#I never thought I’d have a group of matching gray animals

[beaversatemygrandma]

omg I love these stupid beasts

[ddaengyoonmin]

Neptune

Pairing: Mermaid!Taehyung x Space explorer/Scientist!Reader

Genre: Smut, Angst, Fluff

A/N: I really have nothing to say other than I took this way too far lol I hope you all enjoy it! The ending might be confusing lol send asks if you want to know anything and id love to hear what you thought! 

Word count: 16k (yeah that happened)

Warnings: Oral male and female receiving, descriptions of fainting, drowning and death, guns, swearing, (I think thats it, let me know if i missed anything)

Tagging a few of you who seemed excited for this! :) @mischiefmakerliesmith5 @yeontanismypresident @oh-worm-yee-haw @kpopgirlbtssvt @zombiewerewolfqueen

Summary:

No one with legs lived on the surface of Neptune, walkers such as yourself lived on the moons.  The spacecrafts that you traveled in constantly moved to and from all of the different moons, but  no one ever went down to the surface.  That's where the swimmers lived.  You’d heard tales of the fishtailed people that swam in the great sea below the moons, some called them mermaids.  But no one had ever actually seen one before, well, until now.  You and the scientific research team that you had gathered together had built the first spaceship in your people’s history that could go into the waters below.  You’d figured you’d snap a few pictures and return within the month, but things didn’t go as planned.  Your ship was captured by the swimmers and they seemed just as in awe at you and your team as you were with them.   They decided to let you go but only on the condition that you to bring their leading scientist back up to the moons with you, so you could learn from each other.  You learn quite a bit from Taehyung, in particular, your anatomy seemed to be his favorite subject…

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Triton was a gloomy and desolate place, but the moons of Neptune were all your people had known.  There were a few large cities on each moon, each looking identical to the others, all of the buildings were tall and gray and matched the one sitting next to it.  Each neighborhood’s houses looked no different from the one on either side.  Original thought and creativity seemed to be scarce in your society. 

Even the clothes sold in stores seemed to fall into a range of plain styles and blacks and grays.  

Ships flew back and forth between the moon’s daily exchanging supplies.  Some citizens worked on other moons during the week and would return to their home moon for the weekends.  You were lucky to not have to travel far for your work, in fact, you lived right on the same plot of land in dorms with all the other scientists at your facility. 

You were the lead researcher and developer on a new type of shuttle that could fly through space, and also dive into water.  You didn’t know too much about the engineering of it all, your studies had all mostly leaned to biology and astronomy and you had dabbled in geology and physics.  But, your team had been from all different sciences and studies, so, together you had found many ways to overcome the struggles of its creation.

It was a particularly difficult task, considering Triton didn’t have many places for you to test out the ship you were developing.   There were no lakes or big bodies of water. 

Your life’s goal, from when you were a small child had always been the same.  You’d stare out your window at the giant blue planet that hung in the sky, and you’d dream of what life would be like down there.  

You’d heard stories, but everyone said they were nothing but fairy tales.  Your science driven brain couldn’t quite escape the idea that you wanted to prove that they were real, and figure out the mysteries of the swimmers from the stories yourself.  

You knew that it could possibly all be fake, maybe the planet wasn’t even made of water and just looked like it.  

Those were the types of unanswered questions that motivated you to wake up every morning and continue your work.

You had been working on the ship with your team for about 3 years, and the day had finally come to put together the finishing touches and head out on your exploration. 

You weren’t surprised that it had made the news, headlines read ‘Hopeful Scientist and Her Team will Attempt to Uncover the Mysteries Bellow.’ and unfortunately prompted some like

‘Chasing Fairy Tales?  The Scientist who believes in Mermaids’   that one you weren’t quite fond of.  The majority of people thought it was a ridiculous idea, but you never let it crush your spirits and excitement. 

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It was going to take about 2 days to get down to Neptune, nothing compared to a lifetime of curiosity, work and waiting.  

A large crowd of excited citizens and media came to see you and your team off.  You smiled and waved out one of the windows before strapping yourself into your seat.  You had traveled by shuttle many times before, though the design of your shuttle was different than most of the other looked, you were used to this part of space travel. 

Yet, you still felt your stomach turning into knots. 

There were so many things that could go wrong once you got down to the surface of neptune.  One tiny leak could risk the safety of your whole group.  Or a mistake in the system that was supposed to balance the pressure within your ship when you’d dive down into the depths could cause you all to perish almost instantly.  

The team that was coming with you consisted of four others besides yourself. 

A photographer named Jungkook that you insisted must be included to capture all of your findings. 

The aerospace engineer that did most of the designing and tests on the shuttle, Namjoon, also joined your team.  Most of those who actually had worked with you up until now had been too terrified to see this through all the way, but Namjoon had been so excited to see for himself, what he considered his greatest creation, put into action.

The government who had funded your project through the grants that you had basically had to sell your soul for, insisted on your bringing a military general with your team for protection.  You had argued that you couldn’t imagine what kind of help he would be underwater in a small ship.  Yet Jin was forced onto your team.  You didn’t quite like him, or any of the vibes he gave off, but he had actually volunteered for this.  Part of you thinks there must’ve been some good pay in it for him.  

The final member was the pilot/mechanic named Hoseok, he would fly the ship and be tasked with quick fixes and repairs of the ship if anything were to go wrong. 

-------------------------------

Everything had gone smoothly on the take off.  Next was just time to wait and prepare yourselves for what you may discover. 

You and Jin had gotten off to a rocky start when it came time for dinner the first day.

He’d mostly been silent and kept to himself but when you handed him his packaged space meal, he had scoffed and waved his hand away at it. 

“This is literally what you’ll be eating for the next month we are here, I’d get used to it if I were you.”  You snapped at him.

He grumbled something under his breath as he caved in and took it.

“I’m sorry what was that?” You raised your eyebrows.

“I said what idiot decided to go for the bland vitamin protein packs.  You know they had ones with actual food right?” 

You glared down at the black haired man.  He was wearing the same uniform as the rest of your team, silver sweatpants, and a black t-shirt with a silver jacket with a blue stripe up the side.  His nametag on his jacket read, General of Space Military Kim Seokjin. 

“Well Mr. Kim Seokjin.  I’m the one who purchased it.  It saved us money, we didn’t have a big budget for food here.  Probably so we could pay your enormous salary for your unnecessary presence here.” you growled back. 

Namjoon had stepped in as he saw Jin’s face growing red.  

“It’s only the first day guys, let's keep things civil okay?” he said putting his arms up between the two of you. 

You sighed and nodded.  “Sorry for being unprofessional.  I’m on edge today.”  

Jin sulked away to eat his meal in his room. 

You stayed in the small dining area with Namjoon. 

“I’m just so nervous this was all for nothing.  What if we get there and It's literally just empty water.” You frowned. 

Namjoon put a hand on your shoulder and gave you a comforting look. 

“I know, but we’ve come this far.  We should stay positive, I want this to go well too” 

You nodded and wrapped him into hug, “Thanks Joon” 

That was the other thing about Namjoon.  He was your best friend. You had met in college and realized that he shared your curiosity for the life that may be on Neptune.  He’s the one who encouraged you to go for it and offered his help in constructing the ship that would take you to your dream. 

You’d hooked up with him once or twice, he was actually the man you’d lose your virginity to.  But, it's always remained unromantic, purely a friends with benefits deal.  You never wanted a relationship to get in the way of your dream research project.  

The photographer Jungkook entered the room for a moment, noticing the two of you embraced.  

“Oh sorry-” he stuttered thinking he walked in on a personal moment. 

“No it’s fine,” you pulled away from Namjoon and smiled.  “How’s it going?” 

Jungkook settler down into a chair on the other side of the small chrome dining table. 

“I’m pretty excited” Jungkook spoke “Tired of black and white.  Ready for some blue” he chuckled. 

The reason that you had picked Jungkook’s portfolio out of the many submissions of photographers to join the expedition was for that exact reason. 

Everything on Triton and the other moons were so plain and colorless.  Everyone’s submissions contained basically the same types of photographs.  A grey building, the grey empty landscape of Triton or Neso.  Even the wildlife back on the moons were colorless.  Being adapted to blend into their environment, most every animal was some shade of pale gray.  One person even just had an entire portfolio of the same photographed rock.  They were well done, and artistic, but nothing stood out to you. 

Jungkook on the other hand, when you were presented with his portfolio, your eyes lit up, it was a series of beautiful shots of objects sitting in front of the big blue planet of neptune in the sky.  It was extremely creative, and you could tell his love for the blue glow of your destination planet. 

Hoseok slept in the pilot's seat with the shuttle on the autopilot course most of the next two days, only coming out of the room for meal times and to do a routine check of all of the parts of the ship he was in charge of maintaining. 

You passed the time double checking the inventory of equipment you’d brought, and playing cards with Namjoon and Jungkook. 

The blue planet now took up almost the entire view from the windows of your shuttle.  It was magnificent and you felt every part of your body tingling with excitement.  

You were set to land in a few hours, your dream was coming true. 

Everyone was rushing around getting prepared.  Namjoon had come up with a suggestion a few months ago to design an underwater suit, similar to what the astronauts used to be able to breathe in space, but for underwater.  Though none of you planned on leaving the ship, you all would wear them while the ship was first  underwater just encase something malfunctioned.  

You were getting changed and geared up in your room, when your door swung open on you still half naked. 

Namjoon walked in chuckling at the way you scurried to cover yourself up. 

“Just me” he spoke

“Fuck that scared me” you laughed. 

He walked over to you and rubbed your shoulder up and down. “You ready? I can’t believe it's finally happening. I feel like I’m going crazy with anticipation.”

“Same here.  We’ve waited for this moment for longer than I can even remember.”  

Hoseok’s voice rang out from over the speakers “Landing in 30 minutes.  Everyone gets in their seats and buckle up” 

Namjoon gave you a quick smile and a thumbs up and left you to finish getting ready. 

You shakily got the rest of your suit ready, lastly putting on the helmet and making sure it was secured to the oxygen source. 

As you walked out to the seats, you noticed Jin was now equipped with a gun on his hip. 

“And how the fuck do you plan on using that? I will literally kill you if you shoot any holes in my ship.” You hissed at him as you sat and started to buckle up. 

He rolled his eyes.  “Its for if we have to go outside of the ship obviously.  Its made for underwater use” 

“Well here’s to hoping nothing comes to that.” you sighed.  

None of you knew what you were entering into.  If there were any creatures living in the water, how large were they?  How dangerous were they? 

-------------------------------------

The ship shook and rattled as it entered Neptune’s atmosphere, the deep blue water below looked so close that you could just reach your hand out and touch it. 

You have to force yourself to keep your eyes open, not wanting to miss a moment of it.  

With a giant thud that jolted all of you hard into the back of your chairs, the shuttle hit the surface of the water.  

It was the smoothest landing that you could have hoped for, the ship was built for the impact.  

Your shuttle now floated on top of the surface of the waters.  You let out a sigh of relief, though the mission had only began, this was one of the moments you were most worried about.  It was over and had been a success.  

Your team cheered and clapped their hands for Hoseok and his successful piloting as you all un buckled and got out of your seats. 

Hoseok turned around and smiled bowing like a performer on a stage. 

Then looked to you, 

“Alright boss.  What now?”  He asked. 

You thought for a moment, you’d had a set schedule and plan, but you couldn’t help but want to take a moment to just let this sight set in. 

The blue water was making your ship sway to and fro in soothing movements.  

“Lets have Jungkook take some pictures” you decided.  That would give all of you some time to adjust and observe as well. 

Jungkook nodded excitedly and went to his trunk that stored his camera equipment, rifling through to find the best lense. 

Your group now took off their helmets, feeling comfortable that nothing was going to go wrong at this point, but keeping them close on your hips just in case.

You walked over to the giant glass window that took up almost the entirety of one of the room’s walls, staring out in awe. 

The sun made the water sparkle and glisten, it was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen.  You heart was jumping for joy, you felt it might just jump all the way out of your chest and dive right into the water. 

Namjoon walked up and stood beside you.  He opened his mouth to speak but then shook his head and just looked out the window with you. 

You were speechless as well.  You were the first people to have ever observed this sight, it was an honor and was almost a spiritual experience.  

Jungkook now stood on the other side of you, snapping pictures with a giant grin on his face.  He paused and turned to you. 

“Oh my god, I never want to go back” He chuckled.  

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After about a couple hours and all of you eating your lunch in front of the window, you decided it was time to begin your descent. 

Hoseok got back in the pilot's seat, you could see him growing slightly nervous, so you walked to his side with a curious expression on your face. 

“Everything okay?” 

He sighed and nodded, fidgeting with some of the controls, “Yeah, I’ve done this in the simulator so many times.  But, that was just a guess.  I’m about to be the first pilot to shuttle underwater...Just...taking it all in” 

“You’ll be famous for this” you smiled, putting a hand on his shoulder to reassure him. 

He grinned widely “Yeah, We all will be huh? Thanks y/n.” 

“Do we have to buckle up for this?” Jungkook asked 

You shake your head “No it should be smooth and slow as we dive.” 

“Awesome” he clapped his hands together “I’m gonna sit by the window and take a video of us diving then” 

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Slowly your shuttle dove down until you were surrounded by water.  So far there were no signs of life anywhere, you were starting to get a little discouraged until you heard Jungkook squeal loudly. 

“Hoseok stall the descent!” you shouted. Hoseok listened and the ship stilled.  Your group ran over to the window where Jungkook sat with his face pressed against the window. 

A small creature no bigger than your hand was slowly moving along the window.  It was yellow and round, and had a large fin that wiggled back and forth as it moved. 

“Jungkook pictures!” you spoke quickly.  He scurried to capture the creature. 

It was so strange and new.  

“Hoseok how many meters down are we?” you asked

Hoseok checked a screen near his pilot’s seat. “About 30”  

“Hoseok I’m a scientist...can we not do ‘about’…” you chuckled

“29.8” he replied

You quickly jotted it down into your log of events that you’d been keeping. 

When you lifted your head up from your writing you let out a large gasp. 

A larger creature now swam past.  It seemed to be a meter long and was snake like, it was bright red with black stripes around it.  

Your team pouted slightly when the creatures disappeared from view.  But you were still completely giddy over the excitement of having discovered new life. 

“Let's go down further” you told Hoseok and he nodded and returned to his seat. 

For the next few hours you ventured further down into Neptunes depths.  Your team had discovered at least 30 unique creatures that Jungkook had been able to take pictures of.  You documented the depth and time at which you’d seen each of them with a quick summary of their behaviors.  

“I think we should go back to the surface for a while” Hoseok suggested.  “It’ll be getting dark soon and we should surface for the night” 

You were slightly disappointed about that “Are you sure? Can’t we just go a little deeper?”

“Honestly, pressure wise, this is as deep as we are going to be able to go.  The pressure room that the ship was tested in wasn’t capable of testing pressures any more than what we are currently at.  The ship might still handle it, but we don’t know for sure.  For our safety I’m going to advise against it…” 

“10 more meters?” You pleaded batting your eyelashes. 

“Y/n.  If he says it's not safe I’m not going to allow it.” Jin hissed. 

“Allow it?” you spun to face him with your jaw dropping.  “I’m sorry, I thought I was in charge not you?” 

“I’d think that the guy with the gun in really in charge” he smirked, putting his hand to his hip. 

So that's really why he wanted the gun on him.  It wasn’t just for safety from the creatures of the waters.  It was to make sure that he remained in a position of authority over the rest of the crew. 

You shake your head.  

“You wouldn’t do that in here. Hoseok. 10 more meters” you ordered sternly. 

Jin slowly stepped so that his body was almost touching your own, he stared down at you angrily. 

“I said no.  I’m not dying over this stupid mission” 

You gulped.  

“I think if we do 10 more meters I can ascend fast enough that it wouldn’t be a problem.  Any malfunctions would be solvable.” Hoseok spoke calmly, wanting to relieve some of the tension and calm down the man with the gun. 

Jin’s eyes narrowed “Fine.  But if anything happens. I’m calling this mission and we return immediately” 

“You don’t have that authority!” you yelled out. 

“Actually I do.” he pulled out a government note from his pocket and shoved it in front of your face.  

“You really think the government was going to just let something like this happen without being in control of it?” 

The sheet read that Jin was capable of overriding any decisions you’d make.  Shit.  

You groaned and hit the paper away from your face. 

“Fine.  But I don't think anything will go wrong” 

Almost like you had jinxed it, the ship lunged to the side, rolling onto an angle that caused everything not secured to slide to one side of the room and your whole team to fall over. 

“Fuck!” you heard Hoseok yell out as he tried to maintain balance while messing with the controls “I can’t do anything.  Our systems aren’t working” 

You felt your heart rate quicken, you tried to pull yourself back up as you stared wide eyed at Namjoon who had the same look of fear and surprise on his face. 

Almost as soon as your team had regained their footing, it happened a second time.  

This was not good…

“What the fuck is happening!” you screeched, pulling yourself over to the windows and looking around, not seeing anything but the darkening waters.  

Your ship seemed to be...moving?

“Y/n...we have a big problem here” Hoseok’s voice trembled “We’re descending...fast…” 

You felt yourself growing faint, had you just doomed every soul on this shuttle with your grand dreams and ideas?  

Your eyes were fluttering shut as you fell to the side, you could hear Jungkook crying.  And you swore you heard Namjoon throw up right before your consciousness slipped away from you.  

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When your eyes started to open, you expected nothingness.  Maybe you were still dreaming, because everything was bright.  A warm yellow glow touched everything in the room.  The room was a mess, Jungkook’s camera equipment scattered across the floor along with all of the notebooks and papers you’d been writing in.  A coffee cup had spilled over and a giant puddle was surrounding the floor next to Hoseok who was lying unconscious. 

Jungkook who was lying flat on his back had also not yet come to.  Namjoon who was next to you seemed to be just waking up same as you.  And Jin was nowhere in sight. 

Your gaze followed the light up to the windows, it seemed you were still underwater, yet this looked like...a city? It was colorful and magnificent with sea life floating around everywhere.  Your ship appeared to be landed on the steps of a very tall and heavily decorated stone building that had large colorful shells all around it.

What the hell? 

You gasped and stood too quickly almost falling back over.  

Have you found them? 

You almost screamed out when a figure appeared in front of the window.  

It looked like an adult man, in your human years he’d probably be in his 20’s, he was shirtless so you could see how muscular he was.  He was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen in your life.  His skin seemed to have an iridescent glow glossed over every inch of himself.  

Your eyes trailed down and you now noticed that his lower half, was definitely not human.  Just below his waist, his skin stopped, and a navy blue scaling that you’d seen on some of the sea creatures you’d observed was on him.  It bound his legs together into one long form, and where feet would usually be on a person was a translucent, large, tail that also had similarities to some of the smaller sea creatures you’d seen.  

He had long flowing blue hair that floated in the water as he moved along the glass, peering in at you. 

You really had found them, they were real. 

As terrified as you were, you couldn’t help but feel a little excited too. 

You’d been laughed at for wanting to install an underwater speaker system to your ship, but you now thanked yourself for that. 

You shakily made your way to the control panel and picked up the corded microphone, holding down the button and pausing a moment to debate on what your first words should be? 

‘We come in peace?’ ‘Hi?’  Shit.  You’d always thought about what you’d say to a mermaid if you’d ever met one, but all of that seemed to have been lost to the nervousness that you felt. 

The fish man saw that you had noticed him and was now floating right in your line of view, cocking his head to the side while he looked you over. 

You cleared your throat and spoke into the microphone

“We are friends.  Explorers”  You spoke slowly, pointing to the others on your ship.  Not even knowing if he’d understand you.  He mouthed something back, you realize that he must be speaking. Shit, you’d forgotten to turn the receiving microphone on. 

Your fingers fumbled over the control panel and you found the red button, pressing it so it now glowed ‘on’ 

“Sorry, what did you say?” you spoke into your mic, still not sure whether anything you were saying was getting across. 

“I spoke, we are no friends.  Your warrior injure one citizens.  We have now” 

You gasped.  He spoke your language!  Not perfectly but it was more than enough to have a conversation with him.  How that was possible was a discussion for another time.  As you realize now, that he was referring to the missing Jin.  He must’ve left the ship to investigate and shot at one of them. 

“I apologize for our…” you thought over if you should just use the word he used and decided that was best, “For our warrior.  I’m sure he was just scared.  Is your citizen going to be okay?�� 

The merman pressed his forehead to the glass looking around the room you were in. 

“Will be okay.  Getting medical care now they are.  You have more weapon?”  The merman suddenly seemed to get spooked and quickly turned around and swam a few feet from the ship, still looking in at you but hovering further back. 

You realized Namjoon had just walked over to your side.  

“W-what…” Namjoon gasped out “They are real? Oh my god they are real!” he grinned. 

“They are real, and Jin shot one of them” you whispered in a hiss “They captured him.  And us.” 

Namjoon looked around the room realizing Jin was indeed missing. 

“That idiot” he shook his head. 

“Another friend” you spoke into the mic at the merman “No weapons.  Our warrior had the only weapon” 

The merman swam back over to the glass and looked unconvinced.  “Don’t trust…” he muttered. 

“Why here?” he spoke louder now

“We came to see you.  To learn.  Not to hurt.  I’m very sorry about that.  He isn’t a friend” you decided to just throw Jin under the bus with that, in hopes that the man would trust you better. 

“Not friend?” he thought a moment.  “Learn…” 

“Yes, we came from the moons” you pointed up “We came to learn about this planet” 

“We learn too” the man nodded “We like learn.  We want learn”  

“Awesome, well maybe we can learn some things from each other for a while before we leave” you threw in “We do need our warrior back, or we will be in trouble with our government” 

“You said not friend?” He looked confused.  

“Right, but we still can’t return without him” You told him. 

“You don’t return” the merman crossed his muscular tan arms over his chest.  “We don’t let return” he sternly spoke. 

“Woah” a voice came from behind you.  You realized Jungkook was now awake and approaching the glass with his camera in hand held up towards the merman

“Jungkook wait” you spoke to late. 

“Weapon!” the merman yelled and hissed, pulling himself back from the glass, his hair now stood straight up as he bared his teeth growling animalistically at Jungkook. You noticed he had pointed teeth, every one of them sharp. 

“Wait wait!” you waved your hands “It’s not a weapon, see” 

You stood in front of Jungkook’s camera.  “Take a picture of me Kook” you whispered.  

Jungkook was now shaky after the behavior of the merman, but he nodded and held up his camera.  

The merman got close to the glass again pressing his face against it with wide eyes as Jungkook took a picture of you.  

“Can I?” you held your hand out to Jungkook asking for the camera.  He shrugged and handed it over to you. 

You pulled up the picture that was taken and brought the camera to the glass to show the merman. 

“Picture” you told him “See.  That's what he was doing.”  you smiled, trying to show the merman you were being friendly. 

He nodded slowly and repeated “Picture..” 

Suddenly he was pulling himself away from the glass and swimming away quickly.  He was gone. 

Hoseok was now standing up and holding his head that had a slight bump on it.  

“What the hell is going on” he groaned.  

You filled him in on everything that had occurred. 

“For real?” he gasped out. “But, they won’t let us leave...What are we going to do? We will definitely run out of breathable air if we don't recharge at the surface in about a day and a half…” he said looking at some of the gauges on the control panel. 

You sighed. “Yeah, we need to figure out how to convince them to let us leave.  Is there any contact to Triton available right now?” you asked. 

Hoseok tried the radio then shook his head.  

A knocking noise against the glass made you jump.  You turned to see the merman was back, his mouth turned up in a smile.  

“Hello” he spoke 

“Welcome back” you chuckled, growing quite fond of his cute smile. 

“Make deal.”

“You want to make a deal? To let us leave?” 

“Yes.  Deal.” he nodded.   

“Okay…” you looked to Namjoon who shrugged “What’s the deal?” 

“We keep warrior. For learn” the merman spoke

You shake your head “You can’t keep him...He’ll die soon if you don’t let him come with us.  He can’t breathe down here, there isn’t enough air in his tank to last him.  You won't be able to learn much from him dead.”  You informed him. 

The merman looked upset.  “No deal?” he seemed to be pouting, which you shouldn’t be finding so cute considering it seemed this was the creature that held your fate in his hands currently. 

“I make new deal.  Must ask first.” he then turned and swam away like he did before. 

“I say just leave the asshole.” Namjoon laughed. 

“This isn’t funny!” Hoseok snapped.  “But, yeah, why didn’t we just leave him” 

“First of all, I don’t want that on my conscience for the rest of my life.  And secondly, do you really think we won’t be in huge trouble if we return without him.  He works for the governent” 

“True” Namjoon sighed, “But if it comes to all of us dying...don’t you think that…” 

The merman was now knocking at the glass again, snapping the attention of the four of you back to the window. 

“New deal” The merman looked even more excited.  “We give back.  You take”  

You didn’t quite understand what he was saying, he seemed to notice your confused expression. 

“You take” he repeated pointing to himself. 

“Take you with us?” you gasped.  He wanted to come back to Triton with you?  

“For learn.  Want learn.  You take.  Me learn, you learn.  Deal?” 

“Deal!” you exclaimed instantly, realizing you should probably discuss it with your teammates but the idea of being able to take this merman back to Triton with you, and being able to learn everything about him and his kind seemed even more like a dream come true than anything that had happened so far. 

“Right?” you turned to the rest of your crew

They all shrugged and nodded

“I don’t see why not” Namjoon spoke, but there was a hint of something uneasy in his voice. 

-------------------------------------------------

A few more mer-people swam over to your ship after the merman you’d been speaking with went and told them that the deal was on.  Two of them had Jin in their arms who seemed to be squirming around and resisting until he realized he was being brought back to his ship. 

There was a small metal room in the back of the ship meant for coming and going that drained the water once Jin was inside.  

Hoseok went to grab him and brought him to his room.  Yelling at him for being stupid the whole way there.  

The merman you’d spoken to was now in front of the glass again.  

“Gave back.  You take now?” he pointed to himself. 

“Yes.  But, how are you going to breathe?  We don’t have anything water here for you.” 

He thought for a moment, putting his hand to his chin. 

“One night.  I return” he swam away, and the other mer-people followed. 

-----------------------------------------

 You spent the rest of the night discussing with the rest of your crew how you’d handle bringing the merman back with you to triton.

You’d all settled on keeping it a secret.

You knew Jin would have a hard time not telling his boss’s in the government so you’d brought him out to have a little talk.

