little bitter.

“Alright, again, same spot,” Hoseok orders as you line up with him again.

Jungkook grips your waist too tightly at this part, the tension causing you to stumble on your next turn, but at least you can move onto the next major part of your routine without any more flubs or cries of indignation.

Almost the entire program does Jungkook touch you in some sort of way, whether it be a hand on your waist, hip, shoulder, fingers interlocked with yours, or holding onto you for a lift. You know that you’ll get used to it eventually, the feeling of his body heat radiating onto yours, but after five years of constant contact with Taehyung, it’s difficult to change course.

Still, he does not purposely attempt to make your routine any more unbearable or difficult out of spite. He can do that with his words, not his actions. At least he’s making a solid effort to get this routine down.

“Seven, eight, lift!” Hoseok says when the two of you are skating with such momentum as you approach the halfway-mark of your free-skate program.

Jungkook pulls you up, just as you had practiced before, and your skate finds purchase in the thick material of his clothing. You are both experienced enough in this skill to not cut right through his clothing (and perhaps his skin as well), a careful hand on your thigh as he holds you up, and you think you might actually be able to stick this landing…

Until, on the way down, his elbow accidentally knocks into your shin, and the two of you collapse in a puddle on the ice.

“Fuck!” He mutters to himself, swearing as he pulls at his limbs that are entangled in yours.

You sit up as well, rubbing your sore arms as you feel the bruises blossoming on your legs.

“Whoa, you guys alright?” Hoseok asks, brows furrowed in concern as he holds a hand out to lift you up. You gladly take it, pulling yourself back onto your feet as you begin to dust off the patches of ice that have gathered on your leggings. “That was some fall. And it wasn’t even the worst lift.”

“I’m fine,” you say bitingly, “we could probably get it, if it weren’t for Jungkook not knowing where to put his hands.”

“Oh yes, pile all of the blame on me, the nationally-ranked figure skater who made a simple mistake that he can fix in an instant,” Jungkook retorts bitterly, adjusting the sleeves of his fleece jacket as he skates off to cool down.

“Uh, if you guys are alright, wanna run that again?”

“I don’t know about his bruised ego, but I’m cool to do it again,” you comment, loud enough so that he hears you even from his position across the rink.

“Do you just have a thing for insulting me?” Jungkook asks. “Because that’s no way to treat the person who’s going to lead you to gold at Nationals,” he tells you pointedly, hands on his hips as the two of you prepare to rehearse the stunt all over again.

“Please,” you scoff, “I’m the reason you’re even going to Nationals for ice dancing.”

“Oh, yeah, your partner breaking his leg is a real achievement to boast about,” Jungkook retorts.

“Don’t fucking talk about Taehyung,” you spit.

“Okay, you guys, cut the chit-chat,” Hoseok says, probably more for his own sake than yours or Jungkook’s. “We’re doing this one more time, from the camel, and then practice is over for the day,” he says warily, skating over to the panel that controls the music and turning it on.

Everything goes much better the second time, the lift being not nearly as tragic as Jungkook carefully places you back down on the ice and you skate into your next trick. You actually don’t think it’s half bad, that is, until you hear the music abruptly stop and Hoseok skate up to you with a disappointed look on his face.

“Wasn’t that good, Hoseok?” You ask, maneuvering your way to the exit of the rink and grabbing your skate guards.

“It was okay,” Hoseok says, sharing a knowing look with Namjoon, who’s been observing the both of you this entire time.

“Just okay?” You ask, confused. “We landed the lift.”

“Just go get changed, Y/N and Jungkook,” Namjoon says, motioning for the two of you to head to the locker rooms. “We’ll talk to you guys about how you can improve your routines afterwards.”

You sigh, grabbing your coat from the bench as you make your way towards the locker rooms.

“This is all your fault, you know,” you say petulantly, eyeing Jungkook as you give his shoulder a rough shove.

“Excuse me? I wasn’t the one spewing out blame for a one mistake,” Jungkook challenges. “One!”

You sigh, deciding that continuing to bicker with Jungkook won’t change the outcome of the conversation you’re about to have with Namjoon and Hoseok anyway, and you head into the locker rooms to get out of your skates and calm yourself down. You can deal with Jungkook later. That is, if you have enough brainpower left to do so.

Namjoon and Hoseok have their Serious Faces on as you emerge from the locker rooms, Jungkook coming out of his at the same time, duffel bag slung over his bare shoulder. You wonder how Jungkook can be walking around in a muscle tee with his biceps on display for the world to ogle at (but not you, ugh!) in the middle of winter, but then again, he is the Ice Prince after all.

“What did you want to talk to us about, Coach?” Jungkook asks, tilting his head in interest as the two of you approach them.

“We were just discussing the trust factor in your program,” Hoseok says.

“What ‘trust factor’?” You say, wary of whatever criticism is to come.

“Y/N, do you trust Jungkook?” Namjoon says, getting straight to the point.

“No.” The answer is as easy as if someone were to ask if you supported cannibalism, or pineapple on pizza.

“Jungkook, do you trust Y/N?”

“Well, since trust is a two-way street, no,” Jungkook says. It’s the first time you think you’ve ever agreed on something.

Hoseok and Namjoon share a knowing look, one you couldn’t decipher even if you tried. Jungkook turns to face you and you shrug, happy to see that there are no hard feelings as related to the fact that neither of you trust each other despite literally being ice dancing partners. You don’t know what Namjoon and Hoseok were expecting when they asked you that question, especially given how openly you’ve voiced your opinions on Jungkook before. Were they hoping for a “yes”?

“That’s exactly the problem,” Hoseok says. “You guys don’t trust each other. What’s an ice dancing routine without trust? You have to rely on each other the entire time.”

“Well, we were able to do some of the routine today,” you point out, electing to ignore the part where the two of you just completely fell on top of each other. “Why would trust be necessary?”

“Your routine is… hmm, how do I say this nicely?” Hoseok begins.

“Emotionless,” Namjoon cuts in. “It’s emotionless. You might as well be animatronics,” he continues. “Trust builds not only the routine but it builds the emotion within it. You guys are very talented skaters but there is no way in hell that you will even get onto the podium without trust, passion, or emotion. The lack of chemistry is what will bring you down, and I know neither of you want to walk away from Nationals without even bronze.”

“How are we supposed to fix that?” You ask, hesitant. You dislike the path that this conversation is leading you on. “You can’t shove five years of experience and progressively-built trust into six weeks.”

“Exactly,” Hoseok says.

“Which is why we’re staging a Trust Intervention for the both of you. You hardly know each other as people, only as skaters, and we need to fix that,” Namjoon declares, blatantly proud of the plan he’s formulated. His confidence has your eyes wide in worry, and when you turn to Jungkook, it’s clear he’s not looking forward to whatever the two of your coaches have in store for you either.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You ask.

“You guys are going to get to know each other by going out on dates.”

Your jaw drops. Dates?

“And I don’t care how awkward it’s going to be, because you guys are going to do it anyway. You are going to go out on dates to coffee shops and restaurants and other places where you can actively talk with each other, and you are going to learn about each other,” Namjoon orders, and you know you don’t have a choice. Even if you faked it, Namjoon has the eye of a hawk and he’d easily be able to spot the lack of connection the next time you had practice together.

“You’re kidding,” Jungkook says, blinking profusely. He looks like he’s in shock. You can’t imagine you look much different.

Hoseok looks as equally pleased with the proposal as Namjoon. “You guys have more in common than you both might think, you know,” he says. “Before practice in two days, I want to see you out on one date. You could even drop by the coffee shop down the road before practice. I don’t care. But I need to see that you’ve been on one.”

“Wait, wait, Coach,” you say before Namjoon turns to change his focus towards his Little Skaters group that’s slowly filing in for their own practice. “A date? I don’t know how I feel about that.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Jungkook adds.

“They don’t necessarily have to have some sort of romantic connotation, calm down,” Namjoon says. “They’re just outings together. You don’t have to hold hands or kiss or hug, or whatever. Just talk. That’s all I ask of you. You guys are dismissed.”

Before you can get in any more questions, Namjoon and Hoseok are turning away from you, greeting the Little Skaters with their voices light and bright and the total opposite of how they were just speaking to you.

You turn to Jungkook in partial shock and partial disgust, already repelled by the mere thought of having to spend more time with him. You couldn’t think of a worse way to spend your time than this.

“Coffee shop, two hours before practice?” Jungkook asks, expressionless.

You shrug. “Fine. See you there, Jeon,” you spit, marching out of practice with a frown on your face.

You don’t know what Namjoon or Hoseok’s game is, but what you do know, is that if they’re expecting for the two of you to form some sort of bond through these forced dates, then they couldn’t be more wrong.

What kind of bond could be forged between you and Jeon Jungkook? Not even in your nightmares could you imagine putting your trust in his hands.

Two days later, you catch Jungkook in the coffeeshop as he’s waiting at the end of the line to order, staring up the menu above his head and tapping his foot to the beat of the soft pop that plays through the speakers that decorate each corner of the room.

“Ordering without me?” You ask, joining him, with an eyebrow raised. “So gentleman-y.”

“You were taking too long,” Jungkook responds curtly. “I don’t drink coffee anyway, so I wanted to see what this place has.”

“You don’t drink coffee…” you begin, “and we’re in a coffee shop?”

“They have things other than coffee.” Jungkook frowns.

“Alright, whatever you say,” you say distantly, rolling your eyes as the woman in front of you moves to the side to wait for her drink. “Hi, can I get a medium latte, whole milk? And light foam, please.”

The barista nods tapping away at the computer in front of her before motioning to Jungkook.

“Small hot chocolate,” Jungkook says quickly, grabbing his wallet from the back of his pocket.

