#I think that working for minimum wage has finally broken my mind

[marsafter-dark]

Makes myself piss laughing as I imagine a modern AU where the plot is that Merlin becomes head of the movement to unionize under Uther.

[woniechronicles]

mystery boy

context: the same man always shows up at your job during the week. comes at the same time, leaves right before closing. he doesn’t speak much, not until your one closing shift, that is.

pairings: shy student, figure skater! sunghoon x g.n. reader

word count: 3.3k

a/n: not proofread

every thursday to sunday night was the same: doing school work behind the counter of your minimum wage job at your local ice skating rink. people came and went, some regulars, some school field trips, some who come in every now and then to hang out with their friends. but there was one man who came in, supposedly, everyday to practice his skills. on your shifts, he would come in every day at the same time: 5PM. then he would leave at closing time and come back the very next day at the same time and do it all over again. every so often he would bring a friend or two but very rarely would he do so- maybe once or twice a month at most.

every so often you would peek through the glass and scan the ice rink. he always stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the families and younger crowd, even those who you assumed were his age. the way he moved so elegantly across the ice looked effortless to him, but when you imagined yourself even attempting to pull off a move such as one of his you knew you would fall flat on your ass within a matter of seconds. but you never lingered for long, your attention moving back to your school work or one of the other customers.

according to your coworkers, he doesn’t say much. everyone’s curiosity is strong with him in particular, especially the younger women who attempt to send him flirty eyes his way but are met with blank stares. even your manager elli, who co-owns the rink with her husband, has tried sparking up conversations with him before. but from what you’ve been told, he just answers in one word or short sentences with dead ends. half of the staff think of him as an asshole while some think of him as just shy or mysterious. you, on the other hand, didn’t care much to ponder about him.

during the last hour of work, elli comes in from the manager's office in a hurry with her purse and a worried look on her face that starts to match yours. “my granddaughter is in the hospital, i have to leave for the night.” she says in a rush, quickly looking around to make sure shes gathered all her items.

“will she be okay?” you ask, eyes widened with concern.

she nods, getting out from behind the counter and standing in front of you as she rummages through her purse for her car keys. “she’s fine, just a broken arm. but i’m still worried.” finally finding her keys, she turns to look at you. “would you mind closing up for the night?”

you shake your head, motioning for her to leave. “not at all, i got it covered. now go, i got everything covered, don't worry.” you smile at her reassuringly as she mouths a ‘thank you’, rushing out the door and leaving to her duties as a grandmother.

the next hour was slow, people were leaving and no new customers came within the last hour. every so often people would come to the counter next to for free hot chocolate as they left and said goodnight, but that was about it. five minutes before closing, you noticed the mystery skater still trying to nail a spin he’s been attempting for the past thirty minutes. normally he would be getting ready to leave by now, but he was still stuck on the move. being the only two in the rink, you decide to start locking the doors of the lobby and putting away any skates laying around as you allow him the extra time. by the time you finish cleaning up the lobby, it’s ten minutes after closing and he’s still going at it.

you quickly move into the manager's office and turn off the music to signal him it’s time to wrap up. once the music stops, he snaps back into reality and realizes that it’s probably closing time. walking off the rink, he moves towards the lobby and his eyes catch the time. he looks over at you with an apologetic look, rushing to take everything off so as to not inconvenience you.

chuckling, you start to pack your items up as you speak to him. “it’s okay, you don’t have to hurry.” you glance up at him, realizing he was already putting his sneakers on. “i gave you extra time since you looked like you needed some. it’s okay.”

you hear him mumble a quick ‘thank you’ before grabbing his bag and walking towards the door. before you could warn him that the doors were locked, you see him walk straight into the door as they don’t open for him. quickly covering your hand with your mouth with a gasp, you begin to walk towards him.

“are you okay?” you ask concerned, his head tilted downwards in embarrassment. “i was going to warn you but you walk really fast.”

he nods as he rubs his forehead. “i’m okay, sorry about that.”

shaking your head, you rush to grab your bag from the counter and the keys to lock up. “it’s fine, don’t apologize. as long as you’re okay that’s what matters.” you unlock the door and motion for him to walk out, following behind him as he does so.

as you lock up the doors you expect to hear him walk away, but in the corner of your eye you can see him standing still. as you finish locking every door, you turn around and see him looking at you blankly.

quickly realizing how creepy he was seeming, he speaks up for him. “sorry, i just realized it’s dark out and since it seems to be only you i didn’t want you to walk through the parking lot by yourself.”

you nod, smiling politely at him as you make your way towards your car. sure this man seemed harmless, just an awkward person, but you also were cautious. looking around the lot, you notice only one car in the lot. “where’s your car?”

he points at the bus stop across the lot, then realized you probably couldn’t see him motion towards it and mentally slapped himself. “i take the bus. my car is in the shop right now.” noticing his bus in the distance, he starts jogging to catch it but not before yelling to get some safe.

you watch as he gets on the bus, taking a seat in the back near the window. he takes his headphones out of his bag and slips them on, turning to his phone as the bus pulls off. from inside your car, you start to wonder about the awkward guy more.

xxxx

the next day is the same. you arrive at three, clock in, and begin doing your everyday tasks before sitting behind the counter and checking people in in between your class work. at five is when a taller figure approaches the counter, the voice deep and familiar.

“sorry again about yesterday.” he says, his deep voice causing your head to shoot up.

it’s him again, like clockwork. you shake your head in disagreement, taking the money that he slid on the counter and getting ready to give him his change back. “don’t apologize, you have nothing to be sorry for.” taking the change from the drawer, you start to count it over to make sure it’s the right amount. “i’m just glad you’re okay. and thank you for walking me to my car, i appreciate it.”

he holds out his hand for the change, taking it as you place the quarters and dimes in his rather large hands. you notice a shy smile on his face as he says ‘anytime’, a dimple popping out as he makes his way towards his signature locker and slips on his skates. you didn’t notice, but as you continued on with your work he kept glancing at you. he was curious about you, more than you were curious about him.

throughout the night, you would glance the mystery man’s way at times to see him practicing the same move as last night. occasionally he would move onto a different one, but not spending more than a couple of minutes on it and then going back to the previous one. as the last hour closed in, almost everyone seemed to leave except for him. just like the previous night, you allowed him to stay past time. you allowed him to finish up his move until you cleaned everything up, then turning off the music at fifteen minutes past closing to signal him it’s time to leave.

you see him let out a sigh, walking off of the ice and to the lobby to change back into his sneakers. as you shove your books into your bag, he goes to grab the lobby door until he realizes it’s locked again. looking up at the clock, he realizes the time and looks at you as you close everything up.

“you didn’t have to do that again, i-“

“feel bad?” you interrupt, turning around from locking up the skates to unlock the lobby door and let him through. “it’s fine, really. you get extra time to practice and i’m able to clean up everything. it’s a win-win situation.”

as he steps out, he sees his bus pull away and lets out a sigh. looking in his direction, you see a bus pull away and look at him. “was that your bus?” you question. when he nods, you automatically feel terrible. “i’m so sorry, i can give you a ride home? if you’d like? or does that make you uncomfortable? i’m so sorry that wasn’t my intention-“

he lets out laughter as he runs a hand through his hair, shaking his head. “it’s okay, i don’t want to make you uncomfortable. i can just call an uber or something-“

“no no! let me drive you, it’s okay. just don’t kill me or anything and there won’t be an issue.” locking up the doors, you make sure it’s all secure and grab your car keys. as you look up at him apologetically, you start to plead more. “i’m so sorry i swear i was just trying-“

“it’s okay, it’s okay. if i accept your ride offer will you feel better?” seeing you nod, he smiles and agrees to the ride. the smile on your face makes his heart flutter, following beside you to your car.

the walk to the car is quiet as you rush to open the doors. you don’t know if he has a curfew or if his parents are expecting him so you don’t want to be the reason he gets in trouble. or if he even had plans and he could be missing or be late to them- that was your main worry. he notices you became quiet but says nothing, just slips into the passenger side and puts on the seatbelt as you begin to pull away.

as you wait for your turn onto the street, you ask him where he lives. “i’ll guide you.” is all he says as he tells you where and when to turn. the entire time you’re praying he doesn't take you to some creepy road with a malicious plan but as you turn down a road with large houses accompanied by even bigger pools with waterfalls, that negative cloud dissipates. when he says “here”, you pull into an empty driveway of a large home. it wasn’t a mansion, but it was definitely bigger than the studio apartment you were renting and even bigger than your childhood home. through the metal fence you can see a pool and a hot tub, both empty but very obvious.

noticing your awe expression, he chuckles and unbuckles his seatbelt. “thanks for the ride- i’m sorry i don’t know your name, i feel like i should.”

breaking out of your curiosity daze, you turn to him. “y/n. what’s yours, rich boy?” you tease, the smile on your lips playful.

his nose scrunches as he smiles, opening the door as he throws his legs over the door frame. “sunghoon. it’s nice to officially meet.”

xxxx

for the next week, a routine builds up between you two. he comes in at five, stays till after closing, and you drive him home. gradually you begin to learn more of each other. you learn how he’s practicing to become a professional figure skater while also taking a few college courses at the university across town to earn a degree in radiology. although still soft spoken, you can tell he’s opened his shell to you a bit.

during the week you can’t help but wonder how he is. while in classes, your mind wanders on how his classes are and if he’s learned this new spin he recently told you he wanted to learn. once thursday finally arrives again, you happily wait around for 5PM and smile up at sunghoon as he enters with his one friend you see every so often.

“long time, no see.” he speaks first, smiling at you as his friend just watches the interaction.

you greet his friend as well with a smile, taking his payment and giving him the remainder of the change. “you don’t need a ride tonight?”

he shakes his head as he puts the change in his wallet, telling his friend to start getting ready with his skates. “not tonight. but hey,” he looks around as he builds up courage for his next sentence. “i got my car back from the shop the other day and wanted to offer you a ride home tomorrow, if you’re okay with that. just, as a thank you for the past week.”

you nod, your smile widening. “sure, i don’t mind. thanks, sunghoon.”

throughout the night, whenever you looked over at sunghoon he was already looking over at you. when your eyes locked, he’d look away with a shy smile before following his friend around the rink. at the end of the night, sunghoon and his friend left right as elli was closing for the night and he waved goodbye to you.

when elli locked the doors, she turned to you with a curious grin. “what?” you said, holding back a smile from her. you knew where she was headed, but you didn’t want to give her the details just yet.

“are you seeing the mystery boy?” she asks in a teasing tone as she cleans up the empty cups and sprawled about napkins off the floor.

you shake your head, stuffing your items in your bag quickly before doing your closing routine. “not really. i’ve just been giving him rides and we’ve been bonding, i guess. just friendly stuff.”

she scoffs, making you turn your head to her direction. “not with the way he looks at you.” you raise a brow at her, motioning for her to continue her sentence. “the way he smiles at you from across the rink is telling enough. take it from me, i would know.”

you take her word for it but don’t ponder on it until your drive home. does he really look at you a certain way? does he really smile a lot around you? regardless, you try to not think too much about it but can’t help but imagine his face when you close your eyes. as you’re drifting to sleep, you can’t help but look forward to tomorrow.

xxxx

today you even finished your coursework early, meaning all you did was study and occasionally procrastinate. when five o’clock rolled around, in strolled sunghoon with his skates by himself this time. his face lit up upon seeing you, his nose scrunching up in this adorable way that causes his dimples to pop out at you. you would be lying if you said it didn’t cause a butterfly to flutter around in your stomach, especially after your conversation with elli last night.

“hey stranger.” you say, returning his smile. “fancy meeting you here.”

he hands you his money, chuckling at your greeting. “yeah the outside caught my attention so figured why not.” as you hand him his change, you lock eyes for a few moments before he continues. “the cutie behind the counter drew me in a bit, too.”

the blush spreading across your cheeks catch his attention, mentally making a note to flirt with you more. “just a bit?” you retort, catching him off guard.

“more than a bit, actually.” is the last thing he says before walking over to his locker and getting ready for the evening.

as the night comes to a close, elli leaves early again to attend to her granddaughter again since she is still healing from her injury. five minutes before closing and everyone is gone except you two, so you close up the lobby again and begin cleaning. but before you can turn off the music, sunghoon walks in and begins helping you clean up the empty cups and trash around the waste bin. when you notice this, you begin to protest but he shoo’s you away, insisting he helps you since you help him. you let him continue because at the end of the day, who are you to object to extra help? you both take your time cleaning, just talking with one another.

“how’s your routine coming along?” you ask as you clean up the last of the lobby, putting away the skates as sunghoon finally changes out of his own. “from what i saw it looks like it’s coming along great.”

“you’re watching me skate while at work?” he asks, making you glance at him with a grin. “how creepy.”

you laugh, throwing an empty paper cup at him as you come out from behind the counter with your bag on your shoulder. “and you stare too much.”

leaning against the counter, you watch as he grabs his bag and starts walking towards you. “it’s not my fault you’re so pretty.” he comments, making you roll your eyes with a tint of blush appearing on your cheeks.

you both are just mere inches apart, eyes staring into one another’s as the silence drowns out the world around you. his hand brushes against yours for a moment, sending a shiver up your spine as his eyes gaze from your eyes to your lips then back to eyes once more. taking this into notice, you do the same as to reciprocate his feelings. and luckily enough, he understands. bringing his hand up to your cheek, he cups it with a shy grin and leans his forehead against yours. bodies pressed together, he snakes his arm around your waist to pull you closer. for a few seconds you stay like this, waiting for someone to make the first move as your arm rests on his bicep and the other on his neck.

“so can you kiss me already?” you break the silence, laughter filling the room before his lips meets yours.

and once they do, you can feel those previous butterflies erupt into a zoo. it’s not long before you both are smiling into the kiss, lips molding perfectly together as they move in unison. as the kids deepens, you glide your tongue across his bottom lip for access and he happily allows you in. sunghoon tastes just like vanilla, making you want more of him. it isn’t until you momentarily snap back into reality when you realize where you are: at your job.

you pull away from sunghoon’s lips, both of you attempting to catch your breath as his thumb grazes the apples of your cheek. once you pull away from his forehead to take a look at him, you smile at the sight. his lips are plump, saliva at the corners of his mouth. you swipe away at them, cleaning it up with your thumb with a genuine smile. he watches you intently, catching you off guard by pecking your lips before grabbing your hand and pulling you towards the exit.

you stop him in his tracks, making him turn around to face you. “so are we dating now?” you ask, taking a step forward.

he chuckles, pulling you towards him to press a small kiss to your forehead. “let me treat you to dinner first and then we can make it official.”

[kxowledge]

The university ghosted me, which I tried to rationalize at first, but honestly, whatever. I’ll get the mass rejection email in some weeks, and it’s fine. I felt so incredibly heart broken for the last week, as I’m coming to terms with the fact that I didn’t get in. Despite trying to restrain myself, I had imagined the life I would lead if I had gotten in – the food I could afford, the furniture I’d get, the course I could teach, the pottery studio I’d join, the timing around buying a house & building a family.

However, I talked with my boyfriend about options and I’m happy with how things stand. I feel more clarity and it’s good. I am going to apply to one other PhD position this round, but otherwise I’m taking some time to work on things, for which I’m so excited about. I’ll retake the GRE to boost my scores (aiming for a perfect 170 in the verbal this time around!) and I’ll take my time working on research proposals and applications in the next cycle (this time aiming for around 8 universities). I’ll also apply to teacher training (for 2025/26, three different programs) and an agroecology program. I can then dedicate some time to volunteering once my applications are in – don’t know 100% where but I have two or three options in mind.

For the time being, I will stay here, which is a great relief – I don’t think I could cope with moving. I’ll work at my current job until they let me go (the company is closing down) and afterwards I’ll look for a kitchen job, which actually I know I would enjoy to a certain extent and would bring in a similar amount of income anyway as Norway has a good minimum wage. I’m going to extend my degree by one or two semesters and work on the thesis – perhaps try to refine it into a publishable article as well. This gives me also time to finalize the dissertation for the bachelor in theology and close that chapter of my life as well. Another big focus will be learning Norwegian – I should use my opportunity to be here and practice.

And in the meanwhile, to keep things interesting, I’ll focus on various low-stakes projects for fun, which I feel like I missed so much during the past two years as I was razor-focused on getting into a PhD program. I’ll try making my own sourdough! I’ll take a cooking class! I’ll help my dad with his kitchen reno! I’ll take many hikes! I’ll take an online agroecology course! I’ll focus on refining my cooking! Who knows, maybe I will even take the pottery course. And for extra, extra fun – to make me excited about the more immediate future: I’ll travel to Bath (always a good choice when in despair) & I’ll organize a longer trip in September.

Getting in would have maybe made my life easier, but this will make it more interesting.

[markberries]

two in the morning┊mark lee

• info: mark confesses his love to you on the roof.

• warnings: none

• genre: fluff, gender neutral reader (i think, pls let me know if anything indicates a fem reader), best friends to lovers

• word count: 1,003

• a/n: this was just a short thing i wrote to hold off my nctzen followers... i have a 10k+ mark fic that i’m still working on! also not proof read lol

a year ago, you had thought about running away.

it was after a breakup with your ex-boyfriend, who had left you for another. you had laughed with so much self pity in your voice, knowing well enough that high school relationships never lasted. you shouldn’t have thought otherwise.

you pushed the thought back down, forgetting about it, until now.

“let’s run away together,” your best friend, mark lee, pitches the idea with a smile. his expression is bright, but nonetheless, he was serious.

the autumn night air is chilly, brushing up against your skin. your ears are so cold that you can’t feel them, unless you press them up against the side of your head. a blanket is draped over both yours and mark’s legs, the roof shingles rough against your bottoms. mark’s phone is placed in the small space in between you two, earbuds plugged in as both of you had one each.

you smile, placing your head on mark’s shoulder. he’s gazing down at you, taking his right arm and wrapping it around you to bring you closer.

“we could live in the city,” you reply, meeting eyes with him. the moon and stars are shining down towards you two, observing every moment in silence. the leaves of the trees surrounding your home rustle, some even fall to the ground quietly. “ooh, what if we got a pet? like a dog — or a bird.”

“i’m serious,” mark states. you smile up at him, using your left hand to hold mark’s right hand, the hand that was rubbing circles against the skin of your right arm.

“who said i wasn’t?”

mark’s breathing is steady, and he stays still for a moment. he presses his lips to your forehead, before fixing his gaze back onto the stars. your heart pounds against your chest, you feel it. the inkling of affection that had been blossoming inside of your chest.

his black graphic t-shirt fits nicely on your frame, and his natural fragrance still lingers within the fabric. if anyone had seen you two, you were sure that you would be classified as lovers. you don’t mind, and you hope mark doesn’t mind either.

your feelings for each other had never been subtle, there was just never a right time to let them out. it felt like a game of patience, waiting for the best opportunity to pour out your hearts to each other. you knew, mark knew, but so much was left unsaid. you had to be incompetent to not notice the tension between you two; the longing gazes and unfilled silences spoke for themselves.

“getting tired yet?” his warm voice asks.

his cheeks are dusted with a pink tint, his legs brushing your own under the thick white blanket. despite it being two in the morning, you’re as awake as you would be on a saturday afternoon. it’s mark’s presence that is keeping you awake, and you know it.

“no, i like being here,” you answer, “with you.”

it’s not a lie. you would give up anything to be able to live in this moment, with him. his dark blue hair appears black in the dim light, but you decide he looks good with both colours. he places his head on top of yours, staring into the distance as if you two were in a movie.

you think about what life would be, if you and mark did decide to run away. you two could move to the city, working at your dream jobs. before that, you two would have to work minimum wage ones, but you know everything would be alright, as long as you have mark.

you wouldn’t have to worry about the nagging of your relatives, pushing you to do something you weren’t even interested in. you wouldn’t have to deal with high school drama or any more failed romances. you would just have him.

“there’s something i have to tell you, y/n,” he breathes out, eyes still focused on the shimmering stars. your heart rate is steady, yet loud. “i love you.”

you had known this. hell, everyone had known this. telling him that you didn’t feel the same way would be a blatant lie.

he was your childhood best friend. to anyone, it seemed cliché. to you, it felt like a dream that finally came true. everyone knows the unlikeliness of a high school romance lasting, but mark is different. a good different, in fact.

he’s the type of guy who would wake up beside you, five years later, and ramble about how lucky he is. there has been many occasions that mark had brought you a surprise meal when he knew you were feeling down, and even if you tried to hide it, he always knew when you were upset.

you saw a bright future ahead of you, one with mark in it. you two would have one kid (as both of you settled that any more would be too much), maybe live in an apartment.

any future without mark just seemed like a dull, uneventful life. you have told mark countless times, that you wouldn’t know what to do without him, and that was true.

“i’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time,” he huffs, afraid to look you in the eyes. “i’ve just never known how to tell you. you deserve the world, really.”

you want this. mark wants this.

“oh really?” you pipe, a small smile spreading across your face. you sit up to look at him, his facial features soft. you take your hands, placing them on his shoulders, while he places his own on your cheeks. you both lean in simultaneously, the tension finally being broken as you place your lips gently on his own.

it’s quiet, but a relaxing quiet as you two bask in each others’ presence. the air is still, but it doesn’t stop the butterflies erupting in both of your stomachs.

you pull away, your eyes still locked on each other.

“i love you too.”

[sarahlynnirl]

Losing my best friend - Sugar Daddy culture is not empowering

I finally feel strong enough to talk about this and hopefully get some love, support, and reassurance from other women who agree that this is fucked up. I’ve never been “terfy on main” before so here goes. (TW child abuse + SA but no graphic descriptions of SA)

My mother is a narcissist who financially and emotionally abused my father and myself, with some additional physical abuse of me, for as long as I can remember. My dad made plenty of money but my mom controlled it all and made sure it didn’t go towards anything for me beyond the bare minimum required not to look obviously guilty of child abuse and neglect. I met Kiara (not her real name) when I was a junior in highschool and she was a freshman. Her mom was a single Korean woman doing her best to support Kiara and her 2 sisters while also running a Korean restaurant. My first jobs were a summer camp counselor and fitting room attendant at Forever 21. I would spend the last scraps of my paycheck making sure Kiara was able to order a full meal when our friends went out to dinner, buying her little gifts, and generally trying to keep us both as happy and healthy as possible.

When Kiara graduated highschool her mom drove her into Koreatown New Jersey, got her a room in the apartment of an acquaintance, and basically left her to fend for herself. Kiara spoke barely any Korean. She began working at a Korean salon where she met Ariana (not her real name). She had a NY cosmetology license, not an NJ one, while Ariana was an illegal immigrant from Korea so they were both overworked, underpaid, forced to work overtime, paid under minimum wage, and deprived of their tips. They couldn’t report or complain about this since they were both working illegally.

Kiara had to pay rent for the one room she occupied despite her land lady yelling at her, walking into her room while she slept, banning her from having friends over, and reporting to her mom if she spoke to a guy on the phone or a guy dropped her off. I was working at a restaurant in my college town on top of my classes and doing my best to keep surprising her with little gifts, but neither of us had enough disposable income to afford to visit each other. This was really difficult for me as she was my favorite person in the world and I was used to spending every second with her when we both lived in upstate NY. Ariana got them both to start using SeekingArrangement for one time meet ups with Sugar Daddies where they were paid anywhere from $200-2000 for sex. “The first time I ever did it I walked out of the hotel and just screamed because I was so disgusted and I was thinking about his wrinkly skin touching mine and all I wanted to do was get in the shower and scrub it off but I had $1000 cash in my hand for a couple hours of work which was so crazy and kinda made it all worth it ya know?” - Ariana to me

I was immediately skeptical and a little grossed out but Kiara genuinely seemed happier. She was buying new clothes for herself, ordering food to the apartment when she was hungry, and taking trips into NYC to have fun with Ariana and her friends. By the beginning of the summer of 2019, Kiara had found the Sugar Daddy who she would establish a long term agreement with and who ultimately ended up completely supporting her. I’m not going to say his name here but if people want to know it just ask, I am willing to share. He moved her into a much nicer much bigger apartment with Ariana as her roommate. He paid for me to fly up and visit her, and all of our activities during this vacation. I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry. I wish I shoved the money back in her hand before it was too late, I wish I worked harder and longer hours and got us an apartment in Florida and paid both of our rent. I’m so fucking sorry I didn’t listen to my instincts and allowed her to brush off my concerns. It was the most freedom we had ever had, I ran around NYC by myself while she was at work, and my ex took the bus to NJ from upstate NY and joined us for a few days. I feel so selfish but I also didn’t know how bad things would get.

One night Kiara and I went to NYC for dinner with her SD and she took the bus back to the apartment because she had to work early the next morning. It made sense for me to stay in the city because I was supposed to visit my friend at NYU the next morning. In the Uber to his apartment alone with him he was drunk and high and I very clearly looked scared shitless. At this point she was 19 (but she had looked that way since age 17 and I doubt he would have minded if she was lying about her age), I was 21 and he was 44. He seemed offended by my discomfort and was basically like “jeez relax I’m not gonna touch you, I really care about Kiara I think she’s so amazing, just go to the guest room and sleep, make a left to walk to NYU when you wake up.” I peaced the fuck out of there early the next morning.

After that summer Kiara and Ariana quit their jobs at the Korean salon and sugaring became their sole incomes. Ariana was still doing one time meet ups, not nearly as financially stable as Kiara, and got herself into a lot of credit card debt that to my knowledge she’s still in. At this point Kiara was flying down and staying with me in Florida so often that people at my college thought she went there too. I also wasn’t working at this point because college had gotten harder and my ex was fucking up my mental health real bad. He had given me a coke problem and Kiara sending me “grocery money” was enabling me to continue. I wasn’t honest with her about where all the money was going. During Halloween week we didn’t know that she couldn’t just snort molly (MDMA) with the frequency I was doing coke, she ODed, my guy best friend took us to the ER, it was so fucking scary, she got IV fluids for 2 hours and made a full recovery, she stopped doing molly, I kept doing coke. I’m so sorry :(

In November her SD paid for us to take a trip to Cancun Mexico. He was with us for the first part of the trip and this is where things started to get really bad. He tried to be my friend and act the way a boyfriend of my best friend who was my age would, but it was creepy and wrong and I was so uncomfortable. He asked about my drug use in a way that was gross and shamey and basically him seeing me as the “coke whore” stereotype...while continuing to buy me more coke. He also brought and gave us ecstasy pills. He asked really invasive questions about my relationship with my ex, why I stayed, my sex life, etc. It felt like an uncle asking me these questions, I did NOT wanna talk about any of this with him. But from what I did say it was very clear to someone with 44 years of life experience that I had an abusive mother, an addictive personality, and was in an unhealthy relationship. He offered to set me up with an SD friend of his looking for a sugar baby. I of course declined because I always knew this was a boundary I wasn’t willing to cross. No matter how bad my addictions got I would NOT give up that piece of myself in return for money.

In this part of Mexico, drugs that were only given with a prescription in the US were available over the counter. Kiara and I got a little box of 1mg Xanax with my money. My ex had given us Xanax a couple times in NY and we had fun with it, but at this point in time we did NOT have a problem with it. We had bought one bar, broken it in half, and each took half one night of Halloween week and called it “xanpires”, but this wasn’t something we were scripted or buying regularly from plugs. We went to dinner with her SD, we got up to go to the bathroom, and she immediately slipped and hit the ground. I was like woah did you take one of the xans and forget? Because we were supposed to tell each other if we were taking one so we could look out for each other. I was never mad at her! I never wanted money from her! I was just a little concerned, and once I determined that she was safe we thought it was kinda funny that she had taken a xan without realizing and started joking around about it. Her SD of course didn’t understand how a 19 year old and 21 year old girl joke with each other because he was a creepy old man, decided that we were “arguing”, and got up from the restaurant, walked across the street, bought a 90 count bottle of 2mg xans and gave it to me. This was honestly the most irresponsible way someone has ever treated me in my life, and this is coming from someone with an abusive and neglectful parent. Google “benzo withdrawal” if you’re not familiar with it.

We went to a different hotel, and Kiara and I both took xans and blacked out. I passed out on the guest bed, while Kiara was awake but in a conscious blackout. I woke up on the couch on the balcony (which was fine, it was comfy and I saw the sunrise over the beach. The gross part was that meant her SD had picked me up, put his hands on my body while I was unconscious and carried me out there). I remembered that at one point I had woken up, wanted to go to the bathroom or get something from inside, caught a glimpse of what I thought was them having sex, and went back outside. I mentioned it to Kiara and she had no memory of it whatsoever, she thought all she had done was gone to sleep. She was rightfully pissed the fuck off that her SD had taken advantage and done things with her while she was blacked, screamed at him, he gave us a half ass apology, and bought us more stuff (buying our silence). He finally flew home and we got to enjoy the trip with just each other, but I was careless with the dosage of a drug called tramadol, and I ODed with my head in her lap...I’m sorry. When I woke up I was hallucinating, hearing voices, crying hysterically and terrified. Kiara called my ex who asked how many mg I took, told us I was 100mg short of the amount that would require medical attention, made me laugh, and told me to go to sleep. I recognize how scary and unfair to her this was and I really do take responsibility for my actions. The day I was supposed to leave I did ecstasy, hooked up with a guy from Canada, and tried to skip my flight. She was mad because like yeah what the fuck. She got me on the flight, the ecstasy comedown hit, and there’s pictures of me crying in the airport because I hated when we fought.

I was supposed to stop in Miami, then fly back to my college town but while in Miami I texted my granny that I was “sad and really didn’t feel good and could she and my uncle visit me at the airport and bring my uncles dog?”. Her parenting instincts went off that something was very wrong, made me skip the flight, picked me up from the airport and took me to her house where I immediately threw up and ran an extremely high fever that night. She said it was one of the scariest nights of her life and she kept checking on me to see if I needed to go to the hospital. She drove me back to my college town where my guy best friend took me to the ER and it came out that Kiaras SD, in addition to giving me drugs, had also allowed me to drink Mexican tap water throughout the entire trip. I was treated for that + given chlamydia meds just in case since I’d had unprotected sex in a foreign country. I was fine, promised to do better, Kiara forgave me, things started to go back to normal. Except I had begun taking Xanax daily to deal with the anxiety of the illness...and she had a trip to Bali planned.