He was still quite shaken up from the days events when hoseok dragged him from his room to the main room where you all had gathered.

“The merman is coming with us back home.  I want to learn from him, but I don’t think it’s best if the media knows he’s there.  everyone would want pictures and interviews and it’d all get in the way of our research.  Can you keep it a secret?” You asked Jin 

“And why would I protect any of them? Do you even know what they did to me in there?” He growled

“You did shoot one of their people…” Jungkook spoke hesitantly 

“Well she snuck up on me.  And what was I supposed to do?” Jin scowled down towards the floor.

“Please Jin.  I’m begging you.  You can report it to your supervisors only or whatever after we’ve taken him back here” you begged.  You knew that if it was found out your team had brought a real mermaid back with them the media would swarm.  You also were scared of what the government would ask to be done with him, they could easily take him from your team and give him to a different scientist for who knows what…

“I don’t want to lie about this…” Jin grumbled. 

“We could’ve just left you there with them man.  That was the original deal, and she turned it down.” Namjoon snapped at Jin, narrowing his eyes and clenching his fists at the man’s stubbornness to get on board with your plan. 

Jin sighed and rubbed his temples.  

“Fine.” he whispered “I won’t tell…” 

You hoped that he was telling the truth. 

---------------------------------------

The next morning you were awakened to a tapping on the window.  You had slept in the control room where you had seen the merman before so that you wouldn’t miss his return. 

You lifted your head sleepily and looked to the noise, smiling widely upon seeing that the merman had his face pressed to the glass looking in at you. 

You quickly stood and fumbled around to grab the microphone and turn on the receiving one for the outside. 

“Hey, welcome back!” you chimed excitedly. 

You noticed the merman seemed just as excited as yourself.  His long blue hair floating just as beautifully in the water as you had remembered it.  His skin was shimmering in the light, with that shiny iridescent glow covering his gorgeous caramel skin.  

Your breathing quickened at the sight of him, it was almost like looking at a statue of an ancient god.  You felt slightly unworthy in his presence, yet he looked more excited to see you than anyone ever had in your whole life. 

“I come back.  Go with you now.  Made way to travel with.” he spoke.  And as he said that, a group of four other merpeople swam up carrying a large glass tank that looked plenty big enough for the merman to comfortably fit into. 

“That's perfect!” you clapped your hands together.  “So what you’ll want to do is be in the tank when you get into the room.  The room will drain out the rest of the water, but the water in your tank will stay and we can carry you in” 

He nodded.  You saw an older couple, a merman and merwoman approach him and hugged him tightly.  

“Careful you” The woman said kissing him on the forehead. 

You assumed those must be his parents.  Their family dynamics seemed to be similar to your people.  Those were the types of things you couldn’t wait to learn about, you had so many questions. 

You pressed the button to open the door to the chamber Taehyung would enter from.  He swam into his tank and you watched the merpeople swim it over and place it inside.  

“All good?” you said over the microphone to the outside of the ship. 

“Good.  Ready”  A voice called back to you

You took a deep breath.  Nervously you pressed the button to close the doors and drain the water from the room.  

You then called over the announcement speaker system, realizing you should’ve probably done this first,

“Everyone, I’m gonna need your help carrying him in.  He’s here” 

You made your way to the room, Namjoon had joined up with you and you saw a sleepy Hoseok and Jungkook following close behind.  

“Jin’s not up?” you raised an eyebrow to Namjoon. 

He shrugged and you sighed.  Oh well, the four of you could probably do this on your own.  

You felt your skin tingling with the excitement of what lay behind the door you now stood in front of.  

Your childhood dreams and fantasies within your reach. 

You shakily placed your hand on the door and turned the handle to open it. 

When you entered the room the merman was sitting with his head, arms and shoulders all out of the tank.  His head resting cutely on his hands at the edge of his tank. 

“Hello” he spoke.  His voice sounded a bit different when not distorted by the water.  It was deep and soothing and made you just want to melt on the spot. 

“Hello” you returned. “This is Namjoon, Jungkook, and Hoseok. And I’m y/n” you pointed to them respectively. 

“Taehyung” he pointed to himself.  

“Nice to meet you Taehyung” you approached him holding your hand out to shake his hand.  He looked curiously at you and you realized that was probably not a gesture that he understood. 

“Oh.  Sorry.  It’s what humans do to greet each other.  We shake hands” 

“Shake hands to greet.” He nodded like he was making a mental note of it. 

“So we’re going to carry you out of here now, I’ve made space in my room to put your tank and secure it so it doesn’t slide around the ship when we take off.”  You did now notice that the tank didn’t have a lid, you hoped that the trip back to Triton wouldn’t make the water spill out, you’d have to come up with something for that…

The four of you picked up the tank, noticing that it had handles to carry it, you were extremely thankful for that convenience.  It was quite heavy, about four feet high, and six feet in length.  You wondered if he’d start to miss swimming in the open waters.  You’d have to build a bigger tank for him back at your lab. 

“We make last night” Taehyung proudly tapped the glass on his tank as you carried him. 

“You made this in a night? It’s nice, the handles helped”  You complimented him sweetly.  

So they have the means to make things like this.  And very quickly.  You were going to have to ask more about that. 

Once he was set down and secured in your room, you let out a small chuckle at the way he looked around wide eyed at all of your things. 

Hoseok and Jungkook had decided to go get something to eat.  

“Want me to stay?” Namjoon asked “For safety?” he whispered the last part in your ear.  Not being able to tear his eyes from the sharp teeth showing as Taehyung smiled. 

“He seems gentle, you can go eat.  I want to just take some notes and talk with him for a while” 

Namjoon nodded and left the two of you alone in the room. 

You sat down on your bed, which was only a few feet from where his tank sat.  

He rested his chin on his arms at the top of the glass, looking at you with a cute and curious stare. 

“I have so many questions I don’t even know where to start” you chuckled, feeling slightly shy now that you were alone with him.  

“I have question too.  Many” he laughed lightly, he didn’t seem to be nervous about this at all.  If he was he was doing a good job not showing it. 

Your mind raced through all of your questions, wondering what to ask first as you pulled out a pen and your research notebook.  Writing at the top

‘Taehyung, Mermaid Research Notes’ 

“So, did you know that we existed?” You asked him 

Taehyung thought for a moment.  “Little know.” he answered “See your ships move in sky?  Not know what look like.  Or why ships” 

You wrote down his answer in your notes.  So they could see your ships going from moon to moon.  

“So you go to the surface of the water, you can breath like we do it seems.  Like right now you’re out of the water and seem to be fine?” 

He nodded “Breath is both.  Tail need water or maybe die.  Have question? You say two, not fair, take turn” he winked at you in what almost seemed like a flirtatious gesture, your cheeks grew hot and you wanted to cover your face in embarrassment. 

“Sorry.  We’ll take turns” you smiled nervously at him. 

“Good.  I ask, You say warrior would die under water.  Not breath underwater?” He furrowed his brow as he asked. 

“No, we have to hold our breath if we go underwater, and that can only last for like a minute or two.” 

“Oh.  Interesting” Taehyung’s eyes widened as he nodded again. “I ask again?” he cocked his head to the side. 

You chuckled at his gesture “Yeah, I got two so you should get two” 

“We speak same. You know Why?”  

“Actually I was wondering that too!” You put a hand to your face as you thought “ I really have no idea though.  It seems you speak our language, just in a more…” you didn’t want to offend him so you tried to think of a way to phrase your thoughts. “With less words?” 

“Less words.  Yes. You speak extra words” 

Extra words, you found that an amusing way to put it. 

“Maybe at one point in life, a long time ago our people lived together somehow.” you guessed “I don’t know for sure, but we had heard of you.  It was all supposed to be just a story that you’d tell children, and no one really believed it.  But I actually had hoped it was true, and that’s the main reason that we came to your planet.  I wanted to find out if you were real” you told him. 

“Maybe.” he nodded as he agreed with your guess, yet something strange flickered over his dark eyes.  He suddenly dunked his head under the water and surfaced again.  It seemed random, you wondered if he was just missing the feeling.

“Don’t like dry hair.  Feeling weird” he told you, as if he knew what you were thinking. 

“Oh okay” you nodded.  “Um...so my turn?” you still were feeling shy and awkward around him.  His beauty was enough to make you nervous alone, let alone the fact that he was the embodiment of a life long dream achieved.  You wanted to make every second with him count. 

The door to your room swung open, causing Taehyung to jump slightly and splash a bit in the water. 

“Hey.  Just brought you some food and wanted to check in” Namjoon spoke, handing you one of the protein packs and looking Taehyung over skeptically.  

“Thanks Joon.  We’re doing well.  Just talking” you smiled at him

“Okay, just radio me if you need anything.” his eyes not leaving the merman in the room “Hoseok is going to start the ascent to the surface soon”  he let you know. 

You gave him a quick smile and a wave as he left the room.  You had expected him to be far more excited about all of this, it was his dream as well, yet something seemed to be bothering him. 

“Not like me” Taehyung said after Namjoon had shut the door.  He said it as if it was a fact and not a question. 

“I’m sure that's not true.  He’s wanted to meet your people too.  He might just be nervous” 

You were almost trying to convince yourself that was the case. 

You felt the ship jolt forward a little bit, a small creaking sound rang out as the ship complained from having been still for so long.  Taehyung's water shook slightly in his tank and he looked scared. 

“It’s just the ship moving up to the surface” You told him “Its safe” 

He smiled slightly “Okay. Safe” he nodded “Trust” 

The two of you exchanged questions back and forth the whole way to the surface.  You found out that he was also a scientist, that they seemed to have most of the same careers that your society had.  Doctors, teachers, store owners, construction.  Even one job that was basically a veterinarian, they liked to keep some types of fish and aquatic animals as pets. 

Once you reached the surface of the water and it was time to take back off into space, you had to say goodbye to Taehyung and go sit buckled into your seat.  You had made a makeshift lid, hoping it was enough to keep him safe and his water in the tank.

Right before you put it on, he could see your worried expression and he reached out his hand to you, taking your hand in his own.  He brushed his thumb along your palm, sending a shudder throughout your body. 

“Safe.  Trust” He spoke, his dark eyes sparkling as they met yours.  

-------------------------------------------------

When your shuttle arived back to Triton, your crew was met with cheers and camera crews everywhere.  The large crowd gathered at the station were excited that you had all returned safely, and you were sure they were dying to hear all about it.  

Your team went out to the steps where you could address the crowd.  You told them that your team would be releasing the pictures and notes that you’d taken on your trip within the week.  That seemed to satisfy their hunger for curiosity.  

Really all you could think about though, was getting Taehyung safely into your lab without him being seen. 

You had discussed with Hoseok plans to dock the ship in the back entrance after waving away the crowd, so now it was time to do just that. 

Jin had left to go update his higher ups on what had happened on the trip.  You nervously hoped he’d keep his word about what had really happened down on neptune. 

Hoseok, Namjoon and Jungkook helped you carry Taeyhung’s tank from where the ship was now discreetly docked in the lab.  

You were happy to see that he was already from the landing. 

“Nice see you again y/n” he purred out as he saw you.  Namjoon rolled his eyes and sighed, you still didn’t quite understand what had him so upset about this whole thing. 

Once Taehyung was brought to one of the rooms in the lab that only you and Namjoon had access to you thanked Hoseok and Jungkook and told them they could go. 

“That was a hell of a trip boss” Jungkook grinned at you “These pictures we took really are going to make me the top photographer on all of the moons.”

“Just remember not to publish any of the ones of Taehyung or the other merpeople.  Also the ones I selected to be exclusively for my research papers I will be posting” 

“Right” he nodded giving you a small wave as he left the room.

Hoseok then stepped forward towards you.

“Hey let me know when you need me for the return alright? You have my number” he put a hand on your shoulder.

“Will do, seriously thank you for everything. I couldn’t have done this without you”

“I know” he winked and gave you finger guns as he walked backwards out of the room.

Taehyung had been watching you say your goodbyes silently under water, tiny bubbles ascending to the surface of the tank.  He seemed to be anxious to get your attention back over to him again. 

You gave him a small smile and put your finger up to say ‘just wait one second’

You still had to say goodbye to Namjoon, who stood scowling at Taehyung. 

You realized you needed to have this conversation in private and motioned for Namjoon to join you right outside the door to Taehyung's room.

“So what’s going on with you? I thought you’d be excited that we finally found merpeople? This was our dream remember?” You narrowed your eyes at him, biting on your lower lip.

Namjoon crossed his arms across his broad chest.

“Yeah, this was our dream. Our, dream.  But you seem to want to do this all on your own.” He glared at you 

“On my own?  I’m sorry but you were right there with me? You came on this trip too, I didn’t leave you out of anything” you hissed in a whisper 

“Yeah. Okay.  Well have fun with your new best friend.  And your research papers.  Don’t bother putting my name on them.  If you even planned on it” he growled and stomped away from you.

“Namjoon wait!” You yelled after him. “What the hell” you mutter to yourself shaking your head angrily as you walked back into the room where Taehyung was waiting for you.

He had an expression of confusion laid on his features.

He was poking only the top of his head out of the water, just his eyes peeking above. 

“Sorry about that.  I really don’t know why he thinks-“ you stopped yourself, not wanting to rant about your problems to this man you’d just met. “Never mind” you sighed.

Taehyung cocked his head to the side.  “Okay?” he pointed to you. 

“Yeah I’m okay” you faked a smile. 

“Lie” he shook his head, “Alright, don’t tell.” he seemed to pout slightly. 

“It’s nothing really.  Namjoon is upset, but he’ll get over it” 

Taheyung pulled himself up to rest his arms on the top of the tank.  “Hope.” he nodded slowly “Don’t like you sad” he frowned and reached a hand out to you. 

You purse your lips, debating whether to step into his touch.  Deciding that it couldn’t hurt. 

You reached your hand out to him as you walked forward.  He took your hand gently in both of his and turned it over, brushing fingers lightly over your palm and staring at it inquisitively, his gaze flickering from your hand to your confused face every once in a while.   His hands were cold, and seemed to glitter in the light, they were so beautiful, wet and soft as they touched you.  You shuddered slightly.

After what felt like hours of him doing this he gave you your hand back.  

His eyes were locked on to yours and you awkwardly wiped your hand on your pants.  

“So I still have so much more I want to know about you” You spoke

“Same” he nodded “Many question” 

“I’ll start?” you chuckled as you pulled up a chrome metal chair to the side of his tank, taking out your notebook.  

“So,” you cleared your throat “What are relationships like there?” 

“Relationship?” Taehyung furrowed his brow. 

“Yeah, like do you get married?” 

“Not married” He spoke slowly pointing to himself “But, yes married happens.”

“Oh, okay so you aren’t, but that's a normal thing”

He nodded.  “You?”

You chuckled “No, I’m not, but we do here too” 

He seemed relieved at your answer. 

“Turn?” he pointed to himself.

“Yeah, go ahead”

“How do…” he smirked slightly, his tail flicking some water up in the air that fell right back down into the tank. “How do you, create new people”

You choked on air at his question.  As a scientist you shouldn’t feel uncomfortable talking about these things, but for some reason discussing sex with him seemed more intimate than it should.

“Oh, I-” you shook your head, trying to shake away the embarassement, “Sex is, um.  Men have an…” you wanted to try and say this like a mature professional as best you could “an appendage, their genitalia, and they enter the woman’s, entrance...that fits the man’s appendage inside and releases sperm that combines with an egg to create a baby” you coughed, still feeling uncomfortable and shy. 

He nodded understandingly.  “Us different.  Not enter.  Female release, then male release, combines outside in water to an egg where young grows”

“Oh!” you found that interesting and quickly jotted it down in your notes. 

You talked back and forth a bit more with him explaining further and asking more questions as well. 

“I did have one more question before I turn in for the night…”

Taehyung smiled at you, nodding for you to go ahead.

“You said that you can’t leave the water or you’ll dry up.  Has that happened before?”

Taheyung thought hard for a moment “Only told.  Only a story.  No dry to test theory.  Only water at home.  Wanted to create raft to test theory, no one willing.  Much risk.”  he seemed to be thinking hard on this thought.  “Always wondered…”

You wrote down a few more notes on your paper, then flipped your notebook shut. 

“I think that’ll be it for the night” You smiled at him “I’m going to look into getting you a bigger tank, will you be fine sleeping here for the night?” you asked

“Yes, fine.  Sleep good” he smiled, holding his hand out again to you.  You put your hand into his and he gave you a quick squeeze “Will miss…” he murmured almost inaudibly. 

---------------------------------------

The rest of the night you tossed and turned in the sheets.  Taehyung was on your mind the whole time.  

When you finally drifted off to sleep, the world you were sent to was familiar but not your own. 

You felt yourself falling down slowly through dark water, a small light in the distance was getting closer and closer as you sank.  

You didn’t feel like you were drowning, you felt serene and weightless.  The light was now almost to you, nothing else was visible in the pitch black water, and you were starting to make out the object giving off the warm yellow glow. 

It was a lamp, somehow still lit underwater, and a hand was holding tightly to it. 

Soon you recognized the face that owned that hand.  It was Taehyung.  His tanned skin glowing against 

You smiled and opened your mouth to greet him, when suddenly his face was mere inches from your own. 

His razor sharp teeth were bared and your blood froze.  You felt your entire body start to clench up with fear, a shock running down your spine at the monstrous sight of this man.   

His hand shot out and gripped you around your throat.  He screamed something but for some reason you couldn’t make out the words, maybe it was a different language?

Your eyes shot open and you were sitting straight up in bed, gasping and sweating.  What the hell was that dream about? 

---------------------------------------------

After eating breakfast, showering and getting dressed for the day, you made your way over to your lab.  Excited to see Taehyung again despite the dream still slightly haunting your mind.  

As you opened the door, starting to step into his room, you called out for him in a singsong voice “I’m baaaack” 

Only to drop everything you are holding in your hands in shock.  Your heart seemed to sink all the way to your feet and fall to the floor with your notebook and coffee that now was spilling across the tile on the ground. 

He was...gone.  He just wasn’t there.

No, this isn’t possible! Who got to him? Did Jin lie? Did he tell his supervisors and they came and took him to a different lab so they could steal away your credit and research?

Catching you completely off guard and making you almost jump straight out of your skin, a hand touched your shoulder from behind. 

You almost turned around to punch the attached person in the face, when he spoke. 

“No! Sorry.  Accident scare” 

You knew that voice. 

You whipped yourself around to see that standing behind you was a completely naked Taehyung.  Standing.  Behind you.  On LEGS. 

Your eyes scanned over him, his tail gone and his lower half of his body now matching the humanness of his upper half.  You also took note of the fact that the iridescent glow that usually blanketed over every inch of his skin was also gone.  He looked completely human. 

“W-what…” you stammered out, your eyes flickering up and down his body. 

“Y/n.  Experiment, success!” He clapped his hands together and motioned to himself up and down, as if you weren’t already looking him over obsessively. 

“Tried out of water.  Thought you save if went wrong” he shrugged “Look! Like you now.  Strange.”  he grinned excitedly. 

“Taehyung.  I don’t understand...I thought you were sure you’d die out of the water” 

“Scientist?” he pointed to himself “Never sure without facts.  Want see for self. Much surprise” he chuckled.  You now noticed he was absentmindedly playing with the new body part he had discovered between his legs.  

Your breath caught in your throat and you quickly pulled your eyes away from what he was doing.  Your eyes had lingered a bit too long already.  Enough that you’d realized how impressive his cock was.

“I-I, need to get you some clothes” you muttered, now facing away from him. 

“Oh” he spoke quietly “Yes, you people clothes here” he laughed lightly. 

You hurried out of the room and grabbed a spare lab coat, then went to Namjoon’s locker in the breakroom to find that he thankfully had some spare basketball shorts left there. 

You brought them back to Taehyung and turned your back to him while he dressed. 

“Feel weird” Taehyung muttered.  “Don’t like dry” 

You spun back around to face him.  It wasn’t the most stylish attire but at least he was covered now and you could speak to him without feeling a warmth building between your legs at the mouth watering sight of his naked form. 

“I don’t understand how this happened” you whispered. 

“Same” he took a seat in one of the metal chairs in the room, lifting his legs up and down and kicking them around, rolling his ankles while he stared at his feet.

“Toes?” he asked cocking his head to the side as he wiggled his newfound appengages. 

“Yeah” you giggled “How’d you know what they were called?”

Taehyung stood up and walked over to the desk in the corner of the room where you now saw a bunch of opened books laying out.  One being an anatomy book. 

“Oh, woah you’ve had a long night huh?” 

Taehyung smiled and nodded. 

“I learned much” 

Suddenly he was walking over to you, you felt your breathing break it’s steady pace as he reached his hand out to rest on your shoulder. 

“Haven’t learned enough...explain? Something wrong happening” his expressed was shifting into one of confusion and worry. 

“I-I don’t quite understand what you mean?” you stammered out, hoping that he doesn’t realize how much his closeness was making you nervous.  The way his eyes trailed over you was sinful and you were trying to convince yourself that it wasn’t what you thought it was.  But, his eyes seemed to be hungrily taking you in, and now his hand was sliding down from your shoulder, fingers trailing lightly down your arm as he did.  It slightly tickled and made you shudder, which he definitely noticed.  Yet he still seemed concerned about something. 

Once his hand reached your own he took it and slowly guided you forward.  He placed your hand over his crotch, which you felt harden even more than it most likely already was under your touch.  It was his turn to shudder. 

“Why is this?” he muttered. 

“Um…” you tried to speak but your mind was taken over by the fact that he was holding your hand to his dick currently.  You didn’t want to feel as turned on as you did, you wanted to keep this professional.  But you felt yourself growing warm and wet between your legs. 

“It's what happens when men are turned on” you murmured 

“What turned on?” he was still confused. 

“It’s nothing bad.  It means…” you wanted to find the right words to communicate this.  He seemed to understand most things you said even if he didn’t know the words, why couldn’t he get this one, you groaned silently in your mind. 

“It means you want to mate?” you tried. 

“Mate?” He suddenly smiled, “Ah yes.  Understand now.  Yes want that.” he nodded, your heart skipping a beat as his lustful gaze was now admitted to be something real and not an idea you were creating just to flatter yourself.  

“Taehyung you know we shouldn’t right? We are just here to learn-” 

Taehyung cut you off with his other hand bringing a finger to your lips.  He brushed over your bottom lip delicately, his eyes staring into your own so intensely that you swore he was staring into your soul.  

“Want to learn human body, help?” his voice was innocent but his expression and body language was anything but.  He was still holding your hand to his clothed cock over Namjoon’s basketball shorts and he was starting to move your hand slightly up and down his shaft that you could feel so distinctly through the loose fabric. 

“Mmmm” he moaned out lowly, his deep voice so erotic and inticing. 

“For learning?” you whispered, hesitantly moving your face towards his. 

He broke into a boxy smile that made you want to melt. 

“Show me” he spoke softly, his hand now tugging at the button on your jeans.

He pressed his forehead against your own, biting down on his lower lip. 

 “Please” he breathed out. 

At this point you were too far gone to think clearly.  He was begging, and he was too tempting to deny.  

You nodded your head slightly, closing your eyes as you felt him now undoing your button and unzipping your jeans.  So slowly it was almost as if he was teasing you. 

He dropped to his knees as he pulled down your pants and panties all in one swift motion.  His tongue darted out and he wet his lips quickly as his eyes widened at the sight of your lower half naked in front of him. 

“Never...Never done...never seen” he muttered, his eyes flicked up to meet yours. 

“I’ll teach you” 

“Please” he groaned, bringing his attention back to your pussy that was eye level with him. 

His forefinger trailed across your outer folds ever so lightly.  You felt a chill of pleasure and want run over your skin, giving you goosebumps all over. 

“Show me” he repeated his request from earlier. 

You decided to step back from him to go lay on the desk, so you could spread your legs and give him a better view.  He pouted until he realized what you were doing.  Now he was walking towards you and dropping to his knees again, returning to face your dripping center at eye level. 

“Wow” he whispered, he was so close that you could feel his breath against you.  

“You...can touch me.  Explore around I guess” you chuckled nervously, not sure if you were excited or scared to be in this position with him.  You felt like if any of your crew found out what you were doing they’d be upset, especially Namjoon.  

You closed your eyes tightly, breathing quickly anticipating the likely touch that was soon to come. 

Taehyung stared into your center in awe, he didn’t quite know why he was so attracted to this part of you that he’d never seen on anyone before.  Mermaids didn’t actually have sex.  It wasn’t about pleasure or getting off, it was purely for creating children, you never even had to touch the other during the act.  It wasn’t intimate, it wasn’t this…

The urges that he was having were so foriegn to him, he knew it was coming from the new body part he’d found dangling between his legs that seemed to somehow be growing even harder as he stared at your nakedness laid out in front of him. 

You were becoming wet, Taehyung liked the wet, it was so inviting, he wanted to feel it on his fingers.  

You shuddered as he started to feel around, brushing against your clit every so often, never entering you.  

You realized he might not understand that he could.  One of your hands crept down to join his, he almost jumped back in surprise, he had been so entranced in touching you he’d almost forgotten anything else in the world existed.  When your hand reached down he snapped back to reality a bit.  You started to press a finger into your dripping hole. Moaning as you brought the finger in and out.  Taehyung felt his cock twitch at the sound of your pleasure, he realized he wanted to do whatever he could to be the one making you create those beautiful noises. He didn’t understand why, but the thought of pleasuring you made him more excited than he’d ever been in his life. 

“You can do this to me” you told him, “Try” 

Taehyung nodded and brought his finger to replace yours that had just retracted itself from your hole.  

Without even realizing why he did this, his other hand snapped up and grabbed your wrist before you could pull your hand away.  He brought his lips to the finger you’d had inside of you and pulled it into his mouth, carefully avoiding touching you to his sharp teeth, sucking and licking, growling in satisfaction at how unexpectedly pleasent the taste was.  

“Wow” he whispered as he released your hand from his grip. 

He then returned his focus to his other hand. 

“Another?” he asked as he started to tease your entrance with two fingers. 

“Yes.  I can probably only take two though” you moaned, 

Taehyung chuckled, and decided he was going to try a third after he played around with two fingers.  The scientist in him needed to test that theory that you could only take two.  

The louder your moans got, the more Taehyung felt this urge for you to be touching him back.  When your hand was on him over his clothes earlier it was all he could think about, and he needed you to touch him again.  