“I can pay for mine,” you insist, fumbling with the loose bills shoved into your jeans, but Jungkook shakes his head, handing over his card without even giving you so much as a glance. You stand there, at a loss for words as Jungkook casually pays for your obnoxious drink without a second thought.

“This is stupid,” you say mindlessly as you wait for your drinks at the pick-up station. “I don’t know how Coach thinks anything is going to improve if we spend more time together.”

“If Coach really wanted us to loosen up around each other, he should have given us a bottle of vodka and ten minutes,” Jungkook jokes, making you laugh.

“Please,” you scoff, “I bet you have the alcohol tolerance level of a baby goose.”

“Is that supposed to be an insult?”

You roll your eyes, already finding yourselves falling into the distinct rhythm of bicker, bicker, bicker. This is precisely why you knew that whatever plan Namjoon had brewing in his brain wouldn’t work, because if you can’t get past petty insults and snarky comments, how are you supposed to connect with each other?

When you’ve got your drinks, you take refuge in a table by the window of the shop, giving you a glorious view of the angry pedestrians and angrier cars, hooting their way around town. What a sight.

Jungkook sips his drink slowly, savoring each sip. When he’s not drinking, he’s leaning back in his chair, tapping his fingers on the wooden table between you and avoiding your gaze, red scarf wrapped up neatly around his neck and complimenting the red buttons on his peacoat with ease. Without him opening his mouth and ruining the entire vibe of the scenery, he actually looks quite nice. But don’t tell him that.

Meanwhile, you are ungracefully downing your entire medium latte without another shot, craving each gram of caffeine that enters your body. Maybe it is two o’clock in the afternoon, but you are regularly awake until midnight and you also will need all of the energy you can get if you have to deal with a skating Jungkook for the next five hours.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Excuse me?” You ask, coughing slightly as your coffee goes down the wrong pipe in surprise.

“What’s your favorite color?” Jungkook repeats, dead serious. “Coach said we have to get to know each other. Answer the question.”

You’ve never heard someone sound so stern when asking what your favorite color is.

“Yellow. Yours?” You ask, wiping the foam away from the corner of your lips with your sleeve.

“Red.”

“I probably could have figured that out,” you comment mindlessly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jungkook asks, quirking an eyebrow in offense as he looks at you.

“Look at you, Jeon. You’re covered in red from head to toe. It doesn’t take a genius to guess,” you say, motioning from his scarf down his torso. Even his cheeks are read, burning from the mixture of the heat from the coffee shop and the winter from outside.

“Well,” Jungkook begins, shuffling himself around with his hot chocolate cup held tightly in his hand. “I look good in it.”

“Is that your reasoning?” You ask, appalled.

“Do you deny it?” Jungkook retorts, smirk on his face as he watches your expression change from shocked to accosted. You’d never admit to Jungkook that he actually looks good, sitting in front of you with the bright red wrapped around him complimenting his skin tone, the shade of his eyes. You’d rather keel over and die in this very coffee shop.

“I—” You say, speechless.

“So you don’t?”

“Why do you care what I think about you? I thought you were just in this for the medal,” you counter, reminding Jungkook of his own words with a pointed expression.

“I never said I cared about if you think I’m hot, though it is nice to know that you do,” Jungkook responds.

“I never said that,” you say.

“You didn’t need to,” Jungkook says with a shrug, taking an extended sip of his hot chocolate while you sit there, racking your brain for an equally good, if not better, riposte to his obnoxiously self-centered comments. How have they left your mind empty? You had always thought it impossible for a man to leave you speechless, but clearly, you just hadn’t spoken to Jeon Jungkook yet. “What, no response?” He asks, teasing lilt decorating his words.

“Sorry, too busy thinking of all of the ways I can skin you alive after Nationals,” you say, fist up at at the ready. You reach over to punch him in the shoulder, but Jungkook’s reflexes are much too quick for your liking and he grabs a hold of your wrist before your hand can collide with his coat.

“Don’t get too excited, Y/N,” Jungkook warns, keeping his grip on you tight. “Maybe we’ll do so well at Nationals that you won’t want to kill me anymore. You might even want to keep being my partner, how about that?”

You scoff. “In your dreams, Jeon. You and I both know we wouldn’t be able to stand each other for more than a season at a time, if that.”

“Who knows,” Jungkook says, leaning across the table. The sheer proximity intimidates you, how his face is hovering hardly a finger’s length away from yours. This close, you can make out the golden specks decorating his irises, and the lines on his lips—

Shut up! What are you doing thinking about Jeon Jungkook’s lips?

“Things can change,” Jungkook hums, grinning smugly before getting up from his seat and taking his empty cup with him.

You’re left there, sitting in the dust as the conversation settles around you, unable to process even a single thing that just happened. Jeon Jungkook. Jeon Jungkook’s eyes. Jeon Jungkook’s lips.

Jeon Jungkook’s ego that is roughly the size of Madagascar.

You sigh, exhaling heavily as you gather your belongings and make to leave as well, tossing your empty cup in the bin on the way out.

Things can change, but how much are you willing to let them?

“There’s the happy couple!”

Your tired eyes light up at the sound of a familiar voice, and you turn to see Taehyung happily crutch-ing his way over to you. By now, he’s mastered the art of not falling while requiring the use of crutches, so you don’t have to baby him anymore.

“Tae!” You exclaim, happy to see the one person who is most definitely keeping you grounded during this time of torture.

“How’s it going?” He asks happily, not having been at the rink since the day you found out you’d have to be partnered up with Jeon Jungkook.

You turn to Jungkook, who’s already begun walking off in the direction of the locker with little demonstrated interest in the conversation you are about to have with Taehyung, for whatever reason. Taehyung shrugs at the two of you watch Jungkook trudge off, neither happy nor sad.

“What’s his deal?” Taehyung asks, pointing his crutch in Jungkook’s direction.

“He constantly has a gigantic stick up his ass,” you remark, making Taehyung giggle. “No, I don’t know. I guess he just wants to get to practice.”

“Wow, so dedicated,” Taehyung says, shaking his head. “How are you?”

“I’m okay.”

“How much do you hate Jeon Jungkook?” Taehyung rephrases his question.

“Very much,” you inform him. “Actually, only a lot much, now. It’s getting better,” you tell him regretfully, knowing how much he’s going to rub in your face the fact that he was the one who told you that it wouldn’t actually be that bad.

“See, I told you!” Taehyung exclaims, a “you should have believed me when I said so!” expression on his face. “I knew it wouldn’t actually be that bad. You’re just so fucking overdramatic, always have been,” Taehyung reminds you.

“Want me to give you another broken leg, Taehyung?” You threaten weakly, fist balled up with a teasing smile on your face. Taehyung pretends to wince before laughing alongside you. “God, I can’t wait for you to be able to get on the ice again.”

“Me neither,” Taehyung admits wistfully, watching as some of the other skaters practice gracefully on the rink, less advanced but just as devoted as you, Jungkook, or Taehyung. “I’m getting that itch under my skin. Or maybe it’s just because I can’t scratch this one part of my leg because of this motherfucking cast, and it makes me want to die.”

You chuckle at his comment. Taehyung always has a way of taking devastating situations and laughing about them, making them seem like they’re not really real.

“Have you at least gotten to talk to that guy again?” You ask him, interlocking your fingers with his. It doesn’t feel like Jungkook, with whom you’ve been holding hands with (for totally professional purposes) for the past two-and-a-half weeks. It feels warmer, softer. Like you could die in these hands and he would promise that everything would be alright.

“Oh my God, yes!” Taehyung exclaims happily. “Jimin brought me flowers when I got out of the hospital. And they weren’t death-symbolizing white roses. I think I want to marry him, Y/N. You don’t understand.”

“Way to rub in the fact that I don’t have a love life,” you say, grimacing. “But I’m happy for you! You deserve all of the love and appreciation in the world.”

“Y/N,” Namjoon’s soothing voice interrupts your conversation as he places the cool wood of his clipboard on your back. “Go get changed. Hoseok wants to run through the second half of the program with you and Jungkook today.”

“Alright, Coach,” you say mindlessly, waving Namjoon off as you bid goodbye to Taehyung. “You’re gonna watch us practice, right?”

“Totally! Knock ’em dead, tiger,” Taehyung says, already making his way towards the up-ramp onto the bleachers that give him a view of the entire rink. Hoseok’s beginning to clear out the leftmost rink for you and Jungkook to practice, and you wave to Taehyung as you jog towards the locker room, already wary of what Jungkook’s going to say when you are inevitably late to practice on the ice.

The second half of the program for the free-skate is much more comprehensive than the first. Sure, the first part has the first set of twizzles and the layback curve lift (that Jungkook dropped you during the first time you had rehearsed the stunt), but the second features an overwhelming amount of stationary twirls and two more lifts, both of which are significantly more difficult than the curve.

It’s a good thing Jungkook’s as dedicated as you. If, at gunpoint, you were forced to pick one quality you admire about Jungkook, it’s how devoted he is to the sport, and how he’s willing to do anything to secure the top spot. At least you have one thing in common.

“Five, six, seven, eight, camel!” Hoseok shouts as he skates away from the two of you as you begin the camel spin. Jungkook wraps his heavy hands around you, one on your waist and another on your outstretched leg, and you do the same with him, palm glossing over his stomach as you hold on tight. You’re careful not to press to firmly, mostly out of fear for yourself, because you know fully well that he’s got a decent pack of abs under that fleece jacket he’s wearing. You twirl together, your two bodies slowly becoming one, but it’s such a short period of time that you split almost as quickly as you come together before launching off into the next trick.

Jungkook keeps his hands on your waist for almost the entire second part, wrapped around your waist as you skate around the rink, making all sort of elegant gestures with your hands to the beat of the music.

