#Sometimes a 5 when it’s really acute | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

soraviie · 2 years ago

Text

you assume it's unrequited.txt

━ type: bts x gn! reader ━ navigation

━ about: largely angst, some fluff; reader has a crush but thinks that it's one-sided — it's not

━ pictures taken from Pinterest

━ read the continuation in "pining for you.txt"

━ leave behind a comment or I'll stab you with chopsticks

NAMJOON | The routine itself is quite simple. The rules to be observed are only five — it leaves enough leeway to mold oneself should problematic situations arise.

Rule no. 5: don't accept any gifts.

It's the fact of nature really — humans love gifts. Like corvids, people adored their shiny little trinkets and it is a well-known fact that giving someone something makes them feel special. Adored. But since you couldn't be either of those things, it helped to cut any straying thoughts right in the bud. Hence when he offers to get a cup of coffee from the aggravatingly chique brewery across the street you decline and make a quick stage left.

Which conveniently segways to rule no. 4.

Rule no. 4: no lingering around.

The job is thankful in that way — there's always something to do. Whenever you see his silhouette from the corner of the eye which is not exactly hard — he is big — you flee to safety. If he somehow manages to round the exact same hallway you're in and tosses a hand into the air in lieu of a greeting whilst handing out one of those unfairly charming, dimpled smiles, you follow the rule and as such return a simple nod of recognition, hastily heading the other way.

Should he enter the same room, you're quick to grab anything near and dig deep into a dark corner where inevitably you grow invisible. It's a big company — there's always spaces to hide and you're just another nobody.

Safe to say you never pass him messages or even go near his studio. That can be left to your colleagues who are far more enthusiastic about doing that sort of thing.

Rule no. 3: no conversations.

That is...easy. You think.

"Hi!"

You lifted your head from where your hands were trembling around the paper forms. You regarded him with a blank stare, surprised that not only he'd chosen to talk to you out of all the dozens of people buzzing around the room but also that he was gracious about your lack of friendly disposition.

"Hello," you rasped back, becoming acutely aware of the way everyone is staring.

"You must be new," he remarked, casually plopping down to, for some inexplicable reason, sit next to you, breathing a deep sigh of content. For a second his thigh grazed yours — you shirked away.

"S'pose."

There was a steady pause of silence in which you both just...were.

"You have to write-"

"I know what I have to do."

The finger that previously so helpfully was pointing out at the blank space in the registration form froze mid air. You darted your gaze far away from his unsure, inquisitive stare, tightening your grip around the thin and otherwise helpless paper.

"I'm sorry. What I mean is...I've worked here for three years now — it's just been remote. So I know what to do I'm just..." you laid a palm on your chest — where the bubble was. The bubble that makes it hard to breathe and pressed down on your ribs with such terrible strength your vision grew hazy.

"I think I'm having a panic attack."

Yeah, it was easy to not have a conversation with him afterwards. He must be just as embarrassed as you — what with catching you as you collapsed on the floor just seconds after the first greeting.

Rule no. 2: no touching.

For the most part it's easy to observe. You don't want to be in the same room with him, let alone touch him but sometimes he's just so friendly. If once upon a blue moon you have the misfortune of being stuck with him, you've taken note of how often he reaches to pat you on the back, attempts to carry your things, accidentally bumps into you on those short walks between one location to the next. However, by now you're a professional and you evade all of those damning times of contact with mannered ease.

It is only rule no. 1 that gives you trouble. It's difficult to not think about Kim Namjoon. Not only because his face is splattered across half the world's billboards but because it is Kim Namjoon and oftentimes after long hours of dutifully observing all the other rules, you lay vapidly on the bed and break the one that mattered the most. Too much you think about him and too much time is given to dreams that would never, ever come true.

"Hey, _____________."

You jolt at the sound of another's voice, especially since the room should be empty. As you uncrane your neck from the cramped position by the router on the floor, you find Kim Namjoon poking his somewhat unkempt head through the door. And Kim Namjoon finds himself standing yet again in front of you , breaking all the rules he put between him and the danger that is you. He has no viable reason for asking everyone your whereabouts and then coming here where he confirmed you'd be. There's no merit in him checking the status of HYBE's malfunctioning router but very selfishly he clings even to this most pathetic excuse — if only to take a glimpse at you.

"Hello," diplomatically, you bid back. "The uh...cable is broken."

As a means of an evidence that no one asked for, you wave the plastic around.

"I'll go ask Haejun. She has a shit-ton of spares.''

"We can—" but before he could even reach out to grab onto you, to make you linger around just a little bit longer for the sake of his horrid selfishness, the doors are already closing behind you.

"—go together..." Namjoon lets the sentence finish in the dissatisfied silence fallen over the room.

YOONGI | It should be societally acceptable for one, on occasion, to smash their fucking head against the fucking wall. Though you've turned away from him by now, in such as fast motion there's a definite possibility of your spinal disk rupturing, the disgusting act has been caught and observed. He's caught you looking. Leering. He must be repulsed. You put back the money you've been counting for the last five minutes and with a quiet mutter to a coworker excuse yourself to the back-alley.

"Ah, I don't want to be around that gangster," she cries pathetically, spotting the black haired man at the far end of the counter. Whiskey. Top shelf. A double. The first time you glimpsed him sipping 43% proof alcohol with the ease a child would a juice box, you cursed heavens above — men such as that inevitably acted vile afterwards. Cursing, being loud, groping — it'd just be more headache for you but he was surprisingly different. As if having been aware of the ill suspicion you've been harboring, once he was done, the man brought his glass back, bowed politely and quietly rasped a thank you about your hospitality.

To this day you had no idea whether it was meant genuinely or not.

"He's not a gangster," tiredly, you cut back. Even if he was, he was a polite one. "Just pour him his whiskey when he asks and that's it."

Her lips thin from the nerves as she examines him. His hair is longer now but in her eyes it probably doesn't soften the least bit of his features. In the end, she relents and her harpy like fingers let go of your elbow. Pouting, you rub the sore flesh but quickly leave. You think he's still looking at you, no doubt judging you for slobbering.

"What?" you mutter to yourself grumpily, climbing down the poor lit staircase that led to the reeking trash bins outside. "It's not a crime to have a crush on someone."

Ah, you're a pervert, you groan in your mind, kneeling down the wall. One of these days you'll have to scratch your manager's eyes out in order to get a chair.

You fish out the pack of cigarettes from the apron and in the singular beat between one second and the next, someone speaks right next to you:

"Care to share?"

You scream and almost fling yourself into the trash all while the black haired man looks down upon you.

The first drops of rain begin to fall down on your face and you squint on the automated instinct to protect your eyes.

In his hand he's got a cigarette of his own and you scramble to get the lighter working, cringing at the shooting ache as you press it against your rubbed off skin.

"Here," you outstretch the flame towards him. He hums appreciatively and leans down, briefly putting his much larger palms over yours to stabilize the fire. You hiss in pain.

"Sorry. My hands are rough, I know," he grouses and you shake your head mutely. Jesus fucking Christ on a bike. Even just standing next to him knocks the breath out of your lungs.

"No...it's not that. Your hands are nice," your face scrunches up. "I mean they're fine."

He regards you with a slightly lopsided smirk. You cough and take a drag out of the cigarette.

"These things are not good for health, you know," he shuffles a bit, shoes scuffing against the grey pavement below. They're really shiny and now that you could focus on anything besides his cruelly handsome face, you take in the fact the fact that he was actually wearing a suit. Curious.

"You're smoking as well," defensively, you spit back and sagely, he inclines his head.

"I'm trying to quit. Unsuccessfully. Clearly," he snorts to himself, lips widening into arid, mirthless grin. You think your guts just rearranged themselves. What's happening here, currently, was the smell of the trash leaking into the bins, the cool air blowing a trail of goosebumps up your arm. Your legs are aching, somewhere down your spine there is a yet unidentified pain and both of you smell like smoke and still you've never seen a man so beautiful, despite the grody settings.

"Why you're wearing a suit today?" just at the last second you manage to bite your tongue to not call him sir. For all intents and purposes he's still a costumer. Had your manager heard of you smoking by the trash with one of the most high-paying patrons, she'd drown you in the very bin juice but this doesn't feel...forced. He doesn't feel like a customer and you don't feel like just another person in customer service.

"Are you killing someone?" you tease further, testing the edges and luckily he responds in earnest — dropping his head back and howling a mute laughter into the night.

"No, nothing so dramatic," he chuckles. "I had a...corporate event. Of sorts."

"You don't look like an office drone," you drawl, for the first time actually taking him in. That is, without the leering. As a bartender, over a time a certain kind of knowledge builds. You've seen what the poor wear, what the middle class wears and what the rich wear, and this man was certainly well-off. His suit, though nothing extravagant, is well-fitted and the material is expensive. No one of that stature would ever fit inside a cubicle.

"That's cause I'm not. Say, you don't watch a lot of TV, do you?" even in the piss-poor lighting of the foul alleyway, his eyes glimmer with barely hidden amusement. It plays on the corners of his lips as though he was trying his hardest to not smile.

"No, I don't..." you frown. "Why?"

"Nothing," he shrugs. "I actually like it that way."

"Ah, shit," you drag the last smoke from the cigarette before throwing it away. "Sara always said you were into shady shit. Shame she was right."

"Sara...that's the little girl, right? One whose scared of me?"

"Mmm," you hum in agreement.

"That's good."

As your eyebrows knit together in confusion, he also puts out the cigarette with a side of yet another teasing smirk. By this point, you were growing accustomed to it. Seeing it, however, not be unfazed by it.

"I much more like you. Well," he claps his hands together, the sound falling a bit too loud in the otherwise quiet back alley. "I've got to get going. Will you be working tomorrow?"

"Uh...yeah," dumbly, you respond and the nameless man looks mighty pleased.

"Good. See ya."

He turns to walk away, leaving you alone and befuddled by the backdoor only to lean back as though he suddenly remembered something.

"These are bad for you," his hand snatches the pack of cigarettes shamelessly out of your grasp and only then he deems it fit to make an exit.

JIN | "Look, the love of your life is walking over!"

"Shut the fuck up."

It's 8:30 in the morning and the sun is already scorching. You've gotten off an eight hours flight and somehow you're still hangover. To be less verbose — you're not putting up with any bullshit. And your friend cooing in the ear the second they saw Seokjin climbing out is very much the situation you're far too grumpy to tolerate.

"I'm heading to the forest," you toss over your shoulder, making a hasty beeline to the other part of the shore where the dunes laid quiet and unperturbed. The second you're in their embrace, the tension leaves your body.

By now everyone and their mother knew of the gargantuan and utterly mortifying crush you had on Seokjin. To this day they continued to humor it in the same way they did when you were younger.

"Ahh, look, Jinnie, little ___________ has a crush on you! They even made a card!"

And because you were fourteen and it was a time of great hormones, and you'd still rather kill yourself than ever reveal to older Kim Seokjin outright that you liked him, to everyone's shock, Jin's in particular, you ate the paper card in front of him, growling in between the stiff, glittery bites that obviously you meant a different Seokjin. Seokjin who obviously went to your school even though no one could ever verify his presence.

It's been years and by now you're well out of middle-school but the pathetic squeezing of your heart whenever you saw him, whenever you found yourself in the center of his focus has not yielded. How many years will this continue to drag on? Will he need to be married for this to relent?! With kids?! Dead?!?

With a pitiful groan, you let your forehead hit the dry bark of the nearby tree.

"Ah, fuck."

"Always such a potty mouth."

Anyone else might have taken a glimpse at Jin and pronounced that there was some truth to children's stories where selfless, glamorous princes rode about. While Jin is decidedly not a horse (he could barely even walk as the sand proved to be quite an obstacle), he does look like a prince — carrying a blanket and a small, mysterious bag.

"You get so cold quickly," he half-heartedly scolds, tossing the blanket your way. "Why even come here?"

"You get cold as well," irately, you point out, tugging the fleece around your bare shoulders. Only then you did notice that you were actually freezing.

"I came prepared," carelessly, Jin replies, yanking from some invisible space yet another blanket. "I might be devastatingly handsome but I'm not a bimbo."

"Shame. I happen to like bimbos."

At this point you're just saying shit.

Jin blinks and then with the sincerity of a well-seasoned actor, regards you with a confused stare, face mere millimetres away from yours.

"What do you call a fish wearing a bowtie?"

Nervously, your eyes flit all around his face as you inadvertently swallow from the abrupt proximity.

"I don't know," breathlessly, you answer. "What?"

"Sofishticated!"

Well, good news was that if he kept going like this, your pervading illness will be cured.

"Sofishticated! Get it, because it's like sophisticated..."

You leave him standing there, shouting across the dunes.

"Hey, Ji-Yeong told Cindy to tell Eun-Sook to tell Riri-"

Over the loud roar of the working stove, you attempt to clean your eyes free from the onion and give your friend a good yell.

"GET TO THE POINT!"

"JIN IS LOOKING FOR YOU! HE WANTS TO TALK TO YOU!"

And because you're a brave, self-sufficient person of 21st century you pretend not to hear and whenever you see a glimpse of shoulders too broad to be on anyone else but him, you run and hide.

You know exactly what he wants to talk about and thus you'd rather, much rather, with a smile on your face in fact, chew your fucking toe off. Because as stupid as you were now, you were infinitely more stupid last summer. The summer during which you got so plastered on tequila the night ended with you confusing very much real, warm-blooded sentient Jin for a cutout. A cutout which you clung onto like a mad person and proceeded to reveal that innermost layer of your heart and how much it was devoted to one very annoying millennial.

It took a lot of pasta and drinking to have the confidence to leave your home once the initial stage of wanting to rot into the sofa ebbed away. You weren't necessarily keen on repeating that week thus the running away. But you also think Jin has caught onto the games and is growing increasingly frustrated with them.

Jin wants to see you, Jin is asking for you, Jin is stopping by and so on and on and on. By now his name doesn't even sound like a word. Even so you keep the charades going, praying for the first time in your life that you could go back to work.

The time is a bit over one in the night. For the most part everyone is sleeping which leaves the back garden of the house you rented near the beach quiet and docile. From here you can hear the waves crashing and for now it's enough to create a piece of your paradise.

"Didn't I tell you that you get too cold easily?"

Cold shivers run up your spine and you quickly swallow, whipping around. The expression on Jin's face is less than impressed.

"Well, hence, I'll be going," you gift a fake smile but quickly stop when you hear what you've never ever heard before.

Jin being angry.

"Stay where you are."

He's not by any means shouting, not even raising his voice in the slightest but the tone leaves not a single space for discussion to take place.

"Sit down."

You do and sternly he watches you do so, eyebrows coming together to create a deep frown. You search for any sign of this being a prank or another one of his jokes but you don't find any. Just him standing and being fed up.

"Now, let us have that talk about last summer."

HOSEOK | It doesn't matter if both of you were adults. He was still your student and you were still his teacher. It didn't matter whether he insisted on you or not, you still should have said no and referred Hoseok back to Marina. She was a better English tutor anyhow even if he very much disagreed.

"Mr Jung, please understand, I am quitting. How can I continue to teach you if I'm not even a teacher?"

His knuckles were white around the edge of the table to which he clung to as you leisurely piled your things into boxes. These two years were good, just not good enough to stay.

"Marina is horrible," he complains, the sound falling a bit muffled through the mask but its quality of desperation is not reduced. "Please, you can't just leave! Not with all of the progress we've made!"

A bit of clunky choice of phrasing if you had to say because what progress did you make? Was it the progress of being indifferent, to growing shy around him, to dreaming about him in the middle of all the lonely nights only to then choke on all those fantasies? Because if it was that progress, it would do you some good to leave. Would do you both some good.

"_______________, please, make an exception?" he pleaded, eyes sparkling and you had felt your resolve breaking even then. "For me? Your favourite Hobi?"

With your walls falling apart, you hadn't even noticed how casually he'd referred to you.

"Stop bouncing your knee," Marina growls underneath the nose as she sips on the coffee. Her exam materials are displayed haphazardly on the table before her, littered with large crumbs of her banana and hazelnut croissant.

"I can't help it," you retort just as morose, nervously eyeing the clock pinned to the wall.

12:01 — he should be done by now.

"You're so in love with him," Marina rolled her eyes, striking a bold red line across one student's essay. 4/100. Rough.

"It's my job as a teacher to make sure he passes his tests," you brittle venomously. "If I don't-"

Before you could so much as finish your sentence, a pair of judgmental eyes sit transfixed upon your face in a heated glare.

"You're not a teacher anymore. You quit and tutor him entirely unofficially," Marina interrupts curtly. "So the excuse of it being that is redundant if anything. Moreover, he's a whole ass grown man. He certainly doesn't need someone like you to fret over him."

Just then your phone dings with an unread message causing both of your eyes to fall on top of it.

"Your prince Charming is calling," she states coldly. "Go ahead and pick up."

You don't think you'll ever hang out with Marina after this.

Hoseok 💗 sent you a message.

The heart he'd added himself, chiding you one night for assigning such a cold contact info.

Hoseok 💗: I PASSED! I KNOW IT! I'VE NEVER FELT SO CONFIDENT! 😻💓〇(＞∀＜)〇

me: I told you you could do it and you didn't believe in yourself ( ￣＾￣)

Hoseok 💗: hahaha yes o great teacher you've always been so supportive! thank you! ( ♥‿♥)

Then after a moment comes the last message.

Hoseok 💗: thank you, __________________.

As your phone grows dark, you see your own reflection — the giddy smile, the lovesick eyes. The pathetic, eager nature that is you around Hoseok. For a second you let yourself be and let your hand press the phone to your chest as if the meaningless emojis and hearts actually signified anything other than the cursory respect he had for you as his tutor. Then you gather yourself.

If Hoseok will pass his test, he'll be technically viewed as fluent and as such you will be of no use anymore.

You wipe the grin of your face, slip the phone in your pocket and walk back home, pretending that none of this is hurting you.

JIMIN | "Stay still," you scold him, immediately receiving a pout in return.

"I am staying still!" he whines.

Though you roll your eyes, you don't argue anymore and continue to measure his neck. If he wanted to layer his necklaces, you'll have no choice but to measure every chain's length to its absolute nanometer. If they overlayed too much it'd just be a mess and Jimin deserved nothing but the best.

"Now, remember, this is the bag for my jewelry," you remind him sternly, waving the grey pouch just before escorting him to the door. The night is deep. Ever since you wound up having Park Jimin as a regular client your sleep schedule has been wrecked. Thinking about the wording, you cringe, cutting a finger against one of the waywardly left awls on the table. Had your old teacher saw the mess on your workstation, the old crow would probably smack you across the face.

Hissing at the sharp prick, you cradled the hand with a juicy curse on the tongue. Jimin, who'd previously been seconds away from falling asleep (which has happened. Safe to say, having an idol drooling on your couch was awkward, just not as awkward as the morning that followed), yanks his head towards you with laser like focus.

"Show me," he insists, expectantly holding out his palm so that it can join yours. You regard it with a passive stare before taking a step back.

"It's just a cut on a finger," you brush him off, coughing from the abruptly stifled atmosphere gripping your lived-in studio. Jimin appears to be quite displeased. One of the simultaneous advantages and disadvantages of being so close to your models for such an extended time was that by the end of it you knew all of their micro-expressions like the back of your hand. From the tightened way his jaw sat to the coldness in his gaze — he was angry. Jimin was a bit like an April day in that way — always surprising you. Was it good or bad, you did not quite know.

"Here, take this," you outstretched the pouch, sucking a bit on the pricked finger. His eyes seemed to linger there before he averts his gaze, taking the bag with his jewelry.

"You look beautiful in them."

Was it a low blow? Perhaps. But it felt somewhat uneasy, problematic even to let him leave your studio in a huff. With the oncoming release of his album he was already stretched taut. You were half surprised he hadn't yet hit a complete mental breakdown by now. Just following his schedule as a jeweller made your hairs grow grey. Still, as expected the compliment mellows the bout of his sudden attitude.

"Eyyy," he complains, tad cautiously. You weren't after all friends, however, the borders of the proper behaviour became blurred the second he showed up on your doorstep outside both of his company's knowledge or permission. As far as you understood it, he actually sponsored your work out of his own pocket. You could recall that night in fine detail — having a national treasure known as Park Jimin sipping a tea out of cracked cup and asking you to create pieces for him. How he'd came to know of you, he did not reveal and after a while you ceased asking.

"You always do this," he continues, rousing you out of deep though.

"Do what?" innocently, you blink up at him. "I've committed no wrongdoing."

"You always compliment me," he pouts, scuffing the sole of his slipper against the floor. They were in the shape of large fluffy cows. You'd offered him a change but since this pair was given to him on that first meeting, he insisted he'd grown fond of them.

"You know how much I like compliments..."

That you did. Once in a while you let them slip a bit too liberally which is something you'd sincerely need to work on. Having a crush on Park Jimin, unrequited one at that, would anyhow lead to nothing. It was simply futile.

"I can't ever stay mad at you."

"Sorry, for being too charming," you flip a strand of non-existent hair over your shoulder prompting a peel of loud, disbalanced laughter. "Now, this is the bag for my jewelry. Don't mix them up with the one you're supposed to wear for Tiffany which by the way..." you narrow your eyes at him. "Traitor."

Still laughing he pats down your head, eyes crinkling in that expression of pure happiness that you adored to see so much.

"Babyyyy, don't be mad. You're still my favourite one."

Had you not been so irrevocably and disgustingly fond of this man you would have kicked him for making your heart feel like this.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," you groused, taking his hand away from your head. "Now go. Good night."

"Can't I crash here?" he pleads, shifting eagerly on the spot. "It's so late at night..."

"And whose fault is that?" you arch an eyebrow pushing at Jimin's back to get him out of your doorstep. "Rich man goes home and sleeps in his rich man bed."

Sensing an easy target in your words, Jimin gleans over his shoulder, his broad smirk proudly on display.

"Does rich man have to be alone?"

"Bye!"

You watched him secretly behind the broken, off white blinds of your kitchen window. The alleyways in this part of the town are narrow, only barely could Jimin's car make way. It's no surprise that no matter what time it is, it attracts the curious glances of your neighbours. The old man at unit 4b across the road was also looking in — the shitty blue tinted light of his crap ass apartment makes his silhouette glaringly apparent in the window. You scowl at him and for a good measure throw up a bird before accompanying Jimin with your eyes. Happily he gets into the car and drives back home where he'll be safe. Now you can rest easy. Somewhat.

"Good night, Jimin," you whisper into the darkness where the only other company you had was the ever-present droning of your old fridge.