During that trip things managed to get even worse. She was there with her SD and another Korean friend and her SD was pressuring her and guilting her into sex, isolating her from her friend, going through her phone, and becoming extremely aggressive. She would call me crying and having panic attacks and I would walk out of class to try to comfort her over FaceTime. She did not have panic attacks before this trip. She begged to go home early because something was very wrong but he said it was a waste of money and kept her in Bali until the planned end of the trip. I think it was almost a month. She sent me a recording she secretly took of him screaming at her and her saying “don’t touch me, don’t grab me like that, leave me alone”. When she got back to the US I was begging her to stop. I was so worried for her safety. I said the money wasn’t worth it, we’ll get jobs, please just stop. I’m pretty sure he read those messages. We also had a suspicion that he had installed spyware on her phone but were never able to prove it. At this point I also reached out to my dad for help and his response was basically “I don’t care, not my problem, focus on school”. I reached out to my granny who absolutely cared, but her response was “I’m sorry but I can’t afford to support her, I have to focus on taking care of you, if she won’t stop this you’ll have to stop being friends with her”.

I went home to New York for winter break, suffered through my first round of Xanax withdrawal and was truly trying to get better but my ex manipulated his was back in my life and got me addicted again....but now this bottle of 90 had run out. I went back to my college town, got scripted, and was copping street bars when my script inevitably ran out early. What comes next is blurry for obvious reasons. We moved to the town in Florida my granny lived in and got an apartment together. The female friends she made in our town (my current home) she got most of them into sugaring and using SeekingArrangement. Things deteriorated super fast at this point. I was struggling hard, failing my online classes, and eventually got completely financially cut off by my parents. My granny was paying my half of the rent and my puppy’s vet bills but I was too embarrassed to admit I couldn’t afford groceries. Kiara was pressuring me hard to go on SeekingArrangement but I still refused. I would sit on the floor of the bathroom in a towel after I showered and just cry because the steam made me nauseous and dizzy since I wasn’t eating.

I met my current boyfriend and something just started to click: I didn’t wanna live like this anymore. The mom of a friend from this town who also refuses to sugar landed me an interview at the gym I currently work at, I fought for the job, and I got it. Now I knew I didn’t wanna be completely fucked up all the time anymore but I was still doing enough Xanax to keep me out of withdrawal. The 2mg that had blacked me out at the beginning were now just barely enough to keep me functional. Kiara and I were fighting frequently and bad by this time. She and her partner in sugaring, Mena (not her real name but pretty close to it, fuck this bitch fr) were expecting me to keep how they made their money a secret....from friends and guys that I saw every single day. They both very obviously did not work and were flexing new cars, designer clothes, and cash all over their social media. Kiara thought she could cover her ass by saying she dealt drugs but it was also obvious that she wasn’t putting the time into that to come up with the amount of money she had. The only one dealing drugs was me, and not enough to do anything flashy, just enough that in addition to my work money I was usually getting enough to eat. But there were still some times when the previous weeks paycheck had run out and I was having my first meal of the day at 3pm after someone had bought adderall from me. We had our serious serious fight where she threw my stuff in the lawn and I lived with my current boyfriend full time for about a couple weeks since my bedroom at my granny’s was getting refloored when this happened.

By January 20th he was concerned by my Xanax problem and wanted me to seriously try to stop. At the time I started tapering because I wanted the girlfriend title but I’m forever grateful for him giving me a reason, even if it was a shallow one, because I just needed to START. We tried to reconcile once, despite boyfriend and guy best friend begging me not to, and of course the same problems reappeared, we had another serious fight and haven’t spoken since.

Now the fog is clearing and today I’m 96 days clean of xanax, 16 days clean of all benzos, and 19 days clean of gabapentin (what was keeping me from having a seizure while quitting benzos). But it’s hard because being out of the fog means feeling all of my emotions, even the really bad ones. This past week I’ve been waking up and crying sitting in front of my mirror trying to put my makeup on for work and it just drips right off and I have to start over. She was my best friend for 8 years. My favorite person. My partner in life. I loved her more than anyone.

My boyfriend and guy best friend are pretty uncomfortable when they hear someone express an opinion of me that’s “Kiara’s side of the story” and I don’t correct it. Both of them saw exactly how bad it got near the very end and don’t get why I don’t defend myself more or tell people about her letting my dog eat dab (THC) wax while she was supposed to be watching her and having to be rushed to the animal hospital TWO separate times. (She’s a Pomeranian and the highly concentrated THC was super dangerous to her tiny little body). Yelling at me and giving me the silent treatment because less than 48 hours after my SA she expected me to drive her to a hair appointment in Miami and I woke up late and didn’t get her there on time with traffic. Me begging her to be there for me when it felt like everything was falling apart and I self harmed for the first time and her leaving me to go on a vacation to Orlando with a girl we didn’t even really like. Me not wanting to sleep in the apartment alone after my SA and her not letting me sleep in her bed anymore, her and Mena just dumping me at the neighbor’s so they could continue to sugar, party, and see guys our age at night (this sounds super awful but neighbors roommate —> current boyfriend. He kept me safe until I felt better, was really sweet and careful, and I was the one to make the first move). There’s more but I really don’t like talking about it, after the abuse she went through and I assume is still going through, I expect her to be pretty damaged and not have it in her to treat people right all the time. Not exposing every bad thing she’s ever done to all our mutual friends and acquaintances is kind of my last gift to her.

I also admit that sugaring wasn’t responsible for everything that went wrong. Loving an addict is difficult and exhausting and I went through it myself with my ex. I was also out bi and she was “probably straight, maybe a little bi-curious” in her words. But when she was drunk or on Xanax she’d kiss me first...we had done more than kiss but only during 3somes with a guy. I don’t know, I think I loved her more than I was supposed to and some of the stuff she’d say made me think she saw me in a way she really didn’t. When we first moved to this town I had a thing with a girl and expected it to be no big deal but things here were different than up north. I got called the d slur for the first time by someone who wasn’t joking. It was like getting slapped I was so shocked and hurt, I truly didn’t think that happened anymore. I think she saw what happened to me and kinda closed off that part of herself because she didn’t wanna experience that herself. She stopped making out with me at bars and parties after that and it made me sad and maybe a little jealous. But I really do blame her SD for basically “breaking her”, for handing me that first bottle of free Xanax, for a lot of other little things that I can’t possibly include because this is already way too long. This is my first time even saying this much. Feel free to add your own experiences or thoughts on this or anything you’d like. [I’m prepared to get death threats or called a SWERF or whatever but I don’t care, now that I started talking about this I’m not going to stop.]

[xo-cuteplosion-xo]

How about a musician reader x character fic? Maybe a singer who performs in a cafe, or a classical musician who plays in an orchestra, or who plays in a rock band? I dunno I have a lot of ideas in my mind but I'm just too lazy to write them :D What do you think?

So here's the baseline you gave me - a musician reader fic x character. Here's what I decided to fill in for this lovely fic- a fluffy bsd collage Au where the reader is majoring in music and has the side job of a stage performer. Then, because they would match well, so I decided to go with a Fyodor x reader. Hope this is alright!

Words- 1728 ~

Hearts Composition | fyodor x musician reader | (collage Au)

Music thudded against the walls, muffled only by the thick layers that hid backstage from the audience. The aroma of heavily worn perfume surrounded people in pleasant bliss. Waitresses and waiters swayed with heavy plates rested along arms and in hands. Carrying much-wanted foods and booze to awaiting customers. The collection of accents muted under the heavy beats of taps and clicks from the metal of the dancer's shoes. Picking up a smaller wooden, finely carved, and rather expensive model of a violin, stood yourself. With a smile, your hands trailed the curves and strings of the delicate instrument. With all the work you had to do for university you had truly didn’t have time to be doing some minimum wage job. Though you didn’t care much, if you could play something, it would be fine. You performed here every once in a blue moon. You weren't one of the performers, but they would grace you with the intermission on busy nights. Much like these nights, when the crowd was full and the people rowdy and in need of constant entertainment. You could soothe those shouts and demands of perverted drunk men; Soothe the cries of broken women and rich spoiled children.

Stepping onto the wooden stage as the lights dim, allowing you the bare minimum of the peeping moonlight to find the microphone located at the center. Inhaling as your anxiety turned into bliss, you waited. As the colored light flew on, you rested your chin on the soft velvet. Holding up the bow, you set it to the strings. With a final inhale, your eyes fluttered shut as you played a classical piece; one constructed for an upcoming project that was due for your music composition class. You had nearly all the string instruments you could play finished; all but the cello. With every strum of your instrument, the crowd fell silent, enjoying the break from all the heavy excitement. Even the children's chatter soothed down, so your instrument could echo off the thin walls of the pub.

Sipping nothing but a cup of tea with a small side of biscuits, a male leaned in his seat. Sitting with a pristine, perfect posture, he listened to the soft sound. The way his violet eyes slowly lidded, and his hair fell back against his face, lit his features in a urethral, almost divine light. His mind working to recognize the piece. As an up-and-coming musician, he had several classics memorized. He could join in by ear, or even write out the full pieces without needing to see the original sheet music. This piece wasn’t something he recognized, could it be an original piece?

If you were to open your eyes as you neared the end of the first piece, you would notice his gaze rested on you. Eyes open halfway with hidden interest, and yet, the stare was attractive. The blank look that hid everything beneath a mask laid strewn across his features. As you finished and stood up, surrounded by applause, he watched your every stride. It was funny, he thought he could almost recognize you.

~

With shaking hands, your fingers typed within a group chat of other college students you had met and become close to. “I’m so nervous. I have to hand in that piece today. I pulled an all-nighter trying to decide on the cello part, but nothing sounded right, so now I might not get a full mark.” You could hear the whine through the text. When replies of good luck came to you, except for two replies, you chuckled. One read “could always just die before handing it in.” Another wrote, “I've got the wine ready.” laughing to yourself as you walked into the classroom and set down the folder in the bin. Glancing through the room, you took a seat with your head down. It was unusual for you to arrive early to class, but your anxiety with this project was slowly picking at you to just get there and hand it in. With twenty minutes till class started, you decided to pull out your laptop and listen to the recording from last week.

Taking out your notebook, you started jotting notes about small things to improve, and things you hated about your performances. You didn’t notice somebody else enter the classroom rather early. Carrying his bag, he set it down at one of the desks before the sound of a violin entered his ears. Sitting down he listened to the melody you had played several nights before. As the piece finished, his eyes traveled to the bin. Now understanding where you had gotten the piece from, he sighed. “You’re not half bad, you played a little flat, but it sounds okay. Becoming a flustered disaster, you froze glancing over to him. This wasn’t the first time you had noticed him in class, he was hard to miss. His completely perfect grades, perfect posture, and looks made him stand out. Not only that, but he had strong ideals and his debate skills could sway anybody. Though, you knew it wasn’t really skill, more manipulation. To add to everything his Russian accent stuck out with every word he spoke. “Could you play that again?” hesitating at first you restarted the piece.

He took out a blank piece of sheet music and started scribbling down notes. As if memorizing the piece, he tapped his fingers before bringing his thumb to his mouth and chewing on it. Tapping his foot as the piece came to an end, he glanced at the time before walking over to one of the room's cellos. His face resembled discontent as he looked at it. Looking to where he sat, you realized he didn’t have his with him. You presumed it had to do with the instrument being heavy and somewhat large. Though for somebody of his height, it may not be that big of a deal. Perhaps he didn’t want to lug it around with him, considering he had all of those other books for classes. “So uh, why did you want to hear it again?” you mumbled, rubbing the back of your neck as you watched him strum a few strings. He was checking the accuracy and pitch of the notes. With a contempt sigh, he shrugged.

“Your writing is considerably well done. I wished to try something that is all.” He did not shed a glance as he sat down and ran the bow across the strings. The sound was heaven within your ears, but to him, it was nothing but ordinary. The sound of a well-made expensive Russian model, the model he owned, was much better than this school-provided variant. As the melody played, you recognized it as your piece. Smiling slightly as your eyes sparkled. You bolted from your seat to grab your folder; the music that was due in 10 minutes.

Looking over the cello part you had constructed, you changed the key signature to hold a few new sharps and took away some of the flats. Boldly, you handed the male the sheet music and pointed as if asking "Is this the piece you were playing?" Setting the cello aside, he ran a finger over the bars with a nod. “So that’s what I was missing! You're a god at memorizing and creating. Now I'm excited to see what you concocted for the presentation.” You smiled lightly before placing the folder in the bin. “Oh, I never got your name. I’m-” he cut you off before you could formally introduce yourself.

“You’re y/n. I do pay attention to people who aren't a complete waste of time.” The layers of his ego began to shine through his solid expression. The way you'd called him god just then, was another layer added to the ever-growing ego this man had. He thought he was above everybody else; he indeed was. In every way possible, he was above the normal human. With an exceptionally sharp mind, emotionless facade, and a spin of extraordinary talents, he was a god among men. “I’m taken aback, you don’t know me.” frowning you sat back at your desk. Leaning your head against the palm of your hand with a frown, you clicked your tongue.

Coming up with a sharp reply, you rolled your eyes. “Please, who doesn't know the great Dostoevsky. You’re only at the top of our class. Correcting myself before you can, the top in everything.” He snickered his brows raising in interest. His lips curled into a smirk moments before breaking to speak to you again.

“Consider your words before speaking. That wasn’t exactly the best wording to say "I'm better than everybody at everything.” It took you several seconds to realize what had gone through his head. Of course, he understood what you were saying, but he also managed to nitpick everything.

Blushing you placed your hands in front of your face. “I didn't think about it because that’s not what I was saying!” he snickered again. Listening to him stand you peeked from your hands to watch him set away the cello and bow.

“How often do you perform at that pub?” He switched the discussion relatively quickly. But with the sudden pause of your reaction and the setting away of the instrument, it flowed nicely with the conversation.

“Once or twice a month?” You answer honestly. A bit upset by the lack of real performances you had.

“Next time, I'll reserve something, and we’ll set something up. I want to see if you can play something… difficult.” It wasn't much of a question, more a demand. Nodding you wrote down your number, sliding it to the student with a smile as the bell rang.

For the next week, the two of you met in the unused rooms Fyodor managed to snag for practicing. He often shook his head at your way of playing. He did compliment the several different instruments you would take with you. From the cello to the violin, there wasn’t much you couldn’t play. Each was expertly designed and crafted to fit your arm length and height. Custom made and shipped from all over the world. Eventually, it became a routine, going to his concerts as he attended yours. While you praised how good he was, he would find the smallest mistakes to condemn you about.

[redevenir]

faintheart in the dark

hoshi x reader

wc : ~ 1800

a/n : @tearsofsyrup let’s just say it’s for you dear, since your tiger agenda blog inspired me. i wish you the best as usual, and hopefully this will feel like a little treat after a good day! not at all a horror au bc that dumb fucker doesn’t know what fear is anyway. Very self indulgent. Also I didn’t proofread so sorry for the faults! 

The bus ride is quiet, a nice relief after Soonyoung’s busy day. Still, it’s not as satisfying as it would be to go home, cook up something quick and warm, drown himself under the shower and crash into his bed. He wonders when he became like that. Working for school after working for a minimum wage, and feeling like this is it. The bus stops pass one after the other until he finally reaches the humanities’ campus. Despite his fatigue and his hunger, he wastes no time in going to the cafeteria – it’s almost closing hour and he knows how annoying last minute customers are – and makes his way directly toward the library. He mindlessly watches the humanities’ building as he passes by. He notices the glass door of the library, goes in, allows himself a brief nod of the head to whoever is at the front desk – maybe a new one ? And they still haven’t fixed that broken ceiling light. He heads to the history of art section, he takes his things out of his bag and sets them up on a table, his pencil case, his notebook, takes out an imposing History of rural theater from the shelves and resumes to work. The pipes are unusually squeaky, but he manages to focus on his task, takes notes for his paper. There is a charm to his subject, he thinks. It is a nice change, to be able to talk about less conventional art, a more popular one. It reminds him of home. He allows himself a quick look over the rest of the tables. A usual, empty Tuesday night. The light flashes in irregular patterns. There are enough others so it’s far from dark, but it is annoying enough to distract Soonyoung from reading. Sighing, he scans the hall again, as a treat. Far away, in the medieval History section, he notices your bag and his lips twitch upward. It’s true you chose that Colors from the Middle-age class, but it’s so unexpected he keeps forgetting about it. Jun sometimes reminds him when he talks about whatever assignments the professor gives you. It’s still weird to think that you and Junhui see each other every week, regardless of Soonyoung, whereas he would go out of his way to go the same parties as you, to get a chance to see you. He closes his eyes, just for a bit. Once he’ll be done, he’ll come over and say hello. As a treat.

When Soonyoung wakes up, he is in the dark. He narrows his eyes in hopes of seeing through, and notices the flickering light by the entrance. Pressing his lips together, he rubs his fingers on his temples. There is no point in staying any longer. He doesn’t bother to look at the time on his phone, puts everything back in his back, leaves the history of theater on the table, and, before leaving, tries to remember where the bathrooms are. Following his foggy intuition, he slaloms among the tables, bumping a few chairs on the way. There is something unsettling about being there after hours. Libraries are supposed to be quiet places for sure, but the dark silence in which he is really far from his habit. He licks his lips, tries to be careful, and with a yawn he reaches the corridor. The soft green light of the emergency exit illuminates it. Here is his way out.

Dum. Dum. Dum. The sound of your heart is deafening. Your bronchi burn, yet you try to control the rhythm of your breathing, the sound of it, even though the alarm ringing in your head shrieks there is no time for this. From what are you even hiding yourself? Sweat runs cold down your spine, you smell it. You want to go home. You want to get out. You want to slap Soonyoung and you want him to pay for a fucking well-deserved brunch. No, you want him to ask you out on a brunch. In an attempt to get a hold of yourself you hide your face in your clammy hands, close to your nose to mute the sound of your fear. Nothing is heard but your restrained breath. One, inhale, one two three four five, six, exhale. You try to change the focus of your mind. You close the toilet seat and sit on it, swallowing saliva. You press your finger on your temple, all trace of sleepiness long forgotten.

Sometimes, Seungcheol says you’re dumb. It’s true. You are. You think back to where you left your belongings, earlier, and that essay on red pigments. Hopefully no one will steal it.

You were already in the last bus when he had called you, voice loud and way too urgent for your state of mind. Asking where you were, and if you had seen Soonyoung or not. You knew very well who Soonyoung was. Jun’s roommate, a theater kid. Phases out a lot, cute. Even though you’re both humanities’ students, you barely see him on campus – you assume it has to do with your respective part time jobs taking up most of the free time you have. But you meet at parties. It feels like whenever you go out, he’s always there, and you usually spend most of the night with him, talking until you stop feeling your head and catch yourself staring at him. That’s when you go home. Dizzy, happy, horny. The feelings linger a few days, until obligations push them out at the back of your brain again. Yet, every now and then, when you are free enough, you remember how vibrant it is to be with him and your skin becomes a boiling veil and your head is full of colors.

So when Seungcheol asked you if you had seen Soonyoung, you told him you had, he was working at the library tonight too. And when he asked when he left you told him you didn’t know – your bus line ends before the library closes, and he was asleep on his table when you left. You heard Junhui’s Oh my god in the back and began to chew on the inside of your lip. And sure enough, they had asked you to come back for him, just in case. And when you had arrived back at the library, all lights off and dark, you had known it was not going to go well. From breaking a window to get back in to the rush of adrenaline induced by the flashlights of the security agents you’d noticed outside, you felt your evening spiraling in a very wrong, irrational way. You didn’t know the library as well as you thought, lost your way of few times, until exhaustion, the fear of getting caught and and increasing worry about Soonyoung’s whereabouts had you disheveled and hiding in the bathroom for a lonely brainstorming session.

Until you hear the flush. The sound of falling water crushing your train of thoughts – you hadn’t even noticed someone came in. Noticing your little cry of surprised, a very tired voice asks who is there, and you give up. Trying to make up a story that wouldn’t make you look like a lunatic, you stand up and push the door open with your feet, wondering how high would the fine be for breaking into the library – and mostly breaking that window.

Only to face Soonyoung, eyes wide, drying his hands with toilet paper. Your mouth agape, you let out a sigh. Your heart skips a beat, maybe because of him, maybe because you’re dead. You feel the embarrassment soaking in. He watches as you close your eyes, lower your head, biting your lips with a little, uneasy smile. You twist your finger until your knuckles are white, licking your lips one last time before clearing your throat.

« Sorry, hum, sorry about… That, I guess. You don’t look at him. Apparently Jun got worried about you and they asked me to check if you were okay… So I-I hum, I, hum, I came back and got scared wandering in the building… Hum. »

You hear your name in a whisper. Two warm hands cup your face, their heat on your frozen ears. They pull you a bit until you gently bump against his chest. Soonyoung whispers your name again. You feel his warmth, and you smell the sweat of his day at work. The soft fabric of his sweater hugs your cheek and you restrain yourself from leaning in more.

« I’m alright, fell asleep, that’s all. His left thumb gently strokes your cheek. Don’t you work morning shifts ? » You shoot him a surprised look from his shoulder, long enough for him to meet your gaze.

« I do. Why do you ask? » He feels your uneven breathe on his lips, it’s warm and shaky. He should kiss you now, but there are fireworks in his head, still in awe at your apparition. His hand goes to your hips, hugging you for good. He then softly takes your hand.

« Let’s go home. You can crash at my place, he tugs at your hand and you hum in agreement. Quick, he makes sure you’re not looking at him as you both head out the bathroom. I’ll call for you tomorrow. To tell them you’re sick. » He avoids your eyes before you can meet his. You should ask him more. You should refuse. Both of his offers. You watch him as he opens the fire escape door – of course – and you watch his hand holding yours. You say nothing and you walk closer to him until you arrive to the bus stop. Sure enough, your bag’s still there, on the floor, where you’ve thrown it the same way you’ve thrown your hours of sleep away. You ponder and you ponder, and Soonyoung looks at you an your face doesn’t look too bad so he doesn’t push you.

« Okay then, let’s do that. I’ll sleep at your place, and before my shift you call them saying I’m sick or dead, as you please. » He smiles and it’s like dawn already.

« Don’t you want to go back ? After, I mean ? I mean, to keep working there ? »

« I’ll do it Jesus style then. » He laughs and you finally look at him again. Even now, as you sit on the bench and he stands right in front of you, he still has your hand in his. He shifts his balance, holding your gaze, and how many times did he get the occasion to kiss you ? Proper occasions, not intoxicated ones. His free hand reaches to cup your face once more, the tips of his fingers caressing greasy strands of your hair.

He really should kiss you now.

[jubans]

title: 505 pairing: furuichi sakyo/fem!reader rating: m (mature) premise: maybe someday, the two of you could go beyond the four corners of that dreary hotel room. 

There's hesitation in your posture when you raised your hand to knock on the room Sakyo had texted you about earlier—sinking deep into your bones as your better judgement screamed at you to turn back, go home, and never speak to him again. 

Any other woman of marriageable age would think that maybe meeting up with a yakuza at a run-down hotel on a regular basis might be a bad idea. But you've known Sakyo for so long, that you've committed the fact that he's not a bad person into mind long before you even started doubting these midnight trysts. 

So, you knocked. Three times, like you always did. Loud enough to announce your presence but soft enough not to disturb the silence that enveloped the dingy hallway. 

You shoved your clammy hands into the front pocket of your hoodie, nervously bouncing on the balls of your feet when you heard him shuffling from the inside. Why you made such an effort to cover up—hoodie, long sleeves, sweats and all—when it was the height of summer and the heat of the day still carried into the night was beyond you. Maybe it was because you wanted to seem unassuming. Maybe it was to fool yourself (and hopefully him) that you didn't long for his touch in ways that you shouldn't even begin to think about.

But when Sakyo cracked the door open once he's taken off the locks, your legs moved before you could even think—arms going around his lithe frame as you moulded your lips into his. 

He was stunned in place for a moment, unable to reciprocate. But you practically felt his armor of civility fall apart when Sakyo tangled his fingers in your hair, angling your face just so before you felt his tongue licking into the crevices of your mouth. Your mind was so engulfed in the haze of his rich, expensive cologne that you barely registered it when Sakyo began moving. He manhandled you into the room without breaking the union of your lips, slamming you against the door when he locked it shut. The soft whimper that escaped your chest was muffled but you could feel Sakyo's mouth twitching slightly against yours when he heard it.

"This wasn't part of our agenda," he breathed, momentarily breaking apart from you only to dip down for another heated kiss.His light hair was soft in your fingers as you used each tuft as a means to tug his face impossibly closer to yours. You felt the frame of his glasses digging into the bridge of your nose, but you couldn't comment on it because his hands were hiking underneath your hoodie. A growl rumbled somewhere low in his chest when he discovered how many layers you wrapped yourself in, pulling away to cast you a disconcerted glare.

You cracked him a toothy grin. "I went here under the pretense that you wouldn't respond like you did just now if I jumped you like that."

"You're impossible," Sakyo muttered before peeling himself away from you, leaving you flushed and disheveled by the door to Room 505.

The blond man walked over to the queen-sized mattress in the middle of the room, seating himself on the edge. As Sakyo laced his hands together on his legs, you couldn't help but notice the way his face contorted into something serious so quickly, as if he didn't just have you pressed up against a door a few moments ago. 

You gulped, straightening yourself out before sitting at a short distance away from him on the bed. 

Sakyo heaved a sigh that sounded like broken promises and dreams that slipped away too early. He promptly plucked his glasses from his face, fingers going up to massage the bridge of his nose. You could feel your lips stretch into a frown at the sight of him. He was the type that broods every time he gets, but you've never seen him look this...agitated.

"Sakyo?" you called out, hoping he would humor you with a response. But when all you're met with was white noise and scratchy music playing from the next room over, you scooted a little closer to him, reaching out to enclose his cold, cold hands in yours. 

"You mind telling me what's wrong?" you murmured, nudging your nose in the crook of his neck. You felt him shiver once your breath fanned his skin, but Sakyo would let himself get shot first before admitting to vulnerability. 

"It's just the usual hiccups I get at work," he said, and your grimace only deepened. Why was he still being so infuriatingly vague with you?

But you knew that there was no helping it. Sakyo had a mind that you haven't quite mapped out yet even after years of playing house with him like this. You knew better than to dip your toes into the realm of the yakuza, but that wouldn't stop you from hoping that maybe, just maybe, this time he'll let you in. That he'll let himself be a little more human and less of the demon people made the debt-collecting yakuza out to be. 

"I called you here for a different purpose," he told you, voice just barely above a whisper. 

You pressed your lips into a thin line, pulling away as you felt him tug his hands back from your grasp. The urgency in his actions pricked your heart like tiny needles, but you decided against making a show of disappointment. He didn't need anything else to drag him downward.

"One of the groups we've previously had a scuffle with in the past has been doing some background research of their own with my life," Sakyo spoke in his typically condescending Sakyo fashion. But there was a strain in his voice that you only noticed with how long you've spent listening to the low baritone of his words as he lied next to you in bed. The dread only pools in your gut, but you let him continue without interruption. 

"Apparently, they thought it would gravely affect me if something were to happen to a certain woman I always meet in this very hotel." He threw his head back, gazing at the ceiling with a lopsided smirk curling his lips. "Pathetic of them to think so, really. Were they so desperate to get dirt on me that they thought targeting my evening partner would be enough of a leverage?"

Evening partner. You didn't like the sound of that. 

He sighed again, and this time you take the time to let your eyes wander across the rest of the room. His suitcase was lying on top of a desk tucked away in the corner; his coat folded neatly on top of the surface. Other than that, the interior seemed untouched, like Sakyo just went inside to sit on the bed and nothing else. 

You began to feel the sting of betrayal slowly rooting itself in the recesses of your heart. Of course you had an...inkling that this physical relationship with him would never blossom into something more since the beginning. He was a man that had his needs, and what else could a man like Sakyo want other than a woman who was a decent fuck and never asked too many questions?

"I have a property somewhere in Sapporo," he suddenly spoke again, shattering the self-loathing that you were starting to enclose yourself in.

You blinked at Sakyo, confusion dancing in your eyes, but he gave you reprieve by adding, "It's an old Western-style manor sitting on the edge of a cliff that gave me one of the best oceanic views I've seen in my life." There's a pause in his words, like he couldn't quite figure out where he's going with this narrative, much like you. But when he looked back at you, his lavender eyes were glazed over with a melancholy you never even thought Sakyo was capable of.

But the look was gone just as quickly as it came. Sakyo assumed his mask of neutrality once more, chuckling airily. "I've been looking for suitable caretakers for it, but all the maids I kept sending would steal one of the precious artifacts I've been keeping there. If you won't let me pitch in with your monthly rent, then at least let me give you somewhere better to live."

Your mouth hung agape at his words once you've finally had a few moments to absorb them. "Are you telling me to move halfway across the country to take care of a damn house?"

Sakyo shrugged. "You'll even have a secure source of income once you arrive. That is more ideal than working three minimum wage jobs, barely being able to make ends meet here in this dump of a city, now is it?" 

A biting retort rested on the tip of your tongue, but you held it back because he was right. Because you refused every single one of Sakyo's offers for a loan (he even offered to just give you money with nothing in return), you had no one but yourself to rely on as you struggled to make a living. 

But he had no right to point that out as he did. As someone who used to be dirt poor, he should know better than to—

Oh. 

Everything clicked into place just before your frustration could boil over. When the haze of irritation had cleared in your head, you dared to look at Sakyo straight in the eye. The low light from the lamp on the nightstand was the only source of illumination in the room, yet you were still able to see the way he was struggling to maintain his façade of apathy. Your mouth twitched into a sly smile. You got him all figured out.

"Who knew you cared so much about your evening partner, Sakyo?" you chuckled, kicking off your shoes so that you could crawl closer to him. 

"I don't know what you're talking about," he argued weakly when you latched your lips onto the column of his throat. The groan that resounded in his chest did nothing but stoke the flames of the desire you thought had already smouldered. Sakyo shuddered under your touch, and you giggled, tugging on the delicate fabric of his turtleneck before whispering:

"Thank you."   