“Dip!” Hoseok’s voice rings out in the rink as Jungkook, with your hands tightly interlocked, dips you down down to the ice, pulling you in a semicircle before lifting you back up with ease. You spin around to face him, gliding across the ice, attempting to be civil and smile his way, but he offers nothing in return. Asshole.

The first lift comes easily, a combination with you going from Biellmann position on his thigh to a reverse-rotational. You’ve been practicing this for a few days now, not enough for it to be flawless but enough for it to get the job done and for Hoseok to fine tune over the next few weeks as the competition approaches. Jungkook keeps a tight grip on you throughout the entire thing, pressing you tightly to his body as he spins with you in the splits position before gracefully dropping you to the ice. Hoseok claps happily once you’ve landed it, watching with glee as you skate into the next series of twizzles.

It appears that everything’s going swimmingly, and when you are midway through the second half of the routine, the thought flashes across your mind that you might actually be able to work with him on this routine, rather than against him like you have been for so long. It’s a foreign feeling, that thought, and a fleeting one at that.

The final lift before the finale approaches, and you feel Jungkook press his palm firmly on your waist before hoisting you up as you wrap your arm around his neck to hold yourself up. Jungkook spins with ease, watching your body carefully as you dance around him, going from the splits to a horizontal position, the only thing keeping you glued to him his hand around your waist. It’s almost perfect, but when he sets you down you both stumble, skates colliding as you trip over each other and fall to a heap on the rink.

Hoseok cuts the music, skating over to see what went wrong.

“You guys alright?” He asks, concerned look on his face.

Sighing, you stand up shakily, holding onto Hoseok’s arm for support. “Fine.”

“Jungkook?”

“I’m good,” Jungkook says, voice as cold as always.

“What happened there, guys?” Hoseok asks.

“We were just positioned incorrectly, ‘s all,” Jungkook spits quickly, skating around in a quick figure-eight before re-positioning himself so that you can work on the lift again. You dust yourself off and join him, hoping that maybe this time you can get it so you can move onto tweaks.

You don’t.

For the next four times that you attempt the final lift, you end up collapsing in a puddle together, your skates colliding, or Jungkook’s grip on you slipping, or your limbs being connected for a moment too long, something that happens not during the lift but on your way down that causes the fall. You and Jungkook are getting equally infuriated with yourselves and with each other, much to Hoseok’s chagrin.

“Your foot is always too close to mine when you put me down,” you accuse, after Hoseok’s dismissed the both of you from practice. “Move it into more of a 180 position so I have room to move.”

“You aren’t landing in the right spot,” Jungkook counters bitterly. “You need to constantly be aware of my position on the ice so that way you don’t crash into me.”

“Your hand is slipping as you put me down, it throws me off.”

“You’re putting way too much faith in me to do everything correctly, when you aren’t even in the correct form during the last part of the lift.”

You both exhale, exasperated from arguing and from practicing and from the bruises blossoming all over your lower body. Bickering will get you absolutely nowhere but it’s all you have.

Before the two of you leave, Namjoon stops the both of you.

“Dinner together before the end of next week. A decent restaurant too, not a McDonald’s. You guys need to build trust, and you won’t be able to do that by arguing,” he orders, much to Taehyung’s confusion as he exits alongside of you, rambling on about Jimin and his flowers.

You and Jungkook meet eyes for a brief second before turning back to Namjoon and nodding.

Winning gold isn’t all sunshine and daisies. Sometimes, it’s bruises and self-torture as well.

Jungkook meets you for dinner at a mildly posh restaurant in the center of town, where the food isn’t necessarily dirt cheap, but it’s also not outrageously overpriced. It’s a quaint place, The Yellow Dandelion, that serves exclusively appetizers that are meant to be shared rather than eaten separately. The aura is soft, like the ending to a fairytale, decorated with Christmas lights and candles lining the shelves on the walls.

Jungkook’s already sitting there when you arrive, face windblown from the biting winter breeze. It’s a thin restaurant, booths extending all the wall along the wall on the right and a little bar to your left, the kitchen hiding in the back. You spot him instantly, see him waiting patiently for you, and ignore the hostess entirely as you rush over to him.

“You look cold,” Jungkook deadpans when he sees you. He’s dressed in a pale blue button-down, tucked into some khakis with his bangs brushed neatly to cover his forehead, dancing along his eyelashes. He looks so much different than when you saw him in the coffeeshop, bundled up in a scarf and jacket with his hair brushed up, or in practice, sweaty and cozy and angry.

“You look warm,” you comment in return, noting the pink decorating his cheeks. Or maybe that’s just the hazy light of the restaurant.

“I already ordered us Cokes, if that’s alright with you,” Jungkook says as you sit down across from him, thankful for the table in between the two of you that allows the both of you to keep your distance. Though, knowing Jungkook, you don’t doubt him possibly leaning over the table to make some snarky and mildly sexual remark to you. You nod, taking a look at the menu. It’s a single list of a bunch of fancy, hipster foods that sound both appealing and revolting at the same time.

“What are you going to order?” You ask him mindlessly, eyeing the bowl of pasta with olives and grapefruit. Namjoon always did say you needed to eat more “healthy” carbs, whatever the fuck that means.

“The spinach and artichoke dip, and the garlic bread. I can’t go to a restaurant and not get garlic bread. It’s sacreligious,” Jungkook says, making you laugh slightly. “What about you?”

“I don’t know, will you let me steal some of your garlic bread?” You ask cheekily, not minding the thought of garlic bread very much at all.

“You’re going to steal some regardless of if I say yes or no, so, no, I don’t mind. Have whatever,” he offers.

“I’m not going to let you fucking pay for me this time, you asshole,” you warn him holding up your wallet as a reminder. “This place isn’t cheap.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Let me pay for what I eat, Jeon. I’m not taking no for an answer,” you declare, leaning back firmly in your seat.

“You’re so stubborn,” Jungkook comments to himself, sighing.

“Do you not like stubborn girls? Oh, what a shame! What will I do if the great Jeon Jungkook doesn’t like stubborn girls? Will I have to change my entire personality just so he’ll like me a bit more?” You plead dramatically, looking up to the sky with your hands clasped together. Jungkook frowns in response to your melodrama, an eyebrow quirked in disapproval. You smile pettily at him.

The waitress comes with your Cokes, and you’re happy to have something to occupy your mouth so you don’t launch off into another series of personal attacks on Jeon Jungkook. She takes your orders before disappearing off into the kitchen, leaving you and Jungkook alone with your thoughts once again.

“What’s your favorite time of day?” Jungkook asks, yet another stiff icebreaker (pun intended).

“Like, morning, afternoon, night? That kind of stuff?” You ask. Jungkook nods. “Midnight. Early morning. When the whole world is quiet and you can finally breathe. You?”

“The sunrise,” Jungkook responds, his answer catching you by surprise. He had always seemed like an afternoon kind of guy, when the sun is high and beams down on him with all its might, when its rays filter in through the windows at the top of the rink and illuminates the path on which he skates. Not the sunrise, the calm before the storm as the sky turns orange, purple, and pink.

“Really?” You ask, intrigued. “What for?”

“The only people who are awake to see it are the people who see as much beauty in it as I do,” Jungkook says softly. “I know you think I’m some cold, self-absorbed asshole who only cares about his medals, but I actually have a heart, you know.”

“Huh,” you say. “Who’d have thought.”

Once the food arrives, you and Jungkook spend the rest of the evening offering up the food on your plates to the other until there’s nothing left but crumbs and butter lining them. It’s a little infuriating, really, constantly being offered the other’s food, but when your stomachs are full and there is no room left for dessert, you find yourself pleased with the variety of dishes you’ve had. The bill has already been paid, and perhaps the two of you could just up and leave without another thought to this not-a-date date, but then—

“Why did you start skating, Jungkook?” You ask, playing with your fork as it taps the plate arrythmically. Jungkook’s been staring down at his food or his lap the entire night, but he finally looks up when you mention his name.

“I was four,” Jungkook begins. “And I was at the rink because my older brother had been invited to a birthday party there, and I had to come with. And I had wandered off while my mother was dealing with my older brother, gone to the senior level rinks. And I saw Kim Seokjin.”

“Kim Seokjin? Seriously?” You ask in shock. Kim Seokjin is only a legend to you and everyone else who attends your skating rink, a man who skates with so much elegance yet so much pizzazz, his talent alone earning him a silver medal at the Olympics.

“Seriously. He was practicing there, and it took my breath away. I had craned my neck and was standing on my tiptoes just to catch a glimpse of him as he leaped across the ice like a fucking swan, and I realized that I wanted to do that too. When he finished, he saw me watching him, and he gave me the brightest wave my four-year-old eyes had ever seen. I’ll never forget,” Jungkook says, shaking his head at the nostalgic memory. “I wanted to be just like him.”

The answer seems so unlike the Jungkook you know now (or at least, the Jungkook you think you know). You had always heard, always assumed that Jungkook began figure skating because someone had dared him to when he was little, and he had taken up the challenge with all of his might. You had always assumed that he skated not just because he enjoyed it, but because he was good at it, and because he knew he would always win.

“What about you?” Jungkook asks. “Why did you start skating?”

“When I was in kindergarten, all of my friends were good at something, be it sports, or school, whatever. They were all good at this one thing and I was just, kinda average. Not great and not terrible, either. But I was five, and I wanted something to be good at, something to be proud of,” you begin to explain. “And so my mom, the lovely person she is, signed me up for all of these different things to see if any of them stuck.”

“And then you found the rink,” Jungkook finishes, a knowing grin on his face.

You nod, repeating his words. “And then I found the rink.”