TAEHYUNG | Leaning against your hand and watching him speak you think of everything and simultaneously of nothing at all. Though it was not a crime to fall in love with your friend, it very much felt that way sometimes. Times like these when you fantasized how would it feel to hold his hand or to hug him. Not that you didn't know how that felt like. If he could, Taehyung would crawl and make a home in your ribs but he didn't understand. He didn't understand the...spectrum of love you harboured for him. From where he looked onto it the hues were all blue whilst you were far too red.

Red, as you discovered, was not that good of a colour.

"________________? You're not even listening to me, are you?"

Blinking owlishly, you stirred in the seat. The screaming ache in your muscles offers proof to how long you'd been staring at him. Pathetic. You shift your eyes away from the mix of frustration and worry in the browns of his eyes and instead let it sit where's it safe — on the impersonal linoleum cover of the cheap dumpling bistro.

"I was listening," you mumble hazily. "You were...taking Yeontan...for a grooming session, no?"

He sighs.

"Actually I said Jungkook was bitching in my voice mails about having to get a haircut. Are they the same for you?"

You think about it.

"I plead the fifth?"

In spite of it only prompting a thoroughly sassy eye roll from the nominee of 2022 MAMA song of the year, he doesn't much complain, though stuffing his face full of noodles, he does ask. You would rather he didn't.

"What's wrong with you lately? You've been...spaced out."

To feign ease you don't dream of having, you snort.

"Look whose talking."

"Exactly," smartly, he agrees still chewing somewhat aggressively. "If I notice, you know it's bad."

Averting your gaze away once more, you shrug.

"It's nothing serious."

"You sure? 'Cause I was thinking maybe you felt...lonely?"

The so-thin-it's-almost-transparent menu in between your fingers freeze as your heart drops down into your stomach.

"What makes you say that?" lightly, presumably lightly, you wonder.

"Dunno," he shrugs, swallowing a bite so large you can see it travelling down his throat. How he had not yet choked was beyond any science. "It's just you've got no pets, no friends beside me and your place is always quiet so it's safe to say you're absolutely dry in the dating apartment."

Your lips purse in an expression of such pure, unfiltered annoyance that for once it doesn't go above his head. Awkwardly, he coughs, shrinking smaller underneath the gaze of your fury.

"Thank you Taehyung," dryly, you praise him. "That's just what I needed."

"Sorry."

Were you lonely? Probably. Who are you kidding? Naturally.

Exhaling into the black winter air, you watch as the miniature clouds colour white before melting into the night. Did you love Taehyung because you were simply...lonely? Could be. Over the years he was the only one who stayed by your side. Even when you did the most to make him leave, so you wouldn't taint him with your...broken-ness, all too obstinately he'd weathered the storms out. He'd not leave you, that was the end of it. Such he promised and such was the promise he kept, no matter what life or yourself threw at him.

As the gust of biting wind rips through the street, you pitifully tremble in its hold. Shit, why was it always so cold.

"Ah, fuck, my ass is going to freeze off," Taehyung curses, coming to stand beside you just outside of restaurant. He still has a soy sauce in the corner of his lip and without much thinking you wipe it off.

You're both grasping for words.

"My hand is cold," he suddenly complains, swinging on the back of his heels.

"Should have brought gloves then," you retort grumpily. "I certainly don't need you to spend all my hand creams. Again."

He pretends to not see the acussal in your glower.

"I have an idea. Friends help each other out, don't they?"

Suddenly, you find yourself not liking the happy turn of his cheek. That smile paired with that particular glint in his eye always meant trouble. And before you know it, his hand is clasped around yours, the heat of it shooting straight down your entire arm.

"There," happily he chirps, dragging your loudly protesting self down the street. "Now I'm warm and you're not lonely. I see this as an absolute win."

JUNGKOOK | Sure, it was hard to be rendered blind in the middle of a busy street as the sky was dumping down rain with terrible vengeance but you'd still wager a guess it felt better to run head first into a pole than seeing...him.

The light of the billboard pours brightly onto the dark, grey streets below whilst the faceless masses rush to their homes, you included. He stands there, being beautiful, being enticing like a whole dream and mocks you. You can't have him and that's fine but why should you also have the sour memory of his existence be rubbed into the wound.

Droplets of rain steadily fall upon your face though you don't even notice them. Not until you've had your fill of Jungkook.

You hope he's happy somewhere in Seoul.

Coming back home, you set the soaked bags of groceries onto the table, monotonously going through the motions of the day. Many, hell, everyone, would probably say that taking a leave from a high-paying job just to come back home and live an utterly boring life was not the way to go but would they also sympathize with growing depressed about the unrequited love you had for someone who was so far out of the reach, you'd officially have to graduate space flight program in order to ever reach the star that was Jungkook?

No, you don't think so.

Laundry, cooking, laundry, watching TV, laundry. It doesn't offer much reprieve from thoughts about Jeon Jungkook but at least you don't have to look at him and be pathetic. And sure you're miserable but at least somewhat of your dignity is preserved. Even if it's the tiniest, barely existent sliver a man has ever seen.

You don't regret never approaching him. He never went out of his way to say hi, he never so much as glimpsed in your general direction if you were loitering around the room. You remember how hard it was to breathe when the time came to adjust his mic on his chest and you also remember how he'd just sat there, disinterestedly scrolling through his phone. On those rare times you noticed him watching you, there was always a distant gleam in his gaze. He was probably just zoning out and you happened to be there. On those even rarer times that you helped him, he always appeared so unperturbed. He was polite but that was it. Just a polite thank you and long, stretching moments of quiet, that was the only real memory you had of him.

In the end, the whole thing was quite embarrassing and so despite it being abrupt, it felt right to hand in your resignation. He didn't need yet another sick fucker drooling over him....neither did you want to be that person. So why not quit. Why not?

By the time it's evening, you're beyond bored. No TV shows interest you, no movies catch your attention, the span of your focus is too short to read a book and you're too tired to go for a walk. Surely it wouldn't hurt...

When your old computer turns on, it makes itself known. Unlike the sleek, polished versions of HYBE, the surface is so hot it could boil an egg and the sound that comes out of this pre-historic artefact could easily pass off as a roar of a plane. It takes about half an hour for the email to load, so much so that when you come back with a cup of tea, the screen is still suspiciously unresponsive.

Seeing 99+ unanswered messages did not surprise you, what did surprise you was the pile of messages, unanimously sent from one address.

[email protected]

subject: please

The skin on your palms grow wet and you can hardly hear the rain splashing against the window with how hard your heart is beating. Shakily you press to open the email, hardly having the courage to read the words. You've no idea why the subject is named such a way but you're partially sure that somewhere along the way, he's going to call out your affection. How misplaced it is and how much he's disgusted by it. You'd understand if he did.

[email protected]

subject: please

Even if...even if the year we spent together meant nothing to you, that the kindness you extended towards me, that the help you sent my way unknowingly pulling me from a pit of unescapable darkness is nothing but an empty void no more deserving of your attention than the dirt on the side of the road, I beg of you to be gracious once more. Just write to me. Just one letter is all I ask for. No matter what you have to say, should it be something as little as one singular "bye", please, write to me. I'll keep you in my thoughts, forever most likely as you've made your home in them.

Sincerely,

Jeon Jungkook.

tagging: @rmstdio; @pinkcherrybombs; @devilsbooksworld; @btsiguess-kpop; @belladaises; @halesandy; @seok-jinnies; @themochiverse; @cuteipat; @ratherbefangirling; @manchuria; @chimchimmarie; @smalliechelle; @koostarcandy; @flitzerj; @royallyjjk; @dreamamubarak; @anti-social-mochi267; @jung-nika-hoseok; @jminssiii;

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miraclewoozi · 8 months ago

Text

HIGH FIDELITY, PT 2. -c.hs

getting back on the horse is hard, and failing to hit it off with the cute gamer guy you went for a drink with last night has the potential to be your love life’s last straw. but when up and coming rockstar VERNON unexpectedly canters into your life, you find yourself asking one very important question: do you have it in you to saddle up, one more time?

( PART ONE )

pair ; vernon x fem!reader. content ; strangers to lovers. up-and-coming musician!vernon x record store owner!reader. fluff, angst, smut. (MINORS DNI). warnings ; drinking + alcohol is a big theme pretty much throughout. mentions of past relationship breakdowns. reader experiences a lot of stress, anxiety and feelings of doubt, reflected in self sabotage. mentions of sickness (acute). wc ; 12.2k ( ~38k total. ) disclaimer ; this fic was inspired by rob + liam in the series high fidelity and is therefore pretty influenced by the show. if you’ve watched it, you’ll probably see a lot of similarities! i just felt so drawn to vernon in this kind of role that i really wanted to try and put a spin on it. i do not claim that every idea behind this is original. notes ; been working on this one for a while. hope you enjoy it.<3

smut tags : making out. some groping. some 'first time together' shenanigans. oral (m rec) & ball sucking hehe. he has a big cock because i have an agenda to push. implied f rec oral. implied multiple rounds. PLEASE let me know if i’ve forgotten anything.

The clock on your bedside table reads somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00 in the morning when you resign from trying to fall asleep and force yourself to sit upright, fed up of tossing and turning between your now too-creased sheets, brain stuck in a foggy, hellish limbo. Your mind won’t shut down. Your body won’t rest. Birds are starting to chirp outside and you can hear them clear as whistles through the cheap window that doesn’t quite seal shut to your left. Your eyes squint in preparation as you reach for your lamp and flood the room in yellowish light, drawing your knees up to your chest.

You’ve spent so much time in your own thoughts that you’ve begun to feel systemically unwell. Your stomach twists and aches, your eyes are so dry it hurts to even blink and there’s an ache behind them that started as an annoying throb, but has grown over the hours into a roaring flame. From the hairs on your head all the way down to your toes, you feel like you could burst.

You wish you had it in you to cry. To let it out. Keeping this pent up is no doubt making you feel a hundred times worse, and you think it would be nice to feel something other than the endless swooping of the spiral you’re well and truly making your way down. Your alarms are going to go off in a few hours. I can’t let anyone see me like this, you think. I can’t work in this state.

You throw ideas around in your head for a little while, thumbs tweaking over your phone as messages get typed, edited, deleted, and repeat. Part of you thinks maybe you could manage. Just tough it out and put on a brave face, because actually, what right do you have to be hiding away when you’re the one who ran out one of the nicest guys you’ve ever met? But you just know something will go wrong, even if you tell the boys that you need to camp out in the office for the day. When you need peace and quiet, you can never find it behind that creaky old door. When was the last time you got a full admin day without being called through to help with a problem or deal with a drama? And truly, the idea of facing the world right now makes you feel like you could be sick.

Sick…

Could you—?

You’ve never enjoyed taking sick days, even on occasions where you’ve really needed them, when you’ve woken up feeling like you’re knocking at death’s door. Sometimes, you swear the guilt that it brings ends up making you feel ten times worse than whatever your ailment is doing to you in the first place. But your exhaustion lets impulse take hold and you’re already sending a message into your group chat with the boys before you can talk yourself out of it, biting the inside of your cheek as the little indicator pops up on your screen. Delivered.

Well. You’re committed now, whether you like it or not.

Not feeling so hot. I won’t be in today. Take it easy, I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Sorry.

You pick your comforter up off the bed and wrap it around your shoulders like an extravagant, well-padded cape, trudging your way through the apartment until you’re stood, barefoot and cold, staring into the bright light of your refrigerator. Somehow in the seconds between pulling the handle and now, you’ve managed to forget what is what that you were hoping to find. More out of spite for how the bulbs are currently bleaching your retinas than because you want it, you pull the milk from its home in the cradle of the door and fix yourself a glass to take with you and put it on the coffee table back in your living room.

Without an ounce of grace, you throw yourself onto your couch: your head rests against the arm of the seat like you’re in the apartment of a sketchy therapist, and you’re wrapped up in your duvet as if it’s a sleeping bag, treating yourself to the luxury of a slightly different ceiling pattern to stare up at. And it could be the change of the room that finally manages to drag you under, or it could be the total fatigue of the emotional rollercoaster that has been your last twenty four hours…

But your glass of milk goes completely untouched as you eventually drift off, either way.

Of course, it’s not for nearly long enough. Barely an hour after finally managing to fall asleep, your phone starts to vibrate harshly against your chest. You tap at the screen blindly, hoping to shut off what you assume is your alarm; when it’s still buzzing a few seconds later, you reluctantly open your eyes, fighting back a sob. It’s not your alarm – it’s an incoming call. Why would it be anything else?

“Hello?” You grumble, putting the phone on speaker and resting it on the couch cushion next to your head. The energy expenditure of holding the device up to your ear feels mammoth.

“Ohh, you sound terrible.” Seungkwan’s voice sounds more taunting than it does concerned, but you pin that down to a symptom of his over-familiarity. “You’re sick?”

“Yeah,” you sigh. “I’m sorry.”

“I heard there was something going around,” Seungkwan tells you. Great, you think. Good to know. Now go away. “Yeah – one of my cousins… ah, what did she say…”

“Hey, man, I really-...”

“That’s it. She said she was love sick.”

You sigh so hard you think it’s a miracle you don’t pass out.

“Don’t–”

“You better make sure Vernon gives you plenty of Vitamin D, today,” he harps on. “It’s quite the disease. I heard it can really–”

“Seungkwan!” You snap, finally, grabbing your phone and barking straight into the microphone. He doesn’t need to know that you’re stretching the truth to its absolute limit, but you certainly won’t let him keep believing that you’re calling out just to get laid. “Knock it off, okay? I’ve been awake all night.”

(You suppose you should be glad that that much really is true.)

He falls silent, and you don’t know if he totally believes you, but a few breaths later, you hear his voice through the speaker again. He’s softer, this time. Quieter.

“I’m sorry,” he starts, hesitating a moment before he goes on. “Try to get some rest, all right? I’ll swing by after work and check in with some food, and… if you need anything, just text me?”

You’re immediately overcome with guilt at the sharp change in his demeanour, and it does nothing to settle the way your insides are writhing inside you. You clear your throat and pull your duvet up to cover your face, squeezing your eyes tightly shut.

“I will,” you mumble. “I’m sorry – thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says. You can hear the front door to his own apartment slam shut and his breaths pick up as he starts to rush down the stairwell of his building. “I’ll see you later.”

“Okay.”

“Hey–” he rushes, before you can hang up the call. “Rest up. Run a bath, drink plenty. Love you.”

You cringe a little, but not enough to stop you from saying it back. Sort of.

“Yeah. You too.”

Nobody could ever accuse Seungkwan of not being a man of his word. As irritating as he can sometimes be, as determined as he is to get on your every last nerve, you’ve never known him fail to come through on a promise.

Not long after 6:30pm, you hear a series of knocks at the front door of your apartment. You’ve managed to squeeze in odd shifts of sleep throughout the day and though your head is still in a mess, you feel significantly less irritable than you were this morning. Cleaner, as well. One of your (several) naps took place in the bath, where you laid there and let the hot water draw some of the anxieties clean out of you to float towards the ceiling amongst the lavender-scented steam.

In the knowledge that Seungkwan’s expectations of you are quite literally zero, you don’t bother to fix the one leg of your sweatpants that’s rolled up before you heave yourself off the couch and go to let him inside. He stands in the doorway with a bag of takeout food in each hand, all wind-flushed cheeks and that brilliant smile, and you feel like your stomach settles almost straight away when you see him.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, toeing off his shoes as he comes inside and lets the door close behind him. He sets the bags down on top of the small table by your front door and cups your face in both of his hands, squeezing your cheeks and frowning down at you. “You look awful.”

“Wow, thanks,” you huff, squirming to get out of his grip. “I was going to say I feel a little better, but…”

“You look exhausted,” Seungkwan clarifies, picking up the bags once more and following you through to your living room as you start to walk away from him. “I’m sorry about earlier, I didn’t realise you were actually… this bad…”

“This is doing wonders for my ego,” you grumble. “Keep it coming. Really.”

“Oh, you know what I mean.”

“No, no. By all means, continue to kick a girl while she’s down. Super classy.”

Your best friend flops down onto your couch with an exaggerated huff at your petulance. You curl up in the armchair instead, bringing your knees up beneath you.

“Do you think it was something you ate?” He asks, refusing to give into your bickering and changing the subject matter instead.

You shrug your shoulders at him. “I don’t-... I mean, it was more of a head… thing?”

He sucks his front teeth. “What, like a migraine?”

“Sort of?”

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?” He asks. “You’ve had a migraine before. Was it that or not?”

“Well, it’s difficult to-... It wasn’t exactly…”

“Okay.”

Seungkwan interrupts you as you hesitate again, swinging his legs off the couch and resting his elbows on his thighs, leaning as far towards you as he can while still remaining seated. He wrings his hands, plays with his fingers, lips drawn forward in a stern-looking pout.

“I thought something was up this morning on the phone, but I didn’t wanna push it because you sounded mad. Now I know something’s wrong with you. What’s going on?”

You swallow hard and cross your arms over your chest, dropping your gaze away from Seungkwan’s very intense one.

“Nothing,” you lie.

“Bullshit.”

“Seungkwan!”

“I’m sorry,” he sighs, tipping his head forward and running his hands through his hair. He’s never been a coddler, always one to prefer the tough-love approach: it’s no surprise that he doesn’t appear any softer when he looks back at you. “But we both know that’s crap.”

You can feel your pulse starting to quicken the longer he stares you down. It’s as if he’s burning two great big holes into your head, laser-beams where his pupils ought to be. He’s the master of the hard stare, and you know he won’t move until he hears the truth.

Maybe I should just tell him. Maybe it’ll help…

“Look, I don’t care how famous he thinks he’s gonna be, if Vernon upset you last night, I’ll kick his ass myself.”

And there are the alarm bells. In hindsight, maybe you should’ve seen this coming; it’s not that far of a reach, and given the few facts that he actually knows, you can’t blame Seungkwan for jumping to this conclusion. It’s quite effective in triggering you to speak up, too. (You think that maybe, this was on purpose. Attack where you’re likely to defend. He knows you like the back of his hand.) In an instant you’re sitting upright with your feet firmly on the floor and you’re shaking your head at him like a dog trying to get itself dry.

“No, no, no, back it up,” you rush. “It’s nothing like that. He hasn’t done anyth-... God, it’s not him.”

“It better not be,” Seungkwan tells you. His voice still has that dark edge to it, and you’re not sure how exactly to stamp it out. “I’m serious. If he’s done anything-...”

“He hasn’t,” you say more firmly. After a couple slow breaths, you clasp your hands together, swallowing your pride. “The food’s gonna go cold. Go grab a couple glasses and-... whatever else from the kitchen—”

“Only if you tell me what’s happening,” he says, slowly pushing himself up to stand.

You don’t assent with words, but you don’t have to. You look up at him and nod a couple of times and that’s all he needs. Seungkwan strides off through the doorway, leaving you to shakily exhale away the stress that is once again squeezing at your lungs.

Once the containers are laid out on the table, food is divided up, utensils are handed over and he’s poured you each out a glass of soda, Seungkwan sits back on the couch. He doesn’t prod you, or ask you again – he doesn’t need to. You know what he’s waiting for. Even so, he allows you a few mouthfuls of your dinner first: seeing as this is the first substantial thing you’ve eaten all day, you silently thank him for the generosity.

“All right,” you say, gulping down a few mouthfuls of your drink to re-lubricate your throat. “Okay. Fuck – you’re gonna wanna make yourself comfy for this.”

The only way he moves is to pick up one of the food cartons and settle it on his thigh. Oh, how you wish you were joking. But if he really doesn’t want to heed your warning…

“You know I went on that date the other week?” You ask, biting the inside of your cheek. Seungkwan nods at you, lifting a helping of noodles out of the carton.

“With the hitter and quitter,” he confirms. “I remember.”

“Right,” you say. “Well – okay, wait, no. That’s a bad start. He didn’t do anything either.”

“I mean…”

“Not the time.”

He lifts his free hand up in surrender and gestures for you to continue as he slurps his food into his mouth. You clear your throat, bouncing one leg so rapidly that the decorative candle holder on your mantelpiece starts to rattle.

“So… it was before the date. I was on my way to the bar, walking down past-... that convenient store. You know the one Chan keeps going into ‘cause he’s got the hots for the person who works there on a Friday night? Yeah, I was walking down that way. Actually running on time for once, and-...”

You falter, sucking a breath deep into your lungs. It causes your next words to come out more strained than they ought to.

“I ran into Jaehyun...”

Seungkwan swallows just in time to prevent himself from choking on his mouthful of food, but his eyes still shoot wide and you think his chest convulses a little bit anyway. His is a name you haven’t mentioned in a while, but he clearly hasn’t forgotten who it belongs to.

Because, well… how could he ever forget?

Your ex-partner. Jaehyun.

The ex-love-of-your-life, Jaehyun.

The man who asked you to marry him after three and a half years of dating only to leave you, heartbroken and alone, six months later because he wanted to travel the world and there was too much that you couldn’t bring yourself to leave behind, Jaehyun.

How could Seungkwan forget when he had been one of the people who helped drag you through what was not only the worst break-up, but one of the worst times of your entire life?

Aside from the other week, it’s been… nearly eighteen months since you saw him last. Almost a year since you let yourself talk about him. Even sitting in your own apartment with a box full of your favourite food in your hands, a sense of dread chills you from head to toe just going so far as to say his name. But you’ve started, now, so you might as well finish.

“…right outside that stupid fucking store.”

Your voice cracks when you say it and you hurry to set your dinner down on the floor to free up your shaking hands. You cup them over your mouth, closing your eyes and taking a couple of deep breaths. It helps enough for you to be able to continue, even if you still feel a bit like you’re drowning.

“I thought he…” Seungkwan starts, putting his own food down and slipping off the couch. He comes to sit on the arm of your chair and puts a hand around your shoulders, pulling you into his side. “When did-...?”

“Yeah, uh… apparently he moved back a couple weeks ago,” you swallow, leaning into your friend’s embrace.

Seungkwan looks down at you and you look up at him, all misty-eyed and drained. There’s more. He knows there is, but now he waits for you patiently, giving you all the time in the world to get through this and to let it out and to lean on him. He doesn’t butt in. The quiet feels worse than the talking.

“He’s with someone now. They, uh— they met in Paris. Just over a year ago.”

Seungkwan finally dares to make a noise and breathes out heavily, so loud that it’s almost a groan.

“Y/n,” he sighs, tightening his hold around you. “Shit – I’m so sorry,”

You shrug, staring across the room to where your record player sits on top of a low cabinet, lid open, table collecting dust.

