#This takes place before the thing I posted last night

[shouyuus]

could i request car mechanic!vi and fem!reader hcs and little moments of their daily life now that they’re officially dating? 🤭🤭 you write vi so wellll nghghhh 😫

sfw fluffy hcs for car mechanic!vi au bulletpoints bc im in that mood today

breakfast is always a long, drawn out thing -- almost ritualistic, bc "breakfast is the most important meal of the day, sweets! c'mon, you oughtta know that." and you take turns making it, either for each other or for whoever else is in the house that day (sometimes vander, sometimes silco will drop by for coffee, sometimes powder and ekko will stay the night, in which case ekko almost always makes breakfast, bc powder's very particular about her pancakes)

you can't rmbr the last time you sat in a chair proper bc vi's always pulling you into her lap (except at the dinner table, where she tries to show a TAD more decorum, esp if you're having dinner at your place instead of hers, but even then, she'd pull her chair close to yours, just so she can press her leg against yours or reach out to put a palm on your thigh)

on the days that you're not together, you definitely text vi a bit more -- she's got her hands full of repairs, and your biggest worry on the daily is what you wanna make for dinner that day, and if you need to drop by the grocery store before you head over to vi's

the first time you try to teach vi how to use chopsticks, you end up just plopped in her lap, feeding her off your plate bc she claims that "it's easier this way" and that she can "watch your technique better from up close" although it's so stupidly obvious that she's not looking at your hands bc she can't keep her eyes off your lips and how you can't stop giggling when you twist around to feed her

on the lazy summer nights when all the work has been done and all the stuff that can still be done can wait till tomorrow, vi takes you up the hill behind the city, to her favorite little outlook, tucked into the side of a backroad that no one except the true locals know about -- from there, you can see the entire city spread out beneath you, sprawling net, cast in light and shattered stars. "i used to hate this place... just a little, cause i thought i'd never get out of it," she tells you. "and now?" you ask. "now... i kinda love it... it's my home and... well, it gave me you, didn't it?"

vi thanks the heavens that you only live a few streets over, and that it takes her about 5 minutes on her bike to get between your houses (even though, yeah, you do technically live on the rich side of town, just across the train tracks), bc sometimes, 5 minutes is just about as long as she can wait before she starts to feel fidgety about the thought of seeing you again

the nights she spends at yours are always fun -- your bed's more than big enough for the pair of you to sprawl out on; you'd flick through channels on tv till something catches your eye, or carry as many snacks as either of you can up and post up for a movie marathon. it'd always end up with one of you lying against the other, your body curled between her legs or the other way around

sometimes she falls asleep against you, and you'd let the entire movie play before trying to slip out from behind her to turn off the lights. she always wakes up when you move, and she always grumbles and tries to pull you back; you always laugh and promise her that you'll be right back, to which she'd always pout but it morphs into a smile as she watches you patter around the room in a big t-shirt, turning off the lights and clearing the snacks off the bed before climbing back into her arms

she always keeps her hand tucked around your hip whenever the two of you go out anywhere, or she's got her hand pushed into the back pocket of your jeans or shorts or whatever the hell else; she claims its just bc she wants you close; you both know that it's also bc she wants zero questions as to who you belong to when you're walking down the street

when her hair gets long in the back, she lets you braid it and in it up with cute lil clips bc she likes the way it makes you smile

she almost loses it a little when she wakes up one day at yours and finds that you've put out an extra cup for her, and bought her a new toothbrush to use; it's then that she realizes she's already left like a quarter of her wardrobe here and that your parents no longer even look up when she comes downstairs in the morning, bedhead and all, to greet them, and that they've somehow always already made coffee for her, just the way she likes

"hey prett girl, can i ask you something?" "yeah, sure." "what... do you think about moving in together?" "hm? oh --" "not like right this moment or anything but --" "i'd love to. i mean, it does get a little complicated splitting time between my place and yours." "oh... that was -- i thought you'd be a bit more..." vi swallows, trailing off. you cock your head and fix her with a look, "a bit more what? hesitant? i mean... we're basically together all the time now anyway. it'd just make things easier, right? and --" a blush flushes into your cheeks as you look away, clearing your throat, "it'd -- it'd be nice not to have to be so q-quiet, sometimes."

vi nearly blacks out at your words; and yeah, so what if she starts looking at places that exact afternoon?

[moonydustx]

How does it end?

info: yes, we have reached the end of this story! obscenity, of course. Presence of a slightly toxic ex. Sweet boy (and jealous) Law.

italicized text blocks are flashback

MDNI | MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

PART 01 - PART 02 - PART 03 - PART 04 (you're here)

"Do you intend to stay alone there for long?" Your captain's voice caught your attention, dragging you out of a book. "Everyone's going to drink. I think we deserve a celebration."

"I'm right here, captain."

"I insist." He held out his hand, lifting you from the cold floor of the submarine. "I can tell you the end of the book while we drink."

The vivid memory still made you laugh a little. That night, Law not only told you the story of that book, but also the sequel to them, and even so, you read them one by one. At that time, you were still just captain and subordinate. It seemed like something very distant.

You never imagined that you would spend nights stuck in his room, feeling on the edge of precipices full of pleasure. You couldn't imagine that your favorite place to sleep would be one, in your captain's bed, two, in his arms when he refused to go to bed in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, some nights this was impossible, which meant spending a few hours a day in his office, even if it was just to work together and do nothing else.

Your right ear was ringing with the explosion near you, an annoyance that nauseated you and made you dizzy. Who would have thought you would fall into an ambush? Before you could gather the strength to stand up, your feet left the ground and you felt yourself being thrown against someone's shoulders, someone who wasn't wearing the same uniform as you. It was impossible to see the person's face, so you could only pray that they were taking you to a safe place.

The beaten earth floor that you saw below you soon turned into simpler footsteps and cracks against a metal ramp. Trying to stand up, you noticed that you didn't have that much strength and that you could see the symbol of your crew against the yellow wall. You were home.

The sounds were still muffled when you were placed back on your feet.

"You?" Your voice was exasperated as soon as you noticed who had carried you into your submarine.

It wasn't that you hated him or held a grudge against him. But the last thing you expected was to be saved by your dear (not so much) ex-boyfriend. Teru still looked the same as when you broke up and he left the crew, the only thing that had changed about him was his normal civilian clothes.

"Let's disappear from their radar. Everyone at your posts now!" Law's voice sounded too loud for you, forcing you to hide your own head between your arms.

"Captain, I need to talk to you."

"Later." Law's voice sounded even lower as you felt his hands gently rest on your arms. "I'm going to take you to the infirmary."

You expected him to guide you to the place and not transport you with his powers. As soon as the environment transformed into the small white room, you felt one of his hands hold you by the waist and the other lean on one of the walls.

"It's going to be a difficult descent, I'd rather not take any risks."

As soon as the submarine stabilized and you were far enough away from the reach of enemies, Law guided you to the nearest bench, lifting you up and sitting on it without any effort. Quietly, you watched him walk back and forth gathering what he needed. You could tell he was too quiet. The first touch near your ear made you flinch.

"Sorry babe, this is going to bother you a little." He simply said, focused on cleaning the injured area.

He spent a few more minutes cleaning and medicating the area in complete silence. As soon as he finished the area around your ear, he started treating the few wounds spread across your face.

"Is there any salvation for my case? I mean, you didn't say anything."

"Your eardrum is a little damaged, it'll be fine in a few days. Some shrapnel caused the whole problem, so it's pretty easy to heal." he explained in an almost professorial tone.

"Are you sure? You're all tense."

"Do you want the honest answer?" he asked and laughed when he saw your eyes widen in fright. "I'm kidding."

"Still, I can see that something is bothering you."

The hands that were caring for your face went down, contouring your body and resting around you as a sigh that bordered on frustration escaped him.

"I don't know how comfortable I am with seeing you on the shoulders of a man with blood all over your head." he finished, seeing you blink a few times and nod. "Now I'm relieved that it was just that."

"Well, we have to consider that the man who brought me was Teru."

"I couldn't care less about that." Law's professional demeanor slowly faded, allowing him to fit between your legs.

"So I'm discharged?" the tone of your voice along with your fingers trailing a dangerous path up his shirt, towards the back of Law's neck. "I could really use some other treatments."

"You make things a little more difficult." Even if out of the corner of his eye, he followed your nimble fingers and began to undo the buttons on his shirt. "Very difficult."

"I think there's too much adrenaline in my body." The last words came out as a whisper from your lips before you stole his for yourself.

Occupying the little space that still existed between the two of you, Law pulled your thighs in order to fit between your legs while he felt the taste of your tongue against his. Your nails had already found his tattooed abdomen and slid as if you knew every inch of his skin. A path that was becoming increasingly familiar.

"Captain?" Teru's voice caught the attention of both of you, forcing you to move away just enough for Law to be able to answer.

"What do you need?"

"Can I talk to you?" Law's eyes met yours and for a brief moment they seemed to ask permission for him to leave you there and solve whatever problem awaited him. Seeing you nod, Law completely disconnected himself from your body.

"Meet me in my office, I'll be there in a few minutes." the captain replied and took the silence on the other side of the door as an agreement.

"Work calls you." As much as you tried to avoid it, the discouraged tone remained in your voice, which earned a simple smile from the man in front of you.

"Before I go…" Law approached again, this time with no other intention than conversation. "I have a feeling he's going to ask for something and since we're en route, it's going to be very difficult to return to the surface now."

"So we're stuck here with Teru?"

"Is that a problem? I know you broke up amicably, but I don't think it's right to let him stay here without at least asking what you prefer."

"I'd be lying if I said I think it's the most amazing thing in the world to have my ex back here, but he saved me, I think it's the least I owe him."

You explained and saw him nod, processing the words into something that only his head could understand. Law considered walking away for a few seconds, but the doubt that plagued his mind would never allow it.

"Do you still feel something for him?"

"For Teru? I believe that, besides being grateful for his help today, nothing more than that." When you noticed Law's vacant gaze, you didn't hesitate to turn his face towards you. "What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing you should worry." He said in a gentle tone. His lips quickly found the top of your head. "Now go rest."

"But I…"

"Captain's orders." He mumbled with an almost cretinous smile drawn on his lips. "If you behave, maybe you can include a few more things in your rest."

Well, resting wasn't exactly the easiest thing. The injury had been minor and as much as you took Law's considerations into account, something told you deeper down that it was an exaggeration of concern. However, from that moment on, some things started to get strange.

Immediately, it seemed like all eyes were on you. You wondered if they had seen, heard or suspected something about you and Law, but it seemed unlikely. Even more so when Ikkaku pulled you by the arm.

"So… Teru?" she whispered as if you weren't alone there. "Don't tell me you're back together."

"Are you crazy? Never!" the idea would never, ever cross your mind. Even if you were single. Well, technically… "He just happened to be in the right place and time."

"And what happened, were you hurt badly?"

"No, the captain said it was just some shrapnel." You preferred to avoid the more detailed explanation that Law had given. The truth is that the little incomplete session between the two of you had taken up a good part of your memories.

"Hey, I found you!" your ex-boyfriend's voice filled the entire room, with a joy that sounded shrill to your still sore ears.

"I'll leave you two alone." Ikkaku blinked and walked away with a gentle smile towards his former crewmate.

"So, how can I help you?" Your solicitous voice hid your laziness. Honestly, it wasn't like you wanted to avoid him, but you would certainly trade those minutes there for a few more lying in your bed. Maybe with someone else.

"You're still here under Law's orders." He said, trying to bring up a subject that was still unclear to you.

"Of course, it was never in my plans to leave. And you, how has your exploration been?"

Exploring. Ah, the dear excuse for exploring. When Teru decided to leave the crew, he wanted to take you with him. "A great adventure awaits us." But you weren't interested, not at all. In a way, it was as if a weight had been lifted from your shoulders.

"Teru will leave us tomorrow morning." Law leaned against the doorframe, analyzing your figure sitting on the bed. "Have you made your decision?"

"Of course, I never really had any doubts."

"Then why can I see your red eyes from here?" He walked over, leaning on the edge of the bunk. "Do you need me to fix something before he leaves?"

"Fix something?"

"You know, in case he messed up everything." Law explained as if it were obvious, seeing you immediately deny it. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, Captain. Unless he wants you to solve something for him before you go. Then we'd have a problem." You tried to sound more humorous, smiling slightly when you saw the same trace appear on Law's lips.

"Nah."

"Now you take sides?" Your voice came out intoxicated by a light laugh. "That's surprising."

"I mean, you've been here since when Sachi and Penguin couldn't decide on a menu or when my voice wavered much more than my mood." He himself laughed at the realization. "I mean, there are no sides to be taken." He emphasized the plural.

"He and I don't want the same things. I think it's been a while." You simply answered.

"That relieves me. You know, not having to put up with Ikakku burning panties or Bepo devouring everything in the submarine as a form of protest to defend you." he commented still humorously, but his smile quickly disappeared. "Promise you're okay?"

"Yes, Captain."

For a while you lost yourself in the memory, knowing that it had been so long since Teru had left there and things seemed to improve exponentially.

He wasn't bad or that typical evil guy from the books, he just wasn't the right one for you and that was okay.

"And you, after we broke up, did you meet anyone?" the direct question dragged you back to reality, even though you had ignored the entire summary he had given about his last years.

"Yes, I did." you limited yourself to answering. Theoretically, the person you met you already knew, but those were extremely different circumstances.

"Is he here?"

"Can we not talk about it?" you asked and saw him look suspicious. You didn't want to let this conversation go on long enough for a piece of information to be revealed. important thing escaped. "I believe the captain gave you some tasks, I highly doubt he would leave you idly by."

"Of course! Actually, that's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. He asked me to accompany you during these days."

Law asked Teru to accompany you? That didn't make any sense. Could that be why he had asked if you still had feelings for your ex? No, that wasn't like him. But after the chaotic morning and the flurry of events, you chose not to question Law. Before you were… (again that question in the depths of your subconscious screamed, questioning what you were)… you were captain and subordinate.

These should have been peaceful days. They should have.

You didn't expect that by accompanying you, Teru would practically become your shadow. Lunches, dinners, absolutely all of your free time, the man seemed to occupy every available gap of air that you had. In the distance, beyond the not-so-warm jokes of your friends, you could see a pair of curious eyes. But you had known him long enough to know that there was nothing curious about that.

What used to be an arm's length away seemed like miles and miles. Law seemed to be looking further and further away, and with Teru at your feet, it was almost impossible to find him alone. This forced you to drag him towards the first bathroom you saw, not caring that it was occupied - thank whatever god that could exist, it was emptier than your brain had been in the last few days.

"Why are you avoiding me?" the question came out harshly from your lips, and with Law looking you up and down, it didn't make you any more comfortable.

"I don't want to take up your precious time…" the sentence seemed to die there. "With Teru." except that the last words came out full of venom.

"Law, you misunderstood."

"No, I didn't misunderstood." He had to control himself and stop acting like a bratty child. But it was impossible. Since when was it so painful to see you interacting with someone else? "I understand that maybe the distance between you two made you rethink something, I understand that…"

"Law, look at me." You tried to reach his chin, but insistent knocks on the door stole your attention.

"Hey, are you there?" Teru calling your name, what a surprise! "I need your help."

"You can go." Law murmured, nodding in the direction of the path.

A few more days, a few more days and this whole deception would be over. Maybe you would sit with Law and finally open your heart and let out all the thousand questions you had. Inside you, there was the fear that he didn't have any of the answers.

The answers lost their importance on one of the nights when a weight settled on top of you. As soon as your eyes opened and met Teru's, you saw your life fly like an arrow between your eyes. That was crossing all limits, absolutely all.

Without needing to hold back, you threw him out of bed and flew at him, your hands reaching for his neck. However, his hands raised as if he were surrendering.

"Calm down, calm down." he asked, trying to get away. "I didn't do anything, I wasn't going to do anything. I just wanted to wake you up."

"And this is how you do shit like this?" you yelled, getting off of him. "Have you lost your fucking mind?"

"I just wanted to take advantage of the fact that you're alone here and talk." Your trembling hands slid through your hair, trying in vain to gather some calm. "I realized that I still love you and after all this time. Aren't you tired of this, of this life? I can give you something better if you give me a chance."

Your mouth opened and closed a few times, ferocity and indignation drawn on the expression illuminated by a small lamp that you barely know how you turned on.

"Get out of here." Your rational side spoke louder. Your colleagues who occupied the other dorms didn't deserve to have to hear you freak out.

"I believe…"

"Teru, I'm trying to be rational here so please leave. Don't wait for me to decide to be irrational, beat you up and throw you out to sea. We both know in a fight like this who would win."

The man still had the nerve to give you a hurt look, as if you were the crazy one in the whole story. That night, you didn't sleep anymore. Nor the next two.

Teru continued to be inconvenient, the others, unaware of everything you had been through, continued to laugh. Law continued to become more reclusive. Apparently the hurricane of things was limited to your brain.

Three days of stolen shifts, after all, if you were busy working you could find excuses to avoid Teru. Three days without sleep, with only light meals and a more than questionable amount of caffeine in your body.

The room was full, a dinner almost in a celebratory tone for the farewell of a long-time friend. Coincidentally, it meant that your martyrdom was coming to an end the next day.

Your colleagues - and the enemy in question - chatted animatedly around you. The fish on your plate had already swum more than it should have swum when it was still alive. You were exhausted. It was just another day dawning…

"I mean, I can stay a few more days…" Teru's voice stood out, as he flicked your plate, catching your attention. "I just need the right chance."

The jocular tone, the false humor surrounded by a promise that was taking away your peace. It was as if the entire Polar Tang or all the seas decided to go silent at the same time. Maybe your exhaustion didn't allow you to notice that your voice had escalated many, many decibels. Your hands slammed hard against the cafeteria table, silencing everyone around and forcing the man in front of you to retreat.

"Shut the hell up." you shouted, not caring about the higher scales your voice reached. "Shut up! I'm tired, exhausted! I don't want to go back to you, I don't want to give you any more fucking chances. I want to be able to go to my room or at least eat in peace." The dark circles under your eyes and tired expression even indicated that you were exhausted, but everyone knew that you had lost your limits by letting yourself go like that. "It's your fault that I'm in this state, the man I love barely looks at me and I haven't slept for days! I don't want to hear your excuses, I don't want you to grab me or invade my room in the middle of the night. I'm tired of trying to be even the slightest bit polite, that's enough. I don't want to know about you!" After saying each word slowly, you noticed the scandalous silence around you. Damn, you had put on quite a show.

Leaving Teru, your plate and the curious looks aside, you left the room, looking for the first place you could hide and try to think about what you had said. And you had said too much. Back in the Polar Tang cafeteria, curious looks alternated between looking at Teru and where you were.

At one end of the room, a pair of attentive eyes followed you, while each drop of blood seemed to heat up.

"I hadn't noticed." Law heard someone say, in a low tone.

"I thought he was a good person." Another comment hit him.

He didn't want - in fact, he couldn't - think about anything else after the avalanche of information. As his mind permeated with the man I love that came out of your lips, he couldn't deny that he was seeing red in front of him. There was no anger - in fact, he knew very well that that wasn't the feeling he had for you - that would stop him from wanting to protect you at that moment.

"I need to go…" Teru began, ready to follow you. "I need to apologize to her and…"

"Move and you'll be dead." Law's voice came out in an almost monotonous tone, like someone listing some items to buy for the next trip to the market. For those who knew him, they knew that it was almost the same as a death sentence.

With one last look in Teru's direction, the captain of the Heart Pirates decided to follow you. He knew that by the surprised and furious expressions he saw around the room, Teru wouldn't be able to leave so easily.

Finding you was easy. The door to one of the rooms was open and you were circling around nervously.

and from one end to the other even though there wasn't much space for your hasty steps to go around. Law closed the door behind him and that was enough to pull you out of that trance. The two of you remained still for a few seconds, just contemplating each other's existence. It had been days since you had barely been close, let alone locked in the same room.

"Forgive me." He began, intertwining his fingers and trying not to appear as nervous as he was.

"About what? The one who made a scene now was me."

"For not realizing that so much wrong was happening beneath my ignorance." He took a small step towards you. Looking at him was like approaching a small, defenseless puppy, shy and tired eyes looking at him. "I was blind."

"You were busy." Your trembling voice was almost the same as having a thousand daggers cutting him.

"I should never be when it comes to you. But the fact is, I was blinded by silly jealousy." He confessed and released all the air he barely knew he was holding as soon as his hands reached the sides of your arms. "Tell me what I can do for you."

"I think after this, there's not much else to do, right?" You tried to give your best smile. "I think I just want to get some sleep, that's all. Try to clear up all this mess."

"Do you mind explaining to me better what he did to you?" Law saw you lower your head trying to avoid the question. "If you prefer, we can treat this as captain and subordinate, you fill out some things, everything formalized."

"Because I have a feeling I have more than one option."

"Either you tell me here or in my room, not to me as your captain, but as someone who really cares about you, someone who…" He paused, trying not to pressure you or corner you even more. "Just let me take care of you, okay?"

"I have this feeling that either choice will result in him being kicked out of here."

"That's up to you." That came out of his lips, while his mind was hoping that you would decide to let him torture Teru in the worst possible ways.

"You're the captain here."

Law took off the hat he was wearing and placed it on your head, carefully adjusting it under your messy hair.

"I'm temporarily naming you captain. I could get some tattoos or find a cooler outfit, but that's going to take a while." He smiled as he heard a light laugh echo from you. "You decide what to do with him. I'll do it, you don't have to deal with this problem anymore."

"Let's just let him go, please. He made a mistake, I know, but I want this to just end, without too much drama." You suggested and saw him close his smile immediately. "Is there a problem?"

"I thought it would be something more like please cut him into a thousand pieces or please beat him up." He tried to imitate it poorly and realized that you weren't joking. "Consider it done."

"Law?" your hands brought him even closer to you and it wasn't like you needed to bring into the world what you wanted.

Before he even reached your lips, Law allowed his face to slide along the side of your neck as he pressed himself against your body. Something exquisite like feeling you there, something possessive like marking you as his.

Only then did his lips capture yours in a way that seemed calm but the more he stole your mouth to his you noticed even more urgency, more repressed desire after the long week apart. He tried to move away just enough for the two of you to catch a few seconds of air to remember that you were in the middle of some random room at Polar Tang and that there was an entire crew waiting for the man to reappear and make a definitive decision.

"I need to go." He murmured even though he didn't want to. There was a strange feeling of belonging every time his arms were intertwined with your body. "I need to tell everyone…" he made a move to walk away but was stopped by your hands.

"We can't leave it for later, it's just… I missed you." you confessed and he nodded, as if he was savoring the words that came out of you.

"I'm sorry, but no." he genuinely seemed disappointed. "I missed you, but I think I need to go there, take sides."

"And then?"

"Then you'll accompany me to my room, more precisely to my bed…"

"Law." your voice sounded like a warning and ignoring what you were saying, he pressed his body against yours, however you couldn't feel any malice in that.

"More precisely to my bed so you can get a decent night's sleep. No one will disturb you there, I promise." he finished, seeing you smile shyly. "I told you, I just want to take care of you."

Like magnets, your hands once again intertwined around him at the same time that your lips sought his. It didn't seem necessary to deepen the kiss, it was as if your own body just needed to feel Law's presence there, his scent.

His lips were mixed with yours, his lips glued to your mouth. Your tongues danced slowly like a small intimate rediscovery between the two of you. It didn't last long, long enough for him to hold you against his arms.

"I was an idiot, I know, I promise never to act like that again." He murmured against your skin, hugging you tightly before letting you go. "Ready to go?" He held out his hand to you. "I just need to talk to Bepo and Clione first."

"But this…" First you put his hat back on him and then you handed him your hand, and he immediately started walking with his fingers intertwined with yours.

"I said. I'm ready to take sides." He simply replied.

The big room seemed intact like a work of art. Everyone was standing in the same position, except that you could hear some murmurs. One of the only things different was Teru. His confident posture had been replaced by him with his hands under his face, looking nervous. As soon as he noticed the presence of the two of you, he seemed to regain a little of what had disappeared. You didn't want to argue anymore, things seemed clearly resolved. So when you saw him walking towards you, your only reaction was to hold the hand tied to yours even tighter, which seemed to catch Law's attention.

"Hey, I wanted to apologize for…"

"Stop talking." Law limited himself to saying even though he refused to look the man in the face. "Bepo, Clione, please let me know as soon as we're ready to dock at the next island. Until I'm informed, no one leaves the Polar Tang."

"Yes, captain!"

"Do you want to go to our bedroom and rest?" Ikkaku approached you, proposing with a gentle smile. "We're sorry we didn't notice anything before."

"It's okay." You nodded, smiling in her direction. "I just needed to get that off my chest."

"Ikkaku, don't worry." Law turned to her. "On second thought, I think it would be a good idea for you to sleep with Shachi and Penguin or with someone, wherever is more comfortable." Law pointed out, unable to resist glancing at Teru sideways. "I won't cage his, but I also don't know how comfortable I am knowing that someone is capable of breaking into other people's rooms."

"That's a great idea, thank you, Captain."

"You're all dismissed."

Law once again began to guide you, this time to the opposite side. As soon as he opened the bedroom door, he made room for you to enter. The environment became increasingly familiar to you, even though it was still full of books and comics scattered around.

"Are you sure I won't get in your way?" you insisted and instead of hearing the answer come out of his lips, you only felt his arms encircle you and guide you in not-so-aligned steps to the bed. "Can I take that as a no?"

"You can take that as a no, it's my pleasure to have you here." He said in a light tone, the opposite of what you had heard earlier. "Before you rest, I need to know something."

"What do you want to know?" Your voice was shaky, thinking about what you had shouted at the top of your lungs. As soon as you sat up in bed, you had to hold back a light laugh when you saw Law lift your legs and arrange some pillows.

"What did he do?" He sat up, indicating that you should lie down. "I mean, I know he did enough to upset you and that you asked me to take it easy, but I need to know under what exact conditions I can send him away from here."

"And what would the options be?"

"That depends on what you tell me." One of his hands rested on your thigh, in an almost imperceptible caress. "He can leave here, walking on his own two feet or he can leave here in pieces, straight to the bottom of the sea. In short, of course."

"He didn't do anything serious. I think that, apart from the day he broke into the room, he was just being inconvenient. I think most of my outburst was just a rant." You explained and saw that he seemed to be thinking about the next words he was going to say. "What I said there…"

"It's okay." He tried to reassure you even though he was mesmerized by how lovely you looked lying on his bed. "You need to rest, we have all the time in the world to talk later."

"Law?" Only a low grumble came from his lips, encouraging you to continue. "Can you stay here?"

"Yes, of course."

The idea at first was to climb over you and head to the other side of the bed. However, you seemed to have very different plans. Your legs closed against Law's waist and your torso raised enough to pull him towards you.

He didn't need any more tips than that. As soon as his body fell on top of yours, your lips were locked against his and even with all the desire, you could feel him withdrawing.

"I need you." You mumbled against his neck feeling him growl against you, fighting against his own will.

"Babe not today."

God, Law knew he had never needed to have as much self-control as he was having at that moment. And it wasn't that he didn't want you - quite the opposite, since his hips moved in search of some kind of friction against you. It was just a mix of guilt for everything that had happened and concern. He just wanted to see you well.

"I missed you so much, I just need to feel you even if it's just a little." Again the sly tone against him.

"You just need to feel me, huh?" His tone was a few octaves lower and rougher as his hand slid down your body.

His lips didn't leave yours as his hand roamed your body. Fingers slowly gliding over your skin, pushing aside any type of fabric he could find along the way. Wet kisses ran down your neck to your nipple, eliciting gasps that matched the arch that was forming in your back. More contact, more pleasure, you needed more Law.

Two fingers slid through the damp fabric of your panties, sliding there unpretentiously, waiting for you to release the last thread of sanity.

"Law, please, I need you."

"Me? What do you need?" He set the fabric aside, letting his finger slide away from where you needed it most.

The blue dome formed over the two of you before you could understand the word he had said and there was something almost poetic about how he could use the same thing to do devastating things - like dismember, kill or press his fingers into the place that burned you the most.

"M-more." A strangled moan escaped your lips in a brief moment you forgot you didn't need to hold back.

"Babe you need to rest so let's not go through much of this today." He said with a mischievous smile as he noticed the frustration in your expression. "I think I can give a little more to my girl." His middle finger penetrated you slowly feeling you contract and moan slowly as your hips sought more and more. "Do you want anything else?"

You mumbled something he could barely understand not that he cared much about it at the moment. The way your body tangled against his made it clearer than any words could.

"Can you take one more?" His ring finger joined his middle finger inside you as his palm began to rub against your clit. "It's right here, isn't it, sweetheart? I can feel it."

"Just don't… don't stop."

"It's just you and me here, babe. Come on, I can feel you squeezing me. I've missed this pussy, so much." The dirtiest words were whispered against your ear as if someone could break the dome between the two of you. "Do you want to cum? I know you do, give it to me. Just give it to me, sweetheart."

Legs trembling, a blank vision and a scream that would surely be etched in your throat. Before you opened your eyes, you could feel something against your face. Once, twice, three times. A few small kisses spread almost chastely across your skin.

"Are you okay?" Law's eyes were immediately above yours. "It seemed intense."

"It didn't just seem like it."

You laughed, feeling the weight of his body on top of yours, but not for long as he adjusted himself and lay down, forcing you to fit into his arms. You could feel his breath against your skin as his fingers caressed your skin. At that moment, you wanted to say so much. So many feelings that could easily become a waterfall of words, but in the end, they were summed up in just three of them. Three words that you felt like they were being said against your skin before your eyes closed.

Maybe it was tiredness or maybe it was because you were sleeping in a much more comfortable place than you were used to. You were definitely getting used to being there, or else you wouldn't have rolled over in bed looking for someone else.

As soon as you did your morning routine and went to find your tasks, you found your corner of the board empty, your tasks redistributed to others.

"You need this." Shachi tapped your shoulder as he passed, knowing that you were probably confused by your huge list. "Take a rest, after all, we're only going to give you this gift today."

"Thanks, I guess."

You could use a few more hours of rest, even though you didn't know if you'd be able to sleep any longer. The small memory of the night before came to your mind. You couldn't have gotten it wrong, could you?

The walk to Law's room seemed like an eternity and you made sure to distract yourself with anything you found along the way, a way to gain even more time for your final decision.

When you opened the bedroom door, you found Law sitting on the bed as if he already knew you'd be back there.

"I heard you got the day off." In an unexpected gesture, your legs guided you until they stopped in front of him.

"Did you sleep well?" He asked and you nodded. "And did you eat?" Again, the same gesture. "What's going on then?"

Your fingers itched, gathering courage or at least trying to find something to do with your hands. They had never been so restless, so lost. Maybe that was reflected in your frightened expression since the reaction didn't come from you but Law. His hands pulled you by the waist until your legs circled his body, fitting on top of him without any kind of malice. It was as if that path had become the favorite route for both of you.