“Isn’t it weird?” Jungkook asks, twirling his fork between his fingers. You hum to show him that you’re paying attention, despite keeping your eyes trained on your twiddling thumbs. “How even though we hate each other, we have so much in common?”

“Like what?” You ask, not because you’re doubtful, or you’re unsure. You ask because you already know, already know that in more ways than one Jungkook is more than meets the eye, so much more than a first impression, but you refuse to let yourself believe it.

“Like how we both started out because we wanted to be something bigger than ourselves,” Jungkook says. “We don’t like the day. You like late nights, and I like the early mornings, because all we want is a little peace and quiet, a time of reflection and thought.”

His words make you wince, not because they are wrong, but because they are true. Because for as long as it has been, you and Jungkook have always been quite similar. You just wouldn’t allow yourself to admit it.

Jungkook continues. “We like bold colors. They’re statement colors, show off the parts of our personality we wouldn’t otherwise broadcast. We are passionate. And devoted. And determined to succeed.” He’s beginning to stand up, gather his belongings as his words make you shiver.

Jeon Jungkook had always been a beautiful horror story to you. Talented in every way one can be talented at skating, but rude. Aloof. Uptight. Not a heartbreaker, because he didn’t date, but a heartbreaker nonetheless, because he didn’t date. You had never imagined getting so close to him, let alone him becoming your ice dancing partner. They were two separate things, Jeon Jungkook and ice dancing, but now, they are one.

The thought straight terrifies you.

You mimic his actions, picking up your coat and your wallet and standing up across from him as you get ready to leave. Jungkook looks just as soft and hazy as he did at the beginning, fairy lights and candles illuminating his features. He smiles awkwardly at you, and you send him an equally tense grin in return.

He walks you to the door, and you leave the restaurant together only to be greeted with the brisk winter breeze, Jack Frost nipping at your nose and turning his ears a cherry red. It’s clear that he’s going one way and you’re going another, and so he smiles at you.

Maybe Namjoon was right. Maybe a couple hours to get to know each other was really all you needed.

You suddenly feel a lot safer, thinking about tomorrow’s practice, where you and Jungkook will spend the entire time working on the lift. You still have yet to land it perfectly, but you are getting closer. He’s only dropped you about a dozen times at this point. But now—though perhaps it’s just the food talking, the winter weather making your brain go hazy—you think you might actually be able to do it. You might actually begin to feel safe in his arms.

That night, Jeon Jungkook stays up for as long as he possibly can, staring lazily out of his bedroom window to the stars above, catching a glimpse of the moon between the branches of the trees. It is the very early morning when he falls asleep on his windowsill, dreaming of you.

That night, you set fifteen alarms to wake up before the sunrise, managing to get up five minutes ahead of time. You pull on your warmest jacket and rush outside in nothing but slippers, and watch the sky turn from a deep navy to a lilac, to cotton candy pink, to tangerine as the sun slowly creeps over the horizon, thinking of him.

Despite the strangely enjoyable dinner you shared, you and Jungkook cannot land the final lift. It takes all of your willpower to try, yet it is still not enough, and you collapse on the ice in a heap for what is probably the fifteenth time so far, spent only on this one stunt. Hoseok skates over each time and he has no idea what you are doing wrong, no idea how to the fix the mistakes he cannot figure out you’re making.

At least you’ve stopped blaming each other, though you can’t help the side-eyes you send his way each time you pull yourselves up from the ice to try again.

“That’s it!” Namjoon calls from where he stands outside the rink, “I’m staging another Trust Intervention.” He walks up, as close as he can get to the rink without actually stepping foot on it, and motions for you, Jungkook, and Hoseok to skate over to him. When you’re in front of him, he exhales. “We’re gonna do a trust exercise, and it’s going to be a lot of fun and you guys are going to learn how to depend wholeheartedly on the other person.”

“Are we doing trust falls on the ice?” Jungkook asks excitedly, much to your horror. A trust fall on ice skates sounds like nothing short of disaster.

“Not quite,” Namjoon says hesitantly. You and Jungkook share a wary look.

And that’s how you find yourself blindfolded with Jungkook’s bright red scarf and taking tentative steps onto the rink.

The whole premise of whatever fucked-up trust exercise Namjoon has spontaneously made up is that Jungkook, through voice and voice alone, has to guide you through this path that Hoseok has made on the ice, and you’re not allowed to see where you’re going. You’re just supposed to hope for the best and pray that Jungkook does his job the way he’s supposed to you.

“This is such an awful idea, Coach,” you say, worry lacing your words as you slowly stand your ground on the ice. Jungkook is with you in the rink, but he is not allowed to touch you or guide you with any part of his body other than his words.

“I don’t care, you’re doing it anyway!” Namjoon shouts.

“Okay, skate left,” Jungkook begins, and you take a stride left. “Nope! No, not that far left. A little to the right.”

A small step right.”

“Good. Okay, skate forward for two medium-sized glides,” he instructs. With nowhere to look and nowhere to feel, you follow his words carefully, though you aren’t so sure if the term “medium-sized glide” is as universal as Jungkook thinks it it. Regardless, you do as he tells you, and you don’t hear any objections.

It goes on like this for another ten minutes as you make a movement, hear Jungkook shouting at you that you’ve gone too far, or out of bounds, or you’re about to crash into something, and then carefully follow his next direction. You even feel yourself on the verge of falling a few times, even though your hands are outstretched for balance you don’t technically need since you should know how to ice skate with your eyes closed at this point. This is by far the strangest type of trust exercise that you’ve ever had to engage in, but you will admit that it is a lot of fun.

The scarf on your face smells just like him. It’s a strange thing to think, but when you see nothing but a shadowed red and you are relying entirely on Jungkook’s instructions to complete this nonsensical challenge, your mind’s stuck on him.

(It’s been stuck on him since the dinner.)

The scent wafts through the air that surrounds your clouded mind, and you take in his aroma. He smells like the rink, more than anything else, but he also smells like fresh honey, the kind that’s way too expensive for what it’s worth since honey never goes bad anyway. And he smells like movie theater popcorn, the over-buttered kind that reeks of preservatives and calories but you’ll happily binge on anyway. You wonder if Jungkook’s the type to save his popcorn until the actual movie starts, or eat half of the tub during the commercials and advertisements at the beginning.

And when his voice is the only thing that your ears register, smooth like silk, it begins to sound like music to you. When he’s not offending you or sending you a biting remark, it sounds gentle. It sounds like a literal song, voice light and airy and filled with laughter.

Perhaps it’s just because so many of your senses have been stripped from you, that the rest of them are heightened. Perhaps this is the only reason why Jungkook’s scent is so prevalent to your nose, why his voice makes your heart dance along to the rhythm of his words.

There could be no other explanation, right?

You finish the course successfully, and then it’s Jungkook’s turn. Hoseok rearranges the path as you skate over to Jungkook with a grin on your face, the scarf balled up in your hand. He turns around so that you can blindfold him.

“This is kinky,” Jungkook says jokingly, nearly making you keel over with laughter.

“Don’t get too excited, Jeon,” you tease him, warning tone to your voice. “The rink’s locker rooms are terrible places to jack off.”

“You think I don’t know that already?” Jungkook asks pointedly, making you glad he can’t see the wide-eyed expression written all over your face. With his hand holding tight onto yours, you guide him to the beginning of the course.

“Forward for one big glide,” you instruct, again, unsure of the universality of the phrase “one big glide.” Jungkook follows your guide, and is one bad step from falling out of bounds.

“How’s that?” He calls out.

“Good! Turn right a little bit,” you instruct, even though the path leads left. What Jungkook doesn’t know won’t kill him.

He listens to your words like a fool because he is no better than one, happily turning to face the wall. You have to try absurdly hard not to burst into laughter.

“Okay, good, good,” you say, choking down your giggles. “Straight, keep going, keep going, stop!” Jungkook comes to a halt less than a foot away from the edge of the rink, teetering on crashing into the plastic. You don’t know if you want to be kind or evil.

“Am I on the right path?” Jungkook asks?

“Yeah, yeah,” you insist, muffling your laughter. “Straight a little more—!”

Crash!

Jungkook steps back wildly, falling on his ass as the scarf dislodges itself from above his ears, falling into his lap. You’re keeling over, slapping your thigh obscenely as you cackle, the sight of a poor, innocent, blindfolded Jungkook colliding with the wall under your instruction too good to resist. Jungkook stands up in indignation, pouting.

With the scarf in his hand, he points an accusatory finger your way. “This is why we can’t get the landing, Y/N! This is why!”

You’re still giggling, unable to wipe the smirk off your face even as Jungkook comes closer and closer, menacing and peeved yet on the verge of laughter as well. Once he’s close enough, he chucks his scarf your way out of anger, and you catch it before the two of you both burst into hysterics. Even the cold-hearted, self-proclaimed Ice Prince can’t resist a good practical joke here and there.

“You got me good,” Jungkook admits, shaking his head. “I was gonna do that to you, you know. But I didn’t, because I thought it was too mean,” he says, making you muffle down your giggles once more. “Clearly, I was wrong.”

“You snooze you lose, Jeon,” you say wisely.

Namjoon, with his skates on for the first time in a while, joins the two of you on the ice.

“Alright,” he says, clapping his hands together as Hoseok cleans up the path. “Obviously, that didn’t go as planned. But that’s alright, because it’s nice to see the two of you smiling together. It’s a good kind of change,” he declares, disappointed that his trust exercise failed but happy to see that he’s gotten something out of it anyway. “You guys might actually have a shot at gold if you land that ending, you know? You could do it.”

“Let’s get to it, then?” Jungkook says, taking your hand as you skate towards the middle of the rink.

Despite all efforts to improve, you and Jungkook still can’t get the ending.