“For months, I sat here feeling… fucking, sorry for myself,” you say, barely above a whisper. You swallow around the lump in your throat and shake your head. “This whole time, refusing to get back on the horse ‘cause I thought maybe-... but he was-…”

The room goes quiet again as you lose the words you want to say and Seungkwan just rubs small circles against your arm. The problem is that you know this doesn’t explain why you called out of work today. It doesn’t explain what happened last night, and you’re not sure where to begin with that either. Especially seeing as the last time your best friends saw you and Vernon, the sparks flying between you were nigh-on visible.

“I thought I was handling it, you know?” You sigh, leaning harder into Seungkwan’s soft sweatshirt. “Like… yeah — it hurt… but I was okay? I guess. And then Vernon fucking… kissed me last night—“

“He— what?”

“Hang on — no, he… I wanted him to.” You fumble with a thread hanging off the sleeve of your t-shirt as you talk. Why is this all so difficult? At the same time, why does it feel so juvenile to say out loud? “I just… I don’t know…”

Your wall clock tick, tick, ticks away in yet another painful fall of silence.

“How bad was he?” Seungkwan asks when you struggle to elaborate.

You assume this is an attempt to shatter the gloomy atmosphere and lighten your mood a tiny bit; it works, you suppose, because despite yourself, you laugh drily. Not without nudging your shoulder into his ribs, though. He deserves it, and you won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that it does make you feel a little better.

“He wasn’t,” you groan. “Don’t—… you’re such an ass.”

He pulls himself away from you at the sound of your laughter and moves to sit on the edge of your coffee table instead, careful not to disrupt any of your food while keeping himself close enough to you that he can hold both of your hands in his and soothe his thumbs over your palms.

“You freaked out on him, didn’t you?”

He sees straight through you and truthfully, no part of you is surprised. No part of you tries to fight it, or reject his assumption, or even question why that’s the first explanation he leapt to. You just nod, looking to where your best friend’s fingers are currently the only things holding you together.

“Ran out his apartment like the building was gonna burn down,” you sigh, still laughing but harshly now. He squeezes your hands gently, urging you to look up at him. You do, slowly. “It’s ruined everything.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Seungkwan tries, narrowing his eyes at you when you scoff your obvious disagreement. “No, seriously. Anyone can see the poor guy’s got it bad for you.”

“Even if that’s right, you didn’t see his face,” you say. “God, he isn’t gonna wanna look at me ever again.”

“Have you spoken to him today?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Maybe if you explain what happened–”

“Oh, sure,” you snort. “‘Hey, Vernon. Sorry for running out on you like a lunatic yesterday. I ran into my ex recently and when you kissed me, it reminded me of being with him and I got freaked out and had to dash. Hope you don’t mind.’ God.”

You try to draw your hands back but Seungkwan just holds onto you tighter. “We’ll workshop it,” he says firmly. “Do you like him, or not?”

“Seungkwan–”

“That wasn’t an option.”

You scowl at him. “It’s not that easy.”

“It’s a yes or no question.”

“Yes,” you stress finally, groaning through it. “Yes – I do.”

Seungkwan’s face lights up for a second, his eyes sparkling, lips lifting. You’re half expecting him to say ‘I knew it’. Half expecting him to try and be all deep and philosophical and a little bit motherly, as he sometimes does, especially when you’re upset. He’s always been a sucker for a happy ending. But this isn’t a happy ending, you remind yourself, squaring your jaw. It’s past that, already. It isn’t going to happen, you just know it.

“Stop being so fucking hard on yourself,” he tells you, squeezing your hands one last time before he lets go and moves back over to the couch so he can finish eating before his food goes cold. “If anyone can pull this off, it’s you.”

You’re not sure what’s in the air right now, but this has been one of the busiest weekends that you can remember. Both yesterday and today, almost as soon as the store opened, your first handful of customers came through. Apart from about an hour around lunchtime, you don’t think there have been any periods of time where you’ve not had someone milling around the shelves. It makes a nice change, really, from some of your weekend shifts – hours at a time where the dust starts to settle and hardly anyone disturbs the bell above the front door. But this means you’ve been in full customer-service mode basically all day, and you’re starting to feel exhausted from keeping up the persona.

Still. There’s only an hour or so left — you can push through, and when you get home, there’ll be a nice, hot bubble bath with your name written all over it.

The bell chimes again just as you finish serving a group of teenage girls. You watch them scurry away, excitedly giggling about their new albums and you look towards the door with a smile already plastered on, all ready to greet the new customer until your eyes lock with theirs.

A ‘hey, how’s it going?’ stops somewhere midway up your throat, a pathetic little ‘huh?’ sound escaping you in its place. You’re frozen all of a sudden; you and the man who just came in both stand perfectly still, staring at each other like a pair of bunnies in headlights. It takes you forever to register the strap wrapped around his fist, the purse that hangs just below his grip. My bag, you think to yourself, but the voice that narrates your thoughts is hushed for the first time ever, too. Everything in your head gets sucked away into a little vacuum. The only thing left is him.

“I-… thought you might want this back.” Vernon breaks the quiet first. Your throat runs dry. In a flash, the noise in your brain is as loud as it’s ever been and in amongst all the chaos of thoughts and questions and apologies, you can’t pick out the words you actually want to say.

He slowly unravels the strap from around his hand and takes a few steps closer to you, inching towards the counter.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he hurries to assure you. Your heart aches for how reserved and nervous he looks. It doesn’t suit him. You hate it. “It’s okay. I’m… really sorry, about the other night. I didn’t mean to—” A deep breath. “I’ll see you around.”

Vernon lays your bag so delicately on the wooden surface that you could be forgiven for thinking he was handling an explosive. Then, he takes one, two, three steps back, before turning and heading to the exit.

“Wait—” you call out to him, finding your voice at the most critical time, right as his fingers curl around the door handle. “Wait—, please.”

He spins back around to face you as you slip out from behind the desk. His left brow lifts higher than the right but otherwise, he gives nothing away. He doesn’t even say anything as he stands there, pushing his hands deep into his pockets.

You swallow around the golf ball sized lump taking residence in your throat and clasp your hands together in front of you, wringing and twisting and accidentally popping one of your knuckles in the process. “I shouldn’t have run out on you like that. It wasn’t fair.”

Vernon chews this over in his mind but ultimately just shrugs his shoulders at you. What is there to say? He surely agrees, but he seems so adamant to ensure you don’t feel bad about it happening that he just… says nothing. Again. It’s kind of maddening, even if you fully get why.

“No, I mean it,” you try again. “It wasn’t you. It’s nothing you did.”

“We really don’t have to do the whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ thing,” Vernon offers, his cardboard-like posture softening. There’s even a little bit of a smile on his face, you think — but it’s not the kind of smile you’ve grown used to seeing on him. It doesn’t reach his eyes; he looks kind of like someone who has read their cards and accepted their fate. “Seriously. It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” you stress, stepping closer to him again. You sigh deeply. There’s something almost relieving about the position you find yourself in. You suppose this really is crunch time; it’s now or never. “Can we… talk? About everything?”

“What? Here?” Vernon asks.

You glance around the store, at the few people doing a very poor job of pretending to be minding their own business, and frown. He’s right. This isn’t the time, or the place. The problem is, you have a feeling that if you send him away, he may not decide to come back and listen to you. In his defence, why should he? He’s already done more than the decent thing and brought you back that which you abandoned in his apartment; several of your previous conquests would have shoved the bag and its contents either in the trash or the back of a closet somewhere. This is more than you could have hoped for.

You hold a finger up to him and ask him to stay where he is, and though he looks a little bewildered at the gesture, he ultimately doesn’t move. You rush off out the back to the storeroom where you banished Chan an hour ago, on account of his raging hangover and your low tolerance for his whining about it; you’re genuinely surprised to find him working, and actually alphabetising the records you got in a few days ago like you asked him to.

“Hey. Can you do me a huge favour?” You ask, not announcing your arrival and subsequently scaring Chan out of his skin. He jolts as he hears your voice and claps a hand to his chest, exhaling hard. You don’t entertain his dramatics, though. There’s no time. “I need you to close today.”

“Huh?” He asks, still acting as if he’s trying to catch his breath. “I thought–”

“Please.” You wave him off, knowing he’s about to ask about the task you gave him. “We can look at this together tomorrow. You did great. It’s just an hour – is that okay?”

He chews the inside of his lip, almost looking disappointed. To be fair to him, he did look like he was in a groove when you appeared, but he doesn’t argue with you as he puts down the record in his hand and picks his phone up off the table to his right, silencing the catchy tune that was playing while he organised.

“Of course it is,” he says, holding his hand out for your keys and starting to walk towards you. “Everything okay?”

“It-...” you start, faltering as you place the store keys in his waiting palm. Your default response was about to be ‘it’s fine’, but you’re trying harder these days to stop pretending, especially around him. So you swallow, nodding your head, flashing him a tight lipped smile. “I’m about to find out.”

“Oh? Is it…?”

A brief pause later, not before cringing at how predictable you’ve apparently become, you say, “yeah.”

Chan claps you on the shoulder as he skirts his way around you, leaning in to give you a sort of side-along hug on his way. You stretch your arm across his waist and pull him closer for a moment, trying to drive home how much you appreciate this. He doesn’t comment on the uncharacteristic display of affection, and you want to find out why, but Vernon isn’t going to wait around for you forever.

“Go get him, tiger,” Chan whispers.

“I owe you, big time,” you promise.

He winks at you before he disappears through the door and you follow him briefly, but as he does a round of checking in with your customers and making sure they don’t need any help, you hurry off to grab your jacket from the office.

Vernon is exactly where you left him when you come back out into the storefront, hands unmoved from where he stuffed them into his pockets earlier, rocking back and forth on his toes and looking around from wall to wall. You think perhaps he took your request slightly too literally and the fact that even his feet are in the same position as before you left is reminiscent of a puppy commanded to stay, but if anyone here is at liberty to start poking fun, you think that it certainly isn’t you. Instead of trying your luck, you lock the office door and walk up to him, returning his polite, yet slightly awkward smile.

“You’re not, like, super busy right now or anything, are you?” You ask him.

His brows crease and his eyes shift side-to-side before they land back at you. He shakes his head.

“Did you maybe wanna… take a walk?”

Vernon nods this time, still not moving or even pulling his hands out of his jeans. His elbows are locked out and the length of his arms means his shoulders are raised quite some way. He could not be more uncomfortable looking if he tried, but he doesn’t say no and nothing on his face gives away that he wants to reject your proposition, either, so you’re the one to take that tentative first step towards the door. When you do, he follows.

You left the store at least ninety seconds ago and still, neither of you have said anything yet. Honestly, it’s taking all you’ve got not to just burst and let it all out; it’s building and building and your stomach feels tight, but it’s less of a knot and more like a tightly-coiled spring. His eyes are dipped to the ground, incredibly aware of every step he takes, in what you realise now are a gorgeous pair of platform boots tucked up beneath his baggy jeans. He’s at least an inch and a half taller than the last time you saw him.

“Your friend,” Vernon starts finally, pausing before he continues. “Is he always so… you know?”

“What did he say?” You ask, peeking over to him. Trust Chan to start getting —

He hurries to shake his head. “Nothing. He just… kept looking at me. In a weird way, like…”

“Like he knows something you don’t, and he’s not gonna tell you, but he wants you to know that he knows it anyway?” You supply.

“Yeah— exactly like that.”

“Mm. That’s just… Chan.”

“Huh.”

“It’s worse when they’re together,” you say. He breathes out a chuckle and you feel his elbow bump into your upper arm. The distance he put between you when you fell into step outside the store has reduced, you realise now; you’re not sure when, or if it was on purpose. Did he move closer once you started speaking? Was it just so he could hear you better? Or…

Either way, despite being side-by-side, he still feels a hundred miles away from you. This isn’t enough.

“You get used to them, though,” you add, trying to stay on track. “I swear.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Jokes aside, he still won’t look at you for longer than a few seconds, which tugs at something deep in your chest. Discomfort clings to you, and even if it does seem like you’re making some progress, you can still feel unease radiating off him. A cheap laugh at the expense of your friends who aren’t here to defend themselves won’t fix that which you took a wrecking ball to a few nights ago. This needs to be heartfelt and genuine, and more importantly it needs to come out right.

But when you open your mouth to speak, still searching your brain for the right way to explain why you acted the way you did, there’s nothing.

How wonderful would it be for the perfect explanation to just tumble from your lips calmly and evenly, and for it to make everything okay? But the reality is that your throat runs dry as petrol fumes make their way through your parted lips. You hold your tongue again just a second later, sighing quietly.

You’re starting to feel like a lost cause when Vernon breaks the silence for you, again. He slows his steps to a halt when he eventually says, “so.”

“So,” you repeat, freezing mid-stride as you go completely tense. It’s like you’re staring into oblivion’s wide open mouth. “I-… don’t really know where to start. I’m sorry.”

“The beginning’s usually pretty good?” He offers.

You nod. “How much did you want to know?”

“Whatever you’re comfortable with telling me.”

If anyone on this Earth deserves a medal for their patience, it’s Vernon. You still haven’t turned to face him yet, your eyes fixated on the traffic signal some fifty yards away from you and you’re pretty sure if someone poked you too hard, you’d shatter into a million tiny pieces. But, as impossible as it seems all the while you try to get your thoughts in a reasonable order, you manage to swallow your nerves.

It’s crunch time. It’s now or never.

The explanation you give him is messy. Disjointed. But once you start, it becomes difficult to stop: you end up sparing very little detail and circle back on yourself no less than three times. You tell him about how you were engaged and about the breakup, the run-in, your shitty date, gesturing with your hands to emphasise the most important parts. When you start to move again, Vernon makes his steps bigger until he’s walking alongside you. He never interrupts you. He acknowledges every sentence when you pause for breath. Encourages you to keep going when you fall over your words.

“… and—... I guess I just lost my head. But it wasn’t your fault.” You swallow hard before you continue, “I’m… really sorry.”

He nods slowly, taking his time to digest everything.

“Don’t be,” he says, lightly bumping into your side. It’s a very small reassurance that he’s not going to walk away, but it means much more to you than you’re sure he meant it to. “I get it.”

“I—”

“No, like. I get it.”

“Yeah?” You ask, only understanding when you catch the very pointed look in his eyes.

“For sure.”

Of course, it makes sense. Vernon’s young. Attractive. Nice. Talented. He must have been with people before. Hell, you think he surely leaves a trail of broken hearts everywhere he goes. He gets it.

“We dated for like… five? Years. Her name was Nari,” he tells you.

A few seconds later, you watch him start to shrug off his jacket on one side and expose one of his toned arms to you. You’re about to tell him he doesn’t need to air his dirty laundry out if he doesn’t want to when he twists at his elbow; you catch sight of a tattoo you remember having seen the night he wore that black singlet on stage. Two lily flowers blooming up the inside of his bicep.

It’s so pretty. Intricate. The line work is beautiful, the petals shaded with hundreds of little dots. You wanted to ask about it that night, but you never found the right chance, and now—

Lily?

It takes you longer than you’re willing to admit to join the dots, but when the penny finally drops, so does your jaw. Vernon slides back into his sleeve with a big, entertained smile and a little shrug.

“Mhm.”

“Oh my God?”

“I know.”

It’s not that you’re laughing, per se. This isn’t your baggage to laugh at, no matter how unbothered Vernon seems to be by what he’s just revealed. But you do rub your hand over your face and cover your lips, shaking your head in disbelief as a breath that contains the edges of a bemused chuckle escapes you. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to mind; if anything, it appears to give him a boost to keep talking.

“I got that on our third anniversary,” he goes on to explain. “A couple years later… She called it quits. Turns out there was another guy. I thought about lasering it, but… apparently that hurts worse than getting the tattoo in the first place, so…”

“That’s…”

“It’s whatever,” Vernon says, shaking his head. “They’re my mom’s favourite flowers too. That’s what almost everyone else thinks it’s for.”

You haven’t looked back up at his face since the unveiling, not until now. When your eyes meet again, Vernon tilts his head in the direction you’re walking and continues down the street, spinning now so he’s walking backwards but still facing you. “I just mean... It’s okay. I get it.”

The moment you’ve caught up to him and you’re back by his side, he turns to face front, just in time to avoid a collision with a streetlamp. The lingering awkwardness starts to fade to nothing; you can see it in the way he holds himself, and you can feel it in the way you do, too. Everything relaxes. Your neck, your shoulders, your fists. It all ebbs away.

“It really wasn’t anything you did,” you clarify once more.

“So you keep telling me,” Vernon quips, tips of his ears turning pinker by the moment. “It’s okay, I swear. Do you want me to walk you home?”

You accept his offer and lead him down a side-street, picking up a completely unrelated conversation now to purify the air. Before you really know it (what was that everyone always said about time flying?), you come to a stop outside your building. Vernon’s sentence fades away when you stop moving; instead he stills, glancing sideways, and you nod confirmation at him with a lopsided smile.

“This is me,” you say, reaching into your back pocket for your keys. “So…”

“So,” Vernon echoes, glancing around again. “Can I like, lay my cards out, real quick?”

You nod.

“I like you.” He shrugs, now toying with the leather bracelet around his wrist. “Like, a lot. But…”

But. You feel like you should have seen this coming. But. But. Of course there’s a—

“I’ve got some shows coming up out of town and I need to see some family, I’m not gonna be here from tomorrow for like, three weeks...”

Oh.

Well. On one hand, it’s not what you thought. It’s not a flat-out rejection. It’s not a shut down. On the other? You bite the inside of your cheek and look at your hands, playing with your keys to keep them busy. Under any other lens, three weeks isn’t really a very long time at all. You’re pretty sure that the milk you bought yesterday is going to last longer than that. But three weeks… this early into things?

That’s longer than you’ve even known him.

“… and I thought, if you wanted — I could… take you out. When I get back. For real. Maybe.”

Oh.

“Like…?”

“Like… on a date,” he confirms, rubbing the back of his neck. “One where I’m not like… fresh off stage and all gross and shit.”

Relief replaces anxiety on both his face and yours when you let out a quiet laugh.

“I’d really like that,” you say, twitching fingers suddenly still. “Yeah.”

“I’m not asking you to like, wait around, or anything,” he says as he pulls his phone out of his pocket, fumbles with it, and just barely manages to soften the fall with the toe of his boot before it lands screen-up on the concrete. “We’ll just see how it goes. And it gives you some time to… deal with things. Whatever you’ve gotta do.”

You nod, crossing your arms over your chest as he bends low to pick his phone back up, smoothing his thumb over the small scuff on the protective case. It seems remarkably undamaged otherwise.

“And if you’re still interested, then…”

“Interested?” You ask with a small grin.

“Aren’t you?” Vernon asks.

“I—...” You think about playing coy, but when he’s been so open with you about where his head’s at, it feels so silly and childish to bother pretending. That playful ‘I might be’ gets swallowed back. Instead – “Yeah. I am.”

“Cool. Then we’ll figure it out. At your pace, okay?”

“Okay.”

He grabs his earphones out of his other pocket, slides one in, and is about to step back away from you when you do something you don’t really expect yourself to. Something you’ve never done to a man you can barely even say you’re ‘seeing’. You close the space between you and, as if to lock in your words, push forward onto your toes to press a kiss to his cheek.

“Thank you,” you say when you fall back down to your heels. If he wasn’t so dumbstruck, you feel like he’d be about to ask what you were thanking him for; as it stands though, he’s frozen, blushing, and the only reason you can tell he’s still alive is because he can’t stop blinking at you. “For… giving me another chance.”

He still can’t quite find his voice, so Vernon just shakes his head, clearing his throat. (No need, he wants to say.) Alas, his lips just open and close soundlessly.

“I’ll see you in a few weeks,” you supply for him. He takes in a deep, mind-clearing breath and nods his head.

“I’ll see you in a few weeks.”

You see the apples of his cheeks lift as he presses his thumb against his phone screen and restarts whatever song he was listening to when he walked into your store. A brilliant smile consumes his face. It only grows as he turns away from you and walks off down the street.

For a second, you think it’s all very smooth. Movie-like, even.

Then, he stumbles over a crack in the pavement. When he glances back to pray you didn’t watch it happen, he catches you snickering into your fist. He shakes his head and continues on, leaving you to fumble with your key in the lock before you finally let yourself inside.

You overslept.

Sort of. You heard your alarm go off straight away but you might have snoozed it, and when you heard it sound for a second time, you turned it off completely, telling yourself that you just needed one more minute. You just wanted to rest your eyes for a few more seconds. There wasn’t any danger of you going back to sleep.

Twenty minutes later, you practically fell off your mattress in a panic when you realised that there had, in fact, been a big fucking danger.

You were still able to wash up well and make it to work on time, but you had to sacrifice your morning coffee stop after seeing that the queue at the register was going to take too long. For years, you’ve refused to consider yourself to be the kind of person who relies heavily on a caffeine kick first thing in the morning, but today? It’s barely ten thirty and you’re seriously flagging: like you’ve never known what energy is, like you’ll never feel it again.

(You blame the fact that when you first looked at your phone today before rolling back over, there was no ‘good morning :)’ text to entice you out of bed. But you’re trying really hard not to think about why that is, nor why it was such a deciding factor.)

So, when the bell above your shop door jingles and you’re forced to stand upright (a change your back doesn’t thank you for when it has to readjust from the previous hunched position you had adopted over the countertop), you groan quietly. Nonetheless, your tired eyes crease at the corners as you smile at whoever it is that’s come across the threshold.

After a second, your eyes refocus; when you can finally make out their features, it’s as if someone gives you a shot of adrenaline.

“Oh my God,” You say breathlessly, brushing your hair back and moving to stand up fully unsupported. “I thought you weren’t back until Friday?”

“Change of plans,” Vernon grins, scratching the back of his neck. “We drove through the night. I got home like… an hour ago.”

This is the first time you’ve ever seen him dressed down, and hell, does he look incredible. Gone are the ripped jeans, scuffed boots, the leather jackets and chunky rings. Grey sweatpants and an oversized white hoodie (alternatively: the brightest outfit you’ve witnessed him in thus far) drown him, blurring out his usually so distinct frame. You pin both of these things as the reasons you hardly recognised him when your eyes were refusing to cooperate. Paired with what Seungkwan would call ‘dad-sneakers’ and completed by messy hair and tired, soft eyes?

If you could jump his bones right here, right now… God, you would.

“But hey, it’s nice to see you, too,” he adds facetiously.

“Quiet down,” you groan, fighting the urge to run over and envelop him in a hug. You’re not sure that he’d mind if you did, but you also don’t quite know if you’re ‘there’, yet. “Obviously it’s good to-...”

His arms, both of which have been stuck behind his back since he arrived, now move around to the front, revealing to you a takeout cup and a little brown box from the coffee shop down the street.

“Oh, shit. It is so good to see you.”

Vernon laughs, coming closer until he can set them both down on the counter. “If it’s wrong, Seungkwan gave me your order, so.”