And then there it was. Law's worried yet sweet tone and his eyes attentive to your every move, his hands clasped around your waist as a mix of marking himself present and also as a guarantee that he would keep you there, next to him.

It was almost cathartic to understand that, something so big and in such a few milliseconds. It bordered on frightening while at the same time taking away all the fear you were facing.

"I love you." The words came out like that, light as someone saying a simple good morning. As if it was the thing you said to him every morning. "I think I love you. I'm sure, actually, I love you." and there it was, all the confusion, all the butterflies in your stomach wanting to fly out at once.

Cathartic. Just like the smile that appeared on his lips, that lit up your captain's eyes.

"I love you." Coming from him, it sounded like a relief. As if that secret had been kept for too long. "I've loved you for longer than I can even calculate and that's a little scary. I hate myself for acting the way I have in the last few days."

"Don't worry, I think I love you enough for both of us."

For a long time, you were against romance books. The story of the kiss of love, all the drama surrounding it seemed not to suit you. Or your other relationships. Or Law's stolen kisses. Or the idea that your greatest closeness began with something that goes beyond a kiss.

But there it was, lips on lips, his hands moving up your back and your mouth giving way to him. That was a kiss, one of those that took your breath away before his tongue even explored yours.

His hands on your back were replaced by the comfortable mattress. His white t-shirt was thrown somewhere you would worry about later. Your clothes met the same fate and you both couldn't be less worried about it.

"Just tell me you need me, please." He whispered against your skin, his lips descending to your belly. "Babe, please."

"I'll always need you."

This time he didn't tease you, he just dove into your intimacy. Honey and saliva mixed in his mouth and that was certainly the best thing he had ever tasted. Your hips sought more and more and he would give it to you, with all pleasure. Your explosion didn't take long to arrive and before you became too sensitive, your fingers tangled in his dark strands, pulling him back.

"Any lessons for today?" you teased him as he fit between your legs.

"No. Today I want to learn." His cock rubbed against your thighs, a hard resistance as he was getting closer and closer to where you both wanted. "I want you to tell me what you like, what you want."

"Just you." Your legs circled him, you could feel the tip of his cock brush against your entrance and sink in inch by inch. "Fuck!"

"That's my intention." He chuckled against your skin and swallowed your moans against a kiss as your intimacy swallowed him completely.

Slow thrusts drew small moans from you. Damn, it would be hard to control like this and Law knew he was in no condition to focus on anything other than you. Other than your body around him, your moans and requests for more and more against his ear.

The speed increased and by that time someone had certainly already heard you, not that he cared. His fingers intertwined with yours.

"I can feel you… oh fuck, babe I can't hold it in much longer." He moaned against your skin, thrusting without much rhythm, but more and more intensely. "Cum with me, love, please."

The request was enough, the simple request for you to contract against him and for him to spill himself against you. Almost like a perfectly orchestrated symphony.

Law didn't want to let you go, ever, but even more so at that moment. Only when he managed to breathe properly again - and you were still a little breathless and airy - did he pull out of you, only to let himself go and pull you against his chest.

"Shit." Your mumble caught his attention. "You know everyone heard, right? They're sure to make fun of me."

"It's a shame." He laughed, letting his face sink into your hair. "Lucky for you you're off today."

"Yeah, lucky indeed. I can get locked up here."

"And lucky also that you're dating the captain." He blurted out the information, expecting a reaction from you. A complaint, a grumble, but in return, he only found your almost incredulous smile.

"Are you kidding me isn't it?"

"I can get down on one knee, I can buy you a bunch of flowers, I can book an amazing restaurant just for you." He started listing, seeing you look at him with shining eyes. "Whatever makes you happy, as long as you agree to be my girlfriend."

"I accept. Can you say that again?" you asked and saw him pretend to try to remember something, even scratching his head.

"Okay, low blow." he said with a laugh, as you started to give him some pinches. "I love you."

And little did you know that that morning he disappeared, initially to teach Teru a lesson, to make him regret every single thing. But your words remained in his mind, your request to just let him go and for the first time in a while Law wanted to follow someone's order - your request. That's how he changed his course and didn't add "give you a ring" to the list of things he would do for you, after all the jewel had been bought that morning and he couldn't wait to see you wear it.

[sirxlla]

Such an Integral Piece

----------------‐-------------------------------

Warnings: Fluff

Prompt: introducing your cat to Dick's dog Haley (request: @runnergirl234 also I love this idea it's the cutest thing ever and I hope you also have a great day)

Notes: female reader, italics are actions and thoughts.

-With that said it's all under the cut-

The idea of you both moving in together was obvious, most nights one of your guys's apartments was empty because you would sleep over with the other person. It wasn't entirely ideal because of the animals but both of you didn't want to move too quickly in your relationships. That was nearly a year ago before you knew he was Nightwing.

Now Richard was staying at whatever apartment was closest after patrol and unfortunately that meant it was usually his. Sleeping in an empty bed just felt wrong at this point.

"Why don't you just move in? You shouldn't have to drive so far after a long day of work, I know the traffic in the city is not great around this time. I mean it's never great." Dick rubbed your back as you both laid in bed together.

"You're sure?" You asked as you played with his silky soft fluffy hair.

"I mean it would help me keep an eye on you but if you don't want to I entirely understand, I don't want to pressure you into anything." He leaned into your soft touches, closing his eyes with a groan.

"I mean I've been meaning to get away from the other job for a while anyways, If we can figure something out I wouldn't mind moving." Absentmindedly staring at the ceiling in the almost pitch black room.

"You mean that weirdo, David? Is he still coming around?" He asks about the weirdo that used to work at your job that kept stalking you.

"No, I think you scared I'm off but I'm really tired of looking over my shoulder and hoping that he's not there."

"I can find you a job pretty easily I mean hell you could probably work with me if you wanted."

"Isn't that like conflict of interest?"

"Not if we are actually working."

"I'd be down." Haley jumping on the bed to curl into your side.

"Then you're moving in." Cuddling into your chest, his face squished against your boobs.

"I am moving in" You smiled as sleep started taking you.

It was a bit of a process going through everything that you had acquired over time. You had that apartment since you were 18 so there was a lot to go through. It took about a week but you were getting everything settled and moved into Dick's place.

Once everything was in it's rightful place at his apartment the last but most important piece was your cat Frodo. Frodo is very affectionate and loving.

"Oh, God. I'm nervous."

"It's okay, Honey. Haley's got her mask on and I've got a hold of her." He's almost 100% sure she won't do anything to her but he wants to be sure.

"Well, here goes nothing." You brought Frodo's carry case over to Haley to let her sniff him. Frodo started hissing as Haley got super excited and playful which prompted Dick to make her sit.

"Be gentle Haley." He said to the sweet pitbull that listenss to every word that came out of his mouth.

"I guess we'll just have to give them time." You stated to Dick. After about 20 minutes of him in the crate you decided to let him out. Dick told Haley to come sit on the couch with him and she very quickly listened being such a well-trained dog. Once everyone calm down they seemed to as well.

The three of you saw on the couch and watched a movie while Frodo decided to go explore the house. After about an hour Frodo came back and surprisingly curled up next to Haley. You were half asleep against chest so you didn't notice but he sure did, he took a photo and posted it on Snapchat with the caption "my little family" which was a photo of you laying on his chest and the animals cuddling together. This was all that he hoped for when he was so happy that everybody was getting along.

[starlost-maniac]

I Slept with My Boss - Ch 2

Warnings/genre: SMUT, piv, pia, protected sex, one night stand, mxf, mxm, multiple orgasms, multiple partners, club/drinks, voyeurism, pet names, daddy kink, double pen, oral, color system, squirting

Pairing: ot8 SKZ x fem!reader

MINORS AND AGELESS BLOGS, DNI

dividers made by @cafekitsune

You were back at your place, leaving the hotel room before either of the men had woken up. It was a bit hard to get out from between them as they were both flush against you, literally squishing you between them.

You were sitting in your living room, drinking a cup of coffee, scrolling social media. You frown when you come across a picture of you and your ex that popped up in an old post. You swiftly delete the picture and sigh.

You text Yoonae, telling her you're awake. She calls you not a moment later.

"Sooo? How was it last night?" You can hear the eyebrow wiggle through the phone. You laugh.

"It was good. Like, really good. It's a shame I won't see them again honestly." You sip your coffee.

"You didn't get their numbers? Why not?" Yoonae asks, exasperated.

"You know I don't normally do one night stands. I'm only doing it to get him out of my head, which helped for the night, but I just deleted a picture of us, so he's back on my mind." You sigh.

"Well, we are going out again tonight. If the two are there again, I'm getting them back to you. If not, I'll find someone else. You deserve the world, Y/n. Great dick too." You both laugh.

"Fine. You convinced me, Yoonae. I'll see you tonight?"

"Yup, same time. I'll see you tonight!" She says excitedly. You both say goodbye and hang up. You stand up and finish your coffee before going to clean and take a shower.

——

Yoonae took you back to the same club as last night. You're back at the bar, babying another drink as you don't like being drunk. Yoonae was at the bar with you, asking if anyone you could see, interested you. You were here for about an hour. Yoonae looked around but couldn't find the two men from last night. You hum, thinking as you scan the crowd. Your eyes land on a young man with blonde hair and freckles. You point him out.

"Him. He's really cute."

"Say no more, babe." She grins and stands up from the bar. She walks over and talks to the blonde. She points you out and he looks you over, a wide smile stretching across his face. He looks at your friend and points next to him with his thumb. Whoever he was pointing to, you couldn't see as he was blocked by other people. You see Yoonae nod though. She walks back over to you, smiling.

"They're ready when you are, Y/n." She grins when you squint at her.

"They?" You finish your drink, setting the cup on the bar. Yoonae nods. Looking back at the blonde, she waves him over. You look towards him, watching as he walks over, another man following him. They stop in front of you and you finally see the other man. He had fluffy brown hair that he let just cover his eyes. His eyes were wide as he looked you over, a shy smile on his face. They were just as gorgeous as the men from last night.

"This is them." Yoonae smiles at you. "I set up a room upstairs just in case we found someone tonight." You teasingly roll your eyes at your friend and smile at her. Thanking her, you stand up and follow the men upstairs. They lead you to the room that Yoonae rented for the night. They let you walk in first, following behind you.

"We don't usually do this kind of thing, but your friend was very persuasive." The blonde says with a deep voice that doesn't match his face. He's Australian too. "I hope this is ok with you?" He asks, stepping in front of you.

"It's ok with me. He seems really nervous though, honestly." Your eyes flick to his friend who stood off to the side. The blonde looks over at his friend and smiles.

"He's just shy. Han, come over and say hi to our friend for the night." He steps to your side and places his hand on your lower back. The one named Han steps up to you and smiles shyly.

"I don't bite." You laugh softly. "Unless you want me too." You wink. Han's cheeks turn a light pink. Felix moves your hair off your shoulder, seeing the hickey that was there. He smirks and leans down, leaving featherlight kisses along your skin. You close your eyes and tilt your head a bit. Your lips separate some. Han watches his friend for a moment before his eyes flick back to you, seeing how relaxed you are, relaxes him a bit.

He steps right up to you and softly presses a kiss to your lips, deepening it when he doesnt feel you pull away. His lips were so soft. You feel the blonde shift to stand behind you. He starts to untie the back of your dress, slipping it down off your body. Han pulls away from your lips to look you over, sucking in air when he sees you in a blue lace set.

"Felix..she's so beautiful." Han whispers before he leans down to kiss across the top of your breasts. Your hands immediately snake into his hair, soft gasps leave you. Felix unhooks your bra and lets it drop to the floor. His fingers softly run across your skin as they go lower down your body. Hooking his fingers into the band of your panties, he pulls them down off you. Han kisses and nips your breasts before he sucks one of your nipples into his mouth, making you moan softly.

The blonde chuckles behind you and snakes a hand around your body as he presses himself against you. You can feel how hard he is through his clothes. He slips a finger through your folds and immediately starts rubbing your clit. Your back arches a bit, your breasts pushing into Han's face and your ass into Felix's crotch. Both men groan out. Felix slips one finger lower and into your cunt momentarily before pulling out, making you whine softly. He pops his finger into mouth.

"Let's get this beauty to the bed, Han." He pulls away, your back suddenly cold at his loss. Han sucks on your nipple for a moment longer before he pulls away. You shiver as the cool air of the room hits your wet bud. They bring you to the bed and lay you down, taking your heels off you. Both men strip and Han kneels between your knees, practically drooling as he stares at your cunt. Felix kneels by your head, slowly stroking his cock.

You reach up and gently grab the blonde’s shaft, licking the tip. He groans, watching you intently. Han moves as close as he can and slowly licks up your folds before holding them open with his fingers. He uses his other hand to prod your hole with two fingers, slipping his digits into you just as Felix pushes his tip into your mouth. You moan out around the blonde, licking his length as he slides into you. Han kitten licks your clit slowly, his fingers move at a similarly slow pace. You gently place a hand on Han's head.

"You're in good hands. I've heard Han gives the best head." Felix chuckles, his eyes flicking to his friends for a moment before flicking back to yours. Han's tongue moves from your clit to your entrance a few times, making you squirm and moan around Felix. "Fuck.." he says, a deep moan escapes his chest.

Han slowly starts to pick up his speed, fingering you deep and fast, his licks speeding up too. You can already feel your orgasm building fast. You arch your back and suck on Felix as he fucks your mouth. The blonde reaches down to play with your breasts, gently tweaking your nipples. Just as Han curls his fingers inside you, your back is arching and a loud moan comes from your throat. You've never squirted before during sex, but you most definitely did now as you came. Han moans loudly as he licks and slurps up your release, not stopping his ministrations.

Felix groans when you moan, sending vibrations through him around his cock. You grip Han's hair as he continues to finger fuck you, slipping another finger inside your clenching cunt. He sucks your clit into his mouth, moaning around it. You arch and squirm under his mouth as you feel another orgasm already starting to build. Felix moves one hand to your cheek, holding your head in place as he fucks into your mouth.

After a few moments you're cumming around Han's fingers again, squirting again as well. Han moans again when he sucks up your release. He slows his fingering while you come down from your high. Felix grips your hair a bit as he thrusts into your mouth before cumming down your throat. You swallow everything as he pulls out of your mouth, groaning softly when he sees you swallow. The blonde looks at his friend and reaches for his hand, sticking Han's fingers into his mouth to get a taste of you.

Han watches Felix with wide eyes, his chin glistening with your release. Once he has his hand back, he climbs over you and kisses you deeply. You taste yourself on his tongue and groan into the kiss. He lines himself up with you and you immediately wrap your legs and arms around him.

"Shit..condom.." he mumbles against your lips. You whine and release him. Felix chuckles and passes him one. Without breaking the kiss, he opens the wrapper and rolls the condom on before lining up with you again, pushing into you fast. You arch your back, breasts pushing into his chest. He places one hand on your breast, the other on your hip and fucks into you fast, not really giving you time to adjust.

He fills you up well, pressing against your gummy spot inside you every time he thrusts into you. He pulls away from the kiss and bites onto your neck. He sucks on your skin, leaving a decent sized hickey. Felix sits next to you both and watches, a grin on his face. The blonde gently cards his fingers through your hair as Han fucks into you fast and hard, quickly pulling another orgasm from you. He groans loudly against your skin as you clench around him. He fucks you through your high before cumming in the condom.

You breathe hard, holding the man on top of you as he continues lightly thrusting into you, pressing soft kisses along the spots he left marks on you. You look up at the blonde who just smiles down at you.

"How are you feeling?" He continues carding his fingers through your hair, shifting on the bed so his face hovered over yours.

"I'm feeling really good." You gasp when Han thrusts into you hard. Felix chuckles and kisses you deeply, slipping his tongue into your mouth.

"She feels so good, Felix." The dark haired boy mumbles against your skin. He groans when he feels you clench around him again before slipping out of you. Han gets up and discards the condom before slipping back in bed. Felix has you lay on your stomach on top of Han, laying between his legs, as he slips his own condom on. He carefully straddles your legs as Han gently grabs your ass, gently kneading as Felix lines up to your sensitive entrance.

"Are you ready, beautiful?" Felix asks, placing a hand on your lower back, the other holding his cock, prodding your entrance with his tip. You moan out a 'yeah', closing your eyes. Felix smiles and slowly slides his aching cock inside of you, still straddling your legs. The position you're in makes you feel so much tighter. As Felix stretches you, you both moan out, Han groaning against you. Once Felix is in you as far as he can, he stills to let you adjust, Han slipping a finger to your ass, gently running his finger over the hole. You moan softly at the feeling.

"Such a pretty girl." Han whispers. Felix mumbles out in agreement as he slowly starts to thrust into you. Han slips a finger inside your ass, slowly finger fucking you as Felix thrusts into you at a steady pace. Han watches as Felix fucks you, carefully sliding another finger inside you. You moan and squirm a bit, making Han wrap his other arm around you, holding you against him.

Felix groans and grips your ass with both hands, spreading your cheeks as he fucks into you faster. You clench around them as your release comes quick. You moan loudly into Han's neck, both boys not stopping. You feel Felix let go of one cheek, another finger prodding at your ass. You gasp and moan as Felix adds one of his own fingers into your ass, making it a total of three.

"Fuck, beautiful. You feel absolutely amazing and you are doing so well." Felix moans out. "Can we get one more out of you tonight? Think that's possible?" The blonde grinds into your cunt slowly. You moan out a loud string of 'yeses', Han groaning, his head thumping back against the headboard of the bed.

Han moves his hand a bit, moving it into a slightly different position. Felix slips another finger into your ass as he fucks into you hard and fast, wanting to make you cum again. They both coo at you as you start to look fucked out, eyes rolling back.

"One more, beautiful. I know you can do it." Felix says, fucking you as fast and hard as he can. You moan loudly again as you cum hard around Felix, your body clenching hard around them. Both boys groan out. You feel Han cum between your bodies, his cheeks flushing. Felix grunts low as he fucks you through your high before cumming into his condom. He slows his thrusts, breathing hard as he fills the condom. You can feel him twitching inside you as he empties into the rubber, their fingers stilled in you as well.

Felix leans down and peppers your back with kisses as Han does the same to the parts of your face that he can reach. Both of them coo and praise you for how well you did. Carefully sliding out of you, Felix discards his condom and goes to the bathroom to wash his hands and to get a clean rag for you and Han. He comes back to where you were still laying on Han, the dark haired boy still has his fingers in you, teasingly fingering you slightly. You whimper softly at the overstimulation. When he sees Felix, he smiles softly and takes his fingers out of you.

Felix passes Han the rag and carefully helps you off his friend and onto your side on the bed. Han cleans your stomach before cleaning himself, tossing the rag towards the bathroom.

"How are you feeling, jagi?" Han scoots down the bed, turning on his side as Felix climbs in behind you. You smile, sleepily.

"Very tired." You yawn and stretch a bit. Both men chuckle.

"We weren't too rough with you, were we?" Felix asks from behind you. You shake your head some. "Ok, good. I'd feel bad if we hurt you." He peppers your shoulder with kisses again as he moves to be flush with your back. Han moves closer to be flush with your front, giving you a few soft kisses on your lips before letting you get comfortable. You fall asleep and the men hold you close, passing out themselves.

——

You woke the following morning to Han between your legs, lazily eating you out. Felix half hovering over you, softly sucking on one nipple and gently thumbing over your other. You moan sleepily and both men freeze momentarily when they hear you. Your hand that was closer to Felix moves up to his head, gripping his hair softly, your hips moving some to try and get Han to continue. You aren't sure how long they've been going at it, but you don't really care after last night.

Han continues to lazily eat you out, not in any rush to make you cum. Han looks at you from his position, seeing your eyes closed tight in pleasure. Felix continues to suck on and nibble your nipple, making it very sensitive. He switches his actions between your nipples, sucking your other nipple into his mouth. They continue this for a while before you're a whining mess, wanting them to fuck you again before you go your separate ways.

——

You're talking to Yoonae on the phone once you're back home. You were wrapped in a fluffy towel, having taken a nice hot shower before you called her. You looked over your visible skin that you can see in the mirror, seeing the fresh marks from the last two nights escapades.

"You woke to them on you, Y/n? Damn, girl." She laughs. "I told you you're irresistible." You scoff out a laugh.

"They were probably just horny. You know how most guys are in the morning." You gently touch a few of the purple marks on your neck and collarbone.

"Uh-huh." Your friend laughs. "When do you start your new job again? Was it next week or the week after?"

"Two weeks. Thankfully it's a job I'm comfortable in." You sigh. You grab another towel and start drying your hair with it, trying to get most of the moisture out of your hair.

"So, two more weeks I can take you out. Got it." You snort at her comment.

"I would like to stay home a few nights too, ya know." You toss both your towels into the laundry hamper, getting dressed right after.

"I know, but it's nice to see you happy. The guys you've seen the past few nights seemed like they were nice and you sound happier."

It's true. The four men you were with the past two nights were very sweet to you. Making sure you were well taken care of. The two from last night even offered to get you breakfast after the morning session you had. And they all definitely made you forget about your ex.

"I know, but let's go out in a few days though. My body needs a rest." You laugh softly.

"Fine." Your friend teasingly sighs. "Oh, I found this new gym and an art class you might like. I know it's been a while since you did any kind of art, but I miss your pieces, and I know the last gym you went to wasn't very friendly. They're 24 hours too, so you can go as early or late as you want. I'll send you the locations."

You thank her and talk for a little bit longer as you clean around the house and get laundry done. Once she has to go, you hang up the phone, deciding to look into the gym and art classes. You decide to sign up for memberships online. Taking the rest of the day to just laze around the house.

Taglist:

@honeyybbuubblleess @gnabnahcbby @skzittomebabyuhhuhx3 @kenia4 @sweetprincessleah

[snailsgoingdowntown]

Help, I Reincarnated as the Female Lead's Sister-in-Law!

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Chapter 13

‘Slight’ Yandere! Dion Agriche x Fem! Reader

Arranged marriage AU

Interact with this post to be on tag list. The DNI is on it so read that before anything.

NOTE: I gave up on looking for computer error codes (I do not understand what they stand for in full detail, I’m just a silly little guy), so sorry if I used the wrong one.

Warnings: toxic marriage/relationship general yandere themes, obsessive and possessive themes/possible actions/behavior, blood, blood drinking (kinda? Not really, but JUST in case), blood, self-harm (biting thumb hard enough that it’s implies the wound reopened), violence (kicking Dion in the chest), thoughts of violence (thinking of kicking Dion’s face), vomit, panic attack, mention of suicide but Reader is NOT suicidal, one or two suggestive lines, kinda implied future violence (not towards Reader OR her family for plot reasons), mention of the Reader becoming a 'doll'.Please tell me if I missed any.

Reader is NOT having a good time as usual. Pray for her. 

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT CONDONE ANY OF THE HARMFUL AND/OR DANGEROUS ACTIONS THAT MAY TAKE PLACE IN THIS PIECE OF FICTION. THESE ACTIONS AND/OR BEHAVIORS SHOULD NOT BE NORMALIZED NOR ROMANIZED AS THEY ARE BOTH EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND TOXIC.

MINORS/BLANK BLOGS/BLOGS THAT DO NOT INTERACT WITH FANDOM RELATED THINGS (REBLOG/COMMENT ON FICS/ART, ETC.) DNI.

= = =

You ruined your own life.

That is the conclusion you come to when you wake up with an awful hangover, head throbbing, mouth dry, nausea kicking at your stomach and mouth, entire body aching, fatigued and dizzy. 

Dry heaving as an unknown hand holds your hair back, stationed right at home in front of the all too fancy trash can, puking your guts out, hot tears rolling down your face as you have the worst morning ever. Worse than your first night, because hey, at least you weren’t on the verge of fainting, a cold sweat drowning your body, throat burning from the acid in your vomit. Too busied with vomiting, you barely register a hand gently patting your back, mind elsewhere. 

Why did I fucking drink so fucking much?

The answer is simple - you wanted a distraction before you could become a hysterical mess during the dinner last night. Still, regret is a thing, and oh boy, are you feeling it in full.

Retching, your lungs painfully take in air, upset stomach getting in the way. Sweat dribbles down your temples and face, eyes wide as your body rejects everything from last night. Your entire body trembles as a hammer painfully smashes your skull into tiny pieces. Hands clammy, you almost start to think that having a panic attack would be better than this. 

“Urk! F-fuck…,” wiping away some of the vomit that clung to your chin, your body allows you to have a moment of recovery, muscles relaxing as you pant, lungs finally taking in the air that you desperately need. Heavy eyes struggle to stay open, a small dizzy spell falling over you, headache still there. Tears stop rolling down your face as your breathing becomes steady. Everything still awfully aches, though.

Finally becoming aware of your surroundings, you notice a gentle pat against your back as someone also holds your hair back. So gentle and comforting, and automatically assuming it’s Hana, you accept the help without a word of complaint. 

Well, that is until cold shivers run down your spine, as a oh so familiar low and sleepy voice speaks, only now noticing how large the hand that was patting your back was. 

“Better?” 

Freaking out was an understatement. 

Violently scampering away, definitely not missing the touch of Dion Agriche, a terrified and horrified expression paints your face, heart running and beating fast enough it could win first place at a race. Nausea fills your entire being, but for a completely different reason now. 

A worse reason. 

Opening your mouth, words fail to leave your dry lips. You lick them, mind racing on what to say and do. In the end you spewed out nonsense that doesn’t even make sense to you.

“O-oh, u-um, Arigche, good - fuck - good day? Weather?” 

The slight twitch of his dead tired eye doesn’t help your anxiety. Had you offended him? If so, how - because he witnessed an unsightly sight? One that he decided to stay for?

Quick pants and shaky legs, you search and search and search for any type of exit - failing to remember that the heavy double doors were literally right behind you. No, instead you eye the terrace behind him and consider jumping off. 

How quick can you run? Would he stop you? No, rather would he get the wrong impression and think you were trying to commit suicide?

What then? Hand you over to his mental father or mother to use as a bloody toy? Burn your face and stitch up wounds that they created? 

“S-sorry, but -,” scooting away until your back hits something sturdy and hard, the only thing you’re capable of is stare at your arranged husband like a deer in headlights. He doesn’t crawl closer, still kneeling, an unreadable expression across his facial features. Almost like he was keeping his distance on purpose, as to not scare you away like a scared animal.

And maybe to him, you are. 

“I - I, um, didn’t mean to make a mess -” On the verge of crying from stress, you blink rapidly, unable to decide if you should look at him or close your eyes. Tears kept at bay, by reflex you bring your thumb up and -

Chomp

It hurts more than usual. Feels more raw, tongue swiping over the healing bite mark, crimson blood that resembles his eyes drawn as the taste of iron all but makes itself at home on your tastebuds. Hysterical, you cower, hoping, praying that Dion would look the other way and ignore you.

He does anything but. 

Standing only to walk over to you, kneeling once more as his larger and longer fingers force your thumb out and proceed to wrap around your wrist right after. You hiccup as he stares at it, unable to tell what he’s thinking. Maybe it’s better if you don’t.

“That’s a horrible habit you have there,” he states like it’s the morning news before he, like the crazy man he is, takes the injured digit into his mouth.

You’re too flabbergasted to react. 

Your brain fries, error code 43. 

It doesn’t reboot until moments later when his disgusting and slimy tongue runs over the wound, his saliva unfortunately soothing it just the slightest bit.

The urge to puke returns.

You jerk your hand back and he lets you. You think your expression is one of disgust, but it’s hard to tell when Dion blinks oh so calmly. Like he didn’t just shove your thumb into his mouth like the pervert he is.

But fear overrides the disgust, helplessly watching as your horrible husband comes even closer. You feel trapped between the wall - doors, actually - and his towering, intimidating figure. Without a care in the world, he wordlessly places a hand on the door slightly above your head.

You can’t fight back when he oh so gently grabs your right wrist again, inspecting your bloodied thumb. You become boneless as he licks it, all the while keeping eye contact with you.

The shivers that run down your back aren’t pleasurable. 

“You should stop this,” he says as his head tilts, like he was curious about your reaction to everything. “You’re just making it worse.”

His genuine concern sounds like nothing but threats to you. Your flight-or-fight response kicks in when the hand planted against the wall - doors - goes to  your cold and sweaty cheek. As any sane person would, you kick him straight in the chest.

And somehow, someway, it hurts you more than him. It almost feels like a brick wall, wincing while he only fucking blinks. As if finally understanding the situation, he lets go and backs off, but still in front of you. You’re on the verge of throwing up, of running past him to jump off the terrace, laughing as a fear response.

The only reason you don’t do any of it is because your body is boneless, barely able to breathe. Barely able to think. 

Neither of you talk nor move, the distant sound of footsteps and chirping birds filling the silence. He’s treating you like a scared animal while you’re treating him like a predator. Two people unable to understand the actions of the other. Two people on the opposite sides of the spectrum, their definitions of ‘loving’ completely different.

Regardless, he still tries, and maybe if you were into the possessive and obsessive type, you would have praised him. Assuming you notice and realize he didn’t plan on hurting you and was in ‘love’ with you, of course.

“D-D-Dion.” You stutter after slightly recovering from the fright, the throbbing of your thumb forgotten in the background. You can’t feel anything, really, even the cold tiles you sit on.

“Wife.” His response does little to soothe your nerves - no, rather, they freeze at his voice. 

“W-what… were you doing? I think-think I’m still half asleep, haha…” Nervously forcing out a small laugh, you truly hope that this is nothing more than a nightmare. You’d rather wake up to the sound of loud and annoying construction going on outside your apartment.

Ah, but, you weren’t in your old world, were you? Not that you could be, not when -

“Soothing it.”

“O-oh… um, you do realize you essentially drank my blood…?” It’s a miracle you’re holding a conversation without fainting. Still, the idea of jumping off the terrace doesn’t leave your head. It was a reckless plan, but there was a chance you wouldn’t die or break something, and at least would get a minute or two to yourself without him. If you weren’t caught by the guards immediately afterwards, that is. 

“And?” His head tilts, observing your reactions, like you were a science project. Scarlet eyes leave your terrified face to travel to your right thumb. A very, very small part of you want to bite it again, to bite it harder out of spite. The thought leaves when he makes eye contact with you again. 

You look away.

“That’s-that’s really unhygienic…” A whisper is all you can manage, eyes swirling as a dizzy spell falls over you again. How are you able to talk to this perverted brute?

Maybe you were only able to talk to smooth out the situation as much as you could. Or maybe your mouth was just running on its own, hoping this is what he wanted. Why else would he do such a thing? Aside from satisfying his sadistic and perverted urges, that is. 

All you want is to go home.

“So?” His head tilts, jet black hair falling into his scarlet eyes, like he expected you to accept his ‘treatment’ to at least some degree.