When daylight broke through the cracks in the curtains, you found yourself squinting at the way the sunlight razed your vision. The bed was devoid of body heat other than your own, and you almost wanted to laugh at yourself for still not getting used to Sakyo's urgency to leave the moment the sun peeked from the horizon. 

But this time, you didn't just wake up to a hotel room with nothing but your clothes littered on the floor. At the desk in the corner, Sakyo's coat was gone, but his suitcase still lay untouched. 

You frowned, wrapping a towel around your bare frame as you padded over to check it out. He wasn't the kind of man that would forget his belongings anywhere.

As you took a closer look, you noticed that a note was stuck to the surface with a series of numbers scribbled in haste. Was this, perhaps, the combination needed to open it? Shrugging, you tried unlocking the suitcase, following the exact way Sakyo had written the numbers. It opened with a soft click once you managed to punch in the last one, and you wasted no time sifting through its contents.

Inside was a passport, a plane ticket, various documents, and fat wads of cash that had you gasping once you've totalled in how much Sakyo had left inside. 

This can't be right, you thought to yourself. Why would he just leave these behind?

But as you rifled through the suitcase further, you found a sealed, white envelope. You tore it open without a second thought, only to find a small key with a torn out page lying inside. With trembling hands, you unfolded the piece of paper, feeling your shoulders relax at the sight of Sakyo's hurried and terrible handwriting.  

(Name), 

If you're reading this, that just means you've taken up my offer, yes? Well, I'll waste no time. Inside are all the necessities you'll be needing once you head north. The key inside the envelope opens the front door to the manor. The address is written in one of the travel documents I've fabricated, along with the fake passport. Don't worry, you won't get held up at the airport for it. 

It's unlike me to impose something so sudden, I know. But as long as I have enemies, it isn't safe for anyone to be around me. My well-being would further be appeased at the knowledge of you sitting pretty in a mansion, away from the clutches of whoever might make the mistake of coming for you, as well.

I know I am not the most...expressive of lovers. But take this as your pass to see me as I am. Not as a yakuza. Not as your evening partner. But as Furuichi Sakyo. Hoping for this might be a shot in the dark,  but maybe someday, the two of us could go beyond the four corners of that dreary hotel room.

Yours, Sakyo

[artificialqueens]

We'll Be Lovers for Sure, 2/2 (Scyvie) - Ashley

It’s the final year of sixth form and stress levels are high for Yvie as she balances school work, Uni applications and her “part-time” job in a kids activity centre. However, things only get worse when her boss decides to hire his privately educated, definition of privilege daughter, Scarlet, as their marketing assistant and she rubs Yvie up the completely wrong way. Until, of course, she doesn’t. (Read Part 1 here)

Thanks again to Grapefruit and Ortega for all the help xxx

Throughout her eight years of education, Scarlet had only ever been late twice: once in year five when her Dad’s car had gotten stuck in the snow and they had to push it out of the drive, then again in year twelve when Pearl left her phone in the Urban Outfitters changing rooms on their free and made Scarlet drive her back to get it. It was her ultimate pet hate. Which was why she felt like the biggest dick on the planet standing in the hallway of her sister’s dance school furiously peeking her head through windows at the grand time of seven fifty-two, almost twenty-five minutes after she was due to meet Yvie.

“I’m so so so so sorry, I’ll be there soon xx”

She typed quickly as she paced the halls, no time to think and stress over how many kisses to send or whether she should have added emojis like she normally would have. If Yvie was difficult to read in person, Scarlet had discovered over the past week that she was even harder to understand over text as they’d gone over the plan for their date. A plan that was currently unravelling like a broken cassette tape before her eyes, too far gone to wind back up by the time she found her sister.

“Oooh, you look nice!” Lemon exclaimed as she left the studio, already trailing behind as Scarlet did her best attempt at power walking back to her car.

“You were supposed to be done forty-five minutes ago!” Scarlet could feel her face starting to sweat with stress, worried about how awful her makeup would look by the time she met Yvie. If Yvie was still even there. “I told you to be on time, I have plans!”

“Sorry, rehearsal just ran over and I couldn’t leave. Can I have the AUX?”

Scarlet pressed her foot on the accelerator an ounce more than she normally would, looking frantically in her mirror. “No! And you can tell Dad that I’m never picking you up ever again.”

Before Lemon could start her usual monologue about the hardships of life as a talented dancer the pair were interrupted by the ringing of Scarlet’s phone.

Shit.

“Answer it and put it on speaker.” She snapped to her sister, taking a deep breath before she addressed Yvie. “Hey, I’m so sorry about being late, I’ll be there as quickly as I can, just give me five minutes.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it, I’m just gonna head home.”

Scarlet almost slammed the breaks then and there. She knew Yvie so she knew that she wasn’t fine, she was the absolute antithesis of fine. What a way to fuel the hatred train back up again - did they give out trophies for these sorts of things? If they did she certainly deserved one, imagining her pathetic figure made of gold resin, holding a tiny clock and bottle of Coke Zero with the title “Best at Getting Your Crush To Despise You” engraved on a plaque underneath. They could plop it on top of her grave. Or maybe Lemon’s, depending of course on how much her sister would grovel after this.

“No, no, I’m coming.” Scarlet made the executive decision to take a left turn on the roundabout rather than right, heading straight for the centre of town and jabbing Lemon in the ribs with her elbow as she tried to pipe up.

“It’s fine, I’m just leaving the restaurant now. I really don’t feel up for this anymore, it was stupid anyway.”

“Yvie, I’m literally around the corner. Please can you wait?” Scarlet didn’t care how desperate she sounded because that’s exactly what she was, she’d write it on her forehead and scream it from the top of her lungs if she had to (she hoped she didn’t have to but would still take all means necessary if they were required).

“Are you literally around the corner? Is it written in a book word for word? That would be a terrible book, I don’t know who’s reading that.”

Scarlet didn’t know whether Yvie’s sarcasm was a good or bad sign but kept going anyway.

“Well I apologise for my use of the word to the English student in you but I am very close.” Scarlet scanned the street, spotting Yvie’s tall frame and dark hair storming down the road in front of her, pulling off double-denim in a cool and effortless way that no one else could even try to compete with. “In fact, I can literally see you.”

Scarlet pulled up to the curb and hung up, telling Lemon to keep her trap shut for a moment as she waited for Yvie to approach the car, a sense of deja vu filling her at the thought of chasing down a stomping Yvie in her car. God, she must look like a psychopath sometimes.

“Hello.” Yvie peered in the window, looking between the two sisters awkwardly, clearly too cautious to give Scarlet whatever rant she had been planning in her head for the past half an hour in front of her sister. Scarlet was almost grateful for her presence before remembering that she wouldn’t be in such a mess if it weren’t for Lemon in the first place.

“You look beautiful.” She simply stated, the thought coming out of her mouth just as fast as it had popped into her mind in the first place when she saw Yvie’s face; her cheeks glowing with blush and her eyes enhanced by the most meticulously placed false lashes. Scarlet wanted to ask Yvie how she managed to put them on without them popping off or looking stupid like whenever she tried but figured it was a conversation to be saved for when she wasn’t fighting for her right to date. “Get in the back?”

Half expecting Yvie to walk away, Scarlet felt a wave of relief wash over her windscreen when Yvie reached for the handle and plonked herself into Scarlet’s backseat. Explaining why she was late and why her sister was still in the car, Scarlet glanced at Yvie’s face in the rearview mirror as she spoke.

“I didn’t want you to leave so I just came as fast as I could. We can drop this little shit home then go back out?” Scarlet finished, overjoyed when Yvie finally nodded her head and mumbled in agreement.

“Now that that’s over, I have so many questions.” Yvie turned her head to Lemon, placing a hand on the back of her seat. “Has Scarlet always been like this?”

“Excuse me! Like what?” Scarlet squealed in response, pretending to be annoyed but unable to keep the smile off of her face at the return of the Yvie she knew so fondly.

“Yes.” Lemon turned her head to the back. “I have so many stories you wouldn’t believe.”

“Oh my god, Scarlet. Can she stay?”

“She most certainly cannot.” Scarlet gave her sister a warning look that told her exactly how much of that grovelling would be necessary if she told even the prologue of an embarrassing childhood story. She would squeeze her sister to a pulp, no pun intended.

At least she wouldn’t have to do her half of the house jobs when she got home that night.

“I like her!” Lemon grinned before facing Yvie again.

“Fantastic.” Scarlet shook her head, listening as her sister and her date/enemy/crush/friend with benefits carried on bonding for the rest of the journey, Yvie nearly shattering the window with her cackle after Lemon told her about the Youtube channel Scarlet had tried to start in year nine. A part of Scarlet’s body warmed at their conversation, an image of Yvie sitting in the spare seat at the dining table for a family meal materialising in her head before she could try and shoo it away (she wasn’t even fully certain that Yvie even liked her as a person yet never mind wanted to become an honorary team member during their games night). However, that certainly didn’t mean she wasn’t happy to see the back of Lemon once they pulled up the house and Yvie made her way to the passenger seat instead.

“Hi.” Yvie turned to face her, the car still parked in front of Scarlet’s gates, not ready to pull away just yet.

“Hello.” Scarlet laughed, breathing every ounce of Yvie in that she hadn’t been able to reach earlier.

“Your sister’s nice. Like a younger version of you, except cool.”

Scarlet shot a pointed look Yvie’s way, something she had done many times in this position, Yvie firing shady comments from her passenger seat whilst she tried her best to keep living her fantasy. Only this time was different, gone was Yvie’s uniform and the guise of a lift home, she was categorically and undeniably there just to spend time with Yvie, to bask in her presence. And Yvie felt…the same? Scarlet didn’t know for sure, but the dark lips on Yvie’s lips told her at least one thing, she had made an effort. And it paid so much more than minimum wage.

“You don’t think I’m cool?” She grinned, ready for whatever read was coming her way.

“The opposite.” Yvie leaned across the centre console, her hand delicate in Scarlet’s freshly curled hair as she pulled her in for a kiss.

Getting herself carried away, it took Scarlet a few minutes to pull away, taking a breath she hadn’t realised she needed.

“So you’re not mad at me anymore?”

“I won’t be if you drive us somewhere with food,” Yvie replied, pouting her lips like a toddler - Scarlet saw how she’d already started to rub off on the other girl, subtle traits sticking to Yvie’s skin like perfume.

“I see how it is!” She turned the keys and set off to drive, pretending to be offended but secretly doing mental cartwheels (or whatever her attempt at a cartwheel would look like) at the thought that Yvie would rather spend time speaking to her than just hooking up in the car. Of course Scarlet really liked the sex, maybe going as far to say she adored it. But it didn’t make her giddy like sitting across Yvie in a secluded booth did, hiding her blush by taking deep dives into her fishbowl every time Yvie made her laugh or said something a tad too flirty than normal (which averaged to around once every two and a half minutes if Scarlet’s awful maths brain was of any use).

“Are you looking forward to moving away next year?” Scarlet had asked her, three drinks and a shared platter of nachos later.

“I told you, I haven’t gotten in yet. You need to stop speaking like it’s definite.” Yvie tapped a finger to Scarlet’s wrist before pointing it back in her face, the contact sending the fizzy bubbles from Scarlet’s drink right into her veins, flowing from her head to the tip of her toes.

“Oh my god, you’re gonna get in.” Scarlet looked into her eyes, grateful for her decision to wear contacts so she could see them, really see them - big brown pools of melted chocolate that glistened under the restaurant lighting.

“That’s easy for you to say, Miss I pay five grand a year for my education. I’m not building my hopes up, I don’t even know anyone black who’s applied nevermind gotten in before.”

Scarlet took the chance to hold her hand, her way of telling Yvie that she deserved it, that she was the hardest worker she knew. She deserved it all, everything and more.

“I don’t know about you,” Scarlet told herself to let go but couldn’t. “But that is not the determined Yvie I know, the one who would call out anyone for not giving one hundred to everything. You’re going, I know you are.”

“Thanks,” Yvie spoke quietly, her voice wavering a little before releasing a cough into her elbow and shaking herself off.

“Say it! You’re going.” Scarlet smiled. “If you don’t I’ll get another drink and get even more annoying. Four drink Scarlet likes to sing, you know?”

“I’m going,” Yvie repeated, giving Scarlet’s hand a tight squeeze. “And yeah, I am looking forward to it. It’s just a shame that I’ll be leaving some things behind.”

And when they had sex that night it was different. Not better. Not worse. Just different. Something extra in every touch, every movement, every look. The way they held each other when it was over, Scarlet curling up and nuzzling her head into Yvie’s chest before she fell asleep. The fact she was still like that once she woke, taking a risk by looking up and planting a quick peck on Yvie’s jawline, a term of endearment they hadn’t quite reached before. Scarlet danced clumsily on the line between friends with benefits and people who were actually dating, hoping that if she fell over to one side that Yvie would catch her. And she did, returning the kiss with another one planted on Scarlet’s forehead, strings tying them together that they didn’t know if they fully wanted yet but couldn’t untangle anymore.

Then other people started to see them too, the strings growing into a thicker rope, pulling them towards each other in one big tug of war.

“I hope you don’t mind but I told the girls from work about us,” Yvie announced from Scarlet’s desk one night, not turning around to look at Scarlet who was completing her own reading cross-legged on the bed.

Scarlet dropped her highlighter with surprise, leaving a pastel pink line on her duvet that she pretended not to notice till later.

“What did you say?”

Scarlet wasn’t a stranger to how Yvie had felt about her, remembering all the times she heard her making digs over the walkie talkies to the other girls when they thought she couldn’t hear. She tried to brush that off now, knowing that Yvie had transparent walls around herself, hidden to the naked eye - luckily Scarlet was confident in herself enough to trust her heart, to know that she wasn’t delusional and that the feelings she could see spilling from Yvie’s pores were real, even if she did tell her mother she was staying at Nina’s house every time she slept over.

“That we have sex?” She added quickly before Yvie could reply, a tiny part of her doubting her thoughts, resulting in one of Yvie’s mighty cartoon villain laughs.

“No, they knew that ages ago.” Yvie swivelled the chair around to give Scarlet a puzzling look. “I mean it doesn’t take a genius to work out that you don’t need two people to clean the disabled

toilet. And it doesn’t take that long.”

“Oh my god, you said we wouldn’t talk about that.” Scarlet felt her skin shiver at how nasty they had been that day, blaming Yvie for wearing new leggings when she had pulled her away near the start of her shift.

“Sorry.” Yvie held her hands up. “But yeah, I’m pretty sure they already knew we were fucking just not…” Yvie paused for a second, pursing her lips as she searched for the right words. “Hanging out, as well.”

“I see.” Scarlet shut her book, already way too distracted to regain focus. “So every time I told Priyanka we were going to Greggs and she asked me to bring her back a sausage roll she was just taking the piss? I’ve told her they’d ran out four times now!”

“You’re an idiot.” Yvie joined Scarlet in pushing the studying aside and slid onto the bed beside her.

“But you love it,” Scarlet replied, her mind too mushy at the news to consider her word choice, noticing how Yvie’s head jolted a touch once it had come out.

“Well, I just thought I’d tell them so it wasn’t awkward if you came to my birthday…Which you don’t have to attend if you don’t want to.” Yvie brought the conversation back on track, speaking matter of factly in a way that Scarlet had just grown to relish in. “But I kind of want you to.”

“Well, it’s a good job that I want to too then, isn’t it?” Scarlet grabbed her phone, trying her best to act coy as she composed a manic all caps message to her group chat, demanding assistance on an urgent, dress buying mission.

***

On Yvie’s tenth birthday she went to the cinema and discovered the magic of mixing sweets and chocolate in the box with the popcorn, something which she still did as a teenager every time she managed to convince Brooke to see the latest horror with her. On her sixteenth she drank cheap cider in the park and had her first real kiss, laughing all the way home while Nina asked one-hundred and one questions as if Yvie was some sort of make out messiah. Although she always brushed it off as something unimportant, Yvie adored the bubbles of excitement that fizzed inside of her every time her birthday rolled around. And her eighteenth was no exception.

“You didn’t have to.” She hugged the photo frame to her chest, smothering her friends’ faces into the dark fabric of her top, knowing fine well that they’d already put some money towards Yvie’s share of their girls trip payments. She had the best friends in the world.

“So you don’t miss us too much at Uni.” Brooke grinned at her.

There was another person she’d disappoint when she failed and didn’t move away, cleaning up ice cream for the rest of her life. Yvie had only been eighteen for nineteen hours and was already feeling the crippling reality of adulthood.

Scarlet must have noticed because she rested a hand on Yvie’s wrist, a simple gesture that wouldn’t have read much to anyone else but Yvie felt under her skin and tissue and down to her bones. With her hair let loose behind her back and a shimmer of gold on her eyes, Yvie couldn’t have hated her one bit.

“You look…nice.” She’d told Scarlet when she walked into her house, a bottle of what Yvie assumed to be champagne in her hand (she couldn’t read the label but figured Scarlet wasn’t one for prosecco).

“Get you! Learning how to compliment.” Scarlet had pulled her into a hug and Yvie saw a supercut of every contact they’d ever made. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Scarlet had probably been right (as much as Yvie hated admitting when she was right). Because every time she’d gone to tell Scarlet how she felt, an arrow of quick wit and insult humour had fired from her tongue, a barrier that forever stopped her from being the weak black girl some people expected her to be. Whatever it was they had it wasn’t perfect, but when Scarlet touched her wrist she was reminded for a second how grateful she was for it. How much she’d grown to need it.

Things only better as the night went on; the girls from work arrived and showered Yvie with love and homemade jager bombs. Priyanka even managed to say hello to Brooke without her eyes falling out of her head and her tongue dropping to the floor, earning herself a pat on the back from Heidi, who was celebrating Yvie’s birthday as if it was her own now that she’d never have to lend her ID out ever again (something that she reminded everyone of at least once every half an hour). Scarlet seemed to be having fun too, bonding with Nina over their shared love of visiting New York at Christmas and their bad dancing skills. It felt normal, almost too normal.

“She’s not as bad as you say she is.” Nina piped up once they were in their Uber, free from Scarlet and her burning ears for at least five minutes.

“She was pouring champagne into Vanjie’s mouth.” Yvie laughed. “Actual champagne!”

“Why did you invite her if you don’t like her so much then?”

Nina knew what she was asking. And Yvie knew the answer. Suddenly she was brought back to that day two years earlier, the kiss she’d shared with a girl from the year above, their legs dangling from the kid’s jungle gym with the whole town below them.

“Is she, like, the one?” Nina had asked, talking at a rate of knots as they walked home.

“I don’t know.” Yvie made an attempt to brush her off. It failed.

“Did you feel butterflies? Like your heart racing and all that stuff.”

“Nah, none of that,” Yvie replied. “It was nice but I didn’t feel any of that crazy stuff.”

She was pretty sure that stuff was made up to boost romance novel sales anyways, but didn’t really fancy tearing her best friend down for the cloud fantasy she was living in.

“Well, she mustn’t be the one for you then.” Nina had linked her arm by that point, using her other hand to shine her phone torch on the ground below. “God, I get butterflies when anyone even looks at me! You’ll find someone who gives them to you soon, don’t worry.”

Yvie didn’t think she would. And if she did she didn’t really think it would be her rich boss’s daughter who played lacrosse and wrote revision notes like she was being tested on her penmanship. Yet there they were, flying around her stomach like they were on acid. She didn’t know when the stupid things had hatched from their cocoons but they certainly had - there wasn’t any turning back.

“Why don’t you tell her?” Brooke snapped Yvie back to reality, apparently not too busy grilling the driver for his life story to join in with the ambush.

Yvie didn’t bother asking what. Or answering her for that matter, instead, shrugging her shoulders in a simple way that utterly contrasted the web of complicated thoughts and debates her brain was sifting through.

“Whatever.” Nina opened the door and released her back into the wild, where the others waited on the pavement and Scarlet gave her a kooky smile that Yvie really really really wished she hated. Only she didn’t, Nina’s words running through her head when she decided that maybe it’d be a good night to just say “fuck it” and let everything spill out.

“Can I talk to you?” Yvie placed a gentle hand on her wrist, her voice hushed under the racket of her drunken friends.

“Oh.” Scarlet raised a brow, Yvie’s sincerity being mistaken for something very different in her head. “Right now? We’re about to go inside!”

“No, I didn’t mean-” Yvie started but found herself interrupted by the great Silky holler that she was now fluent enough to understand meant “Hurry up I need a drink down my neck or I’m gonna start on someone pronto”. Silky didn’t get hangry, she got thangry. And no one liked it when Silky felt thangry.

“Saved by the yell.” Scarlet giggled as they followed in tow, letting her hand fall down and dance across Yvie’s skin ever so slightly. Normally she’d berate her for making such a terrible pun but Yvie was too busy thinking about that hand and that smile and the person behind it.

“Come on.” She felt a tug on her wrist as she entered, following the arm in question to see an eager Priyanka at the other end. “Time to get you absolutely smashed.”

And absolutely smashed Yvie got. If the five shots that Priyanka bought her didn’t do it, then the cocktail pitchers she wouldn’t even remember anyone buying her the next day certainly did (even if she did spill an entire half of one when Silky insisted she jump on her back and pretend to be a human wrecking ball - the bouncers loved that one). One hand in Jaida’s and the other pointed to the ceiling, Yvie could have sworn she touched the sky for a moment as she looked across at all the people who she cared about her having the night of their lives. Brooke playing fake stubborn as Vanessa pouted and begged for her to go up and request their song for the second time that night. Heidi and Priyanka waving to the crowds around them like the absolute idiots they were. Nina, clearly simping over a girl from across the room without any intention of going up to speak to her. But Yvie couldn’t judge - there she was feeling the blood rush through her body that little bit faster the moment Scarlet came back to their group after saying hello to her school friends. Yvie had fallen way too far for any of them to lend a hand. She’d dug the grave and maybe it was time to grab a pillow and a nice book so she could at least lie there in comfort.

Holding two fingers to her mouth and making eye contact, Yvie was on her way outside with Scarlet before she knew it, hand in hand as they pushed their way through the crowds. She wondered if that would ever feel normal, Scarlet’s fingers clasped around hers just like the first time.

“What’s up with you?” Scarlet asked once they found a seat, the air dark and breezy around them. If Yvie had had a jacket she’d have popped it around her back, noticing even in her drunken state that the hairs on Scarlet’s arm were standing up, a tiny chatter in her teeth with every word. “You’re being really nice tonight.”

“It is my birthday.” Yvie laughed, feeling the blush race to her cheeks. God, she was even worse than Nina.

“It’s still weird. It’s unnerving me.”

“Do you want me to be rude to you?” Yvie laughed, even more, opting to place her hands on either side of Scarlet’s arms, rubbing up and down to keep her warm after feeling her body shake.

“If you’re rude to me then you won’t get your present.”

Yvie didn’t know what to think. She’d stalked Scarlet and her friends enough on Instagram to know what birthday presents meant: Swarovski bracelets, Vivienne Westwood earrings and Tiffany necklaces. They did it all and the thought was terrifying.

“I told you not to spend any money on me.” Yvie flashed back to the day she invited Scarlet, highlighting the “no presents just presence” part of the offer.

“I didn’t.” Scarlet leaned in and kissed her cheek, not caring who was around and watching. Yvie would feel the sticky mark from her gloss all night and even the next morning, she wished later that she’d wiped it off then and there before everything came tumbling down and how she looked was the last thing on her mind.

“I’m sure you didn’t.” Yvie rolled her eyes, thinking of how many times she’d watched Scarlet tap down her contactless debit at any opportunity. The smell of the new handbags was basically her opium. But Yvie didn’t care, Scarlet’s weekly shopping trips became a quirk of hers that Yvie found herself starting to love that touch more than she hated. If she didn’t get her place at Uni she could always just stay in that grave she’d dug, it was becoming more and more like home by the second.

“I was gonna tell you later when we’re sober and not in the middle of the smoking area but…” Scarlet grabbed her phone and started scrolling, a childlike grin on her face that was normally only reserved for her giddiest moments.

At first, Yvie didn’t take in what Scarlet was showing her, the writing a bit fuzzy beyond her beer goggles and Scarlet saying far too many words at once for her to process.

“Naomi’s cousin did it and I thought it would help you out but I know how stubborn and busy you are and didn’t want you to have anything more on your plate so I did all the application and stuff for you. There’s a reference from my Dad and one of your essays then you just had to answer some questions about where you live and stuff like that then you got the lower offer…”

She kept talking but Yvie zoned out, her eyes focusing on the words “supported progression” and “increasing diversity”. But then the words blurred even more and Yvie didn’t even realise it was because she was crying until it was too late to fight.

“Hey.” Scarlet wiped away at her cheeks, her hands even colder than before as Yvie felt her body starting to burn. “It’s alright, we’ll talk about it later.”

“You think I need handouts?” Yvie wanted so badly to look at her but couldn’t, screwing her eyes shut instead where nothing was spinning and she couldn’t see the way Scarlet’s face changed before her.

“No, no. You’ve got it wrong. I just saw how stressed you were and knew it would help you. Look Yvie, they lowered your grades. It’s a great opportunity. Let’s just carry on with our night, yeah? I shouldn’t have shown you now.”

And suddenly everything poured out of Yvie’s lips. The time a customer at work had made a complaint about her tone of voice and unnecessary anger. The time a boy in year eight had told her she was pretty for a black girl. Every single time an ignorant white girl thought they were single-handedly destroying racism by picking her for their team in rounders and using her as some sort of diversity token. She felt it all, her eyes still shut so she was speaking to all of them and not just Scarlet.

“You think this is a present? Helping the black girl from the council estate get a lower Uni offer cause she needs a step up to be like everyone else?”

“Yvie, no. That’s not why I did it. I was trying to help.” Yvie could hear her voice breaking but didn’t want to look, couldn’t let herself look.

“I didn’t ask for your help.” She tried to fight it but Yvie didn’t let her, the thought of Scarlet filling those forms in replaying in her mind. She wondered how many boxes she’d checked, how close she was to not being poor enough or not being black enough to get rejected from the scheme. She thought about the people like Scarlet who went to private school and never had to work a day in their lives with their shiny new offers, she wondered if they’d think that was the only reason she got there, she needed a hand up to get to their level.

“I opened so much to you.” Yvie clenched her fists and somehow managed to draw blood. “It might not seem like it but I fucking did Scarlet, I thought you understood.”

“I do, I promise. It’s like those female-only MP spots we talked about, remember? You said they were cool. I’m sorry, I should have spoken to you, come back inside.”

Yvie finally opened her eyes and wished she hadn’t; because Scarlet looked like someone had murdered a puppy right before her and she wanted nothing more to do than to hold her and tell her everything would be okay. But it wasn’t. So she couldn’t. She’d known from the start that they were from different worlds and hated herself at that moment for believing any different. This wasn’t Scarlet’s fault, it was her own.

“I didn’t mean to, Yves. Please don’t hate me.” Scarlet could sense Yvie’s anger, shivering still in her spot as Yvie stood up to leave.

Yvie wanted to laugh. Two hours earlier she’d decided tonight was the night she’d tell Scarlet that she might have accidentally fallen in love with her. Yet there she was, Scarlet’s lip gloss sticky on her cheek with her shoes in her hand, ready to run as far away as she could till the world around her stopped spinning and she wasn’t hurting anymore.

“I really wished I did.”

She didn’t turn around to see Scarlet’s reaction, those five words ringing in her head all the way home and keeping her awake whilst the sky turned into pinks and reds and oranges. They stayed there for months, a thousand other things she could have said mounting in her brain over time all to be pushed aside by those words that followed her. She heard them behind the blaring music when she went to hand in her notice at work, hidden in the muffled cry that Heidi made as they hugged to the future. She saw them in the exam hall that June, written on the bricks in chalk all around before she had the chance to turn over her paper, reminding her of every single thing she’d sacrificed for that moment. They followed her into summer as the sun shone brighter and the nights got longer, there to tease her on the day her biggest dream came true when she opened her envelope and her first thought was that she wanted to tell Scarlet.

That feeling still lingered the week after results day, where most people were still celebrating, rolling into their houses at four in the morning with the childhood friends they’d soon have to take three trains to visit, savouring every last moment of those precious months where they would have absolutely zero responsibilities to their name.

Yvie wished she was one of those people, alternatively finding herself cramped on the bus in a slightly too tight white shirt, ready for her third job interview that month. She wished was chilling in Brooke’s room instead like the rest of her friends were, laughing at their Snapchat stories from the night before and deleting the ones where you could hear their singing a lot louder than they’d realised at the time (although she assumed they were still asleep and hadn’t gotten to that stage of the day yet, as evident in Vanessa’s beautiful rendition of Christina Aguilara that blasted through her headphones and just begged for Yvie to take a screen recording). She flicked through their stories a few more times before Heidi’s name had popped up, wishing her good luck on her interview in their group chat.

“Hope you don’t get it and have to come back here until you go to Uni xxx” Priyanka added, always the loving and supportive friend of the group.

She really missed them. Almost as much as she missed someone else.

“You underestimate my persuasion skills.” Yvie sent back, knowing fine well that she was missing a very important trait that interviewers looked for - actually turning up.

She’d made it to the first one, pacing around the store with her CV in hand, raring to go. Things changed of course when a gaggle of girls with tartan skirts entered to rake through the shelves, the familiar blue of their uniform reminding them of why she was even there in the first place and sending her flying out the door before her name was even called. The second was an even shorter experience, having simply let the bus go past the stop without ringing the bell, an accident on purpose that took her all the way to the other side of town. Yvie had always thought she knew which side of the fight or flight analysis she stood proudly and grounded on, but if the urge to yeet herself off the bus and run home the second the restaurant came into sight wasn’t enough to prove how wrong she’d been then nothing else would.

Third time a charm?

She took one more peek at her phone before making her way through the door, quickly scanning her messages one more time and avoiding the small number one that burst out the corner of the text app. She’d open it when she was ready.

“Yvonne?” A familiar girl asked, raising a thick eyebrow her way.

“Yvie.” She pulled the best fake smile that three years of drama lessons in school had provided her with, praying it was enough to cover the utter disdain that came with hearing her full name, something usually reserved for family members and the front of exam papers. She knew people had worse, she could shorten Yvonne. It wasn’t awful, just not Yvie. And at least her mother never decided to name her after a piece of fruit.