Maybe another time.

Taehyung comes and visits another one of your practices a week or so later. He’s got four weeks left until his cast comes off and he can get back onto the ice (with discretion, of course), which means three weeks until Nationals, which in turn means three weeks to get this fucking ending down.

He watches happily as the two of you rehearse over and over, each attempt closer than the last to stick the ending and finish with a bang but not close enough, and you almost always end up falling or stumbling or tripping or all three. But each time you turn to look at him, he’s got this gleeful grin on his face, not the least bit discouraged by the fact that you can’t seem to land this damn trick. At least somebody is out here supporting you, even if you don’t know if you can support yourself.

“Ugh, God,” you say, pulling yourself up after having fallen for the nth time so far over these past five weeks.

“Again?” Jungkook supplies, dusting himself off and ignoring the pain that each fall causes to the bruises decorating his legs and arms.

“Again,” you say, nodding tiredly as you join up with him again.

“Wait, wait, before you guys start,” Namjoon’s voice interrupts the two of you as he skates over, handy dandy clipboard under his arm. “Do you guys still want to do this move?”

“What?” You ask, a single eyebrow quirked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, can you guys still stick with it?” Namjoon asks, genuinely concerned. “Because it’s been five weeks and you haven’t landed it once. I don’t know, I was thinking maybe you guys could come up with an easier lift, one you’ll have less trouble landing. We can’t risk a mistake at Championships.”

“We can do it,” you immediately say, refusing to accept the loser’s way out. This move is your golden ticket to first place. Even if you can’t get it now, you know you’ll be able to later. You swear you will. “I know we can.”

“But you haven’t done it once yet,” Namjoon points out, as if you don’t already know that you’ve never stuck the landing for it. “And Nationals is in three weeks. And I don’t know how much more training you guys will be able to get in before then. If you can’t get it now, who’s to say you’ll be able to get it by then?”

“We can,” you insist. “I swear we can. We’re not going to change up the routine just because we haven’t gotten it yet.” This is your one chance at glory, and you refuse to pass it up.

“Y/N, maybe we should listen to Coach,” Jungkook says hesitantly, following you as you skate back to the ending position, where the lift begins. “If we still haven’t gotten it, maybe we should try a different move—”

“No! We can do it, Coach, I swear. Have some faith in us.” You are persistent, relentless, stubborn. You know Namjoon’s just thinking about what’s best for you and Jungkook and the routine, but you won’t change your mind now. You’ve spent so long trying to do this, and you won’t give up. Hasn’t he noticed? You’re getting closer and closer each time. “Hoseok, hit play.”

Hoseok presses the stereo and the music begins to echo throughout the rink. You and Jungkook skate into the trick, slowly gaining enough speed and momentum so that he can continue to spin while holding you. Step by step, he pulls you into his arms, allows you to stand proudly on his thigh before looping your leg around him to morph into the splits, then hang loosely next to his body as he holds you by nothing but the waist, and then—!

Thud!

Jungkook loses his grip on your waist and the two of you come toppling down once more, his hand behind your head to cushion it from the hard ice. You sigh once more, sitting up together with dejected expressions.

“We can do it,” you insist as Namjoon skates over, saving him the trouble. “I swear, we can.”

“How was practice today?” Taehyung asks, as if he didn’t watch the entire thing, specifically you falling over. And over. And over.

“Fine,” you say gruffly, adjusting your duffel bag so the padding rests on your shoulder. Jungkook had told you that he’d stay back to get in a bit of solo practice, so he’s not walking out at the same time as you.

“You’re really working that reverse-rotational,” Taehyung comments mindlessly, referencing the final lift. “You almost got it.”

“But almost isn’t good enough,” you groan, exhaling heavily. The move will get you down, rest heavily on your already dampened spirits until you can finally execute it perfectly.

“How’s Jungkook?” Taehyung asks, changing the topic.

“I still hate him…” you tell Taehyung tentatively, “but at least he works hard. I think our routine is amazing, save for the part where we mess up at the end and fall into a puddle on the floor.”

“You should do that at Nationals, as part of the routine. People will think you’re mad. It’ll be great,” Taehyung suggests, though you know he’s kidding.

You scoff. “As if.”

“But you and Jungkook, you guys are okay, right?” Taehyung asks hopefully, looking at you with innocent wide eyes.

You turn around before you can exit the skate center, catch a glimpse of Jungkook skating to the beat of the rap music playing lightly through the shitty speakers of the arena. He’s not doing much, just a couple spins here and there, but he is so easily able to move his body in perfect time, capture the essence of the song with his movements. It’s mesmerizing, watching him. You think you might be able to do it forever.

“Yeah,” you say, letting your eyes linger on his figure. “I guess we’re alright.”

Two days before Nationals is the first time that you actually do it without falling, without tripping and flubbing up the rest of your routine and missing the ending pose. Twos days before Nationals, and Namjoon and Hoseok are on the verge of a quarter-life crisis because for weeks on end they’ve watched you try to get the final lift over and over and over, to no avail. They’re almost about to cut it from the routine entirely. But stubbornness has always been one of your most unbearable qualities, and you continue to insist that you can do it.

At this point, Hoseok is just trying to fine-tune any last minute things. Nationals is in two days and if you haven’t fixed it already, there’s no way you’ll be able to fix it before the big day. Now, it’s just him skating around the two of you, telling you to lift your leg higher or don’t forget to dig your toe firmly into the ice or grab onto her waist tighter.

What Hoseok, and Namjoon, and Jungkook, and you, are really worried about? The final lift.

If you haven’t gotten it by now the chances of you getting it at Championships are slim to none, so it’s now or never.

You run the program with ease, the music flowing from the speakers to the ice, up your body and through your bloodstream. You live, sleep, and eat the beat of the song, your heart thumps in time to the rhythm. Thank God you picked a song that you’ll never find yourself getting sick of, or you probably would have pulled a double Vincent Van Gogh by now.

The skills come easily to you now, muscle memory propelling you through the routine without so much as a second thought. Jungkook’s touch is not as foreign as it once was, your hands slowly but surely beginning to feel like they belong interlocked with his, the feeling of his palms finding a constant purchase on your waist no longer unnatural, uncomfortable. He is no Taehyung but he doesn’t need to be, not when this routine wasn’t choreographed for you and Taehyung.

It was made for you and him.

Jeon Jungkook is finally starting to feel less like a replacement and more like a partner. You have spent so much time with him these past eight weeks, more time than with Taehyung (and that’s saying a lot, especially considering the fact that the two of you are best friends), and it’s beginning to feel like he’s been your partner this entire time. That this performance you are about to give in front of thousands of people, professional judges, and live cameras, is one that you’ve been planning for for years instead of weeks. That you have been with Jungkook for years instead of weeks.

You don’t know why, but the feeling that Jungkook is slowly starting to melt into the position you once thought Taehyung had secured forevermore is frightening. It’s telling, too, telling you that you’re getting used to being with Jungkook, that your body no longer finds itself immediately repulsed at his touch. It toys with the thought that maybe, one day, you’ll be working him with permanently. It threatens you with the thought that you won’t want to let him go back to single skating, where he truly outshines every single one of his competitors. That you’ll pray he’ll stay with you, instead.

You easily clear the series of twizzles, spinning around on the ice in perfect synchronization not only with the beat of the music, but with each other. The twizzles are some of the hardest skills to master, especially considering that the placement of your skates has to be perfectly balanced so as to continue propelling yourself forward, and you can do them without batting an eye.

You come together right before the big finale, Jungkook reaching out to grab a hold of your outstretched hand and pulling you close to him. He holds your interlocked hands up high and spins you around as you glide across the ice, gaining momentum for the big lift. He places a hand on your waist and meets your eyes, and his hopeful brown ones mix beautifully with your own right before you jump into the lift.

It’s the curve lift first. Jungkook tugs you up and holds you by the thigh as you stand atop his, careful not to pierce his skin as you balance on him, arms outstretched for show. Then, you loop your legs over his shoulder, around his neck, as he begins to rotate in the opposite direction, beginning the reverse-rotational dismount. Your legs form the splits as he begins to pick up speed, and you swear that even over the heavy thump of the rhythm you can hear his heartbeat racing, hear every pound of the beat.

Or perhaps, that’s your own.

Finally, you loop both legs around him so that he is the only thing holding you close to him, back facing the ice as he holds you by the waist as he continues to rapidly rotate.

It all happens so quickly. The entire lift shouldn’t take more than ten, fifteen seconds maximum. Jungkook spins and he spins and he spins and he does not let go of you, keeps his grip as tight as he can as the two of you meet eyes in the midst of it all, staring at each other with such determination, such fierceness, such intensity. Your faces hover so closely to each other, hardly an inch or two apart, the heat of your exhales fanning out over each other’s skin. You hold your breath as you prepare for the dismount. Jungkook spins you around once more, holding onto your waist as your legs come out to rest underneath you, and you hit the ice with a little skip but nothing more, your toepick catching in the ice just barely as the two of you come to a screeching halt.

You’ve done it. You’ve done it and you haven’t stopped staring into Jungkook’s eyes and he hasn’t let go of your waist and you are both panting, panting, panting.

“I got you,” he promises, breathes into your skin as your foreheads rest against each other’s. It’s not even the ending pose, it’s not even the end of the fucking song, but you’ve landed it and you’ve landed it together and that’s all that matters. That’s what will win you the gold. “I got you, I got you.”

It is intimate. Too intimate for your liking, really. You have never been so close, never felt so much, with Jeon Jungkook. You wonder if he can hear how your heartbeat rings through your ears. You wonder if he can tell that with each touch of his fingertips on your skin, goosebumps pop up and a fire ignites.