“I-I mean, it’s rather-rather…disgusting, is it not?” Holding your right hand close to your chest, left one wrapped around your wrist, you hold your breath. You can’t think straight, unable to decide on staying or running away. To keep talking or go silent as a mouse. 

He blinks before saying, “Not if it’s you.” 

Error code 43. 

Error code 43.

Request for maintenance. 

Maintenance needed to continue functions. 

Ever so slightly, a grin tugs at his lips at your flabbergasted expression. Little do you know that your husband doesn’t like seeing you scared, but he enjoys making you speechless, mind blank. Now, if only he could do that to you in other ways…

No. This isn’t the time to think about such things, he mentally scolds himself. Truly out of character for him to even think about such a thing.

“Is that so hard to believe?” He questions after a bit, once your mind is working again.

“H-huh? Wait - this - don’t play with me, please…,” you beg while shaking your head. Your breathing speeds up again, heavier than it was moments ago. Your feet firmly plant themselves flat on the floor. 

You think about kicking his face this time, giving you some time to run before the shock wears off. 

“I’m not,” carefully and slowly, he leans in closer, gently holding the back of your neck like it’s his favorite thing to do. He pulls you closer and closer until he’s able to whisper in your ear, hot breath hitting it. He whispers -

“I mean it, really. You should stop assuming I’ll eventually throw you away.”

If the circumstances were different, if this was a healthy marriage, if this was a loving marriage, it would have been romantic. But because you’re married into the Agriche family, because your husband is Dion Agriche, it sounds like he’s trapping you in a cage, throwing away the key.

And in a way, he is, not wanting to let his pretty, lovely wife to part ways with him. 

Really, he’s not sure of how much longer he can keep himself in check - you drive him crazy and you don’t even know it. An obsessive and possessive husband with a scared wife, who will  one day, realize she has him tied around her pretty little finger. At the cost of her own loose collar in his hand, two people unable to escape the other. 

It’s awful, it’s insane, but who could blame him?

You’re just too lovely to pass and give up.

May God bless the poor soul who’s stupid enough to try.

It’s funny, really - the harder he tries to not drive you away, the more he does.

“You’re starting to hurt my feelings by doing so, (Name).”

  

Tag List: @tiny-mimi

[th3mrskory]

Chapter 6: Pieces falling into place

Pairing: Original fem!Reader x Origins!Logan Warning: None. A/N: So this is sorta of a filler chapter, just laying the ground and taking a look at Evelyn and Logan's growing relationship, enjoy the fluff while it lasts cause the in the next chapters there will be a turn. Also, sorry for the delay, I haven't felt very inspired lately because of the response to the last couple of chapters, but don't worry, I'm here to stay, and so is this fic, enjoy!

Word count: 5.7k

© th3mrskory. don’t copy, translate, or use my works in any form with AI, ChatGPT or any other automated tools. I only share my stories here, so if you see them posted elsewhere, i’d appreciate it if you let me know.

The crisp air of the morning had given way to a chilly but clear evening, the kind that made the warmth of the cottage feel even more comforting. Evelyn stood by the window, gazing out at the faint glow of the setting sun as her thoughts lingered on the past few weeks. Logan had been a steady presence, easing his way into her life in ways she hadn’t anticipated. Their relationship—if she could call it that—was unspoken, undefined, yet it had become an anchor in the stillness of her days.

When Logan arrived that evening, she greeted him with a quiet smile, their easy familiarity setting the tone for the night. After dinner, they found themselves working together on the small, creaky cabinet she’d salvaged from the corner of the cottage. It wasn’t much, but there was a strange satisfaction in repairing it—a metaphor, perhaps, for the pieces of her life she was trying to put back together.

“Hand me the screwdriver,” Logan said, his voice breaking the comfortable silence.

Evelyn passed it to him, watching as he tightened the hinge with practiced precision.

“You don’t have to do everything yourself, you know,” Logan said, glancing at her with a faint smirk. “Could’ve just tossed this thing.”

She shrugged, a small smile playing at her lips. “Where’s the fun in that? Besides, I like the idea of giving it a second chance.”

Logan’s gaze lingered on her, something unreadable flickering in his eyes. “Fair enough.”

The evening drifted on, the two of them moving from task to task with an ease that felt natural, almost domestic. Later, as they settled at the kitchen table, the remains of their meal still scattered between them, the mood shifted. The soft crackle of the fire in the next room filled the space, blending with the distant howl of the wind outside.

Evelyn traced the rim of her mug with her finger, her thoughts swirling as she glanced up at Logan. His steady presence had a way of grounding her, making her feel safe enough to confront the things she usually kept buried.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you something,” she began, her voice softer than usual.

Logan straightened slightly, his full attention falling on her. “I’m listening.”

Her fingers tightened around the mug as she searched for the right words. “Before I came here, I was... engaged. We were together for eight years. I thought we had everything figured out. But then, on the morning of our wedding, he left. A letter was all I got.”

Logan’s jaw tightened, his hand curling against the table. But he didn’t interrupt, his silence urging her to continue.

“I felt like my whole world shattered in that moment,” she admitted, her voice trembling. “Not just because of the humiliation, but because I didn’t see it coming. I trusted him. I built my life around him. And in one morning, it all fell apart.”

The weight of her confession hung in the air, but Logan didn’t look away. His steady gaze made her feel seen in a way she hadn’t expected.

“That’s why you left?” he asked quietly.

She nodded, blinking back the sting of tears. “I couldn’t stay. Everywhere I went, there were reminders of him, of what I thought I’d had. Coming here was the only way I could breathe again.”

Logan leaned back slightly, his expression softening. “You rebuilt yourself. Took your life back. That takes strength.”

“Sometimes I don’t feel strong,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Sometimes it feels like I’m still running, like I’ll never stop looking over my shoulder.”

“You don’t have to run anymore,” he said simply, his voice carrying a quiet conviction. “Not here. Not with me.”

The certainty in his words struck something deep within her, a mixture of relief and fear that made her chest tighten. “What if I mess this up?” she asked, her voice breaking. “What if I’m not enough?”

Logan’s brow furrowed, and he leaned forward, his hand reaching across the table to cover hers. “You don’t have to prove anything to me, Evelyn. I’m here because I want to be. Not because I expect anything from you.”

Her lips curved into a small, tentative smile, her fingers relaxing beneath his. “I don’t know if I’m ready for something serious,” she admitted. “But I don’t want to push you away, either. I don’t want to push us away.”

Logan’s grip on her hand tightened ever so slightly, his voice low but steady. “We’ll take it slow. Just us figuring it out.”

She nodded, her chest feeling lighter. “Thank you. For being patient with me.”

“You’re worth the wait,” he said, his voice resolute.

The fire crackled softly in the hearth, its warmth spreading through the room as Evelyn and Logan sat in the stillness of the evening. The weight of her confession lingered in the air, settling into the cracks of the cottage like something fragile yet unyielding.

Logan hadn’t let go of her hand, his thumb tracing absent patterns against her knuckles. It was a small gesture, but it grounded her, pulling her back from the jagged edges of her memories.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, breaking the silence. “For listening. For... not trying to fix it.”

His lips twitched into the faintest of smiles. “Sometimes listening’s the only thing that matters.”

She studied him for a moment, her fingers tightening slightly around his. “What about you? You don’t talk about your past much.”

Logan’s gaze flicked to the fire, his jaw tightening ever so slightly. For a long moment, she thought he might brush off the question, deflect with one of his usual dry remarks. But then he exhaled slowly, his shoulders dropping as though he were letting go of something unseen.

“It’s not easy to talk about,” he admitted, his voice low and rough. “There’s parts of it I’d rather forget.”

She stayed quiet, sensing the weight of what he was about to share.

“I was in the military,” he began, his eyes fixed on the dancing flames. “A long time ago. Seen things most people wouldn’t believe, done things I’m not proud of.” He paused, his fingers curling against the edge of the table. “The war... it changes you. Strips you down to the bare bones of who you are. And sometimes, when it’s over, you don’t even recognize what’s left.”

Evelyn felt her chest tighten, her heart aching for the man sitting across from her. She could see the lines of pain etched into his face, the weight of memories that clung to him like shadows.

“I’ve lost people,” he continued, his voice quieter now. “Friends. Brothers-in-arms. Some of them because of choices I made.” His jaw tightened again, the flicker of guilt crossing his features like a ghost. “You tell yourself you did the best you could. That it wasn’t your fault. But deep down, you always wonder if you could’ve done more.”

Her hand moved instinctively, covering his. “Logan,” she said softly, her voice trembling with emotion. “You can’t carry that alone. No one can.”

He met her gaze, his eyes darker than she’d ever seen them, filled with a rawness that made her chest ache. “It’s not about carrying it,” he said quietly. “It’s about living with it. And not letting it destroy the good things you still have left.”

Her breath hitched, the quiet strength in his words cutting through the haze of her own fears.

“That’s why I don’t let people in,” he admitted after a moment, his voice rough but steady. “Because when you care about someone... when you let them close... you’re opening the door to losing them. And I’ve lost enough.”

The confession hung in the air, heavy and unflinching. Evelyn didn’t know what to say, how to respond to the pain he’d just laid bare. But she didn’t need to. She reached across the table, her other hand joining his as she held onto him tightly.

“You’ve carried a lot,” she said softly, breaking the silence. “I can see it in the way you hold yourself, the way you don’t talk about the past unless someone pulls it out of you. But you don’t have to keep carrying it alone, Logan.”

He huffed a soft laugh, though it lacked humor. “Not sure I know how to let it go.”

Her thumb brushed against the edge of his knuckle. “Maybe you don’t have to let it go completely. Maybe just... sharing it is enough. Like you just did.”

Logan’s eyes flicked to hers, and for a moment, he looked as though he might argue. But then, his shoulders dropped, the tension easing from his frame. “You make it sound easy.”

“It’s not,” she admitted, a faint smile tugging at her lips. “But I think we’re both learning that together.”

Logan leaned back slightly, his hand still lingering on hers. “You’re tougher than you give yourself credit for. Most people wouldn’t have come back from what you’ve been through.”

“Maybe,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “But I still feel like I’m figuring it out, one step at a time. And that’s why this... whatever this is between us... scares me.”

Logan’s brow furrowed, his expression shifting into something gentler, something she hadn’t often seen. “It scares me too,” he admitted. “But not because I don’t want it. Because I do. More than I’ve let myself want anything in a long time.”

Her breath caught, the honesty in his words stirring something deep in her chest.

“Logan,” she began, her voice trembling, “if we do this... I need you to know that I’m still… a little broken, still figuring out how to trust myself, let alone someone else. But I’m trying.”

He nodded, his gaze steady. “I know.”

The weight of his words settled between them, a quiet reassurance that felt like a balm to her still-healing heart.

“I want to take this slow,” she said, her voice steadier now. “But I also don’t want to keep pretending this isn’t real. Because it is. And it’s starting to feel like the best thing I’ve found in a long time.”

Logan’s lips quirked into a faint smile, one that didn’t quite reach his eyes but carried a weight of its own. “Then let’s stop pretending,” he said. “I don’t need promises or guarantees. I just need to know we’re in this together.”

Her chest tightened, the simplicity of his words hitting harder than any grand declaration ever could. “Together,” she echoed, a small, tentative smile breaking through.

Logan leaned forward, his hand brushing against hers again as his voice dropped to a low murmur. “Would you let me take you out? A real date. Just the two of us. No chores, no firewood deliveries. Something... normal.”

Evelyn couldn’t help but laugh softly, the sound lightening the air between them. “Normal might be a stretch for us,” she teased, her smile widening. “But I’d like that.”

“Good,” he said simply, though the faintest hint of relief flickered across his features.

The following days passed in a haze of quiet anticipation. Every stolen glance and lingering touch between them carried an unspoken promise, building up to the night Logan had planned. Evelyn found herself worrying over details she hadn’t given much thought to in years—what to wear, how to fix her hair, whether she should wear lipstick or keep it natural.

By the time the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in hues of orange and purple, she was standing in front of her mirror, smoothing down the skirt of her dress. It wasn’t anything extravagant, just something simple that made her feel a little more like herself.

The soft rumble of Logan’s truck outside snapped her out of her thoughts. Peeking through the curtain, she caught sight of him stepping out, a small bouquet of wildflowers clutched awkwardly in his hand. Her chest tightened at the sight—a quiet, thoughtful gesture that felt entirely him.

By the time she opened the door, her smile was already wide, though the sight of him standing on her porch, looking both rugged and nervous, made her heart skip. His usual flannel shirt had been swapped for a clean button-down, and though he still wore his work boots, there was an effort in his appearance that made her heart flutter.

“These are for you,” he said, holding out the flowers. His tone was gruff, but the faint dusting of color on his cheeks betrayed him.

Evelyn smiled, taking the bouquet with gentle hands. “They’re beautiful. Thank you.”

Logan gave a small nod, his lips twitching into a faint smile. “You look nice.”

Her cheeks warmed under his gaze. “You clean up pretty well yourself.”

He huffed a quiet laugh, stepping aside to let her lock up the cottage. “Ready?”

She nodded, locking the door behind her before following him to the truck.

The drive into town was quiet, but not uncomfortably so. The low hum of the engine filled the space between them, punctuated by the occasional comment about the scenery or the faint tunes playing from the radio.

He pulled into the lot of a cozy little diner on the edge of town, its soft neon sign casting a warm glow across the gravel. Evelyn glanced at him, a small smile tugging at her lips. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

“Didn’t want to go too far,” Logan said, turning off the engine. “Figured we’d keep it simple.”

Inside, the atmosphere was exactly what she’d hoped for—quiet, intimate, with just a handful of locals scattered at the booths. A few familiar faces turned their way, offering polite nods and smiles, but no one approached. The quiet approval in their expressions warmed her.

Logan led her to a booth near the window, the small vase of flowers at the center of the table adding to the charm of the place. As they settled in, the waitress—a cheerful woman named Rose—greeted them with a knowing smile but kept her comments to herself.

“Evening, Logan. Evelyn,” Rose said, her tone warm but professional. “What can I get you two tonight?”

Logan glanced at her. “Ladies first.”

Evelyn scanned the menu quickly before ordering something light, and Logan followed suit. As Rose walked away, Logan leaned back slightly, his gaze softening as it settled on her. “You’ve been quiet.”

She met his eyes, her lips curving into a faint smile. “Just... taking it all in. It’s been a while since I’ve done something like this.”

Logan nodded, his thumb idly tracing the edge of the table. “Same here.”

The simplicity of his response made her chest tighten. It wasn’t just the date—it was the way he made her feel seen without trying too hard, the way his presence felt grounding in a way she hadn’t realized she needed.

As the night went on, the conversation flowed easily. They talked about everything and nothing—their favorite books, small-town quirks, and plans for the cottage renovations. When the food arrived, they ate slowly, savoring both the meal and the company. 

There was something intimate about the way Logan watched her, his gaze steady and unguarded, as though he were memorizing every detail of the moment.

By the time they finished their meal, Evelyn couldn’t stop smiling. Logan had a dry wit she hadn’t expected, and she found herself laughing more often than she had in months.

After dinner, Logan suggested taking a walk. The cool night air nipped at their skin as they strolled along the quiet street, the faint glow of the diner’s sign fading into the distance.

“Thank you,” Evelyn said softly, breaking the silence.

Logan glanced at her, his brow furrowing slightly. “For what?”

“This,” she replied, gesturing to the flowers tucked under her arm and the night around them. 

Logan stopped, his hand brushing against hers as he turned to face her fully. “You don’t have to thank me for that,” he said, his voice low. “But I’ll keep doing it, if it means seeing you smile like that.”

Her breath caught at the sincerity in his tone, her chest tightening with emotion. Without thinking, she stepped closer, her hand reaching for his.

Logan’s fingers closed around hers, warm and steady. “You sure?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

Evelyn nodded, her lips curving into a soft, trembling smile. “I’m sure.”

The kiss was slow, unhurried—a quiet promise exchanged under the soft glow of the streetlights. When they finally pulled apart, her cheeks were flushed, her heart racing in her chest.

Logan smirked faintly, his hand lingering at her waist. “That felt pretty normal.”

She laughed, the sound light and free. “Maybe normal’s not so bad after all.”

The night ended with Logan walking her to the truck, his hand resting lightly on her back. As they drove home, the silence between them was filled with a warmth that needed no words.

She met his gaze, her smile widening slightly as a playful glint sparkled in her eyes. “Actually...” she began, her tone teasing, “do you want to come in for a bit? I baked a pie.”

Logan raised a brow, his lips quirking into a faint smirk. “Pie, huh?”

She nodded, opening the door and stepping inside.

The scent of cinnamon and apples lingered in the warm air of the cottage, the fire crackling softly in the hearth. Logan leaned against the counter, watching as Evelyn cut two generous slices of pie. She worked with practiced ease, her movements confident but relaxed, and he couldn’t help the way his gaze lingered on her.

“Alright,” she said, turning with two plates in hand. “Moment of truth.”

He accepted the plate, settling onto the couch as she joined him. The first bite was warm and perfectly spiced, and Logan huffed a quiet laugh as he set his fork down. “I’m starting to think you undersold it.”

“See?” she said, her smile triumphant. “I told you it was the best.”

The easy banter filled the room as they finished their dessert, the warmth between them growing as the evening stretched on. When the plates were set aside, they moved to the living room, the firelight casting soft, flickering shadows around them.

Logan leaned back in his chair, watching her as she adjusted the throw pillows on the couch. “You always this competitive about pie?”

“Only when it’s deserved,” she shot back, her grin widening as she sank onto the cushions.

His gaze softened, the humor in his expression giving way to something quieter, something that made her chest tighten. She could feel the weight of his attention, the way it seemed to ground her even as it sent her heart racing.

“You’re staring,” she said, her voice light but slightly breathless.

“You make it hard to look elsewhere,”he replied, his voice low. 

The words hung in the air between them, heavy and unspoken. For a moment, neither of them moved, the tension crackling like the fire behind them.

Then, almost as if drawn by the same invisible force, they leaned in. Her hand found its way to his chest, fingers brushing against the soft fabric of his shirt, while his hands settled on her waist, pulling her just slightly closer.

The kiss began slow, tentative, but quickly deepened, fueled by a growing need neither of them could deny. Logan's hands tightened at her sides as her fingers tangled into the hair at the nape of his neck, urging him closer, deeper, until the space between them all but vanished.

The world outside blurred into insignificance—the only thing that mattered was the warmth of his touch and the way his lips moved against hers, each kiss igniting a fire that burned hotter with every second.

When she shifted, pressing closer, Logan responded instinctively, his arms circling her waist as she climbed into his lap. Her thighs framed him, and for a brief moment, his hands hovered at her sides, a flicker of hesitation in the way he held her. But the tension melted as her lips found his again, her kiss pulling him under like a tide he had no desire to fight.

Their breaths mingled, ragged and uneven, as the kiss grew more intense, her fingers gripping his shoulders for balance. But then, as though tethered by some unspoken understanding, they pulled apart, both struggling to catch their breath.

Foreheads resting together, Logan's low chuckle broke the charged silence. “This taking it slow thing... it’s not going to be easy.”

Her lips curved into a teasing smile, her voice warm and soft. “Nobody said it would be.”

Logan brushed his thumb along her side, his gaze steady but laced with something deeper, something that made her stomach flutter. “You’re testing my limits, you know.”

Her laughter softened the air between them, light and teasing. “You’re the one who said patience was important, remember?”

Logan huffed a quiet laugh, his hand sliding from her side to rest against her back. “I’m starting to think I overestimated my resolve.”

She leaned into him slightly, her hands still resting on his chest. “Well, I’m not exactly making it easy for myself either.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The fire crackled softly in the hearth, its warm glow casting flickering shadows across the room. Logan’s gaze remained fixed on hers, the intensity in his eyes enough to make her breath hitch.

“Just say the word,” he said quietly, his voice low and steady. “If you want me to stop, if this is too much, I will.”

Her fingers tightened against his chest as she shook her head. “I don’t want you to stop,” she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper. “I just... don’t want to rush this.”

Logan nodded, his thumb brushing against her back in a slow, soothing motion. “Then we won’t.”

The weight of his words settled between them, grounding her in a way that eased the swirling doubts in her mind. She let herself relax, her forehead brushing against his as she closed her eyes.

“You make me feel safe,” she murmured, the admission surprising even herself.

Logan’s arms tightened around her, his voice a quiet rumble against her ear. “That’s all I want for you.”

They stayed like that for a while, the intensity of the earlier moment giving way to a quiet intimacy that felt just as profound. The fire crackled softly, its warm glow casting a gentle light over their intertwined hands. Logan's thumb brushed lazily against hers, a silent rhythm that lulled them both into a state of contentment.

Eventually, Evelyn shifted, sliding off his lap but staying tucked close against his side, her head resting on his shoulder. His arm draped around her, holding her there as the quiet of the room settled over them like a blanket.

Minutes stretched into an hour, and before long, the warmth of the fire and the comfort of his presence pulled them into a light doze.

The sharp ring of the landline shattered the stillness, jolting Evelyn awake. She blinked groggily, her head lifting from Logan’s shoulder as the sound persisted.

“You should get that,” Logan murmured, his voice rough with sleep.

She glanced at him, her brow furrowing. “It’s probably nothing important.”

Logan smirked faintly, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “Might be worth checking. I’ll start the fire again while you’re on the phone.”

Reluctantly, she slipped from the couch, rubbing her eyes as she crossed the room to answer the phone. “Hello?”

“Evelyn!” Martha’s familiar voice burst through the receiver, warm and full of energy. “I was starting to think you’d fallen off the face of the earth. How are you?”

A sleepy smile tugged at Evelyn’s lips. “Hi, Martha. I’m fine, just... caught off guard by the timing.”

“Well, excuse me for being an early riser,” Martha teased, her voice light but laced with curiosity. “So, are you going to tell me what’s new, or do I have to drag it out of you?”

Before Evelyn could respond, Logan appeared in the doorway, his boots on and his jacket slung over one arm. He nodded toward the phone, his lips curving into a small, knowing smile. “Take your time,” he mouthed.

She covered the receiver with her hand. “You’re leaving?”

“Work won’t wait,” he said softly, stepping closer. He bent down, pressing a lingering kiss to her temple before straightening. “I’ll see you later.”

“Okay,” she whispered, her heart fluttering as she watched him leave. The sound of the door closing behind him was followed by the rumble of his truck starting up in the driveway.

“Hello? Evelyn? You still there?” Martha’s voice snapped her back to the conversation.

“Yeah, I’m here,” she said, sinking onto the edge of the couch.

“And who was that?” Martha asked, her tone playful and suspicious.

Evelyn hesitated for a moment, her lips curving into a sheepish smile. “Logan.”

“Logan,” Martha repeated slowly, dragging out the name. “Care to elaborate?”

Taking a deep breath, Evelyn launched into the story. She told Martha about the date, the way Logan had shown up with flowers, and the quiet sweetness of the evening. Her cheeks flushed as she recounted the makeout session, her voice dropping as she admitted how intense and vulnerable the moment had been.

“So let me get this straight,” Martha said after a pause. “You had an amazing date, made out like teenagers, and then cuddled by the fire until the phone woke you up?”

“Pretty much,” Evelyn admitted, laughing softly.

“That’s not just romance. That’s the start of a love story.”

Evelyn shook her head, though her smile lingered. “We’re still figuring things out. Taking it slow.”

“Slow or not, he sounds like a keeper,” Martha said firmly. “And you deserve that, Evelyn. You deserve someone who makes you feel safe and loved. Don’t overthink it—just let it happen.”

Her chest tightened at her friend’s words, the quiet weight of her fears loosening just slightly. “Thanks, Martha. I needed to hear that.”

“Anytime,” Martha replied warmly. “Now, promise me you’ll call and update me after your next date. I want every detail.”

Evelyn laughed again, the sound lighter than it had been in a long time. “I promise.”

As the call ended, she set the receiver down and leaned back against the couch, her mind drifting to Logan. The warmth he brought into her life wasn’t something she’d expected, but it was something she was slowly learning to embrace.

Maybe, just maybe, this was the start of something she could finally believe in.

At the logging site, the crisp morning air carried the faint tang of pine and freshly cut wood. Logan worked steadily, his ax swinging with precise, deliberate movements as the rhythm of chopping logs drowned out the hum of his thoughts. His muscles strained against the familiar weight, but it wasn’t the work keeping him on edge. His mind was still back at Evelyn’s cottage, replaying the softness of her lips and the way she’d leaned against him before they both drifted to sleep.

The peaceful monotony of his morning was short-lived.

“Morning, Howlett!” Rick’s voice rang out, cutting through the sounds of work. He strolled over with an exaggerated grin, clearly on a mission.“How’s the love life, huh?”

Logan shot him a warning glance but kept working, driving his ax into the log in front of him with a sharp thwack.

“Aw, come on, don’t be like that,” Rick continued, undeterred. “You gotta give us something here. Nancy’s been running her mouth all morning about how she spotted you and Evelyn at the diner last night. Real cozy, she said. Practically glowing, the both of you.”

Logan set the ax down and leaned on the handle, his brow furrowing as he glanced at Rick. “You talk to Nancy too much.”

“And you talk to Nancy too little,” Rick shot back, crossing his arms. “She’s got all the juicy details. Says you even brought flowers. Flowers, Logan. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Neither did I,” muttered Pete, an older logger who had wandered over, clearly intrigued by the commotion. He wiped his hands on a rag and gave Logan a knowing grin. “So, what’s the story? You finally settle down, or are we gonna have to wait another decade for you to bring her to the Christmas party?”

A ripple of laughter passed through the nearby workers who had paused to eavesdrop. Logan straightened, his expression unreadable, though there was a faint twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“You lot don’t have enough to do?” he asked dryly, his gaze sweeping over the group.

“Plenty to do,” Rick said, leaning casually on a stack of logs. “But none of it’s half as entertaining as you going soft on us.”

Logan exhaled sharply, turning back to the pile of wood. “I’m not going soft.”

“Oh, sure, sure,” Pete said with a chuckle. “Flowers, a nice dinner, walking her to the door. Real tough stuff, Howlett.”

There was another round of laughter, but this time Logan smirked faintly as he picked up another log. “You’re all idiots.”

“Idiots who care,” Rick quipped, his grin widening. “Seriously though, Logan. She seems good for you. And Lord knows you’ve been less of a grump lately.”

Logan hesitated, his hands tightening around the ax handle. He didn’t look up, but his voice was quieter when he finally spoke. “She is good for me.”

The sudden sincerity in his tone caught the others off guard, silencing their teasing. Even Rick, who thrived on poking fun, softened slightly.

“Well, damn,” Pete said, scratching the back of his head. “Didn’t think I’d live to see the day.”

Logan’s lips twitched into a faint smirk, though his eyes remained focused on the task in front of him. “Guess miracles happen.”

Rick nudged Pete with his elbow, his grin returning. “Alright, boys. Let Romeo here finish chopping wood in peace.”

Logan shook his head, swinging the ax with a precision that sent the log splitting cleanly in two. The others drifted back to their tasks, though not without the occasional sly glance in his direction.

As the chatter faded, Logan allowed himself a moment to pause. The teasing didn’t bother him as much as he’d expected. If anything, it felt... good. Like he was part of something bigger again, not just a lone wolf wandering through the shadows.

He picked up the next log, his thoughts drifting back to Evelyn. The way her laughter had filled the diner, the warmth of her hand in his, the feeling of her curled against him on the couch—all of it had settled into him like a quiet revelation.

“Hey, Howlett,” Rick called out as he passed by, his tone lighter now. “So, you bringing her to the town fair next month?” Rick pressed, his grin practically audible. “Could be a real romantic date, you know.”

Logan didn’t even pause this time, his ax slicing cleanly through the log with a sharp crack. “Might,” he said, his tone calm but carrying a hint of something wry. He glanced up briefly, the edge of a smirk tugging at his lips. “If the missus wants to.”

The sudden quiet that followed was almost comical. Rick’s mouth opened slightly, a mixture of surprise and delight lighting up his face.

“Well, hell,” Rick finally managed, breaking into a laugh. “The missus, huh? You’re really in it now, Howlett.”

Pete, who had been stacking logs nearby, barked out a laugh. “Didn’t think I’d hear that from you, Logan. Town fair’s gonna be real interesting this year.”

Logan shook his head, turning back to his work as if the conversation didn’t faze him. “You gonna keep talking, or actually get something done today?”

“Talking’s more fun,” Rick shot back, leaning on his ax. “But seriously, Logan—if you show up at that fair with her, you better believe you’ll be the talk of the town.”

Logan chuckled softly, his tone low and amused as he reached for another log. “Guess I’ll have to give ’em something to talk about, then.”

The teasing carried on a bit longer, but Logan barely noticed, his focus already drifting elsewhere. The thought of taking Evelyn to the fair, of walking with her through the bustling stalls and hearing her laughter as she teased him about some silly game or trinket, settled into his chest with surprising ease.

For a man who had spent so long avoiding entanglements, the idea didn’t scare him as much as he thought it might. Instead, it felt... right.

As the day wore on, the teasing eventually died down, replaced by the rhythmic sounds of axes splitting wood and logs being stacked. Logan kept working, his movements steady and deliberate, but his thoughts drifted back to Evelyn.

By the time the sun began its descent, casting the forest in hues of gold and amber, Logan’s truck rumbled back into the driveway of the cottage. He parked and stepped out, catching sight of Evelyn on the porch with a cup of tea in her hands. She smiled when she saw him, and that simple expression—warm and unguarded—was enough to ease the tension of the day.

“Busy day?” she called out as he approached.

“Could say that,” he replied, his lips quirking into a faint smirk. “Might’ve heard some rumors about us, though.”

“Oh?” she said, tilting her head, her tone teasing. “Anything interesting?”

Logan stopped in front of her, his eyes meeting hers with a quiet intensity that made her breath catch. “Nothing you don’t already know,” he said simply, his voice low and steady.

Evelyn felt her cheeks flush, but she held his gaze, a smile tugging at her lips. “Well, I hope you defended my honor,” she teased lightly.

“Did my best,” Logan replied, stepping onto the porch and reaching for her hand. His rough fingers brushed hers, a small but grounding touch that felt more natural with each passing day.

The two of them settled into the evening with the ease of a couple finding their rhythm, the unspoken understanding between them deepening with every glance, every small gesture.

For Logan, it wasn’t just about the companionship or the warmth of her presence. It was the way she let him in, piece by piece, and how it made him want to do the same.

For Evelyn, it was the steady reassurance he brought, a quiet promise that she wasn’t alone in this anymore.

And as they sat together on the porch, watching the last light of the day fade into dusk, they both knew that whatever came next, they’d face it together.

Chapter 5

______________________________________________________________tagging some amazing people that showed interest on my previous post (if you don't want to be tagged please let me know):

Taglist

@coocoocachewgotscrewed @latinapiscess @littlebunnybigheartfics @themareverine @pandapetals @logansbaby @the-quick-red-fox @throwmethroughawindow @ifyouseethisnoyoudont22 @galacticglitterglue @whos-nin1

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© th3mrskory 2025 — all rights reserved.