If she didn’t have company she’d have slapped herself against the face for even letting her thoughts slip close to Scarlet again, opting instead to pinch the skin on her hand (there was still a mark from when she’d done the same thing a few days prior, having let even the cereals at the supermarket bring back soft memories of the girl that she fought so hard to keep away from).

“My Dad’ll be out in a minute.” The girl turned on her heel to walk away and Yvie realised why she recognised her, laughing to herself at the thought of working with Nina’s utterly obvious crush from sixth form who didn’t even know she existed. She thought about Brooke and Priyanka and what a funny reverse it would be to have her school friend gushing over her work friend instead of the other way around.

Not that this girl was Priyanka, or this place was the centre. It just wasn’t and Yvie knew already. Maybe she wouldn’t tell Nina about Bob’s sister, after all doing that would only catch her in a lie when she inevitably fucked the whole thing up and didn’t dare admit it. Because admitting that she messed up the interview would only lead to admitting a bigger and scarier thought in Yvie’s head.

She really, really wanted to go back in time. If not then a little bit forward, just so the interview was over and she could return back to the comfort of her bed with the new sheets that she’d bought so she could take her old ones to Uni and not because they reminded her of ginger hair tossed out on her pillow and the infuriating yet adorable noise of Scarlet grinding her teeth in her sleep. Definitely the former.

Only she wasn’t a wizard, not even a bit close like all those kids at Scarlet’s school with their house teams and fancy lessons. So the interview started like normal, Yvie jumping over each hurdle the best she could, stumbling a tad when he asked her about why she wanted to work there and she knew “I broke the heart of my ex-bosses daughter and can no longer show my face there but need money” would not have been a sufficient answer. The next few were okay, her feet gliding over nicely as she rattled off one thing or another about her time management skills and ability to work well under pressure. However, she let her face smack the ground on the final hurdle, the finish line almost in sight.

The dreaded character reference.

Yvie watched as he dropped it from his hands and onto the desk - the first time she’d properly looked at it after asking Brooke to print it and shoving it in her file without so much as a once-over. She tried her best to look back up, to engage and catch the interviewer’s eye like she knew she was supposed to, except her own eyes were glued to a familiar font she’d seen many times before. Her mind flashed to all the time spent reading detailed flashcards on the War of the Roses with Scarlet, shooting questions across the room aggressively like they were in the battle themselves (she was the House of Lancaster, red with danger and passion and Scarlet was York, pure and white as she pulled a face of utter distress at every date she couldn’t remember). She knew that font.

“Your reference is pretty impressive.” He looked back up but Yvie was still staring anyway. “This is from your previous employer?”

“Y-yes.” Yvie spat her words, realising at that moment that the character reference that persuaded her University to give her a lower offer, the reference that was two pages long and signed sincerely from her Scarlet’s dad, was in fact written by a passionate eighteen-year-old with a heart of gold and a strange affinity for using the word “conversely”. A realisation that was only a few months too late. If she’d wanted to go back in time earlier…

“Well, I’m surprised he let you go reading this.” He pointed a finger to a specific paragraph and Yvie let her eyes move along the page, his words background noise to Scarlet’s voice speaking clearly in her head.

“In the time that I have employed Yvie, I have been able to see not only her incredibly high standards concerning every aspect of her life but also the passion, vulnerability and humility behind every decision she makes. Watching Yvie blossom into the resilient and determined woman she is today has brought great pleasure to my eyes, however, even more pleasure has been found in seeing the growth she has encouraged in those around her, constantly bringing a sense of warmth and comfort to her coworkers in the most subtle of ways when she isn’t even trying to.”

In the past few months, Yvie had cried a total of three times. The first being her birthday, the night she lost the best part of her entire year in one quick visit to the smoking area. The second was results night - happy tears that had absolutely nothing to do with the text she’d pushed away to the top of her screen after reading the first few words. At least that’s what she’d told Brooke and Nina. Nothing to do with the text or the urge she had to run across to Slug and Lettuce as fast as she could and drag Scarlet away from her half-price cocktails just so they could pretend things were how they used to be for one night. She’d also have told her that she was proud of her, whispered it in her ear as they lay intertwined and said it over and over again so Scarlet knew she meant it. Only she didn’t, the words falling off her cheeks and onto the toilet floor instead, where Scarlet wouldn’t have been able to see them even with her glasses on. So it came as no surprise that the third time was Scarlet-related too, the reference turning more and more blurry as she tried to read on, eventually slipping through her fingers and turning into a jumble of black and white she didn’t have the strength to unscramble.

In the most simple of terms, she’d fucked it. Well and truly fucked it. At least she was one hundred per cent sure of that.

“Sorry, I-” Yvie started but couldn’t find the words to finish, pushing her chair back with such force that it dropped to the floor with a painful clang.

Yeah, maybe it would have been better if she hadn’t turned up after all.

“Thanks for your time.” She mumbled, scooping the chair from the ground and swiping the reference from the table in an awkward and clunky motion.

It would have been so easy to blame Scarlet, to be angry about how many years she’d spent being strong and resilient, immune to vulnerability. To be annoyed at how suddenly she’d waltzed in and smashed all that to pieces with a kick of her designer flats. But if there was one thing Yvie had come to realise that year it was that she only ever made things harder for herself. And despite always saying she loved her life how it was, that was something she had to change. Pronto.

***

“I got you a double vodka.” The girl, Gigi, motioned as Scarlet took her seat, not even bothering to apologise for being late. Not that she’d have had an excuse anyway, having spent all morning laying like a dog on her bed and scrolling aimlessly down her phone until she had twenty minutes to go and figured she might as well start getting ready. Oh, how things had changed.

“Thanks.” Scarlet tried her best to conjure up a smile, her throat wavering as she took a sip and imagined it was a nice fruity cocktail instead. Before she probably would have gagged a little at the taste but she was trying to be less dramatic about things. Of course, a ridiculous idea about ‘accidentally’ spilling it then going to order a fishbowl instead crossed her mind but she managed to shoo it away. Gigi had spent good money on that drink and if Scarlet had learnt any lesson that year it was that you should never take a gift for granted.

“Were you at work today?” She asked, placing her hand on the table just close enough that Scarlet’s hand would brush it if she went for another sip.

Scarlet couldn’t deny that she was ravishing, her eyes screamed sex and she had a beauty mark on her right cheek that just proved she was the modern-day incarnation of Marilyn Monroe. Objectively, she was very pretty and Scarlet should have been proud.

Yet she did not move her hand.

“Nah. My sister has a dance recital this evening, had to make sure my day was all clear.”

It was stupid really, organising a date when she knew she had plans later, essentially shutting down any possibility of taking things further. Only Scarlet wasn’t stupid at all, not in the slightest.

She let the small talk go on further, from travels to Uni to work to friends to food then back to Uni again. Scarlet could see the similarities, the expensive taste they both shared and the fact that Gigi too seemed to live life with the neatness and perfection that Scarlet thrived on. If she were to colour in she’d do it perfectly within the edges, even going as far as ripping the page out if she went over the lines. They should have slotted together perfectly. Should have.

“Did I tell you that you’re gorgeous yet?” The comment took Scarlet off guard, slipped casually into the conversation in that clever witty way she’d always wished she could emulate herself. The way the male lead did in movies and the girl would always swoon and decide that was the moment she was in love with him. In the past she would have loved it, her ever-so-slightly inflated ego taking in any compliment she could get and running with it until the cows returned for their pasture.

“Nope.” She took another sip of the drink, surprised at how little was actually gone. “But you don’t need to, I already know.”

“Sorry.” Her date held two hands in the air and stifled and awkward laugh. Scarlet couldn’t help but wonder why she didn’t fight back. Tell her to get her head out of her arse or else she’d get even more lost than the time she went to London with Plastique and caught the wrong tube twice in succession. Scarlet really, really wanted her to fight back.

“I guess you must think I am too.” She raised a thick brow in Scarlet’s direction. “Or else you wouldn’t have gotten with me on results day.”

Around sixth form, Scarlet was known for having high standards: rolling her eyes in the common room if there was no peppermint tea left because she simply couldn’t have any of the other flavours, never leaving the house without at least two accessories on and always doing the extra reading on her homework even if she was having the busiest of weeks. Her standards were well past the stratosphere and she was never afraid of being a diva about them.

That being said, results day Scarlet would have gotten with absolutely anyone on that night be they male, female, gorgeous or not. Results day Scarlet’s standards were set somewhere in the Earth’s core, about two-thousand and nine hundred kilometres below the sticky floor of the club she was in. She was desperate to feel something or someone. And Gigi was there at her service.

“I guess.” Scarlet tried her best to be polite, her mind flashing back to that night when she felt Gigi’s red lips on her neck as she tried so hard to feel something. To feel someone. To fuck someone. To fuck Yvie and the “Delivered” that sat below the congratulations message Scarlet had sent her that day. A giant fuck you to the girl who’d she’d grown and blossomed with, who’d left her to wilt in the sun without any water after such a stupid mistake. A stupid mistake that she now understood the weight of in pounds and ounces and any other unit of measurement you could think of.

“You guess, damn.” Gigi took her time coming back, looking at her thighs as if there were secret cue cards hidden under the table that told her how to respond to all of Scarlet’s remarks.

Maybe Scarlet needed someone a little more rough around the edges. Someone who let the pens teeter over the lines and used whatever colours they liked despite logic saying there are no such things as bright purple palm trees.

It would have been so easy to be with someone like Gigi, someone who shared her lifestyle, complimented her and tried her hardest to keep the conversation flowing even when awkwardness took over. But that year Scarlet had tasted difficult, complicated and down-right mind-boggling all wrapped in one dish and it was so much nicer than easy.

Easy was boring.

So she did what any other kinda-shitty human would have done on a first date they weren’t enjoying and texted her best friend under the table to call and collect her as soon as possible. Unfortunately, Naomi had never fully understood the “soon” part and left Scarlet to make painful small talk for a whole thirty minutes before pulling up outside and ringing Scarlet with the most ridiculous of emergencies.

“Seriously? That’s the best you could do?” Scarlet pulled a look of utter disbelief the second the car door was shut.

“Bitch, be grateful. I didn’t have to come rescue you.”

“I am grateful.” Scarlet grabbed her friend’s phone and began to queue songs without thought. “I just thought you’d come up with something better than ‘my dog has diarrhoea’, that’s all.”

“You still left!” Naomi laughed as she revved up the engine. “What was it then? Did she have no good chat? Uglier than you remember?”

“Nah, she was prettier actually.” Scarlet played with the ring on her finger, sliding it up and down so much that her skin turned red.

“Serial killer then?” Naomi paused at some traffic lights and took the opportunity to skip the next selection in Scarlet’s line up. “Sorry, that song is way too depressing.”

“She was nice! Just not for me.” She took the ring off completely, rolling it between her thumb and finger as if the small action would detract from every single thing going on in her brain.

“Oh no.” Naomi pulled a look of horror. “I get it.”

“Get what?” Scarlet squealed as her friend took a sharp left, the opposite direction to her house. “Where are you taking me, an early grave?”

“The abandoning a date with the prettiest girl in town, the sad songs. You’re still hung up on Yvie.”

“I’m not!” Scarlet protested, trying her hardest to be nonchalant but instead sounding like a toddler who’d been accused of stealing extra biscuits at break time. Ever so subtle. “Where are we even going?”

“McDonald’s car park. So you can tell me yet again about how guilty you feel and what an awful mistake you made and how you just want everything to be how it was before because it’s just not fair!” Naomi mimicked Scarlet’s dramatic whine and she couldn’t help but give her credit for how spot-on she was, even if she had had a solid seven years of science lessons and after school shopping trips to practice.

“And then you can tell me that life’s not fair and I just have to accept that Yvie hates me again even though I understand everything now?”

“Exactly!” Naomi made her way into the drive-through, stalling at the first pause and making Scarlet laugh for what felt like the first time in months. “You’d think I’d be an expert at this by now, the number of times I’ve had to drag you here.”

“You would be if life was fair.” Scarlet poked her in the rib, happy to have a friend who knew that she needed cheering up before she even knew herself.

And that’s just what she did, reminding Scarlet about Uni and all the girls who would happily bully her there so she didn’t have to pine for the one who had left her, sliding between deep and lighthearted as they ate their meals so slowly they turned cold.

“I just miss her, Naomi.” Scarlet took the last spoonful of her McFlurry, wishing she didn’t have Lemon’s stupid recital and could have gone round again for a second one. Maybe even a third. “I know she’s a dickhead and you think she doesn’t deserve me. But we were good. Really good.”

“I know.” Naomi planted a kiss on her friend’s forehead, pulling her into the biggest of cuddles before starting the car up again and changing the subject. “So, how many shit dances are you gonna have to sit through tonight before your sister comes on for five minutes?”

“Hmmm. Maybe thirty? I’ll make sure to let you know.”

She was close, opening the program as soon as she sat down that evening to count a whole twenty-seven names before Lemon’s, sending Naomi a quick text with the rolling eyes emoji that had suddenly become her most frequently used (replacing the eyes pouring with tears one of course).

She stopped watching altogether ten dances in, letting her eyes travel around the theatre and play out little scenarios in each balcony or scenario, something about the place just screaming romance when you blocked out the fifteen-year-olds forgetting the moves to the Greatest Showman soundtrack on stage (one performance to Rewrite the Stars stood out in particular, reminding her of the time it played in work and Yvie made a joke about how it could have been them but Scarlet wasn’t suave enough to be the Zac Efron character). After twenty she took a trip to the toilet, topping up her gloss and mascara for absolutely no one to see in the dim lighting.

It was a long night, to say the least, Scarlet eager at the edge of the seat by the time dancer number twenty-seven had taken their ridiculously extra walk off the stage and she heard her bratty baby’s name announced on the speaker. Just because she had no desire to clap for other people’s family didn’t mean she wasn’t a secret stage-sister when it came to watching Lemon, wishing she could pull out her phone and record like the cool mom from Mean Girls.

Only it’s a good job she didn’t because, after not one but two calls of her name, there was no sight of Lemon and her big yellow feather boa that Scarlet had bought specifically for that night.

Tripping over at least four sets of feet on her way, Scarlet clambered over the stalls the best she could, dashing to the backstage area as fast as she could once the next girl’s name was called and her routine started. Crazy thoughts ran through her head, images of Lemon locked in storage closets or being carted off into an ambulance with a cast on her leg flashing up as she ran up to an assistant and asked perhaps too forcefully why her sister was not tapping away on that stage like she should have been.

“There was someone without a ticket asking after her at the front desk, I thought she had come back!”

Scarlet didn’t know if he was speaking to her or his headpiece but she was gone again, her size fives working double-time to go and figure out whether it was her absent parents or Lemon’s stupid airhead friends that have caused her to miss her dance and send the gay intern into a state of existential panic.

Glasses at aid, it didn’t take long to find her, feathers falling from the boa as Lemon shook it in her hands with her words. Maybe Scarlet should have spent a little more money on it after all…

Scarlet shouted for her down the hall, the stage-sister persona now fully developed and realised.

But her sister ignored her, continuing to point her finger in the sassiest of manners that would probably have left her cleaning the pantry for two weeks at home - that ruled out her parents, for sure.

“What are you…” Scarlet started but lost the words once she turned the corner and finally got a sight of who her sister was berating. “Oh.”

“I went to the centre but Jaida said you had the day off to watch Lemon dance,” Yvie spoke simply and clearly.

It seemed crazy seeing her in person after spending so long trying to push her portrait out of her head and convince herself that she didn’t exist. But there she was, real as day, her eyes slightly red and her shirt haphazardly tucked into her trousers. “This is the third place I’ve tried but they wouldn’t let me in.”

For perhaps one of the first times ever in her life, Scarlet couldn’t think of anything to say.

“She had a date today too,” Lemon smirked in Yvie’s direction and Scarlet watched her face drop more than it had the day that she’d planned a walk for the two of them around the botanic gardens only for it to be closed (Scarlet went alone once just before her exams and almost let herself cry thinking about how much Yvie really knew her).

“Lemon!” Scarlet’s mind caught up as she turned to her sister and gave her the black look of death that they had devised as kids to show when they were not playing games.

“What? She can’t just break your heart and then waltz into my dance show with some flowers and it’s alright.”

Scarlet hadn’t even noticed the flowers until then - big, red daisies that Yvie was gripping onto far too tight, her nails thorns pressed into her palm. She wanted to take them just so Yvie would stop, to slip her own hand there instead like they had done so many times.

“She didn’t break my heart Lemon, oh my god.” Scarlet’s face spoke a thousand words she wasn’t saying out loud and they were all synonyms for something starting with fuck and ending with off.

“So you just listened to Lana Del Rey on repeat for weeks with the door shut for fun?”

“Excuse me.” A scary-looking woman with a security badge pinned to her lapel rose her voice over her sister’s. She was now officially Scarlet’s number one hero, Audrey Hepburn being shot down in favour of the godsend who parted the red sea to put an end to the ex-flame vs. sister crisis that Scarlet was trapped in. “This is not the place for arguments, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“She’s meant to be dancing, can she go back in?” Scarlet pulled her best puppy dog eyes and batted her eyelashes praying that the woman would let her. It was, after all, the least she could do given that she was now also ranked above Grace Kelly and Arianna Huffington in the mental list of important women who impacted her life. Quite an honour, if she thought so herself.

“If you leave.” The woman pointed to the door before escorting Scarlet and Yvie outside like two school kids who had to spend their lunchtime standing on the wall for being naughty (not that that had ever actually happened to Scarlet herself as a kid. She imagined it would have happened to Yvie and her blunt tongue though, letting a laugh out at the mental image of the girl aged ten having a huff for missing golden time).

“Ring me when you’re done!” Scarlet shouted to her sister before the doors closed on them and they were released to the night sky that had been a cloudy blue when Scarlet first arrived.

And suddenly she was left alone with Yvie. With the girl who had ignored her texts. Who she’d cried over in McDonald’s car park at least seven times by then. Who she longed for every time she even made eye contact with another girl. Who had left her alone in the smoking area with nothing but the taste of corked champagne in her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Yvie spoke for the first time since she’d first seen her, bending down to sit on the curb. Scarlet didn’t have to think twice about joining her.

“It’s fine, I can’t say that was the most exciting thing to watch, anyway.” She motioned to the theatre behind them, the street lamp lighting up Yvie’s face just enough to see her crack a smile. Scarlet pushed the confusion and the past aside for a moment just to take in that smile.

“Not for that.” She gripped her palm again and this time Scarlet couldn’t stop herself from grabbing her hand to stop her. “For before, for everything. I don’t know who you’re seeing or anything but I just couldn’t go away at the end of this summer without telling you that I’m sorry.”

“I’m not seeing anyone.” Scarlet’s heart was beating fast and all of a sudden she was at the back of the cafe with Yvie again, the rest of the world in 2D as they spun in their own little bubble.

“I’m sorry for abandoning you, for making things harder for myself because I got scared. Scared of stupid things that I knew you never even meant. I just never even knew what I felt myself and once I did then I tried to deny it.”

“I’m sorry too.” For once Scarlet was glad she was wearing her glasses in front of Yvie or else she’d be able to see the tears welling in her eyes that very moment. “For being naive and thinking I knew what was best for you.”

And things carried on that way, Scarlet unable to hide the tears for much longer when Yvie told her that she didn’t have to say sorry, that she didn’t even have to forgive her. She just had to listen and try her best to understand. Yvie spoke about when she was a kid, about the day she realised she was different to all the other girls in her class and the day she lost the ability to tell if she hated something or loved it. She talked about the first time they met, the first time they had sex and the first time she thought fuck I’m in far too deep. About the past few months and how they had been, her words not Scarlet’s, like the “nine circles of hell on steroids’’. About how she read the reference and realised those were probably the nicest things a person had ever said about her, and how awful it felt to realise she’d pushed that person away.

“It was all true, the reference.” Scarlet squeezed her hand when she finished, proud of Yvie for managing to speak so many of her thoughts and feelings into the universe and even prouder of herself for not interrupting even once.

“I really brought a sense of warmth to you?” Yvie chuckled as she regained her composure, raising a brow at Scarlet like she had so many times before. “I think I’m the coldest person I know.”

“God knows how but yes, you did.” Scarlet leant in close. “You do.”

The kiss felt like home and Scarlet tried to thank every single star in the sky she could see for it but was swiftly interrupted by the second kiss. She’d have to get up a diagram of the entire solar system to pay her gratitude for the second kiss.

“See? Warmth.” She whispered into Yvie’s ear.

“You don’t have to forgive me that fast, Scarlet. This isn’t a story, things take time.”

“Well, it’s a good job we have some left to work on that before you go to Uni then isn’t it? Now, do you wanna kiss again or carry on telling me about how painstakingly awful it was getting over me? Either is fine by me.”

“It wasn’t that bad.” Yvie teased her. “I could probably do it all over again if I had to.”

“You’d be willing to risk that?”

“For this?” Yvie pulled her into another kiss, this one stronger, making up for the months they’d missed and setting precedent for the few weeks they had left. If there was still an inkling inside of Scarlet that Yvie hated her then that kiss washed it right away with the rain that fell, all the way down the banks and into the river that night. “One hundred per cent.”

Tags -

Throughout her eight years of education, Scarlet had only ever been late twice: once in year five when her Dad’s car had gotten stuck in the snow and they had to push it out of the drive, then again in year twelve when Pearl left her phone in the Urban Outfitters changing rooms on their free and made Scarlet drive her back to get it. It was her ultimate pet hate. Which was why she felt like the biggest dick on the planet standing in the hallway of her sister’s dance school furiously peeking her head through windows at the grand time of seven fifty-two, almost twenty-five minutes after she was due to meet Yvie.

“I’m so so so so sorry, I’ll be there soon xx”

She typed quickly as she paced the halls, no time to think and stress over how many kisses to send or whether she should have added emojis like she normally would have. If Yvie was difficult to read in person, Scarlet had discovered over the past week that she was even harder to understand over text as they’d gone over the plan for their date. A plan that was currently unravelling like a broken cassette tape before her eyes, too far gone to wind back up by the time she found her sister.

“Oooh, you look nice!” Lemon exclaimed as she left the studio, already trailing behind as Scarlet did her best attempt at power walking back to her car.

“You were supposed to be done forty-five minutes ago!” Scarlet could feel her face starting to sweat with stress, worried about how awful her makeup would look by the time she met Yvie. If Yvie was still even there. “I told you to be on time, I have plans!”

“Sorry, rehearsal just ran over and I couldn’t leave. Can I have the AUX?”

Scarlet pressed her foot on the accelerator an ounce more than she normally would, looking frantically in her mirror. “No! And you can tell Dad that I’m never picking you up ever again.”

Before Lemon could start her usual monologue about the hardships of life as a talented dancer the pair were interrupted by the ringing of Scarlet’s phone.

Shit.

“Answer it and put it on speaker.” She snapped to her sister, taking a deep breath before she addressed Yvie. “Hey, I’m so sorry about being late, I’ll be there as quickly as I can, just give me five minutes.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it, I’m just gonna head home.”

Scarlet almost slammed the breaks then and there. She knew Yvie so she knew that she wasn’t fine, she was the absolute antithesis of fine. What a way to fuel the hatred train back up again - did they give out trophies for these sorts of things? If they did she certainly deserved one, imagining her pathetic figure made of gold resin, holding a tiny clock and bottle of Coke Zero with the title “Best at Getting Your Crush To Despise You” engraved on a plaque underneath. They could plop it on top of her grave. Or maybe Lemon’s, depending of course on how much her sister would grovel after this.

“No, no, I’m coming.” Scarlet made the executive decision to take a left turn on the roundabout rather than right, heading straight for the centre of town and jabbing Lemon in the ribs with her elbow as she tried to pipe up.

“It’s fine, I’m just leaving the restaurant now. I really don’t feel up for this anymore, it was stupid anyway.”

“Yvie, I’m literally around the corner. Please can you wait?” Scarlet didn’t care how desperate she sounded because that’s exactly what she was, she’d write it on her forehead and scream it from the top of her lungs if she had to (she hoped she didn’t have to but would still take all means necessary if they were required).

“Are you literally around the corner? Is it written in a book word for word? That would be a terrible book, I don’t know who’s reading that.”

Scarlet didn’t know whether Yvie’s sarcasm was a good or bad sign but kept going anyway.

“Well I apologise for my use of the word to the English student in you but I am very close.” Scarlet scanned the street, spotting Yvie’s tall frame and dark hair storming down the road in front of her, pulling off double-denim in a cool and effortless way that no one else could even try to compete with. “In fact, I can literally see you.”

Scarlet pulled up to the curb and hung up, telling Lemon to keep her trap shut for a moment as she waited for Yvie to approach the car, a sense of deja vu filling her at the thought of chasing down a stomping Yvie in her car. God, she must look like a psychopath sometimes.

“Hello.” Yvie peered in the window, looking between the two sisters awkwardly, clearly too cautious to give Scarlet whatever rant she had been planning in her head for the past half an hour in front of her sister. Scarlet was almost grateful for her presence before remembering that she wouldn’t be in such a mess if it weren’t for Lemon in the first place.

“You look beautiful.” She simply stated, the thought coming out of her mouth just as fast as it had popped into her mind in the first place when she saw Yvie’s face; her cheeks glowing with blush and her eyes enhanced by the most meticulously placed false lashes. Scarlet wanted to ask Yvie how she managed to put them on without them popping off or looking stupid like whenever she tried but figured it was a conversation to be saved for when she wasn’t fighting for her right to date. “Get in the back?”

Half expecting Yvie to walk away, Scarlet felt a wave of relief wash over her windscreen when Yvie reached for the handle and plonked herself into Scarlet’s backseat. Explaining why she was late and why her sister was still in the car, Scarlet glanced at Yvie’s face in the rearview mirror as she spoke.

“I didn’t want you to leave so I just came as fast as I could. We can drop this little shit home then go back out?” Scarlet finished, overjoyed when Yvie finally nodded her head and mumbled in agreement.

“Now that that’s over, I have so many questions.” Yvie turned her head to Lemon, placing a hand on the back of her seat. “Has Scarlet always been like this?”

“Excuse me! Like what?” Scarlet squealed in response, pretending to be annoyed but unable to keep the smile off of her face at the return of the Yvie she knew so fondly.

“Yes.” Lemon turned her head to the back. “I have so many stories you wouldn’t believe.”

“Oh my god, Scarlet. Can she stay?”

“She most certainly cannot.” Scarlet gave her sister a warning look that told her exactly how much of that grovelling would be necessary if she told even the prologue of an embarrassing childhood story. She would squeeze her sister to a pulp, no pun intended.

At least she wouldn’t have to do her half of the house jobs when she got home that night.

“I like her!” Lemon grinned before facing Yvie again.

“Fantastic.” Scarlet shook her head, listening as her sister and her date/enemy/crush/friend with benefits carried on bonding for the rest of the journey, Yvie nearly shattering the window with her cackle after Lemon told her about the Youtube channel Scarlet had tried to start in year nine. A part of Scarlet’s body warmed at their conversation, an image of Yvie sitting in the spare seat at the dining table for a family meal materialising in her head before she could try and shoo it away (she wasn’t even fully certain that Yvie even liked her as a person yet never mind wanted to become an honorary team member during their games night). However, that certainly didn’t mean she wasn’t happy to see the back of Lemon once they pulled up the house and Yvie made her way to the passenger seat instead.

“Hi.” Yvie turned to face her, the car still parked in front of Scarlet’s gates, not ready to pull away just yet.

“Hello.” Scarlet laughed, breathing every ounce of Yvie in that she hadn’t been able to reach earlier.

“Your sister’s nice. Like a younger version of you, except cool.”

Scarlet shot a pointed look Yvie’s way, something she had done many times in this position, Yvie firing shady comments from her passenger seat whilst she tried her best to keep living her fantasy. Only this time was different, gone was Yvie’s uniform and the guise of a lift home, she was categorically and undeniably there just to spend time with Yvie, to bask in her presence. And Yvie felt…the same? Scarlet didn’t know for sure, but the dark lips on Yvie’s lips told her at least one thing, she had made an effort. And it paid so much more than minimum wage.

“You don’t think I’m cool?” She grinned, ready for whatever read was coming her way.

“The opposite.” Yvie leaned across the centre console, her hand delicate in Scarlet’s freshly curled hair as she pulled her in for a kiss.

Getting herself carried away, it took Scarlet a few minutes to pull away, taking a breath she hadn’t realised she needed.

“So you’re not mad at me anymore?”

“I won’t be if you drive us somewhere with food,” Yvie replied, pouting her lips like a toddler - Scarlet saw how she’d already started to rub off on the other girl, subtle traits sticking to Yvie’s skin like perfume.

“I see how it is!” She turned the keys and set off to drive, pretending to be offended but secretly doing mental cartwheels (or whatever her attempt at a cartwheel would look like) at the thought that Yvie would rather spend time speaking to her than just hooking up in the car. Of course Scarlet really liked the sex, maybe going as far to say she adored it. But it didn’t make her giddy like sitting across Yvie in a secluded booth did, hiding her blush by taking deep dives into her fishbowl every time Yvie made her laugh or said something a tad too flirty than normal (which averaged to around once every two and a half minutes if Scarlet’s awful maths brain was of any use).

“Are you looking forward to moving away next year?” Scarlet had asked her, three drinks and a shared platter of nachos later.

“I told you, I haven’t gotten in yet. You need to stop speaking like it’s definite.” Yvie tapped a finger to Scarlet’s wrist before pointing it back in her face, the contact sending the fizzy bubbles from Scarlet’s drink right into her veins, flowing from her head to the tip of her toes.

“Oh my god, you’re gonna get in.” Scarlet looked into her eyes, grateful for her decision to wear contacts so she could see them, really see them - big brown pools of melted chocolate that glistened under the restaurant lighting.

“That’s easy for you to say, Miss I pay five grand a year for my education. I’m not building my hopes up, I don’t even know anyone black who’s applied nevermind gotten in before.”

Scarlet took the chance to hold her hand, her way of telling Yvie that she deserved it, that she was the hardest worker she knew. She deserved it all, everything and more.