You start to wonder how on Earth your employee and your… Vernon managed to have this conversation without you knowing. Does Seungkwan have his number? Did they happen across each other on one of their socials? Did Vernon call into the store while you were out in the bathroom a little while ago and ask? But whatever happened, you quickly stop caring to find out: popping the lid off your cup, the aroma of your favourite coffee immediately fills your senses. It’s so overwhelming that you think you might start to cry.

“Oh my God. You’re the best,” you sigh, wrapping your fingers around the cup and taking a long sip, eyes rolling back into your head. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Vernon laughs, rolling up his sleeves before folding his toned forearms over his chest. “I got you a-... okay, they only had those gluten free brownies in, and I’ll be honest, I don’t know if they taste the same as the normal ones but… like, he said you hadn’t eaten today and I know you said you liked brownies before, — if you don’t like those ones, it’s okay! I can go back, it’s–”

He trails off, cheeks turning pink when you tilt your head to one side and feel your brow go soft. He asks, “why… are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re so cute,” you say, putting the cup down gently so as not to splash your drink all over the counter.

“Huh?”

“You really didn’t have to…”

“I wanted to,” Vernon says, shaking his head.

You almost definitely hear a floorboard creak and quiet shushing sound from just around the corner towards the back room. You don’t call out your eavesdropping friends for trying to listen in on your conversation, though: it barely even crosses your mind. Besides... you can’t take your eyes off Vernon, even if you wanted to. He looks so soft. Like he needs to sleep for a whole twenty four hours, and he must feel like it too, but he came here first.

“So,” he starts, tapping his right thumb against the inside of his left elbow. (The reason why he came so quickly starts to become evident. He just couldn’t wait to ask.) “You don’t have to commit to anything right now…” The silver of one of his rings glints with every tiny movement. “…but, I was just wondering–”

Smiling at him over the top of your coffee cup, it feels like your heart could burst.

“I was just… wondering… if you’d thought any more about letting me take you out?”

You’ve been texting him almost every day since he left. He’s sent you a hundred and one pictures of statues and cool buildings and nice looking food and the sky, and far more animals than you think you’ve ever actually seen in real life. You’ve spoken to him about your strange customers. What’s going on with your friends. Sent him recommendations for songs that you discovered on obscure albums that you pulled out to play over the speakers.

One night after one of his shows, he called you. He was a little bit drunk at the time, chilling in his hotel room with a pizza as he informed you that he’d snuck out of an after-party super early but couldn’t get to sleep. With an audible pout, he went on to confess that he was feeling kind of lonely, that he just wanted to hear your voice: one thing led to another and you stayed up talking to him until he passed out at nearly 4 o’clock in the morning.

To put it simply…

“I’d still really like that,” you say. It’s incredible to you that you can see every one of his features brighten up.

“Okay,” he breathes, unwinding his arms and pushing his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants now instead. “Okay, cool. I’ll… text you later? We’ll figure something out?”

“All right,” you agree. “Now go rest up, okay?”

He laughs as he swears that he’ll go back home and get some sleep, and with that, Vernon takes his leave. You’re once again alone, but this time you have a drink that could only hope to make you feel as energised as he does, and a treat nowhere near as sweet as him.

You aren’t complaining, though, and neither are the two men that miraculously reappear the moment the door closes again.

The smile Vernon leaves on your face doesn’t falter for the rest of your day.

You suppose a big part of the reason you haven’t dated anyone in a while is because you can’t stand the ‘talking stage’. That weird little limbo where you’re never sure if it’s too early to make certain jokes, where you’re checking and second-guessing all your texts, where you can’t figure out if someone’s really into you or if they’re just blowing up your phone to pass the time. The awkward small talk. The ‘getting to know each other’ part. The ‘why haven’t they replied yet — was it something I said?’ anxiety.

Thankfully, with Vernon, that’s not really something you have to worry about.

While he was away, you learned that he’s the kind of guy who just spews random facts at you in the middle of his day and then forgets to check his messages for three hours. Sometimes those facts are interesting things about himself. Other times, you’ve known him to shoot you a text just to announce [ just found out tigers have striped skin as well as fur. wild ].

(On one such occasion, Chan caught you giggling at your phone in the middle of a quiet Thursday afternoon, zooming in on a picture of Vernon’s heart shaped birthmark. This put a swift end to checking your messages while you’re at work.)

[ btw, im allergic to peanuts ], he told you one evening. Completely unprompted, just after dinner time. You spilled half of your glass of juice down your front in panic when you put two and two together and scrambled to ask him if he was okay. [ near miss, dw about it! just felt important haha ], he replied, and your response was just a picture of your newly stained t-shirt and a request for him to never do that to you again.

He can drive — at least, he has his licence — but he doesn’t have a car. He chooses public transport, and he tells you that it’s because he likes not having to worry about fuel prices and it’s ‘healing’ to zone out of reality on the train until he reaches his stop. He tells you that he came up with the melody and two verses of one of his favourite original songs on the bus to his parents house, and one time, he dropped a giant cockroach on a class field trip to the zoo because it tickled when it crawled over his palm and he didn’t like it.

(You later discovered that this piece of information was triggered by the appearance of a large bug in his shower.)

Last night, as you settled into bed after a whole evening of back and forth, he told you that he has all five of the top scores at the piano game in the arcade downtown, and that he has an approximate 75% success rate on claw machines. When you replied saying you hadn’t been to an arcade in about two years, he was horrified. Enough to send 7 broken heart emojis back to back, as individual messages. [ shakespeare himself couldnt write a tragedy that sad ], he said.

But, harrowed as he was by your admission, it did give him an idea.

That idea is exactly how you end up standing side-by-side at a basketball shootout game on Friday night. It’s how he ends up winning one of those cute reversible octopuses — true enough, on a claw machine — which he gives to you immediately. It’s how you watch him hunch over a pinball machine for twenty five minutes before he loses his ball, how you end up tied after four games of air hockey, at which point he calls it quits while citing a ‘cramping hand’.

It’s also how you deliver his ass to him in not one, but two rounds of bowling.

“All right — all right,” Vernon laughs, holding both his hands up in defeat as your final ball takes out all ten pins at the end of the alley. “You made your point. Damn.”

You shrug your shoulders as you walk back in his direction, picking up your glass from the table and sipping your soda through your straw.

(Though the arcade has an entire menu of cocktails, some of which you’ve never even heard of, the thought of navigating an evening alone with him under the influence of alcohol was totally unappealing after last time. Thankfully, Vernon agreed. You quietly think that being stone cold sober has made tonight even more enjoyable.)

“I told you,” you say when you finally sit down. He puts an arm around your shoulders straight away. Naturally, like it’s instinct. Like it’s a position he’s adopted a few hundred times before. “I’m undefeated.”

“We’ll see,” he says, tapping out a rhythm on the ball of your shoulder. “I still think you just got lucky.”

“So,” Vernon says once your leisurely stroll back lands you outside his place, kicking the toe of his left sneaker into the concrete. “What… are the chances that I get a do-over?”

You blink at him a few times, tilting your head. “What do you mean, a do-over?”

Does he not think this went well? Gods, it’s probably the best first date you’ve ever had, but what on Earth else could he mean by that? Did you say something earlier, and not realise? Has he not had fun? What does he m–

“I got these new coffee beans,” he says. “While I was away — and I figured something out with the-… the machine? So— ”

Ah. There he is.

You smirk at him, patting the outside of his bicep and rolling your eyes. When you glance down, Vernon is pulling out his key, thumbing over the ridges down the one side. He reaches for the door, happy to take your teasing as confirmation that yes, you’ll come up. Yes, he gets his ‘do-over’...

…but leave it to you to fall for the world’s dorkiest rockstar.

As he slips the key into his apartment door, there’s a steady pressure against the small of your back: the same one that’s been there ever since he gestured for you to step out of the elevator before him. One of his palms rests over the fabric of your t-shirt and you feel weirdly tingly because of it. He gently guides you inside once the door falls open and doesn’t move away when it’s locked again behind him.

With an anticipatory shiver, you turn around to face him. You make a point to leave just a matter of inches between your chests. To have your eyes soft, patiently waiting.

Vernon’s hands are - for the first time ever - cold when his fingers hesitantly come up to either side of your face, tilting your head up so that he can see you better, unobstructed by any shadows. You gasp at the contrast between them and your flushed, warm cheeks. He swallows thickly at the sound.

“Is this… okay?” he asks, gaze darting between the space separating your eyes from your lips. “We can slow it down, if you want. I just—...”

Your own hands find home against his chest in response, fingers curling into the muscle beneath them. Not harshly, definitely not so much that it could hurt — just enough that it makes him puff himself up a little bigger. Enough to make him square his shoulders as he drags a thumb over the corner of your mouth.

“Vernon,” you say quietly, pressing him backwards. Balling his t-shirt into your fists, you send him stumbling over his own feet before his shoulders find the wood of the front door. A quiet grunt escapes him on impact, but he just holds you closer. “Shut up ‘n’ kiss me. Please.”

Clumsiness aside, the moment he obediently ducks his head and presses his smiling mouth to yours, you feel weightless. Even when you tilt forward onto your toes to meet him halfway, it’s as if you’re not even touching the ground anymore: clouds beneath your feet have you floating. Everything about it is so very different from the last time.

It’s so much easier. Not just for you, either – you can feel it from him as well. Your collective baggage has been left out in the hall, barricading the door, shutting out the hesitation and nervousness and leaving you together, wholly alone, to just… be.

Vernon gets increasingly more brave as the seconds tick by. When you separate for air, his head tilts the other way, lips a little parted, hot breaths fanning over your skin as he meets you again, and again, and again. It’s the perfect give and take. Firm one second, waiting for you to chase him the next. The soft sounds he starts to make are amplified as his tongue presses against your bottom lip: he tests the waters, groaning into the heat of your mouth when you so happily invite him into it. He drinks you up for all you’re worth.

One of your hands uncurls from his chest and moves up to his head instead, threading into his hair at the top of his neck. It feels just as soft as it’s always looked, sliding through your fingers. A gentle pull makes him whine. He draws away from you. His lips are pink and shine with the gloss you touched up in the elevator’s mirror, his lids are heavy, his pupils blown, and looking up at him feels like staring into the sun; you physically can’t keep your eyes open, but it’s so hard to look away.

You tuck yourself into his neck as a compromise, laying gentle pecks everywhere you can reach. His aftershave leaves a bitter taste on your tongue as you touch the tip to a stretch of skin just beneath the harsh cut of his jawline, but the way he shudders and drops his hold down to your waist makes the sting in the back of your mouth all worth it. You only stop when one of his hands sinks lower still and he squeezes at your ass, making your eyes roll back.

He mistakes your surprise for hesitation, though.

“Is this… okay?” he asks, tipping his head back and pressing his crown into the door. Though he doesn’t withdraw his palm from your backside, he also doesn’t pinch at you again. You press your hips backwards, pushing into his touch to encourage him, with this green light he starts to knead at your cheek over the top of your skirt.

“You have no idea how hard it is to keep my hands to myself around you, do you?” You say, slipping one up the hem of his t-shirt as if to prove your point, splaying your fingers out over his stomach.

He takes a shallow breath, hovering with it in his lungs, holding back from saying something. You get there before he can.

“I want you,” you say certainly, pulling back from where you’ve been nestled into his shoulder so that you can look him in the eyes again. He releases that breath and his face flushes when his eyes find yours, moving both of his hands back up to your waist, tightly gripping at you as if his life depends on it as he nods.

“I just… I really don’t wanna mess this up,” he adds quietly. “I—”

When you kiss him again, hoping to further assure that you’re just as into this as he is, he reciprocates, sure. You can tell straight away that there’s a little less bite though — a stiffness to him. He doesn’t relax into you the same way he did a few minutes ago.

“What’s wrong?” you ask, falling back onto your heels. Is this because of the way things went last time, or are you going too fast for him? Selfishly, you hadn’t considered that could be a barrier. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want, you know that right? It’s okay.”

You make to step away from Vernon, unwinding your arms from around him to give him some space but he refuses to let you go too far. His hold on you is just as firm as ever.

“Trust me, I want to,” he says. “It’s just–...”

You stay silent, waiting for him to finish. He chews at his bottom lip, his blush deepening right in front of your eyes. To try and steady him, you lay one of your palms over each of his biceps, saying, “Whatever it is – it’s all right.”

“I just… haven’t been with anyone since…”

And when you laugh, it’s not at him (at least, not for the reason a fly on the wall might initially assume). You drop your forehead down onto the muscle of his chest, feeling his heart’s erratic rhythm underneath his clothes as you loop one arm back up around his neck.

“I thought you were about to tell me something awful,” you chide him through your giggles, lightly swatting at his shoulder. He starts to loosen up beneath you, his own body beginning to shake with laughter too. Those strong arms pull you flush against him, the gentle shift of his weight from one foot to another rocking you both side-to-side. “Like– like you were secretly married or you realised you didn’t actually like me, or something. Jesus.”

He stays quiet for another few seconds, but even without speaking, you can feel how he shakes his head above you. You look back up at his face and brush his hair out of his eyes, fingers lingering on his brow when you’re done.

“It’s okay,” you tell him for the third time. The last wisps of anxiety start to fade from his eyes, replaced with the same look he’s been wearing since he showed up at your apartment door earlier this evening. “I don’t care — I promise, I’ll go easy on you.”

The kiss that follows lands hard and with it, Vernon succeeds in wiping your brain empty. You can barely remember what you were even giggling about a few seconds later.

“Don’t want you to go easy,” he insists against your lips. Then, he’s wallowing up your breathy sighs as he licks into your mouth again, pressing your tongue with his own, reminding you that he’s absolutely not incompetent, just rusty.

When you make it into his bedroom, confessions and various articles of your clothing forgotten out in the hallway, you separate from each other long enough for you to be able to to lay one hand on his bare chest and push him down onto the mattress. He bounces on the foam and pushes up on one elbow, watching as you sink down to your knees and press kisses down his stomach while your hands deftly take care of the button on his jeans.

“Tell me if you want me to stop, okay?” You say to him as he lifts his hips up and lets you pull both his jeans and his boxers down in one sharp movement.

“M’not gonna want you to,” he laughs breathlessly, pushing a hand through his hair as he kicks the remainder of his clothes all the way off and nudges them away to the side. “But yeah. Okay.”

He looks so pretty like this and you can’t help but think he’s even prettier when the first time you curl your fingers around his length, his jaw falls slack and his fingers curl into the bedding underneath him. You drink him in and he watches you do it; your mouth is watering, desperate to feel him press down on your tongue, and you feel a pull towards him that you’ve never felt towards anyone before.

“God,” you whisper, shuffling on your knees to get a little closer.

“Okay?” Vernon asks. He tilts his head to the side and you nod up at him.

“Just… had a feeling you’d be…” you trail off, tugging a few times to feel its thickness in your fingers. Why are you mesmerised by it, a little? What the hell has gotten into you? “But it’s actually bigger, and—”

He laughs quietly and falls back onto the bed, crossing an arm over his eyes. “Shut up,” he groans.

“Yes, sir.”

You lean towards him and gather saliva on your tongue, dragging it from base to tip before closing your lips around the head. He gasps softly and holds onto his next breath, angling his head back further; you give a satisfied hum and slide a little further down.

The glide is made smoother by the spit your tongue left behind and that which mixes with his pre-cum in your mouth. As you start to bob up and down, some dribbles out past your lips so you start to move your hand, too, smearing the mess all over his cock. When it bumps the back of your throat — and on assessment, you realise there’s daylight between your lips and your fist — you squeeze your eyes closed and whimper softly, holding him in place while you adjust before you can take him deeper.

“Fuck— just like that,” he gasps out in a shattered groan when you start to move a little more fluidly, no longer too intimidated by your gag reflex preventing him from slipping down your throat. Your hand and your mouth work in tandem to get him riled. Every sound he makes feels like someone injects lust straight into your veins. When you look up at him from between your dewy lashes, you ponder that you’d watch him fall apart from this angle a hundred times a night forever and still not get bored.

Your jaw starts to ache from the thickness of having him in your mouth and the way he’s restraining himself from fucking his hips up to meet you tells you that he’s too polite to ask you for more. You suck harshly one last time before pulling away with a ‘pop’, using only your hand to pump his length as you shift down to gently suck one of his balls into your mouth.

The sound he makes is so fucking melodic. You think he’s made a similar one before when he lifts into a falsetto, and you’ve never felt more powerful than you do right now. Knowing you have someone with such a commanding presence eating out of your palm could really do something dangerous to your ego. It’s a bit of a miracle, therefore, that you recognise his desperate tapping at your shoulder, but the second you feel it you settle back from him, looking up at his impossibly tense abs and his blissed-out face.

You catch on quickly and feel your features split into a grin at the realisation. When it takes him a second, you know it’s because he’s still trying to remember the mechanisms it takes to breathe. Bless his heart.

“I’m sorry,” he says, pushing himself to sit upright and running a hand through his hair. “It-… fuck, that was so…”

“What happened to ‘I don’t want you to go easy’ huh?” you tease, resting your chin on the top of his left thigh, grinning up at him.

“I’m gonna come if you keep going like that,” he chuckles, shaking his head in disbelief at himself. “And trust me — I want to, but…” He swallows hard. “Not yet.”

You nod slowly up at him, starting to get up off the floor. You stop in your tracks when he says, “I’ve gotta taste you first. Please.”

Maybe it speaks too much to the quality of some of your previous lovers, but his desperation takes you a bit by surprise. You blink at him, ignoring how your thighs burn with the position you’ve frozen in.

“If— that’s okay?” He adds. “I’ve… been thinking about it? A lot. Especially since-”

“Shut up,” you breathe, finally standing all the way up. He shuffles back further onto the bed and you quickly move to straddle across his hips, one hand coming up to hold his jaw in place when you’re in place. “Of course it’s okay.”

You lean in for an impossibly needy kiss, only breaking away when you physically can’t breathe anymore. Vernon’s eyes flutter open at the same time as yours do and as you reach behind yourself with one hand to unclasp your bra, he looks at you like you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

(He tells you that you are no fewer than three times before you fall asleep a few hours later.)

thank u so much for reading, i hope you enjoyed it! as always, likes, reblogs, comments & feedback are so so appreciated. there's approx a scene and a half left for part 3 and then we're all done with this baby! stay tuned for that, coming soon.<3 p.s. no i will not apologise to jaehyun, this is what he gets for making me feel insane. thanks !

#vernon fanfic #vernon imagines #vernon x you #vernon fluff #vernon angst #vernon x reader #seventeen fanfic #seventeen x reader #kpop fanfic #vernon smut #seventeen smut #j writes.#svt smut #re. high fidelity.#*

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mochinomnoms · 5 months ago

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okay so i just read ptm and i'm really liking it^^ but i wanna ask, are your OCs twisted from certain characters or you just made them up ?? i tried to guess some of them but my brain is mostly empty rn :')

Hiiiii!!! I saw you in my notifs, I almost always notice when someone makes little comments in the tags, cause it makes me really happy when people comment and talk about my fics (─‿‿─)

By now I think most people have guessed their inspirations, so I'm happy to talk more about them and explain a bit for each one! I'll go one by one and share a little fun fact!

Yev Quispe is based on Yzma from the Emperor's New Groove! A fun fact is that Yev's signature spell is called “Creature Feature”, which allows him to temporarily turn someone into an animal of his choosing, though it's limited to one person at a time and larger animals require him to use more energy than a smaller one. His uncle is the botany professor at NRC!

Timothy O'Hare, mostly goes by Timmy, is based both on the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland and Thumper from Bambi! He has 9 younger sisters and 3 older sisters, and would regularly get beat up by them if he was rude to a girl. His signature spell is “Reverse the Clock” which allows him to turn time back by a few seconds, 10 at most, however he has to wait at least 30 minutes between each use due to the massive amount of blot he accumulates from use.

James Bartholomew is based on Captain Hook, though he has no hook (yet). He was raised at sea for most of his life among much older and crass sailors, so he has a hard time talking with others. His signature spell is “Hook, Line, and Sinker” which allows him to cast a barrier that “hooks” his opponent to his vicinity, up to a 5-foot radius; if they attempt to leave they will be dragged back like a fish on a hook. The farther they try to get away, the heavier their body will get.

Wynfred Salson is based on Winifred Sanderson from Hocus Pocus, but likes to go by Winnie. He's the eldest of the triplets and is extremely protective of them. He likes foraging and making his own potions from scratch, so he joined the Mountain Lovers Club to collect his own materials. He is very socially unaware and thinks he is the epitome of the ideal human, though most people are put off by him.

Marion Salson is based on Mary Sanderson from Hocus Pocus and is the shyest of the triplets. He's Winnie's shadow and idolizes his brother, and even tried switching clubs but was denied. He has a very acute sense of smell on par with beastmen, so he hates how perfumed Pomefiore is, as he'll get migraines from the smell. Marion would like to become a healer, like his mother, and volunteers in the infirmary as much as possible.

Silas Salson is based on Sarah Sanderson, though they like to go by Sy. Sy likes to dress up in both masculine and feminine clothes and sometimes will ask everyone to refer to them as he, she, or they, depending on how they feel day to day. They also like to eat bugs and will snatch a flying cockroach from the air and shove into their mouth to eat. They say it's because they like how the texture feels in their mouth. Sy is also an excellent singer and would like to study bardic magic.

Aspen Albamar is based on Morgana from the second Little Mermaid, though his name references her green skin. He tries to be composed, but it's quite easy to push his buttons and get him riled up, unintentional or not. He is a wonderful musician, but actually has trouble with magic, as he was a late bloomer. He's originally from the Arctics and moved to the Coral Sea very young,

Tony Lombardi is based on Undertow from the second Little Mermaid, and is extremely small for his type of merfolk, which is a tiger shark. He, unlike the rest of his mer peers, is really into flight class and surprisingly excels in it. It might come as little surprise, but Tony has a big ol' fat crush on Aspen and has since they were children, but has kept it on the down low. Despite his warnings that Jade most likely views him as a little brother, Tony will begrudgingly help Aspen in pursing him since it makes him happy.

Yaqub Fahim is based on Iago from Aladdin and is a parrot beastman. Yaqub is arguably the most level-headed of all the Ramshackle freshmen, and gets along with most if not all of his peers. He does not like Kalim and Jamil at all, as both are off-putting to him for different reasons, so he is not particularly attached to Scarabia as his dorm, so he prefers to stay in Ramshackle as long as possible.