[unicyclehippo]

Hey, Ollie, you mentioned AGES ago that Show Me the Way Home (Avatrice) had a second chapter, it just wasn't perfect yet-- do you think you'll ever post it? Or is that officially an abandoned fic?

its not abandoned, i actually did some minor editing on it the other day. the problem is that its a very seasonally locked piece in my mind & also im lazy & also a perfectionist & also i want to watch wn again before i keep writing it bc i need to rmbr what the characters are like & basically any one of those obstacles are enough to shut me right down so.

it actually is a four part story & if u want, i can share a little with u now? maybe that'll make me feel better for not posting it yet lmao

thursday 22nd december

// 6:55 //

Beatrice stood by the doorway of her apartment, phone in hand and duffel bag at her feet, and wished she was already at her parent’s holiday home. 

It wasn’t that she thought their reunion would be simple or pleasant; it was more that today had started hot and was getting hotter and her parents kept their home at a crisp twenty-three degrees at all hours of the day and night, environmental impact be damned. As the humidity clung to her, a bead of sweat rolling down the back of her neck, Beatrice’s thoughts drifted to the crystal blue pool and the ocean wind that would blow up from the cove and she checked her phone again for any word from her driver. 

Camila’s voice travelled from the kitchen. ‘Maybe you should take the can opener with you. I mean, what if you need to open a can and you don’t have one? There might be beans. Baked beans, cannellini beans, red kidney beans.’

‘I’m sure my parents have one. They do have a kitchen. And a personal chef.’

Camila heard her. The apartment was too small for her not to have heard but she continued listing off every tinned item she could think of. 

‘Lentils, obviously. Diced tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, peeled tomatoes, puréed tomatoes.’ There was a long pause. Beatrice wondered if Camila was reading the labels of what they had in the pantry; if she was, those lentils had been there for a very long time. ‘Tinned peaches.’

‘I think those come with a tab now,’ Beatrice pointed out. She kept her voice mild, not really wanting to draw Camila’s attention to her hiding place by the door. 

At some point over the last few days, the nerves buzzing under Beatrice’s skin had jumped ship and now Camila was the one pacing the confines of their apartment. She’d picked over every inch of the house in search of things Beatrice might need—which ranged from the useful, like the good phone charger she’d “found” (definitely hadn’t stolen out of her room a month ago) to what could be charitably called not useful, like the can opener—and now she stood at the end of the hall bearing the can opener and a dark frown befitting a serial killer. 

Beatrice cleared her throat. Carefully, she said, ‘I really don’t think I need it.’

Camila looked down at her weapon. ‘Oh. Right. No, sure, of course not.’ She tossed it backward into the living room; it missed the couch, landing instead on the floor with a loud thud, the sound of their rental bond being instantly halved. Beatrice winced. Camila seemed not to have noticed, though, and with her hands now empty she returned to chewing nervously at her thumb nail. She scanned the living room, hawkish, before fixing her attention on Beatrice once more. 

‘Can I help you?’

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

‘Camila…’

‘Because you don’t have to. You know that, don’t you? It’s not your only option—you could come home with me again! My parents would love it, we’d all love it, I promise. And you wouldn’t be intruding at all, I swear. The boys ask about you all the time and when you’re coming to visit again.’

‘They’re very sweet.’

‘Sweet! When they want something, sure! They’re still hoping you’ll teach them how to throw people—they bring up your match with Conner every time I call home.’

‘Tell them I’ll think about it.’

‘That can be your Christmas present for them. And Pop, he says you’re the only good one of the bunch.’

‘It’s because I don’t talk.’

‘I know. Poor guy. Christmas in a household of me’s. It’s so loud we have to mime everything for him.’

Beatrice smiled. ‘He turns off his hearing aids.’

‘What? That sneak!’

‘Don’t tell him I was the one that dobbed him in.’

‘It’ll be the very first thing I say—then you won’t be his favourite anymore and the rest of us will have a fair shot.’ Laughter shone in her eyes; it faded a little as she stared at Beatrice, gaze flicking down to the duffel at her feet. ‘I’m serious, Bea. You could call up your parents and tell them you’re not coming anymore. I’d prefer you tell them to go fuck themselves but.’ She sucked in a breath, shook her head. ‘Bea. Don’t waste your time on them. Spend your holiday with people who want you around. Who love you.’

It was a tempting offer. Of course it was.

From the day they met, Camila had been Beatrice’s friend; from the second, her sister. She’d gone out of her way to be all that a sister could be—kind, understanding, supportive, deeply irritating—and offered it all without cost. Her family was just the same. 

Beatrice remembered last Christmas fondly. The singing, the laughter, her chair squashed up to the end of the table next to Camila’s, the friendly chatter, the elbows bumping, the squabbles breaking out, the yet more guests arriving and pulling up a chair, the pass the salt, pass the butter, pass the damn water would you I’m dying over here, where’s the champagne, Arthur we don’t need another bottle of champagne it’s not even midday for Christssake, Beatrice do you want a second serve help yourself sweetheart, when do we open the presents. It had been loud, sometimes overwhelming, and wonderful all the same. 

But. 

Beatrice shook her head. 

Camila sighed. ‘I had to try, obviously.’

‘I know. Thank you.’ She set her hand on Camila’s wrist and squeezed. ‘I appreciate it, very much. Please tell them… Please tell everyone I miss them and that I’ll see them soon.’

‘You mean for your surprise birthday party?’

Beatrice smiled. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

‘Good. Because mum’s going to need a menu from you—’

‘I thought we agreed we’d buy the food, Camila, I’m not making your mum cook for me.’

‘She likes to cook for her kids. Unless you want me to tell her you’d prefer eating a stranger’s food over hers?’ Beatrice scowled at the bold threat. ‘That’s what I thought. Pick what you want and I’ll tell her. Better yet, text her yourself.’

‘If I know your mother, she has something in mind already.’

‘More like eleven somethings.’ 

They shared an identical grin. Camila’s mother had a small habit of going overboard for parties and events. A buzz broke the moment. They both glanced down at Beatrice’s phone. 

Mr. Morris I have arrived

Beatrice Thank you. I will be there momentarily.

Beatrice nodded. This was it. She slid her phone into her pocket. ‘Mister Morris is here. I should go.’ To Camila’s suddenly stricken expression, she soothed, ‘It will be fine, Camila.’ And, because she was not completely oblivious to Camila’s concern, ‘I will be fine.’

‘I know that. Of course I know that. But I want—you don’t have to be just fine. You should be having fun. You’re my best friend, Bea, I want you to be happy.’

Beatrice paused. She struggled for a moment to think of a way to explain the purpose of this holiday to Camila, explain her purpose, in a way that she would understand and accept. 

‘It means so much,’ she began, carefully, ‘to be welcome in your family. But they will always be your family.’

‘Bea…’

‘You and they are all beyond generous.’ She held up a hand to stop Camila interrupting. ‘I know they love me, and I love them. I do love Christmas with your family. It’s always wonderful and comfortable and fun.’ She paused, considering her words. ‘But this is - this is about me,’ she admitted with difficulty, and was rewarded for the effort when Camila softened. ‘I want to go. I need to find out whether I have a place with them or not. And I’ve been so uncertain of how it might turn out that I haven’t tried. But this invitation is an opportunity. One would like to make the most of.’

Camila grabbed both of her hands and pulled her close. Very intensely, she said, ‘Okay.'

'Okay? Just like that?' Beatrice asked, doubtful.

'Yeah. I’m not going to say I understand because I don’t. It honestly makes me furious and a little bit sick to think of you going back to them. But I love you and I trust you and I want you to call me if you need anything. And whatever happens, Beatrice, you always have a place with me. Always.’

Beatrice smiled. Shifted so that she was the one holding Camila’s hands. Her friend wouldn’t let her go willingly and there was a big part of Beatrice that wanted to let herself be held tight and give in to her friend’s protectiveness, to be bundled safely up into Camila’s terrifying little car and trundling off to visit family. 

It was hard to pull free. 

Beatrice stepped back and opened the door.

‘There’s no need to fret, Camila. I’ll have Ava with me, remember?’

‘Yeah. I know. It’ll be great, you’ll see.’ The tightness around her eyes told Beatrice she didn’t quite believe her own words. ‘And you’ll call me.’

‘Every day.’

With one last hug, Beatrice picked up her bags and left. 

// 7:03 //

The town car waited for her outside the apartment. It was sleek and black, washed and polished; the only evidence of the recent storms were faint specks of grey mud deep in the tyre wells.

Beatrice stopped at the bottom of the stairs, observing the car and its driver—Mister Morris, patiently stood at the kerb—and swallowed around a lump in her throat. He looked the same as when she had left. A little more silver in his hair.

He might not have changed much but she had. Now that she was grown (or perhaps, now that she was not in that household), she found herself full of questions—where was it that Mister Morris had driven from? Where did he live? Had the storms been bad on his side of town? How had he passed the time? Had they lost power? (She and Camila had huddled in their living room—it was, Camila had insisted, the perfect weather for a marathon of gory slashers—and the rain had hammered against the windows with frightening strength but had done no damage. She knew others had not been so fortunate.) Most pressing of all, how had he been? Questions that could not be answered by hiding.

Beatrice gripped the strap of her duffel and, setting her shoulders, marched to meet him.

‘Good morning, Mister Morris.’

‘Miss Turner,’ he greeted her, his smile small but true. ‘A pleasure to see you again. How are you?’

‘Quite well, thank you.’ Then, keeping her tone light and brisk, ‘And yourself?’

‘Very well, Miss Turner. Very well.’ It looked as if he wanted to say something more but then he only smiled and cleared his throat. ‘Your luggage, Miss?’

‘I can see to it myself.’

Beatrice stashed her duffel in the boot then folded herself neatly into the backseat. Mr. Morris retook the driver’s seat. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Beatrice fixed her eyes on the headrest in front of her.

‘We have another stop to make, Mr Morris.’

‘Yes, miss. Do you have the address?’

‘I do.’ She ran a finger along the inside of her watchband, rubbing away the sweat that had gathered there. She made it a notch tighter, then loosened once more. ‘They are - That is to say, she is my—’

Mr. Morris met her eyes in the rear-view mirror. His were green and kind. The kindness did not make it easier to say.

‘She is my girlfriend.’ 

‘Yes. I know.’

‘Oh.’

‘Though your mother used slightly different terminology. Companion, I believe she said.’ He kept his eyes locked onto the rearview mirror. When Beatrice glanced into it again, he said warmly, ‘Congratulations, miss. That’s wonderful. I’m very glad to hear it.’

When she had been younger, there had been a stretch of time where running away had seemed very appealing. Each time she attempted it, Beatrice had never made it further than the park four streets from her home. She’d been too pragmatic, even at ten years old, but she’d also been stubborn so Beatrice had say there in the swing until someone noticed; whomever did notice, it was always Mr. Morris who collected her. She was reminded of it as he started the engine. The sound of its growl scared old memories out of hiding—she remembered how the plastic swing creaked, the feel of the metal chain in her little hands, how the gravel of the park entry had crunched beneath the town car tyres. How the headlights had washed over her and away with the tilt of his park and how invisible she’d felt when the lights turned off. Like a ghost haunting the playground.

Beatrice stared thoughtfully at his back, remembering how he would climb out of the car and sit next to her on a too-small swing until she’d been ready to return.

‘Thank you, Mr Morris.’

He nodded. Then, ‘I do still need her address, miss.’

‘Oh. Yes, of course.’

[desultory-novice]

"Money Tree"

All this Hell Branch talk and including the non-Soul bosses and well, suddenly I HAD to address the giant tree elephant in the room...!

[For Context]

Marx: "Before I slice you up and shove you in a wood chipper a piece at a time...what's up with the drastic personality shift?"

Crown: "...Do not mistake me, Jester. I remain exactly the object your broken king knows me for, as the pain I have carved indelibly on his soul whispers to him even now..."

Crown: "But...I have not the power to Control that I did before, this incarnation of myself having been felled by another version of HIM. Ahh, he was shivering as he struck the final blow. The hot tears in his eyes. How I would have liked to feast on them like I did your king's..."

Crown: "My physical form may be buried, to take seed as a harmless fruit tree, but...the memory of my terrifying and wrathful hegemony lives on forever in the minds of every Magolor..."

Marx: "You're back to torment him more?"

Crown: "You foolish clown. I am here to play. Do you know how many years it takes an apple tree to grow from a seed? ...I tire of waiting."

Marx: "Play?! As in HERE? Nuh-uh. You gotta be insane if you think we're letting you set one branch inside our theme pa..."

Magolor: "Every ride and game costs x 1000 the list price."

Crown: "...Deal."

Marx: "Mags!?"

Magolor: "What? Money is money. And we do need a way to keep up with all the competing businesses opening up down here!"

Marx: "So Mags, would you say hell's become a hot spot? Hohoho..."

Magolor: "Heh...Heheh."

Crown: "...I'm going to get some shaved ice."

[eikichi-supremacy]

and they were singin', bye-bye Miss American Pie // american oldie i think kuwabara unironically listens to

(low effort lyric edit im queueing here in May cos im probably gonna forget it exists otherwise)

[spotaus]

Late Night quick thing (New Age Sillies)

Bad news: That joke post about including Reset + Orchid is definitely not canon. (I legit got sad thinking about Reset being in a universe where Orchid isn't- because their stories are so so intertwined- but Nightmare 100% would NOT risk the whole twins exploding Error's soul thing.)

Good news: This means I COULD include Kane (Reset's older brother who usually dies in timelines where Reset is born) and use it to develope his character a bit more! Also! Perhaps a Blue × Dream kiddo is finally in the stars for me to design?

[seventh-district]

it's always something. PLEASE can i just go One single day without there being Something

[weaselle]

it was too much i had to make my own post

line cook here. ACCURATE

if you don't get the hate, here's what you don't understand.

it takes up to 2 hours to close down the kitchen.

The last 60-90 minutes before closing time you do almost no cooking because the restaurant doesn't have many people in it and you've already cooked most of their diners.

So if someone walks in during, like, the last hour, the cook is in the middle of an industrial deep clean of the kitchen.

(these numbers can vary quite a bit from place to place but i have worked several restaurants with these actual times and the concept remains the same)

Say the place closes at 10. If you wait til the restaurant is already closed to start all your cleaning duties, you'll be there until at least midnight.

More than that your boss knows that on an average night you can start your clean up as soon as the last rush ends and get out of there around 10:45, even 10:15 on a slow night if you get lucky. That means there are plenty of restaurants where if you do take until midnight the manager is going to come up to you at some point that week and ask you what went wrong that night, and you'd better have an answer.

So this example restaurant closes at 10 pm. The dinner rush ends around 8:30, and shortly after that the cook is going to start getting every single dish possible over to the dishwasher because the dishwasher always gets hit hard and late, and the machine runs for 2 full minutes and only holds so many dishes, so the way that works out is if you wait an extra 30 minutes to give the dishwasher all your stuff it can mean adding like 60 minutes to the end of his shift. And you're gonna KEEP finding shit to send to the dishpit right up until you leave probably.

all these little square and rectangle containers in this cold table have to be pulled out and changed over into new containers, replaced by new full ones, or in some cases filled from larger containers in the back, which can result in even more empty containers to send to the dishwasher.

while it's all pulled apart to do this, you have to clean up all the spilled food and sauce and juices and stuff from the joints and ledges and shelves and drip trays

Once you get your line changed over in this way, and fully stocked, anytime someone orders something that makes use of a bunch of that stuff, you have to restock and re-clean it some. It might already be covered in plastic. Some of it might already be stuck in the back to make room to take apart your cutting board counter to clean. To cook a dish isn't TOO much of a problem at this point, but you're really hoping for zero orders because you still have so much other cleaning to do.

Meanwhile the salad bar and appetizer section and server station and everybody are all doing the same thing. Even the bartenders are stocking olives and lemons and sending back whisks and stir spoons and shakers and empty 4quart storage containers that used to hold the back-up lemons and olives and things. Every section is dumping their must-be-cleaneds to the dishpit as fast as possible because early and fast is the only thing they can do to to help that dishpit not absolutely drown into overtime.

The poor dishwasher is always the last to clock out, soaking wet and exhausted.

Around this time you probably scrub the flat top, which has turned black from cooked on grease and is still about 500 degrees. Line cooks are divided in opinion on water-based or oil based cleaning methods for this, but they all involve scrubbing with (usually) a brick of pumice stone using every ounce of your strength while you try not to burn yourself

you scrub it from fully blackened to gleaming silver and now if somebody orders something that needs the flat top to cook, you can either fuck up your cleaning job or fake it in a couple frying pans and pass that tiny fuck you down to your dishwasher (who usually understands, especially if you help them take the garbage out or clean your own floor drain later)

If there's deep fried stuff on the menu then the fryers have to be cleaned out, which includes straining the oil out into enormous and super-heavy pots full of oil so hot that if you spill on yourself then it's probably a hospital visit and if you slip and fall face first into it it'll be the last thing you ever do.

Then you gotta scrub out the fryer. Like you gotta take the (hot) screen out and reach your arm down into the weird rounded pipes and curved areas (so hot, burn you if you brush against them hot) and scrub off whatever is down there

Depending on your kitchen you might have to do up to four of these. Then you'll have to pour the (dangerously hot) oil back in

oh, and if you didn't dry the pipes and get ALL the water out of the trap and tank?

water reacts with hot oil in a sort of mentos and coke way that can send a tidal wave of oil past the open flame of the pilot light ...HUGE dangerous mess and/or burn down the kitchen if the oil lights up.

Unless! If the oil has been used too hard and needs to be changed, it's time to carry those open topped super heavy pots full of will-kill-you-hot oil and dump them in the barrel outside by the dumpsters so you can put room temp fresh oil in the fryers. whew!

The clean up is not just some light wiping down that can be easily interrupted, is what i'm saying.

You might have to do some kind of walk-in duty (moving around 50lb cases of lettuce and 50lb bags of onions to get to the stacks of five gallon buckets full of salad dressings and sauces to move so you can reach the giant metal pots and bus tubs full of prep and get it all organized and make sure it's all labeled and i have to stop now i'm having flashbacks)

THE POINT IS

by 15 or however many minutes to close, the line cook is doing an intense deep clean and probably has the whole stove taken apart to detail.

For some industrial stoves this means lifting off large cast iron plates that weigh like 20 lbs each and are still quite hot. Whatever metal burners are on there, you gotta take off and clean, you can see here the lines that indicate the large thick cast iron rectangles that sit on top of the burners to allow heavy pots to rest on. Those five (each has one front burner hole and one back burner hole, see?) have to be lifted off and cleaned with soap and a wire brush usually, and then the underneath area also has to be cleaned because a lot of shit falls through the burner holes on a busy night.

if you didn't do it when you did the flat top you have to do the grease trap (which can be like a full five minutes and is always disgusting).. You gotta clean out all the little gas jets in each burner with a wire or something so the burners all flame evenly, and sometimes you have to remove some of the natural gas piping that connects the burners to access where you have to clean.

you gotta clean out the bottom of the oven and the wire racks, and, oh gods, you gotta take down the filter vents from the hood fans above the stove.

See all the lined parts along the top of the wall?

those are hood vents, and as they pull air up they also pull a lot of grease and they have to be taken down and cleaned, then you gotta climb up there and scrub where they go before you put them back...

And then there's the mopping and floor drains and...

Anyway, that's what the line cook is doing when you walk in fifteen minutes before closing and order something that needs to be cooked on that stove. They are doing an entire industrial cleaning of a professional kitchen.

In some restaurants maybe one or two of these jobs will be every other night or even only twice a week, but in many, possibly most kitchens, ALL of these things happen EVERY night. You don't want to leave any food mess that might attract insects or rodents for one thing, so a really good kitchen is as close to brand new as you can get it every night.

IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO ORDER SOMETHING ANYWAY, HERE IS WHAT TO DO

open with an apology and ask the server to go ask what the cook would prefer you to order.

Any good server will already know what the cook is hoping for and what will make their line cook go into the walk in and scream. If it's significantly less than an hour to close and they say some variant of "oh anything is fine" they are either telling the lie their boss wants them to say, or they actually do not know what their line cook wants, and you can either use human connection and a conspiratorial just-between-us tone to get them to drop the customer-is-always-right act, or get them to actually go ask the cook.

It might be as specific as "the lasagna is easiest on the kitchen" or it might be a simple guideline like "nothing that requires the flat top" or "any of the sautés are easy" but a good line cook will probably have a system for if they have to make a couple of the most popular items after they start their close, so the answer is likely to include something most people like and you should be good to order that.

but for the love of all that's holy, please only do so at great need. Leave that last 30-60 minutes to the truly desperate and the crew's duties.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I think the reader's response to this post is probably going to either be "That's incredibly minor" or "Holy shit YES I'M ALSO PROUD", depending on people's personal experiences with academia, but:

Today I am incredibly proud of one of my students.

In the interests of disguising identities, let's call them Ceri. Ceri is one of my third year undergrads (meaning their final year, for anyone unfamiliar with UK uni systems.) They transferred to us last year, and within two weeks I was giving them the contact info to get to Student Services and get themself screened for ADHD; they have some mental health struggles, but I clocked pretty quickly that they STRUGGLE with procrastination, and punctuality, and attending 9am lectures in particular. Naturally, as is the way of my people, it took them a further four months to remember to go to the screening. Lol. Lmao. Rofl, in fact.

But, they did it eventually! Their screening lit up like a Christmas tree at the ADHD section, and they got a free laptop and optional one week extensions and a study support worker named Claire. This has helped tremendously, and although mental health + until-then-unsupported ADHD meant their academic profile had slid sideways somewhat, with the new tools available and a couple of resits they passed the year and hit this year running.

Until, that is, the last fortnight.

Now, I take them for a Habitat Management module that has two assessments: an academic poster presentation before Christmas, and a site-specific management plan in May. Naturally this means we are at that happy point in the year for the poster presentations. I give out the briefs at the start of the year, so they've had them since October; I've also been periodically checking in with them all for weeks, to make sure they don't have any major burning questions. The poster presentation was to pick a species reintroduction project, pull the habitat feasibility study out of it, and then critique that study; Ceri chose to look at the hen harrier reintroductions proposed for the southern UK. All good.

Which brings us nicely to today! Ceri's presentation is scheduled for 2.30. At 11am-1pm, I am lecturing the first years on Biodiversity, while Ceri is learning about environmental impact assessment with a colleague I shall call Aeron. This means we are separately occupied during those same hours.

Nevertheless, Aeron messages me at about 12.

"I think Ceri needs to see you after your lecture," he writes. "They're panicking, I genuinely think they might cry. I'm worried. Are you free at 1?"

I say I am. At 1, I get lunch and sit in the common area; Ceri comes to see me. To my personal shame, imagine all of the following takes place while I stuff my face with potato.

Now: this part is going to be uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has ever tried higher education with ADHD, especially unmedicated. It certainly was for me. All I can say is, I never had the courage to take the step here that Ceri did.

"I have to confess," they said quietly, and Aeron was right, they were fighting back tears. "My mental health has been so, so bad for the last fortnight. I've left it way, way too late. I don't have anything to present."

"Nothing at all?" I asked.

"I've been researching," they said helplessly. "I found loads on the decline of the hen harrier. But it wasn't until last night that I finally found a habitat feasibility study to critique. Generally... I've been burying my head about it, and it just got later and later. I thought I should come in for Aeron's lecture, and I should at least tell you."

This part is a minor thing, right? But honestly, I remember being in the grip of that particular shame spiral. I never did manage to tell my lecturers to their faces. I just avoided. I honestly can't imagine having the courage it took them to come in and tell me this, rather than just staying home and avoiding me.

"I think..." they said hesitantly, "I know I can submit up to a week late, for a capped mark. I think I need to do that, and apply for extenuating circumstances. But then I'll have both Aeron's assignment and yours due at the same time."

Which meant they would crumble under the pressure and likely struggle to pass both; so me, being as noble and heroic as I unarguably am, stopped eating potato and said, "Let's make that plan B."

(It was good potato. I am a hero.)

So, we made plan A: I moved their timeslot to 4.30, giving them three and a half hours. The shining piece of luck in this whole thing was that this was the crunch time assignment - if it had been Aeron's, they'd have had to try and write a 3000 report in that time. But for me, all they had to write was an academic poster, and those things are light on words by design. We found them a Canva template, and then we quickly sketched out a recommended structure based on the brief: if it's habitat feasibility, look at food availability, nesting site availability, and mortality risks in the target release site. Bullet point each. Bullet point how well the study assessed each. Write a quick intro and conclusion. Take notes as you go, and present the poster itself at 4.30.

"You think I should try?" they asked doubtfully, looking like I'd just asked them to go mano-a-mano with a feral badger.

"If you run out of time, so be it," I said. "But your brain is trying to protect you from a non-existent tiger. That's why you've procrastinated - it's been horrible, and you've been shame spiralling, and your brain is trying to shield you from the negative experience; but it's the wrong type of help for this situation! So while you're sitting there working on it, hating life, every time your brain goes 'This is hopeless, I can't do it', you think right back 'Yes I can, it just sucks.' And you carry on. Good?"

"Good," they said. "I'm going to mainline coffee and hole up in the library. Enjoy your potato."

And then, of course, I had to go and watch the other students' presentations, so that was the end of me being any help at all. I spent all afternoon wondering if they were going to manage it, or if I would be getting a message at 4.25 telling me they'd failed, and would have to submit late and hope for an EC.

And Tumblrs

Tumblrs

Let me FUCKING tell you

They turned up at 4.15, fifteen minutes early, wearing a mask of grim, harrowed determination and fuelled by spite and coffee, and they pulled up that poster and started presenting and yes, okay, I'll admit their actual delivery was dramatically unpolished and yes, they forgot to include the taxanomic name for the hen harrier on the poster and yes, fine, I admit that there were more than a few awkward moments where they lost their place in their hastily scribbled notebook but LET ME FUCKING TELL YOU -

They smashed it. It was well-critiqued, it had a map, it had full citations, it had a section on the hen harrier's specific ecology and role in the ecosystem, it had notes on their specific conservation measures. They described case studies they'd read about elsewhere. They answered the questions we threw at them with competence and depth. There was analysis. All that background research they'd done came right to the fore. They were even within the time limit by 15 seconds.

You would never have known they'd produced it in three hours, from a quivering and terrified mess fighting the bodily urge to dehydrate via tear ducts. After they left, the second marker and I looked at each other and went "So that was a 2:1, right?"

I caught up with Aeron downstairs and he was beaming. Apparently Ceri had seen him on their way out, and had gone over to talk to him. Aeron said the difference between the Ceri of this morning and the Ceri of then was like two different people; in four hours, they'd gone from their voice literally breaking as they admitted the problem, ashamed and broken, to being relaxed and happy and smiling.

"I reckon I've passed," they apparently told Aeron, pleased. "Maybe even a 2:2. There's things I wish I'd had the time to do better, but I'll be happy if I passed."

They won't know until late January what they got, because we're not allowed to release marks until 20 term days after hand-in, and the Christmas holidays are about to hit. But I'm really hoping I can be there when they're released.

But mostly, I'm just... insanely proud of them. I cannot tell you how happy I am. And I know, I know, obviously this is not a practice I would want to see them do regularly, or indeed ever again, and it only worked because they were fucking lucky with the assignment format, but like... when life is just punching you in the face, and you hit a breaking point... isn't it nice? That just this once, you pull off a miracle, and it's fixed? The disaster you thought was about to ruin you is gone? To get that relief?

Anyway. Super super proud today.

[caelum-in-the-avatarverse]

Fandom can do a little gatekeeping. As a treat.

So I finally decided to archive-lock my fics on AO3 last night. I’ve been considering it since the AI scrape last year, but the tipping point was this whole lore.fm debacle, coupled with some thoughts I’ve been thinking regarding Fandom These Days in general and Fandom As A Community in particular. So I wanna explain why I waited so long, why I locked my stuff up now, and why I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a-okay with making it harder for people to see my stories.

Lurkers really are great, tho

I’m a chronic lurker, and have been since I started hanging out on the internet as a teen in the 00s. These days it’s just cuz I don’t feel a need to socialize very often, but back then it was because I was shy and knew I was socially awkward. Even if I made an account, I’d spend months lurking on message boards or forums or Livejournals, watching other people interact and getting a feel for that particular community’s culture and etiquette before I finally started interacting myself. And y’know, that approach saved me a lot of embarrassment. Over the course of my lurking on any site, there was always some other person who’d clearly joined up five minutes after learning the place existed, barged in without a care for their behavior, and committed so many social faux pas that all the other users were immediately annoyed with them at best. I learned a lot observing those incidents. Lurk More is Rule 33 of the internet for very good reason.

Lurking isn’t bad or weird or creepy. It’s perfectly normal. I love lurking. It’s hard for me to not lurk - socializing takes a lot of energy out of me, even via text. (Heck it took 12 hours for me to write this post, I wish I was kidding--) Occasionally I’ll manage longer bouts of interaction - a few weeks posting here, almost a year chatting in a discord there - but I’m always gonna end up going radio silent for months at some point. I used to feel bad about it, but I’ve long since made peace with the fact that it’s just the way my brain works. I’m a chronic lurker, and in the long term nothing is going to change that.

The thing with being a chronic lurker is that you have to accept that you are not actually seen as part of the community you are lurking in. That’s not to say that lurkers are unimportant - lurkers actually are important, and they make up a large proportion of any online community - but it’s simple cause and effect. You may think of it as “your community”, but if you’ve never said a word, how is the community supposed to know you exist? If I lurked on someone’s LJ, and then that person suddenly friendslocked their blog, I knew that I had two choices: Either accept that I would never be able to read their posts again, or reach out to them and ask if I could be added to their friends list with the full understanding that I was a rando they might not decide to trust. I usually went with the first option, because my invisibility as a lurker was more important to me than talking to strangers on the internet.

Lurking is like sitting on a park bench, quietly people-watching and eavesdropping on the conversations other people are having around you. You’re in the park, but you’re not actively participating in anything happening there. You can see and hear things that you become very interested in! But if you don’t introduce yourself and become part of the conversation, you won’t be able to keep listening to it when those people walk away. When fandom migrated away from Livejournal, people moved to new platforms alongside their friends, but lurkers were often left behind. No one knew they existed, so they weren’t told where everyone else was going. To be seen as part of a fandom community, you need to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known, etc. etc.

There’s nothing wrong with lurking. There can actually be benefits to lurking, both for the lurkers and the communities they lurk in. It’s just another way to be in a fandom. But if that is how you exist in fandom--and remember, I say this as someone who often does exist that way in fandom--you need to remember that you’re on the outside looking in, and the curtains can always close.