You wonder if it’s the same for him, though you doubt it is.

You don’t know how long you stay like that, how long you stare into his eyes until you’re drowning in the chocolate of his irises, the caramel that decorates it. Death by sweetness is not the worst way to go, you decide, when you glance you at his lips, so close to yours. They are so tempting, the way they curve into a smile, but you resist for the sake of professionalism, for the sake of winning.

This is a strictly professional relationship. You are figure skaters, nothing more, nothing less. You are one-time ice dancing partners, nothing more, nothing less.

So then why do you feel like you’re missing something?

Namjoon and Hoseok rush over to you, pulling the four of you into a huge group hug as you celebrate sticking the landing, doing it perfectly.

“I told you!” You cry out, smacking Namjoon in the back. “I told you Coach, I knew we could do it!”

Namjoon nods, conceding. “I should have known that the two of you would have been able to pull it off.”

“You guy did awesome today,” Hoseok says as the four of you skate towards the exist. “Practice dismissed. Nationals in two days!” He says giddily, shooting you a thumbs up as you and Jungkook exit the rink, pulling your skate guards on before heading towards the locker rooms.

“Congrats, you guys,” Namjoon says, and you don’t think you’ve ever seen him so elated. “I can’t believe that you’re so close to national fame. You’re gonna kick ass at Nationals, you know that? You’re gonna knock everyone’s socks off, blow their houses down.”

You smile, nothing more than wholly and completely relieved. Even though this is only the first time you’ve landed it, it feels like a weight has been lifted off of your shoulders, like you can finally breathe again.

“Light practice tomorrow, alright? I just wanna see that ending again, just in case I had been imagining it,” Namjoon asks of the two of you, and you nod happily in return. You never thought you’d be so excited to run through the final lift.

On the way back, you try to keep your distance from Jungkook, the mere thought of being any closer to him sending nerves shooting through your brain, sending shivers down your spine. All that you see every time you blink are his wide eyes, staring back at you, searching for something behind the haze.

“You did a good job today,” Jungkook says mindlessly, and oh God, the conversation has resorted back to ice breakers and small talk.

“Thanks,” you say softly. “You too.”

“What did you think of the lift?” He asks, clearly making a desperate attempt for you to just make eye contact with him, but you will yourself to avoid his piercing gaze. You stay silent for a while, the only sound near you the padding of your skate guards against the arena floor.

“It was good,” you comment quickly, gently, nodding your head slightly.

“It was our best one yet,” Jungkook says, continuing. It’s obvious that all he wants is for you to look at him, and you cannot even offer him that. “I’m telling you—” he says, and even though you are listening to him you wonder if he thinks that you aren’t.

You highly doubt that. Jungkook knows you too well to know when you’re not paying attention to him.

“—if we do it like that at Nationals, we’re guaranteed gold, don’t you think?”

You shrug unhelpfully.

He stops, causing you to do the same on instinct. Before you can turn away from him, he grabs onto your wrist, keeps your feet planted firmly on the ground and forces you to look him in the eyes. He looks so desperate like this.

“You just need to trust me, Y/N,” Jungkook says, gazing into your eyes and hopelessly searching for a response that is deeper than words alone. “Do you trust me?”

You’re scared that if you spend too much time looking into his eyes, you’ll drown in them. Without another word, you pull away from him, running into the locker rooms and not coming out until you’re sure he’s gone.

When you were little, just starting out as a junior skater, you would watch the televised championships broadcasted on your little box cable television in your living room, always turning around to tell your mother than one day, you’d be there.

Oh, how the times have changed.

You walk into the rink for practice before the big day, duffel bag resting carefully on your shoulder, and you feel the breath leave your lungs. You had only ever dreamed about being here, about standing on that rink and skating out in a national competition, but now you are here, and you will skate in a national competition, and it feels so surreal and overwhelming and you can feel your heart pounding and your mind racing.

Maybe it’s just the feeling of being here, of being so close to living out your dream, only a few more steps away. Or maybe it’s the feeling of being here with Jungkook, being on the verge of victory with him by your side. Both thoughts terrify you equally, though you find that when you think of Jungkook, instead of your heart racing, it stops.

Outside of practice, the two of you have not spoken since the day you conquered the lift, executed it nearly flawlessly with his hands on your waist and your lips hovering above his. During practice, the two of you hardly speak at all, only a few words exchanged here or there discussing the routine.

It’s strange. Two months ago you were hoping and praying that for rest of your time spent together, you would verbally interact with Jungkook as little as possible, and yet here you are, wishing you could do more than just avoid each other. It’s easy to see that something’s changed but it’s difficult to discern why, to sift through the practices and the programs and fake dates and look for something deeper. Maybe Jungkook really has always been like this, cold, aloof, distant, but after getting to know him so closely, so intimately over the past several weeks, you find that hard to believe anymore.

What should be more concerning to you than whatever peculiar relationship you currently share with Jungkook, you realize, is the fact that ever since your last practice back at your home rink, the scent familiar and warm and the scenery comforting, you have not landed the final lift.

In fact, it’s as if you’ve gone right back to square one, with you and Jungkook inevitably doing something wrong on that last turn, the final rotation before he puts you down and you skate into the finale. There’s something that’s changed, a reason why suddenly you’re not getting a lift you thought you had finally mastered, and not only is it stressing you and Jungkook out, it’s sending major panic waves to your coaches, who look like they are in a constant state of absolute crisis.

“Again,” Hoseok orders from where he leans against the edge of the rink, watching the two of you rehearse the move over and over.

You groan, stretching and cracking the bones at the bottom of your back, the muscles tight from so many contorted positions. You’ve lost track of how many times you’ve repeated it, attempting to land the lift to no avail. Turning your head, you look towards Jungkook, who is already skating back to the starting position with a solemn expression on his face, one of serious concentration and nothing else. He looks so different like this, empty and hollow. The life in his blood has drained out, leaving nothing but dust in its place.

You skate over to him, lining your feet up exactly so you can gain momentum with a couple of loops and diagonals before he is able to maintain the speed throughout the trick. With his hands placed gently on your waist, they no longer feel the way they used to. There’s something missing, something you cannot quite pinpoint, not even as Jungkook pulls you up onto his thigh and the stunt begins.

As per usual, everything goes swimmingly up until the last part, with your back facing the ice, your arms stretched out like an acrobat as he holds onto your waist and nothing else. When he pulls you back up for you to land safely, there is always a stumble, a trip, and then a fall, and the two of you come tumbling down within another second.

Ignoring the looks from the other skaters, the two of you get up and make your way back to Hoseok, who has been rubbing at his temples in worry the entire time. You don’t even want to think about what Namjoon is doing, who told the three of you that he would be going to the bathroom fifteen minutes ago. The poor guy might actually lose his mind.

“Want us to run it again?” Jungkook asks, an eyebrow raised in inquiry. He’s already beginning to turn around to go back to the designated spot.

“No, no,” Hoseok says, shaking his head. “You guys have run it enough. No point in trying any longer.”

“Coach,” you say, expression falling. Is he just giving up on you? Is that what this has come to?

“Really, I know you guys can do it. It’s too late to cut it out of the routine, anyway, so we shouldn’t even bother,” Hoseok insists, hand coming down from his forehead to grip the railing that surrounds the rink. “You’re probably really tired, too. You should get some rest before the competition tomorrow, since you’re gonna be putting all of your effort into it.”

“Coach, what’s wrong?” You ask, scurrying over to the exit to the ice rink, tugging on your skate guards and walking over. You’re only aware that Jungkook is following you because you can hear the distinct click of his guards being attached to his blades.

Hoseok takes a deep breath, exhaling the same way. He sits down on the bench nearby, closing his eyes and tilting his head back. You sit down next to him, concerned. What if you being able to do the trick the entire time was just a fluke? Dumb luck? What if you really cannot do it, and you fall in front of thousands of people and professional judges and live cameras tomorrow, kissing your gold goodbye?

Is it your fault? Are you doing something wrong?

Or is it Jungkook?

You cannot believe you are resorting to pointing fingers and placing blame, just like you had a month ago. You thought you had moved on from that, but the stress is getting to your brain and nerves jitter throughout your body and you don’t know how to stop them. You’ve been shaking for three days straight.

“Nothing,” Hoseok tells you, but you both know he’s lying. “I’m just… understandably worried about tomorrow. You know, because.”

“Is there anything we can do?” You ask.

Hoseok chuckles. “Yeah, land the lift tomorrow.”

You force a smile, looking up to Jungkook as he stands beside the bench, gazing out towards the rink with his arms crossed over his chest. You don’t know if you can muster up the courage to talk to him.

It’s like day one, all over again.

“We’re gonna try our hardest, right Jungkook?” You say, the sound of his name as it leaves your lips snapping him out of his trance. He turns to you with wide eyes, brown and big and beautiful, before shifting his view to Hoseok and nodding.

“We got this, Coach,” he says, that signature cocky lilt peeking in through each syllable. “We’re gonna fucking nail it tomorrow, nobody out there is gonna know what hit them.”

Though Hoseok looks hardly convinced, he cracks a grin nonetheless, getting up with a heave and bidding the two of you good luck, dismissing you from your final practice together.

It feels weird. The thought of this being your final practice before competition, your first and last one together. And then, Taehyung’s leg will have healed and he will be free to skate again, with some caution, of course. And Jungkook will go back to ruling the men’s single skate, collecting medals by the dozen, and he will forget all about the time he got dragged into ice dancing with a girl he barely knew.

You almost don’t want to leave, want to savor the moment for as long as you can before it disintegrates in your hands. Over the past two months, dare you say, Jeon Jungkook has become something of a friend. He has become someone you find yourself blindly trusting, someone you’ll put all of your faith into even if in the end he will steer you wrong. He has become someone you don’t want to forget, but someone you know you should. After all, this is a one time thing. When you return home from competition, with potential gold medals hanging proudly from your necks, you will part ways.