He started to push into you with a third finger.  

“Fuck, Taehyung,  Thats too” you gasped out in high pitched moans. 

Taehyung smirked as he continued, “Shh, Will be okay” he muttered.  You were so tight but adjusting to him.  He started to move his fingers around, and then remembered that you had shuddered and moaned every time that he had brushed against the nub that rested right above where his fingers were going in and out of you.  And the way you had tasted when he licked your wetness off of your fingers still lingered on his tongue, he needed another taste,  Maybe he should be giving some attention there too…

He brought his mouth to your clit and started to give small licks, you responded more than he’d anticipated, bucking your hips up into his mouth, it makes Taehyung swell with pride that he’d figured out how to make you feel even better.  

“Taehyung I’m g-gonna cum soon, I’m getting so close” you gasped out. 

Suddenly his head snapped away from you, you whimpered at the loss of him. 

“Cum?” he looked up at you in confusion. 

“Um yeah, like have an orgasm” You explained. 

“Hmmm” he hadn’t fully realized he was working towards a finish here, he had just been having fun.  But now that he knew there was an end purpose to his actions it only motivated him to work harder.  His tongue dove back into you, flicking and licking faster than before.  He had to hold your squirming hips down with his free hand so he could keep his pace.

“Fuck!” you screamed out loudly “Taehyung don't stop! I’m cumming” 

Taehyung smiled widely against you as he continued his surprisingly skilled tongue work, lapping up every bit of the wetness that you were giving to him as you came.  He felt the walls around his fingers pulsing and tightening around him as you rode out your high.  

He didn’t stop for a moment after you had came.  You were giggling as you tried to wiggle away from him.  

“Ah, Taehyung, Ahh, Stop.  It’s too sensitive now!” you squealed. 

He chuckled and continued for a few seconds more before pulling himself away from you.  Wiping your juices from the corner of his mouth. 

“That was the best orgasm I’ve ever had.” You put an arm over your forehead, your chest heaving up and down heavily.  “Are you sure you’ve never done that before?” 

Taehyung felt so proud of himself.  “No never...Really good?” 

“So good” you smiled at him, sitting up now.  “Want me to return the favor?” 

Taehyung nodded slowly, “Meaning...Touch me?” he asked, his hand now palming his hard and aching cock over his short. 

“Yes, I want to touch you” you smiled sliding yourself off the table and getting down on your knees in front of him.  He cocked an eyebrow up, curious at what you are doing now.  Your fingers hooked around the hem of the shorts and pulled them down to his ankles.  His cock sprung free now, so hard and needy, a small bead of precum already forming on his tip.  You licked your lips and brought a hand up to grip the base of his cock. 

“Oh” he whimpered as he threw his head back and shut his eyes tightly.  

You then brought your lips to wrap around him, not fully taking him in, but enough that he could now feel your tongue laying flat against the underside of his tip.  His hand reflexively snapped to the back of your head, wanting to push himself into you all the way, but not wanting to hurt you.  You started to bob your head as your lips moved up and down his shaft.  Taehyung's other hand now held the back of your head as well, gently moving with you as you moved on him. 

Your tongue flicked over him in a way that felt like heaven, and he, without meaning to jerked his hips forward, causing you to take him in all the way.  You quickly pulled away from him coughing and giggling. 

“Sorry” Taehyung gasped, “Hurt?” he felt awful for his unintentional action that seemed to have caused you discomfort.  Here you were making him feel so good and he was getting overly greedy. 

“No, you’re fine.  I get it” you chuckled “Let me adjust and you can do that more if you want” 

Taehyung’s eyes widened dramatically as you  now started to take him in fully, your lips now all the way at the base of his cock, your nose brushing against his abdomen. 

“Do your thing now,  I’ll tap your thigh hard three times if it’s too much for me okay? Then you have to stop, but unless I do that you can use my mouth however you want” you smirked up at him.  

Taehyung nodded, and for a brief second a thought floated through the front of his mind.  He was in love…

Taehyung’s hands returned to the back of your head, he started out slowly, moving his hips forward into your mouth as he gripped you tightly, pushing himself into your mouth all the way, and back out again.  A loud grunt that surprised even him escaped his lips as he sped up.  

Your eyes were watering as you choked a bit around him, but you didn’t want it to stop, you wanted him to cum.  This beautiful godlike man was using your mouth so perfectly. 

Taehyung felt himself tightening as the pleasure was building, was this his orgasm?  He was slightly nervous for the feeling, when you came it seemed to be quite an intense thing.  He didn’t quite know what to expect but if it felt anything like what he did right now he didn’t want to stop chasing it. 

Suddenly you hummed around him, a low moan that sent vibrations through his cock.  The feeling was overwhelmingly pleasurable.  It was happening.  

“Cumming” he whispered, his eyes rolling back as he shakily fucked himself into your mouth.  The sensation that flooded over him as he poured his hot cum into your mouth couldn’t even be compared to anything he’d ever felt in his  life.  His cock twitched wildy inside your mouth and you moaned around him a few more times, swallowing every drop that he gave you. 

He pulled away once it became too sensitive for him to continue. 

It was your turn to wipe the corners of your mouth.  

Taehyung cocked his head to the side as he stared down at you with a fucked outlook.  

“Good.” he whispered through deep breaths, extending out his hand and brushing a thumb over your cheek and then your lower lip.  You gently grabbed his wrist and kissed the palm of his hand. 

“Very good” 

---------------------------------------------------------------

The next few weeks you and Taehyung continued to learn from each other, in every way possible.  Learning about each other's societies and cultures.  And continuing extensive first hand anatomy lessons.  

Taehyung had been falling more and more in love with you.  

Now that he had legs you were able to take him out into the towns, showing him all of your favorite spots and places to go.  

Everytime you grabbed his hand and pulled him over to something that excites you, that warm feeling of love and joy filled him up to the point that he felt he might explode. 

Your happiness was irresistible, all of you was irresistible to him. 

You were feeling similar, yet that dream you had weeks ago hasn't stopped appearing.  Almost every night you dreamed of Taehyung’s hand around your throat as he dragged you down into the dark water, the dream had actually continued even longer than the first time.  In the most recent dream everything was the same, expect that you could feel the water filling your lungs, you could feel yourself drowning.  You woke up choking and grabbing at your throat.  You hated yourself for somehow having this subconscious fear of Taehyung due to these dreams.  Yet you’d still flinch away from in the morning’s where the dream had visited you during the night.  You’d shudder slightly when you caught a glimpse of his teeth.  

Namjoon had avoided you ever since your fight.  He had turned in a resignation notice and that was the last you’d heard of him.  It hurt that he felt like you were trying to steal all of the credit, you really weren’t.  You would’ve put his name right next to yours on every research paper.  You had cried when you saw Namjoon’s notice that he was leaving,  Taehyung held you and kissed you on the cheek, telling you everything would be okay.  You did feel some comfort in that, you’d lost your best friend...but gained a new one. 

Then many things happened.  All too fast and none of them good.  About a week ago your office was broken into and you found all of your research had been stolen.  You hated that you suspected Namjoon, but who else could it have been.  Who else had access? 

You suspected that he was going to publish the papers with just his name on them, same as he thought you were going to do to him.  

You had tried calling him only to find that your number had been blocked.  

--------

You and Taehyung were cuddling in your bed, enjoying a day off from work and just hanging around your house. 

Your head was on his chest and your arms wrapped tightly around him.  You felt him sigh heavily.  

“Hey what's wrong” you wondered.

He simply sighed again.  

“Tell me or I’ll tickle you” you chuckled. 

Taehyung avoided meeting your eyes as he spoke, a small frown on his lips.  “Miss home” 

“Oh” you frowned

“Love here with you.  But, Miss home.  Miss water.” he sighed again. 

You didn’t know what to say, and simply nuzzled your head against him.  He brought an arm around your shoulders pulling you in tightly and kissing you on the top of your head. 

Suddenly your phone was beeping wildey.  You groaned and rolled over to your nightstand table picking it up. 

Text from Jungkook: Call me. 

Text from Jungkook: Y/n????

Test from Jungkook: Y/N CALL NOW

You were completely confused at what might be so urgent.  You clicked the button to return his many calls that he’d also tried. 

“Y/n oh my god” Jungkook was frantically gasping.

“What the hell Kook are you okay?” 

“Have you seen the news?” 

Your body froze and you got extremely nervous.  What news? What could possibly have happened. 

“Y/n everyone been lying to us.  Jin lied to us, The government lied to us.  Taehyung has been lying to you” Jungkook was shakily gasping out. 

You spun around to Taehyung who was glaring at your phone, he seemed to have overheard that last part and his jaw was clenched tightly.  

“W-what do you mean?” You stammered.  

“Y/n, Off phone now.” Taehyung growled. “Please” 

Your eyes widened at how aggressive Taehyung seemed to be getting.  

“Jungkook just tell me what happened!” 

Taehyung lunged forward and grabbed your phone out of your hand, breaking it in half with ease and tossing it across the room. 

“No.” he spoke with a grim quietness. 

You scrambled out of bed running to the other side of the room away from Taehyung, your heart beating fast and your stomach filling with a sickening feeling. 

“Taehyung what the hell!” you yelled “What did Jungkook mean?” 

Taehyung was shaking his head and running his fingers through his hair. 

“Y/n.  Not what it seems.  Please.  Didn’t want wrong idea.  Please” he was starting to tear up.  “Hear from me not from him” his voice shook as he spoke. 

“Hear what from you!” you spoke through gritted teeth. 

“y/n…” he whispered, 

Suddenly there was a loud crash, and you heard the door to your house being opened and footsteps running towards your room.  The door flung open wide and a frantic Namjoon stood in the entrance now. 

“Y/n! Thank god you’re okay.  I thought maybe he’d already taken you to the ship.” he was gasping. 

“What the actual fuck is happening?” you screamed.  

Taehyung was now standing and walking towards Namjoon, his body shaking with rage. 

“Step back!” Namjoon screamed holding an arm out to Taehyung, your stomach dropped when you saw what was clutched in his hand.  A gun, just like the one that Jin had on the ship. 

Taehyung snarled and hissed animalistically at Namjoon, but backed up a few steps.  His eyes flicking over to you. 

“Y/n please.  Love you y/n.  Promise” Taehyung was whimpering.  “Trust.” 

“We have to go y/n” Namjoon spoke urgently pulling on your arm, still holding the gun out in warning at Taehyung.  

You didn’t want to leave him though, you wanted to hear Taehyung explain himself.  You wanted him to make this awful sinking feeling go away.  You needed the man you loved…

Yet Namjoon was pulling you away from him and out of the house, then into his car.  Speeding away from your house,  you could see Taehyung running out of your home, his gaze following the car as you drove away, your eyes meeting.  You could see him screaming something out at you.

The sight outside was shocking, you now realize why Jungkook was asking you if you’d seen the news. 

The sky was scattered with ships that looked so familiar...they all looked identical to your one of a kind shuttle you’d taken to Neptune! 

“Namjoon, what is happening?” 

Namjoon didn’t tear his eyes away from the road, but he answered you in a very serious tone. 

“Taehyung. This whole time he’s been playing you.  His people wanted the plans on how you’d built the ship they’d seen and that's why they sent him with us.  I’m assuming, once he’d tested out his theory that he could become just like us out of water he radioed that down to all of them too.  Now they are here.  And they aren’t being friendly.” 

Your jaw dropped, you didn’t understand.  Taehyung had been stealing your plans for the ship the whole time? And how did Namjoon know all of this? Was it Taehyung that had broken into your lab?

“And Taehyung isn’t the only one that’s been playing you.  Our own fucking government was.  They knew that they existed.  It was never a question.  They just hid it from the rest of society.  It turns out each of our ruling powers had a similar idea.  Neptune has been wanting to colonize on our moons, take them over.  And our government wanted you to go down there and scope it out because they were thinking the same thing.  Thats why Jin was there.  And that's probably why he left the ship right away when we had arrived at their city.  That's how my suspicions started, why would the government send a man with a gun like that unless they already had an idea.  And the way Taehyung was so willing to be handed over and didn’t even seem to be worried.  I just couldn’t get it off my mind that something was up.”  He shook his head. 

“B-but...Taehyung loves me” you stuttered

“Y/n I’m sorry, but he doesn’t love you.  Hes been faking everything just to steal your research. They are literally here to wipe us all out and we need to get the fuck off of this planet before that happens” His hands shook on the steering wheel. 

“I can’t...I don’t want to leave him.  He may not love me.  But...I love him” You started to sob uncontrollably. 

“You’ll get over it” Namjoon scoffed, pulling into the hanger where your ship that you had taken to Neptune still sat. 

“I got Hoseok and Jungkook here since they are familiar with this ship, and I made the government promise to get our families on the evacuation ships”

This was all happening so fast.  Did Triton really not stand a chance against Taehyung’s people?  Your mind flashed to the dream you’d been having and you felt that you might throw up.  Your mind had been trying to tell you something was off this whole time.  You were too infatuated with the hypnotizingly handsome merman you’d now fallen in love with to see the truth, you’d fed him enough information to destroy your entire civilization. 

You quickly boarded your ship.  Hoseok and Jungkook were already inside as Namjoon had mentioned.  

You sat in silence, still in shock over everything that was happening as the ship took off. 

“So where are we going” you muttered, turning to Namjoon. 

“I know this sounds bad, but we are actually going down to Neptune...It’s big enough that we can hide out in this ship for now until the president issues out a notice that our people have found another planet or place to live... all the ships going out are scattering.” He sighed

“I-I’m so sorry Namjoon.  Why didn’t you tell me sooner that you thought something was up.  I could’ve stopped telling him things.  Been more careful around him” you frowned “Not fallen in love with him” you spoke in a whisper. 

“I’m sorry y/n.  It wasn’t the right call.  I just felt like it was safer if I didn’t say anything.  But I was wrong” he shook his head.  

In a few days your ship was nearing Neptune,  the four of you had mostly slept the entire trip, trying to  not look out and back on your moons.  You’d caught a glimpse of what was happening and you couldn’t help but scream out as you saw the once gray surface of your home lit up red with explosions and flames.  You hoped and prayed that your family and everyone else who had lived there had been fast enough to the evacuation ships.

“Landing! Get buckled” Hoseok yelled out over the intercom.  You did as you were told shakily buckling yourself into your seat. 

Once you hit the water, you just stayed still for a while. You all did.  Probably sharing the same silent thought.  What now?

Your questions were answered when suddenly a door that led to a storage room creaked open. 

“Put your fucking hands in the air and don’t come any closer!” Namjoon shouted out.  His gun he had brought with him now raised for a second time. 

Your breath caught in your throat.  And you knew you shouldn’t feel any happiness at the sight of this stow away.  But you couldn’t help it.  

“Tae-Taehyung” you whimpered.  

Taehyung looked like he hadn’t slept in days, his blue hair messy and bags under his eyes.  

“Please.  Want explain” He choked out, stepping forward towards you. 

“I said don’t move!” Namjoon boomed narrowing in on Taehyung with his gun.

“No! Please!” you ran directly in front of the gun with your hands out. 

Namjoon let out a frustrated growl “Y/n…” 

“I want to hear what he has to say…” you cried. 

The room fell silent, and all eyes locked on to Taehyung.  Namjoon nodded reluctantly for Taehyung to explain himself, lowering his gun, but staying on alert. 

“Your people.  Government.  The date was set.  Destroy date.  I Hacked files and saw.  You came and took pictures.  The last pictures of my people.  Government wanted kill us all.  Date was set” he muttered looking down at the floor. “I wanted...save my people….I wanted also save you” he looked to you with sad eyes “Wouldn’t have let you hurt.  Would’ve got you away!” 

You wanted to believe him so badly.  You wanted to hug him and kiss him, and share more cuddles on your bed at home like you had gotten so used to.  But now you had no home, and it was because of him.  Yet, if what he said was true, his people were only returning the favor in advance for what was about to happen on their planet.  

“Y/n.  Something about four…” He pointed to you, then to Namjoon, Hoseok and Jungkook, “You dream of water all your life.  Want to see Neptune.  Want to explore.” Taehyung turned to Jungkook “Pictures of Neptune so beautiful. And You” he pointed to Hoseok, “Knew the water well, fly ship in water, no one has ever done yes?” 

Hoseok nodded, none of you understanding where he was going with this. Taehyung turned to Namjoon. 

“Why Neptune?  Why here now?  Whole galaxy.  Yet here.” he asked as if he already knew the answer.  Then Taehyung turned to you.  

“Trust?” he muttered, holding out his arms wide.  

You had no idea why, but you did trust him.  His dark eyes had done nothing but lie to you, yet all you wanted to do was keep believing in them. 

You nodded and ran to his arms.  He embraced you in a giant bear hug, twirling you around. 

You smiled as he kissed you on your head. 

“Go water now” He whispered in your ear. 

“You’re leaving?” 

“No.  Two” he pointed to you and then to him. 

“I can’t, remember, we can’t breath under water” 

“Theory.” he stated. 

“Fact?” you raised an eyebrow.  “Humans die  underwater if they don’t get enough air.” 

Taehyung groaned  “Trust,” he grumbled. 

Despite the rest of your crew pleading for you to stop, you followed Taehyung out a hatch that led to the roof of the ship.  You now stood on top, sunlight shining down on Taehyung’s glowing skin.  He grinned at you as the two of you looked over the vast un ending water laid out in front of you. 

“Jump?” Taehyung asked, holding out his hand to you. 

You sighed, feeling slightly uneasy about whatever this was.  But, still, you put your hand in his and let him hold on tight to you. 

“Trust…” you muttered under your breath, taking a deep breath in as the two of you did a running jump off of the top of your ship and into the water. 

Taehyung instantly changed back into his iridescent mermaid form, his tail flowing elegantly in the water.  You pointed for him to swim with you back up to the surface, you already felt yourself craving a breath. 

He smirked and shook his head.  You did not like where this was going. 

Instantly after you had a thought of swimming back to the surface even though he’d said no, he was holding you tightly, and dragging you down, down, down. 

Everything was so dark, and your lungs felt like they might explode.  Your dream came into your mind again.  Though this time his hands weren’t on your throat they were holding you around your waist, holding you under.  You beat him with your fists hoping to free yourself from him.  But you knew, even if you were to be released, he’d dragged you too far down for you to make it up in time. 

This was it.  

It was over.  

Your fight or flight instinct failing, as there was no way to save yourself anymore.  You gave up.  

Taehyung pulled back from you as you started to go dizzy and limp.  He spoke something you couldn’t hear...as if it were another language...Like in your dream.  

He planted a soft kiss on your lips.  Far too loving and delicate for someone that was murdering you.  

Yet somehow, you were glad.  

You had loved him so much.  

You were only sad that now you’d never see him again. 

As everything faded away and your eyes closed, you felt your body try to take in a breath.  Only to have your lungs fill with water.  

Then complete darkness, complete nothingness. 

-------------------------------------------------

Namjoon, Hoseok and Jungkook ran to the top of the ship.  Looking down into the water. 

“She hasn’t come back up yet...it’s been 10 minutes” Jungkook cried out. 

Namjoon shook his head, tears burning his eyes as he clenched his fists. 

“I shouldn’t have let her go with him.  I can’t believe I let him…” his voice cracked. 

Suddenly the water broke.  A wet mess of blue hair was popping up from the water. 

Taehyung….

As soon as he was within earshot Namjoon screamed out. 

“Where is she!?” 

“Come see” Taehyung grinned with a sing song voice. “Take you to her...Follow?” he said cutely. 

“Fuck.” Hoseok whispered.  “This is bad.  She's not with him.  He killed her” he growled. 

Jungkook shook his head “No, no NO! This can’t be happening. Y/n…” he cried. 

Namjoon glared down at the man who was at the edge of the ship now, smiling up at the three of them, his blue tail peaking out ever so slightly from the water. 

“Why shouldn’t I just shoot you right now” he  pulled the gun up and aimed it directly to the forehead of the blue haired merman who seemed unphased by the threat. 

“Want see her yes?” he asked cheerfully.  “Trust” he smiled mischievously, motioning for Namjoon to come into the water with him.  Namjoon was sure it was a lie, it was a trick.  But, he even if it was in death, he wanted to see y/n again. 

“I’m sorry guys.” Namjoon whispered, tossing the gun aside on the top of the ship and diving down into the water next to the grinning merman.  

-----------------------------------

Your eyes fluttered open, there was a weird feeling of weightlessness around you.  Everything surrounding you was colorful,  you definitely weren’t back on Triton.  Which means there's no way all of this had just been a dream.  

You were laying on a stone bed in an odd room, the walls were decorated with shimmering shells and glass. 

In your confusion you went to stand up and go investigate your surroundings.  Yet something stopped you. 

You couldn’t move your feet.  

Well, something moved.  But it wasn’t feet.  You looked down and screamed out loudly. 

Where legs used to be was now a glittering silver scaled tail, resembling the one that Taehyung had, only differing in color. 

At your screams Taehyung quickly swam into the room. 

“Y/n.  Awake!” his eyes widened. 

You jumped and backed away from him, closer to the wall. 

“Taehyung what the fuck is happening.  I-I thought…” you thought he had killed you.  It was the last thing that you can remember. 

“Never.” he shook his head. “Y/n.  Never hurt you” he held out his hand to you.  “Learn? Swim?” 

You nervously swam towards him, it wasn’t elegant and graceful like how he always swam, but you got to him. 

He pulled you into a loving embrace, petting the top of your head as he held you to his soft and warm chest. 

“y/n is awake?” A voice rang out.  

You broke yourself away from Taehyung's arms to find where that familiar voice was coming from.  

Namjoon swam over to you.  Like you, he was missing legs, and his were replaced by a long green tail.  

“This is crazy isn’t it?” his eyes widened.  “I still can’t quite believe it.  But I’m loving it” he swam up and did a backwards flip.  “It’s kinda like flying.  Hoseok And Jungkook are somewhere around here ” he looked around searching for your other companions.

Taehyung chuckled putting an arm around your shoulders. 

“What is going on here?” 

Namjoon swam to face you and Taehyung. 

“Y/n.  The reason Mermaids speak our language.  The reason both our people knew about each other” he paused collecting his excitement.  “They all just explained this to me, so Taehyung, let me know if I’m leaving anything out.  Everyone up on the moons was originally from here on Neptune.  A long long time ago, the mer people learned that they could walk on dry land, but there was no dry land, so they set out to see if there was any where that they could.  They had made it to the moons but a cruel leader at the time destroyed all of the ships and all records of how to get back home.  The knowledge of the merpeople was passed down through stories, until a journal was found not too long ago of a scientist that had built the ships that could go back and forth between the worlds. It was turned into the government and that’s when they started plotting to wipe them out, and figure out a way to colonize.   I had no idea but It was actually one of the books that were given to me by the government for research help while I was building the ship.  They were going to use us and our research to kill everyone here” he finally stopped for a moment after his long speech “did I get everything?” He turned to Taehyung, who nodded.

“Not all moon people can turn back.  But, More than realize though.  Can tell” he pointed to himself “always drawn to water.  Always need learn, explore, color, need more…” he informed you.

So he knew,  he knew the whole time what all of you were.  

“And we can stay here with you?” You whispered, it all still felt like a dream.

Taehyung smiles and kissed your cheek. 

“Yes” he whispered “please stay” 

[salty-dracon]

Some thoughts on The Caligula Effect 2

So I joke about this game getting a second remake to my friends online and the next moment I learn THIS was announced during the Japanese Nintendo Direct. Let me spill out my thoughts to spark discussion as well as provide a record to myself if this game actually does get localized.

Everything is under the cut!

My thoughts on Overdose were that it has a fantastic world... and that’s it. Out of the game’s cast, there were maybe four characters I liked, and the rest had moments that made me lose all sympathy for them. I recall it was common for some Let’s Players to like the villains better than the protagonists, and I’d agree on that front. I actually think the anime is the best iteration of this game’s story, changing up the formula enough to provide a really solid characterization arc to everyone. But Overdose suffers from poor writing issues (killing Eiji offscreen in the best ending was one of the worst decisions they made), rough handling of certain topics, boring and monotonous dungeons, and 500 social links you’re never going to do. I’m incredibly critical of this game, and I’d never recommend it to someone without a LOT of disclaimers, but somehow I still love it.

Already this game looks CRAZY good visually. It doesn’t look like a reskinned Vita game anymore, with something a little more reminiscent of say, the Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth games. That’s not to say that the game doesn’t still implement its fantastic character art, which still show up next to the speech bubbles. (At least the models have moving jaws. That’s important.)

Here’s to really hoping this game won’t be another Caligula 1 reskin, because uh... the game is about a protagonist who realizes that the world is a virtual one created by a Vocaloid who won’t let anyone out and joins up with a group of teenagers who also want to get out despite the fact that their real world lives were horrible so that they can set things right and they call themselves the Go-Home club (and also a Vocaloid gives them weapons made out of black stuff) but the people that are stopping them are basically the servants and guardians of the Vocaloid keeping them trapped in, who also happen to be humans who can’t return to the real world because their real world lives were so horrible, and so they have to fight because the Vocaloid won’t let them out otherwise. I mean, of course it won’t be a reskin, but I’m surprised at just how much of the original story they kept.

As for things they absolutely did NOT keep, DAMN this game looks dark! I was once remarking to a friend about how Caligula’s story would appeal better to me specifically if they’d gone with a religious pressure rather than idol stan theme, and they appear to have really pulled through with that religious pressure. I just realized, while writing this, that the image I showed off above actually has an image of an angel in the stained glass window being worshiped by fans with glow sticks. Furthermore, there’s a gothic cathedral-like altar, a halo behind Regret’s head, and this whole exchange looks like it takes place in a church. While I’m not religious myself, I can talk a lot about church architecture (see: my Fire Force livetweet) and I’m interested to see how this game handles it.

Not only that, most of the character designs seem darker and very different from the original game’s. Take a look at this game’s idol goddess:

Is μ going through an emo phase? I wouldn’t blame her lol. I think she still has a fantastic design that is in equal parts dreary and beautiful, while perfectly matching the color scheme of the new game.

And what a color scheme it is! The world of Caligula 1 had a gorgeous white, black, pink, brown, and gray color scheme framing bold pops of color in the form of flowers. Caligula 2 changes things up by making black the primary color framing everything else. The pops of color are so much bolder, too, from Noto’s bright yellow sweatshirt to basically everything χ is wearing. Do these changes reflect the story’s potential darker tone too? Or are they representative of something else?