I’ve always been super sympathetic to lurkers, because I am one. I know there’s a lot of people like me who just don’t socialize often. I know there’s plenty of reasons why someone might not make an account on the internet - maybe they’re nervous, maybe they’re young and their parents don’t allow them to, maybe they’re in a bad situation where someone is monitoring their activity, maybe they can only access the internet from public computer terminals. Heck, I’ve never even logged into AO3 on my phone--if I’m away from my computer I just read what’s publicly available. 

I know I have people lurking on my fics. I know my fics probably mean a lot to someone I don’t even know exists. I know this because there are plenty of fics I love whose writers don’t know I exist.

I love my commenters personally; I love my lurkers as an abstract concept. I know they’re there and I wish them well, and if they ever de-lurk I love them all the more.

So up until last year I never considered archive-locking my fic, because I get it. The AI scraping was upsetting, but I still hesitated because I was thinking of lurkers and guests and remembering what it felt like to be 15 and wondering if it’d be worth letting a stranger on the internet know I existed and asking to be added to their friends list just so I could reread a funny post they made once.

But the internet has changed a lot since the 00s, and fandom has changed with it. I’ve read some things and been doing some thinking about fandom-as-community over the last few years, and reading through the lore.fm drama made me decide that it’s time for me to set some boundaries.

I still love my lurkers, and I feel bad about leaving any guest commenters behind, especially if they’re in a situation where they can’t make an account for some reason. But from here on out, even my lurkers are going to have to do the bare minimum to read my fics--make an AO3 account.

Should we gatekeep fandom?

I’ve seen a few people ask this question, usually rhetorically, sometimes as a joke, always with a bit of seriousness. And I think…yeah, maybe we should. Except wait, no, not like that--

A decade ago, when people talked about fandom gatekeeping and why it was bad to do, it intersected with a lot of other things, mainly feminism and classism. The prevalent image of fandom gatekeeping was, like, a man learning that a woman likes Star Wars and haughtily demanding, “Oh, yeah? Well if you’re REALLY a fan, name ten EU novels” to belittle and dismiss her, expecting that a “real fan” would have the money and time to be familiar with the EU, and ignoring the fact that male movie-only fans were still considered fans. The thing being gatekept was the very definition of “being a fan” and people’s right to describe themselves as one.

That’s not what I mean when I say maybe fandom should gatekeep more. Anyone can call themselves a fan if they like something, that’s fine. But when it comes to the ability to enjoy the fanworks produced by the fandom community…that might be something worth gatekeeping.

See, back in the 00s, it was perfectly common for people to just…not go on the internet. Surfing the web was a thing, but it was just, like, a fun pastime. Not everyone did it. It wasn’t until the rise of social media that going online became a thing everyone and their grandmother did every day. Back then, going on the internet was just…a hobby.

So one of the first gates online fandom ever had was the simple fact that the entire world wasn’t here yet.

The entire world is here now. That gate has been demolished.

And it’s a lot easier to find us now. Even scattered across platforms, fandom is so centralized these days. It isn’t a network of dedicated webshrines and forums that you can only find via webrings anymore, it’s right there on all the big social media sites. AO3 didn’t set out to be the main fanfic website, but that’s definitely what it’s become. It’s easy for people to find us--and that includes people who don’t care about the community, and just want “content.”

Transformative fandom doesn’t like it when people see our fanworks as “content”. “Content” is a pretty broad term, but when fandom uses it we’re usually referring to creative works that are churned out by content creators to be consumed by an audience as quickly as possible as often as possible so that the content creator can generate revenue. This not-so-new normal has caused a massive shift in how people who are new to fandom view fanworks--instead of seeing fic or art as something a fellow fan made and shared with you, they see fanworks as products to be consumed.

Transformative fandom has, in general, always been a gift economy. We put time and effort into creating fanworks that we share with our fellow fans for free. We do this so we don’t get sued, but fandom as a whole actually gets a lot out of the gift economy. Offer your community a story, and in return you can get comments, build friendships, or inspire other people to write things that you might want to read. Readers are given the gift of free stories to read and enjoy, and while lurking is fine, they have the choice to engage with the writer and other readers by leaving comments or making reclists to help build the community.

And look, don’t get me wrong. People have never engaged with fanfic as much as fan writers wish they would. There has always been “no one comments anymore” wank. There have always been people who only comment to say “MORE!” or otherwise demand or guilt trip writers into posting the next chapter. But fandom has always agreed that those commenters are rude and annoying, and as those commenters navigate fandom they have the chance to learn proper community etiquette.

However, now it seems that a lot of the people who are consuming fanworks aren’t actually in the community. 

I won’t say “they aren’t real fans” because that’s silly; there’s lots of ways to be a fan. But there seem to be a lot of fans now who have no interest in fandom as a community, or in adhering to community etiquette, or in respecting the gift economy. They consume our fics, but they don’t appreciate fan labor. They want our “content”, but they don’t respect our control over our creations.

And even worse--they see us as a resource. We share our work for free, as a gift, but all they see is an open-source content farm waiting to be tapped into. We shared it for free, so clearly they can do whatever they want with it. Why should we care if they feed our work into AI training datasets, or copy/paste our unfinished stories into ChatGPT to get an ending, or charge people for an unnecessary third-party AO3 app, or sell fanbindings on etsy for a profit without the author’s permission, or turn our stories into poor imitations of podfics to be posted on other platforms without giving us credit or asking our consent, while also using it to lure in people they can datascrape for their Forbes 30 Under 30 company? 

And sure, people have been doing shady things with other people’s fanworks since forever. Art theft and reposting has always been a big problem. Fanfic is harder to flat-out repost, but I’ve heard of unauthorized fic translations getting posted without crediting the original author. Once in…I think the 2010s? I read a post by a woman who had gone to some sort of local bookselling event, only to find that the man selling “his” novel had actually self-published her fanfic. (Wish I could find that one again, I don’t even remember where I read it.)

But aside from that third example, the thing is…as awful as fanart/writing theft is, back in the day, the main thing a thief would gain from it was clout. Clout that should rightfully go to the creators who gifted their work in the first place, yeah, but still. Just clout. People will do a lot of hurtful things for clout, but fandom clout means nothing outside of fandom. Fandom clout is not enough to incentivize the sort of wide-scale pillaging we’re seeing from community outsiders today.

Money, on the other hand… Well, fandom’s just a giant, untapped content farm, isn’t it? Think of how much revenue all that content could generate.

Lurkers are a normal and even beneficial part of any online community. Maybe one day they’ll de-lurk and easily slide into place beside their fellow fans because they already know the etiquette. Maybe they’re active in another community, and they can spread information from the community they lurk in to the community they’re active in. At the very least, they silently observe, and even if they’re not active community members, they understand the community.

Fans who see fanworks as “content” don’t belong in the same category as lurkers. They’re tourists. 

While reading through the initial Reddit thread on the lore.fm situation, I found this comment:

[ID: Reddit User Cabbitowo says: ... So in anime fandoms we have a word called tourist and essentially it means a fan of a few anime and doesn't care about anime tropes and actively criticizes them. This is kind of how fandoms on tiktok feel. They're touring fanfics and fanart and actively criticizes tropes that have been in the fandom since the 60s. They want to be in a fandom but they don't want to engage in fandom 

OP totallymandy responds: Just entered back into Reddit after a long day to see this most recent reply. And as a fellow anime fan this making me laugh so much since it’s true! But it sorta hurts too when the reality sets in. Modern fandom is so entitled and bratty and you’d think it’s the minors only but that’s not even true, my age-mates and older seem to be like that. They want to eat their cake and complain all whilst bringing nothing to the potluck… :/ END ID]

-

“Tourist” is an apt name for this sort of fan. They don’t want to be part of our community, and they don’t have to be in order to come into our spaces and consume our work. Even if they don’t steal our work themselves, they feel so entitled to it that they’re fine with ignoring our wishes and letting other people take it to make AI “podfics” for them to listen to (there are a lot of comments on lore.fm’s shutdown announcement video from people telling them to just ignore the writers and do it anyway). They’ll use AI to generate an ending to an unfinished fic because they don’t care about seeing “the ending this writer would have given to the story they were telling”, they just want “an ending”. For these tourist fans, the ends justify the means, and their end goal is content for them to consume, with no care for the community that created it for them in the first place.

I don’t think this is confined to a specific age group. This isn’t “13-year-olds on Wattpad” or “Zoomers on TikTok” or whatever pointless generation war we’re in now. This is coming from people who are new to fandom, whose main experience with creative works on the internet is this new content culture and who don’t understand fandom as a community. That description can be true of someone from any age group.

It’s so easy to find fandom these days. It is, in fact, too easy. Newcomers face no hurdles or challenges that would encourage them to lurk and observe a bit before engaging, and it’s easy for people who would otherwise move on and leave us alone to start making trouble. From tourist fans to content entrepreneurs to random people who just want to gawk, it’s so easy for people who don’t care about the fandom community to reap all of its fruits. 

So when I say maybe fandom should start gatekeeping a bit, I’m referring to the fact that we barely even have a gate anymore. Everyone is on the internet now; the entire world can find us, and they don’t need to bother learning community etiquette when they do. Before, we were protected by the fact that fandom was considered weird and most people didn’t look at it twice. Now, fandom is pretty mainstream. People who never would’ve bothered with it before are now comfortable strolling in like they own the place. They have no regard for the fandom community, they don’t understand it, and they don’t want to. They want to treat it just like the rest of the content they consume online.

And then they’re surprised when those of us who understand fandom culture get upset. Fanworks have existed far longer than the algorithmic internet’s content. Fanworks existed long before the internet. We’ve lived like this for ages and we like it.

So if someone can’t be bothered to respect fandom as a community, I don’t see why I should give them easy access to my fics.

Think of it like a garden gate

When I interact with commenters on my fic, I have this sense of hospitality.

The comment section is my front porch. The fic is my garden. I created my garden because I really wanted to, and I’m proud of it, and I’m happy to share it with other people. 

Lots of people enjoy looking at my garden. Many walk through without saying anything. Some stop to leave kudos. Some recommend my garden to their friends. And some people take the time to stop by my front porch and let me know what a beautiful garden it is and how much they’ve enjoyed it. 

Any fic writer can tell you that getting comments is an incredible feeling. I always try to answer all my comments. I don’t always manage it, but my fics’ comment sections are the one place that I manage to consistently socialize in fandom. When I respond to a comment, it feels like I’m pouring out a glass of lemonade to share with this lovely commenter on my front porch, a thank you for their thank you. We take a moment to admire my garden together, and then I see them out. The next time they drop by, I recognize them and am happy to pour another glass of lemonade.

My garden has always been open and easy to access. No fences, no walls. You just have to know where to find it. Fandom in general was once protected by its own obscurity, an out-of-the-way town that showed up on maps but was usually ignored.

But now there’s a highway that makes it easy to get to, and we have all these out-of-towner tourists coming in to gawk and steal our lawn ornaments and wonder if they can use the place to make themselves some money.

I don’t care to have those types trampling over my garden and eating all my vegetables and digging up my flowers to repot and sell, so I’ve put up a wall. It has a gate that visitors can get through if they just take the time to open it.

Admittedly, it’s a small obstacle. But when I share my fics, I share them as a gift with my fellow fans, the ones who understand that fandom is a community, even if they’re lurkers. As for tourist fans and entrepreneurs who see fic as content, who have no qualms ignoring the writer’s wishes, who refuse to respect or understand the fandom community…well, they’re not the people I mean to share my fic with, so I have no issues locking them out. If they want access to my stories, they’ll have to do the bare minimum to become a community member and join the AO3 invite queue.

And y’know, I’ve said a lot about fandom and community here, and I just want to say, I hope it’s not intimidating. When I was younger, talk about The Fandom Community made me feel insecure, and I didn’t think I’d ever manage to be active enough in fandom spaces to be counted as A Member Of The Community. But you don’t have to be a social butterfly to participate in fandom. I’ll always and forever be a chronic lurker, I reblog more than I post, I rarely manage to comment on fic, and I go radio silent for months at a time--but I write and post fanfiction. That’s my contribution.

Do you write, draw, vid, gif, or otherwise create? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you leave comments? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you curate reclists? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you maintain a fandom blog or fuckyeah blog? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you provide a space for other fans to convene in? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you regularly send asks (off anon so people know who you are)? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you have fandom friends who you interact with? Congrats, you're a community member.

There’s lots of ways to be a fan. Just make sure to respect and appreciate your fellow fans and the work they put in for you to enjoy and the gift economy fandom culture that keeps this community going.

[totalswag]

hii, I’m not sure if you take request still but if so is there a possible way you can do a drew x singer!reader one shot take on how Sabrina “arrests” her fans before performing Juno for being too hot but the reader does it to Drew during her shows please 🫶🏼

arrested for being too hot — DREW STARKEY

authors note THANK YOU FOR REQUESTING THIS!! my request box is still open so feel free to send me any ideas regarding singer!reader or regular fic ideas you’d like me to write. this was so much writing too. thank for all the love on my last fic lovies <3

taglist ⤕ if you would like to be notified every time i post you will type in your username then be all set.

summary "arresting" drew, your boyfriend, during your show before performing your song from your new album.

warning(s) none!

You are on tour for your new album in-front of thousands of fans almost every night. You worked hard on this album and it turned out wonderfully. If it weren’t for the amazing fans of yours, you don’t know where you’d be in your career— they are the reason you are doing this.

Half way into the show— going amazing. The crowd tonight isn't disappointing you. Everything you've hoped for on this tour. You've performed eighteen songs and about to go onto your nineteenth. Played musical spin the bottle not long ago which was really fun.

Before Juno, you begin with a small "skit" where you call someone out in the crowd, arresting them for being too hot. This became a thing after your first show of the tour and doing it ever since. Plus, fans absolutely love it. Interacting with your fans has always been something you did and create those bonds.

Drew, your boyfriend, is attending the show with Madelyn Cline, a mutual friend and cast-mate of Drew's. You told him earlier today you wanted to arrest him in the middle of the show to get the audience excited and it would be fun.

Drew was all for it, and he didn't want you to tell him what you were going to say—he prefers surprises.

Your pink, glittering, dazzling clothing was sparkling in the lights. You pressed your free hand to your brow as though you were looking around for a call. With security, you could see Drew and Madelyn making their way to the front.

You begin by adjusting your earpiece while moving around the stage in your long skirt. "You guys know that moment when you are in a room filled with such beautiful looking people that you start to feel overwhelmed?" When fans applaud, you smile.

"Oh, girls, I think I just seen my future husband in the front row! Oh my god, girls, come here, come here," you say anxiously into the microphone, beckoning them over and waving your free hand.

You turn to face Drew as the girls approach you, asking, "Do you see that gorgeous looking man over in the front row with his arms crossed in the tan shirt?" You speak into the microphone aloud, pointing to Drew in the crowd.

Your girls joyfully waved at Drew while placing their hands on your shoulder. As Drew blushes on the big screen, the crowd reflexively turns up the volume in the arena. 

"What's your name handsome?" With your head cocked slightly to the right toward your shoulder, you inquire in jest. 

"Drew!" You can hear him when he places his hands on the side of his lips. He gives you a childlike smile and a flushed face.

You say, "I'm sorry I couldn't get that?" as though you couldn't hear him. Leaning forward more, you place your free hand behind your ear.

He shakes his head and utters "Drew!" a little louder. 

"Oh my Drew, I must say that you must be a magnet because you drew me in" brings a smile to your face. Your tone indicated that you were trying quite hard not to laugh, yet you kept your calm brilliantly.

Fans had their phones out, capturing the entire interaction. Nobody would have expected Drew to be the person arrested at your gigs since the tour began.

"Drew, you are under arrest for being too hot," you say aloud, smiling and pointing at him— fanning yourself, moving your hips side to side as the sound of sirens going off with blue and red lights behind.

You put your left elbow against your girls shoulder, "guys do you ever just see someone so good looking that you just don't know what to do and all your clothes fall off in that moment" your long skirt slips off smoothy.

"Like your brain just like malfunctions and like I just wanna handcuffed to you now like," one of your girls puts the pink fluffy handcuffs into your hand, you kneel down, "do you know what I mean? Will you take these from me?"

Drew is overwhelmed in this very moment— it's very obvious how much you are affecting him. Drew gives you a gimme me gesture with his fingers, ready to catch the hand cuffs.

He takes them in his hands, looks down, and feels the smooth texture of the fuzzy. He tilts his head to the side before slowly glancing up at you with a smirk—keep in mind that he's still on the big screen.

"We're gonna sing this one to you, Drew."

Juno's song intro starts playing. You wave goodbye to Drew and Madelyn as you return to the center of the stage. You could hear the two begin speaking to fans in the distance.

Drew and Madelyn met you in the dressing room following the show. After giving Madelyn a hug and thanking her for attending the event, you moved to approach Drew and put your arms around his neck while grinning.

"That was insane," Madelyn exclaimed, pulling you into a hug. "What about the full call-out and the handcuffs? Iconic! "You're the talk of the night; everyone is crazy about it."

You giggled as your face heated up. "It seemed right." "You should have seen his face!"

She laughs, "I got the whole thing on video, I'll send it to you later."

"I'm going to give you two some alone time, but you did such an amazing job tonight and looked so hot doing it," Madelyn adds, taking your hands in her and wiggling her brows. 

"Thank you, babe. I love you always," you say, hugging her before she leaves you and Drew alone. 

When you close the door, Drew comes behind you, placing his arms around your waist and kissing you on the cheek, making you laugh with the tenderness of his lips.

"I'm so proud of you baby, you did such an amazing job on stage and looked unbelievable in your outfits made me feel like the luckiest guy in the entire world." He expresses emotionally, which uplifts you. 

"Coming from you, it warms my heart baby. Forever grateful to have you in my life," you smile softly, leaning against his chest, feeling that sense of warmth you always feel whenever you are with him.

"And I'm forever grateful for you" he quietly responds, kissing the top of your head.

"So what are we gonna do with those pink fuzzy handcuffs?"

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[asahicore]

fast forward - pjs

pairing. jay x fem!reader

synopsis. After yet another romantic disappointment in the form of one Jake Sim, you go to the well you’ve always believed to grant wishes and ask for your one and true love to appear. That night, you go to sleep in your bed but wake up in a strange house. When you head downstairs, you find a man washing the dishes and telling you your favorite meal is waiting on the table for you. You’ve spent hours glaring at the back of that head, you could recognize it anywhere—it belongs to none other than Park Jongseong, your high school sworn enemy... and future husband, or so it seems.

genre+warnings. high school au, the type of e2l where they never really hated each other to begin with, they act like they're academic rivals even though they're not particularly academically gifted, jay has a thing about german the language, sunoo and kazuha besties, heeseung is a loser, jake and sunghoon are assholes sorry, ive liz is german, 02z get into a white-boy locker-room fight, attempts at banter etc, they're a little bit silly

word count. 26.6k

a/n. had the idea for this listening to fast forward by somi LAST SUMMER... and only wrote it this summer and only posting it now <3 i hope u guys enjoy reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it !!!!! jay is an absolute cutie here pls love him as much as i do.... as always let me know what u think and remember to vote for @zreamy president in the upcoming elections, shes the only one i trust to beta-read and hence to run a country <3 no it doesnt matter that shes scottish put this woman in the white house

There is only one thorn on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life.

Every morning, you wake up feeling refreshed from eight hours of restful sleep. You go downstairs to the kitchen, a boiling cup of milky Earl Grey tea already waiting for you, and eat breakfast with your brother Jinwoo and father. Your mom dashes in, placing a kiss on your and Jinwoo’s foreheads, and on your dad’s lips, saying she’s late for work but will see you in the evening. “Have fun at school,” she bids every morning without fail. Your dad teaches Korean Literature at your school, so the three of you drive there together. He watches amusedly as you and Jinwoo bicker light-heartedly on the way there—even in the pits of his puberty, you and your brother get along like two peas in a pod. He still tells you about everything he learns at school and fills you in on the drama in his class, up-to-date with everything even though he pretends not to be interested.

You’re always one of the first to arrive at school, so you scroll through your feed or finish up some homework as you wait for your classmates to file in. Your friends circle your table and you chat about the last episode of the show you’ve been watching until the bell rings and they leave you for their assigned seat.

Class starts with your teacher handing out the math tests you took last week. “Jay and Y/N, great job, keep it up,” he says as he walks past you and the boy in front of you, and hands you your paper. Relief floods your body as you take in the bright red 82 in the top right-hand corner—not the best of the class, but enough for you to be satisfied. 

Good friends, good grades—nothing extraordinary, but it’s a life you dare say any high school senior would want.

There’s just that one thing. The thorn in your side that won’t stop poking.

You glare at it as it whips around in its seat and takes a peek at the grade on your paper before you get to snatch it away from view. It only gives you three seconds to rejoice over your grade. 

“Aw, Y/N. Good effort! Maybe you’ll do better next time!” Jongseong coos, holding up his test for you to see and glare even harder at. 85. Not that big of a difference, but it makes you want to punch the faux sympathetic pout off of his face. 

You’re about to spit something just as petty back at him, but someone whispers your name, and you turn your head in their direction. Beside you, Jake is smiling at you as he asks what grade you got. Your attention is swiftly taken off of Jongseong, whom you don’t even notice dramatically rolling his eyes, huffing in annoyance, and turning around. 

“82,” you whisper back, holding up your paper for Jake to see. His friendly, absurdly handsome smile makes your ears burn. “You?”

The corners of his lips fall down into a sad pout—the kind that makes your heart melt rather than gets on your nerves like someone else. “68,” he says. Leans in over the gap between your tables. Your heart jumps uncontrollably around your rib cage. “Do you wanna go over it together during the break? I think I need some help.”

One-on-one time with Jake Sim? You don’t need to be asked twice. You nod silently, almost mesmerized by Jake as his grin widens. He leans back in his chair. “Perfect. I’ll see you in the library, then.”

“Library, yeah,” you echo dumbly, but thankfully, your teacher tells you to all quiet down and starts the lesson. 

You’re antsy all throughout the rest of your morning classes and lunch break, so nervous that you barely manage to finish your yogurt. Of course, your friends, Sunoo and Kazuha, have a field day with this, and even you can’t help but laugh along as they jump between reassuring you that it’ll be fine, slapping your shoulders with excitement and making fun of your uncharacteristic quietness.

Jake arrives at the library five minutes after you, looking around the room before he finds you at the big round table in the back of the library. Your brain is too riddled with anxiety for you to make more small talk than “Hey,” “Hey,” “How was your lunch?” “Good, yours?” “Good.” And so you just jump straight into it.

You’ve only had a couple minutes of quiet explanation on your part and heavy nodding on Jake’s when Jay appears at the entrance of the library. He spots you and Jake immediately, and without any hesitation whatsoever heads towards you and sits down at your table, right across from the two of you.

“Hey, Jay,” Jake greets in a friendly manner, but Jay only responds with a nod of his head.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” he says when he notices you glaring. “I won’t bother you.”

As if he could be anything other than a bother, you think, but courteously keep to yourself. The childish rivalry you and Jongseong have got going on has no business spoiling a rare hour of alone time you get with Jake. As you go over the exercises he had the most trouble with on the test with you, your eyes often drift over to Jongseong as if to check on him—you’re cautious like he’s a spider in the corner of the room that might spring on you at any moment.

And indeed, the moment your gaze leaves him for more than a minute as you explain an intricate theorem to Jake, he’s out of sight, and panic shoots through you. Where the hell has he suddenly gone off to? you wonder, but not for long.

“There’s a much easier way to do this, really,” says a voice from behind you, and of course, it’s none other than Jongseong himself, quite literally butting his way into your tutoring session. Right between you and Jake, he bends over and rests his elbows on the table, taking Jake’s pencil from him and describing the theorem in a way that isn’t that much simpler. Your eyes shoot bullets into the side of his face while he, unbothered, explains this and that to Jake, who glances at you a couple of times but otherwise does not seem so perturbed by the sudden change of tutor. Either Jongseong doesn’t notice your glare or doesn’t care, because he doesn’t budge.

Just when they’re done with the exercise and you think you’ll get Jake to yourself again, another voice appears from behind, a much higher, girlier one. You notice the hand on Jake’s shoulder first, until slowly, your eyes drift to the face—you recognize Yunjin, head of the cheerleading squad, and she’s smiling at you, a smile that at once tries to cover and betrays her surprise at seeing you and Jake together. She doesn’t acknowledge you any more than that, gaze going back to “Jakey,” asking him if he wants to head to class together. You check the time—five minutes before the first bell rings. What do they need so much time getting to class for? It’s not like any room in this school is more than a three-minute walk away.

But Jake doesn’t even look back at you, just says “Sure!” with far too much enthusiasm for your taste as he packs his stuff. “Thanks, you two,” he says, looking at Jay first, then at you. You think his eyes linger on you for a second, but just like that, he’s gone, him and Yunjin walking side-by-side.

You watch them leave—they look good together, the cheerleading captain and the soccer team’s star. The white Vans she’s wearing have a bunch of red love hearts on them that look drawn on, and you think, Of course, Jake is the type to date someone cute, someone fun, someone who would draw on their shoes. Not someone like you, whose idea of a good Friday night is lighting up a scented candle and reading your favorite novel for the nth time. When they’ve left the library, you slump in your seat, crumpling the sheet of paper you had drawn a bunch of graphs and formulae on to make things clearer for Jake. Jay awkwardly clears his throat and finally returns to his seat, looking at you with his lips pressed in a tight line.

“Y/N?” he asks tentatively, and the sound is too much to bear, so you pack your things and head to your next class early, too. Your mind is racing with a million thoughts a minute—who is that girl to Jake, how come you’ve never seen them together before, how come he was so eager to leave with her, what was that smile she gave you about? In the fifty-five minutes of your biology class, which you uncharacteristically don’t pay any attention to, you’ve convinced yourself that they are crazy in love and that none of Jake’s actions or words towards you had ever meant anything, that you’d liked him so much you’d dreamt up the possibility of his liking you back, too.

Your next lesson starts—the smile Jake gives you as he walks into History is so bright, it dissipates any clouds hanging over your head. You do believe in male-female friendships, but despite yourself, you can’t help but think that anyone in a relationship wouldn’t give someone else such a perfect, warm smile. It just wouldn’t be right. And so, you reason with yourself that simply walking to a class together didn’t mean two people were a couple.

For an hour, you stare at the back of Jake’s head, and although you do eventually come to the more sensible conclusion that a smile may just be a smile, you also think it's unlikely that he and Yunjin would be a thing. If they were, why would they hide it? Jake is so nice, you wouldn’t be surprised if he’d exaggerated his enthusiasm upon seeing her. You’re sure you still have your chances. He even says see you tomorrow when class is over and slips out of the room to go to soccer practice. 

You feel like you’re walking on cloud 9 as you head from History to your next class—but when you remember that the next class is German, your mood drops significantly. Because the universe has it out for you, you and Jay are two of just ten students in your year taking German as your second foreign language option, everyone else having gone for either French, Japanese or Spanish. Your reasoning for it is that your dad has had an obsession with Germany since his year abroad in Bavaria, and twelve-year-old you had wanted to make him happy. Eighteen-year-old you regrets it slightly, but at least now your dad is ecstatic every time you tell him in German that the dinner he made was really tasty. Why Jongseong decided to take it beats you—he’s probably just insane.

But because you don’t really know anyone else in the class, and because it’s your last period of the day, you have no friends to run off with once the lesson is over, and he gets to bother you all the way from the classroom door to the staff parking lot. 

You’ve barely finished bidding Auf Wiedersehen to your teacher and Jongseong is already harassing you. “So, I didn’t take you as the type to be into guys like Jake Sim.” He says Jake’s name with such disdain, like he thinks he’s so much better than him, or like he hates him. It confuses you just as much as it annoys you; Jongseong didn’t seem to have a problem with Jake earlier at the library.

“And that’s your business, because…?”

You don’t look at Jongseong, who’s quickened his pace to keep up with yours, but you can feel the smirk on his face. It’s insufferable. “Oh, it’s none of my business. I’m just surprised, is all. You guys are so… I don’t know, different.”

You scoff. “If you think I’m not good enough for someone like Jake, I’d rather you tell me straight up, Jongseong. Or actually,” you say, looking up at him with a dry smile. “Keep it to yourself and leave me alone.”

He looks offended by your words, and it only adds to your already immense annoyance—he’s the one who just insulted you, so why is he looking at you with those stupid furrowed eyebrows?

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t need to.”

“No, Y/N.” He grabs your wrist and makes you face him, your stomach flipping in surprise that you quickly cover up. When he releases you, you cross your arms over your chest and wait for him to speak, keeping your eyes trained on a spot behind him. “I don’t think he’s too good for you.” 

This makes you look at him. You have to admit, your curiosity is piqued. Not like Jongseong to say anything even vaguely in your favor. “He’s just…” He sighs, searches for the right word. “Well, he’s just a bit of a dick, isn’t he?”

You freeze for a second. You’re so taken aback, your scoff comes out more as a laugh—Park Jongseong, king supreme of all dicks at this school, just called Jake Sim a dick?

“I’m sorry?”

He sighs again, as though you’re the unreasonable one. “He’s so… smug. A wannabe class clown and thinks he’s the shit because he’s on the soccer team. Have you seen the way he swaggers around school?”

You look at him with fake sympathy. “Jong, are you jealous?”

“Pfft. No way. I just think it’s a shame you keep going after these dudes who are not even worth your time, or whatever, so yeah…” he says, voice trailing off and looking down at his feet as he speaks. Hands in pockets and blank expression on his face, you can tell he’s trying to look cool, but the way he’s avoiding your gaze is a dead give-away. Even his ears have turned red. Jongseong is having one of those shy moments he has when he’s trying to be nice to you. Clearly, a simple act of kindness towards you is so hard for him that it radically changes the way he behaves. 

Like when you were fifteen and you just couldn’t get this stupid art project right, so he stayed behind for three hours after school with you, helping you draw and paint and cut and glue. 

Like when you were sixteen and your grandma just passed away, making you miss a week of school, and without a word, barely looking at you, he gave you a stack of handwritten notes of all the lessons you missed. To this day, you’re not sure how he did it—you weren’t in the same class that year.

Like when you were seventeen and Park Sunghoon rejected you in the middle of a crowded hallway. You’d run off to the girls’ bathroom to cry it out, but Jongseong quickly found you and spent the entire period cursing Sunghoon out instead of being in English, like you were both meant to be. He was uncharacteristically nice to you for a few days after that, never starting an argument for no reason or interrupting you when you spoke. When you snapped at him, telling him it only made you feel worse that he treated you differently, he smiled and told you how stupid you looked when you cried. It made you laugh more than it should’ve.

Like now, when he suddenly decides that Jake Sim is also a wrong choice for you. “Him and Sunghoon are good friends, you know that?” he says. “Birds of a feather, and all…”

So you know that Jongseong is not all bad. He has his redeeming qualities. He can even be nice sometimes, when he so wishes. But those moments are so few and far between that when he returns to his usual insufferable self, you wonder if you’d dreamt it all up. Which is why you can’t quite take him seriously right now. You roll your eyes and resume walking towards the parking lot, but of course, he continues to follow you. “Why do you even care who I go after?”