The next day, you will walk in with Taehyung by your side and begin to prep for next season, learning the new skills Namjoon will teach you and mastering the choreography Hoseok will create. And you will spot Jungkook at another rink, skating alone to music playing from his wireless headphones. He will come to a stop at the same time as you, and you will meet eyes and wonder what might have happened if he stayed.

And everything will go back to normal.

You begin to walk from the arena, making your way to the hotel across the street to settle in for the night and prepare for tomorrow. There’s a sheet mask with your name written all over it waiting in the bathroom in your room, and you want nothing more than to sink into a hot bath and cover your face in skincare products.

“See you tomorrow?” Jungkook asks casually once you’ve gotten to the door to your room. His room is just across from yours. His tone is nonchalant, distant. His words feel like an obligation, rather than a choice.

Just like the ice dancing.

You nod, hand on the doorknob as you begin to turn your back to him to head inside. “See you tomorrow.”

You make your way inside, shutting the door behind you quickly and peering through the peephole. Jungkook waits outside his door for a little bit, staring straight at yours for a moment too long before shaking his head slightly and retreating to his room himself. You wonder what he’s thinking, what’s going on in his mind.

Before long, all thoughts of Jungkook are forgotten as you collapse in your bathtub, letting the water wash over you like waves pulling you away from the shore.

Your entire life thus far has been preparing you for this one day, you decide as you stand in the sidelines, watching the other skaters glide gracefully across the ice as warm-ups. You and Jungkook are the last ones to go on for the free skate (having acquired the highest short dance score, thank God), meaning you will in turn be the last ones to warm up for it.

As Jungkook is adjusting the tights wrapped around his legs, Taehyung pulls you aside. He had accompanied your little herd to Nationals, quoting “moral support” as his reasoning for being there. Namjoon and Hoseok are too soft for him to reject him, so here he is.

“Y/N,” Taehyung says, and the serious tone tells you that he’s not about to tell you some lame joke about one of the other figure skaters.

“What?” You ask, glancing up at the digital clock floating along the rim of the seats.

“You haven’t been getting the lift with Jungkook,” Taehyung points out, and you are suddenly reminded that throughout all of the practices you have had so far at Nationals, he’s been watching every single one. Taehyung knows you better than anyone else, like the back of his hand, and he can typically tell when something is going wrong. “Coach Namjoon said you had been getting it a ton back home… what’s happened?”

“Not you,” you say with a groan, tilting your head back in exasperation. It seems that everyone around you is concerned with the lift and nothing else, each word placing another pound of pressure atop your shoulders. “Yes, we haven’t been getting it recently. Why?”

“Because you’ve gotten it before,” Taehyung says, “and I don’t understand what’s changed.”

Neither do you. “Nothing’s changed,” you spit quickly, already regretting how bitter the words sound as they leave your mouth.

“Why are you so stiff?” Taehyung asks, getting progressively more concerned. “You’re never like this before comps.”

You scoff. “I’m not stiff.”

Taehyung tuts. “You’re so stubborn sometimes. Look at you,” he says, motioning down to you. You’re tapping your guarded skate incessantly on the arena floor, your eyebrows are on a constant state of knitted together, and your arms are crossed tightly over your chest, wrists itchy from all of the glitter on your costume. “You’re all tense. Want me to massage you?”

Only Taehyung would offer a massage to you while in a cast, balancing on crutches. “I don’t need a massage, Taehyung.”

“Is it Jungkook?”

His name catches you off guard, as it so often does these days. “What?”

Taehyung leans in closer. “Is he making you feel this way?”

You’re rendered speechless. “I…”

Taehyung looks at you gently, searching in your eyes for an answer he knows you won’t give him outright. “If he’s giving you a hard time, just say something, Y/N.”

“That’s the thing,” you find yourself whispering, so quiet you can barely hear yourself over the thumping of your heart.

“What?” Taehyung asks, thoroughly confused with where you’re going with this.

“I don’t…” You begin hesitantly, hoping and praying that he isn’t listening in. “I don’t know how I feel about him, alright?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I can’t figure it out,” you say, and this might be the most honest you’ve been with yourself in a long while. “I just…”

“Do you like him?” Taehyung asks, finally beginning to connect the dots together in his mind. He’s got a little smile on his face, a knowing one that already tells you everything.

“I don’t know!” You respond, raising your voice out of pure stress. All of these questions are slowly driving you mad. All you want are answers, concrete things to feel and see and touch, but the thought of Jungkook is none of those things, and you find yourself left with nothing but more questions.

“Y/N,” Taehyung says softly. “Seriously, you don’t need to be so scared if you do like him.” He says, reaching out a soothing hand to rest on your upper arm. The touch makes you shiver, but maybe you’ve just been so deprived of human touch recently that everything feels foreign.

“I’m not scared,” you say sharply.

Taehyung frowns. “You look terrified.”

You make absolutely no attempt to mask what is definitely a frightened expression on your face. All you say is, “I’m not scared! I’m just…” you trail off, at a loss for words. “I don’t know what I am, Tae.”

Taehyung beams, seemingly having an answer to every single one of your questions. Maybe this is what he’s been doing these past few weeks he’s spent not skating, falling in love with that guy named Jimin and suddenly becoming the Local Love Expert, guiding you with a hand on your back. “You’re a talented ice dancer who may or may not be in love with her partner but it doesn’t matter because you’re gonna kick ass either way,” he promises proudly.

You crack a smile, perhaps out of desperation, perhaps out of relief.

“Taehyung,” you say, voice pleading. “What do I do…”

Taehyung holds both of your hands in his, looking intently into your eyes with the determination of a man about to go off to war. “You go out there and put all of your trust in Jungkook and give the best damn show of your life, that’s what.”

“Taehyung…”

“If you’re worried about Jungkook, Y/N, don’t be,” he promises softly, and you finally turn your head to Jungkook as he begins to walk towards the ice rink to warm up for your performance. He’s covered in sparkles from head to toe but his eyes glitter the brightest. “Have you even seen him? He treats you like a snowflake. Like one wrong move, and he’ll lose you forever.”

When the time comes for you and Jungkook to close out the show with your program, you find that the nerves in your body have been replaced by an overwhelming sense of dread, instead.

You dread the way he will put his hands on your waist or your cheek or your neck and the way you will melt into his touch, caving into the feeling. You dread the final lift, the one that not only the gold medal, but any medal is riding on. You dread the conclusion to your performance, when the crowd will cheer for a couple that is nothing more than a farce, a one-time deal, and you will pretend that it will be like this forever. You dread the feeling of nervous anticipation at the end, where you will be anxiously waiting for your score. You dread the arrival of tomorrow, when Jungkook will slip between your fingertips before you even get a chance to say goodbye.

Jeon Jungkook can promise you nothing more than what will happen in the next four minutes, whether it be good or bad, and while that sinking feeling in your chest tells you that it isn’t enough, your heart is willing to take it.

You meet up with Jungkook right at the entrance to the rink. He looks at you with a determination in his eyes and spunk in his wild smile, and you think that out of all of the Jungkooks you know, this one is your favorite. He takes your hand in his, holds it securely in his grip with a refusal to let you go, and the two of you skate onto the ice to cheers.

After doing a half a lap each, the two of you join in the center of the rink. You line up in the post Hoseok had instructed you so carefully to do, take in a deep breath, and the music begins.

Muscle memory, at this point, is what keeps your racing heart from thumping right out of your chest. You have rehearsed this routine so many times that it is practically engraved on the inside of your eyelids, embedded in your bloodstream.

Muscle memory is also what keeps you from thinking about Jungkook for too long, from thinking about the way he holds onto you like you’ll fly away if he lets go, the way he refuses to stop staring into your eyes as you glide across the ice like swans. Hoseok had choreographed your new routine with the intention of taking the anger you once felt towards him and turning it into passion. But now, instead of anger is something softer, something more delicate. But Jungkook refuses to give in, the fire igniting in his eyes with every turn he makes, and you realize that passion is what will give you the score. Love is what will give you the medal.

You skate along with ease, feeling the way you melt under his hot touch but doing nothing to stop it, not as he leads you through the first lift to a chorus of applause and hoots from the crowd. When you separate for the first series of twizzles, though you no longer feel his touch, the ghost of his fingertips dance along your skin, sending a lightning bolt to your heart as you spin in synchronization.

You wonder what you must look like to an outsider, right now. What the people watching see. Do they see a pair of ice dancers, shredding up the rink as they attempt to get the gold? Or do they see something more? Do they see the devotion in your eyes, the dedication you have for the sport? Or do they see the way your eyes never leave Jungkook’s, not unless they absolutely must. The way you lean into his touch despite it ruining your perfectly straight form. Can they see that, as well?

With the second lift successfully cleared, you begin to gain a little more confidence. There’s less than a minute left in your routine and you still have the last lift to go, the most comprehensive of them all. But even as the seconds tick down it feels like time stretches out, like you’ve been skating with Jungkook for years and this is just a measly four minutes, but it is so much more than that.

As you approach the final lift, your speed the only thing propelling you into his arms, time stops. It freezes entirely, leaves the two of you zooming forwards as it comes to a halt. Your surroundings seem to blur when he puts his hands on you, pulls you up onto his thigh for the first part of the lift. They turn to white in the second part, and suddenly Jungkook is the only thing you can focus on, the only thing you can think of. All that flashes through your mind as you loop yourself into the final hold is his name, Jungkook, Jungkook, Jungkook. He is the only thing on your mind. He is the only person who has your heart.