We don’t know too much about the characters, but Caligula 2 looks like it’s giving them different weapons. It looks like the protagonists wield double knives instead of double shotguns. As for the other weapons, I see shortswords, katanas, chains, pistols (much smaller than Shogo’s), canes, and Qiyana’s ohmlatl from League of Legends. Definitely a shift from the original game’s weapons. I wonder if they’ll make a comeback? That giant gun was unique to say the least.

The Obbligato (I think?) are this game’s Ostinato Musicians. Italian for “obliged”, they are the ones who defend Regret from any threats. The one shown off most in the trailer is this guy who looks like the 1010 dudes from No Straight Roads. Man, he really looks like Shadow Knife in that image up there...

Also we get a, um, clown astronaut and a crazy high school yandere. Just to name a few. Definitely not the first time I’ve beat up a clown in a video game. Pretty unique as far as villains go, though. I hope this game has its own villain route, where you learn more about them. I’d really like that.

Social links! Looks like you rank up social links the same way you do in the original game. Do you want to make this character spill out all their trauma? Are you SURE about that, despite there being no negative consequences to you, the player? Awesome. Get ready to be sad.

The battle system is, from what I’ve read, similar, but not the same, as the battle system in Overdose. I’m not going to give too many details on that. They still seem to be time-based with combo chains, but they’re pretty vague. Looks like you still get to unleash crazy special attacks against your enemies. And they in turn can unleash crazy special attacks against you.

I absolutely want to see a. better characters and b. better overall writing. In my opinion these were the two weakest points of Caligula 1. Despite the protagonists’ tragedies, some of the little things they did made me sort of hate them. I did not like how everyone in the original Go-Home Club used Kotaro (who you learn is FOURTEEN!) as a verbal punching bag despite him being one of the kindest characters in the club. As for better overall writing, I stated before that I preferred the anime’s interpretation of events, because I thought they were in a better order overall. Besides killing Eiji offscreen, I hated how they wrote μ to be such a monumentally stupid character (I often point to Persona 5 Royal on how to write a villain like her well) and their, in my opinion, poor handling of certain topics like fatphobia. And though the character episodes sort of redeem them, it’s like... not really? The way I described it to a friend was that while the moral of Caligula 1′s story may have been “We live in a society and everyone’s dealing with their own hardships, but you can’t run away from them forever and you can at least be sympathetic to those facing them”, the character interactions end up dumbing it down to “We live in a society”.

Also an anime adaptation would be really sick. The anime just had so much better writing.

As for what I’m really curious about:

1. Who is Regret and how is she related to μ and Aria? We already know she’s a Virtuadoll like them, but if I recall correctly μ and Aria had some more concreteness to their backstories. Specifically, the human characters remember them existing as vocal synthesizer programs before they became the rules of Mobius. Regret’s backstory is that she just kind of showed up one day. Does she have different origins from μ and Aria? By the same merit, who is χ and how is she related to Regret, μ, and Aria? We know that χ opposes Regret and gives the Go-Home club the power to fight back against her, kind of like what Aria did in Caligula 1, but was she a co-creator of Redo like Aria was, or was her role completely different? The fact that she isn’t a little sparkle like Aria was (as a result of losing all of her power) indicates that their roles might be a little different.

2. What relationship does Redo have to Mobius? We know Mobius was created because Aria and μ wanted a place for humans to live without the sorrows they experienced in the real world. However, eventually μ was manipulated by everyone’s negative emotions and Thorn’s actions. This caused her to prevent anyone from leaving, and also the plot of the first game. Is Redo a second, improved iteration of Mobius, or a completely new virtual space? Were the goals behind its creation the same as in the first game? Or was there another force at work? Is Regret trying to copy μ or improve on her work? Or is she doing what μ did independently? I don’t think there’s enough information to predict the answer to this, but from what I’ve seen, there are a lot of similarities between the two worlds, from the high school to the end goal. However, there are some differences in tone. Mobius was a place to escape suffering, while Redo is being marketed as a place to escape regret. Redo also has a more religious bend than the idol theme of the first game.

3. What other links do the first and second games have to each other? People have been theorizing that Marie Mizuguchi/Wicked from the first game may return as Marie Amabuki (I think) in the second due to them having the same VA. There’s obviously the shared artstyle, symbolism, Catharsis Effect, glitchy NPC faces, and general setting. I also suspect that this game takes place after the events of Caligula 1. Not much I can say about this right now, but I wonder how everything joins up. Or if it even matters that they do. I haven’t seen too much on whether or not this game is being marketed as a standalone or a sequel, or if you even need to play Caligula 1 to enjoy Caligula 2.

Conclusion: While the Caligula series isn’t one I’d recommend to everyone, for the way it handles a number of sensitive topics, I will still be checking out Caligula 2 if it comes to the West. Though very little has been revealed thus far, so far I’m interested in the religious iconography used as well as the darker tone and colors presented in the game. As well as the characters, who have more varied and interesting designs including super unique weapons. I’m a bit disappointed that the plot, as it has been revealed, is an exact copy of Caligula 1′s plot, right down to the names of the protagonists’ faction. I was hoping for a bigger evolution to the story, but considering so little has been revealed in the first place, this may be a bit of a preemptive judgement.

That’s it. I hope you enjoyed my discussion of what I’ve learned so far.

[chilling-seavey]

Anything But Mine (d.s.) - Chapter Eleven

A/N my entire dorm room smells like cleaning supplies and fresh spring air as I have been scrubbing all day with the window open in preparation for my two week hibernation. Hope you all are staying healthy and away from triggered stans ;)

Thursday, October 31st, 2019

“Look out! Here comes the fiercest, most ferocious animal in the world!”

Daniel came down the stairs and into the living room, carrying Clementine in his arms. She was dressed in a giraffe costume, little freckles drawn on her chubby cheeks, and a huge smile plastered on her face. Daniel had matching drawn on freckles on his cheeks. The room ‘awe’d out loud.

“Say ‘rawr’.” Daniel whispered to her.

The ten month old let out a tiny ‘rawr’. The room offered her a gasp, making her smile proudly. Daniel set her on the carpet so Florence could take her picture.

“Giraffes don’t say rawr.” Corbyn piped up.

“They don’t say anything, actually.” Daniel rolled his eyes. “What am I supposed to tell the kid? ‘Say nothing’!”

“She’s good at that.” Zach nodded.

“I think this is the cutest giraffe I have ever seen in my entire life.” Corbyn said, “Even surpassing Daniel.”

“Wow.” Daniel pouted.

“I’m very glad I trusted you to pick out her first Halloween costume.” Florence said quietly as she sat back down on the couch, plenty of pictures in her phone to send to Callum.

“I told you I knew what I was doing!” Daniel teased, picking the baby back up.

Florence put on a soft smile, keeping her eyes on her best friend and daughter. Only a few nights before, someone who meant so much to her virtually walked out of her life. She hoped Grayson would come back to her eventually, she felt like a piece of her heart was missing and he had only been gone for three days. Florence spent the day of the 31st at the boys’ house and into the late afternoon when she would take Clementine trick or treating. Aidan, Jonah, Corbyn, and Jack were going to a party that night down the street, leaving Daniel and Zach to entertain their all too familiar guests.

“Finally done.” Aidan said as he and Jonah came downstairs as well. Aidan had dressed up as a zombie, ripped clothes that he had thrifted and green and brown paint smeared over his face. Jonah was a cop, his black button up mostly undone and tucked into his black skinny jeans. The handcuffs that hung off his belt made the room howl and clap.

“Shut up.” Jonah laughed.

“Sexiest cop I’ve seen.” Zach called out.

“Clementine looks so cute!” Jonah beamed, leaning in to gently poke her cheek.

“Get - your - dirty - hands - away from her.” Daniel said quietly, covering the baby’s head with his hand and turning away.

“Dirty hands?!” Jonah frowned.

“You know what I mean.” Daniel eyed the open button up shirt.

“Let’s get a move on.” Corbyn said, jumping up from the couch and grabbed his helmet from the ground.

“Why are you still 7 years old with your damn astronaut costume?” Jack grumbled, giving his friend a shove towards the door.

“At least I actually dressed up.” Corbyn retorted.

“I did too!” Jack protested, gesturing to his ripped jeans, beanie, sunglasses, and skateboard. “I’m a skater boy!”

“You look exactly the same as you always do. Just shirtless.” Corbyn frowned before walking for the door.

“There’s no pleasing anyone.” Jack grumbled, stopping to kiss Clementine’s cheek on the way after his friends. The oldest few left with loud goodbyes.

“I hate being a literal child.” Zach frowned, his voice muffled slightly behind the fake vampire teeth he wore, as he leaned his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. “Now I’m stuck with the baby gang all night.”

“You could have gone. No one there is going to ID you.” Daniel said. 

“Yeah until my mother finds out. Then I’ll be dead. I’d rather be sober than dead.” Zach grumbled.

“Suit yourself.” Daniel shrugged.

“You can have Clementine’s candy.” Florence said.

Zach perked up, “Really?!”

“Hey! I was going to have the candy.” Daniel frowned.

“You shush.” Florence directed to her best friend. “Zach’s the other baby here so he gets first dibs.”

“Hey!” Zach frowned. Florence chuckled.

“We should head out!” Daniel said, rocking Clementine dramatically in his arms. “Before the baby falls asleep.”

“Yeah. I don’t want to have to carry him to bed.” Florence nudged Zach before standing up.

“You guys are so mean.” Zach grumbled before following them to the door.

The group walked down the street in the direction away from the frat houses. A few streets down, more young children and their parents were out trick or treating in the setting sun of the Toronto suburbs. Clementine, from her spot in Daniel’s arms, peered around the bustling street with her mouth open wide, one arm draped lazily over his shoulder.

“Where should we start?” Daniel asked, coming to a stop.

“There!” Zach pointed to a house on their left. A bunch of children were at the door and they could see and older lady dropping pieces of candy in their bags. The children rushed back down the steps as Daniel led their tiny group to the door. The old lady smiled at them.

“Say ‘trick or treat’!” Daniel said to the baby. At merely ten months old, Clementine only curled shyly into him.

“Well aren’t you the cutest giraffe in the city?” the lady chuckled. “How old is she?”

“Ten months.” Florence answered proudly from beside them.

“A first Halloween calls for lots of candy.” The old lady said, dropping a few pieces in the bag that Florence held. “Any for the little boy too?” she asked.

It took Zach a second to realize she was talking to him. He stood at only 5’6” next to his friends’ 5’11”. Daniel bit back a smile at Zach’s appalled face.

A nervous “N-No!” was all he got out.

Once they were back on the street, Daniel burst out laughing, Florence smiling next to him.

“All of you, shut up.” Zach grumbled.

They continued down the street, stopping at a few more houses. Florence finally took Clementine for a little while, after convincing Daniel that his arms would give out if he didn’t pass her over. A few adults complimented Daniel on his matching face paint to the baby, making the shy boy blush and thank them.

After thirty minutes, Zach claimed the baby, carrying her up to the next house excitedly.

“He could be her big brother.” Daniel snorted as the two of them waited on the street.

“Yeah, if I gave birth to him at 2 years old.” Florence rolled her eyes.

“I mean...whatever.” Daniel chuckled, sliding his hands in his pockets. Zach cut across the lawn to the next house, Clementine’s little giraffe hood bouncing on her head. Florence linked her arm through Daniel’s as they walked on together.

“When are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?” he questioned.

“What do you mean?” Florence asked.

“Oh, come on.” Daniel laughed. “Any other day you would kill yourself laughing by an old lady calling Zach a little boy. You barely smiled.”

“How are you so good at reading people?” Florence chuckled.

“I just know you well.” Daniel shrugged. “So what’s up?”

Florence looked over at Zach standing at the next house with Clementine in his arms. The gentleman at the door was fawning over the baby.

“I don’t know where to start.” Florence mumbled.

“Try it.” Daniel shrugged.

“I met this guy, Emilio, the other day. He’s Callum’s new boyfriend’s twin brother.”

Daniel repeated the long title to himself and then nodded, encouraging her on, his eyes on the pavement in front of them.

“And we hit it off. I guess, bonding over how much we miss our brothers when they’re in LA.” Florence sighed.

“Ok?” Daniel said slowly.

“And we hit it off. Like, really hit it off.”

“And by that you mean you slept with him.” Daniel stated plainly.

“Fuck, don’t say that.” Florence held her face in her hands. Daniel only frowned at her as they stopped walking. “I mean, yeah, I did, but I don’t...I feel like shit about it now.”

“You regret it?” Daniel asked.

“No.” Florence said. “God, no. He’s fucking amazing.”

Daniel tried to smile but it didn’t show.

“Grayson found out though. Monday night. He thought that we were dating this whole time but I thought we weren’t.”

“I thought you were too.”

“Fuck.” Florence whined, running a hand through her hair. “I don’t know, I just messed everything up. Now Gray isn’t speaking to me.”

“Why didn’t you think you and Grayson were dating?”

“We never talked about it; about titling anything. I’m still getting over Matt and trying to figure out who I am and trying to raise a baby. I didn’t want the ties to a relationship. I don’t know. I wanted experiences. My first and only relationship left me pregnant. I just...fuck, I don’t know. I wish I could just relive so much and change so much.”

Daniel took her in his arms, holding her warmly before saying, “I know it feels like the end of the world but it’s not. Everything happens for a reason. Things will work out. Grayson is just hurt and it was all just some miscommunication. It’ll smooth over.”

“Do you hate me?”

Before anything else could be said, Zach came trudging down the street, Clementine giggling in one arm and the arm holding the bag of candy wrapped around her back.

“This kid is heavy.” Zach wheezed, pushing the baby towards Daniel who scooped her up.

“Surprised you lasted that long with these noodle arms.” Daniel patted his best friend’s bicep, Clementine curled in his other arm.

“Speak for yourself. You’re literally a walking breadstick.” Zach rolled his eyes.

“Do you think we’re done for tonight?” Florence asked. “I’m tired.”

“Tired?! It’s barely 8:30.” Zach gaped.

“Look at her.” Daniel said, gesturing to the baby who was falling asleep on his shoulder.

“I wanted more candy.” Zach frowned pathetically, looking into the open bag in his hands.

“Poor little baby.” Florence draped her arm around his shoulders and they all headed back towards their house. Zach opened a chocolate bar on the way and he and Florence shared it. It wasn’t long before they were back at the house, Daniel flicking the lights on as they entered.

“I will never understand how you don’t like chocolate.” Zach said loudly through a mouthful.

“Can you shut up?” Daniel whispered sharply, gesturing to the sleeping baby.

“Sorry.” Zach sighed. “But honestly, it’s weird.”

“I didn’t ask to be this way.” Daniel grumbled, laying Clementine down gently on the couch. He reached for the diaper bag where her change of pyjamas was.

“I got it, Dani.” Florence whispered. He stood back and let her change the baby into her pyjamas. Zach sat across the room, eating candy, and scrolling through his phone.

“Are you staying over?” Zach asked Florence briefly looking up over the top of his cell phone.

“Uhm-“ Florence looked to Daniel.

“No. I’m driving her home.” Daniel answered for her.

Florence couldn’t help but feel that simple sentence as a stab to her heart. More often than not, Daniel had her stay over; now he seemed to be getting rid of her. She figured it was because of what she told him on their walk. Did he think less of her now?

The ride back to her apartment was filled with awkward silence. Daniel didn’t even turn any music like he normally would. Florence found herself biting her lip nervously until it tingled, staring intently at the passing city lights. Once in the parking garage, the two didn’t move for a moment too long.

“I’ll see you on the weekend?” Florence asked.

“No, I’m at the studio all weekend.” Daniel said.

“Oh. Will I get to hear anything you produced yet?”

“Possibly.” Daniel shrugged, not looking at her. Silence fell over them again.

“Ok. I better go.” Florence sighed, leaning over to hug him awkwardly before getting out of the car. She grabbed sleeping Clementine and her things and waved as Daniel drove off, leaving her, yet again, standing alone in the parking garage.

[eldritchsurveys]

977.

How old are you? >> 33.

Do you live in North America? >> Yes.

Do you love dogs? >> I do love dogs. I teeter on the fence constantly about whether I would actually want to take custody of one or not, though. What I truly want is a trained support dog -- not a full service dog, because I don’t need that level of assistance, but I guess “emotional support animal” is the term I’m looking for even though that’s gotten a bit fraught lately. Once I saw a video (which was weird to watch because it felt a bit voyeuristic, but hey) where a person was having a meltdown and the dog came and prevented them from harming themselves, and I think I could greatly benefit from that as opposed to having to hope that Can Calah (who has no real power over the body 99.8% of the time) can stop me.

Were you finished childhood and teens when Harry Potter movies came out? >> The first movie came out in 2001, which means I was 14 at the time.

Did you keep all your VHS tapes? >> I never had any.

Do you think Jack Nicholson is a good actor? >> I don’t have an opinion.

Have you ever watched an episode of “The Honeymooners”? >> I’ve watched a fair bit of it, because of the New Year’s marathons.

Have you ever owned a pair of high-top Converse? >> No, Converse shoes are uncomfortable for me.

Do you have rain boots with a cute pattern on them? >> No, I just have a pair with white polka dots because that was all I could find at the store at that time. I want to get a cute pair at some point but I keep forgetting (and I use them so infrequently that it doesn’t even seem to matter now -- snow boots are far more important here).

Would you rather eat an apple or an orange right now? >> Apple. We’re out of them, though.

Would you rather do a cartwheel on land or a backflip in water? >> I can’t do a backflip, anyway. So, cartwheel by default.

Have you ever performed on stage in front of people? >> Yeah, many times.

Were you kinda scared of the goths in high school? >> I wanted to be the goths. Unfortunately, I had very little control over what I was allowed to wear, do, or listen to, so...

What size is your mattress? (single,twin,double,queen,king) >> Twin.

Do you eat foods from all 4 food groups everyday? >> No.

Would you rather watch a movie in theater or at home? >> Right now, at home 100%. Usually there will be a few movies that I would choose to see in-theater because I want the big-screen experience, and also because I like making An Event out of things sometimes by having to actually go out somewhere to experience them.

Do you prefer brown or white rice? >> I use white rice most often. I’m not sure if brown rice would taste the same in coconut rice (which is the kind of rice I eat most often)... should try it sometime just to see.

Do you like spaghetti? >> Not especially.

What about lasagna? >> It’s all right sometimes. I just don’t eat a lot of pasta, period.

Do you celebrate Christmas? >> Yes.

Is your Thanksgiving celebrated in October too? >> No, this country’s Thanksgiving is in November.

Do you like chocolate bars? >> Not usually.

what about ice cream? >> I don’t dislike ice cream as much as I just never have a taste for it (and I’m particular about flavour).

Have you ever been stung by anything?What was it? >> No.

Do you have GOD-GIVEN(not dyed) natural brown hair too? >> I do have natural brown hair.

Or were you born blonde? >> Not even close.

Have you found a gray hair on your head or body before? >> Yeah, I have several greys. I can’t wait to grow more, it’s my favourite hair colour.

Have you ever had any suspicious moles removed? >> No.

Have you ever been screened for STDs? >> Yeah.

Are all your wisdom teeth pulled? >> No, I still have them all. The dentist suggested getting them pulled because one of them was starting to have an issue of some sort, but like... “starting to have an issue” (and only one of them, besides) isn’t enough motivation for me to get four whole teeth pulled.

Did you have your tonsils taken out? >> No.

Did you have your appendix taken out? >> No.

How many kidneys do you have?(have you donated one?) >> I haven’t donated a kidney.

Would you(to save someone)? >> If it was viable, sure, why not.

If you were dying of starvation, would you eat another human? >> I can’t imagine what it would be like to be starving, so I can’t rightly say what I would do. That sort of extreme survival situation turns you into a whole different person, I can’t speak for myself in that state until I actually know what it’s like. (I have no current moral objections to it, though, so I’m assuming I’d have less trouble eating a person than someone who finds it repugnant in normal circumstances.)

Have you ever found a bug or slug in your salad? >> No.

Do you like Harry Potter? >> I thought it was all right. I liked certain characters and plot concepts, specifically, and mostly ignored the rest of them (including... the main characters, lol). Now I have even less interest in it after watching JKR get radicalised in real time, not gonna lie. (Still reppin’ Slytherin from Malfoy Manor, though! :p)

What about Twilight? >> I never got into that, the first book bored me.

How do you feel about Lord of the rings? >> I think it’s an amazing and intricate and delightful story. But I didn’t read it, lmao. Too much book and far too much exposition in said book for my interests. The movies are what I’m into.

Are you going to see ‘The Hobbit’ when it comes out? >> I saw the whole trilogy. I never did get around to reading the book, but I’ll probably do so eventually (after my reread of Silmarillion, which comes first!).

Do you have a glass that says 'Molson Canadian’ on it? >> I don’t. I have a glass that says “Guinness” on it, though. And my name.

Do you have any collector’s glasses or cups or mugs? >> No.

Would you rather have a white fridge or a black fridge or a stainless steel fridge? >> Black or stainless steel, I’m quite done with white fridges and I never want to see one again.

Do you have a wide foot or a narrow foot or just average? >> I assume my foot is average.

Do you bite your nails when you’re stressed? >> No, I’m a picker.

Do you have to take an allergy pill daily in order to live normally? >> No, I don’t have allergies.

Are you on the birth control pill? >> Yeah. It’s more like the dysphoria control pill, for me.

Or are you trying to get pregnant? >> I would never.

You’d rather wear black sneakers or sneakers in a bright color or pattern? >> Black, because they’d match with everything I have. I’m sometimes tempted to get funky sneakers but the novelty wears off so quickly.

Has anyone ever told you they were attracted to you? >> Sure.

Are you going to drink alcohol tonight? >> Most likely not. Also, I’m a day-drinker, not a night-drinker, because I don’t like things messing with my sleep.

Have you ever heard of the Canadian kids show called “Mr.Dressup”? >> No. But I’m so glad Lane got to take a survey that had Canadian stuff in it instead of being inundated with common USian bullshit for once xD

What about the kids show “Fred Penner’s Place”? >> ---

Did you hate Sesame Street when you were little too? >> I didn’t.

Were you born perfectly healthy or with some(or a lot) of health issues? >> I can’t recall having any health problems whatsoever as a child.

What are those 'said’ health issues? >> ---

Do you collect DVDs? >> No.

Do you download music? >> No.

Or do you still go to stores and buy CDs? >> I haven’t bought a CD in at least a decade.

[survivorparr]

the sun and her moon, pt 3/?

aka, In Which Cathy is a Badass Goddess and Anne Quotes a Vine

Part One | Part Two

**definite tw for verbal/physical harassment on this one, sorry!!**

•

“Anne, I told you, no.”

“But I’m so hungry. Pleeeeease?”

“We haven’t got the time to make a stop.”

“Jaaaane, come on - you don’t even have to stop, just the van slow down and I’ll take my chances on jumping out!”

“Anne Boleyn!!”

“Hold on now, Seymour, I don’t hate that idea...”

Jane used the rear view mirror to shoot a chilling glare at Aragon.

“Anne, you don’t even know your way around this city! There will be no stops made by this van until we reach the venue.”

Anne let out a petulant whimper.

Cathy pulled her headphones out of her ears at last and leaned over Cleves to get a better idea of what was going on.

“What are you all on about then?”

“It’s nothing, don’t-“

“I think I’m going to starve, Cathy. Be a dear and convince Jane to pull over for food, won’t you?”

Anne was pouting, and her big, green-gray eyes had gone wide and sad. Cathy looked at her face, and then down at her watch.

“I do know the area a bit - I could get out with her, find us some food, and make sure she’s at the venue on time...” Cathy suggested.

Anne’s eyes lit up as Jane’s narrowed in suspicion.

“Alright then... I’m trusting you here, Cath. If anything goes wrong, it’s on you now.”

“Hear that, Boleyn? My life in your hands.” Cathy flashed a brilliant grin at Anne. 

Anne didn’t have time to go weak, because Jane abruptly pulled the van over to the side of the street.

“Remember, 11:30 sharp!”

“We’ve got it, Jane.”

The two girls made their ways from their seats, down the aisle, and out the door of the tiny van.

“Right then, are you completely attached to the idea of breakfast?” Cathy asked.

“I wouldn’t say I’m married to it, no... What do you have in mind?” Anne countered.

“Well, I just happen to know of a Nando’s nearby opening soon. What do you think?”

“I think you’re brilliant and I didn’t know I needed chicken wings until just now. Lead on, MacParr,” Anne cried dramatically, pointing a long arm in the absolute wrong direction.

Cathy laughed and shook her head gently. She wrapped her fingers around Anne’s extended arm and repositioned it in the direction in which they should walk. Anne grinned sheepishly. “That’s why you’re in charge, yeah?”

The girls set out down the street side by side, hurrying past storefronts and other pedestrians. The streets were busy, and Cathy linked her arm in Anne’s tightly - to make sure she won’t get lost, of course. Jane would want me to.

After several minutes of weaving through crowds (Anne had never noticed quite how gracefully Cathy moved even when she wasn’t dancing), Cathy yelled “Shortcut” over her shoulder to Anne. A minute later, she pulled Anne into a refreshingly empty back alley. The street was narrow and lined with trash bins. The walls were high, contributing to the overall grim appearance. Anne might’ve felt uneasy if she had been walking here alone, but Cathy knew what she was doing.

Cathy turned the corner and found herself face to face with a man at least a head taller than she was. He was close enough to her face that she could taste the alcohol on his breath. Gin. She stumbled backwards, reaching out a protective arm to pull Anne behind her.

“S-sorry, erm, sir, didn’t mean to bother you,” Cathy stammered.

“Come now, a woman as good-looking as you is surely never a bother... And a matching set? Even better...” The man did nothing to hide his eyes as they roamed over Cathy and Anne. Cathy shuddered as Anne broke free of the arm she’d been using to hold her back.

“Right, well, we’ll just be going then.” She grabbed hold of Cathy’s hand and started to make her way around the man.

“Hold on, don’t I know you?”

“Don’t think so mate. We’re kind of in a hurry, so if you could-“

“Yeah, I do so! You’re that Anne Boleyn chick, the singer from that group! Aren’t I in luck - rumor has it you’re quite the little tart...”

Anne froze on the spot and her blood ran cold.

“Yeah... and this is one of your little ladies in waiting, is it? Well, I’d rather have the whole group of you, but if I have to pick and choose, at least I’ve got me the sluttiest one.”