“I don’t-”

“You clearly do, otherwise you wouldn’t be bothering me like this.”

“Well, if all your attention is taken up by that douche, who am I going to go up against?”

“That’s what you’re worried about? That I stop arguing with you?” you say, disbelief clear in your voice.

“I’m offended, Y/N,” he starts, his sarcastic tone making you roll your eyes again. “That our little rivalry matters so little to you.”

“We’re not even the top students of our class, for God’s sake, we’re not fighting over anything.”

“I’ve actually got the best grades in German, thanks very much.”

“Whatever. I wouldn’t call it a rivalry so much as a mutual dislike of each other, because one of us woke up one day and decided to start going against everything the other said.”

“At least you’re self-aware.”

The exit to the parking lot now appears to you like the gates of heaven. You don’t even bother replying to him, thinking that he’ll just leave you alone now that you’re here. But as you step outside, he places himself in front of you and blocks your path, arms splayed out, eyes wide like he’s just seen a ghost.

“What are you-”

“Have you done the German homework for tomorrow?”

The sudden change of subject gives you whiplash. “What? No, Miss Schumacher assigned it just now-”

“Well, given your tendency for getting the word order all wrong, I can already tell you you’re not gonna have fun with it-”

You pinch the nose of your bridge, trying to calm yourself down before you lose what’s remaining of your mind. “Jongseong, were you actually dropped on the head as a baby? Go away. My dad’s gonna be here any second.” You try to walk around him, but he steps in front of you again. You peer up at him, undisguised annoyance in your eyes. Where are your dad and brother when you need them?

“I’m just saying, you’ll probably need help with it-”

“I won’t. And if I do, I’ll just use Google. Now get out of my way,” you say, and manage to duck under one of his arms.

Then you see it.

Well, actually, it takes you a second to understand what it is you’re seeing. At first, you think it’s one of those horny couples thinking they’re being really discreet by going to the staff parking lot to make out, when in reality they could be caught by any one at any time. They’re just far enough that when you do a double take, you realize that you do know the back of that head; that fluffy mop of brown hair. You sit behind it every History period, next to it every Maths and English period.

The girl is up against the wall, and you can’t really see her, what with her and Jake’s tongues being down each other’s throat and his body blocking her from your view, his hands on her hips, her arms around his shoulders. All the works. She’s wearing a cheerleader uniform, so she could be any of twenty girls—but you’re pretty sure only one of them wears a pair of white Vans with red love hearts on them.

Your heart sinks to your stomach.

You’re frozen in place when a whistle rings in the distance, and Jake and Yunjin separate, giggling to each other as they jog to wherever the sound came from. The sports field, probably. It’s Monday; the cheerleaders and the soccer team share the field for their practice. 

Jake spots you and Jongseong staring at them. He waves quickly, awkwardly at you, still smiling even when surprise coats his features. Yunjin tugs on his hand and just like that, they’re gone. 

“Y/N-” 

Jay’s voice fades in the background. You want to get away from this situation as quickly as possible—it’s embarrassing enough seeing the guy you like and thought you had a chance with kissing a girl that is arguably much more on his level than you are, but having Jongseong of all people not only witness it, but try to protect you from it, God knows why, makes it impossibly mortifying. You speed-walk to your dad’s car, huffing as you plop in your seat and slamming the door behind you. Your brother is already sitting in the passenger seat, and you don’t even argue with him about it. When you only give single-word replies to his questions, he shrugs and returns to playing Clash of Clans on his phone. 

The moment you get home, you fish a five cent coin from your purse, change into mud boots and grab your dog’s leash. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

After half-an-hour of trudging through leaves and soft ground, muddy from many a rainy November night, you and Pablo, your massive, fluffy airhead of a German Shepherd, find yourselves at the well in the middle of the forest. Ever since you were little, you have attributed magic powers to the well—not that anyone told you any sort of myth about it, but you remember reading a story about a magic well and decided that your well would be magical, too. You’ve never wanted to abuse its powers, so you’ve used your wishes conscientiously: things like getting a certain present at Christmas (when you were nine and the most important thing ever was getting the Monster High doll you wanted) or not stuttering during your presentation in class (when you really didn’t want to embarrass yourself in front of Park Sunghoon and his cool friends). Every wish you’ve made has come true. Whenever a faint voice of reason tells you that it’s because you always ask for very realistic things, you squash it and continue to believe in the well.

Because today, you’re not asking for something realistic. 

Today, you’re asking the well to show you the way to love.

You’ve grown up watching The Notebook and Pride & Prejudice. Your parents are high school sweethearts who are still, twenty-five years later, happily married. You devour romance novels and binge-watch Asian dramas, the more unrealistic and romantic, the better. You are convinced that soulmates exist, that love always finds a way, that it is there for anyone to see. That it can take form in a childhood friend, an archnemesis, a total stranger.  

But for some reason, it hasn’t shown itself to you yet, no matter how valiantly you’ve looked. 

You’re absolutely sick and tired of it. It is Jake kissing another girl, it’s Sunghoon leading you on for months and then rejecting you in front of everyone, it’s your ex-boyfriend-who-shall-not-be-named, your first love and first heartbreak, dumping you after a year and getting with the girl he had told you not to worry about a week later. At a party a few months later, he’d said, word for word, “At least I didn’t cheat on you.”

Coin lodged between your hands, you interlace your fingers and press your palms closely together, eyes screwed shut in desperation. “Hey,” you start simply, because you and the well are good friends. “It’s been a while since I’ve asked for anything, so I hope you can indulge me… This is gonna sound so cliché, but I’m really tired of getting fucked over by boys — excuse my French — and I just wanna meet the person who’s right for me, you know? Mom’s always reminding me that I’m only eighteen, and that I’ve got plenty of time to meet someone, but I just feel like if I don’t find someone now, I never will. And if I get fucked over again — sorry — I’ll just lose hope and write off men for the rest of my life. So help a girl out, will you? I’ll leave it to you how you wanna go about it, but… just show me that there’s someone out there. Please.”

When you open your eyes, you need a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. You toss the coin in the well. It doesn’t make a sound as it hits the bottom, as if it has been absorbed within the old brick walls. You know better than to question it—the well works in mysterious ways.

You’re quiet that entire evening, making up an excuse of a tiring day at school when your parents ask. Really, you’re just thinking about your wish, whether it’ll work, what might happen. You half-ass your homework—Jay was right, the German exercises throw you into a bout of despair, so you quickly close your textbook and bury yourself in your sheets, falling asleep hours earlier than you usually would.

--

For some reason, the first thing you notice when you wake up is that it’s still dark outside. It must be the middle of the night, you think. It takes you a few seconds to realize that you’re in a completely strange room.

Instead of your floral-patterned sheets, you find yourself covered by delicate silk sheets that your parents would never agree to buy you, no matter how adamantly you argued for the benefits of silk for your skin. If skincare experts online had convinced you of one thing, it was that silk would do wonders for your obstinate acne. You slide out of bed and find a pair of slippers on the floor, as if waiting for you. Even the pajamas you’re wearing are fancier, more grown up than the ones you have at home, a set composed of a pinstriped button-up and shorts. You look around, for some reason more surprised and curious than panicked. You could’ve been kidnapped, for all you know, but all you care about right now is this room. Rather than the pink and white walls that have surrounded you since childhood, covered with pictures of you and your friends, postcards of artwork bought at museums, and posters of your favorite movies, the walls here are beige and mostly bare, except for a painting of Japanese cherry blossoms above the bed and a family portrait on the opposite wall, above a wooden chest of drawers. 

The family portrait. A woman, a man, and what you can only assume are their children. They look like twins—two girls. Can’t be older than three years old. Out of the four faces, you recognize two of them. You recognize them far too well. One of them is yours, of course. You look slightly older, by a decade, maybe? You’re glad to know that you won’t fall off after twenty-five, like much of social media has led you to believe. 

The other face you recognize immediately, too, but it takes you a few seconds to truly believe it.

It belongs to none other than Park Jongseong.

A dry chuckle falls from your throat, as if someone has just made a very insulting joke at your expense and you have to pretend you find it funny. The well has a very odd sense of humor, you think. It’s probably just a prank, a magic-induced nightmare before the real thing. Except this already feels real, disorientingly so. The fabric on your skin, the picture, the room. It all feels too real, more tangible than any dream you’ve ever had.

You take a step closer towards the picture, as if looking at it harder will make Jongseong’s face fade into that of another man, the real man that will become your husband and father of your children. But alas, his features remain the same, frozen in time by the photographer’s camera. He, too, looks older—and not only does he not fall off after twenty-five, he becomes all the more handsome for it.

Is this how you find out that Jongseong was handsome all along? You stare at it until the familiar face becomes practically unrecognizable, like repeating a word so much it stops feeling like one. The straight nose, the almond-shaped eyes that seem to have softened overtime, whereas his jaw has remained as sharp as ever. Have his eyebrows always framed his face so perfectly? Has that dimple always been there? 

You look around again, and the bright numbers on the bedside alarm clock catches your attention. They read 9:57 p.m., but it’s the date that makes your stomach sink—today is still the 18th of November, but ten years later. You stare at the clock, at the unfamiliar number, a date so far into the future you can’t wrap your head around it. You could barely envision life after high school.

Downstairs, the sudden clang of pots and the sound of a tap running manage to rip your gaze away from the alarm clock. An overwhelming curiosity tells you to follow the noise. This is all a dream, so there are no consequences if you explore a bit more, right? 

You’ve never been in this house before, and you have no idea where your feet are taking you until you find yourself in the kitchen. It’s the only lit room in the house, and you’re creepily standing in the dark under a wide archway that connects the kitchen to what looks like the dining room. A man has his back to you, washing dishes and putting them out to dry on a rack next to the sink. He’s wearing a white cotton sweater, one that you feel you recognise without ever having seen before, and a brown apron is tied around his neck and waist. 

The first thing you think to yourself is Oh, his haircut hasn’t changed. In almost every class you share with him, Jongseong has made it a point to sit either next to you or right in front of you, so you’ve spent a lot of time glaring at the back of his head. You wouldn’t be surprised if he started developing two eye-shaped bald spots there. His hair is still short and spiky at the back and on the sides, longer on the top. When he lets it grow too long, it sometimes covers his eyes, and he obnoxiously keeps having to push it back like a heartthrob in an 80s movie. 

Something like a memory flashes through your mind, blurry like those images you aren’t sure came from a dream or from real life. Your surroundings are unclear, but Jay’s face is nestled against your neck, your hand in his hair. You can feel the softness of the close shave against your palm as clearly as if you were touching it right now. You ask him why he’s always kept it that way, and he replies that it’s simple to maintain. Then in classic Jay fashion, he adds, “And it makes me look awesome.”

Another memory, a clearer one, this time—this definitely happened. It’s halfway through sophomore year, a random Tuesday, and Jay walks in, holding his head high and looking smugly around himself. The bastard got a new haircut. Long gone, his messy, unorganized flop of black hair that looked like it didn’t know what it was doing; hello, sleek undercut. It accentuates all of his best features, which is terrible news for you. You had never even thought of Jongseong as someone having “best” features, but now they’re being thrown in your face. His nose. His jawline. His smile.

It ruins your day, and a few after that. You can’t quite put it into words when your friends ask what’s wrong at lunch—or rather, you don’t wanna face the humiliation of uttering something along the lines of “Park Jongseong looks good with his new haircut, and it’s bothering me.”

Here, it’s a familiar sight in an unfamiliar environment, the back of his head. Without really thinking, you take a step forward. Jongseong starts at the sound of your slippers against the marble floor tiles, but his face relaxes into a smile when he sees you.

“Oh, it’s just you, honey. I thought you were sleeping.”

Just you. As if the two of you being in the same kitchen is normal. You guess it must be, to this version of Jongseong. To him, you’re not the annoying girl he strives to best in every class—you’re honey. 

“I was,” you say, walking around the kitchen island to join him by the sink. Something in you needs to look at him, really look at him, maybe pinch yourself or pinch him to be sure you’re not going crazy. Maybe you caught wafts of some ancient algae that lives in the well and made you hallucinate?

“I left a plate out for you in case you woke up. Made your favorite. The girls weren’t so happy, seeing as it’s the third time this month,” he says with the special kind of smile reserved for parents talking about their children. The girls. A mention so casual, so obvious, your heart hurts. “But I think I got it really right this time,” he continues. “Honestly, it might even be better than the original.”

He goes back to washing the dishes and you watch the sponge in his hands as it scrubs away tomato sauce, the soap as it runs from the plates into the sink. A knot forms in your stomach, something like a deep sadness that overwhelms you all of a sudden, and tears form in your eyes, threatening to fall any second.

When you haven’t budged in almost a minute, Jongseong starts to say, in an intimate, almost worried voice, “Aren’t you going to eat, honey?” but when he sees your wet eyes, the tremble in your lower lip, he shuts the water immediately and dries his hands. With his thumbs, he wipes away the tears that have started falling from your eyes. “What’s wrong?” he whispers.

You can’t reconcile the man in front of you with the image you have of the boy that torments you in every class you share. You can’t reconcile the genuine concern in his voice with the snarky tone you’re met with every day. And yet, they respond to the same name, their features are identical, if not for the years that separate them, the stress of adulthood on one and the carefreeness of youth on the other. 

Your body reacts automatically to the soft touch—never in a million years would you let the Jongseong you know come near you like this, but here, nothing feels more natural than his hands on your face, your shoulders, your hair, as though they’re just as much his as they are yours. You realize the emotion in your stomach is not sadness—tears fall, but you’re not sad. You’ve never felt as home as you do now, and if one thing romantic novels have taught you, is that this must be love.

You look up at the man in front of you, eyebrows furrowed as you search his face for confirmation or some sort of an answer. There’s a tremble in your voice when you speak next. “I just… I think I love you, Jongseong.”

He chuckles. “Well, we established that a while ago, didn’t we? What with getting married and having kids. But I’m glad you still feel that way.”

The mention of marriage and children doesn’t faze you nearly as much as it should. You’ve only got one thing on your mind. “Do you love me too?”

You expect him to laugh—not out of cruelty, but because the answer is so obvious, it almost doesn’t deserve to be answered seriously. Like when your brother asks if he can have one more of your cookies and you tell him you’ll cut his hand off. Sometimes you think it’s easier to be sarcastic than be unabashedly nice to someone. Especially with Jongseong, whom you don’t expect kindness or patience from, you wait for him to stay something like, “No, that’s why I’ve stayed with you these eight years.” 

So when instead, he says, “More than anything on this Earth,” voice low and vulnerable, tears flow even harder. 

“Sorry, it’s probably just my period,” you say through sobs, although you have no idea where in her menstrual cycle this version of you is.

Jongseong chuckles again, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “You do get emotional around this time.” And you cry more, because you can’t believe someone other than your mother knows you so well that they know what your period symptoms are.

Rubbing soothing circles against your back and whispering soft words in your ear, he holds you for as long as you need to calm down. When you finally do, he tells you to go sit on the couch, that he’ll finish up the dishes then heat and bring your food for you. You think you’ve got your emotions under control, but the moment you bite the pasta, cooked to perfection with the most succulent tomato sauce you’ve ever had, sweet with a little kick of spice and a generous amount of parmesan cheese, tears start to fall again as if you had an endless stock of water behind your eyes.

“This is so good,” you mumble.

Jongseong smiles, his gaze full of affection miraculously directed at you as he tucks away strands of your hair so they don’t get in your eyes or in your food. “I’m glad, baby.”

You react to the nickname viscerally, words tumbling out of your mouth before you can even understand them. “You haven’t called me that in ages.” You widen your eyes at yourself, wondering how this was something you even knew. But when you look at Jongseong, all he does is smile more.

“You’re right, I haven’t. I guess I was reminded of college. You cried all the time back then. As much as it pained me, I can’t say I wasn’t happy to be the one you always came to for comfort.”

You haven’t been through college yet, so you should be unable to tell whether this truly happened or not—and yet, the memories of the body you’re in all confirm what Jongseong just said. But it feels impossible—going to university with him, letting yourself be vulnerable enough with him to not only cry in front of him but let him comfort you. Whatever could have happened in the years between the present you know and your time at university for things to change so drastically?

But before you can make sense of any of it, Jongseong speaks again. “Why? Do you like it when I call you baby?”

Your stomach flips. Heat rises to your face at his words, the tone with which he said them, the things he was alluding to—you know that having children means you’d popped your cherry at some point, that you’d had sex with Jongseong specifically, but to be confronted with the fact was something else. 

“Maybe,” you mumble, and proceed to stuff your mouth with pasta so that you can’t incriminate yourself further.

He puts on a recent movie, something you should arguably be paying attention to, since you’re literally getting a glimpse into the future of cinema—you could steal the idea, go back to your present and sell it for an outrageous price.

But Jongseong’s presence next to you makes it impossible to concentrate on anything but him. The warmth emanating from him, the scent of his perfume envelop you, give you a sense of just how real this all is—despite how comfortable being with him like this feels, you’re still not convinced you’re not just in an unsettlingly vivid dream. You take one of his hands in yours, examining each finger, turning his hand over, tracing the lines of his palm, smoothing your thumb over his nails—it’s an undeniably human hand. Warm against yours, slightly rough. He’s started using hand cream, you think, all these winters when his dry hands would crack because of the cold coming up to your mind, teenage Jongseong’s hard refusal to wear any sort of cream to protect himself. Memories bob up to the surface: fixing his cracked hands up with a plaster, your tear falling on his hand, the both of you in your school uniforms in what looks like the school infirmary; awkwardly gifting him some hand cream the Christmas of that year, not looking at him as you hand him the small package. Saying, “It’s a waste of plasters for something that could be fixed so easily.” Him treating you to warm, spicy tteokbokki because he felt bad for not having gotten you anything, even though this was the first time either of you had ever given the other one a present.

As your fingers trail up from his hand to his forearm, his shoulder, his jawline, more memories flood your mind. Clumsy first kisses; squabbles of the kind you were already used to; lazy mornings in bed; hours spent in your kitchen or his, before you shared one, cooking dinner together; the way you felt when he proposed, a feeling so intense remembering it is almost unbearable now. Your eyes and fingers examine his face in detail—even though you’ve seen him almost every day since the start of high school, this feels like the first time you really perceive him. The delicate bow of his lips, the strong nose, the softness in his eyes when he looks at you. Your heart beats uncontrollably as you hold each other’s gazes, but you feel inexplicably relaxed at the same time, two nearly opposing realities fighting each other inside of you—one in which you and Jongseong regarding each other with such affection is unthinkable, the other in which it is daily routine.

“Movie not to your taste?” he asks, voice gentle, breaking you out of your stupor.

“Hm?”

He nods towards the TV screen. “I see you’re not paying much attention.”

“No. I have… things on my mind.”

He raises an eyebrow, a smirk slowly growing on his lips. “Yeah?” You think your heart might actually flatline when he brings you in closer to his chest, and, face buried in your hair, says, “You know, I’ve been thinking that the twins might want a younger sibling to play with soon enough…”

You’re not sure whether he actually wants a third child or if this is weird dirty talk that apparently turns parents on—all you know is that this is something future you will deal with, not high school senior you. 

You whip up your head at him, eyes wide in panic that he mirrors immediately. “Or—or not. Later. Later?” You nod fervently, and the worry dissipates from his handsome features. “Okay, later,” he whispers, kissing the top of your head before returning his attention to the movie. 

A couple hours later, you’re laying in bed in the dark together—you can tell Jongseong is falling asleep by the regularity of his breathing and his stillness, but you’re wide awake. You don’t know how you’ve managed to spend all this time with him, acting like the wife he knows and loves, without imploding. But suddenly, the idea of waking up in your childhood bed, surrounded by your pink-and-white walls, going downstairs to be greeted by your brother and parents, sends a wave of panic through you. You haven’t felt this comfortable in a long time—Jongseong’s arm draped over your waist, the fact that you could reach over and feel his skin against your palm if you wanted. You don’t want to go back to a time where you hate him. In fact, you don’t know if you could hate him after this.

“Jongseong?” you say softly, the syllables unfamiliar on your tongue, even though the name rings brusquely through your head for the best part of every day.

It takes a few seconds, but he reacts eventually. “Hm? Did you just call me Jongseong?” he murmurs sleepily, as if you’d just called him Robert or Christopher and not the name his own parents gave him.

“Yeah.”

He chuckles. “Now that’s something you haven’t called me in ages. Makes me feel like you’re mad at me,” he says, turning over and burying his face in the crook of your neck. His hair tickles your skin, and one of your hands comes up reflexively to feel the softness of his close shave.

“...Jong?” you try.

“That’s a step up, but not quite what I want,” he mumbles.

You’re silent for a few moments. “Honey,” you say tentatively, voice a mere whisper.

“That’s better.” You can hear the smile in his voice.

“Will you be here in the morning?”

“Mh-hm. It’s Saturday tomorrow.”

“No,” you say, feeling out of breath. “I mean, will you be here?”

You’re aware you’re not making much sense—and yet, Jongseong needs no further explanation. “Of course, baby,” he starts, voice soothing. “I’ll be here tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day afterwards. ‘Til death do us part, remember?”

You let out a shaky breath. “Okay.”

“I love you, Y/N.”

“I love you, too,” you find yourself saying, and, more importantly, meaning. It’s the last thing either of you says before falling asleep.

--

Tears are streaming down your face when you wake up the next day. When you open your eyes, pink and white obnoxiously stare back at you. The clock reads 7:12, just three minutes before your alarm goes off, and unfortunately for high school you, the night hasn’t given in to Saturday morning—it’s Tuesday, and you have to go to school and act as if you hadn’t just had the weirdest, most realistic dream of your life. You don’t even get a weekend to shake this weird feeling in your stomach off, you’re going to have to face Park Jongseong full force. At least, this will become your friends’ favorite bit for the foreseeable future.

They’re already sitting in the classroom when you get there, animatedly chatting to each other. You plop down in your seat in front of them, and when they see the sullen look on your face, ask you what’s wrong.

“Did you wake up during the night to play Hay Day again?” Kazuha asks, eyebrows knotted with genuine worry.

“I’m not that person anymore,” you reply. “No, I just had a really weird dream. More like a nightmare, really. It feels like I didn’t get any sleep.”

“What was it about?” Sunoo asks.

Your eyes dart back-and-forth between the two of them as you brace yourself for their reactions. Not wanting anyone else to overhear, you lean in conspiratorially. They mirror you. “I was married to Park Jongseong,” you whisper. As expected, they burst into laughter immediately, and you lean back in your seat, crossing your arms in annoyance. “It’s not funny.”

“It’s very funny,” Kazuha retorts. “It’s ironic, even, considering how much you hate the guy.”

“Exactly!”

“But I guess even you know how ridiculous it is that you hate him, if your brain is able to imagine yourself being married to him,” Sunoo adds, shrugging. “It’s a good reminder that you’re literally the only person in this school with a vendetta against him.”

Kazuha nods energetically. “He picked up a pen for me, once. He’s a nice guy.”

You look around the room in panic. “Keep it down, will you?” you hush, despite the fact that no one is paying any attention to the three of you. You sigh, resolving yourself to telling them the entire truth. “But guys, I’m scared. I think this might be a sign.”

Their eyebrows perk up. “A sign that your hatred of him has actually been disguising a crush this entire time?” Sunoo asks, feigning innocence.

“No—what? Where did you get that idea?”

“Nowhere. Go on.”

“Whatever. Come here,” you say, gesturing for them to huddle again. “It’s the well.”

“Oh my God, Y/N, you’ve actually lost it,” Kazuha says, fascinated by your stupidity.

“I’m not going to tolerate any well slander, this is serious. I just wanted it to reassure me that there was someone out there for me. And then I had that stupid dream.”

Kazuha and Sunoo exchange a look like they’re parents trying to announce to their daughter that she’s adopted. “Y/N…” Sunoo starts.

“This is crazy. Like, love philters and writing Park Sunghoon’s name a hundred times are one thing, this is…”

“Crazy,” Sunoo said, nodding along. “This is crazy. There’s no other word for it. Your eighteen years of boyfriendlessness have finally caught up to you.”

“You guys don’t get it. What about that time I asked it to give me a good grade on our Literature exam and I literally came first out of our class? Or when I told it I missed Jung Hae-in and his military discharge announcement came the next day?” you say, aware that the look in your eyes is only confirming their suspicions—but you need someone to believe you, or at the very least understand you.

“One, you’re a good student. Two, that was pure coincidence,” Sunoo explains.

“But girl, if you want to marry Jay, that’s fine. You’ve got our blessing,” Kazuha says, shrugging.

“Yeah. He picked up her pen, once,” Sunoo adds.

“And you know, you guys clearly have some sort of chemistry.”

You scoff. “If you think that him refuting my every word and finding every opportunity to make fun of me, then yeah, I guess you could say we have chemistry.”

“You guys have banter,” Kazuha says as if it’s obvious.

“Oh, please. Banter is cute. I want to kill him every time he opens his mouth.”

Your friends both roll their eyes. “While I understand that most men are better off staying quiet—no offense, Sunoo—”

“None taken.”

“You have to admit Jay is not nearly as insufferable as you make him out to be,” Kazuha says.

“Are you kidding me? He’s always acting like a child. Rubbing it in my face when he gets a better grade, trying to start arguments for no reason, sucking up to teachers, stealing my erasers, for God’s sake, you’d think he’s twelve. I know that I’m not on the majority's side, but I seriously cannot understand how other people tolerate him at all.”

Sunoo sighs. “Because he’s nice to everyone. He never hesitates to help people, he’s even funny, sometimes, and—well, look at him.” He nods his head towards the door, and when you turn around, Jongseong is indeed walking in the classroom. “He’s not a bad-looking boy.”

“Gosh, Sunoo, maybe you should marry him,” Kazuha says, but since you laid your eyes on Jongseong, you’ve stopped listening.

You feel weird. You look at him, and you feel weird. It’s the same feeling you had during your sleep last night, a feeling that paralyzes you from head to toe, that starts in your stomach and spreads to your entire body, weighs you down in your chair. 

“Hey, guys,” he greets simply, and his voice wraps itself around your heart and squeezes. You can’t do anything but watch him as he takes his seat next to you, plopping his bag on the table and taking his notebook out. He looks at you, watches you watching him, then swivels around in his chair.

“What’s wrong with her?” he asks your friends.

“She had a dream that she m—”

“Do not finish that sentence, Zuha, if you want to live to see another day.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she replies, a satisfied little smile on her lips.

Despite yourself, you’re still staring at Jongseong, trying to figure out what the hell these emotions are that are raging up a storm inside of you. Instead of ignoring you, he turns to face you, resting his elbow on the table and his chin in his palm as he stares back at you, smirking. “What’s up, Y/N? Has it finally dawned on you how devastatingly handsome I am?” he asks, and you frown, because he’s not so far off from the truth.

“Please, kids, it’s 9 a.m., don’t flirt right in front of us,” Sunoo says, despair in his voice.

“She’s the one who started it,” Jongseong replies, still looking at you, his smirk growing.

For some reason, this startles you out of your trance, and you look away from him like you’ve been burned, preoccupying yourself instead with your notes for this class. “In your dreams, Jongseong,” you mumble.

“More like in yours,” Kazuha says, her and Sunoo giggling.

“Zuha!” you exclaim. Jongseong looks at you with raised eyebrows, and with his infuriating capacity to put two and two together, you’re scared he’s figured out what she meant, but you’re literally saved by your teacher who walks in at that moment and starts the class. 

The second the bell rings to signify the end of the class, you hurriedly pack your things and mutter an excuse about needing the bathroom, trying to get as far away as possible from the boy whose all-too familiar scent had messed with your thoughts all class, whose every brush of his arm against yours had made your heart race uncontrollably.

--

It hadn’t just been a dream. It couldn’t have been.

Just like there was no doubt the 28-year-old Jongseong from last night had once been the annoying boy you knew, the 18-year-old Jongseong was sure to one day become the husband of your dreams. A devoted partner and father, his presence comforting, his good looks indeed devastating, unwavering.

There was no mistake to be made. The well had worked its magic.

Whether you liked it or not, you would end up marrying Park Jongseong. You, of all people; him, of all people.

Was there already something of your future husband in the boy that snickered when you mixed up your genders in German class, or would he one day spring out of nowhere? Apparently, you’d be around to find out.

But for now, how to act around him? It felt unfair that you were privy to this knowledge of your shared future while he was ignorant of it. Blissfully, perhaps. You couldn’t imagine that he would rejoice much at this news.

Your mind is somewhere else the entire day. At lunch, your other friends try to get the thing that’s obviously bothering you out of you, but Kazuha and Sunoo are there to tell them not to bother. You’d needed to tell someone about it, but you don’t want the entire school to know about your marital premonitions. The two knuckleheads you call your best friends are already doing a good enough job teasing you about it—”There’s your husband, Y/N,” when Jongseong walks past; “So have you thought of baby names? Kayleigh and Mackayleigh, perhaps?” unsolicited, during Physics. You turn around to check on the culprit — because yes, Jongseong is the culprit here, you, a mere a victim — and when he notices you staring, nods at you as if to say, What’s your problem?, trying to look threatening in his white lab coat that’s three sizes too big and protective goggles.

It doesn’t help that Jongseong has a way of hovering around you. Even in classes in which your teachers assigned the seats for you, he’s never far from your seat. The two of you sit next to each other in German, your last class every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. But today, the seat next to you is empty—what would’ve been a cause for celebration just yesterday is now a source of worry. You’d seen him just two hours ago in your previous class together, so where the hell was he now? He’s lucky that your teacher is an old German lady who always spends the first ten minutes of the lesson rambling about something in dialectal German no one understands but nods along to anyway. When he walks into the room, five minutes late, she just says, “Hallo, Jay,” and continues with her story. It’s about her first school trip to Berlin when she was fifteen and the country was still divided. You think.

He winks at you when he takes his seat and you roll your eyes. You pretend to listen to your teacher for thirty seconds, then hit him gently with your elbow. “Where were you?” you ask without looking at him.

He doesn’t answer immediately, probably surprised you initiated a non-hostile conversation with him for once. “I was just hanging out with my friends, something you clearly wouldn’t understand.”

And your friends wondered why you hated him?

“Still having imaginary friends at eighteen is really concerning, Jongseong. You should see someone about it.”

When you glance at him, he’s already looking right at you, smiling. You’ve never felt so conscious of your side profile. 

“Why? Were you worried?” he whispers, kicking your foot with his.

You look at him, horrified—where the hell had he gotten that idea? How was he so spot-on? You scoff, trying to diffuse the tension inside yourself. “No.”

He kicks your foot again. “I was five minutes late and you started to worry?”

“No. Stop.”

“I didn’t know you cared about me so much, Y/N.”