Amara Goethel, also known as Nurse Goethel, is based on Mother Gothel from Tangled. She is in charge of the infirmary, but also teaches the health and wellness curriculum, which has classes that correspond with both science and health, so she works with Vargas and Crewel often. She has a very hot wife who is covered in tattoos and

I wanted to establish a cast of side characters to make up for the lack of the third years, so I decided that new freshman would be the best choice! A lot of their background and 'lore' won't be relevant in the main story, but I would like to write more about them in little side snippets!

Some of them will end up together or with an unnamed background character. Two technically have partners already, but one of them doesn't really count. Anyways this was fun thanks for asking about them, though I think I shared more than asked lol.

#mochi asks #xxoomiii #twst #twisted wonderland #twst oc #twisted wonderland oc #ptm

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rayslittlekitten · 2 years ago

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Grumpy Old Man

A/N: Okay, so this is my first little Joel Miller fic. This was inspired by episode 3 +5. Just a fluffy little thing. Hope you enjoy!

Rating: G

Word Count: 974

Pairing: Joel Miller x GN! Reader

Plot: Your partnership with Joel evolves.

Warnings: None

You don’t think you’ve ever seen Joel not grumpy. It’s his norm. You can’t tell if it’s an old man thing or he’s just always been perpetually acutely miserable even before you met him. Either way, you find it adorable. And when you tell him that, the corners of his mouth dip down even more and at that point, you don’t know if he’s flirting with you or just emphasizing his discontent.

Joel is not an affectionate man and doesn’t really say or share much. You’ve tried to talk him to open up, but he quickly shuts down the conversation as soon as it gets too personal. You never really know what he’s thinking, but you always notice the little thoughtful things he does for you. Aside from protecting you, making sure you’re fed and have a safe space, he also has his own language of letting you know he cares in other ways.

You notice he usually gives you a bigger portion of food, especially if it’s something you like. Food is hard to come by so you always feel bad when he does that, but you would feign you've had enough to eat so you let him have the rest.

Every now and then when you both go scavenging, if he finds something he knows you'll appreciate, he'll throw it in his bag and gift it to you at a later time even though he's always told you to only take what's useful because you should travel light. To him, anything useless regardless of how small it was, was just wasting precious space.

Says the man who found a stash of worn out Archie comic books, which you once mentioned you enjoyed reading growing up, and quietly shoved them into your backpack when you weren’t looking, probably while you were asleep when he kept watch. He doesn't feel an obligation to you nor distrust you, but for his peace of mind, there are some nights he feels safer keeping an eye open.

Another time, you had found your worn down boots replaced with a newer pair. Joel apparently found a decent pair your size and swapped them out with the ones you've been trekking everywhere with for a while. The rubber soles were thinning and the one was only staying on the bottom of the shoe because of duct tape. When you made a joke about them not being your favorite color, he said he had checked and that was the only option.

You thank him every time for the small gestures, but he always just grunts and brushes them off or changes the subject. The man of a few words sure says a lot through his actions and tonight is no different.

The temperature had dropped drastically and there wasn't much to keep warm except for two dinky little sleeping bags. A fire was out of the question, not wanting to draw any attention. Joel didn't seem so keen on the idea at first, but he had suggested to use each other’s body heat to stay warm. This is the first time the two of you have ever been so physically close together, aside from that one time he pinned your body against a concrete wall and clamped his hand over your mouth to quiet you to avoid being caught by FEDRA when a trade between your crew and his went sour because you all were at the wrong place at the wrong time. FEDRA had raided the abandoned, decrepit building that was once an elementary school and everyone scattered and ran, but you and Joel were the only ones who escaped as far as you both knew. Joel doesn't take on strays, but having already been acquainted, the two of you stuck together ever since to increase your chances of survival.

It was a bit awkward at first, as the both of you have always remained platonic and only saw each other as allies but you'd be lying if you said there isn't some tension between you two. The more time you spent with him, the more you started looking at him differently, and sometimes you think he senses a change as well, but it's hard to read Mr. McMoodypants. Whether it's human nature, convenience, or just having no one else but each other, this partnership seems to be breaching companionship.

You're both snug inside a large sleeping bag that he merged together with the two. Your backs are right up against one another which seems silly since it defeats the purpose of keeping each other warm, but he could still be crabby about that comment you made about him being adorably grumpy. Trying to get into a more comfortable position, you turn over and curl up behind him. You rest your hand on his waist and feel him stiffen underneath it for a second. After a few seconds, you feel him grab your hand to bring it up to his chest. His fingers interlace with yours and you press yourself closer to him, basking in the warmth his back is radiating. You can feel his heart slowly beating beneath his cozy flannel.

"Who knew the grumpy old man has a warm heart," you joke.

Joel lets out a deep sigh and ignores you.

After a few quiet moments, you check to see if he's still awake.

"Joel?"

"You're a few words away from getting kicked out of this sleeping bag so choose your next words wisely," he responds, staying in the same position.

You can't help but smirk. He's as grumpy as he gets.

"Good night." You strain your neck to give enough reach to boldly plant a kiss on his cheek before finally settling in.

A few seconds later, Joel surprisingly brings your hand up to his lips and kisses your fingers, his beard tickling you.

"Good night."

#joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x reader #joel miller x gn!reader #gn!reader #joel miller #the last of us #the last of us hbo #tlou #tlou hbo #pedro pascal

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asirensrage · 3 months ago

Text

Saudade - Chapter 5

Rating: Explicit Pairing: Mikey x OC, Hanma x OC, Ran x OC, Mikey x OC x Draken Fandom: Tokyo Revengers Warnings: swearing, violence, threats of violence, murder, smoking, sex, consensual sex between teenagers, alcohol, recreational drug use, mention of trafficking, torture, family neglect, mentions of sexual violence. isekai OC. memory loss. unbeta’d **warnings are not exhaustive** Summary: No one seems to realize she doesn’t belong until she finally runs into her “new” brother, Hanagaki Takemichi. Now, hearing his story, Takara makes the choice to help him and hopefully find her way home, but faking it til you make it only lasts so long when you start losing the memories of the life you had before. As Takemichi becomes the only family she’s ever known, how far will she go to protect him?

notes: This chapter is much longer than the others. It originally was two chapters, but one was much shorter. I considered making the larger one smaller but it didn't feel right. So, at the suggestion of a friend, I merged them. I was at a con today and found barely any Tokyo Revengers merch so I have to update to add my part to the fandom. If only to make myself feel better knowing that people are still here lol.

I hope you enjoy it. Your comments mean the world to me. Thank you all.

also on ao3

fic masterlist - prev chapter

THE PAST

It’s been a week since the future Takemichi left and she misses him. Not just because he was someone to talk to, but the current Takemichi isn’t on the same level. He’s more immature and honestly? She’s beginning to wonder what Hinata even sees in him. If he wasn’t her brother, she wouldn’t be near him.

Luckily, he seems far more involved with his own friends than her and Takara is left to her own devices. Unfortunately, she only has some acquaintances and no sports for her to distract herself with. She spends her time doing homework and regretting the way she’s stuck here.

She doesn’t wake up back home when Takemichi returns to the future. She’s just left with a weird sense of longing and the realization that she can’t really picture what her old bedroom looked like. She spent all her free time there. She should know, shouldn’t she? It sits like lead in her stomach.

She slips unseen through the house that has claimed her. Her parents, these parents, don’t entirely seem to care that she exists. They’ll greet her and speak to her, but sometimes she sees the ways their eyes slip off of her, like oil against water. Sometimes they are startled by her presence, as though they’ve forgotten she’s there. Whoever’s placed her in this world has done a shit job. Old resentment festers but she’s learned long ago to cleanse the wound. She leaves her house and spends her time on her rollerblades, feeling more at home when she’s speeding down the path with her own skill than she does anywhere else.

🏍️

Takara is sixteen.

She’s in a body that she did not grow up in, with a family she doesn’t belong to, and acutely aware that she’s alone. She wishes Takemichi did not have to return to a future that feels impossible to see. She wishes she had something to fill her time with like before so that she doesn’t actually notice how she feels.

On the one hand, she should be glad that she has the time to explore the areas where they live, on the other, she’s bored out of her mind. She hates being bored.

It’s with a little research that she manages to track down a sports shop. Baseball is huge here, so she grabs the basic equipment for that, and she manages to find a hockey stick so that she can at least keep up with her slapshots. The store owner also pointed her in the direction of a rink that had skate rentals. A small thing but it already feels like a relief, like she hasn’t lost everything.

She gets about a block with the large equipment bag thrown over her shoulder when a shadow falls over her as someone steps up next to her. She glances over before scowling.

“What the fuck do you want?”

It’s the giant from the other day. The one who said he wasn’t with the boys who hunted her down before claiming them as she made her escape.

He grins at her and takes a drag of his cigarette. “Looked like you needed help. Thought I’d offer my services.”

“With what? Reaching a top shelf that I don’t need anything from? Or hitting your head on the doorway on your way out?”

“Your bag,” he says, not at all put out by her attitude. “Looks bigger than you.”

“I’ve had bigger.”

His eyes seem to shine at that and she adjusts the grip on the hockey stick, ready to drop the bag and hit him if she needs to. “Let me carry it for you. You can buy me lunch to pay me back.”

She stops and stares at him. “What kind of shit deal is that?”

“One where we both win.”

“Sounds like I lose regardless.” An idea pops into her head and while it might bite her in the ass, it’ll at least entertain her for a bit. “How about this? We have a shoot-out. Whoever scores the most goals in five minutes wins.”

He steps closer. “Yeah? What do I get if I win?”

She tries not to roll her eyes. “You win and I’ll buy you that lunch.”

“And if you win?”

“You stop stalking me and leave me the fuck alone.”

He takes another drag of his cigarette. “If I win, I want a kiss.”

She can’t stop herself from scrunching up her face at the idea. “A kiss?” She’s never kissed anyone before. She’s always been too busy.

He laughs. “Yeah, princess. A kiss.”

She’s not sure if it’s confidence or simply the desire to wipe the expression off of his face. “Don’t call me that. And fine. You’re on.”

Hanma is a terrible loser. It’s kind of hilarious to see how frustrated he gets when he misses a shot, as though he can’t imagine being bad at something, but he makes up for it with how he praises every single one of her goals. She’d almost think he wants her to win. It sits sickly sweet in her mouth, making her nauseous.

When she wins, because of course she does, she’s played hockey since she could balance on skates, she leans on her stick, and stares at him, feeling justifiably smug. “I win. That means you fuck off and leave me alone.”

“Oh it does, does it?”

Her eyes narrow, the tone reminding her of the way her brothers used to trick her. “That was the bet.”

“You’re right,” he agrees. He darts forward, lips pressing against hers. She reels back and does the one thing her brothers drilled into her. She punches him. When he pulls back laughing, she adjusts her grip and swings, slamming the hockey stick up between his legs. He chokes on his laughter and she pulls back the stick. He doesn’t quite fall to his knees, but he does bend over, trying to breathe through the pain. She uses the angle and changes her grip on the hockey stick until she’s swinging it like a bat into his head. This time he falls.

“Keep your fucking hands to yourself,” she snaps.

His mouth is bloody as he laughs again and she ignores him, picking up her bag and leaving.

🏍️

“Hanagaki!”

Takara turns automatically at the call of her name before it stuns her. There was no hesitation in acknowledging the name.

“Hey! Hanagaki, you okay?”

She blinks, looking up at Draken as he waves his hand in front of her face. “Yeah! Sorry,” she shakes off the feeling that she’s forgetting something and smiles. He’s standing there with his hands in his pocket but he’s not alone. She recognizes Mikey, Mitsuya and Baji standing with him. There are a couple others with them but she’s not sure who they are. She looks back at Draken. “What’s up?”

“Where are you off to?”

“And what are you wearing?” Baji asks, gaze dropping down.

She scowls automatically, aware of the insult. “Clothes. Why? Want some shopping tips?”

“Not from you,” he scoffs. “I was almost blinded looking at you.”

“You’re welcome to close your eyes,” she sneers before realizing that some of the others are staring at her in surprise. “Sorry,” she mutters. “I’ve had a shit week.”

“You okay?” Mitsuya asks.

“Yeah, just had to teach some asshole the meaning of consent.” Their gazes sharpen and she even sees Mikey straighten.

“Consent?” Draken asks. “Who? What the fuck happened? Are you okay?”

Her chin juts out. “I’m fine. Like I said, I taught him the meaning of consent.” The tension eases at their obvious concern and she’s reminded oddly of facing not only her brothers but her friends as well. Her attitude fades and she shifts in place. “What are you all up to?”

“Ken-chin was released today,” Mikey says. He smiles as he continues. “We’re going to celebrate. Come with us.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Come on,” Draken says. “Mikey says to come, you’re coming. Besides, not like I don’t have to thank you for helping us.”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

“I know,” his eyes close as he grins. “Doesn’t mean I can’t thank you.”

“What’s it going to hurt?” Baji adds, throwing an arm over her shoulder. She shoves him off just as fast.

“Fine.”

🏍️

She’s squished into a booth between Draken and Mitsuya. Draken has an arm over the back of the booth bench behind her and both of their thighs are pressed against hers. It’s not entirely uncomfortable but Takara is used to being squished between her brothers, especially on road trips. She lost any sense of personal space years ago.

The boys are rambunctious enough to make the wait staff wary of approaching, at least until Draken tells them to knock it off. The two on each side of her seem to be the more controlled or calming influences of the group, which doesn’t say much for the other side made up of Baji, Mikey and Chifuyu. She was properly introduced to him and Hakkai, who was seated next to Mitsuya but dead silent any time she said something, once she agreed to join them.

“What do you want?”

Takara muses over the menu but nothing seems appealing or familiar. “It doesn’t matter. Get me whatever. Maybe something with meat.” She can use the protein.

As soon as they order her curry, she regrets it.

Takara has never really been a fan of curry or spicy food in general. She blames her ancestors…and the fact that her parents weren’t that big on expanding their culinary horizons when she was a kid. She never put much thought into it if she’s honest, aside from the way her teammates would laugh when they watch her attempt spicy food. Now she’s not looking forward to getting this dish…and having to force herself to eat some of it. She did tell them to get her anything. She wasn’t really thinking about the possibilities.

“So tell us about yourself.”

“Hmm?” She looks up, drawn out of her thoughts, as she realizes that Draken, Mitsuya and Mikey are staring at her. “What do you want to know?”

“Where’d you learn to skate?”

“Where does anyone?” She asks, reaching over to take a sip of her drink. “The rink.”

“Where do you go to school?”

She answers without thinking and is surprised to see them all staring at her in shock. Even the others on the edge. “What?”

“You’re in high school?”

She frowns, confused at the reaction. “Aren’t you?”

It turns out, they’re not. Most of them are in their last year of middle school and while some are starting to stress about the entrance exams, others aren’t. It doesn’t really make sense to her because while she’s sixteen, she’s born in the same year that Mikey, Draken and Mitsuya are. She just had the advantage, or disadvantage depending on who you asked, to be born in January when the school term starts in April.

“You’re so small,” Draken says. “I can’t believe you’re older than us.”

“I will kick your ass,” she points at him. “Don’t fucking test me.”

“Can you reach?” he teases. Her eyes narrow but she’s drawn away from responding by the arrival of the food. She looks at the dishes, wondering which one is hers and mentally trying to figure out how she’s going to get out of this.

Until it’s placed in front of her.

It smells delicious. If anyone notices her hesitance, they don’t comment on it. Instead they talk over her and Takara is left to try it on her own.

This isn’t curry. It can’t be because Takara has tried curry before and not enjoyed it. This? This is fantastic.

“Hey…hey, Takara, you alright?” She looks up at the sound of her name. Mikey is staring at her, confused. “You’re crying.”

She reaches up, touching her cheek. He’s right. She’s crying and the moment she realizes, she starts crying harder. She vaguely hears the boys around her start to panic, but she ignores it. Something is wrong. It’s wrong because she’s not herself and she shouldn’t like this and nothing is right.

Someone’s arm wraps around her shoulders and she finds herself being pulled into a chest. A hand rubs her back and she hears him whisper “Shh, it’s okay. Everything’s okay.” It’s strangely comforting, as though they’ve done it a million times. In the back of her mind, she hears Draken telling everyone to be quiet.

When she finally feels like she can breathe, when the tears stop falling and she calms down, she pulls away.

Mitsuya smiles softly and lets her go. “You alright?”

“Yeah, sorry.”

He shrugs. “It’s fine. I’m used to girls crying on me. I have two little sisters. They come to me for every scrape.”

She snorts at the imagery of the big bad biker being bombarded by little girls crying. “Still, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“What was wrong?”

“Was the food that bad?” Mikey asked, looking completely serious. It’s enough to make her laugh. The tension eases at the sound of it and while the others still keep looking at her,

“No, I just…” She goes to slip into the well-worn excuse she knows will make them stop asking, but Draken seems to catch on before she even can.

“You don’t have to say,” he tells her. “None of our business.” She’s not sure if he’s being polite and giving her an out, or he just doesn’t want to hear it. Either way, it saves her an excuse.

“Hey Takara! Let me tell you about the time…” One of the boys calls out, telling a story about their friend and the last mess they got in. The boys start teasing him and he tries to explain what really happened. It’s enough to distract her from nearly throwing up when she tries to eat again. The fact that it tastes good sits uneasily in her stomach. She pushes it away, deciding not to force herself and one of the boys takes it to test and ends up eating the rest of it.

By the time they all leave, her crying is unmentioned and the cause of it slips through her fingers. She doesn’t recall what exactly was wrong.

🏍️

Something breaks. She’s not sure if it was the dinner or Draken getting out of the hospital or the knowledge of her fighting to teach someone consent, but she suddenly finds herself constantly in someone’s company. It’s exhausting and some days she refuses to leave her house, just to ensure they can’t bother her. Not that it’s ever stopped Mikey or Draken from just walking in.

She’s buried in blankets and half asleep when Takemichi comes barrelling into her room.

“Takara!”

She lifts the blankets down just enough to see him before he runs towards her and hugs her tightly. “Get off! What the fuck Takemichi?”

“Sorry! Sorry!” He pulls back but stays seated on the edge of her bed. “I just got back. Well, not right now, maybe an hour or two ago? I was in the public baths with Mikey and Draken and then there was this meeting. It’s just…so good to see you.”

That gets her attention. She sits up and faces him. “Am I dead?”

“No, but you told me to pass on a message!”

“What?” That…sounded like something she’d do if she knew she could communicate with her past self. Watch out on her left in that last game, don’t eat the shellfish at the going away party… “What did I say?”

“You told me to tell you everything.” And he does.

It’s enough to drive her out of bed and put on her skates. She thinks best when she’s moving.

Takara skates down the dark and empty streets, her mind running over the new things she’s learned. Takemichi tells her everything about the future including Draken being in jail because of Kisaki and Toman still being led by Mikey and Kisaki. He told her about Hinata dying in the manner she did and his promise to take over Toman to make sure it changes. The only thing he hesitated on was her future. He told her she’s alive and still involved in the gang even when he wasn’t. She told him she swore to keep him alive so he can keep his promise.

He didn’t tell her everything. She knows because her brother is a terrible liar. He always has been. At least, she’s always known when her brothers were lying to her. They couldn’t–

She forces her thoughts back on track. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the point her future self made. Why was Kisaki so focused on Hinata and Takemichi? Far as either of them knew, neither of them even knew Kisaki. At least…Takemichi didn’t. Until now.

There’s only one thing to do. She needs to talk to Hinata.

🏍️

It’s only when she’s outside the girl’s apartment building that she realizes how late it is. It’s not like she can throw rocks at her window to get her attention. She stands there, staring at the building before it occurs how creepy she looks and she goes to sit down on a ledge so she can figure out what to do.

She calls Takemichi, but her brother must be knocked out because he’s not answering. Muttering how useless he is under her breath, she searches her contacts for another answer. She doesn’t have Hina or even Emma, but she does have a bunch of the boys who have been following her around. Baji and Mitsuya are out. Neither of them are likely to have Hina’s number. The only one she can think of might be Emma and the only way she’s going to get her number is through her brother.

Takara is already tired, but if she’s going to help Takemichi, she needs the info. She’s going to have to call Mikey and deal with the fact that she’s been avoiding them. She half hopes he’s asleep so she doesn’t have to listen to him whine, or that Emma’s right next to him. Still, she presses his contact and waits.

“Yeah?”

“Mikey, it’s Takara.”

“Who? Do we have a friend named Takara?” she hears him ask someone on his side. “Think we remember one…”

“Okay okay,” she calls out. “I’m sorry!”

“Hmm..”

“Oh my god,” she mutters to herself. “Will it help if I promise not to avoid you guys anymore?”

“Takara! I remember now!”

“Of course you do. Look, can I have Emma’s number?”

“Emma? What do you want with Emma?”

“I’m outside Hina’s place because I wanted to talk to her, but it’s late so I can’t go to the door and don’t have her number.”

There’s a moment of silence before he finally responds. “Takara, do you know what time it is?”

“I’m aware, Mikey. Can I have her number? Please?”

“Stay there.” He hangs up on her.

“What the fuck,” she stares at the phone for a moment. Not only does she get pounced on by a time-travelling brother, but she’s pulled out of her bed because she can’t think sitting still and now she’s getting hung up on. Mentally cursing everyone who’s ever been a problem for her, including whatever higher powers dropped her into this role, Takara sits and waits.

She considers practising learning to grind on the edge of the ledge, but considering it’s dark and she’s more than likely going to wipe out, she refrains. She doesn’t want to wake anyone up at this hour. So she sits, fiddling with her laces and using the time to double-check the wheels on her blades.

Not even ten minutes pass when she hears the sound of a motorcycle. Takara looks up at the noise and sighs. Mikey parks the motorcycle before striding towards her. Somehow, he manages to look confident and bored all at once, as though she’s dragged him from his bed to come rescue her.

She skates over to him, meeting him halfway. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s late. You shouldn’t be here alone, Takara.”

There’s something about the way he says it. He doesn’t sound like the irritated, teasing boy she knows. He sounds like Takemichi describes him when he talks about their gang meetings.

“You didn’t have to come, Mikey. I just needed a number.” It was unusual to see him alone. She half expected Draken to appear, irritated at Mikey leaving him behind. No one comes though.

“You can have it, but I can’t let Takemitchy’s sister be out here alone. Where is your brother?”

“Asleep?” Takara shrugs. “He’s not answering his phone.”

“Come. Ride with me.”

“I’m busy,” Takara says, looking at him dryly. “Are you going to give me Emma’s number or not?”

“You’re not contacting Hina now. She’s asleep. Emma’s asleep. Get on my bike. I’ll give you the number and you can deal with this tomorrow. When they’re awake.”

She skates side to side, considering his words. “Give me the number and I’ll go home.”