Under her eyes, Anne’s cheeks burned red with shame, but she found herself unable to speak or move. The man was advancing on her now, he could surely touch her if he really wanted.

Cathy put herself between him and her friend.

“What did you call her? Don’t you even dare take one step closer,” she threatened.

“Ooh, this one’s feisty. I like feisty. I think I’ll let you watch as I have my way with your friend,” he continued, slipping an arm over both of Cathy’s shoulders and pulling her next to him. Anne wanted to scream but she could only watch, paralyzed with terror.

“You will do NO such thing,” Cathy growled. In the same instant, she used her outside hand to firmly pin down the hand resting on her shoulder, and swung her inside arm straight up in the air. She pulled it down hard behind both her and the man, brought it back to her side, and squeezed hard. Finally, she stepped forward and twisted her torso away from where she had his shoulder trapped, eliciting a gruff shout.

“Whoa! Alright, I’m sorry, let me go!”

Cathy stared at the man doubled over in pain. She kicked him in the shins, threw an arm around Anne, and ran as fast as she could.

As soon as they were properly out of the alley, Cathy stopped and steadied Anne. Her eyes had glassed over and her expression still suggested shellshock, but she appeared to be otherwise unharmed.

“Anne?! God, are you alright, please say something, please??” Cathy shook her frantically by the shoulders.

“That... that... that man was at least six feet tall, and you utterly destroyedhimwhatthefuckcathy”

Cathy chuckled in relief and tucked an errant strand of hair back into place behind Anne’s ear. “You’re alright.”

“Well yeah, bloody thanks to you! Woman forgets to tell us she’s a damn WWE fighter, that’s all,” Anne muttered under her breath.

“Anne,” Cathy began, looking at her friend with dark, serious eyes. “I have to ask...”

“I’m fine, Cath, it was awful, but it’s over. Promise,” Anne said earnestly.

“Well that’s great, but I was going to ask if you still wanted to get chicken.”

“Oh... yeah, actually, I think I do”

“Me too.”

•

For the record, she really did seem fine. In the dressing room, as she gnawed on her wings and did her makeup, Anne regaled the others with the tale of Catherine’s extraordinary bravery. Possibly, she even exaggerated a little bit (“Hold on, I did not bodyslam him to the ground”), but the others were just thrilled to see her safe and still so animated.

For her part, Catherine did not mention to the others the way Anne had frozen up in the alley. She thought it was best that that remained between the two of them.

•

Anne danced and sang her way through both shows (and instigated tons of backstage chaos) without any sign that the morning’s events had affected her at all. She laughed and joked all through pizza night with the girls, too.

The only thing that felt any different was the way Cathy sometimes stared a little too long, like she was worried or checking up on her. Anne found herself avoiding her friend’s gaze. It’ll all go back to normal soon, she told herself.

It wasn’t until Anne took her leave and excused herself to bed that she realized just how far from normal things truly were. Lying there in her room, staring up at the ceiling, she couldn’t stop the constant barrage of words circling in her mind - “tart... slut... have my way with you...” She squeezed her eyes tightly shut as another too-shallow inhale caught in her ribcage. Hugging her knees to her chest, she fought back the hot tears she knew were coming.

No. She wouldn’t. She had already let her fear take over once today.

Anne sat up in bed and noticed she’d been sweating. Her damp t shirt was cool against her back. She ran her fingers through her hair, twisting it up into a messy knot of a bun.

Water.

Ruled by her newly realized thirst, Anne crept to her door and peered down the dark hallway. The others would be asleep by now, and she didn’t want to wake them. If she could just make it to the bathroom, she could refill her mug.

She set out down the hallway, pressing her feet ever so carefully into the soft carpet, taking deep breaths to keep her racing heart subdued. Almost there.

Suddenly, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

She turned sharply, putting up both hands in defense. “Do NOT mess with me,” she hissed. “I have the power of God and anime on my side!!”

“Mate, what the hell are you on about?”

Anne’s eyes adjusted.

“Cathy?!?

•

[forehead-enthusiast]

A Buncha Tag Games (and yet not all of them)

tagged by: @eggyukhei mwah

tagging: this is a LOT of games so i’ll only tag @atinyphobe @nsheetee and @veonjun for the SECOND (2nd) game. if they or anybody wants to do any of the other games, absolutely go for it and say i tagged you <3 i’d love to see what you guys say!! (also, tk if you felt like you wanted to answer my questions from the second game i’d be interested to see!)

One:

tell me the first song that made you stan your current fave group and why did your faves attract you so much?

ok SO the song that probably got me into rv 100% (also yes ik this blog is 99% nct but rv is my forever fave no question) was probably ice cream cake!! i had been a casual listener of many groups up until that point and had never really stanned anyone, but icc was so infectious i found myself watching it over and over. i had heard happiness and be natural before but hadn’t really listened too closely, so icc was the song that captured me. after that, dumb dumb only cemented my love for them more, and the red is still one of my favorite kpop albums to date. rv attracted me primarily because of their incredible vocals and their versatility in genres and concepts. i still get so excited wondering what they’ll tackle next!! they’re just soooo unique and have one of, if not the best discographies of any group. i cannot stress enough, I. Love. RV!! also they’re funny and gay so. anyway stream monster once it drops uwu

Two:

rule: answer the ten questions and write your own!

1. what is your favorite song that’s been released during quarantine? ooooo honestly??? probably something off of Sawayama. literally every song bangs so hard i highly recommend that album to anyone!! i can’t pick a favorite off it but who’s gonna save you now is awesome and xs is just,,, chef’s kiss

2. what is your greatest mishap when you tried cooking? (or something you’ve witnessed) one time, while making soup at my late grandmother’s house on her like gas stove, i put a lid on a pot and somehow that led the pot to be engulfed in flames. IN MY DEFENSE i was like 7, and i’m great at cooking/baking now

3. what’s your go-to outfit or article of clothing? oh i love a nice dress. they can be casual or formal, and you look like you put effort into your outfit except i didn’t because i didn’t have to match anything yo!!!! also shorts have trouble fitting me cause i’m a weird body type so dresses tend to be very comfy for me

4. what is your comfort food? am i allowed to say like all food??? eating in itself is comforting,,, that sounds depressing but also i just like eating yummy food. i guess i’d say like my dad’s fried rice?? its my fave and no one makes it like him soooo

5. what singular moment in your life would you like to relive? i couldn’t tell if this meant like, a good moment you want to re-experience or go back in time and redo a moment and fix it. it’s kind of a hard question so i might cop out and go with a bit of a silly answer: i want to relive the hi touch with astro...... i wanna look at rocky’s beautiful eyes and touch moonbin’s hand ok,,,,

6. what is your favorite line and/or character from a movie, show, or book? i got a bunch but a few off the top of my head are genie lo (the epic crush of genie lo), ty lee, suki (atla), klaus, and ben (umbrella academy) 

7. if you could only choose one ice cream flavor and pizza topping/style for the rest of your life, what would it be? ice cream flavor: this very specific one from a local store that is banana ice cream with strawberries and oreo mixed in. it is heaaaavenly. as for pizza topping, i love a breakfast type pizza with an egg on top and like sausage and stuff!!!

8. what is the worst injury you’ve ever had or witnessed? funny enough, i’ve actually gotten badly injured quite a few times, and always on the face!! god hates me. the worst was probably when i hit a metal bench with my face and it took a chunk out of my cheek. i still have the scar! as for “witnessed” i accidentally broke a grown man’s rib once as a child, so i guess that would count.

9. would you rather explore the unknown of space or the bottom of the ocean? oceaaaan!! i answered this in some other game, but i like how mysterious and yet close the ocean is. like proximity wise it’s so near, yet there’s an insane amount we know nothing about. that’s so frightening but so intriguing

10. if you could be any cartoon character, who would you be? my first thought was literally “kirby. eat fast” GOD my followers are gonna think i’m just a glutton and they’re not even gonna be wrong im dying. but uhh idk mulan or smth?

my questions:

what is your go-to feel good movie?

are you the type of person who’s indecisive about buying, or the type to impulse buy once you see something you like?

do you prefer chocolate-y or fruity candy?

what idol do you think is most similar to you? (not your bias necessarily)

do you have any silly dealbreakers? if so, what are they?

what do you do to unwind?

what is a small thing you like to do for people you love? (be it sending memes, remembering their favorite shows, etc)

what’s/who’s your favorite myth/mythological being?

what is a non-typical pet you would want to have?

do you say pronounce data as day-ta or dah-ta?

THREE

rule: bold the statements that apply to you, italicize your aspirations, then tag nine people. 

AIR ༉⋆͙̈

i have small hands / i love the night sky / i watch animals and birds when i pass them by / i drink herbal tea / i wake to see the dawn / the smell of dust is comforting / i’m valued for being wise / i prefer books to music / i meditate / i find joy in learning new truths from the world around me

FIRE ༉⋆͙̈

i don’t have straight hair / i like to wear ripped jeans and overalls / i play an organized sport / i love dogs / i am not afraid of adventure / i love to talk to strangers / i always try new foods / i enjoy road trips / summer is my favorite season / my radio is always playing

WATER ༉⋆͙̈

i wear bracelets on my wrists / i love the bustle of the city / i have more than one set of piercings / i read poetry / i love the sound of a thunderstorm / i want to travel the world / i sleep past midday most days / i love simply lit dinners and fluorescent signs / i rewatch kids shows out of nostalgia / i see emotions in colors not words

EARTH ༉⋆͙̈

i wear glasses or contacts / i enjoy doing the laundry / i am a vegetarian or vegan / i have an excellent sense of time / my humor is very cheerful / i am a valued advisor to my friends / i believe in true love / i love this chill of mountain air / i’m always listening to music / i am highly trusted by the people in my life

AETHER ༉⋆͙̈

i go without makeup in my daily life / i make my own artwork / i keep on track of my tasks and time / i always know true north / i see beauty in everything / i can always smell flowers / i smile at everyone i pass by / i always fear history repeating itself / i have recovered from a mental disorder / i can love unconditionally

FOUR

the ultimate tag: answer whichever ones you want to because there are a lot and then tag a few blogs you’d like to get to know better! 

PERSONAL

name: sarah

nickname: bells

birthday: april 17th

zodiac: aries

nationality: chinese american

languages: english, some spanish, some korean

gender: female

sexuality: baby bi bi bi~

height: 5′10

BLOG STUFF

inspiration for muse: i suppose nct since i write for them the most?? but i feel like sometimes i come up with the idea before i think of a member so sometimes the muse is just my own fantasies oops

meaning behind my url: i made it at a time where loads of idols were getting bangs and honestly i believe most of them look infinitely better without them, thus i was and still am enthusiastic about foreheads.

blog established: like winter of 2018...?? i think

followers: over 2.5k but most deactivated/left during my hiatus lol

FAVORITES

favourite animals: sharks, chickens, snakes, cats, penguins

favourite books: the epic crush of genie lo and then iron will of genie lo, PERIOD

favourite colour: pink and purple!!

favourite fictional characters: lol, again, genie lo, ty lee, suki, klaus, ben, and just a few more: richard and evelyn o’connell (the mummy), dave (dave), michael (the good place)

favourite flower: sunflower

favourite scent: baking chocolate, heating butter, blackberry, wisteria

favourite season: probably spring! i like warmth but not HEAT

RANDOM

average hours of sleep: ugh idek i sleep horribly

cats or dogs: both, but unfortunately i’ve never had either

coffee, tea or hot chocolate: tea but then hot chocolate

current time: 5:29pm

dream trip: go to paris and eat loads of pastries and enjoy the fashions and beauty of the city, and also learn to bake better maybe?

dream job: actress

hobbies: making jewelry, drawing, singing, reading comics

hogwarts house: according to the quizzes, all of them. people who have just met me think slytherin or gryffindor, people who i’m friends with think ravenclaw or hufflepuff, people who know me really well know you can’t box a person into oversimplified archetypes :’) in my assessment of myself, it varies by the day, but i think perhaps gryffindor today?

last movie watched: hot fuzz (a classic)

last song listened to: summer breeze by sf9

no. of blankets you sleep with: like 2

random fact(s): i won lego building competitions as a child, one of my dream roles is anastasia from the musical named after her, i played violin for a very short time, i bake the cakes for all my family and friends’ birthdays, i have strangely strong grip strength

SIX

10 songs i can’t stop listening to:

love me 4 me- rina sawayama

cherry- rina sawayama

in & out- red velvet

crush culture- conan gray

manic- conan gray

the king- conan gray

summer- pentagon

told you now- jeremy jordan (originally sung by sam smith)

fuck this world (interlude)- rina sawayama

someone who loves me- sara bareilles

[vigilantobserver]

My friend asked me to make this for her. I take only half the responsibility.

Warning: I have only watched the 2 first seasons of Tokyo ghoul and it was years ago so please, don’t attack me. Also this fanfic includes people with animal features and behaviors (I pity the person monitoring my search history)

Disclaimer: I do not own Tokyo ghoul or it’s characters. The only thing I do won is this fanfiction.

For those brave enough to read: please enjoy this mess of a fanfic

Mismatched colours

Mismatched. It was the only way that Touka could describe the quiet, white haired boy. You’d think that she was talking about his difference in behaviour when he was a hungry, hunting ghoul compared to when he was being a relatively normal, meek citizen, but that wasn’t quite it.

Sure, the boy was truly not made to be a ghoul and was obviously suffering under his situation. She had a feeling that if he got hit by more tragedies, he would someday lose himself completely.

 But that wasn’t what truly caught her attention. No, what actually made him so mismatched to her was his appearance. And she did not mean him being a one eyed ghoul either. It was his fur.

Kaneki was a hare with deep black ears and tail. The boys ears were big and flopped at the side of his head to lay on his shoulders (only ever standing up when he was in a fight), the white hair contrasting starkly with the deep coloured ears. Normally hybrid’s fur either matched their hair colour perfectly or there was at least some of their hair colour on their extra body parts, whether in form of stripes, intricate patterns or dots. She herself was an example of having multiple colours. Her own smaller, constantly perked up, vigilant ears where a purple at the roots that faded into the purest white.

It was an unusual sight to see, but for some reason it both fit the boy and at the same time didn’t at all. One the one hand, some people tend to look at him weird. Confused by his fur they keep their distance, like he was some diseased person. Something wrong in the world.

On the other hand, the mismatched fur was aesthetically pleasing, even almost alluring.  The strange and unique colouring bought him a lot of, most of the time unwanted, attention from women and men alike (the eyepatch really did not help here).

The perfect example for this where a group of girls giggling in one corner of the café. A Canary and a blue-Russian cat where teasing the ferret of the group, urging the red faced girl to go talk to Kaneki. It quite honestly raised her hackles. Couldn’t they see that he did not want to be bothered?

She was about ready to put a claim on him herself, to release her pheromones and invite him to chase, to dance, just so that people would finally leave the poor teen be. A bit of her scent would be enough to keep most people away. And the more persistent ones could answer to her. She wasn’t afraid to fight for her claim. Not that she truly wanted him as a mate, or anything…

Ok, that’s a lie, she kind of actually did. She just couldn’t help but be protective of him. She couldn’t help but want him. He was unique, kind and strong when the situation called for it. The perfect mate, that would be able to both make her feel needed and be there when she needed him. But many hybrids mate for live nowadays and she was not sure if she was ready to make such a decision.

Cheering broke her train of thought. She looked up from where she had been cleaning a table, for probably already way too long, and her tail raised a bit as she saw the ferret girl move towards Kaneki. To think that she would actually try her luck. Touka had to give her credit for her bravery. Or maybe it was just foolishness.

After all, Touka was not just going to let this slide. No matter how cute and small the ferret was, no matter how good she would look next to the one eyed boy, Touka would not just let her fellow bunny be seduced.

Not wanting to be caught snooping, Touka moved to clean another table closer to where Kaneki was drying glasses behind the bar. She kept her ears on attention to listen to every word. She wasn’t going to interfere immediately. It wasn’t her place after all to scare pursuers of Kaneki. In the end it is his decision who he wants to be with, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t save him if he got uncomfortable.

“Hi! My name is Misa. Can I know your name?”

Touka scoffed. The tone the ferret girl used had such a fake sweetness it made her sick.

“Ah… It’s Kaneki. Kaneki Ken.”

„Ken, huh. Such a nice name! Ah, can I call you Ken? I’d really like to.”

“Um, I’d actually prefer if you didn-“ 

“Yes? Ok, good! Say, let’s go on a date.”

Touka’s head snapped up. Did that girl really just do that? Sure, other people had been blunt before but this was a new level. It was almost offensive.

“Uh-um, I’m sorry but I don’t think-“

“Aw, come on! It’s only a date. I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”

“I-I…”

He was uncomfortable. His ears had moved from their comfortable position over his shoulders to pinned behind his head. Kaneki was extremely uncomfortable and she couldn’t blame him. The audacity of that girl! Touka watched as the hare tried to back away from the flirty brunette girl, only for her to grab onto his arm tight. (When had she moved behind the bar?)

That was the last straw. Like hell would she let that persistent bitch force him into anything. Touka took a deep breath and made her way over to the pair. Kaneki spotted her over the ferrets shoulder and his pleading, anxious, hopeful gray eye met her purple ones. She nodded her head slightly and watched as relief took over his whole being.

Touka cleared her throat loudly, catching the girls attention. Brown, annoyed eyes focused on her and a sharp mouth snapped rudely.

“What do you want? Can’t you see we are busy?!”

Touka raised an unimpressed eyebrow and crossed her arms.

“The only thing I see is you harassing my coworker, so I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

Brown eyes widened, only to immediately narrow.

“The fuck?! I’m not harassing shit! Mind your own damn business!”

Touka could feel her temper rise. She took a look around to see other customers watching the scene with anger and incredulously in their expressions. Seems like they all feel the same.

“Listen here, bitch. You are obviously not only making Kaneki but everyone here uncomfortable. So, I’m gonna give you two options: 1. You leave right now without making a fuss and never come back, or 2. I throw you out myself.”

“Ha! You and what army?”

The girl hissed this while baring her fangs and showing off her claws.

Touka bared her teeth and smirked.

“I don’t need one.”

With a grunt Touka attacked. Before the ferret could react she was in the air as Touka lifted her over to the front door by her collar. The girl began to struggle and tried to claw at Touka’s hands. But it was to no avail.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

“Taking out the trash.”

And with that Touka threw the girl outside of the café, making her land painfully on her sorry ass. She then turned to the ferrets friends.

“Yo, dumbasses! You are her friends aren’t you? Get out before I make you!”

The two girls seemed to be smarter than their friend was because they only flinched and scurried out silently.

“And don’t come back.”

Touka said decisively, slamming the door. There were a few seconds of silence before sudden loud cheering rang out. 

She turned around in surprise and smiled at what she saw. Everyone in the café was applauding her. The bunny looked towards Yoshimura, who was giving her a proud and satisfied smile. He nodded at her and indicated to Kaneki with his head and then to upstairs. Touka looked at Kaneki and saw that while his ears had moved back to their calm position, he was still ever so slightly shivering.

She nodded at her boss in thanks and moved slowly towards Kaneki, so as not to startle him. Carefully she took his hand. He flinched but didn't pull away.

"Come."

Kaneki only hesitated for a moment before letting himself be pulled along. Once in her room, Touka let go of the hares hand. The one-eyed ghouls fingers twitched, as if he wanted to reclaim her hand. She bit her lip to stop from smiling. This was still serious after all.

"How are you feeling?"

Kaneki looked up from their hands with wide eyes.

"I- I'm fine. Thank you for helping me, Kirishima-san."

“It’s no problem. To be honest that girl was making me angry anyways.”

Kaneki chuckled nervously.

“She was a bit rude, wasn’t she?”

Touka scoffed.

“A bit is an understatement. She was basically sexually harassing you! Anyone could have smelled her pheromones from a mile away.”

Kaneki looked down at that, but gave a slight nod of agreement. He was obviously still bothered by what happened and Touka had a feeling there was more to it too. With a carefully controlled tone, she decided to ask something she had been meaning to ask for a while now.

“Does this happen often? I mean I’ve seen people approach you before but never like that and you are shaking.”

The hare looked up, wide eyed and startled. His ears raised just a bit.

“No, no, no! While people have tried to curt me before they usually gave up pretty fast when I didn’t react like they wanted. The only one who was ever that bold before was…”

The white haired teen trailed off, but she did not need for him to finish. She had heard of how he became a ghoul and could imagine who the other person was. Her ears lowered a bit at the thought of the betrayal and fear Kaneki must have felt. He had been honestly interested in the women after all.

Would he ever be interested in her, too? The purple and white bunny had seen his reactions to her, had been observing closely for a while now. She had seen the curiosity and a certain amount of attraction, but would that be enough? As she watched Kaneki Ken, the one eyed ghoul, the meek hare with mismatched fur who could have anyone he wanted, she decided that the only way to ever truly know was to make a move.

Touka took a deep, audible breath. Kaneki focused on her in curiosity and watched with rapt attention as she began to move. She slowly started to circle the hare who’s eyes widened in surprise as he recognized the traditional courting behaviour of their kind. The female bunny paid close attention to the one she wanted to curt and felt relief wash over her as she saw his eyes shine and ears lie back slightly in submission. With the knowledge that she wasn’t being rejected she increased her speed a bit.

Then after a while of circling she moved close and gave a playful nip to the hares right ear. Kanekis ears stood up and he moved towards her. The chase was on. 

They proceed to spent the next half an hour chasing each other playfully through the small room. Always nipping the other gently to say ‘You’re it!’ and making sure to never start circling too close. They did not want conflict. No, they were enjoying their little game of tag, their dance, their courting way too much to let it become bitter. It was exhilarating. To finally be able to act how they were supposed to, to realize that they weren’t alone, that there was someone who understood them, someone who acknowledged their boundaries and didn’t overstep.

Touka's heart swelled as she looked over her shoulder at her partner. She could tell that he was letting go of his inhibitions. He was acting on instinct and happiness. Realizing this her tail gave an involuntary flick. A single grey eye widened at the flirty move and before Touka could react was she being pressed down to the floor. She gasped at the feeling of being mounted and nipped in the back of the neck.

It wasn’t sexual. If anything it was romantic. A small chatter of happiness escaped her as she realized the full meaning her partner wanted to convey. It was a sign of possessiveness, of protectiveness. The hold wasn’t forceful and the nip gentle. This was Ken (when had he become Ken in her mind?) saying: ‘You’re mine!’. This was a claim.

The black hare moved off her to lie beside her, allowing her to lie on her side and mirroring her position. Another move that such a clear sign of closeness that it nearly brought tears to her eyes. Deciding that it was her turn to return the favor, Touka made her own move. She raised her hands and softly began grooming Kens hair and ear. Grey eye widened and locked with calm purple.

With a honestly beautiful smile the male bunny scooted closer and moved his arms to wrap around her and started to groom her windswept tail in return. Both bunnies closed their eyes in bliss and purrs of joy filled the air.

They both knew that they had a lot to talk about, but for now the ghoul bunnies decided to let themselves be swept away by their instincts and pure joy at a successful start to courting.

FIN

[firethatgrewsolow]

Swiss Time - Chapter Twenty-One

**Thanks for reading and hope you like it! The clock is closing in ... <3 PS - expect fluff :-)**

We’re off, Nattie. I suppose it’s a good thing that you didn’t want to come, considering you were near comatose when I came downstairs to say goodbye. There’s water and aspirin on your nightstand and orange juice in the refrigerator, courtesy of Christian. I would have let you suffer.

Natalie shook her head at the evil smiley face her aunt had drawn. Christ, she was definitely suffering and pretty certain that at some point her head was going to explode. She crawled out of bed and snatched up the aspirin, knocking them back with the lukewarm water. Grimacing, she returned to her nest, pulling up the covers around her as she continued to read.

We likely won’t be back for close to a week, so please take care of Duchess. Change her water every day, and make sure to wash the bowl. Her food is in the pantry, along with her brush and some of her toys. Her favorite is the little pink mouse. Make sure it’s filled with catnip at all times. And don’t forget her music. She enjoys classical, but only in the morning. In the evening, she prefers jazz.

Nat rolled her eyes. The cat got better treatment than she and Christian did. Her annoyance faded away as she heard a faint mewl next to her, and she bent over, smiling as Duchess sprang onto the bed. Running her fingers through the kitten’s soft gray fur, she turned her attention back to the note.

You should be set in terms of groceries as I had extra delivered before the party, but feel free to order more or dine at the hotel. Just charge it to Christian.

Natalie’s stomach grumbled. A good sign in the midst of the worst hangover she’d ever had. At least she could still eat. The aspirin was beginning to work, as well. Maybe she’d actually live through the day.

Okay, that covers it. You have our hotel information should you need to contact us. Have a wonderful, relaxing week, darling. Oh, and one more thing. Apparently, you spoke to Robert on the phone last night. It was a rather animated conversation. At least, what I caught of it, which unfortunately was only about half.

Nat stilled. She’d spoken to Robert? Oh, shit. She replayed the evening, what she could remember of it, racking her brain for a clue about the conversation. Did I call him? Or did he call me? Surely she’d not given in and phoned him. Oh, God. She breathed a sigh of relief as she read the next line.

In case you’re wondering, he called you. Anyway, after a rather interesting exchange, you told him to ring you at 3:00 sharp. Today. Given your state last night, I thought I’d remind you. Love to you, sweet. See you when we return.

Natalie’s eyes darted to the clock, her heart pounding. 2:58 … 2:59 … 3:00 She warily shifted her gaze to the phone on her bedside table, its silence a blaring warning of yet another broken promise. Still, she waited, hopeful. One minute ticked by, then a second, and then a third. By the fourth, the familiar pang of disappointment washed over her. By the fifth, she gave up, her eyes welling. What did you expect? He never comes through. She stood, squaring her shoulders as Duchess scampered under the bed. Fuck him. Get on with the day.

She was due to meet a group of friends at the Christmas market later that evening, but her desire to go had been vanquished. She padded to the french doors that led to the patio and pushed them open, taking in the glorious view. Even with a chill in the air, it never failed to uplift her, the sublime beauty of the nature around her like a tonic that could cure all ails. Except today. Stretching, she determined she needed another tonic - hair of the dog and a soak in the hot tub.