This time, you give him a harsh look, one that lets him know you really mean your words—“Stop it.” Finally, he relents, getting the assigned homework out now that the teacher has actually started the lesson. Your face softens—he looks hurt. Guilt tugs at your heartstrings.

Despite what you might say, you like the way things are with Jongseong. If some people always need to be crushing on someone, you always need to have someone you perceive as an enemy—it was Na Jaemin in elementary school, because he’d once made fun of your incapability to climb the monkey bars; Shin Ryujin, in middle school, for kissing your crush during a game of spin-the-bottle at your own birthday party; Park Jongseong, since freshman year, for simply existing. Your reasons for disliking him are trivial, you’ll admit. You weren’t sure you could even place a finger on what had first triggered your disdain towards him—one too many awful jokes, one too many times raising his hand in class and rattling off a perfect answer, then looking around himself proudly, one too many roars of laughter heard throughout the entire cafeteria. The fact that no one else seemed to be bothered by him only added to your aggravation. He just got on your nerves, and it seemed that you openly showing your dislike of him — him, who was so used to being loved by everyone around him, pampered by his family, praised by his teachers, popular among his peers — was enough to make him dislike you, too. So, after a few failed attempts at trying to be your friend, because Jongseong was unable to not be friends with everyone he met, he didn’t simply give up. 

If he couldn’t be your friend, then fine, he’d be your enemy.

At least, that’s how it appears to you, still now. It’s never gone dangerously far, but if there’s an opening to tease you or get on your nerves, he’ll do it. Not passing you the ball during soccer, or conversely, only aiming for you during dodgeball, not sharing his textbook with you when you forgot it unless you beg, loudly clearing his throat when you speak in class. And, lately, pouring salt on your wounds in the form of reminding you how impossible you and Jake Sim are. His motto must be if there’s a will, there’s a way. And when it comes to making your life hell, his will is infinite.

Everything is upside-down now. The question of how your relationship can possibly go from this to that obsesses you. It feels like you’re more capable of sharing a funeral, dying at each others’ hands, than a wedding. 

“Jong, your textbook.”

He squints at you. “Funny how I’m Jongseong when you hate me, Jong when you need a textbook,” he says, sliding his book closer to himself.

“It’s not my fault your name is a mouthful,” you retort, trying to pull it back to the middle of the table, but he’s quicker than you.

“Then maybe you should call me Jay, like everyone else on Earth.”

“Where’s the fun in that? Now give it here. Please?” you ask, mustering your best smile. Any other teacher would’ve scolded the two of you by now, but Ms. Schumacher is peacefully going on about the importance of word order and punctuation in the German sentence, oblivious to her two students bickering in the back row. Jongseong usually never sits at the back of the classroom—only here.

He gives in, smiling back, but there’s something behind it, something that tells you nothing good is brewing in his brain. “Only because you’re so pretty.”

Normally, this kind of remark would’ve warranted a slap on the arm or an array of insults, but if today is anything, it is not normal. You look at him like you’ve been stung, visions of your not-dream coming to you in flashes like you’re the titular character on That’s So Raven—the affection in your husband’s eyes, the kindness in his words, the sincerity in his smile. Again, you’re left to wonder if this man is already taking root inside of the boy next to you, if Jongseong’s future capacity to love you presently exists in his heart.

Does your future capacity to love him already exist in your heart?

You watch as his smirk softens into a grin, your flusteredness and lack of a response clearly amusing him, then as he circles the exercises Ms. Schumacher is assigning for the lesson. She seems to have forgotten there was homework due—Jongseong will be sure to remind her of it quickly.

He kicks your foot again, tells you to focus. His ears have turned red.

You wonder if those capacities haven’t existed from the start.

--

As much as you love a good friends-to-lovers story, characters hiding their feelings out of fear of ruining the friendship have never failed to frustrate you — just tell her, you dummy, it’s obvious she likes you too — and yet, you’ve never related more than now.

Whatever it is that you and Jongseong have, you don’t want to lose it. It adds entertainment to your otherwise average life. 

“Good thing she didn’t pick on you while we went over the homework, ‘cause you clearly put zero effort in. And I wouldn’t have helped you, even if you’d asked, by the way.”

You hum absent-mindedly as you put your notebook and pencil holder in your bag. Are you sure that these are even your feelings in the first place? Just because the well put a silly idea in your head doesn’t mean you have to believe it like it’s scripture. If what you saw is real, then it will happen in its own time. Things don’t have to start changing right this instant.

“Gosh, Y/N, what’s up with you today? You’re so boring,” Jongseong continues, following you out of the classroom. 

“Just tired,” you reply. Wouldn’t it be unnatural if you were to radically alter the way you behave with Jongseong? Love should come about organically. Sure, his presence has always provoked some kind of reaction within you, but that’s usually been annoyance. Whether he’s stealing the fifth eraser you’ve bought that month or running on the soccer field, beads of sweat running down his temples, hair sticking out everywhere, victoriously smiling when his team scores—you’re annoyed. Whether he’s sticking up his hand higher than yours or going to the school dance with Ahn Yujin—you’re annoyed. When you learned that she’d been his neighbor since infancy and that she had a boyfriend, who went to another school and only trusted Jongseong to take her to the dance, you were still annoyed—this time at yourself for feeling even the tiniest bit relieved that nothing was going on between them.

And this — his quick steps trying to keep up with yours, his dumb story about yogurt coming out of Heeseung’s nose today at lunch when they were laughing too hard — yes, you’re still annoyed. But you realize you’re not annoyed at him.

You’re annoyed at how he makes you feel.

“Y/N?” he says, but you’re too deep in your thoughts, only vaguely registering the sound until he repeats it, louder this time, and grabs your hand, making you abruptly stop walking. “Are you sure everything’s okay?” he asks with genuine concern in his voice. “You’re barely listening to me. I mean, it’s not like you usually really do, but you’d have told me to get lost, like, five minutes ago now…”

He chuckles self-deprecatingly, but despite his words, you’re focusing on something else yet again. His hand on yours, his loose hold on your fingers. Your brain is yelling at you—hold his hand, hug him. It’s like there are still traces of the 28-year-old version of you you visited yesterday, urging you to behave like her and not 18-year-old you. 

So, the well had let you know that you need not look much further to find what you wanted. Here it is, in the form of a boy you have convinced yourself you hated, and hated you, and yet, he’s holding your hand, asking you if you’re okay, worry knotting his eyebrows together. 

Hold his hand. Hug him. Instead, you retract your hand, let it fall limply by your side. Jongseong’s eyebrows shoot up.

He’s so close, the supposed love of your life. You don’t know how to reach out to him.

For now, you smile. “Get lost, Jong.”

--

you guys how the hell do i act around jongseong now that i know our fates are romantically intertwined

kazuha i think not treating him like the number one public enemy would be a good start

you so what… be nice to him? how do i do that

sunoo oh my god y/n when she has to treat another person like a regular human being

you he’s not just another person!

sunoo okayyyyy i see you little miss repressed feelings

you i hate u

kazuha just don’t roll your eyes at everything he says anymore and don’t start arguments for no reason

you he’s the one who starts them… but okay i’ll try

--

“Let’s pair up for the reading analysis today. You can stay with your deskmate or pick a partner, I don’t mind as long as you get the work done. I’m talking about you, Chaewon and Yuri. This is English class, not a gossip session.”

The second your English teacher has finished speaking, Jongseong swivels in his chair. “Let’s partner up, Y/N?”

“What about me?” Jake asks, eyes darting back-and-forth between the two of you.

“You can partner up with Minju,” Jongseong replies, pointing to the girl he’s usually seated next to. “Look. You guys will be great together. Say hi, Minju.” Minju waves shyly at Jake, braces on display as she smiles ecstatically. It’s not everyday that she gets to talk to one of the most popular guys in school.

Jake reluctantly switches seats with him, glancing back at you and Jongseong who just grins at him, fake friendliness plastered on his lips, until he turns around again. Your new partner’s smile softens and reaches his eyes when he looks at you. “Hi.”

You have to look away—you feel your face burn under his gaze. “Hi, Jong.”

He tilts his head. “What? Do you hate me so much that you can’t even look at me now?” he asks, and you can’t tell whether he’s joking or genuine.

You frown. “I don’t hate you.”

“Oh? That’s a recent development.”

“I guess,” you mumble after a few seconds. Is it really? You suddenly can’t remember if you ever really hated him, or if you’d exaggerated your own feelings.

His smile widens. “Well, good. I mean, you were going to have to realize at some point that I really am funny, smart, endearing, handsome-”

“Back to hating.”

“Let’s start the assignment.”

You agree on reading the passage first, but you realize halfway through that not a single word has been absorbed. “Hey. Why did you switch seats with him?” you ask, whispering so as not to be overheard.

Jongseong shrugs. “I thought you wouldn’t want to work with him, considering…”

“Right.” You’re silent again, but only for a bit. “What’s it to you?” you mumble. 

He scoffs. “Sorry for trying to be considerate.”

“That’s not—”

“Let’s just focus on this.”

His sudden coldness vexes you. You know you should let it go — don’t start arguments for no reason, and all that — and you know it’s childish, but you can’t help yourself. You have certain reflexes you’re not particularly proud of when it comes to one Park Jongseong. “Let’s just focus on this,” you repeat, mocking his grumbling tone of voice and shaking your head like a puppet.

He glares at you. “Can you not act like a toddler for once?”

“Can you not be a dick for once?” you bite back.

“Y/N, Jongseong, I’m sure you’re having a fascinating conversation on the use of chiaroscuro in the text?” your teacher asks, a look of warning on his face.

“Yes, sir,” you reply, embarrassed.

“Yes, so much chiaroscuro,” Jongseong mumbles, resting his cheek on his knuckles. When the teacher has turned away, he kicks your foot. “See, you’re getting us in trouble.”

“Do you even know what chiaroscuro is?” 

He hesitates. “That’s not the problem here. You are.”

“Well, maybe if you didn’t-”

“Y/N, Jay, final warning.”

“Sorry,” you both say at the same time. With one last glare at each other, you finally get to work.

So your plan to start getting along with Jongseong isn’t in full-force yet. On the drive back home that afternoon, you reassure yourself that these things take time. When the moment is right, the two of you will grow closer.

--

But increasingly, it feels as though the right moment will never come.

Two months have passed since your visit to the well, and things between you and Jongseong have not changed. Not really, at least.

You still bicker like cat and dog — it goes without saying that you’re the cute puppy and he’s the heartless cat — and he gets as much on your nerves as ever, especially now that you know that the potential to be nice to you, to love you, even, exists somewhere inside him. Somewhere deeply hidden perhaps, but somewhere nonetheless. Of course, after telling yourself that what must come will come of its own accord, you haven’t done much to change the dynamic between the two of you. But if you used to see your retaliations against him as necessary to your survival, you now find some sort of enjoyment in them—some might call it Stockholm Syndrome, you perceive it as a step in the right direction. You’ve followed one of Kazuha’s pieces of advice: you don’t roll your eyes at him anymore, simply because you don’t feel the need to. You argue with him with a smile on your face, his attempts at insulting or annoying you have started to make you laugh.

He doesn’t say anything but seems to gladly welcome this change. If you get a lower grade than him on a test, he doesn’t try to stick the knife in further, but genuinely offers to go over it with you later. If you give in after two hours of tearing your hair out over a German exercise and text him for help, he doesn’t make fun of you. If he says something particularly arrogant or makes a really bad joke, all you need to do is give him a look, and he’ll mumble an apology. 

Could it have been like this the entire time? you wonder, watching him across the schoolyard as he and Heeseung hunt for Pokémon. Just a couple months ago, you would’ve scrunched your nose at the sight, making fun of him for his childish interests. Now, you notice the way he laughs, audible all the way to where you sit with Kazuha and Sunoo, the way he jumps excitedly and points at things only he and his friend see, and all you feel is endearment.

“Look at you, look at that,” Sunoo says as he hits you on the forehead with his metal spoon, startling you. He tuts. “You’ve got love dripping from your eyes, sweetie.”

“Sunoo, that’s disgusting.”

“Love? I know.”

“No, your spoon. Your saliva’s all over that,” you say, and all he does is eat another mouthful of his yogurt while staring wide-eyed right at you. When you look back at Jongseong, he’s high-fiving Heeseung. You wonder which creature he’s caught now. In the library yesterday, he spent thirty minutes showing you every single one he had captured so far instead of revising for the upcoming Physics test.

“Yeah, we know you’d like someone else’s saliva more,” Kazuha chimes in, and the two of them snort.

“It’s not like that,” you say, biting into an apple slice.

“Oh yeah? What’s it like, then?” Kazuha asks.

“We’re… becoming friends,” you say, but you’re not sure who you’re trying to convince more.

“Y/N, I’ve had to watch the two of you giggling to yourselves in the library one too many times to believe you’re friends. I know your homework’s not that funny,” Sunoo argues.

“Friends can giggle with each other!” you exclaim, but your friends are inflexible.

“I would tell you to get yourself together if you giggled at me like that,” he says.

“I saw you twirl your hair the other day,” Kazuha adds.

“I never—When?!”

She shrugs. “The other day.”

You deflate, crushed under your friends’ accusations. “I wouldn’t twirl my hair…” you mumble. You decide to busy yourself with your apple slices, not even bothering to find out what Kazuha and Sunoo start snickering and elbowing each other about.

“Hey,” a familiar voice greets, making you look up. Jongseong smiles at you and steals an apple slice from your tupperware as he sits down next to you, Heeseung across from him.

“Hi, Jong,” you say, sitting up straighter. You offer a piece of fruit to Heeseung but he declines, saying he doesn’t like apples without peanut butter.

In front of you, your friends exchange a look, and you’re immediately terrified of what they’ll do next. Leaning in, they place their elbows on the table, and Kazuha starts them off. “Jay, you and Y/N know each other pretty well, right?”

Jongseong glances at you, eyes wide. “Uh, sure.”

“Have you ever noticed her, say, twirling her hair?” Sunoo asks, tilting his head innocently at the poor boy by your side.

You’ve never seen him look so confused. “Um, yeah, she does that when she’s concentrating on something, sometimes…”

They lean back. “Huh,” Kazuha says, studying Jongseong’s face.

“Interesting. Very interesting,” Sunoo says, slowly nodding.

You glare at your friends. “See, that’s different,” you tell them. “I was concentrating on something, not doing… whatever you guys had in mind.”

Jongseong looks at you. “What did they have in mind?”

You answer before either of them can dig your grave any deeper. “Nothing. It’s nothing. We were just having a stupid conversation.” You muster your most convincing smile, and the subject is finally dropped.

No one says anything for a few moments, until Heeseung decides to speak up: “You should’ve seen Jay earlier, Y/N. He caught this super rare version of Pikachu earlier, it was awesome.”

“Dude…” Jongseong murmurs.

“What?” Heeseung asks, his enthusiasm quickly dissolving into confusion. Jongseong just shakes his head. Thankfully for all of you, the bell rings then, and you head to class. The three of them walk in front of you while you and Jongseong fall back a step.

“Why were you guys sitting outside? It’s freezing today,” he asks you. Walking side-by-side like this, you can’t help but notice the inches he has over you, the broadness of his shoulders in comparison to yours.

“They turned the heat way too high in the cafeteria, so we came outside for some fresh air,” you explain. He’s right, the air is chilly today—it’s a few days into December, and the temperatures have been accordingly low.

“Aren’t you cold?”

Your heart skips a beat. One of the side effects of not being at each other’s throat anymore was that you got more and more often to be privy to this side of Jongseong—attentive, considerate, kind. What you once thought were his moral attempts at not being so mean to you all the time, you found out was actually his real nature. He wasn’t a prick who was sometimes nice, he was a nice person who turned into a prick with you. Whether the fault lay on him or you was another debate.

“No, I’m alright,” you say, but your body decides to betray you and makes you sneeze three times in a row.

“Bless you,” Jongseong says, laughing. “Here.” You try to stop him, pushing his hands away, but he takes his gloves off and forces them in your palms.

“I’m going to be inside for the next four hours, Jong, I’ll be fine. Keep them.”

“No, it’s okay. Just so you can warm up quicker.”

You eventually give in, putting the gloves over your hands, laughing at the extra fabric that hangs off the tip of your fingers. But when you look at Jongseong’s now-bare hands, something catches your attention. Stopping in the hallway, you grab one of them, examining the cuts on his knuckles. “You need to wear hand cream, Jong, your hands are too chapped.”

He lets you turn his hand over, smooth over his skin, do the same thing with his other hand. “Men don’t wear hand cream,” he says, a grin on his lips.

You burst out laughing. “I think that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“Seriously, though, I don’t like the way it feels. Too sticky.”

“You just need to get a quick-absorption one.” Then, you make the terrible mistake of looking up from his hand and meeting his eyes—you gasp silently, his gaze and soft smile transporting you right back to that night, the images of 28-year-old and 18-year-old Jongseong mixing into each other, becoming indistinct from each other. Your gaze drifts down to his lips — chapped, too, when they’re usually plumper, rosier — and his hand, still in yours, balls into a fist. The second bell rings and you both take a step back, eyes meeting again for a brief moment before looking down at the floor. With uncharacteristically shy, embarrassed words of parting, you make your separate ways to your next classes.

“That was beautiful, Y/N,” Sunoo says, waiting for you by the door, and you walk past him without so much as a glance.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

--

sunoo jay and y/n almost kissed earlier

kazuha WHAAAAT

you KIM SUNOO.

kazuha WHEN?????

sunoo right before class after the lunch break y/n was sooo embarrassed afterwards lol

you we did NOT almost kiss you’re talking out of your ass

kazuha i can’t believe i missed this fml

you YOU DIDNT MISS ANYTHING NOTHING HAPPENED

sunoo be serious u guys we’re standing inches apart

you were* and no we weren’t

sunoo oh stfu it was autocorrect i saw it w my own eyes y/n… you WERE literally holding his hand and staring into those beautiful eyes of his

kazuha sunoo…?

sunoo what can’t a man acknowledge another man’s objective attractiveness if i was y/n i would’ve folded the moment i saw him

you literally one of the first times he talked to me was to make fun of my handwriting

sunoo yeah he’s on his tsundere shit i fw it

you …

sunoo anyways zuha you shouldve seen it when the bell rang they practically leaped away from each other and u didnt know what to do w yourselves afterwards likeeee it was so obvi what you both were thinking of

kazuha cuuuute

you i resent these accusations.

sunoo istg if u dont kiss him next time i will

kazuha ???

you SUNOO?

sunoo WHAT

--

Something happens a few days before the start of winter break.

Ms. Schumacher is absent, gone off to Germany to visit her family there—she has enough seniority in the school that they let her abandon her responsibilities as a teacher once in a while. A week is too short a period of time for them to bother finding a substitute. It’s usually your last class of the day, but you have to wait around for your dad to be done working, so while most of your classmates have gone home early, you sit with about six other people in the unsupervised study room, absent-mindedly jotting down tid-bits of dialogue for your new story idea, too preoccupied with Jongseong’s absence to really pay attention to anything else. It’s fifteen minutes after the hour, but he’s nowhere to be found, although you know for a fact that he takes those weird Molecular Gastronomy cooking classes your Chemistry teacher offers for extra credit every Thursday after school, so he should be here. And anyways, if he’d gone home, he would’ve texted you something like, Have fun sitting around for an hour, I’m gonna go do awesome stuff with Heeseung, even if awesome stuff meant playing Mario Kart or drinking Sprite and holding a two-person burping contest.

You’re so engrossed in your own thoughts that you pay no mind to the sudden ding of a phone in the room, followed by some gasps and heated whispers. The exchanged words go through one ear and out the other—There was a fight? In the locker rooms? It must be bad if they were sent to the nurse before the principal… Huh? Over who? So he took both of them on? Damn, I didn’t know Jay got like that. He seems so well-behaved.

Your head whips up at the mention of your friend’s name. “Jay? Did something happen to him?” you ask out loud, the whispers dying down immediately as everybody stares at you. 

Gaeul, who was in your class last year, is the only one who answers you. Holding up and waving her phone, she says, “They say he got into a fight.”

Jongseong? A fight? It sounds like a practical joke. He admitted to you he once started crying watching Heeseung playing Call of Duty, it was so violent. You shake your head. “He-he did? With who?”

Gaeul and the girl next to her exchange a concerned, almost guilty look. “Jake and Sunghoon.” The crease between your eyebrows deepened. You don’t need to ask anything else before she adds, “They’re at the nurse’s station. It sounds pretty bad…”

That’s enough for you to leap out of your chair and run to the nurse’s station. It seems the news has spread impossibly quickly among your year group—even Kazuha and Sunoo are already blowing your phone, asking you if you’ve heard, if you know how Jay is. You ignore them, reminding yourself to text them back later, until one message from Sunoo in particular catches your attention: It apparently started because Sunghoon said something about you, Y/N. They’re saying Jay got angry.

The nurse is busy on the phone when you get there, her back to the entrance, so you’re able to slip in unnoticed. You head to the adjoining room where the beds are, all three of them taken—you walk by Sunghoon first, his arms crossed over his chest and pointedly not looking at you, then by Jake, who calls out your name. You glare at him and pull on the white plastic curtain that separates his bed from Jongseong’s. They’re already going to hear you, you don’t need them seeing you on top of that. 

Jongseong sits up with a grunt when you appear at the end of his bed. The sight of him makes your stomach flip, and not in a good way, for once—his left eye is swollen and circled by a deep purple bruise, shiny with ointment, there’s a cut on his cheek, his lower lip is busted, his right hand is wrapped in bandages. “Oh my God,” you whisper as you help him up, voice breaking. He stares at his hands, jaw locking when you gently place one palm on his good hand, the other on the side of his face, moving it this way and that so you can take a better look at his injuries. He winces, and you let go, resting your hand on his shoulder instead. “What the hell got into you?” you whisper vehemently, unable to decide if you’re worried or angry or both as tears form in your eyes.

He tries to shrug, but even that seems to hurt. “Don’t shrug, Jongseong, tell me what happened.”

“I’m Jongseong again now?” he says, attempting a smile, but only one corner of his lips rises.

You sigh. Even in this state, he has to be a smart-ass. “You’re Jong when I need a textbook, Jongseong when you get into stupid fights,” you reply, and he smiles wider but immediately winces, hand coming up to the cut on his lip. You notice that his hand is still riddled with cracks, and whether they’re due to their dryness or to this fight doesn’t matter—”Wait here,” you say, and go rummage through some drawers for plasters. “She forgot some spots.” You feel Jongseong’s eyes on your face as you patch him up to the best of your abilities.

“I don’t want to tell you what happened. I’ll do the job of hating these idiots for the both of us, so don’t concern yourself with them,” he says, apparently not caring that the idiots in question can hear his every word.

He keeps his promise—you never hear another word from him about the cause of the fight. 

Later, you find out through other means, namely Sunoo’s questionably remarkable ability to unearth any and all gossip, that in the locker rooms after Phys Ed, someone had started Jake on the topic of Yunjin, who had been recently revealed as his girlfriend. They’d apparently kept it secret because it was just fooling around at first, and only later had gotten serious enough for them to parade around the school as the couple. 

It had been an unremarkable conversation until Jake said, “You guys know Y/N from our class? She saw us in the staff parking lot once, and I was sure we’d be busted then. But she didn’t tell anyone.” And just like that, the conversation turned to you, someone who was usually never a topic among these boys, jocks, soccer players, “the kind of people who peak in high school and still have a superiority complex at forty,” as Sunoo describes them. 

He has a harder time explaining what happened next, can’t quite look you in the eye as he recounts what was said. “So, this is what they say, apparently someone said that you used to be obsessed with Sunghoon, then with Jake, and Sunghoon said you… Well, he said you were pathetic, that asshole, and that you had been so easy to lead on, then Jake joined in, saying the same things, basically, how funny it was seeing you so obviously in love with him when he would never give you a chance…” He looks at you worriedly, but you tell him to go on. “And so that’s when Jay got up and just straight-up punched Jake in the face. And while Jake was trying to figure out what happened, Jay punched Sunghoon, and then they both got on him, pushing him, but when he wouldn’t stop throwing punches, they started fighting, too. I think they all got some good ones in before the other boys were able to break them apart and the P.E. teacher arrived…”

But that would be later. Now, sitting with Jongseong in the nurse’s station, tears falling onto the plasters you place on his hand, nothing matters but him. You don’t need the details—he’s hurt, he got hurt over you, you feel as though every cut on his body may well have been done by your own hand. You’ve never felt so guilty for something you didn’t do. Your voice trembles when you speak; you’re unable to look at him, at his busted eye. “I just don’t want you to get hurt for me.”

Without missing a beat, he says, “What else would I get hurt for?”

You can only meet his eyes for a split second. Even like this, he manages to look at you with the same softness that has haunted you since the night you met 28-year-old Jongseong, that has rendered all thoughts of anything other than him meaningless since the day your gaze drifted down to his lips just weeks ago. “Jong…” is all you can mutter as you look down at your hands holding each others’, your lips trembling.

He raises his bandaged hand, still not used to his dominant side being ineffective for now, then lowers it when he realizes. Clumsily, he pats your hair with his left hand. “Don’t cry, please…”

Jake’s head pops out from behind the curtain. “Y/N, I’m really sorry—”

“Not right now, man,” Jay quickly interrupts. Jake pathetically disappears behind the curtain again.

“Just promise me you won’t do this again.”

“Y/N…”

“Promise me,” you say, more demanding this time, sticking out your pinky finger. Jay, hesitant, looks between your outstretched finger and your face a few times, but eventually gives in.

The nurse, upon coming to check on the boys, catches you with Jongseong and chases you out immediately. You sulk back to study hall, where everyone’s head perks up the moment you walk in. “They’re okay,” you reassure vaguely, and unenthusiastically answer their many questions. It’s only a few minutes until the bell rings, and you’re free to go then.

--

jong so… guess who got a five-day suspension

you you idiot what did your parents say?

jong they’re not happy i have to do all the household chores for a month

you boo-hoo

jong not sure why i came here thinking i’d get some comfort…

you … are you feeling better?

jong a little bit the nurse gave us some really strong painkillers but i’m okay because there’s a pretty girl that’s going to drop off the homework for me after school every day :)

you oh did you ask chaewon to do that?

jong um no i was talking about you ..if that’s okay

you haha i know i just wanted you to say it straight up

jong ykw maybe i should just ask chaewon

you i’ll see you tomorrow jong!!

jong :) see you tomorrow pretty 

 --

The months that separate your return to school and graduation come and go in the blink of an eye. Jongseong can’t come to school the last day before the holidays or the first four days after, and he’s grounded in-between. Things change bit by bit with every day you visit him—To give him the homework, you tell his parents, although there isn’t much to do when the semester isn’t in full swing, and you could’ve easily sent him pictures. The first time, you spend more time scouring the pictures and trinkets in his room than actually talking to him, and awkwardly give him a half-hug when he tells you he won’t be able to hang out at all during the break before practically running out of his house, your heart beating a thousand miles a minute from the innocent contact. By the fourth time, you lie together on his bed and talk about your plans for college, your hands sitting centimeters apart on the navy sheets. You haven’t dared touch his hand since that day in the nurse’s station.

You’re window-shopping with Kazuha when you spot the hand cream you had seen yourself gifting Jongseong in your well-given vision. Buying it is one thing, actually giving it to him is another, an awkward, stuttery situation in which the wrapping done by the store employee suddenly seems over-the-top and out-of-place. But Jongseong seems to like it—it’s the last day of his suspension, his black eye is now a yellow-ish color, he can smile without risking splitting his lip in two. He applies it immediately, tells you he’ll make sure to wear it every day until the end of winter. You find yourself wishing there was something you could give him for every season so he wouldn’t go a day without thinking of you. When you leave, he bashfully thanks you for making sure he doesn’t fall behind and says he’s excited to see you at school the next day. You hardly know what to do with yourself, so you squeak out a “me too” and slip out the door.

His first day back is a Friday. It starts with Mathematics, a class in which you sit by each other. You remember the first week of classes when Kazuha and Sunoo had ran to sit with each other, expressly because they knew that if he saw you were sitting alone, he’d take the seat next to you, just to better torment you all year. You’d resented it then; it couldn’t make you happier now. Your body is humming with nervous energy, your foot tapping relentlessly against the tiled floor. When he appears in the doorframe, you wave at him as if he’d forgotten his seat in three weeks of absence. His elbow brushes against yours as he sits down.

Between the two of you, friendship blossoms over these months. To the detriment of everyone around you, you continue to bicker as you always have, but it’s now clearly done out of habit, out of affection, even, than out of actual dislike of each other. He and Heeseung slowly integrate your small group of three, and before you know it, it feels as though there have always been five of you. Together, you welcome spring.

In January, to thank you for helping him to pick out his mom’s birthday present, Jongseong treats you to some tteokbokki, which you said you’d been craving all week. He orders the spiciest one, then has to take a sip of water between every bite. You laugh at his teary eyes and red face while you devour the bright red rice cakes easily. 

In February, he makes a show of giving you and Kazuha and Heeseung and Sunoo some homemade chocolates, saying it’s a friend thing. You find out that evening that the others each have five in their box—there are twenty in yours. It’s one of the things that makes you second guess what sort of feelings he has for you. For years, you’ve been convinced he harbored strong feelings of disdain for you; now, he seems to enjoy your friendship. You’re scared to read too much into anything, because if Jongseong is well-liked throughout school, it’s for a reason: he’s nice. To everyone. Even to you, too, nowadays. But if nice is giving five chocolates, what is giving twenty?

A sudden realization hits you in March—Jongseong appears at your door, drenched from the rain, a bag of your favorite snacks in hand. “You weren’t at school today. I had to find out you were sick from Kazuha,” he says as if she was a random classmate of yours and not your best friend, as if he should be the first to know about these kinds of things. Your mom rushes him in, finds him so charming in the five minutes they converse that she decides he should stay over for dinner, and as you watch him laughing with her, you think, I haven’t thought of 28-year-old Jongseong in ages. I’ve only thought of you. And although you can trace the start of your feelings to that dream-like experience you had, you can now say with confidence that it’s not the only reason for them.

College application results come out in April, right on his birthday. The five of you celebrate together at an American-style diner, gorging yourselves on crispy bacon and chocolate chip pancakes. Kazuha is going back to Japan, almost a decade after moving to South Korea—”I’m gonna miss you guys, but I miss takoyaki and my grandma more right now.” Heeseung has been accepted into the Engineering department at the country’s top university. You, Sunoo and Jongseong are all heading to the same place: you for Screenwriting, which you’ve known since you were one of the winners of the scholarship contest last October, Sunoo for Communications, whatever that is, and Jongseong for European History and Literature with a minor in German, that freak. It’s a good university, and it’s not far from home. The way Jongseong tells you about his acceptance sticks with you: he doesn’t say, They accepted me, too, or, I’m going to the same university as you. He says, We’ll be together.