“I don’t know about you,” Scarlet told herself to let go but couldn’t. “But that is not the determined Yvie I know, the one who would call out anyone for not giving one hundred to everything. You’re going, I know you are.”

“Thanks,” Yvie spoke quietly, her voice wavering a little before releasing a cough into her elbow and shaking herself off.

“Say it! You’re going.” Scarlet smiled. “If you don’t I’ll get another drink and get even more annoying. Four drink Scarlet likes to sing, you know?”

“I’m going,” Yvie repeated, giving Scarlet’s hand a tight squeeze. “And yeah, I am looking forward to it. It’s just a shame that I’ll be leaving some things behind.”

And when they had sex that night it was different. Not better. Not worse. Just different. Something extra in every touch, every movement, every look. The way they held each other when it was over, Scarlet curling up and nuzzling her head into Yvie’s chest before she fell asleep. The fact she was still like that once she woke, taking a risk by looking up and planting a quick peck on Yvie’s jawline, a term of endearment they hadn’t quite reached before. Scarlet danced clumsily on the line between friends with benefits and people who were actually dating, hoping that if she fell over to one side that Yvie would catch her. And she did, returning the kiss with another one planted on Scarlet’s forehead, strings tying them together that they didn’t know if they fully wanted yet but couldn’t untangle anymore.

Then other people started to see them too, the strings growing into a thicker rope, pulling them towards each other in one big tug of war.

“I hope you don’t mind but I told the girls from work about us,” Yvie announced from Scarlet’s desk one night, not turning around to look at Scarlet who was completing her own reading cross-legged on the bed.

Scarlet dropped her highlighter with surprise, leaving a pastel pink line on her duvet that she pretended not to notice till later.

“What did you say?”

Scarlet wasn’t a stranger to how Yvie had felt about her, remembering all the times she heard her making digs over the walkie talkies to the other girls when they thought she couldn’t hear. She tried to brush that off now, knowing that Yvie had transparent walls around herself, hidden to the naked eye - luckily Scarlet was confident in herself enough to trust her heart, to know that she wasn’t delusional and that the feelings she could see spilling from Yvie’s pores were real, even if she did tell her mother she was staying at Nina’s house every time she slept over.

“That we have sex?” She added quickly before Yvie could reply, a tiny part of her doubting her thoughts, resulting in one of Yvie’s mighty cartoon villain laughs.

“No, they knew that ages ago.” Yvie swivelled the chair around to give Scarlet a puzzling look. “I mean it doesn’t take a genius to work out that you don’t need two people to clean the disabled

toilet. And it doesn’t take that long.”

“Oh my god, you said we wouldn’t talk about that.” Scarlet felt her skin shiver at how nasty they had been that day, blaming Yvie for wearing new leggings when she had pulled her away near the start of her shift.

“Sorry.” Yvie held her hands up. “But yeah, I’m pretty sure they already knew we were fucking just not…” Yvie paused for a second, pursing her lips as she searched for the right words. “Hanging out, as well.”

“I see.” Scarlet shut her book, already way too distracted to regain focus. “So every time I told Priyanka we were going to Greggs and she asked me to bring her back a sausage roll she was just taking the piss? I’ve told her they’d ran out four times now!”

“You’re an idiot.” Yvie joined Scarlet in pushing the studying aside and slid onto the bed beside her.

“But you love it,” Scarlet replied, her mind too mushy at the news to consider her word choice, noticing how Yvie’s head jolted a touch once it had come out.

“Well, I just thought I’d tell them so it wasn’t awkward if you came to my birthday…Which you don’t have to attend if you don’t want to.” Yvie brought the conversation back on track, speaking matter of factly in a way that Scarlet had just grown to relish in. “But I kind of want you to.”

“Well, it’s a good job that I want to too then, isn’t it?” Scarlet grabbed her phone, trying her best to act coy as she composed a manic all caps message to her group chat, demanding assistance on an urgent, dress buying mission.

***

On Yvie’s tenth birthday she went to the cinema and discovered the magic of mixing sweets and chocolate in the box with the popcorn, something which she still did as a teenager every time she managed to convince Brooke to see the latest horror with her. On her sixteenth she drank cheap cider in the park and had her first real kiss, laughing all the way home while Nina asked one-hundred and one questions as if Yvie was some sort of make out messiah. Although she always brushed it off as something unimportant, Yvie adored the bubbles of excitement that fizzed inside of her every time her birthday rolled around. And her eighteenth was no exception.

“You didn’t have to.” She hugged the photo frame to her chest, smothering her friends’ faces into the dark fabric of her top, knowing fine well that they’d already put some money towards Yvie’s share of their girls trip payments. She had the best friends in the world.

“So you don’t miss us too much at Uni.” Brooke grinned at her.

There was another person she’d disappoint when she failed and didn’t move away, cleaning up ice cream for the rest of her life. Yvie had only been eighteen for nineteen hours and was already feeling the crippling reality of adulthood.

Scarlet must have noticed because she rested a hand on Yvie’s wrist, a simple gesture that wouldn’t have read much to anyone else but Yvie felt under her skin and tissue and down to her bones. With her hair let loose behind her back and a shimmer of gold on her eyes, Yvie couldn’t have hated her one bit.

“You look…nice.” She’d told Scarlet when she walked into her house, a bottle of what Yvie assumed to be champagne in her hand (she couldn’t read the label but figured Scarlet wasn’t one for prosecco).

“Get you! Learning how to compliment.” Scarlet had pulled her into a hug and Yvie saw a supercut of every contact they’d ever made. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Scarlet had probably been right (as much as Yvie hated admitting when she was right). Because every time she’d gone to tell Scarlet how she felt, an arrow of quick wit and insult humour had fired from her tongue, a barrier that forever stopped her from being the weak black girl some people expected her to be. Whatever it was they had it wasn’t perfect, but when Scarlet touched her wrist she was reminded for a second how grateful she was for it. How much she’d grown to need it.

Things only better as the night went on; the girls from work arrived and showered Yvie with love and homemade jager bombs. Priyanka even managed to say hello to Brooke without her eyes falling out of her head and her tongue dropping to the floor, earning herself a pat on the back from Heidi, who was celebrating Yvie’s birthday as if it was her own now that she’d never have to lend her ID out ever again (something that she reminded everyone of at least once every half an hour). Scarlet seemed to be having fun too, bonding with Nina over their shared love of visiting New York at Christmas and their bad dancing skills. It felt normal, almost too normal.

“She’s not as bad as you say she is.” Nina piped up once they were in their Uber, free from Scarlet and her burning ears for at least five minutes.

“She was pouring champagne into Vanjie’s mouth.” Yvie laughed. “Actual champagne!”

“Why did you invite her if you don’t like her so much then?”

Nina knew what she was asking. And Yvie knew the answer. Suddenly she was brought back to that day two years earlier, the kiss she’d shared with a girl from the year above, their legs dangling from the kid’s jungle gym with the whole town below them.

“Is she, like, the one?” Nina had asked, talking at a rate of knots as they walked home.

“I don’t know.” Yvie made an attempt to brush her off. It failed.

“Did you feel butterflies? Like your heart racing and all that stuff.”

“Nah, none of that,” Yvie replied. “It was nice but I didn’t feel any of that crazy stuff.”

She was pretty sure that stuff was made up to boost romance novel sales anyways, but didn’t really fancy tearing her best friend down for the cloud fantasy she was living in.

“Well, she mustn’t be the one for you then.” Nina had linked her arm by that point, using her other hand to shine her phone torch on the ground below. “God, I get butterflies when anyone even looks at me! You’ll find someone who gives them to you soon, don’t worry.”

Yvie didn’t think she would. And if she did she didn’t really think it would be her rich boss’s daughter who played lacrosse and wrote revision notes like she was being tested on her penmanship. Yet there they were, flying around her stomach like they were on acid. She didn’t know when the stupid things had hatched from their cocoons but they certainly had - there wasn’t any turning back.

“Why don’t you tell her?” Brooke snapped Yvie back to reality, apparently not too busy grilling the driver for his life story to join in with the ambush.

Yvie didn’t bother asking what. Or answering her for that matter, instead, shrugging her shoulders in a simple way that utterly contrasted the web of complicated thoughts and debates her brain was sifting through.

“Whatever.” Nina opened the door and released her back into the wild, where the others waited on the pavement and Scarlet gave her a kooky smile that Yvie really really really wished she hated. Only she didn’t, Nina’s words running through her head when she decided that maybe it’d be a good night to just say “fuck it” and let everything spill out.

“Can I talk to you?” Yvie placed a gentle hand on her wrist, her voice hushed under the racket of her drunken friends.

“Oh.” Scarlet raised a brow, Yvie’s sincerity being mistaken for something very different in her head. “Right now? We’re about to go inside!”

“No, I didn’t mean-” Yvie started but found herself interrupted by the great Silky holler that she was now fluent enough to understand meant “Hurry up I need a drink down my neck or I’m gonna start on someone pronto”. Silky didn’t get hangry, she got thangry. And no one liked it when Silky felt thangry.

“Saved by the yell.” Scarlet giggled as they followed in tow, letting her hand fall down and dance across Yvie’s skin ever so slightly. Normally she’d berate her for making such a terrible pun but Yvie was too busy thinking about that hand and that smile and the person behind it.

“Come on.” She felt a tug on her wrist as she entered, following the arm in question to see an eager Priyanka at the other end. “Time to get you absolutely smashed.”

And absolutely smashed Yvie got. If the five shots that Priyanka bought her didn’t do it, then the cocktail pitchers she wouldn’t even remember anyone buying her the next day certainly did (even if she did spill an entire half of one when Silky insisted she jump on her back and pretend to be a human wrecking ball - the bouncers loved that one). One hand in Jaida’s and the other pointed to the ceiling, Yvie could have sworn she touched the sky for a moment as she looked across at all the people who she cared about her having the night of their lives. Brooke playing fake stubborn as Vanessa pouted and begged for her to go up and request their song for the second time that night. Heidi and Priyanka waving to the crowds around them like the absolute idiots they were. Nina, clearly simping over a girl from across the room without any intention of going up to speak to her. But Yvie couldn’t judge - there she was feeling the blood rush through her body that little bit faster the moment Scarlet came back to their group after saying hello to her school friends. Yvie had fallen way too far for any of them to lend a hand. She’d dug the grave and maybe it was time to grab a pillow and a nice book so she could at least lie there in comfort.

Holding two fingers to her mouth and making eye contact, Yvie was on her way outside with Scarlet before she knew it, hand in hand as they pushed their way through the crowds. She wondered if that would ever feel normal, Scarlet’s fingers clasped around hers just like the first time.

“What’s up with you?” Scarlet asked once they found a seat, the air dark and breezy around them. If Yvie had had a jacket she’d have popped it around her back, noticing even in her drunken state that the hairs on Scarlet’s arm were standing up, a tiny chatter in her teeth with every word. “You’re being really nice tonight.”

“It is my birthday.” Yvie laughed, feeling the blush race to her cheeks. God, she was even worse than Nina.

“It’s still weird. It’s unnerving me.”

“Do you want me to be rude to you?” Yvie laughed, even more, opting to place her hands on either side of Scarlet’s arms, rubbing up and down to keep her warm after feeling her body shake.

“If you’re rude to me then you won’t get your present.”

Yvie didn’t know what to think. She’d stalked Scarlet and her friends enough on Instagram to know what birthday presents meant: Swarovski bracelets, Vivienne Westwood earrings and Tiffany necklaces. They did it all and the thought was terrifying.

“I told you not to spend any money on me.” Yvie flashed back to the day she invited Scarlet, highlighting the “no presents just presence” part of the offer.

“I didn’t.” Scarlet leaned in and kissed her cheek, not caring who was around and watching. Yvie would feel the sticky mark from her gloss all night and even the next morning, she wished later that she’d wiped it off then and there before everything came tumbling down and how she looked was the last thing on her mind.

“I’m sure you didn’t.” Yvie rolled her eyes, thinking of how many times she’d watched Scarlet tap down her contactless debit at any opportunity. The smell of the new handbags was basically her opium. But Yvie didn’t care, Scarlet’s weekly shopping trips became a quirk of hers that Yvie found herself starting to love that touch more than she hated. If she didn’t get her place at Uni she could always just stay in that grave she’d dug, it was becoming more and more like home by the second.

“I was gonna tell you later when we’re sober and not in the middle of the smoking area but…” Scarlet grabbed her phone and started scrolling, a childlike grin on her face that was normally only reserved for her giddiest moments.

At first, Yvie didn’t take in what Scarlet was showing her, the writing a bit fuzzy beyond her beer goggles and Scarlet saying far too many words at once for her to process.

“Naomi’s cousin did it and I thought it would help you out but I know how stubborn and busy you are and didn’t want you to have anything more on your plate so I did all the application and stuff for you. There’s a reference from my Dad and one of your essays then you just had to answer some questions about where you live and stuff like that then you got the lower offer…”

She kept talking but Yvie zoned out, her eyes focusing on the words “supported progression” and “increasing diversity”. But then the words blurred even more and Yvie didn’t even realise it was because she was crying until it was too late to fight.

“Hey.” Scarlet wiped away at her cheeks, her hands even colder than before as Yvie felt her body starting to burn. “It’s alright, we’ll talk about it later.”

“You think I need handouts?” Yvie wanted so badly to look at her but couldn’t, screwing her eyes shut instead where nothing was spinning and she couldn’t see the way Scarlet’s face changed before her.

“No, no. You’ve got it wrong. I just saw how stressed you were and knew it would help you. Look Yvie, they lowered your grades. It’s a great opportunity. Let’s just carry on with our night, yeah? I shouldn’t have shown you now.”

And suddenly everything poured out of Yvie’s lips. The time a customer at work had made a complaint about her tone of voice and unnecessary anger. The time a boy in year eight had told her she was pretty for a black girl. Every single time an ignorant white girl thought they were single-handedly destroying racism by picking her for their team in rounders and using her as some sort of diversity token. She felt it all, her eyes still shut so she was speaking to all of them and not just Scarlet.

“You think this is a present? Helping the black girl from the council estate get a lower Uni offer cause she needs a step up to be like everyone else?”

“Yvie, no. That’s not why I did it. I was trying to help.” Yvie could hear her voice breaking but didn’t want to look, couldn’t let herself look.

“I didn’t ask for your help.” She tried to fight it but Yvie didn’t let her, the thought of Scarlet filling those forms in replaying in her mind. She wondered how many boxes she’d checked, how close she was to not being poor enough or not being black enough to get rejected from the scheme. She thought about the people like Scarlet who went to private school and never had to work a day in their lives with their shiny new offers, she wondered if they’d think that was the only reason she got there, she needed a hand up to get to their level.

“I opened so much to you.” Yvie clenched her fists and somehow managed to draw blood. “It might not seem like it but I fucking did Scarlet, I thought you understood.”

“I do, I promise. It’s like those female-only MP spots we talked about, remember? You said they were cool. I’m sorry, I should have spoken to you, come back inside.”

Yvie finally opened her eyes and wished she hadn’t; because Scarlet looked like someone had murdered a puppy right before her and she wanted nothing more to do than to hold her and tell her everything would be okay. But it wasn’t. So she couldn’t. She’d known from the start that they were from different worlds and hated herself at that moment for believing any different. This wasn’t Scarlet’s fault, it was her own.

“I didn’t mean to, Yves. Please don’t hate me.” Scarlet could sense Yvie’s anger, shivering still in her spot as Yvie stood up to leave.

Yvie wanted to laugh. Two hours earlier she’d decided tonight was the night she’d tell Scarlet that she might have accidentally fallen in love with her. Yet there she was, Scarlet’s lip gloss sticky on her cheek with her shoes in her hand, ready to run as far away as she could till the world around her stopped spinning and she wasn’t hurting anymore.

“I really wished I did.”

She didn’t turn around to see Scarlet’s reaction, those five words ringing in her head all the way home and keeping her awake whilst the sky turned into pinks and reds and oranges. They stayed there for months, a thousand other things she could have said mounting in her brain over time all to be pushed aside by those words that followed her. She heard them behind the blaring music when she went to hand in her notice at work, hidden in the muffled cry that Heidi made as they hugged to the future. She saw them in the exam hall that June, written on the bricks in chalk all around before she had the chance to turn over her paper, reminding her of every single thing she’d sacrificed for that moment. They followed her into summer as the sun shone brighter and the nights got longer, there to tease her on the day her biggest dream came true when she opened her envelope and her first thought was that she wanted to tell Scarlet.

That feeling still lingered the week after results day, where most people were still celebrating, rolling into their houses at four in the morning with the childhood friends they’d soon have to take three trains to visit, savouring every last moment of those precious months where they would have absolutely zero responsibilities to their name.

Yvie wished she was one of those people, alternatively finding herself cramped on the bus in a slightly too tight white shirt, ready for her third job interview that month. She wished was chilling in Brooke’s room instead like the rest of her friends were, laughing at their Snapchat stories from the night before and deleting the ones where you could hear their singing a lot louder than they’d realised at the time (although she assumed they were still asleep and hadn’t gotten to that stage of the day yet, as evident in Vanessa’s beautiful rendition of Christina Aguilara that blasted through her headphones and just begged for Yvie to take a screen recording). She flicked through their stories a few more times before Heidi’s name had popped up, wishing her good luck on her interview in their group chat.

“Hope you don’t get it and have to come back here until you go to Uni xxx” Priyanka added, always the loving and supportive friend of the group.

She really missed them. Almost as much as she missed someone else.

“You underestimate my persuasion skills.” Yvie sent back, knowing fine well that she was missing a very important trait that interviewers looked for - actually turning up.

She’d made it to the first one, pacing around the store with her CV in hand, raring to go. Things changed of course when a gaggle of girls with tartan skirts entered to rake through the shelves, the familiar blue of their uniform reminding them of why she was even there in the first place and sending her flying out the door before her name was even called. The second was an even shorter experience, having simply let the bus go past the stop without ringing the bell, an accident on purpose that took her all the way to the other side of town. Yvie had always thought she knew which side of the fight or flight analysis she stood proudly and grounded on, but if the urge to yeet herself off the bus and run home the second the restaurant came into sight wasn’t enough to prove how wrong she’d been then nothing else would.

Third time a charm?

She took one more peek at her phone before making her way through the door, quickly scanning her messages one more time and avoiding the small number one that burst out the corner of the text app. She’d open it when she was ready.

“Yvonne?” A familiar girl asked, raising a thick eyebrow her way.

“Yvie.” She pulled the best fake smile that three years of drama lessons in school had provided her with, praying it was enough to cover the utter disdain that came with hearing her full name, something usually reserved for family members and the front of exam papers. She knew people had worse, she could shorten Yvonne. It wasn’t awful, just not Yvie. And at least her mother never decided to name her after a piece of fruit.

If she didn’t have company she’d have slapped herself against the face for even letting her thoughts slip close to Scarlet again, opting instead to pinch the skin on her hand (there was still a mark from when she’d done the same thing a few days prior, having let even the cereals at the supermarket bring back soft memories of the girl that she fought so hard to keep away from).

“My Dad’ll be out in a minute.” The girl turned on her heel to walk away and Yvie realised why she recognised her, laughing to herself at the thought of working with Nina’s utterly obvious crush from sixth form who didn’t even know she existed. She thought about Brooke and Priyanka and what a funny reverse it would be to have her school friend gushing over her work friend instead of the other way around.

Not that this girl was Priyanka, or this place was the centre. It just wasn’t and Yvie knew already. Maybe she wouldn’t tell Nina about Bob’s sister, after all doing that would only catch her in a lie when she inevitably fucked the whole thing up and didn’t dare admit it. Because admitting that she messed up the interview would only lead to admitting a bigger and scarier thought in Yvie’s head.

She really, really wanted to go back in time. If not then a little bit forward, just so the interview was over and she could return back to the comfort of her bed with the new sheets that she’d bought so she could take her old ones to Uni and not because they reminded her of ginger hair tossed out on her pillow and the infuriating yet adorable noise of Scarlet grinding her teeth in her sleep. Definitely the former.

Only she wasn’t a wizard, not even a bit close like all those kids at Scarlet’s school with their house teams and fancy lessons. So the interview started like normal, Yvie jumping over each hurdle the best she could, stumbling a tad when he asked her about why she wanted to work there and she knew “I broke the heart of my ex-bosses daughter and can no longer show my face there but need money” would not have been a sufficient answer. The next few were okay, her feet gliding over nicely as she rattled off one thing or another about her time management skills and ability to work well under pressure. However, she let her face smack the ground on the final hurdle, the finish line almost in sight.

The dreaded character reference.

Yvie watched as he dropped it from his hands and onto the desk - the first time she’d properly looked at it after asking Brooke to print it and shoving it in her file without so much as a once-over. She tried her best to look back up, to engage and catch the interviewer’s eye like she knew she was supposed to, except her own eyes were glued to a familiar font she’d seen many times before. Her mind flashed to all the time spent reading detailed flashcards on the War of the Roses with Scarlet, shooting questions across the room aggressively like they were in the battle themselves (she was the House of Lancaster, red with danger and passion and Scarlet was York, pure and white as she pulled a face of utter distress at every date she couldn’t remember). She knew that font.

“Your reference is pretty impressive.” He looked back up but Yvie was still staring anyway. “This is from your previous employer?”

“Y-yes.” Yvie spat her words, realising at that moment that the character reference that persuaded her University to give her a lower offer, the reference that was two pages long and signed sincerely from her Scarlet’s dad, was in fact written by a passionate eighteen-year-old with a heart of gold and a strange affinity for using the word “conversely”. A realisation that was only a few months too late. If she’d wanted to go back in time earlier…

“Well, I’m surprised he let you go reading this.” He pointed a finger to a specific paragraph and Yvie let her eyes move along the page, his words background noise to Scarlet’s voice speaking clearly in her head.

“In the time that I have employed Yvie, I have been able to see not only her incredibly high standards concerning every aspect of her life but also the passion, vulnerability and humility behind every decision she makes. Watching Yvie blossom into the resilient and determined woman she is today has brought great pleasure to my eyes, however, even more pleasure has been found in seeing the growth she has encouraged in those around her, constantly bringing a sense of warmth and comfort to her coworkers in the most subtle of ways when she isn’t even trying to.”

In the past few months, Yvie had cried a total of three times. The first being her birthday, the night she lost the best part of her entire year in one quick visit to the smoking area. The second was results night - happy tears that had absolutely nothing to do with the text she’d pushed away to the top of her screen after reading the first few words. At least that’s what she’d told Brooke and Nina. Nothing to do with the text or the urge she had to run across to Slug and Lettuce as fast as she could and drag Scarlet away from her half-price cocktails just so they could pretend things were how they used to be for one night. She’d also have told her that she was proud of her, whispered it in her ear as they lay intertwined and said it over and over again so Scarlet knew she meant it. Only she didn’t, the words falling off her cheeks and onto the toilet floor instead, where Scarlet wouldn’t have been able to see them even with her glasses on. So it came as no surprise that the third time was Scarlet-related too, the reference turning more and more blurry as she tried to read on, eventually slipping through her fingers and turning into a jumble of black and white she didn’t have the strength to unscramble.

In the most simple of terms, she’d fucked it. Well and truly fucked it. At least she was one hundred per cent sure of that.

“Sorry, I-” Yvie started but couldn’t find the words to finish, pushing her chair back with such force that it dropped to the floor with a painful clang.

Yeah, maybe it would have been better if she hadn’t turned up after all.

“Thanks for your time.” She mumbled, scooping the chair from the ground and swiping the reference from the table in an awkward and clunky motion.

It would have been so easy to blame Scarlet, to be angry about how many years she’d spent being strong and resilient, immune to vulnerability. To be annoyed at how suddenly she’d waltzed in and smashed all that to pieces with a kick of her designer flats. But if there was one thing Yvie had come to realise that year it was that she only ever made things harder for herself. And despite always saying she loved her life how it was, that was something she had to change. Pronto.

***

“I got you a double vodka.” The girl, Gigi, motioned as Scarlet took her seat, not even bothering to apologise for being late. Not that she’d have had an excuse anyway, having spent all morning laying like a dog on her bed and scrolling aimlessly down her phone until she had twenty minutes to go and figured she might as well start getting ready. Oh, how things had changed.

“Thanks.” Scarlet tried her best to conjure up a smile, her throat wavering as she took a sip and imagined it was a nice fruity cocktail instead. Before she probably would have gagged a little at the taste but she was trying to be less dramatic about things. Of course, a ridiculous idea about ‘accidentally’ spilling it then going to order a fishbowl instead crossed her mind but she managed to shoo it away. Gigi had spent good money on that drink and if Scarlet had learnt any lesson that year it was that you should never take a gift for granted.

“Were you at work today?” She asked, placing her hand on the table just close enough that Scarlet’s hand would brush it if she went for another sip.

Scarlet couldn’t deny that she was ravishing, her eyes screamed sex and she had a beauty mark on her right cheek that just proved she was the modern-day incarnation of Marilyn Monroe. Objectively, she was very pretty and Scarlet should have been proud.

Yet she did not move her hand.

“Nah. My sister has a dance recital this evening, had to make sure my day was all clear.”

It was stupid really, organising a date when she knew she had plans later, essentially shutting down any possibility of taking things further. Only Scarlet wasn’t stupid at all, not in the slightest.

She let the small talk go on further, from travels to Uni to work to friends to food then back to Uni again. Scarlet could see the similarities, the expensive taste they both shared and the fact that Gigi too seemed to live life with the neatness and perfection that Scarlet thrived on. If she were to colour in she’d do it perfectly within the edges, even going as far as ripping the page out if she went over the lines. They should have slotted together perfectly. Should have.

“Did I tell you that you’re gorgeous yet?” The comment took Scarlet off guard, slipped casually into the conversation in that clever witty way she’d always wished she could emulate herself. The way the male lead did in movies and the girl would always swoon and decide that was the moment she was in love with him. In the past she would have loved it, her ever-so-slightly inflated ego taking in any compliment she could get and running with it until the cows returned for their pasture.

“Nope.” She took another sip of the drink, surprised at how little was actually gone. “But you don’t need to, I already know.”

“Sorry.” Her date held two hands in the air and stifled and awkward laugh. Scarlet couldn’t help but wonder why she didn’t fight back. Tell her to get her head out of her arse or else she’d get even more lost than the time she went to London with Plastique and caught the wrong tube twice in succession. Scarlet really, really wanted her to fight back.

“I guess you must think I am too.” She raised a thick brow in Scarlet’s direction. “Or else you wouldn’t have gotten with me on results day.”

Around sixth form, Scarlet was known for having high standards: rolling her eyes in the common room if there was no peppermint tea left because she simply couldn’t have any of the other flavours, never leaving the house without at least two accessories on and always doing the extra reading on her homework even if she was having the busiest of weeks. Her standards were well past the stratosphere and she was never afraid of being a diva about them.

That being said, results day Scarlet would have gotten with absolutely anyone on that night be they male, female, gorgeous or not. Results day Scarlet’s standards were set somewhere in the Earth’s core, about two-thousand and nine hundred kilometres below the sticky floor of the club she was in. She was desperate to feel something or someone. And Gigi was there at her service.

“I guess.” Scarlet tried her best to be polite, her mind flashing back to that night when she felt Gigi’s red lips on her neck as she tried so hard to feel something. To feel someone. To fuck someone. To fuck Yvie and the “Delivered” that sat below the congratulations message Scarlet had sent her that day. A giant fuck you to the girl who’d she’d grown and blossomed with, who’d left her to wilt in the sun without any water after such a stupid mistake. A stupid mistake that she now understood the weight of in pounds and ounces and any other unit of measurement you could think of.

“You guess, damn.” Gigi took her time coming back, looking at her thighs as if there were secret cue cards hidden under the table that told her how to respond to all of Scarlet’s remarks.

Maybe Scarlet needed someone a little more rough around the edges. Someone who let the pens teeter over the lines and used whatever colours they liked despite logic saying there are no such things as bright purple palm trees.

It would have been so easy to be with someone like Gigi, someone who shared her lifestyle, complimented her and tried her hardest to keep the conversation flowing even when awkwardness took over. But that year Scarlet had tasted difficult, complicated and down-right mind-boggling all wrapped in one dish and it was so much nicer than easy.

Easy was boring.

So she did what any other kinda-shitty human would have done on a first date they weren’t enjoying and texted her best friend under the table to call and collect her as soon as possible. Unfortunately, Naomi had never fully understood the “soon” part and left Scarlet to make painful small talk for a whole thirty minutes before pulling up outside and ringing Scarlet with the most ridiculous of emergencies.

“Seriously? That’s the best you could do?” Scarlet pulled a look of utter disbelief the second the car door was shut.

“Bitch, be grateful. I didn’t have to come rescue you.”

“I am grateful.” Scarlet grabbed her friend’s phone and began to queue songs without thought. “I just thought you’d come up with something better than ‘my dog has diarrhoea’, that’s all.”

“You still left!” Naomi laughed as she revved up the engine. “What was it then? Did she have no good chat? Uglier than you remember?”

“Nah, she was prettier actually.” Scarlet played with the ring on her finger, sliding it up and down so much that her skin turned red.

“Serial killer then?” Naomi paused at some traffic lights and took the opportunity to skip the next selection in Scarlet’s line up. “Sorry, that song is way too depressing.”

“She was nice! Just not for me.” She took the ring off completely, rolling it between her thumb and finger as if the small action would detract from every single thing going on in her brain.

“Oh no.” Naomi pulled a look of horror. “I get it.”

“Get what?” Scarlet squealed as her friend took a sharp left, the opposite direction to her house. “Where are you taking me, an early grave?”

“The abandoning a date with the prettiest girl in town, the sad songs. You’re still hung up on Yvie.”

“I’m not!” Scarlet protested, trying her hardest to be nonchalant but instead sounding like a toddler who’d been accused of stealing extra biscuits at break time. Ever so subtle. “Where are we even going?”

“McDonald’s car park. So you can tell me yet again about how guilty you feel and what an awful mistake you made and how you just want everything to be how it was before because it’s just not fair!” Naomi mimicked Scarlet’s dramatic whine and she couldn’t help but give her credit for how spot-on she was, even if she had had a solid seven years of science lessons and after school shopping trips to practice.