And you land, blades falling firmly onto the ice as you spin outwards, not a single stumble in sight.

The crowd suddenly reappears, and around you the setting becomes clear as day. The cheers are deafening but you can hardly hear them, not as you make eye contact with him and he smiles, grins, beams. Just in time with the music, the program ends with the two of you holding each other close, his arms wrapped around your waist and your palms holding his cheeks, foreheads resting against each other.

Perhaps you can make out Namjoon and Hoseok shouting from the sidelines, Taehyung yelling from his spot on the benches nearby, but all you can feel is Jungkook’s hot breath fanning out over your skin, and the warmth of his body as he tugs you in tightly.

Finally, after what feels like a million years too short, you part, nothing but the biggest and brightest smiles breaking out onto your faces. Customary to the tradition, you both bow to the audience, holding each other’s hands as you thank them, turning in each direction so as not to miss a single person.

He lets go of your hand so that you may begin to skate around yourselves, waving to the cheering audience. You skate around each other, getting every part of the arena. You look down into the sidelines and see Namjoon and Hoseok shouting for you, pumping their firsts up in the air. Your vision’s never been the greatest, but is that Namjoon crying?

When you turn back, you see Jungkook skating around as the audience showers the rink in roses and other celebratory flowers. He beams with the light of a thousand suns, and you wonder if you stare at him for too long, if you’ll go blind. And then you decide that even so, falling in love with him isn’t so bad.

After the applause dies down, you and Jungkook skate back to the exit, where Namjoon is happily holding your skate guards as he waits for you. As you step onto the pavement, he pulls you both in for a bone-crushing hug, words muffled from how excited he is.

“You did it!” Hoseok says as he comes bounding over, giving you a high-five that’s definitely going to sting for a while. “I’m so proud of you guys! I knew you wouldn’t let me down!”

You and Jungkook are both equally terrible at responding to compliments, and the feeling of them coming in by the dozen overwhelms you slightly. But, before you can walk over to the platform to receive your scores, you feel someone wrapping their arms around your torso.

“You just fucking murdered everyone!” Taehyung shouts, loud enough for the other couples to hear as they pass by you. “We’re all deceased! All of us!”

You laugh, pulling in Taehyung for the biggest one-legged hug you’ve ever received. When you part, he grins.

“I never thought I’d say this, but I’m so fucking glad I broke my leg,” Taehyung tells you, and the comment both horrifies you and flatters you.

Not a moment after, Namjoon is patting your back and motioning for you to join him and Jungkook on the bench at the platform where you will receive your scores, find out if you’ve won gold. You scurry over, taking a soft seat next to Jungkook as his hands instinctively come to grab onto yours, holding them tight as you look up at the scoreboard.

What happens next is mostly a blur.

You can only catch a quick glimpse of your names, being moved up to first place, before you hear Namjoon shout as he pumps his fist in the air. Suddenly, you feel Jungkook wrapping himself around you, pulling you in for the tightest hug of your life as tears suddenly begin to well up in your eyes. It all feels like it’s happening in slow-motion, like your life is a movie and this is the part where all of the music and dialogue cut out and there is nothing left but slow-motion film.

And then, Jungkook’s palms are on your cheeks and he meets your eyes with his crescent ones, and he kisses you.

In front of thousands of people, on national television, he kisses you. And you’ll be damned if you don’t kiss back. The audience erupts into cheers yet again, but you drown them out with the feeling of his lips on yours. He is warm and bright and wonderful, and his lips are as soft and as sweet as you had hoped. Jungkook kisses you on national television, in front of skaters, judges, audience members, and you feel like the world has stopped but you keep going. You feel like you’re floating off into space, and the stars are beautiful but so is Jungkook.

You part, heavy breaths and heaving chests, before Jungkook tugs you up from where you were seated on the bench so that you can wave once more. Not only are you gold-medalists in a national competition, but you are also lovers.

Though perhaps, you always have been.

(Later, at the medal ceremony, you and Jungkook are standing high on the top of the podium, unable to hold back your smiles. With bouquets in your hands and medals around your necks, you turn to Jungkook and he squeezes your hand tightly in response, and you feel like you can conquer the world.)

On the way back to the hotel room, the adrenaline rush slowly filtering out of your system with each passing second, you glance down to your interlocked hands and wonder aloud: “When did you realize you loved me?”

Jungkook seems caught off guard, pausing in the lobby of your posh hotel as he begins to think. You turn to face him, looking at him with curiosity lacing your features.

“I know,” he says, as if he’s just had a mental contemplation with himself to discern the moment in its entirety. “When we were doing that trust exercise, and you crashed me into the wall.”

“That was when you fell in love with me?” You ask in shock, mouth dropped open.

“Well, no, not really,” Jungkook reasons carefully. “I think I had fallen in love with you a while before then. But then, when I pulled off the scarf and saw you keeling over with laughter, I realized it.”

You hum, nodding at his response as you begin to slowly but surely make your way to the elevators. Ever since the win, it seems that time has just gotten progressively slower, like it’s beginning to cater to all of the lost time you and Jungkook share.

“What about you, hmm? When did you fall in love with me?” He asks cheekily, nudging your arm gently as he pushes the up button on the wall.

“Did I fall in love with you?” You jokingly say, furrowing your brows as you pretend to debate the topic. Jungkook pouts, and his face is just too cute to resist. “I fell in love with you the first time we had gotten on the ice together. Namjoon made us skate laps while holding each other’s hands, and while my mind didn’t initially register it, my heart realized that you were the person I had been waiting for.”

Jungkook grins at your answer, leaning down to nuzzle your nose gently with his own. The elevator door opens beside you, the familiar ding echoing throughout the end of the hallway. Jungkook smiles, pulling you into compact space and pressing you against the wall as you gasp in surprise. Right as the doors close, he leans in close, his lips dancing over yours.

You lose track of time when you’re with Jungkook. The last thing you can remember is him tugging you out of the elevator once it reached your floor, your collarbones and neck already beginning to blossom with bruises—and not from falling on the ice—and pulling you into his hotel room, shutting the door behind you.

All that’s on your mind, all that is ever on your mind, is Jungkook. The softness of his hair as your fingers entangle themselves in it, tugging on the strands to pull him impossibly closer. The crinkles by his eyes when he smiles as he leans into you, soft pink lips grazing your own, teasing you. The curve of his body, the way you fit so snugly next to it, like two pieces of a puzzle meant to complete each other. He is the final piece of your missing puzzle, the piece you had always thought you’d lost, the one you almost give up on. That is Jungkook in every sense of the word, every electrifying feeling he leaves in a path of fire down your skin.

You kiss. For hours on end, you kiss, unable to get enough of the taste of each other, the feel of your bodies pressed together not in a lustful way, but in a loving way. You sit on his bed for hours and you just kiss, pressing your lips together and refusing to part. He is the air that you breathe.

It’s 2AM when something is finally done.

Namjoon, key card in hand, roughly and abruptly opens the door to his room, knowing fully well what the two of you are doing in there. You part like deer caught in the headlights, jumping back from each other even though it’s only Namjoon, but he’s seen you kiss enough today.

“Alright, out, Y/N,” he orders, much to you and Jungkook’s dismay. He pouts as you stand up, reaching an arm out to touch you a final time. “Stop canoodling.”

“Don’t leave me,” Jungkook begs.

Namjoon rolls his eyes. “You’re gonna see her in like, five hours. Calm down, Jeon,” he says, sighing as you make your way to your own room, still hazy from the high, drunk off of his touch. “You can canoodle whenever. You’re together now, aren’t you?”

Taehyung gets his cast off and by the next day, he’s back on the ice despite all warnings from his doctor to Not Do That. You tell him to listen to his physician and lay off the intense physical exercise for a while, considering the bone just healed, but Taehyung insists otherwise.

He’s not your partner anymore, for ice dancing. Obviously, he is not your partner, not when every day you walk in five minutes late to practice with Jungkook on your arm and a coffee mug in your hand. Your noses are always frostbitten from the cold, and you’re always smiling. Namjoon’s learned to accept it, especially since you’re his best ice dancing duo anyway. Taehyung had walked in the day after Nationals, took one look at the two of you, and happily gave up his position as your partner.

His reasoning? “You finally have a refutable love life, Y/N. I’m not gonna fuck that up.”

He’s a single skater now, and Hoseok says he is doing remarkably well for someone who has spent his entire ice skating career thus far relying on another person to do half of the work.

By now, everyone in the country knows who you are. Besides being the reigning national champions, apparently your relationship is just super adorable to a majority of the population, everyone obsessing over how #relationshipgoals you constantly are as you make too many posts about each other on your Instagrams and spend fifteen minutes during interviews talking about what you love about the other person. It seems, to the public at least, that the two of you simply cannot get enough of each other, and while that’s not necessarily true, it’s pretty obvious how infatuated you are with each other.

But hey, nobody’s complaining.

One question you find yourselves getting a lot, with each TV interview and radio show you do, is how you ended up meeting, especially since Jungkook had previously been a solo skater and you had been working with Taehyung. And each time, Jungkook shares a knowing smile with you, one that makes your heart burst into song, and he says, “Well, it all started with a broken leg…”

⇒ hmu with feedback or just talk to me here!

⇒ check out the post-script drabble here!

#sfwbangtan #bangtan bookclub #bangtanwriters-net #bts writing squad #jungkook fluff #bts fluff #jungkook oneshot #bts oneshot #jungkook scenario #bts scenarios #jungkook au #bts au #bts enemies to lovers #w: ice prince #I STILL CANNOT BELEIVE I WROTE LIKE 22K IN FOUR DAYS #HOW !! HOW DID I DO THAT #THIS AINT HAPPENING AGAIN I CAN ALREADY TELL U

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