He stares at her for a long minute. “After.” There’s something in his eyes that warns her not to argue. It’s a rare look on him, at least that she’s seen so far.

She crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m wearing my blades. It’s not easy to ride with them on.”

He shrugs, “Take them off.”

“And only wear socks on your bike?” She rolls her eyes when he just stares at her. “Fuck, fine.” He grabs her wrist and pulls her back towards his motorcycle. She lets him drag her, moving her feet only when necessary to fix her footing to make sure she doesn’t trip. She sits on his bike, leaning down and unlacing her rollerblades. She nearly topples both her and the bike over as she’s pulling one of them off. Mikey grabs the bike, keeping it steady.

Takara ties the laces together and tries not to wince as her feet quickly get cold. She hangs the rollerblades around the back of her neck, letting them rest just under her arms. It’s not going to be comfortable, but since Mikey has basically demanded she comply, he could deal with them digging into his back for all she cared.

Mikey drives like a maniac. She thought Baji was bad in his race to make sure his friend was okay, but there’s no reason for Mikey to be speeding the way he is and weaving between cars. She’s tempted to let go, to see if she can hold herself up with her legs and just feel the wind blow past her. She almost feels free like this, like she’s not pretending to be someone else. She can forget that she’s not meant to be here.

When he finally slows and pulls up by her house, she lets go. She sits there for a moment, trying to decide if the best choice is to just run for it in her bare socks or untie her blades and shove her feet back in. Mikey doesn’t move.

“You gonna give me Emma’s number or what?”

“Why do you have to talk to Hinata so bad?” He turns slightly to see her.

“Girl stuff,” she says. It’s not like she can tell him she’s trying to stop a future where her brother keeps almost getting killed.

He pulls out his phone and after a moment, she feels hers buzz in her pocket. “I texted it,” he says. “Don’t do this again, okay, Kara-chan?”

“Don’t call me that,” she glares at him before making her decision. “Thanks for the ride!” She awkwardly hops off the bike before running to her house, silently praying that her parents are fast asleep and none the wiser to her excursion.

She hears Mikey drive off once she’s actually in her house and Takara does her best to silently put down her blades and creep to her bedroom. She doesn’t know why Mikey came to drive her home, or why he was so insistent about it. Especially since she has been avoiding them since she cried in front of all of them. Thankfully, no one’s told Takemichi about it, or if they have, it was the old one…not hers. She falls back on her bed and pulls out her phone, adding Emma’s number to her contacts. Whatever. She’ll deal with it later. She has more important things to worry about.

🏍️

“Kisaki Tetta?” Hinata blinks in surprise, taking a sip of her drink. “Yeah, I know him.”

Takara perks up and tries to squash the excitement she feels in possibly getting this figured out. “Oh yeah?”

“We were in cram school together,” Hinata says. “Haven't seen him this year but he’s always been really smart. He was doing math equations that were far ahead of what we were taught.”

That…fits with the little Takara knows of the future and the way Takemichi has yet to avoid his own fate or Hina’s. He would have to be intelligent to be able to plan the things Takemichi heard from Draken and even herself in the future. It makes this more dangerous. Takara isn’t intelligent in the same way, but she knows how to create a strategy based on the way people play, she knows how to use what she has to gain the advantage. It’s not the same as planning a play in hockey, but she’ll figure it out. She has to.

“He doesn’t attend cram school anymore?” she asks, fidgeting with the straw of her cup.

“No,” Hinata answers. “Why do you ask? Did you meet him?”

“Not that I know of,” Takara answers honestly. “Takemichi told me he joined Toman, that he’s a new captain.”

“So why did you ask me about him?”

Takara shrugs, leaning into the nonchalance she used to use on her brothers whenever she wanted something. “I figured I’d ask everyone I know. Someone was bound to know something. Besides, I want to know who my brother is around. Toman is alright, but you never know what might slip through the cracks.”

“Where is Takemichi?” Hinata asks, sounding sweet. “I haven’t seen him all day.”

Takemichi is on some sort of quest to drag Baji back to Toman. That also doesn’t make sense to Takara because she’s been around Baji and the others. They got along like a well-oiled machine, like a team that has spent days practicing together. His leaving with no explanation except that he doesn’t want to be involved anymore doesn’t make sense. It makes her regret avoiding them because clearly, she missed something important.

“Who knows,” she says. “Probably doing something stupid with his friends.”

Hinata giggles at that. “We’ve never really talked before,” she said. “I was a little nervous when you texted me.”

“You were?”

“Yeah, I mean, you’re a little scary.”

Takara stares at the younger girl. “What? Really?”

Hinata smiles. “You’re really cool, especially with your skating, but you always seemed…alone. I’m glad I’m getting to know you.”

Well, that sounds depressing. Takara isn’t sure how to take that, she’s never really been alone her entire life. She’s always been busy with her teams or her family. Now though all she really has is Takemichi and when he’s not his future self, he’s gone most of the time.

“Me too,” she finally says, smiling back. “So…you and Kisaki are just friends?”

Hinata looks a little surprised by the way Takara brings the conversation right back to where they started. “Yeah, we were just friends. I admired him though, he was so smart. He always seemed so shy.”

Between what she knows about him from her brother, and the way Hinata remembers him, triggers something in her memory. Takara thinks back to her brothers and the way one of their friends hung around. He was a strange one and lingered around her the way she knew he shouldn’t. She had only told her brother when he said something he shouldn’t have. Her brothers came home with bloodied fists and she never saw him again. “Do you think he ever had a crush on you?”

“What?” Hinata laughs. “No! We were friends!”

“Okay,” Takara says, forcing herself to laugh. She doesn’t believe it. No one murders someone repeatedly if they are just friends. At least not on his side. For a moment it occurs to her just how strange the situation is. What is her life coming to?

“Takara?”

She blinks back in focus, smiling at Hinata. “Sorry. It was a long night.”

“You sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about me, Hinata. I’ll be fine.”

🏍️

It’s by complete accident that she runs into Baji.

She’s skating down the street, ignoring the glares some people send her way when she nearly crashes him as he exits a store.

“Woah!” He catches her before she falls when she tries to dodge out of the way to keep herself from injuring him. He lets go as soon as she’s standing. “Takara?”

“Oh, hey Baji,” She glances around but there’s no one else around. “How’s it going?” She shifts her feet back and forth, keeping herself standing.

He frowns slightly but it looks a little forced. “What are you doing?”

“What?”

“I’m not part of Toman anymore. Why are you talking to me?”

“Why are you talking to me?” she snaps back automatically. “I’m not part of Toman, what the fuck do I care if you are or not.”

“Really?” he grins. “Because your brother has been demanding I return.”

“I don’t control him,” she says with a shrug.

“So you’re not going to try to convince me to go back?” he looks like he doesn’t believe her.

“No offence, but I have better things to do with my time.” That’s a lie, but he doesn’t need to know that. “You must have your reasons for changing teams. People usually do.”

He looks like he doesn’t quite believe her. “You don’t care?”

“Should I?”

“That’s her, Officer!”

Takara looks to the side, seeing an older woman pointing towards her. The police officer standing next to her is staring towards Takara. “Shit.” She’s been told that skating in public places is a disturbance but she’s ignored it. She can’t get in trouble if they can’t catch her.

Baji grins at her, sharp and wide. His concern seems forgotten as he grabs her hand and pulls her as he takes off. She hears someone yell for them to stop but she lets him drag her. He knows the area better than she does, even with all her wandering.

By the time they stop, they’re both laughing hysterically. They managed to ditch the cop but didn’t pause until the trail of people yelling after them faded and they were left alone in an alleyway off of a park.

Once they stopped, Baji was leaning against a wall and Takara moved back and forth in place.

“Thanks,” she says once they catch their breath.

“Nah,” he tilts his head back and rests it against the stone. “Thank you. Been a while since I laughed like that.”

“That’s sad.” She says it without thinking.

“Ha!” he nods. “Yeah, it is.” He falls silent and Takara is content to wait. She’s not about to dive back into public this soon after being chased by the police. They’re likely still looking for her. “I don’t regret my choice.”

“Huh? What choice?”

“To leave Toman.” He looks over at her. “It’s for the best.”

“Okay?” Takara shrugs. She’s not here to judge him or demand he return. That’s apparently Takemichi’s job. She makes a mental note to go talk to her brother and figure out what his plan is. She was half asleep and focused on the fact that she’s still here in the future that she may have tuned him out a little…she doesn’t remember hearing about any plans except that he was going to get Baji back.

He looks at her carefully and she lets the silence fall as he seems to weigh his options. She takes the chance to practice skating on one foot, keeping her core tight and her balance steady.

“I’m trying to save them.”

Takara looks up, suddenly interested. “Save who?”

“My friends. All of them. I’m doing this for a reason. I have a plan.”

“Is it a good one?” she can’t help but ask.

“It’ll work,” he nods, mostly to himself.

“That’s not what I asked,” she says, taking note of the way he’s not answering. He doesn’t respond and Takara doesn’t push. Her brother used to be the same way. Always had to do his own thing and never wanted an opinion until it blew up in his face. Not…Takemichi. Her other one. One of them.

She stops moving. She knows their names. She does. They were some of her first words but they’re not…they’re not coming to her. It’s like they’re on the tip of her tongue but she can’t seem to grasp it.

“-kara?” Baji steps toward her, drawn out of his planned monologue. “Hey. You okay?” It’s not the first time he’s seen her drift off in thought, face paling as tears build in her eyes.

Her gaze snaps to him as the weight drops in her stomach at the realization that she can’t remember her brothers’ names. “I have to go.”

She bolts. Baji runs after her, yelling for her to stop, but Takara is on wheels and moves like she was born on them. She speeds up, weaving around people with skill she doesn’t often show as she succumbs to the desire to run.

Something is wrong. It’s so fucking wrong that she can barely breathe from the weight on her chest and the adrenaline coursing through her veins. She runs over all the names she knows, ones that fit her old life and the person she used to be, but nothing feels like it fits. None of them sound right coming from her lips and she falls to her knees, barely aware of the way her landing scrapes open the skin. She bleeds, on the pavement and in her soul.

Takara doesn’t belong here and every moment is a reminder…except that things keep escaping her. Nothing is as bad as this. Her brothers taught her to skate, they terrorized her and cheered her on and the three of them ran circles around their parents. They are a part of her, down to the DNA they share….

She throws up, heaving the remains of her lunch as her body feels like it’s collapsing inward. She doesn’t share their DNA anymore. She’s not herself. Takara is stuck in a body that shouldn’t exist and playing a role that was cut out just for her. She doesn’t know why. She doesn’t know what happened or if there’s a reason…but she’s losing herself. She’s losing everything.

She only moves when she hears someone shout at her and threaten to call the police. It’s automatic. Takara is only half aware of where she’s going, numb to the world as she goes through the motions to go home. She wants to go to bed. She wants to crawl in and never come out until everything returns to normal. Until she’s back where she belongs.

There’s no car in the driveway and she silently prays that no one is home so she doesn’t have to explain why she feels like shit. She takes off her rollerblades outside the door and creeps in. She makes it as far as the living room doorway before her name is called out. Takara turns at Takemichi’s voice and stops at the sight of the stranger in her home. The boy next to Takemichi is bleach blond and covered in bandages. He looks like he had the shit beat out of him.

Her mouth opens before she can stop herself. “What the fuck happened to you?”

The grief at the loss of a name slips to the back of her mind, forgotten as her brother introduces her to his new friend, Chifuyu.

tag list: @raith-way @zeleniafic @veetlegeuse @chickensarentcheap @residentdormouse

@themaradwrites @kingsmakers @thatmagickjuju @awkwardchick87

tr tag: @mitsuwuyaa @blackfire2013 @bleach-your-panties @reiners-milkbiddies

saudade tag: @thisbicc

network tag: @pixelcafe-network

#fic: saudade #oc: takara #tokyo revengers fic #isekai fic #tokyo revengers oc #tokyo revengers fanfiction #mikey sano x oc #sano mikey x oc #haitani ran x oc #hanma shuji x oc

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nrdmssgs · 6 months ago

Text

The dropouts (part 3)

Masterlist

Part 1 I Part 2 I you are here I Part 4 I Part 5 I Part 6

Genre: Angst, hurt/comfort, action, slow burn.

Pairing: Olga 'Zhar' Samoilova (OC) x Nikto

Summary: Nikto accidentally finds his way into Chimera

TWs: This whole series will be revolving around a person living with an acute dissociative disorder. Mention of an act of self harming. Swearing.

Weeks of an aimless wandering around turn into months. Of course Nikto is still much present in every major KorTac operation, he even keeps signing for private gigs, still going with the flow. But he is constantly somewhere else, deep in his thoughts. Sometimes he replays his last meeting with Zhar for hours, sometimes he just drowns in almost rhetorical questions.

What was that he wanted from her? Is there anything, people like them even can share with each other?

On rare occasions, their paths with the Chimera cross. Even more rarely does Nikto see their second in command. Each time she’s on the move elsewhere, surrounded by her men, in the middle of a conversation, too busy to notice him. He himself doesn’t help it, keeping a good distance between them, wanting to see Zhar, but not daring to stand in her way.

Scars on his arms multiply. Nikto can’t do anything about it. Not all of his voices actually heard of that woman, but those who did are painfully unanimous with their hysteria when it comes to her. The only way to make them forget about her for some time is to break his own skin and push and cut until they howl in pain.

It’s true that despite his condition, Nikto is still in control of his body, he’s a deadly opponent, a highly skilled soldier. But this has its cost, and with Zhar's appearance the cost skyrocketed. He keeps going in circles from managing his mental state to maintaining his duties, until they meet again.

***

It is a wide scale operation: KorTac mobilized its best soldiers and provided each with the finest gear. But what really sparks Nikto's interest was König's commentary at the briefing.

“Chimeras are also awaited. If you meet them - just let their units do their thing, we have different objectives, but we all win if nobody interferes in other's business.”

***

Nikto receives last reports from his squad mates and waits for the Colonel to command all their groups to return to their transports, when a chain of explosions rolls down the next street, each one sending up a plume of smoke and fire. The ground trembles beneath him, the concussive force of the blasts rattling his bones. For a moment, Nikto freezes and watches in awe as the shockwaves shatter windows, sending shards of glass raining down onto the empty street.

“Tired again?” Nikto would recall Firebrands voice in any choir of voices. This is a friend, a safe person. Nikto turns around, but someone grabs his shoulder and pulls him unto the nearest alleyway that offers a semblance of cover. His friend's voice dissolves in clouds of dust and cacophony of sounds of destruction.

Nikto darts forward after the man, that dragged him away from the open sight, and recalls Krueger's military patches and the tactical net.

“The hell you forgot on Chimeras worksite?” Krueger's breath comes in short, ragged gasps. He peeks around the corner, not letting go of Nikto.

“Not that you have put a sign over your part of a playground,” a missile flies over the alley with a whistle so loud, Nikto has to make a pause “What’s going on?”

They both crouch and scurry between vehicles that got flipped like toys. From pieces of Krueger's barks, mixed with swearing in three languages simultaneously, Nikto can only make out something about the final stage of their operation going south. It doesn’t help that Krueger seems to have his lip split, as he constantly pauses to spit out the blood.

After taking a few turns and leaving the destructed street with burning car carcasses far behind, they finally emerge from the cloud of dust. Echoes of distant destruction noises still reach them, when they enter a two-story building that the Chimeras use as their temporary shelter. Nikto feels concerned gazes glued to his figure in an instant and hopes, that Krueger's reassurance will keep things from escalation. They go up to the second floor, make their way to the far corner of the hall, when a low grumbling voice reaches their ears.

“You were supposed to come back with my SIC, Krueger. Last I checked - she didn't look like this.”

Nikto turns back and faces a tall dark haired man. His face expression remains unreadable due to aviator glasses hiding his eyes and a cigarette in his mouth.

“She specifically commanded me to retreat alone!” Krueger wants to tell the man something else, but has to stop to spit out the blood.

“There is a reason why Zhar is the second in command! That reason be me, her bloody boss! What I say - goes!!”

Nikto heard about Chimeras commander before, but this is the first time he actually sees the notorious Nikolai. Maybe he should worry about Nikolai's clear irritation about the fact, that a stranger stepped in his quarters. Maybe he should worry about Krueger gradually toning up every next phrase in an unraveling fight with Nik. Maybe. But everything Nikto cares about is what he heard about Zhar. She's left behind, although Krueger was supposed to bring her back? The hell is going on in this company if they can't work out their own hierarchy? But most importantly.

Why are they wasting their time arguing, while she is somewhere out there alone?

“I'll extract her!” Adrenaline kicks in and doesn't let Nikto analyze his own spontaneous will, before these words leave his lips.

Nikolai and Krueger fall silent and turn to him.

“You? Waste time saving my soldier? What would your Colonel say?” Nik smirks, puffing smoke him in the face. Nikto is not surprised, this man knows about his commander, after all Nikolai has quite a reputation of a guy who always knows a guy.

“He doesn't have to know if I make it quick enough. Just point me in the right direction and tell me, what am I about to face.” Nikto actively ignores other soldiers gathering around them, waiting for Nikolai's response.

“You have twenty minutes to make our girl happy - after that, we opt to other, more radical means of extraction.” Nikolai reaches out for a handshake, and Nikto catches his hand.

***

Olga crouches low on the roof of a small, dilapidated building, her breath coming in shallow, controlled gasps. She can hear the voices of her enemies below as they systematically search the area. It's only a matter of time until they discover her. Every beat of her heart is now just a countdown until the inevitable. She presses herself flat against the roof, hoping the smoke and rubbish scattered across the roof would cloak her presence. Her mind races, calculating escape routes and potential strategies.

“Didn't survive my ass getting burnt to end it all here. Didn't live through all the missions going sideways to give up now.” Zhar mutters, feeling the cold metal of her weapon pressed reassuringly against her side. However, she knows that a firefight against such odds would be suicide.

“Didn't survive meeting that-” She falls silent, when a movement catches her eye.

Through the gaps in the crumbling roof, she sees a figure emerging from the darkness, moving with lethal precision. The newcomer is clad in a pressure suit, but Zhar already knows, this one hasn't been ejected from a fighter plane. Because she already saw this strange uniform twice. This and the mask, leaving his victims nothing but a cold shine of a blizzard roaring in his eyes.

Before she can fully process what is happening, the soldier strikes. With brutal efficiency, he dispatches her pursuers one by one, their muffled cries cut short by swift, lethal blows. He moves like a shadow, his actions quick and silent, leaving no room for retaliation.

Olga's breath catches in her throat as she watches the scene unfold. Her shoulders flinch with every his blow. She has more than a dozen years of experience, yet a cold fear grips her by the throat. Somehow, this man feels worse than being burnt alive. And as the last soldier falls and Nikto's figure straightens, his eyes scanning the area, Zhar realizes with a jolt of terror that he is looking for her next.

She fights off the urge to stand up and run and clutches her weapon tighter. Olga would swear on anything that right now she remains unseen for him, but some animalistic feeling nudges him exactly in her direction.

Nikto scales the side of the building with a predator's agility, and within moments, he is on the roof. Zhars's heart pounds louder, her pulse a deafening roar in her ears. But despite the all-consuming fear, she raises her gun.

He searches for her in a dense smoke covering the roof. Olga holds her breath and exhales only when his eyes meet hers.

“It's you or me again,” she thinks and fires a warning shot.

Nikto flinches and for a moment Zhar believes, she somehow managed to hurt him despite clearly aiming a good two meters away from him. But before her concern get confirmed, he does the last thing, she could have expected - he slowly raises his hands.

"I'm not here to hurt you," Nikto says, his gaze glued to Olga's face. "Nikolai sent me. Told me, where to find you."

Zhar curses under her breath. As crazy as this sounds - it's in the very Nikolai's nature to improvise in search for solutions of emergency problems. As much as she doesn't want to trust Nikto - his words sound like a truth.

"Why should I believe you?" she manages to say, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Because," Nikto's hand slowly descends to his face, "if I was to kill you - I would do shoot you from the next roof. It's easier this way: faster, less fuss with the extras."

“Only when it comes to me - you have this funny tendency to opt to the steel arms.” Zhar points her gun at him. “Now stop moving, before I eased you of your right hand.”

“You can take everything.” Despite Olga's command, he reaches for the straps connecting his mask to the rest of the uniform and loosens them. “Two knives on the back, another two at the front, two pistols. Take everything. And if I give you even the smallest reason - one shot in my face would be enough.”

She watches him undoing his mask in silence. Visually it doesn't make a big difference because he wears a balaclava under it. Olga realizes, that this gesture is aimed more for his comfort, as a bullet fired in the mask may turn it into dozens of small pieces piercing his skull. But something about Nikto taking off his mask just to earn a drop of her trust feels disarming.

Zhar tries to not think about the vulnerability, Nikto brought himself into, when she steps closer to take his weapons. He stands completely still as she opens his holsters, obediently waiting for her to check every pocket. He only lets out a quite sharp inhale, when Olga's hand leaves a feather-light touch against his face. Guilt stings Zhar as soon as she hears that: as if it wasn't enough that he already gave her that much control.

“Sorry. Need to make sure, you're not delirious. I'll return your stuff, when we are back at Chimeras disposition.”

On their way back, both Zhar and Nikto stay silent: too much going on around them, too little reasons to talk. Each of them secretly debates if it would be reasonable to thank the other for being more or less cooperative, but nobody finds a strength to break the silence.

Olga visibly transforms as soon as they enter the Chimeras hideaway: something about the way she walks, carries and places herself around shifts, becomes colder and harder. She maneuvers between other soldiers, not paying any attention to Nikto anymore. He even thinks, that if he were to sneak away right now - she wouldn't notice. For some reason, this idea irritates him.

“Nikolai! Care to explain, since when do we hire KorTac people?!” Her voice, low and grumbly catches a few soldiers off guard, but Nikolai keeps his unbothered face expression, not even turning back to Zhar.

“Since my second in command gives orders that intentionally conflict with mine.” Nikolai finally turns back to them and notices all the extra ammunition in Olga's hands. “Olya, be nice, give the poor guy his trinkets back - he saved you after all.”

She hisses something unintelligibly and finally turns to Nikto just when he is done readjusting his mask back. Zhar leads him to the nearest table and lays out his knives, guns and magazines on the table. Then she freezes for a moment and shakes her head. Nikto doesn't want to interrupt whatever is going on in her head, so he just silently observes as she changes swaps two knives and frowns. He just takes the slightest step closer to her, just in case she would like to tell him anything, that is not meant for any other ear. Nevertheless, she stays silent and swaps a gun and a knife.

“Everything alright?” He asks and Olga raises her gaze at him. She looks lost.