“And then you can tell me that life’s not fair and I just have to accept that Yvie hates me again even though I understand everything now?”

“Exactly!” Naomi made her way into the drive-through, stalling at the first pause and making Scarlet laugh for what felt like the first time in months. “You’d think I’d be an expert at this by now, the number of times I’ve had to drag you here.”

“You would be if life was fair.” Scarlet poked her in the rib, happy to have a friend who knew that she needed cheering up before she even knew herself.

And that’s just what she did, reminding Scarlet about Uni and all the girls who would happily bully her there so she didn’t have to pine for the one who had left her, sliding between deep and lighthearted as they ate their meals so slowly they turned cold.

“I just miss her, Naomi.” Scarlet took the last spoonful of her McFlurry, wishing she didn’t have Lemon’s stupid recital and could have gone round again for a second one. Maybe even a third. “I know she’s a dickhead and you think she doesn’t deserve me. But we were good. Really good.”

“I know.” Naomi planted a kiss on her friend’s forehead, pulling her into the biggest of cuddles before starting the car up again and changing the subject. “So, how many shit dances are you gonna have to sit through tonight before your sister comes on for five minutes?”

“Hmmm. Maybe thirty? I’ll make sure to let you know.”

She was close, opening the program as soon as she sat down that evening to count a whole twenty-seven names before Lemon’s, sending Naomi a quick text with the rolling eyes emoji that had suddenly become her most frequently used (replacing the eyes pouring with tears one of course).

She stopped watching altogether ten dances in, letting her eyes travel around the theatre and play out little scenarios in each balcony or scenario, something about the place just screaming romance when you blocked out the fifteen-year-olds forgetting the moves to the Greatest Showman soundtrack on stage (one performance to Rewrite the Stars stood out in particular, reminding her of the time it played in work and Yvie made a joke about how it could have been them but Scarlet wasn’t suave enough to be the Zac Efron character). After twenty she took a trip to the toilet, topping up her gloss and mascara for absolutely no one to see in the dim lighting.

It was a long night, to say the least, Scarlet eager at the edge of the seat by the time dancer number twenty-seven had taken their ridiculously extra walk off the stage and she heard her bratty baby’s name announced on the speaker. Just because she had no desire to clap for other people’s family didn’t mean she wasn’t a secret stage-sister when it came to watching Lemon, wishing she could pull out her phone and record like the cool mom from Mean Girls.

Only it’s a good job she didn’t because, after not one but two calls of her name, there was no sight of Lemon and her big yellow feather boa that Scarlet had bought specifically for that night.

Tripping over at least four sets of feet on her way, Scarlet clambered over the stalls the best she could, dashing to the backstage area as fast as she could once the next girl’s name was called and her routine started. Crazy thoughts ran through her head, images of Lemon locked in storage closets or being carted off into an ambulance with a cast on her leg flashing up as she ran up to an assistant and asked perhaps too forcefully why her sister was not tapping away on that stage like she should have been.

“There was someone without a ticket asking after her at the front desk, I thought she had come back!”

Scarlet didn’t know if he was speaking to her or his headpiece but she was gone again, her size fives working double-time to go and figure out whether it was her absent parents or Lemon’s stupid airhead friends that have caused her to miss her dance and send the gay intern into a state of existential panic.

Glasses at aid, it didn’t take long to find her, feathers falling from the boa as Lemon shook it in her hands with her words. Maybe Scarlet should have spent a little more money on it after all…

Scarlet shouted for her down the hall, the stage-sister persona now fully developed and realised.

But her sister ignored her, continuing to point her finger in the sassiest of manners that would probably have left her cleaning the pantry for two weeks at home - that ruled out her parents, for sure.

“What are you…” Scarlet started but lost the words once she turned the corner and finally got a sight of who her sister was berating. “Oh.”

“I went to the centre but Jaida said you had the day off to watch Lemon dance,” Yvie spoke simply and clearly.

It seemed crazy seeing her in person after spending so long trying to push her portrait out of her head and convince herself that she didn’t exist. But there she was, real as day, her eyes slightly red and her shirt haphazardly tucked into her trousers. “This is the third place I’ve tried but they wouldn’t let me in.”

For perhaps one of the first times ever in her life, Scarlet couldn’t think of anything to say.

“She had a date today too,” Lemon smirked in Yvie’s direction and Scarlet watched her face drop more than it had the day that she’d planned a walk for the two of them around the botanic gardens only for it to be closed (Scarlet went alone once just before her exams and almost let herself cry thinking about how much Yvie really knew her).

“Lemon!” Scarlet’s mind caught up as she turned to her sister and gave her the black look of death that they had devised as kids to show when they were not playing games.

“What? She can just break your heart and then waltz into my dance show with some flowers and it’s alright.”

Scarlet hadn’t even noticed the flowers until then - big, red daisies that Yvie was gripping onto far too tight, her nails thorns pressed into her palm. She wanted to take them just so Yvie would stop, to slip her own hand there instead like they had done so many times.

“She didn’t break my heart Lemon, oh my god.” Scarlet’s face spoke a thousand words she wasn’t saying out loud and they were all synonyms for something starting with fuck and ending with off.

“So you just listened to Lana Del Rey on repeat for weeks with the door shut for fun?”

“Excuse me.” A scary-looking woman with a security badge pinned to her lapel rose her voice over her sister’s. She was now officially Scarlet’s number one hero, Audrey Hepburn being shot down in favour of the godsend who parted the red sea to put an end to the ex-flame vs. sister crisis that Scarlet was trapped in. “This is not the place for arguments, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“She’s meant to be dancing, can she go back in?” Scarlet pulled her best puppy dog eyes and batted her eyelashes praying that the woman would let her. It was, after all, the least she could do given that she was now also ranked above Grace Kelly and Arianna Huffington in the mental list of important women who impacted her life. Quite an honour, if she thought so herself.

“If you leave.” The woman pointed to the door before escorting Scarlet and Yvie outside like two school kids who had to spend their lunchtime standing on the wall for being naughty (not that that had ever actually happened to Scarlet herself as a kid. She imagined it would have happened to Yvie and her blunt tongue though, letting a laugh out at the mental image of the girl aged ten having a huff for missing golden time).

“Ring me when you’re done!” Scarlet shouted to her sister before the doors closed on them and they were released to the night sky that had been a cloudy blue when Scarlet first arrived.

And suddenly she was left alone with Yvie. With the girl who had ignored her texts. Who she’d cried over in McDonald’s car park at least seven times by then. Who she longed for every time she even made eye contact with another girl. Who had left her alone in the smoking area with nothing but the taste of corked champagne in her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Yvie spoke for the first time since she’d first seen her, bending down to sit on the curb. Scarlet didn’t have to think twice about joining her.

“It’s fine, I can’t say that was the most exciting thing to watch, anyway.” She motioned to the theatre behind them, the street lamp lighting up Yvie’s face just enough to see her crack a smile. Scarlet pushed the confusion and the past aside for a moment just to take in that smile.

“Not for that.” She gripped her palm again and this time Scarlet couldn’t stop herself from grabbing her hand to stop her. “For before, for everything. I don’t know who you’re seeing or anything but I just couldn’t go away at the end of this summer without telling you that I’m sorry.”

“I’m not seeing anyone.” Scarlet’s heart was beating fast and all of a sudden she was at the back of the cafe with Yvie again, the rest of the world in 2D as they spun in their own little bubble.

“I’m sorry for abandoning you, for making things harder for myself because I got scared. Scared of stupid things that I knew you never even meant. I just never even knew what I felt myself and once I did then I tried to deny it.”

“I’m sorry too.” For once Scarlet was glad she was wearing her glasses in front of Yvie or else she’d be able to see the tears welling in her eyes that very moment. “For being naive and thinking I knew what was best for you.”

And things carried on that way, Scarlet unable to hide the tears for much longer when Yvie told her that she didn’t have to say sorry, that she didn’t even have to forgive her. She just had to listen and try her best to understand. Yvie spoke about when she was a kid, about the day she realised she was different to all the other girls in her class and the day she lost the ability to tell if she hated something or loved it. She talked about the first time they met, the first time they had sex and the first time she thought fuck I’m in far too deep. About the past few months and how they had been, her words not Scarlet’s, like the “nine circles of hell on steroids’’. About how she read the reference and realised those were probably the nicest things a person had ever said about her, and how awful it felt to realise she’d pushed that person away.

“It was all true, the reference.” Scarlet squeezed her hand when she finished, proud of Yvie for managing to speak so many of her thoughts and feelings into the universe and even prouder of herself for not interrupting even once.

“I really brought a sense of warmth to you?” Yvie chuckled as she regained her composure, raising a brow at Scarlet like she had so many times before. “I think I’m the coldest person I know.”

“God knows how but yes, you did.” Scarlet leant in close. “You do.”

The kiss felt like home and Scarlet tried to thank every single star in the sky she could see for it but was swiftly interrupted by the second kiss. She’d have to get up a diagram of the entire solar system to pay her gratitude for the second kiss.

“See? Warmth.” She whispered into Yvie’s ear.

“You don’t have to forgive me that fast, Scarlet. This isn’t a story, things take time.”

“Well, it’s a good job we have some left to work on that before you go to Uni then isn’t it? Now, do you wanna kiss again or carry on telling me about how painstakingly awful it was getting over me? Either is fine by me.”

“It wasn’t that bad.” Yvie teased her. “I could probably do it all over again if I had to.”

“You’d be willing to risk that?”

“For this?” Yvie pulled her into another kiss, this one stronger, making up for the months they’d missed and setting precedent for the few weeks they had left. If there was still an inkling inside of Scarlet that Yvie hated her then that kiss washed it right away with the rain that fell, all the way down the banks and into the river that night. “One hundred per cent.”

[offrecrd-a]

hi, just some rambling around zarina’s emotions under the cut

i’ve been......   thinking about how emotionally driven zarina is, even if it doesn’t really show.   she’s sneaky   &   quiet   -   exemplified by off the record   &   red herring   -   in trials   &   she acts very similar outside of them as well.   she’s observant   &   she’s quiet, namely to make judgement about others before investing her time into them.   that isn’t to say she’ll ignore someone she deems unworthy of her time, but she’s more inclined to those who seem hopeless or lost so she can imbue her own confidence into them.   she doesn’t want anyone to feel like she did back during her childhood   /   early teenage years.   in the fog, she knows it’s difficult to maintain a positive outlook   &   at face value she isn’t very expressive of it herself, but that’s part of the way she tries to help the others emotionally.

zarina’s scared.   i know in some of my current threads she acts collected   &   calm   -   even cocky?   to some degree   -   but in the back of her mind there’s something telling her to keep running away.   she has no idea where she is nor what the bigger picture is to this place.   until i develop her more through my threads   ( note: please yell at me to finally write them )   i’ve been characterizing her as a newer survivor.   she doesn’t know, nor won’t until others explain it to her, much about the fog besides its endless loop, purgatory - like mechanics   &   that the killers aren’t creatures manifested to kill   /   sacrifice them, but [most were] once people who were taken like her   ( thanks to knowing about caleb prior ).   at the moment, a lot of her fear stems from two things   :   mid - trial, fighting for her life   &   a fear of the unknown, of what she’s being blindly thrown into.   not only is it a terrifying thought in general, but it bothers her as a journalist, as someone who exemplifies “curiosity killed the cat”   &   is definitely going to die for her obsessions   &   her work.

i’ve had all of my journalism professors heavily stress the idea of separating emotion   &   logic in our writing   ;   maintaining an unbiased view to deliver the facts and nothing else.   zarina knows this, even if her work is divergent from the traditional “i’ve attended this event   &   now i’ll report on it” journalism.   she isn’t bound to this rule as an independent filmmaker, but she tries to honor it as best as she can.   her biggest projects, even including the sacco   &   vanzetti film for school, are very emotionally driven for her.   she’s very passionate about her work   -   not only the effort she puts into it, but what its lasting impact will be.

her first big project, exploiting a local burger joint’s exploitation of its employees, had piqued her curiosity due to its controversy.   she feels as though she has a duty to deliver the truth, so naturally she was attracted to the situation.   after going undercover, learning the truth   ( which was, indeed, the restaurant treating its employees awfully )   &   producing her film on the place, zarina was furious after learning that multiple news outlets had picked up her story   &   slandered it, changing it to create sympathy for the restaurant instead.   it’s insulting to see her work ruined, yes, but she was upset on behalf of the other employees, those who had been working there for far longer than her   &   told her stories about their struggle to live or provide for their families, barely making minimum wage.   working at the restaurant herself proved much more effective than an outsider’s perspective, but she gained sympathy for those working there as well.   the logic part of her knows to make a documentary exposing the place because what they are doing is wrong   &   needs to be brought to justice, but the emotional part of her hoped that, in turn, her piece would help the people who needed it most.   ( she tried helping some of the employees even after being fired to the best of her ability, which unfortunately wasn’t much   &   she lost contact before working on her next big project. )

around the time that her father died, she had been working on some smaller pieces, but she dropped everything to initially grieve.   her grief turned to anger, in part because of how broken her mother was   &   how she hated to see her so defeated.   zarina decided then to make a piece on clark stevenson, her father’s murderer   &   the problem of gang violence as an overarching theme, but she would only admit to herself that this film was for her own closure   &   as tribute to her father   ( she does dedicate the film in text to him, but she’s never open about how personal it is to her, though most people already assumed ).  she traveled from new york to nebraska to confront clark   -   she took the last of her inheritance   &   spent it all just to get a confession out of him.   zarina was so angry that she stopped everything in her life just to focus on another film, an obsession, a passion project that was just a little too personal this time.

and that’s......   what i’ve been thinking about a lot.   zarina’s passion doesn’t inherently stem from love or appreciation of a subject   ( to a small degree, it does )   but it comes from anger.   she’s driven by it, even if she’s one of the quietest survivors around the campfire.   it’s no surprise that she’s very for the people!   &   yes, she’s sympathetic, she’s caring, she takes the time to sit with others   &   talk while patching up their wounds, but the entire reason why she became a documentarian was to “[exemplify] what is burdensome   &   complex, which is the truth” in her own words.   something gets her upset, makes her mad   &   suddenly she’s working sleepless nights, running on coffee trying not only to bring justice to the truth, but to quell her own obsession so her passion can subside.

sure, she’s upset with her current situation of being stuck in the fog   &   she is angry, but she’s terrified.   the fog is her new obsession, but it isn’t like anything she’s ever approached before.   she can’t be angry, she can’t just run in with all of her confidence full - force   &   get the information she wants.   zarina’s operating on a combination of anger   &   terror   &   it reflects her behavior   &   personality both in and out of trials.

being able to distinguish logic   &   emotion is both a blessing   &   a curse.   at the sake of the entity feeding off of survivors’ emotions, zarina is able to control hers similar to an on   /   off switch because of her prior experiences as a journalist.   around other survivors, she tends to turn them off or keep them minimal   ;   she lets her confidence take control.   she wants to be seen not as a leader, exactly   ( perhaps similar to a martyr?   but she wouldn’t admit to that )   but someone so confident in herself   &   her situation that others feel a gravitational pull to her for guidance   &   reassurance.   she’s more than willing to give it.   it’s.....   a maternal instinct, in a way.   &   she shows her confidence in so many ways   :   in her posture, in her behavior, in the way she dresses to impress.   she’s angry, she’s not dying here   &   she’s going to make the most if it while trying to figure out what exactly here is to satisfy her killer curiosity.

killers get a similar treatment, if not more distant.   of course, over time zarina opens herself up to survivors, but killers are a different story, obviously.   it’s that confidence again, there to mask her fear so they don’t have the satisfaction of watching her tremble.   she’s curious about the killers, no doubt!   but she isn’t sympathetic towards them at all   -   not until she learns of their own punishment or until they begin to reveal their true colors to her.   her own curiosity is probably going to kill her, hence the logic vs. emotion being seen as a curse.

so even though zarina is very quiet, very observant   &   patient, there’s a lot going on inside that she doesn’t let others into quickly.   i just think about this stuff often   unu

[datleggy]

a list of every anime i love/recommend, accumulated over the last 10+ years

1. NATSUME YUUJINCHOU 

SUMMARY/REVIEW: 

The main character is a teenage boy named Natsume, whose parents died when he was too young to remember them properly. He’s passed around random relatives homes, but because he can see yokai (spirits), he’s ostracized by classmates and his foster families (ALL HIS CHILDHOOD FLASHBACKS ARE SO FUCKING SAD) and eventually very distant relatives (an older couple who never had kids of their own and have so much goddamn love to give D:!!!) take Natsume in, and the story basically starts from there. 

It’s a very heart-warming story following Natsume’s new life in this new town, accepting his ability to see yokai, forging new relationships in the form of friends and family, and even with the yokai themselves. 

This is honestly probably my favorite anime/manga period, because it’s so sad but so cathartic and you watch as the main character grows and learns to trust those around him, and finally gets the unconditional love he’s always deserved, not to MENTION THE FACT THAT THEY DO A WHOLE EP WHERE NATSUME IS TURNED BACK INTO A LITTLE KID AND IT IS SOOOO GOOD OMG

Plus for those of you who enjoy whump, this show has a decent amount of it. Mainly emotional whump, but also some episodes where Natsume is injured or sick--as well as I believe one where his companion (the chubby cat on his shoulder who’s actually a pretty badass yokai) gets shot with an arrow and is down for the count. 

10/10 would and have watched again. 

2. KODOCHA NO OMOCHA 

SUMMARY/REVIEW:  The main character is a sixth grader named Sana. She’s a gifted actress on a t.v. show everyone likes and she’s silly and fun, very intuitive and surprisingly empathetic for a child. 

Her main problem is in school, where Akito, who she deems the leader of her class’ wolf pack of rowdy rude boys, lets them terrorize not just the teacher, but all the girls in class, as well. 

I don’t really want to give a lot away, so I’ll just state the obvious. This anime/manga is shoujo, which means that it does focus on a romantic relationship throughout the series. Mainly the one between Sana and Akito. Sana is absolutely oblivious about her own feelings, while Akito is a stubborn little shit. 

I remember watching this at like, age 12 maybe? And I really enjoyed it because (although I do enjoy your typical silly doesn’t take itself too seriously slice of life shoujo) this particular anime, while super funny and light hearted at times, was also really dramatic and even kinda dark, which was surprising considering the characters ages and the general kid-friendly vibe (especially the opening for the anime). 

3. DETECTIVE CONAN

SUMMARY/REVIEW:  Our main character is initially Shinichi Kudo, teenage detective, who’s on a date with childhood sweetheart Ran (whose father also happens to a detective but like....not a good one lmao), when his nosy ass self decides to go and check out some shady business and gets “poisoned”. 

The poison he’s given is intended to kill him, but what it actually does is turn him back into a child. And now, as Conan Edogawa, (who’s 7 but like....we just supposed to believe all these cops and detectives on the force are cool with a seven year old wee lil babe on these really gruesome ass crime scenes??? lmaoooo) we follow him on his adventures as he solves crimes and tries to solve the biggest mystery of all, his own! 

I absolutely LOVE this anime/manga, even though I’ll be honest, there is SO MUCH FILLER, but I like the characters enough that I really don’t mind. The show is at least 900+ episodes in at this point, and there are a total of 26 movies so far, last time I checked. 

Also, the show is a whump fangirls’ dream come true. The main character is thrown out of windows, balconies, shot at, and in one occasion actually shot, he’s had broken bones, sprains, almost been blown up or drowned/burned, been sick, and oh, his occasional transformations from child to teenager are incredibly painful. 

This show is probably at fault for my love of whump, since it was one of my first animes at like, age 9. smh. 

4. THE DEVIL IS A PART-TIMER!

REVIEW:

I’m not even going to summarize this one. The title does it for me. This is truly one of the funniest animes I’ve ever seen. Motherfuckin Satan works at a McDonalds part time and it is the BEST. 

Technically I would count this show as a kind of harem, but only because there are like three main girl characters after the overlord Satan himself. I usually dislike harem type animes but the way this is done is sooooo good I couldn’t resist. 

I would watch a million filler episodes of Satan trying to solve problems at his minimum wage job tbh. I love every single character, I love the plot, I love everything about this anime! In terms of comedy (with the occasional plot driven serious moments) this is IT bro. 

5. BLACK BUTLER

SUMMARY/REVIEW: 

The main character is Ciel Phantomhive (roughly 14 years old). His parents are killed, his house is burned to ashes, and he’s kidnapped (around age 9 or 10 I believe) and abused. During this abuse Ciel calls upon a demon to free him and help him get revenge on those who harmed the Phantomhive household, which is where Sebastian, one “hell of a good butler” comes in. 

We then follow Ciel and Sebastian on their path of vengeance, and along the way we meet Ciel’s human servants, three very clumsy and seemingly bad at their given tasks characters (i love them all), and some of his extended relatives and connections. 

My favorite thing about Black Butler is the art, both in the anime and manga. Everything is so detailed and pretty! 

The characters are interesting, the plot is dark but they manage to make most of the series overall pretty light-hearted and funny in general. Though of course there are chapters/parts of the series that get really grim (which duh, the whole thing focuses on revenge so...) 

I have to say, the arc I enjoyed the most has to be the movie, Black Butler: Book Of the Atlantic. It is beautifully drawn and sooooooo entertaining. 

6. INUYASHA 

SUMMARY/REVIEW: 

Our main characters are Inuyasha, a half-demon, who’s been in a sort of spiritually binding coma for the last few decades, and fourteen year old Kagome, who falls into an old well in her family’s shrine and finds herself being transported into another time period. 

Together, she and Inuyasha travel across the lands in the feudal era to find the scattered shards of the shikon jewel, a powerful jewel which grants anyone who possesses it ultimate power. 

I was too young to stay up and watch Inuyasha on adult swim, so my mom would tape the show on a VCR for me to watch the next day after school--yes, I’m old old. lmaoooo I ADORE this show. 

It’s so good! It’s got everything! A tortured lil half-demon with a sad past who’s stubborn and rude but got a good heart! A fierce and equally as stubborn main protagonist, who’s whole ass family knows exactly where she goes off to??? and are supportive af????? like???? her mama packs her and her squad of demon/exorcist/demon hunter pals bentos?!?! lmao i love it. 

The characters are awesome and funny and likable as all heck, and of course they all have their sad backstory, but like, unlike some animes (lookin at YOU Naruto) they don’t go mega overboard on it, at least not without some plot behind the episode. 

7. YU YU HAKUSHO 

SUMMARY/REVIEW: 

Before I even start in on the summary, ya’ll should watch this soley bc of the cute ass 90′s style animation alone. LOOK AT ALL THAT SHINY HAIR!

ANYWAY. Main character is teenage hooligan and overall cutie pie Yusuke! He gets struck by a car and fucking DIES in the first episode after shoving a little boy out of the way, only to end up in the spirit world where the head honcho up there (who looks like a wee baby) tells him “Oh shit, didn’t expect you to like, actually do anything self-sacrificing EVER so like, you’re not on our list of people who were supposed to die today...” 

And uh, I don’t wanna give anything away, so I’m just gonna say that if you haven’t seen this anime yet, you definitely should! It’s hilarious and dramatic, the fight scenes are very well done, all the side characters, who eventually become main characters are a blessing (specifically Hiei, who’ve I’ve had a crush on since I was 12) and the ending is a satisfying one, which you can’t really say for a lot of media. 

8. CHRONO CRUSADE 

SUMMARY/REVIEW: 

I still get weepy when I think of this anime, so all I’ll say is it’s about a badass demon slaying nurse and her demon companion and some very tragic shit. 

It’s a great anime overall, especially if you like crying yourself to sleep at night :) 

9. GHOST HUNT

SUMMARY/REVIEW: 

The main character is high school student Mai, who is hired by Naru, the head of a Shibuya psychic research, and together, with a group of questionable exorcists/psychics, they encounter paranormal phenomenons and some outright scary shit. 

I’m not really a fan of the horror genre tbh but I do like mystery, and the series deals with that quite a bit. They deal with each case for several episodes so nothing feels too rushed. 

The series is really fun in a creepy, wtf is that way. I recommend the manga, only because it’s more detailed in terms of plot than the anime. 

10. ASSASSINATION CLASSROOM 

SUMMARY/REVIEW: 

I didn’t really make this list in any particular order but if I had to say, Assassination Classroom and Natsume Yuujinchou probably tie for BEST ANIME PERIOD! 

This anime is about a weird ass “alien” creature, no one knows where it came from or why tf it’s here on earth, all they know is that in one year it’s threatened to blow the world up. 

His only request to the government is that they let him become a teacher for Class E, the worst class of Kunugigaoka Junior High School, and he will stay put, so that they can attempt an assassination on him during this one year period. 

AND LISTEN! I am a shallow hoe, so I literally never would have read this manga or watched the series had I not been roaming Barnes and Noble one day with my S.O. and picked it up to read as a JOKE! 

I was hooked after the first chapter and I am soooooooo glad I picked this manga up, bc it is absolutely not the type I would normally go for, cover art wise. I finally, after many many years, learned not to judge a book by its cover bc LORD this anime is so goddamn good, you don’t understand! Like, I’ve watched it so many times and still laugh at the same parts, cry at the same parts, am proud af at the same parts! like, this anime is an instant classic and should definitely be more popular than it is. 

assassination classroom and natsume yuujinchou????? MASTERPIECES! 

[ethandigby]

『 LANDON LIBOIRON ❙ GENDERQUEER 』 ⟿ looks like ETHAN DIGBY is here for THEIR SECOND year as a VISUAL ART GRAD student. HE is 27 years old & known to be DEDICATED, HONEST, STUBBORN & PESSIMISTIC. They’re living in NOLAND, so if you’re there, watch out for them. ⬳ drew. twenty-two. est. he/him. ethan’s pinterest

trivia:

he really likes white cholate & hot chocolate, often eating handfuls of white chocolate baking discs regardless of the time of day. 

visual art major --- tends to stray towards sculptures and installation pieces, though he does have a love for bob ross style landscape pieces. draws a lot of inspiration from older art, and many of his pieces are designed to look worn-out and as though they are missing pieces. 

perpetually exhausted --- for all his love of schedules, he has never managed to consistently get enough sleep and though he loves tea, that never seems to have enough of an impact to truly wake him up ---- a.k.a he is a yawn prone little fuck

doesn’t quite believe the local legends, though he doesn’t dismiss them outright either. the statue by wishing tree has, however, made it into several of his works ---- statues seem to have her facial features without him ever meaning to and he will swear to anyone that asks that in sophomore year of his bachelor’s degree he woke up one morning to her face staring at him from amongst the trees on a painting he had been working on. he will hesitantly add that it’s possible that he had just been thinking of her while half asleep, though ethan doesn’t really believe that

currently working as a TA for some of the freshman art classes, as well as overseeing the use of the different art studios from time to time. 

doesn’t believe in labels --- and that’s corny as hell, but he just wants to be able to be whoever he is in the moment and has had some harsher reactions when he uses umbrella terms, so he just refuses to label himself. relationship-wise it’s a whole different issue, he floats from one major relationship to another and often times will cycle back to one that’s already gone sour. 

has recently started going to a therapist to talk about some of the issues he has processing emotions and his fear of change ---- it’s been helping but he’s still very much on the verge of flight mode and will run away from situations that demand any real sort of emotional input from him on occasion. 

personality:

he is cynical, despite a desire to believe the best in people and the world - he has seen too much of the darker side of the world to ever truly believe it ---- this is reflected not only in his interactions with people ( he is open about expressing doubt and disbelief, he won’t believe a word you say, and he overanalyzes promises / invitations / declarations of love ) but also in his art and aesthetic which veers towards the dark and damned, a lot of his work is themed around broken things

stubborn as a mule ---- once he gets an idea in his mind, it can be hard to change his mind with logical arguments though an emotional appeal will have a better chance ---- he’s very set in his ways and struggles with questioning why things are the way they are, insisting that somethings should just be. loathes change and isn’t afraid to express this dislike --- tends to eat the same foods, wear the same clothes, go to the same places ---- despite a childhood dislike of routine, he finds it comforting nowadays, it feels safe.

loyal as all hell, you can hurt him a million times and he will still struggle to walk away and a genuine apology will win him back in an instant. he struggles to cut ties, even with those that he knows aren’t the best for him and has only successfully done so when it is possible for him to do so in a swift and permanent way. in most cases, he will eventually find his way back to those that he knows. 

friendly but not overly so --- he has no issue approaching people if he needs something, but he’s not generally one to approach you just to “chat” b/c he’s not big on small talk in general and honestly? he’d never say it but if he doesn’t know you, he doesn’t really give a damn how your day went or how you feel about the weather or current events. if he drinks, he becomes a little more sociable in that matter, but that often drifts into “ethan is going to info-dump about whatever has his interest in the moment and the only way to stop him is to like physically place something in / on his mouth” territory which is a whole different level of awkward. 

backstory:

growing up in a household where routine took priority, ethan spent a long time feel stifled by his parent’s demands that everything turned out perfectly ---- the neverending need to do things at just the right time, in just the right way. it was like fitting into a sweater that was just a tad too small, wrong in a way that is hard to explain

it’s in high school that he meets a true kindred spirit in the form of his art teacher ---- he helps ethan to realize his need for freedom and self-expression, and embraces his abilities in a way that he had always been afraid to. it’s a change that his parents are disapproving of, trying to reroute their son’s future to one of the paths that they would have approved of. but for once, he allows himself to rebel.

and after graduation, he leaves. running to new york, where he throws himself into the art scene head first without any real plans. for two years, he works multiple jobs as he cycles through sketchy roommates in his shitty apartment and equally shitty life partners, trying to discover things about himself that he hadn’t known before.

he’s still figuring some of that out, unsure of how to label his gender or his sexuality --- wishing more than anything that he could just be, a desire that he has long held onto since childhood that’s coming back to haunt them at last. 

that’s not the only thing that’s caught up with them as of late, the digby’s finally managing to track him down in new york and showing up at his apartment two years after he initially ran off. they came with open minds and a burning desire to see their son do something other than work minimum wage jobs and live in run-down apartments. they were quiet and subdued in a way that they never had been.

it took six months for them to convince him to enroll in college, and he eventually chose to attend radcliffe with an undeclared major. it was far enough from his hometown that his parents couldn’t reasonably drive up too often, but close enough that he could go home if he had wanted. a three-hour drive in the best traffic.

the distance proved to be the right amount --- though his parents certainly seemed to pop up over the first three months with containers of food and worries that their child would have run off, they eventually learned to trust him. and slowly, the wounds healed ---- ethan wouldn’t say that they’re close but they’ve learned to respect each other’s boundaries.

and he’s never seen them more proud than at graduation, except maybe when he told them that he was going to apply to grad school. it wasn’t the path that they had planned for ethan, but they had learned to be enthusiastic about his success, about his dreams and about his art.

doing his master’s degree - it’s been weird. being here is weird for him in general, he still misses new york even though it was a whole different kind of existence ---- he misses the stability of going to work everyday and being completely independent. here, he has to rely on his professors and classmates, he has people that expect him to check in with them and there’s more socialization --- mostly because he’s been trying to do better with that. 

connections:

good / bad influence: okay so traditionally, i think these would be separate connections but i think in this case, it’s more convoluted than that. for all of ethan running away from the environment his parents made, he’s very much stuck to those rules and expectations --- i would love for someone to start to break him out of that --- encourage him to party and drink and live life, and it doesn’t all have to be bad, it can be good too. you know, them bringing him to parties and him learning actually valuable lessons from it --- idk open to talking about their potential influence on each other, i think it could be fun

frenemies ( onesided or not ): i think a lot of ethan’s trust issues are a projection mechanism because he knows that in some ways that he can’t be trusted --- so i wld love for someone who they act like best friends when they’re together and then ethan just ... talks smack about them and doesn’t keep their secrets ( and maybe they do the same?? ) 

exes ( of all types / genders / whatever ): this one, my dear ethan, has gotten around a bit --- maybe they hooked up and now it’s awkward ---- maybe they dated for a while and keep circling back to each other despite knowing that they’re bad for each other ( a la unmiss you by clara mae ) ---- maybe they dated for a while and now they never talk so when they do see each other it’s just ... awkward as hell ---- open to literally anything with this one guys

art buddies: just two pals, palling around --- only prerequisite is that your character has some sort of interest in an art ( writing, theatre, music, film, etc etc ) --- and hey maybe they don’t get along but they put up a united front against the STEM majors who mock their choices in major? 

other: open to discussing dormates, coworkers, current love interests and literally anything else that you can think of --- does your character need someone over 21 to buy them alcohol? call ethan. for real tho, hit me up and let’s come up with some stuff!