Natalie headed to the bathroom, shedding her clothes along the way. She brushed her teeth and pulled up her hair, splashing cold water on her face to wash away the night. Satisfied with what peered back at her, she grabbed a towel and made her way toward the porch, freezing mid-stride. She glanced toward the ceiling, certain that she’d heard something upstairs. Or someone. Wrapping the towel tightly around her, she tiptoed to the landing, tilting her head. She waited a beat, and then another. Silence. Finally convinced all was well, she whirled around, slamming into what felt like a wall. She shrieked as she realized it was human.

“Whoa! It’s just me ...” Robert trailed off as her towel hit the floor, his eyes sailing up and down her completely naked form. He barely registered her scowl and the swift smack of his shoulder as she scrambled for the wrap.

“Jesus Christ! You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing here?”

“Well, hello to you, too, Nat.”

“How the hell did you get in?”

Robert gestured to the french doors that were wide open. “Nobody answered upstairs so I came around back. It was … open.” His eyes traced her frame as his mouth curled up. “Do you always traipse around so scantily clad? Aren’t you worried about your neighbors?”

“Apparently, I need to be more worried about random English miscreants. And I was about to get into the hot tub.”  Nat cocked her head. “You didn’t answer my question, by the way. What are you doing here?”

Robert chuckled. “What do you mean, what am I doing here? I told you I was coming. You didn’t really think a simple phone call would do, did you? Not after the conversation we had.” Natalie opened her mouth, only to close it, and Robert narrowed his eyes. “Wait. You do remember last night, right? Our conversation? The things you were saying?” His voice cracked on the last syllable.

“It’s, um, kind of hazy.”

“Are you bloody serious? Fucking hell, woman.”

Her eyes widened. “What all did I say?”

Robert barked a laugh, running a hand through his hair. “You likely wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

“Was it bad?”

He expelled a breath. “No, I’d say it was rather good.” Robert nibbled his lip as she stared at him, bewildered. “Nevermind. Christ. Anyway, it seems that I’m here, I suppose unexpectedly. I can’t stomach another two hours on the train, and I’m bloody well starving so I’ll have to sort it out tomorrow. If that’s alright with you.”

The adrenaline from her initial fear had given way to that of elation. He’d come to see her. He was there in the flesh, just for her. But what was it she’d said to make him drop everything and come running? Flashes of the previous night flickered through her head as if his physical presence was jarring them, conjuring them. There had been the phone call, that she could recollect … she’d chastised him for not knowing about the fire … then she’d teased him about the article, losing her virginity, she’d joked, and then … Oh, my God. It all flooded back at once, a dam breaking in her mind. Jesus Christ. What had she been thinking talking like that? No wonder he got his ass on a plane. She fought the crimson burn that crept across her cheeks. It was true, though, every single word.

“Are you alright? I can, ah, make arrangements at the hotel if you-”

“No, no, you can stay here. Susan and Christian are in Vienna for a week. It would be nice to have company.” Nat adjusted the towel, the cool air from the porch a blessing for her tingling skin. “Maybe we could go into town for the Christmas market later.”

“I did see a big ferris wheel on the way up here.”

“It’s really pretty at night with all the colored lights. And there’s ice skating and games. It’ll be fun.”

“I’d like that.” Robert closed the gap between them, tucking a loose tendril behind her ear. “I am so happy to see you. I’ve missed you.”

Her breathing hitched as he cupped her chin. And just like that, she was lost. It was as if no time had passed. His touch riveted her, cloaking her in his magic spell. “I’ve missed you, too.”

Robert grazed her cheek with his thumb. “You’re not upset that I came, are you?”

“I hoped you would,” Nat replied, a devilish smile blooming on her face. “Why do you think I said all those things?”

His mouth fell open. “You little ... tart.” She squealed as he pounced, throwing her over his shoulder and swatting her backside. “You’re a dirty little girl. And do you know what happens to dirty little girls?”

Natalie giggled as he tossed her onto the bed, dropping over her. “Bad things?”

Robert shook his head, his eyes gliding along the line of her throat. “No. Very bad things.” He nipped her chin. “Extremely bad, as a matter of fact.” He slid his lips across hers, bound for her ear. “But not until I have a bit of snap and a look at the fair. We English take Christmas very seriously.”

*          *          *

A sea of hats and heavy wool coats littered the ice, swirling around them with wild abandon. As Robert gently tugged her through the throng, Nat’s knees buckled, and she reached for his shoulders, her grin matching his as he caught her.

“Christ, Natalie, you’re a resident of Switzerland, and you can’t ice skate?”

Nat wrinkled her nose. “You’ve got candy apple in your teeth.”

“So do you,” the singer shot back, his brow lifting.

“At least I have all mine.”

“Ouch.” Robert snickered. “I suppose one can’t be perfect. But I’m not far off.” Natalie yelped, gripping him tighter as he took a wide stride backwards, parting the pool of revelers behind him. “You need a proper lesson.”

Nat snuggled into the warmth of his chest, so solid and strong. She knew very well how to maneuver on the ice. In fact, she was a crack skater and loved it. But she loved his arms wrapped around her even more. “Just keep holding me, and I’ll skate along with you.”

“Is this a ploy to keep me close to you?” Robert asked, narrowing his eyes.

She batted her lashes. “Whyever would you think that?”

“Because you’re very tricky. My tricky little-”

“I know. Minx.” She pecked his dimpled cheek. “I like being your minx.”

Robert slowed to a stop. “And my muse?”

“Your muse? I’ve never been a muse before.”

“Not even your good friend David’s?”

She studied the tip of her boot. “He’s never mentioned it.”

Robert skimmed his fingers under her chin, reclaiming her gaze. “He’s a fool, then.” He could feel her swallow through the thin leather of his glove as he drew closer, his eyes dropping to her lips. “An absolute f-”

“Attention! Attention!”

The boy’s warning rang out too late, and Natalie clung to Robert as the child careened into them, depositing them into a twisted pile on the ice. He sprang up as fast as he’d gone down, muttering an apology before sliding away to wreak havoc elsewhere. She smiled as Robert stood, offering her his hand. “At least I’m not the worst one out here.”

“Something tells me you’re far from the worst.” He looped his arm through hers, guiding her to the side of the rink. “Let’s try an activity a hair less hazardous.”

While Natalie returned their skates, Robert was dispatched to procure tickets for the ferris wheel. A light snow filled the air as the last thread of dusk faded, and the market came alive. Strolling carolers roamed the network of booths, and bawdy laughter emanated from tents and too many helpings of spiked apple cider. The scents of pine and baked delicacies wafted endlessly around the twinkling tinsel-draped trees scattered about. It was one of her favorite things, a wonderful mix of spectacle and domesticity, convivial, but community, too.

“You ready?”

She nodded. “I’ve got to warn you. I don’t love heights.”

He gave her a squeeze. “I’ll protect you, my lady.”

“That doesn’t inspire much confidence.”

With more than a whisper of trepidation, Natalie boarded the car, which creaked mightily as the wheel began to turn. She instinctively grabbed Robert’s hand, her mouth curving as their fingers entwined. “This thing sure looked better from a distance.”

“It does seem to have seen finer days.”

The clamor from the festivities below them receded as they soared higher and higher, until they reached the apex of the circle. The cabin rocked back and forth as the motion suddenly ceased, and Nat’s smile disappeared. “Why did we stop? What’s going on?” She glanced to Robert, unimpressed with his mischievous smirk. “Wait. Did you tell them to? The other riders are not going to be …” The words were lost as she inspected the cars below them, all empty. “You bought all the tickets.”

“That and a healthy, ah, contribution should allow us a bit of privacy.” Robert guided her hand to his lips, caressing the back of it. “And a big view.”

A big view it was. Lights from the villages surrounding them danced in the distance. A bright full moon had peeked out from the clouds, sending silver shimmers across Lake Geneva and illuminating the snow covered peaks that abounded. “My God, I can see forever. It’s so beautiful.”

“Ah, but you put it to shame, Natalia.” Robert slid off her glove, kissing each of her fingers one by one.

He hadn’t used her nickname since his last visit to Montreux, and Natalie savored the intimacy of the moment. He was a hopeless romantic, and by default, had temporarily made her one, too. It was easy to get lost in him, his subtle smile and gentle gaze impossible to resist. So handsome, but there was far more to it than that. He had an aura, an air, a way that connected with her like no one else. She knew better than to let it happen, but that was just it. She’d no control. None whatsoever.

Robert skimmed his lips across her wrist. “You okay?”

Nat blinked, nodding. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“What are you thinking about?”

She took a breath, hesitating. That I’m in love with you. And I’m scared to death. “Nothing much.”

Robert’s brow wrinkled. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

The car lurched forward, hurdling them back against the seat. And her senses back to her. She cleared her throat, summoning a smile. “I, um, thought I saw my house, that’s all.”

“Where? Point to it.”

“I was wrong. Wrong direction.” She shrugged, slipping her glove back on. “We should probably get back. I don’t want to leave Duchess alone too long.”

“Who’s Duchess?”

“Our new kitten. I would have introduced you to her, but she gets nervous around people she doesn’t know. She’s probably still under one of the beds.”

“I bet I can coax her out. I’ve a way with the ladies, you know,” Robert added with a wink.

Natalie snorted. “Highly doubtful.”

“Shall we make a formal wager?”

Her gaze snapped to his. “What are the stakes?”

Robert pursed his lips. “If I win, I get to kiss you.”

“That’s it? No conditions?”

“Just one.” A wicked grin creased Robert’s face. “I get to do it anywhere I want.”

Natalie’s heart skipped a beat as sultry heat exploded in her tummy, slowly drifting lower. The things he could do to her with only words, the need he could summon with a simple phrase. It was nearly debilitating. She finally found her voice. “And if you lose?”

His dimple deepened. “Oh, darlin’, I’m not going to lose.”

[euphoriecs]

11/11/11 tag !!!

thank u sm for tagging me @yikescomma​, @buckaroowrites​ nd @yikeskimi​ !!!

rules: answer 11 questions, write your own 11, tag 11 people !

under the cut bc its a Lotta questions KSKSKSHK

yikescomma’s questions!!

1. what’s your favourite place to write?

oh this is ?? kind of a tough one bc i feel like i never Branched out in my spaces when it comes 2 being productive,, like a lot of my work is done in my bedroom just bc my desk is there and it’s the most convenient,,,, honestly im jus gonna say my favorite place to write would be from . my desk . bc it faces the window :-)

2. which character(s) from your wip(s) is your favourite?

since i only have wtsf confidently worked out ,, i’ll use those ocs !! but i think , quite Honestlie ,,, that wendy is my favorite character !! im rly in love with how she progresses as a person nd also she’s jsut . she gets it u know .

3. what are some inspirations for your wip(s)?

I TALKED ABT THIS BEFORE but b/ts’ hyyh series, my neighborhood, spring day by b/ts are a few inspirations for wtsf !!! 

4. how did you start writing?

my dad got me hooked on reading when i was really really young !! and being able to read abt all these huge worlds nd being given an opportunity 2 fall in love w them rly inspired me to want to write worlds of my own . plus , i watch a lot of different shows nd animes that feed into my daydreams nd sometimes im like ‘yo,,, that was a good daydream,,,,, time 2 story it’ .

5. which of your ocs is most difficult to write?

uHGHHGHGS ARTHUR ...... trying to capture this like . enigmatic feeling while keeping close 2 his reasons for acting That way is actually ,, rly hard?? hes a tough cookie 2 crack but i will crack it .

6. what aesthetic do you associate with your wip(s)?

for wtsf ,,, quiet towns , lonely beaches , sunset nd sunrise ,,, running through the streets ?? 

7. do you like planning?

YEA !! i see it more as like . being able to explore ur wip and what directions it can take nd its also jsut rly helpful to have a solid foundation .

8. what is your favourite quote from your wip(s)?

i pulled this from my drabbles but: “Slow down.” Wendy grabbed Arthur’s wrist, pulling him down to sit on the sand. “This world can’t keep up with you.”

9. do you like to listen to music while you write?

yes and no ?? im very particular to the kind of music im listening to nd more often than not, i write in complete silence ,,, but sometimes i’ll find a song that i feel rly fits the vibe of what im writing nd i just put it on repeat HGSHJK

10. what do you like most about your own writing?

i think i like the descriptive aspects of it ?? like how i describe places nd feelings ,,,, :-) !

11. what are/were/would be your ocs favourite subjects in school?

everyone except piper in wtsf is graduated from high school but ,, wendy liked english class the best bc it was fun nd she got good grades !! rafael definitely loved psychology nd took it at an ap level ,, arthur liked math nd chemistry .. chemistry he liked More bc he got 2 blow stuff up SKKSKSEH and piper likes world history!! tho shes not good at it . but she likes it!!

buckaroowrites’ questions!!

what is your favorite subgenre to write? to read?

i lov urban fantasy and low fantasy JGHDSHGJKS like its my favorite to write nd read bc like .. o heck ?? ghosts nd ghouls nd just overall supernatural stuff irl ?? that’s the way 2 go

if you had to be trapped on a desert island with any of your ocs, who would it be and why?

if i had 2 be trapped on a desert island ...... i’d probably choose rafael . honestlie he just seems like he always knows what’s up nd my chances of survival would increase w him JHGJKSJKS

what is your favorite medium to write?

definitely novels !! its a format i’ve pretty much grown up w and im more comfortable w this medium than any others GHSHJKS but i’d love to explore like ,, screenplays nd see where that takes me

who was your first oc?

HYLLY SHITTTT THIS BRINGS ME BACK SJHJHJGJKS i used to draw a lot back when i was younger nd so i had this oc JHJS his name was ian and he was meant for the maximum ride universe but he was a dumb dude who was 2% cat . nd he had an adopted sister ,, i forgot her name but she was part bird .

what was your first wip about?

world end club is supposed 2 be abt a group of teens who work together 2 take down a corporation that wants 2 essentially control the artificial island they live on thru engineered soldiers . ITS A CONCEPT ,, nd it requires a little Too Much for my one brain cell to think abt

thoughts on shakespeare?

uhhh no thots bc i never read his work in high school i jus know macbeth is cursed .... wow i rly dont know anything abt shakespeare huh .

poetry or prose?

o this is TOUGH i rly adore both .......... im gonna . im gonna go w prose . i lvoe poetry so much sometimes there are lines that just rly fucken punch u in the face but im gonna go w prose bc its familiar !!

would you ever co-write a story?

nO ..... i wouldnt b able 2 compromise i’d jus b like oH ACTUALLY SKSKKS MY IDEA’S DUMB LETS JUST DO URS 

write what you want to write or write what you want to read/watch?

oh . fuc .... i feel like its important to have a good balance of both but . honestlie im very partial to what i want to read/watch ..

do you like to write violence?

i dont Like 2 write it but its In My Wips !

what is your favorite trope?

oH ,, probably ‘fire forged friends’ or like . mutual pining ... i have too many favorite tropes nd somehow im gonna incorporate them all .

yikeskimi’s questions!!

Tell us about the main character(s) in your current WIP!

oKAY SO im gonna try to not make this too long SJKHJGS !! wendy is a very like . prickly character . shes like a cactus . nd she’s not too fond of letting ppl get close, but the ppl who do manage to get close to her are happie 2 learn she would actually die for them . loyalty is a Huge Huge part of her character, and she cares very deeply abt the people she calls family . shes also v sarcastic nd like . ‘open ur eyes dummy’ .

arthur is a kind of person who lives heavily on false pretenses . like he projects this image bc its an image that he can control nd he jsut Rolls w it , but hes actually someone who likes 2 tease his friends nd be friendly to them ,, hes got Issuez nd is very much the type of person to be like ‘o lol im ok :-)...’ nd prioritize the needs of others 

rafael is , in all honesty , just babey . he studied a lot during high school nd rly pushed himself beyond his limits bc he wants to be able 2 go 2 a good college on scholarship nd get a job 2 support his family , nd hes just ?? very responsible nd sweet but that can also manifest into him taking on more than he should nd burning out . 

piper is a very ,, honestlie kinda sad character kjHGJSJ she spends a lot of time just trying 2 appeal to other ppl bc she knows her interest in the supernatural make her a ‘weird’ person nd she wants to be able 2 have real friends ,, but when she learns 2 let go of this she’s very silly nd always making jokes During The Right time ..

Do you have an all time favorite OC? Tell us about them!

hMMMM i dont think i do ??? my memory of my ocs is rly bad JHSJ so more often than not i just ,, rip i dont remember them </3

If you could be best friends with one of your OCs, who would it be and why?

ms piper chaiyathan !!!! shes a very open nd kind individual nd i feel like our humor nd joking style would match V v v well !!!

Last line you’ve written in your WIP?

Wendy, unlike her brothers Adam and Nate, had inherited her father’s rough touch, and that made them both unwanted in the high stakes setting of a diner kitchen.

If you have a chosen title for your WIP, were there any titles you considered before it? And if not, what are some titles you’re thinking of?

when the sun falls went through SO many titles nd i actually have them all here: where the sun goes / fever dreams / above the sun / where the sun follows / the drowned sun ... as u can see the sun was smth i Needed .

What is an important element in the world your WIP takes place in?

uHHHH the supernatural element is . Very important but i cant be too specific about it but i will tell u it involves a dead tree on the beach .

Tell us an out of context spoiler.

arthur gets a cool new set of eyes.

Any power couples/ships in your WIP?

wendy nd arthur babey ,,,,,, bat nd molotov cocktail duo ,,,, last name central until the important moment nd THEN they use each other’s first names ..

Any music you like listening to while you write?

uHHHH specifically for wtsf i listen 2 a lot of hozier, lorde, conan gray, khalid nd halsey :-)

What would your main character(s) favorite song be?

oH okay i got this in the BAG ... wendy’s favorite song would Absolutely be work place by hozier or more than sorrow by a-lin ,,, arthur would definitely b listening 2 like . free spirit by khalid .. piper, since she p much spent all of middle school nd 2 years of high school in thailand ,, i think she’

Which character in your WIP could you relate to the most?

honestly? all of them !!! a lot of the characters in wtsf have little bits nd pieces of me bc thats how all my ocs come into existence nd theres no One character thats like “oh,,, das me”

and here are my 11 questions !!

Which one of your OCs do you think could survive a zombie apocalypse? Why?

What’s something you’ve been itching to write about?

Share the last paragraph you wrote!

Do you prefer coming up with plots or characters? Why?

Do you have any abandoned WIPs? Tell us about them!

What are some favorite themes/tropes to write about?

How do you get into the zone for writing?

Tell us a random fact for any of your OCs !!!

Are you someone who needs a visual for your WIPs?

What are some influences to your writing style?

If you had to be a character in one of your WIPs, which WIP would it be and what role would you play?

i’m gonna tag @babyreeds @holotones @alejandroistyping @noloumna @faerisms @omniawrites @aslanwrites @ashesconstellation @thegrievingyoung @glittcrpeach @syposium !!! no pressure to do it if u dont want to tho <3

[abthepoet]

All my friends are dead.

Something strange is trending in my life.

All my friends die.

At the beginning of my sophmore year in college, my roommate from freshman year died tragically in a single vehicle car crash. Her name was Allison Lynam. We called her Blake. She was sassy and funny and I wish I would've taken more time to know her.

The rain was torrential the night she died. I swear I've never seen it rain that hard ever again in my life. She drove to the store along Highway 36 in Long Branch,NJ. She had off campus housing that year and had to use the highway often. The road was terribly flooded the night she died. Im told she hydroplaned, spun, and T-boned the driver side smack into an electrical pole. Her family still decorates it.

At that very same moment, in my dorm room nearby, I was watching TV when the lights suddenly flickered and dimmed. A brown out.

I had no idea but that was my friend crashing into a pole and dying. She was 19 years old.

I know this because that accident happened near the mall. That accident killed the power to nearby businesses.

I later found out that the road she died on was so badly flooded, the police intended to close it. Why they didnt get to it in time, I'll never know. Maybe that's fate.

Then there was Jessica Blain. Jessica Blain was a firecracker of a human being. She was 100% unmistakable. One of the loudest, funniest, most loyal people and friends I have ever met. She was also an incredibly gifted singer and I was lucky enough to have Chorus with her. We, along with a small group of friends, founded a new greek organization on our campus, Alpha Xi Delta. We were paired up as Twins. (you can't have Bigs & Littles when you're just starting the Family Tree). We named the family we formed Fuck Up Your Shit. Because that's what we'd do for a friend. I miss her laugh most of all. It was loud and unapologetic. She was there for me, supportive, and encouraging without me ever having to ask. The night I officially finished college we all went out to the local gay club, The Colosseum. I got wasted, of course. But Jess was the person who when I shouted 'I have to pee' on the ride home, she stopped and knocked on strangers doors and asked to let me use their bathrooms. Nobody said yes so she held my hand while I peed on a fence instead. I remember the last time we spoke. She was at a concert with a mutual friend. We hadn't spoken much since I graduated, she was still in school.

She died in her dorm room bed on Halloween as a result of asphyxiation during an epileptic seizure. She was 20 years old. The news was broken to me that very same Halloween night as I floated along in NY on a concert cruise. The World/Inferno Friendship Society decided to host Hallowmas, their annual event, on a boat this year. Nothing like being trapped on a musical boat while you grieve. I had messaged her AIM late that night to say hi. She had an away message up. I may have sent a message to a dead person. I miss her friendship more than I realize sometimes.

That brings us to James Padden. James was a warm, snuggly bear of a guy who always tried to do the right thing and let me steal his hoodies. He insantly became my best friend in a Stepbrothers-esque manner. I met James working overnights at Wawa in Leonardo, NJ. I forget how it started now, but we were standing in front of the deli and I think I tossed him a broom or he already had one. . . I cant remember now.. . . but he just took one look at me with that mischievous little twinkle that I quickly returned and we instantly began sword fighting with our brooms. Like two little boys playing pretend and having a ball. He was sweet and silly and kind. I needed a ride, and he loved to drive. Our first winter as friends, we went out doing donuts in the snow. I barely knew him, but I felt safe. We smoked a ton of weed and had so many adventures trying to procure more. One time, we got so high driving to a Dropkick Murphys concert in NY we kept going in circles, missed almost the entire show save for the last 3-5 numbers, and had a blast. I can barely remember the night, but I remember laughing hard in that car. No one could talk to me like James. We were both insecure being chubby kids and adults, but so charismatic and grandiose that I sometimes thought we were the only two who would put up with listening to each others wild ideas and ridiculous banter. We would smoke joints and take adderall and talk about everything and anything. I miss the safety and closeness I felt with him. We were always 100% platonic, but we could nap together, I could walk into his house and jump on him in bed and wake him up. Then we would cook ourselves a breakfast feast and hit the beach. He taught me to always take the back roads. I gave him advice on the ladies. He taught me about fixing cars. I helped shave his back. He called his new pick up truck, a pick'um up truck. We could wax philosophical all damn day and not get sick of each other.

It wasnt just driving he loved, it was going fast. Like so many young white men, he had tendency to be a little reckless. The universe gave him a pass only so many times.

I'll never forget when he got his motorcycle. It was the last time I saw him. It was a bright green crotch rocket. He loved lime green. I was doing yoga in the living room when I heard this obnoxious engine rev down my street. I asked myself, who the hell is making this noise?! And it was James, grinning from ear to ear with a matching helmet on his shiny new toy.

before he left I said, 'you die on that thing, I'll bring you back to life and kill you." I remember giving him this very long and intentional hug and not knowing why I felt compelled to hang on.

When he left and hopped back on the bike, I felt compelled again and took a video of him riding away from my driveway until he was entirely out of sight.

That's my very last memory of him alive. James Padden died on Thanksgiving five days after his 25th birthday. He went out for a joyride on his bike before dinner, opened up to 100mph around a curve where he couldn't see a car pulling out around the bend in time. They called a medevac, but he died on scene. I loved James dearly and I regret drifting apart after we both left Wawa and I started a new relationship. He had stuff too, but in hindsight it never seems important.

Then there's JB. I will always remember JB for his kindness and generosity. The very first time I finally worked up the nerve to go to a poetry slam, I was alone and terrified. I had no idea what to expect. JB was the very first person to turn around, introduce himself, and welcome me. He made me feel like I belonged. Years later, when I won the title of Grand Slam Champion, he immediately offered to help coach me for national competition. Except, I didn't see the messages and left them unanswered, which I deeply regret. When I started hosting my own open mic a few years after that, JB would be one of the only people to consistently come support the show both as an audience member and participant. It was at a pizza joint and he would sometimes buy me food when I had no money. He wrote beautiful poems about his two young daughters and how much they inspired him. JB always tried to make people laugh but you could tell he carried a sadness. I did not get details, but from what I have gathered he made a choice to end his life. I wish I would have gotten closer to him and appreciated him more as a friend and person. I wonder if he felt no one cared about him and I feel like I should've let him know more.

Which brings us to Crys. Crystopher Anthony Diaz was a Scorpio with a big heart and a big personality. I met him on Myspace back in the day and started Web camming. We became friends and eventually fell into this gray area of friends, together, but not. It wasn't long before I was spending days at his place, killing hours at a time downloading music, making Wawa runs, and smoking weed with his roommate at the time, Syd. You know, the whole reason I worked at Wawa was Crys suggesting it. And Wawa is the reason I met James. Crys was unlike anyone I'd ever met. He was poetic and artistic and loved animals, especially pit bulls. He loved to draw and write and had this very out loud style that favored Earth tones. He taught me about fashion and insisted on getting dressed even if it was 1am and we were just going to Wawa because you never know who you might see. We would buy new clothes at Walmart and have photo shoots. That boy drank his weight in coffee daily. If it's one thing I'll always remember him for, it's the dancing. Dancing was a passion of his and always used to talk about wanting to form a dance crew. Eventually, we ended up living together for four years. My first apartment was with him in this piece of shit duplex rented to us by a slumlord in Keansburg,NJ. My relationship with him was always defined by our Aries/Scorpio dynamic and he never let me forget it. His birthday was October 30th, mischief night. One time, after we had moved into a new place, we decided to get revenge on our old downstairs neighbor by taking a finished lobster carcass and throwing it on his lawn. . . . . . . Keansburg had a terrible stray cat problem. 😁

I have so many memories with Crystopher. Unfortunately, towards the end of our relationship things became too tumultuous. We had too much unresolved baggage and trauma to find a healthy place emotionally together. We were so financially strained for a time we hardly ate. And then when he met his new girlfriend Laura, she introduced him to her good friend, Roxy. As in Roxcicet. aka Blues. Neither of us knew what that even was at the time. But he sure learned quick. He started using them pretty frequently as time went on, and things only got more complicated. My mental health took a nose dive. By the time I moved out our relationship was trash. I basically left. At the time, I didnt have a choice. things had gotten so bad between us, the money, the using . . . we didn't act like friends anymore.