“Yes. I just... There was something else, wasn't it? First it was this knife, then this one… Ah, fuck it.” She unstraps one of the holsters from her vest and puts another knife in the row.

And only then does he understand: she is trying to remember everything that she must return to him, arranging things in the order in which she took them. It's been a damn long day for her, she needs a rest, so her nerves are playing against her right now.

“Hey, it's ok. We are fine,” he starts calming her down and for the smallest moment, not longer than a few seconds, she closes her eyes and visibly relaxes. “We two are fine. You're fine.”

If he could, he would pat her back, give her any reassuring touch. But Nikto is not out of his mind. At least not to this point. So he stays still, watching her coming back to normal and turning to face him.

“Alright then. Thank you. Solid work back there,” she blurts out in one breath and disappears somewhere deep in the hall among other Chimeras.

Nikto stands still with eyes still fixated on the place, where he saw her last second, for some time until Nikolai's voice brings him back to reality.

“So, now that you, charmer, made so many friends among my Chimeras - you can call it a day. Give König my regards.”

Nikto realizes, this means ‘goodbye’ or, more realistically, ‘get the f out of our place, so we can keep working’. Only he doesn't want this all to end like that. He wants more. He deserves more.

The idea appears in his head so fast, it feels like an insight. Nikto doesn't let it sit for too long before he starts regretting getting it.

“Nikolai? Hire me.”

“I'm not interested in stealing KorTac peop-” Nik follows the direction of his gaze and stops short. “Or you have anything that might interest me?”

“Short-term work. I can teach your people how to survive long captures.” Nikto feels as everything within him already hates this idea, but keeps talking.

“I heard about you and Zakhaev. But I'm wondering, who survived his long capture? The one who literally calls himself ‘Nobody’?” Nikolai cannot deny himself the pleasure of teasing Nikto, knowing full well what he really wants.

“One of the best KorTac soldiers, one of the most high paid mercenaries in Europe and the Middle East. The one, who made your SIC happy in less than 20 minutes.”

“I'd dispute on the last one.” Nik chuckles. “But I'm willing to give you another shot. Maybe you need a full evening. I'll contact you later.”

#cod mw2 #cod #cod modern warfare #call of duty #cod x reader #call of duty mw2 #nikto angst #nikto x you #nikto cod #mw2 nikto #mwii nikto #nikto fluff #nikto x reader #andre nikto #call of duty nikto #nikto #cod nikto #nikto x oc

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ladykailitha · 2 years ago

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Oh For a Muse of Fire! Part 8

Here we get Eddie side of the story mixed with a bit of what happened to Steve. I traded bats for a ruptured appendix and died for almost.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Eddie got to his apartment and called Chrissy. It was time for that long talk.

Chrissy arrived with beer and ice cream. She flopped on the sofa and handed him the first beer.

“So you going to finally tell me why you hate Garnet?” she asked, popping open her own beer.

Eddie sighed and settled next to her with two spoons. He handed one to her and dug into the ice cream. “First off, you’re going have to know his real name, because context is key.”

Chrissy shrugged. “I had a feeling they all knew each other before you told me you went to high school with them. I don’t think Diamond realized. I think he just assumes that they have been working together for so long that they just work well together.”

Eddie closed his eyes tightly and opened them slowly. “His name is Steve Harrington and I’ve never hated him.”

Chrissy raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know, Eddie, you seemed pretty hostile to me.”

Eddie took a swig of his beer and leaned back against the cushions. “Yeah, well. In high school he was everything. You know the type. Beautiful, athletic, rich, popular, sweet as honey. Everyone had a crush on this dude.”

She grinned, dimpling her cheeks. “So like me!”

Eddie laughed and kissed her forehead. “I do have a type, sweetheart.”

“Good taste,” she said with a wink. “I approve. Go on.”

“He was everything,” he murmured. “And then after I came back from an acute case of appendicitis everything had changed. He suddenly wasn’t the top of the food chain. He was closed off, withdrawn. Almost angry.” He frowned recalling how everyone just seemed to avoid Steve like he was the plague.

“And then,” Eddie continued, “about a year or so after I finally graduated. I see him in this tight light blue polo shirt and he’s soaking wet, like someone dumped water on him or something.” He cleared his throat. “He was sitting there just shivering. So I go over there and ask if he needs help. He doesn’t even look up, so I reach out and touch his shoulder to try and get his attention.”

Eddie squeezed his eyes closed again, fighting back the tears. “And he hits me. He hits me so hard I have to go the fucking hospital.”

Chrissy put down her beer and wrapped her arms around him. “Oh, Eddie! I’m so sorry, sweetie.”

Eddie curled up into a ball, beginning to sob. “Hunt the freak, you know? So he hates me enough to lash out and seriously hurt me. So I’ve trading barbs with him to keep him at a distance. To keep myself from getting hurt again. Maybe not physically this time. But hurt nonetheless.”

“So what changed?” she whispered into his hair. “Why tell me this now?”

“I was on my way home when I saw Robin...eh, Pearl to you, crouching down next to Steve as he rocked back and forth clutching his hair.”

Chrissy’s eyes went wide. “Holy shit, was he okay?”

Eddie struggled to get up, so she let him. “He was having a panic attack. Apparently he has these nasty scars on his back. Like really ugly rug burns, but way worse. And when it started raining the white shirt turned translucent.”

“And he was panicking about people being able to see them?” she asked gently.

Eddie nodded. “He dissociates and can get violent. He only has a vague recollection of these things. I looked it up and sometimes they don’t remember anything at all.”

Chrissy sagged. “Oh shit. He doesn’t know he hit you, does he?”

Eddie shook his head. “I’m sure Robin’s gonna tell him. But yeah. Everything I’ve known, everything I’ve held close to my chest for so long, nursing that ache. Sharpening knives on the wound, letting it bleed and fester has been a lie.”

“No, baby,” she whispered. “No. How were you to know? How would have anyone known?”

He let out a shuddering breath. “Apparently the entire fucking country knows according to Robin.”

Chrissy cocked her head to the side and frowned. “What do you mean?”

“She said that what happened to him was on the news for a long time,” he explained.

She pulled out her phone and began typing. “Holy fucking shit.”

Eddie tried to look at her phone but she pulled away from him. “What?”

She gulped and turned to him slowly. “I thought the name Steve Harrington sounded familiar. Drink the rest of that beer, babe. You’re going to need it.”

Eddie took a long sip of his beer, eyeing her warily. He held up the bottle to show that it was empty and set it down. “All right, spill. What the fuck is horrifying that I need to be drunk for it?”

She turned the phone over and Eddie got up and personal shots of the scars on Steve’s back when they were road rash. There were also close up shots of a ring like wound around his neck. The neck one looked worse than the road burn.

“What the fuck happened?” he choked out.

Chrissy took her phone back and set it on the coffee table. “I’m going to tell you what I heard and remember and then later you can look up news articles and TV spots. Later because I don’t think I can take hearing it again. Because Eddie? It was entirely fucked up.”

Eddie looked at her with tears in his eyes. “How fucked up are we talking about?”

“Like got the Feds involved, hate crime levels of fucked up,” she said darkly. “And you have to understand this all from news reports and stuff. I wasn’t there, you’d have to ask Steve or Robin...” she paused. “It feels weird to call them by their real names. Because she was involved, too.”

“What happened?” he asked, barely holding back the tears.

“Prom king, captain of the basketball team, co-captain of the swim team was tied up and dragged behind the motorcycle of a rival at school because he stepped in between him and a girl who was be bullied for being gay.”

“What?!” Eddie squawked. “You have got to be fucking kidding me!”

Chrissy shook her head. “That’s how the story goes anyway. And if Garnet is Steve Harrington like you say he is, then fuck. His dad didn’t just kick him out for being gay. His dad beat him and threw him out the second he turned eighteen. It was part of the big scandal. He went to go stay with Robin’s family until he graduated high school.”

“Holy shit,” he breathed. “And all this happened when?”

Chrissy rubbed her lip thoughtfully. “When were you in the hospital?”

Eddie sat back and really had to think. “It would have been after the middle school’s Snow Ball, because me and the boys played. But before Christmas? I vaguely remember having to go back to school for a couple days before winter break.”

She nodded. “That tracks. While you were in the hospital with acute appendicitis Steve was getting the shit beaten out of him by a raging homophobe and his dad.” She paused for a moment and tilted her head to the side thoughtfully. “Who is also a raging homophobe.”

Eddie tilted his head back and sighed. He pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes, trying to hold back his tears. After a few moments, he lowered his head and looked Chrissy in the eye. “I’ve fucked up, haven’t I?”

Chrissy leaned over and took his face gently in her hands. “You listen to me Edmund Joseph Munson. You did not fuck up. You protected yourself with the information you had. You only fuck up if you continue to be an ass.”

He let out a shuddered breath. “I don’t know what to do now. How to act, what to say.”

She pulled him to her chest. “Apologizing and explaining is the best place to start.”

He nodded and let the tears flow, sobbing into her shoulder as he was racked with shame and guilt.

Steve woke up to a somber Robin and jacket he knew better than his own. Eddie’s leather jacket, the one he always wore.

She sat him down and explained what happened last night. And he sat through it all, numb.

“Oh.”

He didn’t know what else to say. What could he say? Eddie’s reason for hating him was valid.

“Yeah,” Robin agreed. “So what are you going to do about it?”

Steve rubbed the soft leather of the jacket between his fingers. “I wouldn’t even know how to make it up to him.”

Robin tilted her head, her expression fond. “I know movies tell you to go big when making it up to people. But I’ve found people are more likely to be embarrassed by that shit. So start small, and keep being repentant. Just know, he doesn’t have to forgive you. He might never.”

Steve nodded. “Yeah. Thanks, Robs.” He kissed her cheek. “You’re the best friend a guy could have.”

She smiled. “And don’t you forget it.”

“Never.”

Steve got to class and sat nervously in his spot, his knee jerking wildly, tapping his foot against the rung of the stool. And then Eddie walked in wearing a soft grey hoodie with a denim vest over top of it.

Steve gulped. Eddie looked good. He grabbed the jacket from his bag and hurried up to him.

“Hey,” he greeted shyly.

Eddie turned to him, like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Um...thanks for the jacket.” Steve held out the jacket at arm’s length, trying so hard not to squeeze his eyes to brace against Eddie’s forthcoming attack.

Eddie took the jacket gently from Steve’s grasp. “Hey, it was the least I could do since I couldn’t do anything else.”

Steve hung his head. “Yeah. I should see a therapist to at least getting better coping strategies but that requires money and health insurance. Two things that are a little thin on the ground right now.”

Eddie’s shouldered sagged, he put his other hand on Steve’s bicep. “Hey, PTSD is inevitable after what you went through. I’m just sorry I didn’t know until now.”

Steve lifted his head, furrowing his brow. “That’s what Robin said. But I don’t understand how.”

Eddie pursed his lips and gave Steve’s arm a squeeze before letting go. “Just before all that...” he waved his hand in vague gesture, “shit happened to you, I was in the hospital with a ruptured appendix. The doctors tell me it was touch and go for awhile. I almost died.”

Steve’s eyes went wide. “Holy shit. Oh my god. That’s horrible.”

Around them the class had filled up and Joyce was moving to the center of the room. The class was about to start.

Eddie looked around. “Look, can we talk after class?”

Steve nodded. “Yeah, man. I’d like that. A lot.”

Eddie smiled, sweet, but small. “I’ll see you then.”

Steve smiled back and went to sit down. Today they were starting full nudity before the final. Get them used to the naked form.

Steve blushed a deep red when Eddie stepped out from behind the partition who used to get undressed and Eddie raised a cocky eyebrow.

This was going to be a long three hours.

Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Epilogue

Tag List: @artiststarme @allbymyselfexceptformycactus @spectrum-spectre @estrellami-1 @swimmingbirdrunningrock @gregre369 @itsall-taken @m-owo-n @zerokrox-blog @runyousillydetective @grimmfitzz @wonderland-girl143-blog @sapphirecobalt-1 @scheodingers-muppet @victor-thee-corvid @apricottree @bookbinderbitch @sleepyboosstuff @biatcgh @pixiefallingupthestairs @grtwdsmwhr @thepainisspicy @carlyv @eboyawstenn @bisexualdisastersworld @bidisastersworld @abstractnaturaldisaster @evix-syne666 @nerdsconquerall @lololol-1234 @goodolefashionedloverboi @chaoticlovingdreamer @a-little-unsteddie @val-from-lawrence @i-must-potato @elluminis @tailsfromthecrypt @danili666 @plyerice27 @alittlegreyfish @n0-1-important @no-upper-limit-to-stupidity @maya-custodios-dionach @cinnamon-mushroomabomination @heaven428

#My writing #stranger things #steddie #art school au #gay steve harrington #bisexual eddie munson #ladykailtiha writes

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emotionallychargedtowel · 2 years ago

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The Eighth Sense e5 & e6: portraying trauma with nuance

Episodes 5 and 6 of The Eighth Sense have really blown up a discourse bomb in tumblr’s BL scene. I had been putting off watching these episodes because I had gathered that episode 6 ended with something pretty distressing, and stuff like that sometimes hits me pretty hard, especially when it’s left as a cliffhanger. But I was already tempted to rip off the band-aid and watch it anyway, and then everyone has been debating aspects of these episodes. So I just had to see what all the discussion was about and figure out my own take on it.

In case it’s not obvious, the following will have spoilers for the series up to and including episode 6. I have a lot to say about this, because it touches on subjects that have been a major focus for me in my personal life, in my previous work as a trainee therapist, and in my research and writing. But I want this to be a manageable read, so I’m going to put things in bullet form when I can to keep them brief and organized and I’m going to make some section headings to help with skimming or skipping around. But before I launch into the rest, there’s one thing I should get out of the way: I don’t think any part of episodes 5 or 6 are a hallucination, a dream, or otherwise did not occur. I do think that there are aspects of the way the show portrays certain things that indicate dissociation and/or an acute trauma response. I’ll talk more about that below. (Hey, @waitmyturtles, this is the epic TES post I’ve been writing off and on for two days! I hope it’s of interest.)

Here are the section headings I’ll use below, to give a sense of what I’m going to talk about:

Conceptualizing Jae Won: Or, what I think is happening with him

Jae Won’s therapist - comments and interpretations

Jae Won’s therapist - medication management

Human beings’ amazing capacity for self-blame

Interpreting show production choices psychologically

Are the creators of The Eighth Sense going to pull a “who shot JR?” move?

Conceptualizing Jae Won: Or, what I think is happening with him

We don’t know how his younger brother died, but we know that he died in front of Jae Won when they were together, and it’s clear that he blames himself. I would be shocked if he was actually at fault even a little bit. But it does appear to have happened “on his watch” in a sense that lends itself to blaming himself. This is a huge issue, one that I’ll discuss in more detail later on.

Even before his brother’s death, Jae Won was clearly under a ton of pressure from his parents. And his father appears to be emotionally and, almost certainly, physically abusive. This is also far more likely to have pre-dated his brother’s death than to have only developed afterward.

In addition to pressure and abuse, I think it’s pretty clear that Jae Won was a parentified child. This means that he was put in a position of having to take care of his parents’ emotional needs as a child. This kind of role reversal has profound effects throughout the parentified person’s life.

Jae Won’s self-blame about his brother’s death means he was always going to be predisposed to stay stuck in the chronic version of the acute trauma response instead of moving through the natural healing process. In other words, he was almost certain to develop PTSD.

This is less clearly shown in the show, but my impression is that Jae Won has a deep-seated depressive tendency that existed before the loss of his brother. This would make sense for someone who faced the family-of-origin difficulties that he did.

When he did develop PTSD, as I have no doubt he did, Jae Won’s existing challenges were going to make him even more likely to develop the depressive symptoms of PTSD than others. We’ve seen some of these in the show already:

feeling alienated from others, unable to form meaningful connections with them,

anhedonia (an inability to feel positive emotions), and

negative beliefs about himself, other people, and the world.

All of this is happening at once. He’s dealing with PTSD, but he also still has all the same habits and beliefs he had before due to the parentification and training in people-pleasing, so he’s supposed to bottle up all of this pain. And if it’s his fault (in his mind) that his brother died, how much more does he owe his parents than he ever did before? This is a distorted, unhealthy way of thinking about all of it, but these kinds of maladaptive thoughts and expectations happen all the time with trauma survivors.

Jae Won’s therapist really sums all of this up very well when she says, “All your worries, not doing what you want to do because you do not want to let your parents down, and trying hard to be a good person to everyone because you do not want to disappoint others. Don’t you think it might be all because of your younger brother? Your younger brother, who got into an accident while with you. Your younger brother, who you couldn’t protect. And you are struggling to live your life for him as well.”

Jae Won’s therapist - comments and interpretations

I went into this series feeling nervous about its portrayal of therapy. I was very excited that therapy was being portrayed at all, mind you! It’s horrifying how seldom we see therapy mentioned as an option, much less shown, either in BLs or kdramas, and I’ve hoped for this to change for a long time now. But therapy is shown in an inaccurate way so often in media. And often, we see therapists and other mental health professionals breaking ethical rules. So I was on my guard, big time.

There’s one thing I really take issue with about Jae Won’s therapist, and it’s somewhat of a small thing: her office is way, way too dark! I just don’t think that kind of low lighting, with a lot of the illumination coming from her aquarium and other tinted light sources, is professional or conducive to therapy work. Of course, it’s obvious that her office is lit in this way because it looks cool and sets a certain mood for the show. And that’s fine. It’s a very stylized show in a lot of ways. But it makes me a little tweaky to watch it.

Some of the things she does in the therapy space with Jae Won are a bit open to interpretation, and could be debated. But I view her in a fairly charitable light, and I found that a favorable interpretation wasn’t difficult to justify at all. I ended up viewing her (so far, at least) as a very skillful and effective therapist.

I loved it when she joked, in the first scene after the credits for episode 1, “For God’s sake! Just tell me what your worries are!” Jae Won isn’t great at sharing. He’s been trained from early childhood not to show his messy, vulnerable emotions around authority figures. Jae Won is not an easy client by any stretch, so she may have been showing a mild version of some real frustration with him when she began that comment with mock-hostility. But he seems really sensitive to criticism, real or perceived. Coming at him directly about this could be risky. Using humor is a good way to get around this sensitivity pretty effectively. It’s worth noting, though, that I wouldn’t endorse this kind of move by a therapist unless they knew a client very well and had built a solid rapport with them.

The comment I quoted above (”Don’t you think it might be all because of your younger brother?”) connects so many of Jae Won’s interpersonal difficulties to the loss of his brother in a skillful way. It was very astute and well-put. But there are some things I would quibble with about it.

First, I’m kind of surprised that she is only saying this explicitly this far into therapy with Jae Won. It seems rather late to make such an observation considering this constellation of issues has, without a doubt, been in place the entire time they’ve been working together. This could definitely have been done sooner.

At the same time, paradoxically, it’s delivered abruptly, as if she blurted it out too soon. Actually, the abruptness comes from the fact that there’s not sufficient lead-up to the comment in their discussion beforehand.

Though the show’s treatment of mental health is strong overall, I think this part of this scene suffered from flawed writing. If I had written this scene, I would have made a change that I think would have resolved both of these issues. Instead of introducing this insight as if the therapist has just voiced it for the first time, I would have presented it as something she and Jae Won have touched on together more than once during their work together. Anyone who’s been to therapy knows that the same ideas, which appear as shocking revelations at first, often have to be returned to many times and worked through before we can benefit from them. She could have said something like, “This is that issue we’ve talked about before, right? It seems like another case of your beliefs about your brother’s death causing trouble in other areas of your life.”

Even better, she could have been shown quoting some kind of metaphor or shorthand Jae Won came up with himself when they’d spoken about this previously. For example, I had a client once who used to talk about metaphorically carrying around a giant, heavy book where he wrote down all of his failures. He described it in a similar way to “the catalog of mistakes” (I’m not going to share his actual wording, of course). Whenever I would use his wording, saying “the catalog of mistakes” or even “the catalog,” all of our prior discussion of that issue came into both our minds immediately. It also served as a reminder of our rapport and the importance I placed on his perspective.

Jae Won’s therapist - medication management

There’s one other area of Jae Won’s interactions with his therapist that is a bit hard to interpret. The exchange he has with his therapist about the amount of medication she’ll prescribe to him certainly seems important, but it’s hard to tell what exactly it means.

One thing that complicates this is the fact that he is receiving therapy and medication management services from the same provider. In other words, she seems to be a psychiatrist who provides therapy services. In most parts of the United States, this is rare (though that wasn’t always the case). I haven’t been able to tell whether this is more commonplace in South Korea.

Because she’s a prescriber and a therapist, asking for three weeks’ worth of medication instead of two also means waiting longer before having another therapy session. Maybe Jae Won really is just busy and trying to cut down on demands on his time, but this doesn’t seem too likely. It’s also possible that he’s seeking a greater quantity of his medication for some purpose, such as abusing it or using it for self-harm or to end his life. But he also could just be trying to put off his next therapy session to a later date because of his difficulty talking about vulnerable topics, something he demonstrates at multiple points in his therapy session. Similarly, when his therapist says she can extend his prescription to three weeks but not a month, because, as she puts it, “I need to do my job,” this could be in reference to the medication or her therapy work. Part of her job is keeping him from having access to too large an amount of medication at once, while another part is having therapy sessions with him (that are frequent enough to be useful). It’s hard to tell which of the two she was referring to, or whether it could be something else entirely. So I don’t think there’s one clearly correct interpretation here. But I do think we should be attentive to the possibility that he might be medication-seeking, possibly with the aim of using the medication for self-harm.

Human beings’ amazing capacity for self-blame

Even if you have experienced trauma or have been close to someone who has, unless you’ve spent time with a sizable sample of trauma survivors, it’s hard to understand just how readily people blame themselves for traumatic experiences. I had had personal experience with this as a survivor of intimate partner violence before I ever did any training in trauma therapy, but I was still totally floored when I observed firsthand just how often this happens and how unjustifiable every single instance of self-blame I encountered in clients turned out to be.

This is actually a big area for me as a researcher so I’m going to try not to go off on a massive tangent, but I think this is important. When we experience trauma, one of the most frequent responses people have is to blame themselves. I used to describe this to clients as a “deal with the devil.” Blaming ourselves allows us to feel like we have control over whether such things will happen to us (and/or those we care about) in the future. If we tell ourselves, “the trauma only happened to me because I did something bad, or something wrong,” then we can also tell ourselves, “but I’ll never do the bad or wrong thing again so from now on I’ll be safe.”