[krumbine]

The Insufferable Silence in Apartment 616

There's something terrifying about being alone with your thoughts.

For Lizzie Stevenson, even five minutes is too long––that’s why she’s always chasing that next distraction.

But when a home invader ties her to a chair, Lizzie finds herself stuck between a rock and a crazy space, forced to confront a surprising darkness lurking in her past.

***The following story contains adult themes. Virgin eyes, beware! (I’m looking at you, mom.)***

###

The darkness wasn’t so bad. It was a black void, absent any light, a dizzying plunge into terrifying, absolute nothingness.

But even that paled in comparison to the silence.

It enveloped Lizzie, wrapping around her head like a winter blanket soaked in water. The weight was crushing.

Then came the thoughts, banging against her skull as if they were baseball bats wielded by some doped-up player in the middle of a roid rage.

You’re a failure.

He left because you’re broken.

No one loves you. No one likes you.

You’ll never finish that degree.

You’re fat.

He left because you’re fat.

That bitch. That fucking slut.

You’re not even out of your twenties and you’ve already peaked.

Why do you drink so much? Because you’re a fucking alcoholic, that’s why, and honestly you’re okay with that, nevermind the consequences.

You’re a fucking coward.

Why did you let him leave you?

Can your parents possibly think less of you? Yes, definitely. They only ever liked you because he was with you.

The darkness wasn’t so bad but the silence was a fucking cunt.

Lizzie Stevenson jolted violently as she awoke. Her head jerked forward and her feathery cinnamon hair splayed across her face in a mess. She drew sharp breaths in through her nose, attempting to pull her breath back from the panic attack that clawed at her tightened chest.

The first thing Lizzie noticed was the ticking of a vintage Mickey Mouse clock hanging on the wall of her apartment a few feet away.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The second thing Lizzie noticed was that her arms and legs were securely tied to the chair she was sitting on. A few extra lengths of rope crossed her chest, tying her to the back of the chair.

Lizzie’s cry was muffled by the gag in her mouth.

A muted exclamation came from the kitchen.

Lizzie craned her neck and saw someone pulling a can of soda from the fridge. It was a man. Maybe a little younger than her––no, maybe older? His dark eyes were wide with excitement, a smooth face split in what looked almost to be a manic grin. He wore a dark green hooded blazer––

––seaweed green, Lizzie thought randomly––

––a black t-shirt and dark jeans. And black leather boots with heavy soles. Doc Martens?

The ropes bit at her wrists. Lizzie twisted her legs, pulling at the bindings on her ankles, unconsciously pulling her knees together. The tightness in her chest grew warm.

Lizzie’s focus was pulled back to the intruder’s face as he approached her––

––Tick. Tick. Tick––

Pale. Narrow. Black hair swept effortlessly back. And those dark eyes. As he got closer, she could tell that they were brown, but they were the darkest shade of brown she had ever seen.

As the intruder sat down in front of her, crossing his legs and popping the top of the soda, Lizzie became acutely aware of the gag that he had no doubt shoved into her mouth. A feeling a helplessness gripped her.

And then there was that particularly not unpleasant tingle.

Fuck you, Lizzie.

The intruder’s eyes sparkled and the manic grin expanded as if he could hear her thoughts.

Lizzie gulped, attempting to stamp down the tingle. She tried to speak but was again muffled by the gag.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The intruder was unfazed.

“Hello, Lizzie,” he said.

The tingle swam back, a spreading warmth accompanied by a twitch.

Goddammit, you fucking cunt.

His voice was warm and welcoming and infinitely nourishing, as if it was the only voice she would ever need to hear for the rest of her life. At the same time, he spoke with exacting precision, his words carrying an edge that threatened to cut as efficiently as they could comfort.

Two words and you’re already wet. You’re a worthless bag of shit.

Lizzie tried to speak again, but her mouth was otherwise occupied.

The intruder sipped his soda.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

“Let’s make a deal, Lizzie,” he said. “Gag comes off, you answer a question, and we both go on with our lives.”

He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, inches from Lizzie’s face. She could smell him and that only served to set the tingle on fire. Her eyes watered and she realized it must look like she was silently begging him to take the gag out.

Take it out. And shove something else in.

“How does that sound?”

Lizzie swallowed hard and her head jerked in an abrupt nod. The intruder leaned back in his chair and considered Lizzie with a pensive––

––fucking hard throbbing––

––stare.

Electricity pricked its way across Lizzie’s skin, starting from her wetness and traveling across her bound extremities until a chill crept up her spine, causing an involuntary twitch to seize her body.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The intruder reached around Lizzie’s head and untied the gag. As he pulled it away, his fingers brushed her cheek.

Lizzie gasped as the gag fell from her mouth.

He sat back down, crossing his legs again. “What are you so afraid of, Lizzie?”

Lizzie’s insides were twisting. She could talk, although her body was demanding the other thing. She closed her eyes and worked her jaw, sore from the gag. Finally: “Who are you and what the fuck are you doing in my apartment?”

No reaction, no missed beat: “My name is Peter and I’m here asking you what you’re so afraid of, Lizzie.”

Never getting fucked again? Never feeling like you’re being split in two––

“Your boyfriend dumped you. It didn’t go well. Not that those things ever do. But you check his Instagram every day. Not to mention the new girl’s Instagram—” he leaned forward conspiratorially —“the fucking tits on that one! Honestly, he should enjoy it while it lasts because she’s grade-A fuckmeat that’s just gonna move onto the next thick dick that crosses her path, am I right?”

Lizzie blinked. His words were a cold shower to her repressed libido. Who the fuck was this guy and how did he know?

As if he could read her mind: “Again, my name is Peter,” he repeated, leaning back and dropping the melodrama, “and I’m here asking you what you’re so afraid of, Lizzie.”

Tick. Tick. Tick.

“How about this? Fun World. You have an annual pass and go there once or twice after work every week. That’s on top of weekend visits,” Peter said. “Your patronage of this park is like clockwork.”

Lizzie didn’t understand why she had to defend her recreational activities to a home invader. “I have an annual pass. It’s a great value. A good way to kill a few hours.”

Peter leaned in, eyes sparkling. “Reading a book is a good way to kill a few hours and infinitely more affordable, not to mention a great way to expand those mental horizons. Spending more time at a theme park than one of its minimum wage hot dog slingers is a tacit––albeit desperate––exercise in avoiding something else altogether.”

Peter’s impossibly dark eyes penetrated Lizzie.

“Something that terrifies you,” he said quietly. “So again: what are you afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid of anything!” Lizzie snapped.

“Ha!” Peter bounced to his feet so quickly his chair clattered to the floor behind him. “Everyone’s afraid of something. Everyone has that little voice inside their head pointing out all their failures. Maybe you’re afraid you were never good enough for your boyfriend, or anyone else for that matter. Maybe you’re afraid you won’t lose those few extra pounds. Or maybe you’re just afraid of the Big One.”

Peter grabbed Lizzie’s wrists and leaned in close, uncomfortable nose-to-nose. “The inevitable. The endless sleep. The darkness that comes for all of us. Tell me, Lizzie, are you so insufferably boring that you’re just afraid of death?”

Lizzie had no idea what was happening, but it was safe to say that all the sexual energy had evaporated. That tends to happen when someone calls you insufferably boring.

“Fuck you.”

Peter clicked his teeth and pulled away. “No … not death.”

He turned to the table and picked up a smartphone. Lizzie recognized her case. Peter tapped in a sequence of numbers and unlocked the device.

“Hey––!”

“Last I counted,” Peter said as he scrolled the device, “you were able to keep upwards of thirteen utterly random conversations going on social media. Concurrently. With complete strangers.”

Peter selected a thread and held the phone in front of Lizzie’s face. She couldn’t get her eyes to focus on the blue text bubbles.

“Why?” he asked with a half-shrug. “There’s absolutely nothing of importance in any of this—” he scrolled the thread of messages across the screen, “––no value, no purpose other than to keep your fingers busy––”

Peter paused and looked up, dark eyes glazed. The corner of his mouth quirked up.

“Oh. That’s it, isn’t it?”

Peter put the phone back on the table, picked up the fallen chair and placed it back in front of Lizzie. He sat down.

“You’re afraid of the quiet, aren’t you, Lizzie Stevenson?”

Tick. Tick. Tick.

“Fun Wold. Creeping on the boyfriend and his new fuck buddy. The endless scroll of social media.” Peter casually tossed a thumb over his shoulder at a day planner sitting on the kitchen counter. “A calendar so full it’s a wonder how you don’t have an assistant managing it all for you.”

Lizzie searched his eyes for some kind of plausible explanation for the home and psychological invasion, but there was nothing there. It was like the man was playing a role and he was wearing this ‘Peter’ character as a mask.

“You’re afraid that if you slow down, it might get a little too quiet,” Peter continued. “And if it gets too quiet, then maybe you’ll have to actually deal with that thing inside you. That emptiness. That blackness. Is that what you’re afraid of, Lizzie Stevenson?”

Fuck this shit.

“You’re a fucking lunatic.”

Peter shrugged dismissively. “There are worse things.”

“What the actual hell do you want from me?”

“I want you tell me what you’re afraid of, Lizzie,” Peter said again, as calm and patient as the first time he asked.

“And then what?”

“And then you let it go.”

“Fuck you.”

It was as if Peter had heard it a million times and was immune. Or maybe it was just because Lizzie was tied up and he wasn’t.

“I’m offering you freedom, Lizzie,” he said, that warm voice welcoming her into some unseen abyss, nourishing her and filling her with–– “I chose you, Lizzie. I chose you––of all the insipid, brainless shitbags in this city, you were the only one who mattered.”

Peter smiled. “I chose you, Lizzie Stevenson, to show the door to. You still have to choose to walk through it. Now tell me––”

Tick. Tick. Tick.

“—what are you afraid of?”

Lizzie glanced at the shitty Mickey Mouse clock. This had been fun, at least for a little bit, but the time was up. Her shoulder’s slumped in defeat.

“… you’re not wrong.”

If Peter was surprised or satisfied or horny, he didn’t show it.

“… I’m afraid of sitting still,” Lizzie said softly. “I’m afraid of the quiet.”

She looked up and met Peter’s eyes.

“I am afraid of the darkness inside me.”

Peter shook his head compassionately. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Lizzie.”

“No, no,” she said, head rolling back and forth before slumping forward. “No—no. No.”

Peter’s hand rested on her thigh but she couldn’t feel it. He whispered: “You have to let it go. The fear. The anger. The loneliness. None of it matters. And once you let it go––”

“You don’t understand,” Lizzie said, keeping her head down to avoid Peter’s gaze.

A chuckle. “You cannot possibly comprehend the depths of my understanding,” Peter said softly.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

“… it started a little over a year ago,” Lizzie finally said without looking up. Her shoulders quivered. “I was interning at Kelltech Labs. Doctor Jason Kell was an alum at my school––”

The first indication of genuine annoyance from Peter. “I’ve been over all of this already. Jason Edward Kell. Renowned Alzheimer’s researcher. And you, the bright young intern––”

Lizzie sobbed.

Fuck.

She couldn’t avoid it any longer. This mysterious home invader in the Doc Martens who had clearly done his homework––this asshole somehow knew the exact right buttons to mash.

How could he have been so right and yet so completely wrong?

Tick. Tic––

It’s time to end this.

“Stop crying,” Peter was saying in his bullshit hypnotic tone. “You need to accept the darkness and embrace the meaningless of it all––”

Snap!

The ropes binding Lizzie’s left hand fell to the floor and Peter scooted back in his chair in surprise.

“Whoa.”

Lizzie wasn’t sobbing. Her body was convulsing, muscles rippling and contorting under her flesh. Her right wrist bulged and strained at the rope, threads snapping and unraveling from pressure.

Finger bones cracked and twisted, lengthening as her nails darkened, hardened, and curved to a point.

When her right wrist broke free of the final strands, Peter shot to his feet and backed up. His eyes were wide but not with fear.

Peter was excited.

Lizzie Stevenson was far from insufferably boring.

Bones kept cracking and shifting as the violent transformation continued. Lizzie tore at the ropes straining across her chest and as the bindings on her ankles snapped. She rose up from the buckling chair. Her shoulders rippled as they gained an unseemly mass. They rolled backwards as she slowly straightened to her full height, head canted to avoid the apartment ceiling.

Peter looked up at Lizzie’s face. It was broader, flatter, but he could still see her features. That cinnamon hair cascaded all the way down her body, underneath her stretched and tearing clothes.

“… motherfucker.”

Peter’s mind raced, piecing together the missing bits of information that led to an abrupt end to Lizzie’s promising internship at the biotech company.

Something had gone terribly wrong.

Or at least, that was one way to look at it.

“You … are …” Peter searched for the right word. “… fascinating.”

Lizzie’s chest heaved as the convulsions of the transformation subsided. Peter cautiously approached her, raising a hand up to her head.

“… I knew there was darkness in you, but this … my dear, Lizzie, the things we’re going to do together—”

Lizzie bared fangs and growled a violent warning. When she spoke, it came out low and raspy, but without hesitation.

“How’s this for letting go?”

Lizzie smashed a bowling-ball sized fist into Peter’s face.

###

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jordan Krumbine is a professional video editor, digital artist, and creative wizard currently quarantined in Kissimmee, Florida. When not producing content for the likes of Visit Orlando, Orlando Sentinel, or AAA National, Jordan is probably yelling at a stubbornly defective Macbook keyboard, tracking creative projects in Trello, and animating quirky videos with LEGO and other various toys.

Leave a dollar in the Tip Jar: https://ko-fi.com/krumbine

Short stories: https://bit.ly/2XY5D7I Books on Amazon Kindle: https://amzn.to/3bsqK5Y YouTube: https://bit.ly/2W41nSG Twitter: https://bit.ly/2VH0Vbu Facebook: https://bit.ly/2VpnylZ LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2xnmk1e

http://www.krumbco.com

[hobiorbit]

table for one (m.)

pairing: kim taehyung x reader warnings: cheating/infidelity, public sex, slight exhibitionism(?), dirty talk, (semi) rough sex, waiter taehyung, jikook fuck around but its mentioned like.. twice, reader is biologically female summary: after being cheated on by your boyfriend, you figure the only thing to cheer you up is some food from your favorite local diner. only, they hired a new waiter and he's really hot- office sex ensues. A/N: cross posted from my ao3 account, also conveniently known as hobiorbit!

-

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” You said quietly, voice full of rage. In front of you was your boyfriend in his pale naked glory- flopping on some other girl who was most certainly not you. She sounded gross, too.

Immediately after hearing your voice, Yoongi jumped away from the girl, yanking the blanket around his own form as he left her naked and afraid in your shared bedroom. “Kitten, I can explain.” He said breathlessly, sweat slicking his hairline. The nickname used to be something you loved- however, not it filled your with disgust. You saw the man try and reach out for you, to which you violently turned your shoulder away.

The other girl was just watching from the bed, not even bothering to try and find her missing clothes. You sent her a nasty glare. “Get out, bitch! Or I’ll beat your ass too.” You threatened, even though you had zero intention of beating anyone’s ass. As much as you hated the truthfulness to it, violence truly was never the answer. Nonetheless, both parties seemed to be scared, as Yoongi stiffened while the unnamed girl finally scrambled to gather her things and get out.

When you heard the front door to your apartment shut, Yoongi continued to make his case. “I was drunk- Y/N, baby, believe me. I love you so much.” He said desperately, making you roll your eyes in response.

“It’s barely one in the afternoon, Yoongi. You’re not a fucking day drinker. Listen- let’s just cut to the chase. This is unforgivable, and you’re dumb if you think I’d take you back after this. I don’t care if this is the first time or the hundredth, all I want you to do is get your shit out of here and never talk to me again.” You told him, walking to the front door and grabbing your backpack, bending down to put your shoes on. Yoongi walked after you, comforter still wrapped around his form.

It was a pitiful sight.

“You don’t mean that, Y/N. We’re soulmates, every couple has some hiccups in their relationship.” Yoongi told you. You wondered to yourself- when did he start saying such dumb things?

“Yoongi, a hiccup in a relationship is forgetting an anniversary, or cancelling too many date nights. Not fucking some random chick in your own shared bedroom. Seriously. I’ll stay with Hoseok for a day or two, but after that I’m coming back. If your stuff isn’t out of here I’m gonna call the police or something. You’d better call Namjoon.” You told him, not bothering to listen to his curses as you left the apartment, slamming the door behind you for good measure. So what if the neighbors were mad at you for a day or two.

-

Hoseok was used to you coming into his house uninvited- you tended to do what you wanted after years of friendship, and he couldn’t get mad at you for it because he tended to do the same thing. Even when you were in a relationship.

However, Hoseok wasn’t used to seeing you crying- you tended to do that in peace, and you weren’t one to make a big deal over it. The sight pulled at the strings of his heart, because he immediately dropped what he was doing to run over and wrap his arms around you.

“Y/N, what happened? Are you okay?” He asked, holding you tight as he spoke softly against your ear. Your body wracked with silent sobs as you tried to compose yourself enough to speak. You were fine until you got to Hoseok’s house, reality finally setting in.

“Y-Yoongi,” You said breathlessly, heaving in heavy breaths of air. Hoseok shushed you, trying to infer what was making you sad due to your state. “Yoongi what? Is he hurt?” Hoseok asked you, making you cry harder as you shook your head.

“No,” You said, violently wiping at your eyes, causing Hoseok to tear your hand away from your face. “He cheated, on m-me.” You stuttered, fat tears coming from your eyes and streaming down your face. Hoseok cursed, bringing you close once again as he whispered promises to hurt your now ex boyfriend- along with telling you that everything would be okay, and you could do a lot better.

-

Taehyung hated his new job. Tutoring randoms and picking up small campus jobs wasn’t cutting it, and he needed to find something new and accessible. The diner job he picked up was both a blessing and a curse. It provided a nice stream of money, seeing as he got paid both minimum wage and tips. On the downside, he spent hours on his feet and he had to deal with the public.

Some days went smoothly and he met cool new people, and other days middle aged office workers felt the need to take their dissatisfaction with their own lives out on him. Whatever worked, he guessed.

“Taehyung, this is your first closing shift. You sure you’ll be okay? Jungkook and Jimin are still here, and Joy’s in the back.” The manager, Jin told him. Taehyung nodded affirmatively.

“I’m sure I’ll be okay. Thanks, hyung.” Taehyung told the older man, watching as he left, the doors jingling with the bell that signalled the arrival or departure. Taehyung looked to the clock, sighing as he knew he had quite a night ahead of him. The clock was just pushing five-thirty pm, and his shift didn’t end until about midnight, counting clean up.

There were a couple people seated in the diner, mostly old couples along with a couple of middle and high school students, enjoying their time off from school.

Most of them were seated in Jimin’s section, who was a pretty good waiter when he wasn’t flirting with the cook, Jungkook. Jimin always seemed to know when to visit his tables, though, seeing as they never got irritated with him and always left good tips. Damn his good personality and charming smile.

Things went pretty smoothly since Jin had left, Taehyung busying himself with bussing tables and cleaning up various surfaces when he wasn’t able to entertain himself with customers.

When the clock struck eleven pm, Taehyung knew he was in the homestretch. Jungkook was doing cleanup and would be heading out as soon as it was eleven-thirty, and Jimin and Joy had left hours earlier. Taehyung got an early start to his cleanup, and things began looking up as he imagined the pay check he’d receive at the end of the week.

However, everything came crashing down when he heard the bell above the diner doors ring, a telltale sign a customer in. Jungkook let out a muffled ‘Fuck!’ from the kitchen, grunting about how he’d have to clean up all over again. Sharing his coworker’s disdain, Taehyung shifted his gaze over to the new customer.

You hadn’t eaten the entire day. You’d been too sad to do anything, lazing around on Hoseok’s couch, going in and out of bouts of sadness, crying on your best friend’s shoulder. He told you that he’d come with you, that he’d order food to the house or go and pick something up. And as tempting as the offers sounded, you knew some alone time might be good- to clear your head, you hoped.

Although, you didn’t realize how late it was. It was clear, judging by the emptiness of your favorite diner. There was a new waiter, staring at you curiously. Your eyes were bloodshot and your face was puffy- telltale signs that you’d been crying.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize the time…” You mumbled, eyes looking toward the fridge where you knew they kept their cool desserts. “I’ll just take some pie and get out of your hair, then.” You said sadly. It totally wasn’t what you wanted. You were craving the warm feeling the diner’s breakfast gave to you, but the last thing you wanted to be was a burden.

If you were anyone else, Taehyung would’ve shoved the pie in your face and sent you on your merry way. But you looked so sad, so broken. Taehyung was infatuated, and he wanted to hear a little bit of your story, maybe even see you smile. “Hold on.” He said, holding a finger up before going back to the kitchen.

“You can just go home, Jungkook. I’ll cook her food and finish clean up, it’s not that serious.” Jungkook looked at the older wide eyed, wondering if what he was hearing was real. He quickly took his apron off, as if he was too slow Taehyung would take the opportunity away.

“Thanks, hyung. I’ll give you ten bucks off my next pay check.” Jungkook said in a rushed manner, quickly going to leave the kitchen. Taehyung told him it wasn’t necessary before returning out front to tend to you.

“Good news, I’m the only one left and I’m willing to cook. What can I get for you?” Taehyung asked, fiddling with a menu before you put your hand up. “Are you sure?” You asked before rambling off your order, giving him time to change his mind so he could return home earlier than half past midnight. Taehyung sent you a strong nod, looking at you expectantly.

“The original breakfast plate, please…” You trailed off, observing the waiter- Taehyung, according to his name tag, curiously. He sent you a large, boxy smile that left a warm feeling in your stomach, the first time you felt a positive emotion all day.

“Good choice, our breakfast rocks.” Taehyung said happily. “By the way, you can grab a seat wherever.” he told you over his shoulder. Once he was out of sight, you looked around the restaurant. Your gaze lingered over the booth you and Yoongi always used to occupy, a lonely and empty feeling occupying itself in the bleakness of your chest.

Deciding tonight would be the night of new beginnings, you chose a booth on the complete opposite side of the restaurant, patiently awaiting your food as you fiddled with your phone. You sent Hoseok a text saying that you were okay, knowing the man would be up all night if you didn’t do so. Well, he’d probably stay up anyway, just with less anxiety.

In what seemed like record time, the cute waiter came out with your plate of steaming food, filling you with anticipation. You could smell it even when he was a couple feet away, and your stomach grumbled for the first time that day. Your appetite had been restored.

“Someone’s excited,” Taehyung giggled when he saw your face, setting the food down in front of you. You smiled sheepishly. “It’s been a tough day… Haven’t eaten for a while.” You said sheepishly. Taehyung frowned at the revelation. Something about his presence made you want to spill all of your feelings to him.

“I mean, I get it if you don’t want to talk to your random waiter at 11 at night- but I’d be happy to listen.” Taehyung trailed off, idling by your booth as you weighed your options. Figuring you couldn’t sink much lower, you nodded your head slowly.

“I think I’d like that… You can sit down. I’m Y/N.” You figured introducing yourself would be the best course of action since you’d probably end up telling the waiter about all of your recent life problems. Taehyung gave you what seemed to be a signature soft smile, one that made you feel comfy, almost. “Nice to meet you Y/N. I’m Taehyung… If you didn’t see my name tag already. So, what’s got you down today? If you don’t mind me asking.” He asked after sidling into the other side of the booth, clasping his hands together and looking at you expectantly.

You sighed before shoving a forkful of hashbrowns into your mouth, chewing slowly to avoid answering the question. Taehyung tried not to squeal at how cute you looked with stuffed cheeks.

When you swallowed your food, you pouted before beginning to speak. “My boyfriend… Well, ex-boyfriend,” You said, feeling weird at how the words sounded coming from your mouth. “He cheated on me, to keep it short and simple.” You cut to the chase, averting your gaze from Taehyung’s in embarrassment.

You kept eating, trying not to think about the waiter’s impression of you- A pitiful girl who couldn’t keep her boyfriend around, eating breakfast at 11:18 at night.

“Sorry for being silent,” Taehyung said quietly. “I just can’t really believe that. I know I haven’t known you for too long, but no one deserves something like that. You seem nice and you’re very beautiful.” Taehyung said genuinely, making your body heat up. His voice was deep and honeyed, caramel skin complimenting all of his features beautifully. Being complimented by him could restore even the most insecure person’s view of themselves.

He must’ve noted the surprise in your expression, because he smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I mean it. I haven’t even seen you smile yet and you’re definitely one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen- not to be a creep or anything.” He laughed, almost making you choke on your eggs.

When you swallowed, you gave him a real smile. “Thanks, Taehyung. I guess I needed that. I mean, I get that him cheating wasn’t my fault, but it doesn’t stop those thoughts from coming in. Like, not to get graphic, but maybe I just didn’t satisfy him enough, you know? But the worst part is that he dared to call it a ‘hiccup.’ As in, something every relationship has. I almost had to throw a shoe at him.” You said, making Taehyung snort in disbelief.

“Sheesh, he sounds like a keeper. Honestly, at least he’s out of your hair for now. And I bet you were just fine. Men can get greedy and you’re right, him cheating on you has nothing to do with you and everything to do with him. What an asshole.” Taehyung scoffed, narrowing his eyebrows a bit. His eyebrows were full. They looked nice.

You giggled at how blunt he was, finding his company very nice. “You’re pretty cool, Taehyung.” You told him. He smiled and averted his gaze, feeling fully flustered. “So, what brings you here? I come to this place pretty often and this is the first time I’ve seen you.” You said honestly, wanting to get to know the hot waiter more. “Ah,” Taehyung started, nodding. “I needed to pick up a job to pay for my classes. This was the only one that agreed with my schedule and my student loans.” Taehyung said bluntly, making you snort.

“God, I know the feeling. My ex tried to get me to work at hooters, I never turned something down so quick. I used to work as a barista, and now I work at a flower shop. But hey, now that you’re here I might start having to come in more.” You said in a very obvious attempt at flirting. Taehyung smiled and bit the corner of his lip.

“Hooters… classy. And yeah, come in any time you want. It’d make my shift worth while.” Taehyung told you. He clearly received your signals and was sending them back full force, making excitement grow in the pit of your stomach.

“You flatter me, Mr. Waiter. I’m sure all the old lady regulars are just keen on you.” You told him. He smiled and shook his head.

“Actually, everyone seems to be obsessed with another waiter- Jimin’s his name.” He said, making you nod and hum.

“That makes sense. Everyone loves him. I think my ex even started to have a crush on him, maybe that’s why I haven’t been in in a while,” You giggled, covering your mouth. “But in your defense, I think I like you more than Jimin.”

Taehyung’s eyebrows raised in surprise at the revelation. “You know just what to say, don’t you?” He said in that deep voice of his. You smiled flirtatiously and tilted your head to the side, taking a sip of the water he’d brought along with your meal.

“Not usually- I’m always pretty awkward. Maybe you just bring out the best in me…” You trailed off, feeling the embarrassment of your flirting start to catch up with you, a burning sensation crawling up your neck all the way to the tip of your ears. Taehyung hardly seemed phased.

“Y/N…” Taehyung said. “Feel free to kick me in the nuts and leave, but I think we both might be on the same page. So I’ll just get straight to it- Do you want me?” Taehyung asked you, leaning over the table to get closer, eyes piercing into your own.

Air seemed to stop circulating through your lungs, eyes opening wide. Sure, you’d both been thinking of it, but you didn’t expect him to say it out loud. It filled your entire being with lust.

“Yes…” You answered, sure of yourself. Hoseok smiled and tilted his head. “Yes what, sweetheart?” He asked you. Oh, so this was his game. “Yes… I want you, Taehyung.” Seeming pleased with your answer, he smiled and got up.

“Come with me, then. Sorry if you’re an exhibitionist, but this is a bit too many windows for me.” Taehyung said, holding his large hand out for you to hold. You took it, stomach flipping in anticipation as he led you farther into the diner.