I saw him a couple times at his new place but that was years ago. Since then, he went through a lot, including homelessness and more struggles with addiction to opiates. He reached out to me and sent me a message apologizing for everything a couple years back. I never responded. I was afraid I would let him back into my life and let the all the problems back in. I didnt trust where he was at in his life. We lost touch and stopped speaking.

His ex, who used to live with us and became my friend, messaged me and told me he died a few days ago. He was 35. I'm still waiting for information, but it may have been drug related. I'm not even sure where I'm at with how I feel. I know why we stopped talking. It was the right thing to do at the time. But he didnt deserve to die so young, having spent the last god knows how many months homeless. It's fucking with me so hard because we never resolved anything. I loved this person so fucking much and we never made peace. Of everyone I've lost, he was the closest to me. I've had a lot of people die on me but none that I lived with and shared a life with. I have more memories with him than I can handle and while I know we hadn't spoken in years and why, I still wish I would've said something. Done something. Yes, i needed healthy boundaries but he needed somebody. when is being firm too firm? If we would've helped, could it have been different? But we didn't want to help at the time, you try to be tough and draw a line. Be firm. Not let yourself be taken advantage of. But is that a defense? Did that defensiveness leave a human being who's head i used to scratch until he fell asleep out in the cold to get sicker and die?

What am I supposed to learn from all this Universe? Why do you take my friends so young and so tragically? I'm only 35, I'm too young to have this much loss.

Because these are just the major players I've lost. It doesnt include my cousin Jared, who died being reckless on a motorcycle at 21 two years ago. I was 15 when he was born. I loved that baby, he used to bite my nose. But his family lived far, so I rarely saw him growing up. Last time I saw him was at my grandfather's funeral. He didn't remember me and the nose biting.

And then there's Marcos who we used to chill with. He worked delivery for our favorite chinese food place. He was a nice kid who lived with his grandparents. We would get food, smoke weed, hang out a little. Even used to buy it off him for a while. Eventually he got into the opiates too, he even wound up being good friends with Crys and being Blue buddies. But eventually Marcos died from an opiate overdose. He was in his mid twenties.

I didnt want to include Ricky because he was more of an acquaintance for me, he was more my partners childhood friend. But god damn, in the time I knew Ricky that kid was a riot. He was loud and funny and definitely marched to the beat of his own drum. Drugs took him too.

Thanks for reading all this if you've made it this far. It's taken me about two hours to type this out on my phone. but i needed to. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: The Shining Beacon Pt. 2

This is the last (!!!) reposting from March 26, 2018 in an effort to get all my recaps onto tumblr. Thanks!

With Volume Five completed and the latest season of RWBY Chibi underway, I thought it time to start these recaps back up again. Yes, we're jumping around a bit--back to Volume One--but we'll get to all the episodes eventually!

In fact, the simple days of Volume One feel pretty wonderful right now...

We begin with a pan across Beacon's entrance (our shining Beacon as the title attests), giving us another good look at the school that's presumably the best Huntsmen academy in Remnant. We're not told exactly how much time has passed between this episode and the last, but I guess it's been a couple of hours? When we last saw Ruby and Jaune they were lost, looking for a food court, and when they meet up with Yang she asks Ruby how her day has been. I'd love to read some fics exploring their first few hours together before they finally figured out where to go.

So it's presumably late afternoon when all the freshmen gather in a large meeting room, the same one that will later be used to welcome the other academies and allow everyone to choose their first missions. For now though it's chock full of shadow people and Ruby immediately abandons Jaune once she spots Yang--which is pretty rude of her? I get that Ruby is supposedly bad at making friends, but contrary to that we've always seen her as incredibly sensitive towards others and she was just abandoned by Yang earlier that day. She calls her out on it two seconds later too, so I actually find it a little hard to believe that Ruby would ditch the one new person who's been nice to her when he clearly has nowhere else to go. Jaune literally lurks in the background being awkward.

I’ve been there, Jaune. It sucks. 

Nevertheless, it allows the writers to flesh out his Nice Guy mentality that we'll see him working to overcome over the next two volumes. As Ruby leaves, Jaune wonders where he'll find another "nice, quirky girl to talk to." We're not in a YA novel, Jaune. There are no manic pixie dream girls to sooth your manly angst.

Oh, except for the redhead that's conspicuously revealed when Jaune walks off screen. Not that I would ever disparage the glorious Pyrrha Nikos with such a title.

Yang: "I saved you a spot!"

You... did? In the giant room with only a handful of people that Rooster Teeth had the time and budget to animate? Oh yeah, I'm sure it was real hard claiming that spot for Ruby.

As Ruby tears into Yang for ditching her and recaps all the shit she went through that morning, Yang develops an expression that is the very embodiment of yikes and asks if Ruby is having a "meltdown already?" Interesting choice of words. It could just be exaggerated, sibling teasing--to match what Yang assumes is an exaggerated tale--but I do wonder if Ruby has had "meltdowns" before. We don't know much about their lives pre-Beacon, but I can imagine that a socially awkward girl growing up in a world infested by grimm, who lost her mom too early, dealt with a depressed father, and was in part raised by a sister just two years older than her might have had a tantrum or two.

I do find it a little hilarious though that Yang doesn't believe her at first. Given everything Ruby is going to do in the next week alone, it’s 100% believable that she would explode on her first day of school. Classic Ruby.

As she recounts the whole debacle, who should overhear but scary, shouting Weiss? I absolutely love that they have her literally creeping up behind Ruby only to yell "YOU!" at the end of her speech. If Weiss really hated this girl she could have easily ignored her. But no. Weiss' dramatic ass has to re-introduce herself in the most extra way possible. As Ruby throws herself into Yang's arms (adorable) Weiss gives a sped-up, high-pitched legal info dump about what the Schnee Dust Company is and is not responsible for. At the time this was pretty funny--another one of the cutesy edits that characterize Volumes One through Two--but now that we know more about Weiss' home life? About her abusive father and how the dignity of the Schnee name has been ground into her since birth? The fact that Weiss can rattle this off and feels like she has to suddenly isn't very funny anymore.

Ruby tries to salvage the situation by starting things over and asking to be friends, and of course Weiss is an absolute brat about it. She mimics the cliched, air-headed girl, saying that she and Ruby can "Try on cute clothes and paint our nails and talk about boys!" throwing in an insult at poor Jaune while she's at it ("scraggly"). The fact that Ruby happily agrees tells me two things: 1. She shares a lot of those traditionally "feminine" interests (which is great considering we usually only see her geeking out over weaponry) and 2. this is some of the first evidence we see for headcanoned autistic!Ruby. Weiss' tone is very clearly sarcastic, but Ruby reads it as quite earnest, honestly surprised when it's revealed she's being duped. Before these three can start a real fight though Ozpin takes the stage to make, in his own words, a short announcement.

Now this is by far one of the most fascinating moments in Volume One. Especially after Volume Five's world building. A lot of fans have speculated that Ozpin isn't... well, Ozpin here. That one of his other souls (perhaps the man whose body he currently inhabits) is the one speaking to the new students. This is based mostly off of Ruby and Yang's comments that he "seemed kind of off" and, crucially, that is was "almost like he wasn't even there." Admittedly there are a number of holes in this theory (If a full merge is a thing, wouldn't Ozpin's latest two souls already have merged by now considering that he's possessed that body for years? How does Yang know when he's "off"? She's never even met the guy), and ultimately I'm inclined to think that these were lines that perhaps were supposed to go somewhere, but were then dropped. Or just generic ‘oooh look Ozpin is mysterious’ characterization. 

Regardless, there is something pretty fishy about this scene, most notably the cinematography. Ozpin is animated primarily in close ups with half his face (his eyes) cut off, he's shot once from behind, and only once do we get to see his whole expression. As said, he's filmed as if he's this mysterious, shadowy figure that we're just meeting; like we hadn't already had a whole conversation with him over cookies two episodes back. If you wanted to make a case that someone other than Ozpin is speaking here, the cinematography might be one way to do it. But, more likely, I think it’s RT pushing for the ‘he’s super morally gray!’ aspect, even though we actually learn too much about Ozpin to really make that work. 

His dialogue is just as interesting though. Ozpin tells the kids that all he sees is "wasted energy," that no matter how driven they might be to succeed it means nothing without proper effort. Dreams alone won't cut it: "Knowledge will only take you so far. It's up to you to take the first step." Ozpin is far from one to shy away from reality, but he's usually kinder than this too. This is perhaps additional evidence that a part of Ozpin--one we don't see very often--is in control here; a personality not as inclined to sugarcoat things. 

This word choice also tells us a lot about his motivations. As we'll learn later, Jaune forged his transcripts to get into Beacon and a lot of people wonder why the hell Ozpin would let an untrained kid get away with that. Ultimately though Jaune isn't in much more danger than anyone else. As Pyrrha's death makes abundantly clear, even the strongest of them can easily fall when up against the sorts of enemies they face. Thus, Ozpin prizes determination--the drive to do good--over talent or current levels of strength. Jaune was let in because he took his own first (admittedly illegal and arguably immoral) step and Ozpin, like with Ruby, rewards his resolve. This reminds me of Raven who has the knowledge of the threat Salem poses but refuses to do anything about it. Already we’re seeing characters who have internal motivations (a need to do good) and later we’ll meet others who just... don’t. 

Again, Pyrrha showed us that being a prodigy is not a guarantee of success. Ozpin reminds everyone of that here. 

But that horrible episode is still a ways off!

For now the kids shrug off his ominous speech and crowd together later that night in the dining hall for a sleepover, considering that they still haven't passed initiation and haven't found their teams yet. Yang jokes that Dad wouldn't approve of them sleeping with all these boys, though it's clear that she does. (Bi Yang, bi Yang!) Ruby continues writing a letter to "the gang back at Signal" which honestly kind of drives me up the wall? Yang ran off with her shadow friends and Ruby is writing to Signal friends and neither of these groups are ever heard from again. Yes, obviously the show is about their new friends at Beacon, but past friendships are important too, particularly for Ruby. She's been uprooted two years early and is supposedly really bad at forming new relationships. Theoretically we should have gotten something touching on all this: Yang torn between her new team and old loyalties; Ruby avoiding trying to get close to Weiss by texting Signal buddies. It would have rounded things out a whole lot more and, once we expand beyond Beacon in Volume Four, would have given us a lot of opportunities to see how these girls are connected to Remnant as a whole. 

They're certainly determined to make friends now though. Ruby spots the girl from earlier in the courtyard (Blake) and before she can stop her Yang quite literally drags them over with a hilariously drawn-out, "Hello!" Too bad Blake isn't interested in pleasantries. Especially when Yang draws attention to her bow. She won't shake their hands and is pretty damn blunt about how she wants them to leave. We have a clear divide down the team between the social butterflies (Ruby + Yang) and the abused girls who haven't had the chance to figure out how to talk to people yet (Weiss + Blake). It makes for a well-balanced dynamic and later a whole lot of conflict.

Blake will always have a soft spot for books though. She opens up a bit when Ruby asks the title of hers and explains that it's about “A man with two souls, each fighting for control over his body.” Ha. THAT'S not significant or anything. 

We have some lovely setup for Volume Two/Three in which Blake lectures Ruby on how real life isn't like a fairy tale. Ruby already knows this. She just wants to work to make it as close to one as possible. A lot of viewers forget the difference between naivety and optimism when it comes to her characterization and though Ruby will prove short-sighted in many respects later on, she’s never thought the world was perfect.

As Ruby and Yang get into another cartoon fight (a visual technique we won't be seeing for long), the commotion draws over Weiss who is not pleased that the troublemaker is Ruby again. She yells that Ruby is a "hazard to my health!" and I cackle at what a little drama queen she is. As they continue their fight Blake blows out her candle, ending our episode with the first shot that contains all of Team RWBY.

Other Details 

When Weiss yells at Ruby she cries, "Oh god it's happening again!" 'Oh God' is such a common phrase in the English language that it only makes sense we'd use it to help characters express themselves, but it still raises some interesting, in-world questions. Is there a lot of organized religion? We know Qrow mentions people believing in various gods, but is it common enough to create this same phrase? Meanwhile, poor Ozpin has to cope with knowing that gods do exist and they're absolute assholes.

Ozpin doesn't even introduce himself to the kids. Like yeah, obviously everyone already knows who he is, but he could have at least started with a "Hey, I'm old as balls Ozpin" instead of jumping straight into a lecture about how pathetic their work ethic is. I’m torn between the “That wasn’t Ozpin” theory and just a straight up, “The man is SAVAGE at times hell yeah.” Granted, this is the guy that’s gonna chuck his students off a cliff in a few hours, so I’m leaning towards the latter...

We see Ozpin making use of his cane despite the fact that he doesn't appear to need it 99% of the time. Easiest way to walk around with it, or was this particular body injured once? 

Love how horribly offensive Yang is here lol: "Yeah, this girl is a lost cause." Like damn Blake's right there!

Ruby is dressed in a tank top that I think has an Ursa on it. Made all cute of course and with a face mask with matching, red slitted eyes. It's a great bit of world building and says a lot about Ruby's personality. (Honestly I wouldn't be surprised to see Nora in those PJs either.)

[moonlit-seren]

For Dispatch || Heo Hyunjoon

Summary: Dispatch reporters have always been well known for their diligence and persistence no matter the situation. So when y/n gets thrown a potentially dangerous lead to follow, she finds herself face to face with Seoul’s biggest mob boss and a savory Inkigayo sandwich.

Genre: Fluff

Warnings: None

Word Count: 4.3k

A/N: This is my very first The Boyz fanfic, so I hope it’s alright. I feel like the Dispatch workers in the story were more like secret agents than reporters lol.

Credits to fall-out-bangtan for inspiring the plot~ <3

꧁Masterlist꧂

~

~

“Y/n L/n reporting for duty sir,” I stated, voice loud and proud as any reporter’s should be. My hands were planted firmly by my sides, with a clipboard wedged under one arm as I bowed to my superior respectfully.

“Yes, sit,” said my boss calmly, gesturing to the empty chair in front of his desk. I sat down, watching as he leaned forward so that his clasped hands rested on the polished wood.

A mischievous glint flickered in his eyes, sparkling brighter than it usually does when he finds a new story to cover.

Sangyeon had only been my boss for a couple of months, but our friendship had grown to the point where we could read each other like an open book.

And from what I could tell from his demeanor, I should be very, very concerned for my well being right now.

“So you know how I sent Sunwoo after that one fishy looking guy in the alley two days ago?” Asked Sangyeon, guilt flashing across his face at the harsh glare I sent him.

“Yes, and I distinctly remember seeing the handle of a knife on the person Sunwoo was pursuing, and advising you to call him off,” I replied coldly, not seeing the benefit of having risked the life of one of my coworkers just to follow a potential story.

Sangyeon dismissed my comment, waving it off as if it were nothing more than a bothersome fly. Both of us knew that Sunwoo was one of most diligent reporters at Dispatch, but I couldn’t help but worry about him.

“Don’t worry, he came back alive yesterday, with something that could completely blow our audience off of their feet,” exclaimed Sangyeon, eyes widening as he made overly excited hand gestures.

I rose an eyebrow at him, opening my mouth to ask what it was but he cut me to the chase. He slid a photo across the table, explaining that Sunwoo had taken it.

In the image was a blurry shot of three men. One had his hair dyed a dark orange, with soft doe eyes in contrast to a sharp gaze. The second had dark caramel colored hair, a slightly sturdier build than the first, and a cocky stance. But it was the third male who truly caught my attention.

He was a couple of centimeters shorter than the other two, but had beautifully striking fox eyes. Framing them was a curtain of sleek black bangs styled up in a quiff, giving him more of haughty, arrogant look.

Though his milky white skin didn’t appear to be marred with any tattoos, several piercing lined the cuffs of his ears including a dangling cross and he had on an long, expensive looking fur jacket. It didn’t take much to guess that the third person was the leader of the group, as he stood at a slightly larger distance from the other two.

“You’re ogling,” whispered Sangyeon, amused by how my eyes remained fixated on the gorgeous male.

I stuck my tongue out at him, crossing my arms defensively as a blush spread across the apples of my cheeks. “Whatever, I don’t believe that I came to your office to get teased.”

Sangyeon smiled knowingly, before shaking his head. Sinking back in his armchair, he launched into an animated explanation as he began to explain his findings.

“He’s probably the last person you’d want to date unless you want your head blown off,” started Sangyeon, causing you to raise your eyebrow once more. “I don’t recognize any of these people so I asked around the office and what do you know, Kevin came back with a report from last week saying that he had stumbled upon some underground meeting.”

“Apparently some sort of money exchange was made between the person he was following and another male with a black coat. Both were flanked with two companions. I think that the second party may have been these three,” Sangyeon pointed at the photo once more and you nodded along, unsure of what else to do.

“So you’re saying that this guy is some sort of gang leader?” I asked, pointing at guy who had caught my eye in the picture.

Sangyeon shrugged a little in a carefree response, taking a sip out of the beige mug on his desk before delving back into his story.

“Better actually. I went through our old records and that was when it hit me. I’m surprised I hadn’t recognized him right away,” Sangyeon continued, purposely pausing because he knew that the suspense was killing me on the inside.

“And?” I prompted, a little impatient as he intentionally reached over to straighten an already neat stack of papers resting on the corner of his desk.

“Several months ago, before I got promoted, our last boss sent me to go check out what was said to be a power switch ceremony. I managed to sneak in under the cover of a gang member and the CK was there,” narrated Sangyeon, pride swelling in his chest at the shocked expression on my face.

“CK? As in Seoul’s biggest mob boss in recorded history?” I asked, my eyes widening into large saucers. Anyone who has ever watched the news would know that CK was Seoul’s most notorious criminal in the entire city. Back in his day the police never stood a chance, always being a solid ten steps behind. In fact, he was a renowned criminal all over the world and not just in South Korea.

Sangyeon nodded in affirmation. “Well not anymore apparently. He stepped down and passed his power onto his son who appeared to be around four years younger than me. At that time the boy had his hair dyed a steel gray, which was why I didn’t recognize him at first… But that piercing gaze and cold brown eyes are unforgettable.”

The two pieces clicked together in my mind the moment Sangyeon finished his last sentence. My eyes drifting down to the photo once more at the three people conversing in it.

“He goes by the name Hwall, no one except those incredibly close to him know his real name. As for the other two, I remember seeing them at the ceremony too, so I’m assuming that they’ve grown up together,” said Sangyeon.

“Isn’t it a little curious that the current biggest mob boss didn’t even realize he was getting tagged by a news reporter?” I wondered aloud, curious as to how that ‘Hwall’ guy was still alive in the business he’s in when he couldn’t even notice he was being followed.

Sangyeon shrugged halfheartedly, “Who knows, maybe he did notice Sunwoo but let him follow him around. Just to let the word know that he was still out there and at large.”

I nodded, seeing the logic behind his guess. The net was probably the easiest way for one underworld leader to let his or her competition know of their presence.

After all, news spreads like fire on the internet and it’s far safer than coming out in the open waving an ‘I’m alive’ banner in front of all of your enemies.

“Alright, so now that I know the backstory, can you tell me why exactly you called me of all people rather than Sunwoo down here?” I asked, still a little confused over my presence here.

Sangyeon held up a finger, indicating that he wanted me to wait a second, as a sweet smile spreading over his face. My eyes narrowed, immediately recognizing his expression. He only ever used that smile when asking a difficult request, and more often than not, I always end up regretting agreeing to it.

“You see, not every news outlet gets such a rare chance to cover a giant story like this. If we get this scoop, Dispatch’s name will be known world wide and our division will become famous for obtaining it. It would be risky to send Sunwoo out again so we both agreed that you’d be the best one for this job,” explained Sangyeon, pulling out a file from his desk draw. From what I could see, it looked like it contained all the information we currently had on this particular case. “Besides, I only want you on the field for a day, there’s a slim chance that you’ll get caught.”

“I shouldn’t seen this coming,” I thought, sighing deeply. On one hand my cover could get blown and I could get killed, but on another… If my work gets recognized I could get a huge pay raise and never have to worry again next time I go binge in a expensively delicious dessert cafe. Besides… life isn’t worth living if you’re still knee deep in student loan debts.

Much to both of our surprises I agreed without much hesitation, reaching forward to take the file out of a gawking Sangyeon’s hands. “Sure, what do I have to lose?”

•

The fated day came a week later, with Sunwoo guiding me to the right place at the right time and hanging around to see if I could overhear or sneak a peek at anything.

“He’s going to a meeting with the leader of another gang from Jeju. They’ll be on the second floor of the Park Enterprise building, 2nd door to the right from the elevators. You should have a clear visual from the roof of the karaoke bar next door,” informed Sunwoo, before hanging up to let me do my thing.

“Okay,” I whispered to myself, pulling on a baby blue snapback and matching face mask. I slipped my phone into my bag before beginning the trek up the stairs of the building Sunwoo told me to go to.

The door to the roof was unlocked for whatever reason, but I wedged a small stone in the doorway to keep it cracked open just in case.

“Let’s get to work,” I thought, placing my bag onto  the ground as I pulled out my binoculars to peer through the window of the room my target was supposed to be in.

The blinds were nearly pulled all the way down and at most I could only see a sliver of the ebony table in the center of the room.

The only windows to that particular room that were exposed were the ones facing the large office building across the street, which I’d have extreme difficulty sneaking into.

Spotting the horizontal flag poles lining the edge of the building, the corners of my lips slipped into a smirk and I pulled off my hat in order to tie my hair up into a ponytail.

“For Dispatch,” I whispered, bravely crawling onto one before dangling upside down on the pole. It extended above the sidewalk below, the building only being four floors up.

Bringing the binoculars up to my eyes, I sighed in content realizing that I could see perfectly into the room now.

There was a total of nine people in the room, three of which being Hwall and his ever present duo of right hand men.

I watched as the people conversed, unable to make out much from the silent conversion besides the words “money” and “guns”.

Sure enough, a few minutes later two silver briefcases were brought to the table containing whatever goods that were about to be exchanged.

A few distant yells disrupted my focus, as I pulled my binoculars away from my eyes and glanced down at the mini crowd that gathered below.

“Get down from there suicidal idiot!” Shouted a boy from the sidewalk, frantically gesturing his arms to signify that I should plant my feet back on a solid surface.

He appeared my age but other than that I couldn’t distinguish much from my vantage point besides a mop of dark blue hair partially hidden by a denim cap.

Similar cries erupted from around him as many concerned faces peered up at me from the ground.

I smiled at his concern, touching my pointer finger to my lips in a shushing gesture before bringing the binoculars back to my eyes. “For Dispatch.”

The meeting concluded as quickly as it began, only lasting for a mere ten minutes.

It seems that it’s dangerous for men like them to stay in one place for too long, especially in broad daylight where everyday businessmen rather than shifty drug dealers roamed the streets.

I finally climbed off the flagpole I had been dangling from, nearly toppling the moment my feet met the cement of the roof from the severe headrush I experienced.

Not wasting any time, I quickly gathered my belongings before running  down the stairs of the building I was in.

The moment my feet hit the first step, I pulled my phone out again, speed dialing Sunwoo to ask if he knew where to go next.

“You know the beach where we went last month with Kevin and Sangyeon?” He asked, picking up nearly instantaneously.

I racked my brain projecting the memory in the forefront of my mind. Indeed we had gone to a public beach for a mini vacation and as expected, a series of embarrassing events occured under Sunwoo’s influence.

“How could I forget?” I snapped with a huff, climbing down the second fleet of stairs. “You intentionally pushed me into Kevin, hoping for some cliche k-drama moment!”

“Well it kind of worked,” Sunwoo mused, snickering at the angry tone I was using. Of course he was amused at the mortifying predicament he put me in.

I gasped, appalled at his statement. “We ended up falling on top of some poor kid’s sandcastle! You should’ve seen the little girl’s face, she looked like she was about to cry! And to this day Kevin still thinks I intentionally fell on him! Do you know how embarrassing it was? I can’t even talk to him nowadays!”

Sunwoo burst into a loud bout of laughter, accompanied by the sounds of a couple items getting knocked over. “Not my fault your love life is a joke.”

“Kim Sunwoo!” I exclaimed, feeling a deep sense of hurt at his jesting antics. A quiet ding resonated from my phone, signifying that it was at two percent. “Crap my phone is about to die.”

“Kidding, kidding. Anyways, I gave you an earpiece yesterday, you can just use that instead of your phone to talk to me later. Remember, go to that beach!”

“Alright, bye,” I hung up, tucking my phone away as I exited the building I was in.

Seeing as I arrived via one of the city’s commute buses, I looked around, quickly scanning my surroundings for a taxi of sorts.

Unfortunately, the only vehicle around was a small white cargo truck across the street and I realized with a sigh that it’d have to suffice.

“One hundred thousand won,” I offered, waving the bills in front of the truck driver. His beady eyes absentmindedly followed my hand, clearly itching to claim money as his own yet hesitating. “All I need is for you to drive me to Eurwangni Beach.”

“I don’t have any space in my truck to, there are only two seats and my coworker’s occupying the second,” he began, but I quickly cut him off with a simple shake of head.

“Don’t worry about that,” I replied, walking over to the flower shop beside us. Spotting the ladder propped up against the wall, I moved it so it was right beside the cargo truck before clambering onto the top of it.

“I’m going to get in trouble with the police,” sighed out the truck driver, taking the wad of cash out my hand as I leaned over the edge of the truck’s roof.

“Not if I have a seat belt,” I assured, pulling out  a detached lap belt and a role of neon orange duck tape from my bag.

“Kids nowadays…”

I ignored his exasperated comment, taping the seat belt down before patting the roof of the truck to indicate that I was secure.

As requested, the driver drove to the aforementioned beach, which was a short drive from where I was in Incheon.

I’ve never actually visited Incheon before today, as the meeting I was just observing took place here. The Dispatch office I worked in was located in Seoul, a few blocks away from my apartment.

To be honest, the ride wasn’t unpleasant at all. The roads were fairly smooth and the luscious scenery on the way looked like it came straight out of a photocard.

Once we arrived, I hopped off the truck, allowing the soft sand to cushion my fall. Due to the sunny weather, the beach was already occupied by several different parties.