It’s very tempting to make this bargain, but it is an extremely bad deal. Self-blame is one of the biggest reasons some people get stuck in their acute trauma response instead of completing the healing process, resulting in PTSD. That feeling of control isn’t worth that. But human beings are so tempted to make this trade. When I was doing trauma therapy as a trainee, I saw example after example of folks who did seriously remarkable amounts of mental gymnastics in order to justify blaming themselves for their trauma. I’m going to talk briefly now about a client I had many years ago, without giving any details that could be remotely identifying. This person had witnessed the death of a close friend when they were in combat together. I did prolonged exposure therapy with this person, meaning he had to tell me the story of his friend’s death again and again and again. When we do this type of work, it usually seems at first like the client is telling the exact same story again and again without any real change. But little changes crop up gradually and accumulate and after a while, you find the story has made big shifts. And occasionally, a big change happens.

This client started out telling his story in a way that looked for every possible reason his friend’s death could have been his fault. And wow, was he ever grasping at straws. It was almost as if he had said something as nonsensical as “I had oatmeal for breakfast that day and maybe that’s why my friend died.” Every miniscule decision he had made that day could, in his eyes, potentially have caused his friend’s death in some mysterious and imperceptible way. It would have been absurd had it not been so sad. But thankfully, as we continued the exposure work, his story gradually changed and these justifications for self-blame started to fall away a little at a time.

Then, one day, a crucial detail was added to the story that blew me away. After weeks of telling the story in the usual way, my client mentioned for the first time that just before his friend was hit, he had called out a warning to him, which the friend had ignored. He’d mentioned countless ways he might be to blame--none of them remotely justified--but had never told me about the one very clear way in which he had tried to prevent his friend’s death. When I pointed this out, my client was shocked that he had never mentioned that detail before. We spent a lot of time unpacking what all of this meant. It was the single biggest turning point in his therapy. So, yeah. People have an amazing capacity for figuring out even the slimmest of pretexts for self-blame, and it’s abundantly clear that Jae Won is exercising that capacity big time. I’m pretty certain we’ll find out that he has been blaming himself a lot for what happened while having no real justification for doing so.

(Side note: I have tons more thoughts about trauma, self-blame, victim-blaming more generally, and other related psychological constructs--these are all longstanding research interests of mine--but I’m going to stop here because this thing is already ridiculously long. But if anyone reading this ever wants to discuss any of this further, please feel free to hit me up! I love talking about these things.)

Interpreting show production choices psychologically

Let’s review where we find Jae Won toward the beginning of the show. I’ve talked about how Jae Won had a lot of psychological difficulties before the story started. His family of origin situation was damaging even before he lost his brother, and then he had to contend with trauma and complicated grief. After that, he went through a breakup (possibly due to his partner cheating on him), completed his military service, and then had to make the transition back to civilian life, which isn’t easy under the best of circumstances.

And then he meets Ji Hyun, and his feelings for him unsettle the precarious set of strategies that he’s been using to get by. Ji Hyun makes Jae Won feel tempted to let his guard down and be himself. He places a degree of trust in Jae Won that challenges his cynicism and makes him feel tempted to trust Ji Hyun in return--to trust him to an extent that would normally be out of the question for him. Ji Hyun shakes things up, and while this is mostly a very positive thing--there are a lot of things in Jae Won’s life that urgently need to change--it’s also rather destabilizing in the short term.

Then the shit starts to hit the fan when Jae Won wakes up after staying out late drinking to hear his father pounding on his door. And the makers of the show start to play around with cinematography, editing, sound design, and other aspects of the show’s production to evoke Jae Won’s inner experience. After his dad pounds on his door, the way the show is shot and edited changes.

This disjointed editing and other distortions of typical filmmaking at this point in episode 5 have reminded some folks on here of a dissociative state, and I can see why. I would agree that it has a dissociative flavor. There are two prominent types of dissociation (which can happen simultaneously):

derealization, a feeling that the world around us isn’t real--it may feel empty, strange, or just plain wrong; and

depersonalization, in which we feel like we’re seeing ourselves from the outside, as if the person we’re observing isn’t us.

It’s tricky to talk about either of these in the context of tv/film because as viewers watching a fictional story unfold in a TV show, we are by definition:

perceiving that the world the characters inhabit doesn’t seem real, because it isn’t

looking at the characters from the outside, because they aren’t us (and they aren’t real)

But there are conventions of film and tv production that give us a sense of realism and of seeing things from characters’ points of view, and when Jae Won is dissociating we see those conventions get suspended or distorted. For example:

Conventional editing creates a flow of time that feels realistic (partly because we learn the “language” of film from a young age and interpret it that way). At important moments in The Eighth Sense, the editing breaks the rules of conventional editing, often messing with the viewers’ sense of time. Contexts change abruptly, as when Jae Won suddenly goes from being at home to being in his car. At other points, dialogue also goes out of sync.

Shot-reverse shot techniques help to approximate seeing things from the characters’ perspectives, situating us in the story so that we don’t feel like we’re observing from a distance. The most notable moment when this rule is broken happens when Jae Won is upset about his camera being damaged. We see him telling someone between sobs that the camera was a gift from his younger brother, but that person (assumably his dad) isn’t shown at all--not even a shoulder or the back of a head.

There’s also a lot of use of shallow depth of field (something the show uses in other ways as well), putting Jae Won in focus while his surroundings become a blur, making the world around him look hazy and unreal.

The sequence where Ji Hyun and Jae Won kiss in the ocean puts their dialogue way out of sync. On my first viewing, this just seemed like an interesting choice, one that gave the scene a sort of dreamlike quality. I’ve seen this strategy used before, as well, without any reference to mental illness, usually in art films. The first example that came to mind for me was from a Godard movie. It would be a valid option regardless of mental health-related content in a show. But after what immediately follows, I think that scene is portraying a trauma memory. Sometimes benign events that happened just before something traumatic become encoded with trauma memories rather than our usual type. (To put it briefly, trauma memories are encoded and stored in a different part of the brain from our everyday memories, and this is why they “behave” differently and have a different sensory quality from typical memories. Trauma recovery often involves some degree of re-encoding these memories in a more normal manner.)

Basically, the show sometimes puts the viewer into an approximation of a derealized and depersonalized state, particularly relative to what we’re used to as TV watchers. At other points, it shows characters’ experiences as if they were traumatic memories.

Are the creators of The Eighth Sense going to pull a “who shot JR?” move?

All this being said, I think that Jae Won’s dissociative moments, while very concerning and doubtless extremely distressing for him, do not point toward any sort of severe dissociative disorder like Dissociative Identity Disorder, nor do they make me concerned that his reality-testing (his ability to effectively distinguish what is and isn’t real) is impaired. I also don’t see any signs of cognitive impairment that would create a similar degree of confusion about reality. As a result, I don’t think the show’s use of signs of dissociation suggests that entire sections of the story will later be shown not to have happened.

Here’s the thing about dissociation. On paper, it sounds like an extreme symptom that approaches the kind of severe mental illness that includes symptoms like hallucinations and delusions. But the vast majority of the time, it’s very different from psychosis. And it’s also, in my opinion, more of a spectrum than we care to acknowledge most of the time. When we look at it that way, we can see that in a sense, Jae Won is at least a tiny bit dissociated a whole lot of the time. But frankly, so am I. It’s not uncommon for trauma survivors. It’s very different from something that would result in impaired reality-testing.

It’s possible that the show will end up revealing that Jae Won’s mental illness has resulted in him imagining entire segments of the show. These types of symptoms are often portrayed in media, for a couple of reasons: 1) people just find psychosis fascinating, and 2) these types of symptoms are very handy for creating plot twists and other interesting narrative devices. It’s not hard to think of examples of this. Fight Club, Black Swan, Shutter Island...the list goes on and on. But these portrayals are almost always inaccurate and exploitative. So far, the folks who make The Eighth Sense have shown a great deal of nuanced awareness of and sensitivity toward mental health matters, so I don’t think they would use this kind of cheap plot device. But they might. If so, I’ll find that pretty disappointing.

There is one thing the showrunners are doing that is somewhat sneaky in a way that could look analogous to that. Others have pointed out that Jae Won and his therapist are wearing the same clothes in every therapy scene, suggesting that we’re seeing the same therapy session interspersed with the other events of the series. In other words, the therapy session operates on a very different timeline from the rest of the story. We don’t know where to situate it relative to the rest of the plot. But I don’t see that as tied to the show’s portrayal of Jae Won’s mental health, nor does it seem exploitative or out of left field.

To sum up:

So far, The Eighth Sense has been remarkably accurate regarding psychological matters and has portrayed therapy and the use of psychotropic medication in a mostly positive and realistic light. I get the feeling the writers/directors/etc. have had some experience receiving mental health treatment. I really hope they maintain this level of quality throughout the remainder of the series.

I don’t think Jae Won’s PTSD (or his depression/anxiety) are sufficient for him to experience psychosis. I don’t expect entire segments of the show will be revealed to be an elaborate lie or hallucination, and if they are, I would consider that to be an example of poor writing and an unrealistic and potentially harmful representation of mental illness.

#The Eighth Sense #psychology of BL #trauma #self-blame #dissociation #media portrayals of mental illness #media portrayals of psychotherapy #media portrayals of trauma #jae won x ji hyun

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notmoreflippingelves · 10 months ago

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saemi-the-dreamer asked:

OTP ask 😉 ! Krisnix: 10, 14, 30, 39, 42 ; Estelanor: 2, 5, 18, 30, 51 please?

Splitting these up into two posts again as I rambled on for way too long. And this way, I can post at least part of it sooner <3. This one is the krisnix one.

Krisnix

10. Describe their first date

They have like three "first dates" lol. The first would be the first time Kristoph invites Phoenix to join him for dinner at the Borscht after Phoenix finishes his shift there (or in-between shifts). Kristoph offers to pick up the check (he will do this on all their subsequent dates as well, and Phoenix doesn't resist in the least). Phoenix *technically* gets an employee discount when he dines at the Borscht but he never uses it with Kristoph--both because he enjoys making Kristoph spend more--and because he knows that Kristoph himself is enough of a snob that he'd hate feeling like a "cheap date" who couldn't afford to pay the proper bill.

Neither of them really expects this to turn into a regular thing. They just happen to be there (either Kristoph was working on a case in the area or purposely sought Phoenix out following the Bar Association's ruling) and be hungry at the same time. So they figure that they might as well eat together and talk through the conversation. And again, both of them are pretty surprised at how agreeable they find each other's company.

Phoenix is much more intelligent and well-read than his unpolished "every man" exterior would suggest--largely due to his time as an arts major. And Kristoph is surprised at how much they have to talk about. He may not be as cultured as Kristoph by a long shot, but he's surprisingly interesting and insightful, nevertheless. And the conversations end up being a lot more stimulating (in more ways than one) and engrossing than Kristoph ever expected.

Meanwhile even though Kristoph Gavin comes across as the coldest, most remote and pretentious person that you've ever met at first (and to be fair, there is a good bit of that in him still), Phoenix is amazed at how full-of-life-and-light Kristoph can be when you catch him on the right topic. He positively gushes about dogs and tells the funniest, warmest stories about Klavier-as-a-small-child. It's rather adorable and super unexpected. He's also surprisingly funny. His wit is much drier than Phoenix's own, and a bit more biting. But still, it's there and it's sometimes irrestitable. Plus, Kristoph is also funny in unintentional ways, given how stiff and formal and seemingly stoic he often is. So much so that Phoenix can't help but look at him and laugh--simultaneously with derision (i.e. "can you fucking believe this guy?") and with genuine affection (i.e.. "it's fucking cute how ridiculous he is without meaning to be.")

Their second "first date" would be the first time that they do something together in a place other than the Borscht Bowl. Neither of them come even close to acknowledging it as a date. This is simply an" outing that we will do together since I enjoy your company and we are sort of 'friends' now." It probably comes about rather organically. Kristoph mentions a different restaurant that he recently tried with Klavier and wonders if Phoenix has ever tried it. (Of course, he hasn't. The entrees cost more than he makes in a given night at the Borscht). Which then naturally extends to Kristoph saying that it's a pity Phoenix hasn't had a chance to go yet, and perhaps, he and Kristoph might go together some evening as friends.

Their third "first date" would be much the same as one of the ones that came before. But with a crucial difference. They are still nowhere near identifying this particular outing as a "date." But since their last "first date," their "friendship" has since extended to include physical intimacy of some kind. Maybe they've had a drunken kiss or two--or maybe they've actually done teh sex. Nevertheless, they are both acutely aware that things are DIFFERENT between them from then on, while also stubbornly refusing to admit to each other that things are different. They know this is a date. They know that they are much more than friends--even ones "with benefits"--but you will never get them to acknowledge this fact. This is just a shared social experience between two men who enjoy each other's company and lips and there is nothing more to it than that. (There is a great deal more to it than that).

Sadly, they never got to the point of a fourth "first date" (i.e. one that they openly acknowledge as a date) in canon, but they still can in my heart.

14. How do their personalities compliment each other? How do they clash?

Both Phoenix and Kristoph are artistically-minded, driven, and very intelligent (albeit in different ways.) As I mentioned in the previous point, Phoenix is somewhat more "cultured" than one would imagine and Kristoph is not *quite* as much of a humorless stick-in-the-mud than he appears. So they actually find that they have a great deal to talk about and can enjoy each other's company. Due to the circumstances that brought them together, there is inevitably a little bit of a facade to their "friendship" but not nearly as much of one as you might think.

In terms of their differences counterbalancing each other, Kristoph's cautious and reserved nature helps reign in some of Phoenix's unhinged impulsiveness. Meanwhile, Phoenix's sense of humor and spontaneity can sometimes force Kristoph to stop taking everything (especially himself) so damn seriously and to open himself up to life outside professional success.

However, it isn't all smooth sailing for them. These same differences can cause friction between them just as often as they smooth it. Moreover, the fact that both men are extremely stubborn also leads to clashes.

As a workaholic and supremely ambitious person in his own right, Kristoph also finds himself frequently frustrated by Phoenix Wright's perceived laziness and lack of ambition. They both know that Phoenix is capable of being more than dubiously sober piano bum and illegal poker player at a mediocre dive bar. So why isn't Phoenix "trying" harder to find something better for himself?

Meanwhile, Kristoph is also trying very hard not to acknowledge that Phoenix's current state is very much Kristoph's own fault. He tries to convince Phoenix to lift himself out of his sorry state, at least in part to ease Kristoph's own conscience.

Kristoph is also very unaware that much of Phoenix's perceived lazy, aimlessness is an act--one carefully tailored to lull Kristoph into a false sense of security so that Phoenix can make his move.

Naturally, the biggest barrier between them is the one that they can never directly acknowledge. Kristoph's role in orchestrating Phoenix's disbarment and Phoenix's complete awareness of this fact. On the rare occasion that the topic comes up indirectly in conversation (ex: any mention of Phoenix's former legal career, Kristoph's Bar Association duties, Trucy's life before Phoenix, media coverage of the so-called "Dark Age of Law,"etc.) things between Kristoph and Phoenix become decidedly more tense than usual. Lots of sarcastic remarks, comments that can be taken in more than one way, and little arguments over matters that would normally not have provoked such a response. Again, they can't ever discuss the real state of things openly so they have their little proxy spats and then quickly try to change the subject.

30. Your OTP gets to pick out each other’s outfits; what is each wearing?

Phoenix loves to make Kristoph dress more casually--both because it's cute but also because he thinks it's mentally/psychologically "good" for Kristoph. He will be more relaxed when he wears clothing that is softer, looser, and/or more comfortable. I think Kristoph probably has a Gavinners-branded hoodie or sweatshirt that is leftover merch from Klavier, and Phoenix is constantly trying to persuade him into wearing it--ideally with jeans instead of Kristoph's normal dress pants. He eventually gives in, partly because Phoenix Wright is unbelievably stubborn but also partially because damn it, the sweatshirt (though far too casual for professional use) is very soft and very warm--and Kristoph has always been the sort of person who gets cold easily. And there is something very relaxing and soothing about letting himself dress for warmth and physical comfort instead of trying to impress people. Also he feels much freer to cuddle with Vongole (which is also psychologically very good for him) when he's less concerned about getting dog hair on his nice work clothes.

Kristoph, conversely, likes to dress Phoenix up. Underneath that dreadful hat and sweatshirt, Phoenix Wright is a rather handsome man with nice broad-shoulders, a pleasingly strong jaw, and bright, twinkling eyes. He really should show off his handsome features and physique. And yet, he hides himself in this loose, plebian garb and two days worth of stubble. (Kristoph is in deep denial about how much he likes Phoenix's stubble. Phoenix is completely aware of the effect he has on the other man).

So Kristoph is always looking for excuses to put Phoenix in a suit or even just a button-down shirt with a tie. And sometimes, Phoenix is willing to indulge him, even if it still feels weird to put on his "trial suit" to go anywhere other than courtroom. But he does like reminding Kristoph (and himself) just how nicely he can clean up when he wants to.

(Kristoph is so lucky that he never got to see three-piece suit dilfnix and his waistcoat of sexyness. He would've died of lust on the spot, and all Phoenix would've done was laugh.)

Another "compromise" is that Kristoph is able to talk Phoenix into a bit more often is a short-sleeve polo shirt. A little more dressy than his normal hoodie but still not properly formal.

(Of course, Kristoph never quite thinks through the ramifications of this. He is Victorian level of repressed-yet-horny. And so the instant, Phoenix's bare forearms enter the chat, kristoph.exe promptly stops working.)

39. Who would rescue an injured animal and nurse it back to health? What would the other think?

Honestly, I think its fairly plausible that either would do this. But honestly, it's much more interesting to think about Kristoph being the one to do it so that's where I'm gonna focus.

This could be a possible backstory for Vongole acquisition. Kristoph's job led him to find the most Beautiful Dog in the World™ left abandoned (and possibly wounded) after her owner died or went to prison. At first, he intends to take Vongole in for a short while until he can find a new home for her. (She's a purebred and a very good girl so Kristoph isn't ready to just dump her in an animal shelter's care and hope for the best). But it's not long until he finds himself just completely enraptured by her and unable to imagine his life without her.

Phoenix, meanwhile, has enjoyed watching this unfold from a bit of a distance. He doesn't meet Vongole officially for awhile, but he notices how quickly Kristoph is completely "puppy-whipped" for her. Kristoph can't stop talking about this "foster" dog he's looking after. He talks about more even than he talks about work--which is saying something. His eyes light up behind his glasses and he can't stop smiling when he's chattering about how SMART and cultured Vongole is, because she sits and listens and wags her tail whenever Kristoph is practicing his violin. And she's so got the most refined palette too. She likes only the best dog food made from the finest ingredients.

It's adorable seeing Kristoph like this, so happy and relaxed and at peace with himself. Even with all the baggage between himself and Kristoph, Phoenix genuinely likes seeing his frenemy in this light and is happy for him.

After a few months worth of Kristoph "fostering" Vongole, he finally announces that he's decided to keep her permanently and Phoenix is all ...

(Phoenix saw this coming about a week after Vongole came into Kristoph's life).

I am also struck by another possible "Kristoph-rescues-a-wounded-animal scenario" as well and would like to discuss it. In this case, I think Kristoph should find and take care of a wounded bird (preferably a baby). I think the most narratively satisfying (i.e. metaphorically resonant) would involve Kristoph having accidentally caused the bird's injury in the first place. Maybe he accidentally hit a passing bird with his car or caused the bird to fall out of its nest and injure itself, while Kristoph was tending to his garden. Kristoph would therefore have to take accountability for having hurt something so beautiful and delicate and would see his nursing the bird back to health as an atonement for his past missteps.

Phoenix, meanwhile, would have very mixed reactions to seeing Kristoph's diligent care for this particular bird. He can't help but feel a little envious seeing Kristoph take responsibility for his harmful actions in this respect, while Kristoph has utterly failed to do the same where Phoenix is concerned. The significance of this being a bird--and Phoenix's own name being a (mythical) bird is not at all lost on him either. But on the other hand, he sees Kristoph being so patient and caring and gentle with this little wounded bird, and Phoenix can't help but love him for it. Can't help but wonder if--if only circumstances were just a little different and if he and/or Kristoph were able to swallow their pride for long enough--maybe Kristoph would have been able to do the same thing with Phoenix after all. But of course, they are doomed by themselves, their anger, and the narrative so this would never happen.

If the bird is unable to be safely released back into the wild after all--or Kristoph is simply unwilling to let the bird go-- it's also possible that the caged blue bird in Kristoph's cell is in fact this very same bird. Which adds some additional metaphorical resonance to the obvious Phoenix-bird parallels. Either Kristoph has already damaged the bird (and Phoenix) so severely and irrevocably that even his most ardent attempts at atonement/undoing the harm are not nearly enough. Or Kristoph has become so mentally and emotionally attached to the bird (and Phoenix) that he refuses to let it fly away from him--especially while Kristoph himself is wasting away in prison.

42. What’s their favorite type of weather to enjoy together? (getting snowed in together, watching thunderstorms, etc.)

Phoenix most enjoys bright, warm sunny days (especially in the summertime). This is more in general than relating to Kristoph specifically. There is so much more to do when the weather is nice--including a few particular things that he enjoys doing with Trucy and often with Kristoph as well. They've gone berry-picking a few times (on Kristoph's dime), something that neither Kristoph nor Trucy had ever done before and something that they are both pleasantly surprised by. They will go for picnics at the park and talk Kristoph into taking Vongole with them. (Trucy enjoys playing several rounds of fetch with her afterwards). Sometimes, when they have a day at the pool, Kristoph will wear a big, floppy hat to keep the sun off his face, and Phoenix can't help but find it rather endearing.

Kristoph, meanwhile, enjoys the rain. Or more specifically, a steady, lightning-less medium downpour that is heavy enough to keep everyone indoors (and prevent Phoenix from leaving too soon) and water the grass, while still being nowhere near heavy enough for there to be any danger of flooding.

He enjoys taking Vongole for walks after the rain and breathing in the fresh, clean scent of the air. He particularly enjoys it when he is able to rope Phoenix (and sometimes Trucy and/or Klavier) into joining him. Especially on the very memorable occasion that they saw a full rainbow just as the sun was starting to set.

#krisnix #kristoph gavin #phoenix wright #ace attorney #the kristoph + bird arc is directly inspired by the “Rabbit takes in and takes care of a wounded baby bird arc from Winnie the Pooh”#if you haven't watched that episode yet saemi; you should #it's everything #but you will absolutely cry #kristoph has a similar personality to Rabbit imo #very uptight and perfectionistic and not always particularly warm #but just as capable of gentleness and nuance as he is of harshness and one-dimensionalness #was i perhaps a little too self-indulgent in my replies?#yes #but did i have fun? do I think others will enjoy anyway?#also yes and yes again #kriswright #narukiri #kirinaru #ask memes

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