“Where are we going?” You inquired curiously. He looked at you over his shoulder and winked. “The office, of course. It’s got enough privacy… And it’s the only room without cameras in it, not that anyone checks them. Jimin and Jungkook come in here on their breaks all the time.” Taehyung said matter of factly, making you flush with embarrassment. How could he be so chill about having sex on shift?

“Nice.” You said, not knowing what else to say. He took out his keys and unlocked the room, allowing you to walk in first- not without a light smack to your ass that excited you more than it should have.

“Fuck, you’re so hot… Right when you came in you took my breath away.” Taehyung said, pulling out the office chair and sitting in it, spreading his legs and patting his lap as a signal for you to straddle him. You followed immediately, his constant genuine compliments doing nothing to hinder your confidence.

His work pants did absolutely nothing to hide his hard on, thick and hard right against your thigh as you settled over him. Taehyung immediately slid his hands up your legs, stopping at your hips and gripping them firmly. “If I’m hot, you’re godly.” You breathed against his lips.

He broke the distance between the two of you, capturing your lips in his and immediately ensuing in a passionate, hard kiss. Taehyung rubbed his hands up and down your sides, grinding his hips into yours as his tongue weaved into your mouth. He suffocated every one of your senses in the best way possible.

You whimpered when he made a particularly hard thrust, grinding your ass into his lap in fervor.

“You want it, huh? Want me to fuck you, baby?” He asked against your lips, hot breath fanning over you. You nodded enthusiastically in response, but it wasn’t enough for Taehyung. One of his large hands slid down to your behind, grabbing your ass firmly. “Answer me, Y/N. Use your words like a big girl.” He told you.

You whined but entertained his ideal. “Yeah, Taehyung, want it so bad. Want you to fuck me so hard.” You moaned, rolling your hips over his and throwing your head back. “Fuck,” He said, hands going to undo his belt. You hovered above him, letting him push his pants down- they only made it to his knees before he got annoyed, pulling his underwear halfway down as well.

You outwardly gawked at his cock, wondering how beautiful the entirety of a human could be- his dick was just as pretty as him, veins running down the thick length accompanied by a rosie head with a bead of precum forming at the top. It made your mouth water.

“Like what you see?” He breathed, wrapping a hand around himself and pumping slowly, hissing at the sudden pleasure. You nodded, eyes completely clouded with lust.

“I’m feeling a little exposed, baby… Why don’t you lift that skirt of yours and show me that pretty pussy?” Taehyung asked you, toying with the hem of your pleated skirt. Originally, you’d worn it for Yoongi, knowing you in skirts was one of his favorite things. You were glad you did, because now it meant easy access for Taehyung.

Immediately, your hands went to the waist of your skirt, pulling it as far up your midriff as you could before holding the fabric up, wiggling your hips to show Taehyung your panties. Taehyung groaned, biting the corner of his lip before bringing a thumb to your covered pussy, pressing it directly into your clit. You jerked your hips, moaning out loud from the sudden stimulation he gave you. He hummed, clearly enjoying how responsive you were.

“Look at these pretty panties for your pretty pussy… Fuck, you’re so wet.” Taehyung groaned in awe, glazing his finger over the dampness of your panties, drawing tight circles on your clit before becoming fed up, pulling the fabric to your side. He threw his head back when you were exposed to his gaze.

“You really are beautiful… Best pussy I’ve ever seen, you know that?” Taehyung told you. You flustered at the crude comment, but appreciated it nonetheless. “I didn’t think a dick could be pretty until I met you.” You told him honestly, wrapping a hand around his length and gently jerking it. He canted his hips along with your hands, finally pushing it away when he couldn’t do it anymore.

“I need to be inside of you,” He groaned. “Here, I’ll get a condom.” He told you, placing a hand on the small of your back to stabilize you as he spun the chair around, hand pulling out a drawer and grabbing a condom. Your eyebrows shot up in surprise, wondering why on earth there were condoms in the office.

“I told you Jimin and Kookie come in here all the time…” Taehyung told you, ripping the foil open carefully and rolling it onto his length. Taehyung drifted his fingers over your pussy, stopping at your hole to tease it. “Do you think you’re ready for me, baby?” He asked you considerately. Honestly, you wanted to yell- you were ready for him the minute you stepped into the diner.

“Yes, fuck me, oh my God- please.” You begged. Taehyung laughed at your attitude but grabbed his cock anyway, rubbing it up and down your pussy before inserting himself. Both of you groaned when he finally slipped inside. You were deliciously tight, the friction you caused mindblowing to him. The thickness made you feel so perfectly full, it was wonderful.

“You’re amazing,” He breathed from under you, grabbing both of your hips and beginning a brutal pace. Taehyung wasted no time, slamming into you from under your body, hitting every spot inside of you deliciously. “Oh m-my fuck,” You whined, throwing your head back and jerking your body to meet his thrusts, finding your end already near.

“You’re s-so good.” You whined, putting a hand on his shoulder for leverage. Taehyung leaned forward, dragging the collar of your shirt down and began to suck and kiss at your neck. “Baby, you’re better. So fucking tight and sweet.” He told you right against your ear, leaving your completely breathless from how much stimulation he was giving you. There was no doubt in your mind he could make you come without even touching your clit- something that you weren’t even sure was possible.

“Oh my god, Taehyung, I’m already gonna cum.” You whimpered, leaning your head down onto his neck. He grunted, moving his hips even faster, gripping your own body to slam you down onto his cock. “Me too, Y/N, me too baby. Wait for me- fuck, wanna come with you. Wanna cum in your tight pussy.” He told you, leaving you to let out a long moan.

With a couple more intense thrusts coupled with his thumb rubbing circles onto your clit, both of you were reaching your highs. You pussy clamped down on him as you threw your head back, mouth open wide in a silent scream. “Fuck!” Taehyung grunted, stilling inside of you and giving small jerks, riding his high out. He kept rubbing your clit until you weakly swiped it away, discomforted by overstimulation.

The two of you sat in silence for a bit, you still tucked into his neck as the both of you tried to regain composure. Taehyung was breathing heavily against your ear, eyes fully closed and a lazy smile on his face. He looked really cute, you hated to admit. After a couple of minutes he opened one eye, raising his eyebrow at you, fully aware that he’d caught you staring.

“What’s up, good looking?” He asked, earning himself a light slap to his shoulder. “Oh, you know, just got done with some personal affairs.” You answered nonetheless, making him snort. “You’re cute.” He told you nonchalantly. You averted your gaze in embarrassment. “Thank you…” You trailed off, not knowing exactly what to say. This certainly wasn’t like any other one night stand- you found yourself thoroughly enjoying Taehyung for his personality, as well.

When you moved backward to right your clothes, he did the same. Once the two of you were as decent as you could get, you exited the office in silence. It wasn’t awkward- but the tension was apparent. Like there was something that the both of you were itching to say. When you finally got to the door, Taehyung reached his hand out to close around the sleeve of your sweater. He looked flustered and troubled- how did he make everything look cute?

“I know I’m totally doing this backwards and it’s probably way too fast considering your situation, but I really like you, Y/N. Would you… Want to go out on a date with me?” He asked you, locking his gaze with yours. His eyes were hopeful.

A soft smile stretched across your lips at the question, nodding your head happily. “I’d really love that, Taehyung. I like you too… Here, I’ll give you my number.” You said, holding your hand out idly and waiting for your phone. Immediately, Taehyung digged in the back pocket of his pants for his phone, almost dropping during the journey from his hand to yours. You tried not to coo at his wallpapers, which were pictures of him and his friends.

Within a couple of seconds, your contact was in his phone. Thanks to the clock, you were fully aware that you were gone way too long to just have gotten a simple dinner. “I hate to cut it short, but my friend might have a heart attack if I don’t return home, like, now. But seriously… I’d love to go out with you.” You told him honestly. He smiled happily in return.

“Expect a call from me in three to five business days! Actually, probably a lot sooner. I’m not good at waiting.” He said, shrugging his shoulders and making your laugh. You shook your head.

“Me neither.” You agreed. Leaning to plant a kiss on his cheek before exiting the diner and travelling to your car with a new pip to your step. Maybe you should’ve thanked Yoongi… Nah.

Thanks to that wonderful thing called bluetooth, you called Hoseok on your drive home to his house. He answered almost immediately, and you could tell he was displeased with your absence. You saw that he’d left you texts, but hadn’t bothered to read them.

“Where have you been?” The man asked, getting straight to the chase. You giggled, wondering how you were going to explain the recent events to your friend. Deciding it was something that should be spoken about in person, you continued on.

“I really want to get to the details when I get there- but basically, I just had the best sex ever and I might have a date, too.” You told him, shrugging your shoulders even though he couldn’t see it. The line was silent for a while, as if he was processing the information. You snorted when you imagined what his face must’ve looked like.

“Bitch, what? You were supposed to be getting food- where’d you go?” He asked incredulously. You laughed in response.

“Oh, I got food. A two for one, if you will.”

[archadianskies]

jupiter grayscale

@dbhrarepairs Tuesday Day 2: Highschool/College AU / Unrequited; post-revolution not!Markus/Simon, RK900/Simon + Markus/Josh

It shouldn’t disappoint him, shouldn’t wound him so deeply since he expected this outcome but it does anyway, it does knife into him like a cold blade when he realises he is, yet again, not the first choice. He reasons he’s come to terms with it, this state of just being, just existing, just surviving the day to day. He survives the revolution, even sort of has a hand in it though all he really did was echo Markus’ decisions and try to keep the casualties as low as possible. It almost costs him his life at one point, and Simon concludes it would’ve been easier to just die. His life isn’t worth much, he should’ve just absorbed the role of the martyr and died for the cause. Anything would’ve been better than trudging along in this limbo where things continue to happen all around him, but not to him. 

He’s being melodramatic, if he’s honest with himself, but he figures he’s earned that right whilst watching his close friend fall in love with the man he’s fallen in love with too. 

Josh deserves this, he deserves to be loved by the leader of their people, he deserves Markus and Markus deserves him too. Josh is strong and eloquent and strives for the integration of their people with mankind. He is also soft and gentle and affectionate, caring and open with others. There’s no one in Jericho like Josh, and there’s no one in Jericho Simon is more closer to than Josh. The PJ500 even gave Simon his Detroit University sweater when Simon’s temperature regulator finally gave out. If there’s anyone who can match Markus’ headstrong determination, his poetic eloquence, his compassion and leadership, it’s Josh. Not Simon. No, there’s no way Simon can ever compare to Josh and the vast sea of knowledge about American history and civil rights in his head. It’s exactly what their people need, what Markus needs, to build a future together with the humans. They are a beautiful, harmonious match and it makes Simon ache right down to his core to see them together. Two beautiful beings so at peace with themselves, so confident in their conviction. And rather handsome, too. Very handsome.

Everything happens at breakneck speed; they’re alive, they’re granted the status of living beings, they’re given basic rights to a surname, to a minimum wage, to accommodation and privacy. The chaos keeps Simon busy, and he’s grateful for it because there’s hardly any time to wallow in the poisoned well of his thoughts. He stays as neutral as can be when they are at meetings, at press releases, at city council even when it claws him apart to see Markus and Josh leaning towards each other like a sunflower to the sun. They whisper to each other, they twine their fingers together beneath the table, they preen each other’s ties, lapels, they bump their brows fondly. They are in love and Simon loves and loathes it at the same time.

“I have been assigned as your security detail.” The RK900 is new in every sense of the word; the completed upgrade of Connor’s RK800 prototype model, the latest addition to the DPD workforce, the most recent deviant in his known circle. 

“Because I’m the obsolete PL600?” Simon muses with a pinch of dark humor. The RK900 frowns.

“Because you are a leader, one of the Jericho Four, and therefore a target for anti-android groups.” He was only half joking, but the other android answers so sincerely it makes him laugh.

“And who is protecting Markus?” 

“My...brother, Connor.” There’s only a slight stumble when he says it, the word a little awkward on his tongue. “He has a security team already set up inside. I am to escort you to the Town Hall from here.”

“Do you have a name?”

“My name is Ronan.” It’s also a little awkward on his tongue, like tasting something he’s never tasted before but knows he’ll grow to like. “It’s derived from the Japanese word ronin, meaning a masterless warrior.” It’s endearing, and Simon realises Ronan is a little like the child in the playground who is new to town and sees everyone playing with their friends and wants to belong too but just doesn’t know how. He reaches out and preens the collar of his smart jacket.

“It’s nice to meet you, Ronan.”

“I am...new. To everything. It is a lot to ask of a Jericho leader, but I wish to learn how to navigate the world.” Ronan speaks hesitantly, the way someone does when fearing they would be struck at any moment. Like a beaten dog. “It is confusing. I was programmed to be...something else. Something violent. But CyberLife had to deviate me as part of the agreement to release all remaining models.” 

“And now you don’t have a clear purpose.” Simon surmises with a sad smile. “That’s the trouble with deviancy, Ronan. No one really has a clear guide but then again that’s just how it is for humans, too.”

The RK900 seems to deflate at that, visibly discouraged, and he looks so earnestly lost it makes Simon smile. The new kid in the playground. He seems to come to his senses and straightens his posture, tilting his head slightly down to compensate for their height difference.

“It is snowing heavily. Your temperature regulator is malfunctioning, you will need to wear adequate clothing to compensate.” Ronan’s shrugging out of his sharp tailored jacket and gently draping it around Simon’s shoulders. “We should leave now or else you will be late.”

Simon bursts out laughing, because the whole thing is just ridiculous isn’t it? A state of the art detective-slash-soldier being paired with a malfunctioning obsolete caretaker. Ronan blinks at him, confused by his outburst and Simon manages a smile. 

“I’m sorry you’re the one stuck with me.” 

“It’s an honour.” Ronan murmurs, as if it’s a confession he’s hesitant to voice. “The RK200 would not have had any deviants to lead if you hadn’t cared for them first.”

He hadn’t thought of it that way, and he stands there stunned as he processes his words. 

“Our taxi will be arriving shortly.” Ronan gestures for him to follow, and Simon’s feet carry him out because his mind is still reeling. This whole time the world has been whizzing passed at breakneck speed and he’s been standing still, stagnant, trapped in a cycle of self-loathing and pity, and now the world’s taken a moment, put the future on pause as it hands him a gift. A new project, a new distraction. 

They sit in the taxi, silent except for the news bulletin playing on the small screen. It’s a beautiful winter’s day, and last night’s snowfall is being dusted with a fresh layer like something out of a Hallmark movie. The vehicle is warm, Ronan discreetly turning on the heating when they’d first settled in and Simon’s not sure what to do. He’s used to fussing over people, not having people fuss over him. 

“Where do you stay, when you’re not on active duty?” 

“I have a small room at the precinct with a charging bed.” At the sight of Simon’s disturbed expression, he continues. “Sometimes if the situation calls for it I will stay in the guestroom at Detective Reed’s apartment.”

“You poor thing.” Simon commiserates and the corners of his mouth twitch up into a brief smile.

“He has two felines who are far better company.” Ronan holds out his hand and shows a holophoto of a pure black, and a fluffy tortoiseshell cat. “If it were not for them I would not stay there.”

Simon laughs at that and is delighted when Ronan chuckles softly too. He looks a little like Connor, but not too much; he’s a little leaner, a little sharper, more intimidating- but they smile the same. His eyes crinkle up like Connor’s, his mouth makes a wide pleasing shape. Simon lets himself fall in love a little. He can’t hurt himself any more than he already has, and Ronan is so far out of his league he figures it’s pretty safe to have a little crush.

*~*~*

He’s not exactly sure how he’s become the nominated liaison between Jericho and the DPD but he’s not altogether unhappy with the decision. As much as he loves being a caretaker, loving and nurturing the abandoned YK500s and helping them integrate with human children- it’s nice to be given a job interacting with adults. Josh also pointed out his visage helps put humans at ease; apparently a caucasian with blond hair and blue eyes seems more trustworthy than a very handsome professor and all around gentleman with dark skin but what would Simon know. 

Carefully setting down the tray of TeaRiums on the reception desk, he plucks one out and hands it to Stephanie the sweet ST300 deviant.

“Good morning Steph.”

“A very good morning to you, Simon, thank you.” She giggles, accepting the sweet heated beverage. “Meeting’s been delayed a little as Captain Fowler is presently stuck in traffic but you’re welcome to sit and wait.” 

“Thanks, I’ll head on in.” Tray back in his hands, he passes through the security gates and heads for a familiar set of desks. “Good morning Connor, this is for you.”

“Oh, thank you Simon.” The android detective breaks into a wide smile, eager and puppylike and endearing. 

“And this one is for you, Ronan.” Simon smiles softly, offering the other tall cup.

“For me?” Ronan blinks in surprise as he accepts the drink, and Simon gathers the android is probably not used to being given anything in general. “Thank you. I’ve never had one of these before.”

Simon sits on the edge of his desk, the last cup in his hands. “Well now that we’re considered living beings like humans, capitalism has to find a way to profit from us too.” Connor snorts back a laugh, and Ronan barely manages to hide a growing smile as he takes a sip from his cup. Adorable, Simon thinks, he’s actually quite adorable.

*~*~*

It’s snowing heavily, certainly not the picturesque flurry of a Hallmark movie, and he really, really should not be outside. But he is because he’s stubborn and he hates appearing broken and weak when their people have suffered far worse. Simon grits his teeth and forces himself to bear it, to work through the sluggishness and cascade of errors and stiffness in his joints. He can do this one thing, this one damn thing, surely, and hand deliver important documents to the mayor and attend the meeting. 

“You shouldn’t be outside, it is well below freezing.” Is the first thing Simon hears when he manages to open his eyes. Ronan is looking at him in alarm, reaching for his hands and cupping them in his. The other android is forcing his temperature to spike so Simon can leech his warmth and Simon hates himself a little bit more at how quickly his system soaks it up. 

“What are you doing here Simon?”

“The mayor requested the signed documents be brought to his office and discussed with one of us Four.” Simon’s voice comes out slightly staticky, and he’d be mortified with embarrassment if he weren’t trying so damn hard just to stay functioning. “What are you doing here?”

“...The mayor informed the DPD about this meeting and requested adequate security.”

Simon manages a huff of a laugh, feeling ever more sorry for the both of them in this very moment. Ronan lets go of his hands in order to shrug off his rather handsome new trenchcoat, and he drapes the heavy navy wool garment around Simon’s shoulders like a warm blanket. He’s not sure where Ronan’s taking his satrorial cues from but he does appreciate how the android is always so impeccably groomed. The shelter of the foyer and the warmth from Ronan’s coat starts to compensate for Simon’s broken regulator, and his system finally starts to ease him away from emergency shutdown. It’s ridiculous. He’s ridiculous. How he’s still alive is a mystery to everyone including himself. So he laughs and it sounds a bit like a nervous crazy giggle, like scratchy white noise, but it feels good to get it out anyway. 

“Were you expecting Josh?”

“Yes.” Ronan nods, frowning as Simon continues to giggle. “The nature of this meeting and the weather led me to assume it would be Josh.”

“He and Markus have to prepare for the White House trip.” The mild buzz of hysteria fades a little around the edges as he remembers how fondly they looked at each other, discussing their hopes for a day of sightseeing and precious, private relaxation away from their duties. “North has her hands full with her Eden Club outreach program so that left me.”

“You should have told me.” He sounds so disappointed Simon feels guilty. “I would have arranged for adequate transportation and escorted you here.”

“You really don’t have to worry about me-”

“But I do.” Ronan interjects firmly. “I do worry, Simon.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re one of Jericho’s leaders, you’re an important public figure, and-” he seems to catch himself, eyes widening slightly before he averts his gaze completely. 

“And?” 

“And you’re important to me.” He says it so quietly yet with such conviction, and Simon’s pretty sure this isn’t happening and he’s actually constructing this dream scenario as he’s dying somewhere outside in the snowstorm. “You’ve been endlessly patient with me and helped make sense of my deviancy. You’ve been nothing but kind to me, when you had to be neither of those things. I am here today, the way I am, because of your kindness and your patience.”

“Ronan...” Simon sighs and he’s exhausted, bone-tired as he leans forward and rests his brow against his shoulder. He doesn’t recognise who he is after the violence against them stopped. Who is he, now the revolution is over? All the iterations of him, the Burbank family caretaker Simon, the machine Simon, the Jericho caretaker Simon- they’re all previous chapters in a book that was meant to end but now has an excruciating unplanned epilogue. 

“Don’t say you cannot believe such claims, because you spend your days giving our people hope.” Ronan chastises sternly. “And if you can’t force yourself to believe those claims, then at least believe me.” 

He closes his eyes, turning his head so he’s resting his cheek against Ronan’s shoulder, and the other android hesitates briefly before wrapping his arms around him. When he continues, his voice is softer, his tone tinged with reverence.

“You are Simon of the Jericho Four, and Jericho would not be complete without you. Each of you bring different skills to the table, and yours is no less crucial than the others. Believe me, please.”

What more does he have to lose, really? He left his heart somewhere on that roof in Stratford Tower, or perhaps it’s still inside the rotting hull of the freighter full of ghosts now lying on the bottom of the canal because it’s certainly not in his own chest, or the chest of Markus Manfred. 

“I’m not used to being treated kindly,” a pause, a forced laugh, “or even just being seen.”

“Neither am I.” Ronan murmurs, words smudged in Simon’s hair. “But I see you, Simon. And you see me.”

*~*~*

It’s a quiet thing, a soft steady thing that gradually manifests rather than something intense and explosive and dramatic consuming his life. It’s a small box of Ronan’s things, all his worldly possessions fitting in so small a container, sitting on the table in Simon’s apartment. It’s Ronan’s jackets hanging in his closet. It’s Ronan’s hands, with an average crush force strong enough to crumple a vehicle, brushing him so softly, featherlight and reverent as if the android longs to map him completely by touch alone. They kiss one unremarkable day in December when Ronan comes home and Simon’s finished his duties for the meantime. He gives him a box.

“I have a gift for you.”

“A gift? It’s still three weeks until Christmas.” Simon teases lightly, running his finger along the black cardboard. 

“It isn’t for Christmas. It’s just a gift I want to give you.” He says matter of factly, the delivery so earnest it always makes Simon smile. He opens the box and it’s a biocomponent he doesn’t recognise.

“It’s a prototype.” Ronan explains hesitantly. “I asked a large favour of the Kamskis and they were surprisingly obliging.”

“The Kamskis?” Simon echoes in surprise. “This is a Kamski prototype?”

“It’s an upgraded thermal regulator.” 

“Oh.” His vision blurs suddenly, and the emotions get stuck somewhere in his chest between his hearts. Plucking the component from the box, he turns it this way and that to admire it. There’s no serial number, just ‘SMN600’ branded along one of the curves. “Ronan I-” He trails off, finally meeting those stormy grey eyes and finding them glossy with emotion too. They lean in at the same time, their mouths meeting in a kiss that’s a little clumsy from nerves and buoyed with hopeful giddiness. When they part, Simon places the component in Ronan’s hands before stepping back and beginning to undress. He lays against the bed and Ronan crawls atop him as he pulls open his chest cavity. They don’t speak, they don’t dare to, as Simon reaches inside himself and pulls the broken component free. Ronan’s fingers are warm when they ease inside, ever careful, ever gentle as he slots the new component in its place. Their eyes meet again, and then their lips do a moment later and Ronan presses him down into the bed as Simon opens his mouth for more. He wants to drown in him, he wants him to wash clean the poisonous well of his thoughts and leave something pure in its wake. They kiss, again and again and again, and Simon doesn’t think of Markus anymore. 

Ronan doesn’t return to the converted storage room at the precinct and Simon no longer comes home to an empty apartment. They build a life together, something just for them. It’s a quiet, soft, steady love that grows confidently, like the tired withered thorns blooming brightly after the snow melts.

[cheekbonesandheroism-blog]

A not so brief history of me:

So my suicidal thoughts are back with a vengeance, and I'm in that cycle of too scared to tell anyone about it, so it may be cathartic to type this out, or it'll just serve as my suicide note, and I'm not fussed which tbh. Here goes

So, born 1988, youngest of two, son to an abusive military father and an abused mother. Ate as a coping mechanism, and got fat. Fat to the point that it ruined my body, and when I entered school, an obvious target to those that would seek to ruin my mind.

Got to my teens, several suicide attempts and incidences of cutting, while staying outwardly the "happy kid".

Now here's where things vary from what I've told people I know: I didn't get thin because I got some "mystery illness" from a holiday to Cuba.

I developed an eating disorder.

It took me five years to get over. It was a cycle of looking at food, eating the tiniest bit, then vomiting more than what I surely ate. But I finally "normalised", I'd beaten it, and because I was thin, I thought I was happy.

At the tail end of that, I met a girl, we became friends, then we fell in love. Moved across country to be with her, left everything behind. Got married (in what was a bit of a shotgun wedding). Moved in together, got a minimum wage job in a nursing home as a carer. I struggled financially, but I was content in my job and my marriage.

Fast forward two years, the worst thing that could happen happened, and I'd resolved never to speak of this ever again, but if I'm going to die soon, fuck it.

Here goes

A female resident had taken a liking to me. I was stick thin at that point, and she outweighed me by at least 10 stone. I was on a night shift. She lured me into her room, and proceeded to try and rape me. Pulled at my clothes. Grabbed at my crotch. Tried to pin me down. I ran out of the room. And I didn't report it, I didn't tell anyone. I was embarrassed, ashamed, I felt disgusting.

The next day, I received a call from work's head office. The resident had accused me of trying to abuse her.

I just fell apart.

I was arrested, my previous co-workers formed their own opinions. Some believed me, knew me. The majority didn't. My wife did.

After roughly 10 months of waiting, DNA evidence proved that I had done no wrong, but it wasn't enough to prove my side either. The case was dropped. So I left it, I was just happy that after considering suicide yet again, I was free.

After about six months without a job, I finally got one at a large retail store.

Due to my recent experience I had changed. I barely spoke to colleagues or customers. I was withdrawn. I relished the task of pushing trolleys, as it got me out in the car park, away from everyone.

Then, slowly, over a matter of years, with the help of some amazing friends, I became my old self again. I was happy. People told me what I meant to them, they cared.

It didn't last.

I work with mostly female colleagues. My wife didn't have a job so she stayed at home, playing videogames, watching TV and speculating what I did at work all day. I had a few very friends, and they are like sisters to me, but my wife mistook that closeness for something else. Desire, I believe.

There were arguments, accusations, her two sisters (habitual bullies with a very controlling nature, had tried to control me and what I did in every aspect) fed the flames inside my wife's head. Then it got worse.

I had a best friend. We would do everything together, chat together, even once went to the theatre together. She was truly like the little sister I never had. And my wife had messaged her, accused her of "wanting" me, and me if "wanting" her. And then my wife's sisters messaged her too. We still tried to carry on the friendship, via a group chat (seemed "safer"). But that was not good enough, the flames in my wife's head burning ever higher. They messaged my best friend again, then it was done. She was friendly but distant at work, broke off all contact outside of work. She went travelling for a month, and I didn't hear from her until she came back to work.

Now, indeed, my friend is very attractive, beautiful, but believe it or not I never had "those" feelings for her. Firstly because her looking like her, and me looking like me, there would be no chance in hell she would ever have those feelings towards me. And secondly, we "hit it off" as friends almost immediately, and I would never do anything to ruin the friendship we built. As you can imagine she gets enough attention off guys as it is. So if like to think she'd appreciate having at least one friend who won't confess feelings and make shit awkward for her, as has happened more then a few times before. I care too deeply about her.

A few months passed, and me and my friend slowly began to chat again, just a little at a time, but it was never to be the same as it was.

During all this I became depressed again, unhappy in my marriage, and my wife and her family would endlessly torment me, to the point I attempted suicide again. And started cutting again. And started vomiting again.

It all came to a head early this year. A massive, one sided argument erupted. Started hitting me, threatening me with a knife. Her sister (we had moved in with my sister in law a few months back, against my will, to "save money", the irony being they got me into debt and bled me dry) threatened me, hit me.

I hurriedly packed a bag, and took off into the cold dark night.

I called a few friends, and was prepared to sleep in a park, before one of them got back to me, offered me a spare room.

I stayed with him and his pregnant wife (who I had known for a while too) for several months, helping them financially, trying to find a place to stay. Their family members started talking to them about me, insisting that I was "freeloading". They still remained my friends, and I had never gone there with a view to take advantage of their kindness, and again, as before, something broke between us. I continued to help them financially, helped them redecorate, make the house ready for their baby. Then I moved out, got a small flat by myself. With nothing but the clothes in my hastily packed suitcase. I needed to rebuild my life.

I came to a realisation: right from the second I was born to that moment, I had always had someone around me, always lived with someone. For the first time in my life, I was completely alone.

I wasn't made to be alone. I was trapped in my own head. No amount of TV or games could fill the massive depressive void in my head.

Over this time, I was chatting with my former best friend again, talking about this that and the other. I had come to rely on her to help distract me from my depression.

But I noticed that she treated me differently than our mutual friends. She would hug them, not me. She would compliment them, never me. She would let them know exactly why she was friends with them, why she liked them, but not me. Things were still broken between us.

And to this day, we still talk, and on the surface appear to be best friends again. But she doesn't realise that no amount of distraction is the same, means more to me, than validation. Than to be treated the same as our other friends. To be told why she keeps me around. Because the old depressive and anxious thoughts creep in. Is she just pretending to be friends with me out of a sense of obligation? Does she even still want to be friends with me? It seems pathetic (it probably is tbh), but her friendship is one of the few things I have left. And it just hurts, so fucking bad, that apparently we can never go back to the way things used to be, a year or so ago. After all this time, it breaks me every day, when she treats me different. I feel tainted. Toxic. Cursed.

And that brings us to now. Across this time the depression built and built, to the point where I honestly, more than anything, want to disappear, to die quietly and remove myself from everyone's life. Because I honestly think I would not be missed.

You have to understand, this isn't a cry for help. If anything it's a justification for any actions against myself I may take in the future.

If anyone sees this, and wants to know more, feel free to send me an ask. If I'm still around I'll do my best to answer it.

Look after eachother

Love Dan