I went to go sit on one of the public use lounge chairs, sighing as my skin hit the shade of the large red beach umbrella.

Remembering Sunwoo’s words, I rummaged through my bag for the small device he had given me. There were only two buttons on it, one being call and the other being end call.

It must’ve been linked to the one in Sunwoo’s possession as there was no way for me to enter in a number, so I pressed the dial button before slipping the black earpiece in my ear.

“Sunwoo, is this really necessary?” I whispered, hearing him pick up after the second ring.

“No, but it makes it feel like we’re secret agents so why not?” Rang Sunwoo’s voice from the tiny device. “Besides, stop speaking. You’ll look stupid and suspicious talking to yourself. Not that you don’t already look stupid lounging on the beach alone.”

I glared as he chuckled, despite knowing that he couldn’t see me. It was like Sunwoo’s second nature to tease me for whatever miniscule reason he could find and if karma didn’t get him back one day then I would.

“Alright prick, now tell me what I’m doing lounging on a beach chair in eighty degree weather,” I demanded, taking my hat out of my bag to fan myself with it.

My efforts proved fruitless as it generated no more than a tiny gust of air from each swing, so I pulled it on instead in defeat.

I heard a few shuffling sounds from the other end of the line, waiting for a response from my coworker.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting there. And here I was thinking you’d appreciate an impromptu vacation” Sunwoo replied after a few seconds, taking a long drag of what I assumed to be coffee. I rolled my eyes, unafraid to do so in public as I had on a dark pair of sunglasses. “ According to our sources, Hwall is supposed to arrive in a few minutes with his two goons. Most likely taking a break from the whole criminal thing.”

“He literally just came out of a meeting-” I began, eyebrows furrowing in skepticism before being startled out of finishing my sentence.

“WHAAAAAAAHOOOOOO-” cried a frenzied, dark haired male are he charged into the ocean like a stampeding rhinoceros, eyes bulging and mouth stretched open into a wide smile before snapping shut right as the waves swallowed his body.

Shortly after yet another person charged after the first, kicking up fist fulls of dirt into the air as he clumsily dove head first into the glistening blue waters with a loud splash.

My eyes widened at the strange occurrence, still trying to comprehend the rare sight of men my age acting like eight year olds on a sugar high the moment they spot the ocean.

“Why do I even bother with them?” Asked a soft voice a few yards away from me, a third figure appearing from the same direction the other two came.

Curious, I turned my head to peer at the mysterious voice, jaw dropping as I took in the sight.

There, in all his glory, stood the very person I had been tasked to follow, his dark hair billowing in gentle waves like the ocean before him.

Having changed out of his suit, Hwall only had on a pair of swim shorts, forgoing a top and opting for a simple shark tooth necklace in its stead.

Cheeks darkening in a dangerous shade of red, I quickly averted my eyes before they drifted further than the pale skin of his collarbones, reaching up to tip my hat further done my face. “Oh my sweet california oranges.”

“What?” Asked Sunwoo, startling me out of my reverie. I had completely forgotten his presence, unknowingly relishing in the silence from his end. Dealing with him could be quite a handful at times, though I wouldn’t trade our friendship for the world.

“Nothing, I thought I saw a shark,” I responded casually, trying to play off the nervous titter in my voice. Much to my horror, my voice carried over the wind catching the attention of the fine specimen to my left.

Before Hwall had the chance to turn his head fully, I tilted my head downwards to better hide my face as I furtively pressed my phone against my right ear to pretend I was in the middle of a phone call.

“Was that shark hot? I can hear your blush from here y/n,” Sunwoo stated teasingly, making a loud kissing noise. I silently cursed at how well he knew me, realizing how transparent I must be considering how easily my friends could read my emotions.

“Shut up,” I whispered sharply, turning off the earpiece in my ear in annoyance. “Why do I even bother with you.”

Directing my gaze back on the ocean, I watched with mild interest as the two males continued to splash around, hyper aware of how Hwall hadn’t moved from his spot.

The moment I had spotted him the two dots connected together and I realized who exactly the two childlike strangers were. It was a little surprising, seeing two supposed mob members actually like normal teenagers if not younger.

“HYUNJAE,” shouted the tall male with dark orange hair. He had on a distinct look of disgust and betrayal as his companion had managed to nail him right in his face with a handful of water.

“Suck it up Younghoon,” Hyunjae replied, sticking out his tongue as he scrambled out of the range of his angered friend. He burst into a bout of strangled laughter, as Younghoon pounced on him bringing the both of them beneath the surface of the waves.

It was only then that Hwall shifted, strolling towards the ocean in a carefree manner. My eyes caught onto his movement, shifting to his back as he leisurely swam towards Hyunjae and Younghoon.

Much to my surprise, rather than splitting the playful fight, he laid down on Younghoon’s back as the latter was still attempting to throttle Hyunjae.

Younghoon gasped, swimming away in surprise which caused Hwall to roll back into the water.

Yet another water fight broke out as their laughter carried all the way to the beach, or rather, all the way to my ears.

I smiled unknowingly, finding the sight strangely endearing. For whatever reason, I had half expected the group to go shark hunting or some other dangerous activity when I heard they’d be coming. This was the last thing I expected in all honesty.

Seeing the trio like this made me feel a little more  at ease, as if I were at less of a risk of dying due to following them, though it would still be a little early to make that assumption.

The next few hours continued on in a similar fashion until Hwall, Hyunjae, and Younghoon wore themselves out.

“I need food,” whined Hyunjae, collapsing on his back on a beach towel that I presumed was his.

Younghoon plopped down next to him, nodding a little as if to say ‘me too’.

Hwall glanced down at them, shaking his head in exasperation. “I’ll go buy something from the cafe down the street.”

He walked away to a chorus of thanks you’s, pulling on a shirt and a pair of sandals from the bag laying beside his two friends.

Inconspicuously gathering my own belongings, I waited for five minutes before leaving, already knowing which cafe he meant as there was only one within walking distance.

By the time I arrived, Hwall had already ordered and was situated at a table by one of the floor length windows that lined the shop. His head was resting on his palm, as he stared out through the glass only breaking out of his pensive trance when a waiter brought over his mug of coffee.

Not wanting to be caught staring, I walked towards the counter to order something to nibble on since I was already here.

But to my surprise, the male working the cashier flashed me a cheery smile as he slid a sandwich across the counter. “One Inkigayo sandwich right? It’s already been paid for, so enjoy!”

I didn’t have the chance to ask him if he had made a mistake as to who to give the sandwich to or even who paid for it, as he was already talking to the next customer in line.

Walking to the nearest empty table, which was coincidentally beside Hwall’s, I sat down and slowly peeled open the plastic wrap covering the sandwich.

A small beige notecard fell out of the wrapping, fluttering delicately on the table. I picked it up, flipping it over as the side that had been facing me was blank.

There, in messy black handwriting, was a short message that seemingly caused my heart to stop for a solid few seconds.

“I probably would’ve killed you by now if you weren’t so cute.”

My cheeks flared scarlet red, feeling absolutely mortified as I knew that it was foolish of me to think that someone of his profession wouldn’t notice that they’re being followed.

Dropping the card back on the table, my gaze nervously trailed forward, before stopping on Hwall who was already looking at me.

The afternoon sun cast a beautiful aura of light on his face, illuminating his features with an ethereal glow as he winked at me, the corners of his lips quirking up into a smirk.

.

.

.

“What’s up girl?”

[dxsole]

LAYER ONE: THE OUTSIDE

• name: Donald “Babyface” Penzag

• eye color: Chestnut Brown

• hair style/color: Jet black, short, almost always styled

• height: 6′1″ / 185cm

• clothing style:  Sporty, comfortable and casual. Lots of grays and blacks as well as every shade of blue available. Likes sweatpants, track suits, shorts, and tank tops. Usually wears ratty Converse or specifically boxing sneakers since he’s often training in the gym.

LAYER TWO: THE INSIDE

• your fears: “Uh, goats freak me out-- it’s the eyes, you know? I don’t like fuckin’ ‘round with goats. Or clowns. Or snakes. Listen, I’m a big guy but I’m no match for a fuckin’ sentient noodle with teeth and venom and Satan in ‘em.”

• your guilty pleasure: “Uh, beer. Like good IPA, fancy shit. Makes me feel like a hipster but whatever, it’s good. And sub sandwiches. Get me in a Subway and I’ll tear it to pieces.”

• your biggest pet peeve: “Does the general presence of cops count? I think it counts ‘cause that’ll set me off for the whole year. Also, when people in the crowd after the match start talkin’ shit just ‘cause they were rootin’ for the other guy? Like, okay Steve, I get that yer not my fan but I won’t hesitate to break yer face in.”

• your ambitions for the future: “Go pro. I can do it too-- I know I’m young but c’mon I’m good! And totally made for the screen, like look at me...I’m gorgeous. And I deserve fame and fortune and my own line of sport drinks.”

LAYER THREE: THOUGHTS

• your first thoughts waking up: “Fuck the sun. Fuck the sun, fuck the alarm, fuck everything.”

• what you think about most: “Uh, boxin’...eatin’...fuckin’...in that order. Wash, rinse, repeat.”

• what you think about before bed: “You...You think I’m thinkin’ anythin’ at that point? My mind is a void as my head hits the pillow at high speeds.”

• you think your best quality is: “I have so many, oh my God...I’m beautiful gorgeous, strong, charming, talented, humble--”

WHAT’S BETTER?

• single or group dates: “Singles. Friends always wanna know ‘bout you and stuff, like, shit, I’m just tryin’ to smash here.” • to be loved or respected: "Respected.” • beauty or brains: "Beauty. People with brains figure me out too quick.” • dogs or cats: "Dogs, I wanna dog so, so, so badly, oh my God...”

LAYER FIVE: DO YOU…

• lie: ”...Listen....okay, maybe I...exaggerate-- No, I straight up lie, sorry. Not to be malicious but like...not everyone goes for ‘hey, I’m just gonna rail you and never call back and also maybe fuck your roommate too’ like that just doesn’t work.”

• believe in yourself: “Of course! I’m my number one fan!”

• believe in love: "Uh, I guess. Maybe. With someone really, really good.”

• want someone: ”Someone in particular? Nah, just...someone to sleep with in general...get in line everybody.”

LAYER SIX: EVER BEEN…

• been on stage: “Uh, does the ring count? Oh shit, no, when I was in elementary school we put on one of ‘em lil’ kiddy plays...we did The Jungle Book....I was Baloo!”

• done drugs: "Nah, my coach took me in pretty early and he’s real strict ‘bout what I put in my body. I’m not about to risk losin’ him as a coach for drugs. Don’t do drugs kids, and uh, stay in school.”

• changed who you were to fit in: "...Maybe. Maybe a lot.”

LAYER SEVEN: FAVORITES

• favorite color: Cobalt blue

• favorite animal: Dogs

• favorite movie: The Die Hard series.

• favorite game: Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, God of War

LAYER EIGHT: AGE

• day your next birthday will be: “April 21st! It’s also Easter apparently, but since I’m Jewish, uh, my birthday is obviously the big event at my house.”

• how old will you be: "I’ll be 24!”

• age you lost your virginity: ”16.”

• does age matter: "It matters when it’s younger, yeah,  that’s just creepy. I’m 23 and I don’t even think I’d even talk to anyone that wasn’t 21, okay?”

LAYER NINE: IN A PERSON

• best personality: "Personality? Uh, I guess someone super compassionate and...funny...and like nerdy. I need someone who’d wanna binge watch The X-Files with...”

• best eye color: "I’m not lookin’ at anyone’s eyes I can assure ya of that...”

• best hair color: "Don’t care ‘bout that either...I mean, in my personal experience, blondes most definitely do have more fun but it’s not a dealbreaker.”

• best thing to do with a partner: "You know what I’m gonna say.”

LAYER TEN: FINISH THE SENTENCE

• i love: my family. • i feel: hungry. • i hide: porno mags. • i miss: the Spice girls. When are they gonna get back together to spice up the world? • i wish: I had a sandwich right now...

💌 TAGGED BY: @heartmemos​ // thank u bby~!!!

💌 TAGGING:@broskys​ (gimme constantine? if u want! :3), @cedarscentedofficer​, @deadblush​, @fadedbouquet​, @gentlegently​ and anyone else who wants it~!!!

[miraculouspaon]

Mercutio

Because I was in the mood for some light Ferdithan, and I was inspired by @aliensfordonuts‘s adorable cat Benny, who is a dead ringer for Mercutio. An expansion of this drabble. Enjoy!

“I’m not making any promises,” Jonathan said, as he and Ferd stepped into the animal shelter. “I’m not really a cat person.”

“You absolutely are,” Ferd replied easily. “You need a cat more than any other person I’ve ever met in my goddamn life.”

“Oh, so this is you doing me a favor, is it?” Jonathan looked around the lobby, but it was deserted except for a black cat lounging on the front desk. “Where is everybody?”

Ferd shrugged and started scratching the cat behind his ears. “They’re pretty understaffed,” he said. “They need more foster homes, volunteers-”

“Don’t push it.”

Grinning, Ferd scooped up the cat and held him up to Jonathan’s face. “Hey, look, it’s your arch-nemesis,” he said.

“Oh my God.”

“How’d the final battle go?” Ferd held up the cat’s front paw, lightly pressing out the poor creature’s claws, and began swiping in Jonathan’s direction. “This is about how it went down, right?” Ferd made a hissing noise. “Die, die!“ He turned the cat towards himself. "Don’t worry, kitty,” he said reassuringly, “I’m a historian, I guarantee this reenactment is a thousand percent authentic.”

“Put that thing down, Ferd.”

“Don’t be fucking rude,” Ferd replied cheerfully. He held the ridiculously patient cat up to Jonathan’s face. “Scratch your nephew’s ears.”

“I will walk out that door.”

“No you won’t.”

“I thought cats didn’t put up with being manhandled like that?”

“Most don’t.” Jonathan and Ferd turned as a friendly-looking woman approached, smiling. “It’s good to see you again, Ferd.” She held her hand out to Jonathan, who shook it. “Hi, I’m Claire, I run the adoption program here. And to answer your question, Chat Noir here is just about the most laid-back cat in the city, hence why he gets to be the front desk mascot. I know,” she laughed, completely misreading Jonathan’s expression, “the name’s cliche on multiple levels. But we put it to a vote with the kids at the local community center, and it wasn’t even close. You’d be surprised, actually, at how good the real Chat’s been for the city’s felines. We used to have a hell of a time adopting out the black ones, but now they’re the most popular of all.”

“Oh,” Jonathan said politely, “That’s great.”

Claire’s smile brightened. “Ferd tells me you two just moved into an apartment that allows pets?”

“Yeah,” Jonathan said, “but honestly, I’m not really sure about-”

“Oh, of course, of course,” Claire interrupted, “I wouldn’t want you to adopt one unless it felt right, obviously. We’re very good about matching cats to owners, though, a lot of people come in thinking they want one thing because they don’t really know better. Follow me, I’ll get you two set up in one of our rooms in the back. Let’s see, two adults, no kids, I know Ferd’s working hours fluctuate a bit depending on the time of year, what about you? Standard nine-to-five office job, or are you an academic, too?”

“Neither, actually,” Jonathan said, as Claire led them both into a cozy little room with a few chairs and cat beds, “I’m a freelance magic consultant. I mostly work from home.”

“Oh! That sounds fascinating, you’ll have to tell me all about it. Well, off the top of my head I’d say you two are a good fit for one of our calmer young adults. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

“She’s nice,” Jonathan said, once Claire had closed the door behind herself. “Former student?”

“Nope,” Ferd said. “We met at a support group.”

“A support…” Jonathan trailed off as he suddenly realized why Claire looked vaguely familiar. “Really? You want a cat that badly?”

“Oh, I would never dream of suggesting you adopt a cat out of guilt,” Ferd said happily. “Although I will point out that Claire is not just any akuma victim, she’s the last one. You know, the one you akumatized after your sister was safely returned home and everything was completely fine.”

“You are enjoying this far too much, you know that?”

“Maybe,” Ferd admitted, “but we signed a lease, so you’re stuck with me.”

The door opened, and Claire entered with two small carriers. “Okay,” she said, shutting the door firmly before letting both cats out, “this fluffy orange one is Prospero, and the gray and white shorthair is Mercutio. Now, Prospero’s a bit more playful, but Mercutio’s shy, he takes a little while to…” Claire trailed off as the cat jumped right up into Jonathan’s lap, curled up, and began purring. “Oh,” she said. “I’ve never seen him do that before.”

Gently, Jonathan began stroking the cat’s soft fur. “Mercutio?”

“We have a lot of cats to name, and it’s easier if we pick themes,” Claire explained. “This month it’s Shakespeare. You can rename any cat you adopt of course, most people do.”

“No,” Jonathan said softly, “Mercutio’s perfect for him.”

“Jonathan used to be an actor,” Ferd said. “Did you ever play Mercutio?”

“I was Tybalt once,” Jonathan replied, still petting the cat. “He kills Mercutio in Act Three.”

Claire grinned. “I’m sure this Mercutio won’t hold it against you,” she said. “He can be a bit clingy if he’s left alone too long, but if you’re home most of the day it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Jonathan scratched Mercutio’s ear, and the cat’s purring grew louder. It was funny, the creature’s contentment was almost contagious. Jonathan wondered if part of that was his empathic powers, though they’d never worked on animals before, or if that’s just how cats were.

“Mercutio,” Ferd said. He reached over and scratched the cat’s other ear. “More like Mer-cutie-o.” He looked up at Jonathan. “Well? Come on, you need someone keeping an eye on you at home while I’m teaching.”

Jonathan smiled. “You win.”

[themurphyzone]

Secret Santa Ch 6

Sorry about the wait! I went home for Thanksgiving and we just got the Internet back!

So yeah tons of cuteness in the last chapter. Headcanon that Bradley is totally a cat lover! Also Pepper’s original name was Ashley but then I thought Bradley already had a name that ends with -ley and it looked too similar. Besides, salt and pepper go together!

Ch 6- Bradley

“You’re picky, aren’t you?” Bradley asked. Pepper mewed and turned her nose up at the white cat bed Bradley pointed out. “Do you want a darker color?”

Pepper batted at the air in front of her.

“This one’s too big,” Bradley said, kneeling to look at the items on the bottom row. “And this one’s expensive.”

He set Pepper down so he could look at the price tag of a brown, circular bed. The fleece was soft and fluffy, and had room to spare as Pepper grew up.

“What about this one?” he asked, his heart sinking when he realized Pepper hadn’t answered like she normally did. “Pepper?”

It hadn’t been a week and he’d already lost track of his kitten. She couldn’t possibly get into trouble. No, there was no way she could waltz out the door and get chased by stray dogs or hit by a car or be buried in a landslide-

Bradley inhaled deeply, though it didn’t help calm his heart at all. He walked through the aisle twice, but there was no sign of a dark gray kitten anywhere.

“Bradley!” An all-too familiar voice shouted. “Hey! What are you doing here?”

The last thing he needed with this disaster of epic proportions was the epitome of catastrophe himself.

“Milo,” Bradley said flatly. “Go away. Weekends are my breaks.”

“Well, I can’t leave Diogee behind!” Milo cheerfully waved to Diogee, who was behind a large enclosure with a group of five other dogs. Diogee barked at the acknowledgement. “Also, Melissa’s the assistant teacher!”

“Assistant teacher for what?” Bradley asked.

“Oh, you didn’t know?” Milo asked. “Diogee teaches ACL. American Canine Language for short. This pet store lets them use the space on Saturdays at noon. It’s really nice of them to do that.”

Melissa put a fluffy Pomeranian down, opening the door a crack so she could join the conversation but not let the dogs out. “Between you and me, I have no idea what they’re saying. I’m just here to pet some pooches,” she whispered to Bradley.

Bradley pulled away, quickly turning his back on Milo so he didn’t see his cheeks heat up. Of course he’d been thinking about Melissa’s gift, but he only thought about it during school since Pepper wasn’t distracting him. Not that all distractions were bad of course. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go find Pepper.”

“Did you lose her?” Milo asked. “I can help you look. It’s no trouble. Maybe I can get Diogee to sniff her out for you.”

“Yes, I lost her,” Bradley snapped. “And keep your mutt away.”

No amount of telling Milo to keep out of his business was working, so Bradley had no choice but to let Milo follow behind him. In that timespan, three shopping carts overturned and a large bag of dog food split open, the entire back half of the store now filled with the sounds of crunching kibble and barking dogs.

They checked the bird aisle, the toy section, the aquarium decorations, and the grooming services, but they still couldn’t spot Pepper anywhere.

“It’s hopeless,” Bradley muttered. “We’ll never find her.”

“Don’t give up!” Milo said. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

Bradley scoffed, folding his arms. “And how do you know?”

“Because she’s right next to your head,” Milo replied. “Hi, Pepper! You had us all worried!”

Bradley whipped around, but before he could scoop Pepper up, she turned tail and settled into a black cat bed, curling in on herself and yawning.

“I can’t believe she was napping the entire time,” Bradley said, taking the cat bed off the shelf. “I’m not hanging around longer than I need to. I only came in here to buy her bed.”

Milo nodded. “See you on Monday then! Bye, Pepper!”

“Keep your voice down! She’s asleep!”

Pepper adjusted to his house quickly, so he was able to focus his attention on his gift to Melissa.

She was intelligent, but often forgetful. Bradley had seen her weak throwing arm, so sports equipment was ruled out.

Safety equipment? She was almost always in the splatter zone.

But Melissa never hesitated in telling people off when she thought they were being too paranoid around Milo. In Bradley’s opinion, there was little paranoia in fearing for his life when ‘anything that can go wrong’ did not exclude dying.

He liked to think he had good self-preservation instincts, a skill which many kids at Jefferson County Middle School sorely lacked.

Maybe a second opinion wouldn’t hurt. Girls were complicated after all.

Bradley deliberately hung back while the other kids crossed the street to get to the bus stop. Since there were currently only four functioning buses due to circus elephants stampeding through the parking lot at the main district office, the buses wouldn’t come around for another fifteen minutes.

That was plenty of time to chat.

“Elliot, I have a question for you,” Bradley said.

Elliot was still shaking his fist at Milo. “And if I even see you trying to cover your arm with any bracelet that’s on my prohibited list, you’ll be sorry!”

Bradley rolled his eyes. “Do I want to know why you have a prohibited list for bracelets?”

“Not just for bracelets. Also includes any other pieces of jewelry that can potentially get caught on water heaters, streetlamps, or luggage carts,” Elliot replied. “Always good to help educate a student on safety protocol.”

“No, that was a question formulated out of disbelief,” Bradley sighed. “Say, hypothetically, there was a pretty girl at school and a Secret Santa exchange is coming up in less than a month. What would you get her?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Elliot said. “Matching safety vests! That way you can walk home at night and the color is bright enough so people can see you! Except make sure the girl in question isn’t also a regionally acclaimed skateboarder. Wendy didn’t like it that much when I gave tickets to all the other skateboarders at the state competition for violating basic safety principles. It totally wasn’t my fault. They deserved those citations for not completely wearing a protective bubble wrap layer while skateboarding along the half-pipe like any sane person would.”

Bradley wouldn’t be caught dead in one of Elliot’s overly saturated safety vests.

He walked to the bus stop with nine minutes to spare. “Thanks for nothing. I have no idea what I was thinking asking him for help,” he muttered.

“Why don’t you ask Milo?” Mort suggested. “He hangs out with Melissa all the time. He’ll probably know a lot of things that she likes.”

Bradley tapped his pencil in irritation and tried to focus on the assignment in front of him. “I am not asking the Boy Blunder for help. I’m not that desperate.”

Mort raised an eyebrow. “You say you aren’t desperate. But your aura is a deep purple like you’re afraid of what will happen in the near future should you fail to procure a suitable present.”

“Don’t try to read my thoughts,” Bradley snapped. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“And there’s a hint of green mixed in there too. Usually it stands for disgust,” Mort said.

Bradley shrugged. “In my defense, they were serving meatloaf for lunch.”

He was not going to regret this. He was not going to watch what little dreams he had crash and burn before they even got off the ground.

“I need help,” he said.

He fought the urge to scream, run, and live like a hermit for the rest of his life. Getting Melissa a present took precedence over his disdain for Milo. It was a constant internal struggle.

Milo gasped, a sickeningly bright smile taking over his face. “Sure! I’d love to help! I don’t know what you might need it for, but consider it accepted anyway!”

As he stood up in excitement, the open water bottle on his desk tipped over, spilling liquid all over the nearby electrical cords. The cords sparked and they quickly moved away from the small fire that sprung up.

He was definitely starting to regret this decision.

Looking around to make sure Melissa wasn’t in the vicinity, Bradley beckoned Milo closer, though he made sure there was an arm’s length between them. “What does Melissa like?”

“Lots of things!” Milo exclaimed. Apparently he never learned volume control, Bradley thought. “Good grades, friends, Diogee, music, risk-taking, bets, and puppies. I’m guessing puppies are kinda out of your budget though.”  

As much as he wanted to disregard Milo, he had good ideas sometimes.

Only sometimes.

“Maybe not every kind of puppy,” Bradley said. “Does she like stuffed animals?”

Milo nodded. “She doesn’t really buy them herself. They’re usually gifts. And you can tell which ones were from me, because there’s always a leg or eye lost between the time I buy them and when she receives them. One time I knocked over the shelf where she displays them and now she has caution tape around the perimeter.”

“That’s all I need to know,” Bradley said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere else to be.”

“Where?” Milo asked.

A perfume cloud suddenly enveloped the classroom from a girl’s spilled bottle, causing the people in the back to cough as their senses were overwhelmed.

“Anywhere that doesn’t have an ocean mist scented perfume cloud,” Bradley replied, gathering his things and leaving the class so he didn’t get stuck with the scent all over his clothes. “And don’t think for one minute that asking for your help is going to be a regular occurrence.”

He found himself in the stuffed animal section of a toy store, looking through all the plush dogs on the shelves. They had just about every breed of canine imaginable, and Bradley belatedly realized he didn’t ask Milo about the breeds Melissa liked.

He tried to picture Diogee in his mind, though he had no idea what kind of dog he was. He appeared to be a corgi or dachshund though. It was probably the stubby legs.

After some debate, he picked a small Shiba Inu plushie complete with Santa hat. It wasn’t anything extravagant, but he hoped Melissa would find it cute anyway.

He was sure the plushie could never be as adorable as Pepper though.