May is filled with afternoons at the park when you should all be studying for exams. Your mom keeps asking when she’s going to see “that wonderful boy” again. Your friendship with Jongseong has given him new ways of teasing you—after four years of near-kleptomaniac tendencies, he’s finally stopped stealing your erasers and has instead started to let his gaze linger on your face, to call you pretty when you least expect it, to tuck your hair behind your ear. You hate it most when he asks you whether there’s something from your romance novels or movies that you want him to recreate. “Is there a field big enough nearby that I can walk through at the break of dawn, Mister Darcy-style?” he’ll say, or “I’ve always wanted to try that upside-down kiss from Spider-Man. It’s a classic, really.” 

Summer comes early in June. You need to bring a two-liter water bottle and a hand fan to your exams, and you’ve never felt such relief as when it was all over. After endless pictures with your parents and siblings, just your parents, just your siblings, then Kazuha and Sunoo, together, then separately, then with Heeseung and Jongseong as well, Kazuha forces you and Jongseong together, watching with a smile as he shyly wraps an arm around your waist and you awkwardly throw up a peace sign. It’s your first picture of just the two of you.

In July, you and Jongseong unlock a new first: saying goodbye. He’s leaving to stay with his American family as he does every summer. You show up at his house the day before at four p.m. “to help him pack,” you say, but it’s Jongseong, and he finished packing two days ago. So instead, you sit on his desk chair, he on his bed, and you fight back tears. “You’re coming back, right?” you ask, like he’s leaving to go to war and not Seattle. Amusement and affection flicker in his eyes. “Of course I am. I wouldn’t throw four more years of being a pain in your ass away, would I?” he says, and you smile, because you know it’s going to be much more than four years.

But he doesn’t just leave you with a few nice words. Avoiding your gaze, he hands you an envelope. Inside is a single ticket, a two-month membership for your city’s arthouse cinema that you can only go to when they have student deals or when your parents have had enough of your begging. You can’t even begin to imagine how much this must’ve cost. “Jong…” you murmur, in awe at the thin slip of paper between your hands. “This is incredible. Thank you so much.”

Jongseong looks down at his feet, fighting a smile as he kicks the invisible rocks that obviously litter the floor of his bedroom. “I thought you’d get bored without me around, so, that way you can entertain yourself, I guess… And if you run into any film bros next year, you’ll have seen as many pretentious movies as them.”

You burst into laughter then, and, without thinking, wrap your arms around his neck, thanking him over and over again. It takes him a second, but he wraps his arms around your waist and says it’s no big deal.

As you walk down the path from your house, he calls out your name. “Don’t be a stranger,” he says.

You smile. “Never.”

So, he’s not here for summer. Kazuha is working in her parents’ ramen restaurant to make some money before leaving, even Heeseung leaves two weeks into July for Seoul to visit some relatives there and get accustomed to life in the big city. You only get to laze around with Sunoo, but even he eventually leaves for his grandparents’ house by the sea, making you promise you’ll come visit him at some point, otherwise he’ll “die of boredom.” 

It’s August now, and your brain and body alike buzz with restlessness. You go to the cinema almost every day, making the best of your subscription. If you’re not going around your house looking for spider webs with your vacuum cleaner, you’re riding random bus lines and discovering parts of your town you’ve never set foot in before. If you’re not making your way through your never-ending pile of unread books, you’re creating your own stories, finally taking the time to properly outline and draft the one-line ideas you’ve had sitting in your Notes app, preparing yourself for the start of your degree. Your mind is taken up with love stories. From Romeo & Juliet to Dirty Dancing to Book Lovers, you can’t get enough of the genre. You become particularly obsessed with stories involving time travel, rewatching After Time and Lovely Runner like they contain some precious knowledge. By the end of the month, you’ve turned your life into an eight-episode TV series—a desperate girl makes a wish on a star only to discover she is fated to marry the one boy she hates most. You know you’d watch that. You send Sunoo and Kazuha the pilot, and after calling you insane numerous times but also heaping on praises, Sunoo says this: lol your going through jay withdrawals.

It shakes you so much you’re not even compelled to message back you’re*.

But he’s not wrong. The more you let yourself admit it, the more you realize how true it is: you miss Jongseong. You text once in a while, you’ve even stayed up late talking on the phone a couple of times, but you miss him, his corporeal form, having his gaze on you, having the possibility but never the courage to touch him. Every day, there’s something you want to tell him about. The cats huddling around a young neighborhood kid as he pours milk into a bowl, the clearance sale at your local library, most books for one buck only, the actor from an 90s Hong Kong film you swear has the exact same smile as him. You don’t want to bother him, so you write letters instead. Some you send, some you don’t—the ones you keep hidden in your drawer usually hint too obviously at your feelings for him. Some of them don’t just hint and contain lines of your declarations: I miss you, everything I see reminds me of you, I want to check that your bruises have healed completely even though the last trace of them faded months ago. You keep these letters a secret, even from Sunoo and Kazuha, who would never let you live down such woebegone, down bad behavior.

You do it because it feels good, getting all of your feelings out on paper. You’re a romantic at heart, so you’re prone to over-exaggeration when it comes to things like these—but everything that you write remains based in truth. You’d started with a postcard of your hometown, jokingly writing, Don’t forget where you came from. How is it over there? and he’d actually replied with a postcard of his own, filling it from top to bottom. You easily went from these small postcards to multiple pages of stream-of-consciousness-like writing. You think it’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever done—although you’re not sure he feels the same way, considering he still writes to the German pen pal Ms. Schumacher had assigned him in your first year of high school. No one else’s correspondence had lasted more than four months because she’d immediately forgotten to make sure you kept in touch regularly.

I ran into Jake Sim at the city library, you write one day. You’ve replied to everything in his latest letter, so you’re now catching him up on your recent adventures. He was checking out some books about Linguistics, of all things—he bought me bubble tea afterwards and told me that the injury he got last April was actually a relief. Did you know his father was a big name in soccer here? Apparently, he never wanted to be a soccer player that badly, and he wants to do Linguistics and Social Anthropology, who would’ve guessed it. He’s like Troy Bolton if High School Musical was about Humanities and not singing. Anyways, you probably don’t want me to go on and on about him, so I won’t, but we did talk about that fight you guys had back in December. He apologized for it, to you and me both, although he didn’t go into much detail — Sunoo is still the only one who’s had the balls to tell me exactly what happened, and he wasn’t even there! — and I was reticent at first, but he seemed genuine. He said he didn’t even hang out with Sunghoon or Yunjin or any of those people anymore, that it was only out of convenience really, and that he hopes starting university will be like turning over a new leaf. Well, he could be full of shit, who knows. As I sat there listening to him I wondered what it was I used to see in him. He’s nice enough, but we only spoke about him for the entire hour. He asked me no questions that weren’t “and you?” so it was a bit exhausting. 

But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you.

You look at your words, smiling to yourself—this is one of the times where you find yourself erring from the topic at hand, instead indulging in sappiness and nostalgia. You write about how your opinion of Jongseong has changed over these months, how it wasn’t seeing him as your husband in all those years that had really shaken things up, but rather that day in the nurse’s station, the frightening colors around his eye, his attitude like it was natural that he would get hurt like this for you. You write, Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?

“I’m going to the Post Office for a package soon, Y/N. Are you done with your letter?” your mom calls from the staircase landing.

“Give me five minutes!” you call back.

You forage through your drawer for a new sheet of paper and re-write your letter, making sure to leave any compromising parts out and fold both letters into neat squares—one that will cross the seas and reach Jongseong, one that will live out its days in the darkness of your crowded drawer. You’ve run out of envelopes, so you go look for one in your parents’ office. Your mom calls out your name again, impatient to leave — if she sends her package off before twelve p.m., it will get to the receiver tomorrow, and she’s hell-bent on getting perfect five-star Vinted reviews — so you hurriedly put your letter in the envelope, close it, stamp it, and write Jongseong’s name and address on the back. The other letter you absent-mindedly throw in your drawer with the dozens of other letters in which you’d crossed the line.

--

A few weeks later, like an apparition, Jongseong stands before you again.

He’s tanner from months under the Washington sun, from afternoons spent at his family’s lake house, on their boat. His hair is slightly shorter and suits him even better; you don’t recognize any of the clothes he wears. He grumbles as his mother goes back-and-forth between hugging him, staring at him worriedly and reminding him to call at least twice a week while his father unpacks the trunk. “I’ll only be a thirty-minute train ride away, Mom,” he says. 

He’s still Jong.

You moved in yesterday, and you’re now waiting for your new roommate, who, after five minutes of deliberating whether she should bring a jacket or not and finally decided against it, changed her mind the minute she stepped outside. 

It’s been two months since you last saw him. Shortly after sending your letter, you’d gone to stay with Sunoo’s grandparents for a week, just a day before he was set to come back from Seattle. Amid packing and other preparations, you haven’t had time to see each other. Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texted you. You replied that it wasn’t a problem, you told him which dorm you’d been assigned and found out his was the one next door.

When he notices you staring, he does a double-take. You wave at him, and even from this distance, you see the blush that creeps up his neck and takes over his face as he shyly waves back. You’ve never seen him like this—he’s always been either arrogant or friendly, never… flustered. He makes a motion as if to say, I’ll text you, and heads inside the building with his parents and all of his luggage.  

Indeed, he texts you some hours later while you’re sharing a piece of strawberry and matcha cake with your roommate Liz, whom you find out is half-German—Jongseong and your dad would probably love her for that simple fact. Some of the first things she’d asked you were what your astrological signs were and whether you wanted her to pull tarot cards for you when she was all done setting up her side of the room. Between that and her dyed blonde hair, you’d felt comfortable telling her all about Jongseong, the well and your dream. Unlike your skeptical and sarcastic friends, she’d nodded along to your every word, a serious expression on her face. “A sign from the universe,” she’d called it, and she gasped in excitement when his name appeared on your screen.

He sends you a link to a freshers’ week event, some potted plant sale happening on the main campus square, and asks if you’re free to go with him tomorrow. I need something to liven up that depressing room, he writes.

So that’s how you find yourselves among green plants of all shapes and sizes, searching for one that’s both low-maintenance and appealing to the eye. You’re glad that you have something to actually do—if you were just sitting at a café and having a conversation, you’re not sure you’d be able to stand the awkwardness. You’d chalked up his behavior on the day of his move-in to nerves, or to surprise upon seeing you so unexpectedly. But apparently, it wasn’t a one-time thing. He keeps clearing his throat as if he were sick with some cold, won’t look into your eyes for more than split seconds at a time, and in complete opposition to his usual confident, deliberate speech, talks in a quick and disorderly manner. And he’s either really caught a cold, or his ears have just permanently turned red. You ask him if something’s wrong a couple times, but he violently shakes his head, says, “No, what could be wrong?” then looks at you as if you might tell him what’s wrong.

When you’re alone again, you wonder what on earth could have happened over the summer that could make him change his behavior with you so radically. Did something happen in Seattle? Maybe he met someone there and doesn’t know how to tell you. Maybe you went overboard with your letters, he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, he wants to let you down easy but doesn’t know how to tell you. Or maybe—maybe you got impossibly pretty during those two months, and absence does make the heart grow fonder, as they say, and every thought you have about him, he has about you, but he doesn’t know how to tell you.

In any case, he’s hiding something.

The theory that he might want to stop being friends soon falls flat—the invitations to other freshers’ events keep coming, be it free wine & pizza taster sessions from the Wine Society, karaoke nights with the Taylor Swift Society or a shark movie marathon with the Bad Film Society, and he never turns you down when you tell him there’s something you want to visit in this new city of yours, even when the thing you want to visit in question is a bakery you have to queue in front of at seven a.m. if you want to get a pain au chocolat. In your defense, they turn out to be the best ones you and Jongseong have ever tried—although, to be fair, neither of you has been to France.

Things progressively return to normal. He’s able to make eye contact for more than three seconds again, he listens carefully and laughs along when you tell him about your week by the sea with Sunoo, he fills you in on what Heeseung’s been up to. One thing remains different, however—when you throw quips at him, he usually would’ve delighted in coming up with a better, wittier response, but now, he’ll roll his eyes at best, look at you amusedly and stay silent at worst. “Won’t you even entertain me?” you ask him once, to which he replies that you’re doing a good job entertaining yourself as is. 

Instead, he becomes more earnest. As per usual you badger him with questions like Aren’t I so pretty right now? or Isn’t my outfit so cute today? to get a reaction out of him, and if during your high school days he’d either fake a puking sound or look you up and down and grumble I guess, he now smiles and simply says Yes, you are, Yes, it is. It seems impossible to keep track of his attitude: one day, he’s one thing, the next, he’s another person entirely. 

It annoys you. You take his changing demeanor to mean that now that he’s a college student, he won’t indulge in your childish squabbles anymore, as though he was above all of that now, when just three months ago he was stalking your parents’ Facebooks to find unfavorable photos of you from when you were thirteen and using them as reaction pictures in your friends’ group chat. You think of your graduation day, of the box he’d given you, all done up in wrapper paper and a bow—he had filled it with every eraser he’d stolen from you over the years, he’d even gone so far as to date every single one of them, from the second of October freshman year to the twenty-eighth of November of your senior year. You didn’t count them, but there had to be at least a hundred. At the time, you’d just thought it was funny—but what if the gesture had meant something deeper than you’d realized? What if he was marking the end of something with that box? No more playing around, we’re adults now. But classes have barely started, you don’t know your way to the off-campus library, you aren’t a different person to who you were just weeks or even months earlier. Why is he acting like he is? You look at him, and you see the boy whose fault it was you had to buy a new eraser every week—who knows how many books you could’ve bought with that money. But when he turns to look at you, too, and your eyes meet, you’re suddenly assailed with the memories of that night, the kind eyes, the soft smile. 

Does his future capacity to love me already exist in his heart?

Your heartbeat speeds up and you have to look away.

--

From your letters, it seems to be much hotter back home than in Seattle—you talk of sunburns, of afternoons spent inside with the fan on maximum speed, of ice melting instantly and watering down your Coke Zeros, whereas Jay can walk around the city pleasantly and needs to bring a jacket if he’ll be out until late after sundown. And yet, as he reads your latest letter, his skin prickles feverishly, from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. He’d excitedly torn the envelope open the second it arrived in the mail, heart thumping as he counted the pages, at least three more than usual — he was always happy that you wanted to talk to him at all, so the fact that you had this much to tell him sent him over the moon — but he would have never expected what was awaiting him inside.

With a smile on his face, he read your replies to the questions he’d asked you last time, your reactions to everything he told you about, the live Mariners game, the lake house, the rides on the boat. He imagined you as you sat at your desk in your room he’d only seen once, when you’d held a small party for your birthday and he, having arrived first, was honored with a tour of your house. He imagined your smile, the way you played with your hair when you focused on something, wondered whether you pondered every word before you wrote it down as he did or whether you poured your thoughts out onto the page without hesitation. His smile faltered when Jake Sim’s name appeared in your neat handwriting, but he was relieved to find out your description of him now was miles away from the one at the start of the school year. 

Then you start writing about him. Him, Park Jongseong, and your words startle him so much, it’s like he’d forgotten he was the recipient of this letter in the first place.

But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you. 

He’s been lying comfortably in his bed, but he sits up the moment his eyes take in these words. If there is one topic the two of you have practically never broached, it’s this exactly: your relationship, the changes it’s gone through this past year. Except for a few mentions made in jest here and there, you’ve always conveniently ignored the fact that not so long ago, you were at each other’s throats. At least, you were at his throat, and Jay let you be, let you think the hatred went both ways, when in reality all he wanted was to keep you close one way or another. To him, anything was better than indifference.

But here you are, writing about how you feel about him, not in hints, not in jokes, but actually telling him black and white what goes through your head when you think of him—in other words, everything he’s been dying to know ever since he met you and especially ever since you started warming up to him a few months ago.

I have never told you about that night because I know it’ll just be more fodder for you to endlessly tease me, and I haven’t even mentioned it in these letters that I write and don’t send. Sometimes I debate the ethics of it—if I know something about our futures, isn’t it right that you know, too? But then again, I still hesitate whether what happened was real or not. As with anything, the more time passes, the more I forget about it. What kind of cheese you’d put on the pasta, the movie that played in the background, whether the stairs were carpeted or wooded—these details have evaded me by now. All I clearly remember is your face and how I felt, seeing it then, seeing it the next day at school, ten years younger, the same exact person in what felt like a different universe. As much as I tried to deny it, I know now that it was no coincidence—I was talking about it with Sunoo and he said that sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. He’s not always a dimwit. And he’s right, the kind of love I felt from you in that dream — or not-dream — I’ve yearned for it ever since I first watched Pride & Prejudice, the 2005 film to be precise, when I was ten. But with you? That was what I couldn’t believe at first. I don’t think I need to explain why—you were there, I think you knew how I felt about you for over three years, it’s not like I tried to hide it.

Then you turned up and the sight of you was enough to bring back all the feelings from that dream. You must’ve wondered why my behavior with you switched so suddenly—well, a glimpse into marital bliss is sometimes enough for a girl to make some changes in her life. Yet I valiantly tried to convince myself that any flutter of my heart around you was due to this stupid dream, to a version of you my brain had conjured up because it was starved for affection, and you happened to be at the forefront of my mind, even if not for the right reasons. But it was no use. I had entertained the possibility that this future was really mine, and I couldn’t go back to seeing you as the boy who annoyed the living daylights out of me.

But Jong, if you weren’t you, I would’ve been confused for a week and then I would’ve gotten over it. I stayed confused for a while, and everything you did only served to confuse me further. I started to notice you more, to see you for who you were and not for the idea I had constructed of you in my head, I stopped taking note of only the things that reinforced this idea. And that changed everything.

Let’s get it out of the way: as much as I hate to admit it because it proves you right, I saw that you are indeed devastatingly handsome. It devastates me every time I have to look at that stupid, wonderful face of yours. And if aging is something you’re worried about, don’t be. I’ve seen you at 28, and let’s just say that your jaw somehow only gets more chiseled. I’ve realized that you don’t just participate in class to be a prick — except for when you contradict me in Literature, I know you only do that to piss me off, and yes, it works — but that you actually care about what we learn and that you don’t want the teacher to feel like they’re talking to a classroom full of students made out of bricks. I’ve also realized that you didn’t specifically pick German to be the one subject where you must beat me at all costs, you just actually really like German, even if I’m still undetermined as to why. And I can finally admit to myself—you are funny. Sometimes. There were so many times I had to stop myself from laughing at one of your idiotic puns because I could not bear to give you the satisfaction. That feeling when the worst person you know makes a funny joke, and all that. And as much as I’ve mocked you for it, I do actually like your laugh. I like that you’re only loud when you laugh, or sneeze, or get excited over something. You don’t scream, you don’t get angry, and I think that’s a lot for a boy fresh out of puberty. Or for any boy, really. 

But above all, you’re kind, Jong. I think it’s the best thing about you. I think it’s the best thing anyone can be. I see it in your patience with Heeseung when he starts one of his rants better reserved for Reddit than real life, I see it in the way you took Sunoo and Kazuha in stride, even though they’re a bit rough around the edges sometimes, I see it in the way you guide the freshmen at the start of every year, when all anyone does is complain about them, I see it in the gentleness with which you let down the girls who confess to you, even the more persistent ones. I used to think they were crazy, but I understand them more than ever now. I also used to think that all those kindnesses meant that the ones you occasionally showed me meant nothing more than that—occasional kindnesses. You were just a nice guy, occasionally so to me. But you sort of ratted yourself out when you gave me those twenty chocolates for Valentine’s.

Or, really, what made things clearer was that fight in December. I guess I was wrong—you do get angry. I remember a thought I had at the time: just when I think I know you, you do something to shake it all up. You punched two of the star soccer players of our school in the face because they said some mean, unimportant things about me. Thinking about it now, I still don’t understand it. Was it another one of your acts of kindness? 

And then I thought of those other times you helped me out. Do you remember them—the art project, the handwritten notes after my grandma passed away, you tearing Park Sunghoon a new one in the girls’ bathroom. I’m sure there are many more that I’ve dismissed simply because I did not want to see you in any other light than the one I’d decided to shine on you. 

Maybe I’m rewriting the past here, but I’ve been thinking about something lately. The theme today seems to be honesty, so I’ll lay myself bare and tell you something I haven’t told anyone yet, not even myself. The more I write, the more I become aware of its truth. I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. Maybe that’s why I kept buying erasers.

I don’t have the best memory — I suspect iron deficiency, it runs in my mom’s side of the family — but I do remember this. The first time I saw you. I haven’t noticed your face changing in real time, but I’m sure I’d laugh at how much of a baby you looked back then. Although I didn’t fare much better, I’m sure. Well, you’re the one that has all these embarrassing pictures of me, you freak, so I’m sure you could tell me. Moving on… 

I found you really cute. You were chatting to the person next to you, maybe it was Heeseung, I didn’t look properly—I only looked at you. Don’t laugh at me. It was the first day of high school, there was a nervous energy in the air, but you seemed happy to be there. You know I don’t have hordes of friends like you do, I don’t walk through life with people naturally gravitating towards me. I’m okay with it now, but it was something I struggled with back then. Kazuha, Sunoo and I have had each other since our elementary days, and I never needed more than that—but fifteen is the prime age for comparison, and as the weeks passed and we got used to being high schoolers, I listened to everyone sing your praises, I watched as you talked with all of our classmates, even our teachers, like you were old friends. But we sat next to each other in a couple of classes, and you wouldn't talk to me outside of partnered work. I, who wanted to be easily charmed by you like everyone else was, who thought maybe you’d help me come out of my shell. But it felt like sitting next to me was torture to you, like the boy whom I watched speak with ease to everyone else disappeared when I was around. And so — and I’m not proud of this — every smart remark in class, every joke that had the entire class roaring, every high five you gave out in the hallway, I started to despise them. And by association, I started to despise you. After that, it was easy to find fault in everything you did, my contempt was only enhanced by everyone’s admiration. But I’m not alone here. It went both ways, didn’t it? I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. I don’t blame us for how we acted, only for taking so long to get our heads out of our asses.

(I have to say, I also have a thing for hating people. Remind me to tell you about Na Jaemin and Shin Ryujin one of these days.)

Anyways, I think it’s because I had liked you so much at first that I could then seemingly hate you so much. But I never hated you, Jong, not really. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. Can I take it all back now? 

Now that we’re entering university soon, I can’t help but look back on high school. This is what I want to know, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have the courage to ask you, because if your answer is the one I suspect, I don’t know how I’ll handle all the regret in my heart.

Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?

Your letter abruptly ends here, no concluding remarks, no wishing him a fun time in Seattle and looking forward to his next letter, no sign-off. It was as if someone cut you off before you could say everything you wanted, but then why send him this seemingly unfinished letter? It is all the more bizarre since your letters are usually meticulous: you write on every other line, it looks like you take your time with every single letter, the only disturbance in your otherwise perfect handwriting is your going back-and-forth between cursive and script s’s. But this particular letter looks rushed, your lines are sloppy, some words need to be read a few times over to be understood. What kind of state had you been in, writing these words? Jay’s heart swells, thinking that you were as moved writing as he was reading. He even looks through your letter again, wishing to find a tear stain somewhere, but there are none. Maybe he’s been watching too many of these romantic period dramas you always go on about.

He has to pace his room when he’s done reading your letter, but he feels trapped inside these four walls, so he dashes outside, saying that he’s getting some air when his relatives ask him where he’s off to in such a rush, and walks around the block five times. When he’s back in his room, he rereads your letter, eyes taking in each and every word slowly and carefully, making sure he doesn’t misread anything.

You like him. You, Y/N, like him, Jongseong, it’s a fact, it’s real, you said so yourself, you went into quite some detail about it, he can’t believe it, but it’s real, it’s written right there on the page, if anyone dares tell him he’s fooling himself, he can prove them wrong, you’re the one who said it.

The smile doesn’t leave his lips for the rest of the day, he can barely eat, he’s already full of happiness. He reads your words over and over before falling asleep, committing them to memory, dreaming about them, about you.

You. How should he respond to this? Are you even expecting a response? You seem to know he’s not impartial to you, either, although that’s an understatement. 

In the following days, the thought that you hadn’t meant to send him this letter nags at him. The abrupt ending, the absence of your usual Love, Y/N. The fact that this had come out of left field—none of your previous letters had even a romantic undertone, no matter how he tried in his own to hint at his missing you, the most reference to seeing each other again you would give him was It’ll be better to show you this in real life. The act of sending letters itself didn’t feel very platonic, but you never went there, so he didn’t, either. He had secretly yearned to have you this close all these years, he would never forgive himself if he ended up chasing you away now with his over-eagerness.

You had landed on something very real in your letter: I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. He cursed his fifteen-year-old self, that idiot who couldn’t even speak to a girl no matter how much he wanted to, just because she was so pretty, he was afraid of saying something stupid and messing it up before it even had a chance to start.

On days when you’d had particularly nasty or petty arguments — it could get pretty bad, at the start, before you both started maturing and realized how ridiculous you were, especially with your classmates telling you to keep it classy — he’d stay up all night, wondering why you hated him so much in the first place, what on Earth he could’ve done to warrant such vitriol. Now, finally, he knew, and he could only resent the fact that no one had invented time machines yet, so he could nip his useless ego in the bud; so he could tell younger Jay not to take it personally, that you had your reasons for disliking him, that even if you hadn’t, the world won’t end if someone doesn’t like him like everyone usually does. 

Because, he hates to admit, that was what had done it for Jay. He couldn’t stand that someone — not just someone, but one of the prettiest girls he’d ever seen, a girl he’d been hyping himself up to talk to every day, but never found the courage to — didn’t immediately fall for his charms. And not just that, but even showed just how much she disliked him. You looked him up-and-down with disdain, made disgusted faces at his jokes, rolled your eyes when he spoke up in class. It made him burn with anger, but he also weirdly enjoyed it—at least, you were paying attention to him. So, he amped it up. Talked louder, laughed louder, hovered around you. He even stole your erasers, wrote the date on which he’d taken them, kept them in a box on his desk that he looked at every time he studied at home. He aimed to beat you in every class you shared, even though neither of you cared that much about grades—the annoyed look on your face when he boasted about the two points he’d gotten over you was enough satisfaction.

All in all, he behaved like a child, and you reciprocated in like.

Until you didn’t.

It was a random Tuesday when something in your attitude towards him shifted. It wasn’t a complete 180, but he noticed everything about you, so even a slight change of your tone was obvious to him. You started using your nickname for him more often than his full name—he never told you, but of course he loved that you didn’t call him Jay like everyone else, that you had your own way of addressing him. It was a sign to him that the two of you had something special, even if it was on the opposite end of the spectrum of what he wanted with you.

He again spent sleepless nights wondering what had caused this change: was it something he had done, or something within you? It was a welcome change, that much was sure, but he was initially too confused to take it in stride. He’d long made peace with the fact that he’d never have you the way he really wanted, so he was fine with whatever this was—but now, you were changing, your interactions were tinged with something like shyness, the distance between you felt greater than ever. He tried to keep up his smart-ass appearances around you, but you only indulged in your old habits once in a while, as though you had grown tired of arguing with him, even of giving him the time of day.

So he resolved himself to adapting his behavior to yours. If you stared at him intently like his face was a puzzle you were trying to solve, he let you, rested his head on his palm and smiled as he stared back at you. Finally, he had an excuse to look at you without you threatening to punch him or saying a picture would last longer. He knew they did, he’d had to resort to scrolling through Sunoo’s and Kazuha’s Instagrams to find any photos of you. Yours was private and at the time, you would’ve probably cursed him out if he’d sent a follow request. If you seemed too annoyed or upset over something, he’d leave you alone, he’d do something nice to let you know you didn’t need to have your guards up at all times around him. If you seemed to silently call for a truce of hostilities, he easily complied.

Then, after a few weeks, your petty arguments resumed, but those too were different—if before they felt filled with real disdain and irritation, they now seemed to be a comfortable habit to fall back on, almost like a fun hobby. Those, too, Jay readily welcomed.

And so things changed in a direction Jay had never thought would one day be possible. You gave him no explanations, nor did he ask for any, and soon he stopped losing sleep over the why’s and the how’s and simply let himself enjoy the fact that you now had the semblance of a friendship, that he could compliment you and pass it off as amical teasing, that he could learn things about you like what you spent your weekends doing, what your relationship with your family was like, whether you were a dog or cat person, whether you wanted to visit his farm in Stardew Valley. 

Unsurprisingly, this only enhanced his already pathetically strong feelings for you. He worried over how to make sure this wasn’t some sort of 30-day friendship trial you had wanted to test out. He reveled in the fact that his top university of choice was the one you had already been accepted to. He now knew what it felt like to have you smile at him, smile because of him, and he never wanted again to live in a world where this was not a daily occurrence. 

He now sort of has an answer—your letter doesn’t make it very clear, it makes him think again that you really had not meant to send it, but you seem to have had a dream. A dream of him, 28-year-old him, to be precise, of your life together—he’s not sure. At this point in time, he doesn’t care much, either. Whether it was a dream or a real vision of the future that you had, all that matters is that it allowed you to see him in a new light, a light which he had hoped for years would one day appear to you, and it had changed things. And now, you liked him.

You said so yourself.

He’s at a loss for words. He can’t concentrate for long enough to put all his thoughts in order, he can’t make himself calm down and write his feelings down. He has to pack to go home, once he’s home, he’ll have to pack for university. But it’s only two weeks from now to the day you meet again, and it’ll be better to say what he wants to say in person, anyway.

Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texts you.

And then those two weeks pass like two seconds and you’re there, a few meters away from him. All the speeches he’d prepared in his head, from grand declarations of love to laid-back admittances of Yeah, I like you too, you’re cool, I guess, they all vanish from his head. For fourteen days he’s been going through scenarios upon scenarios of your reunion, what you’d look like, what he’d say, how you’d react. But now that he can actually see you, now that he would just have to walk a few steps if he wanted to touch you, hug you, kiss you — hoping that was something you wanted to do — he freezes. He forgets how his body works, the part in his brain that’s meant to manage language ability fails him. HIs mom calls him over, urging him into his new dorm building, and all he can do is wave back at you like an idiot.

When finally he musters the courage to text you, what he hopes will be the day that starts your romantic relationship turns into the day Park Jongseong realizes how much of a loser he is. For the first hour, he can’t look at you, he can’t get through a sentence without stuttering out half of his words, he runs out of things to say in record time. All he can think of is how easy it’d be to grab one of your hands, hold it in his and walk around this stupid potted plant sale as if the two of you were two halves of a whole. He doesn’t even want a potted plant, his roommate already has five, he just wanted an excuse to see you. He steals glances at you when you’re looking elsewhere, and he notices everything about you tenfold now that he can, now that caring about you doesn’t need to be in vain any longer. He tells himself that he just needs to calm down a bit, even when you have the confirmation that the person you’re about to confess to already likes you, revealing your feelings to someone is always nerve-wracking, the two of you haven’t seen in each other in a while, he’ll talk to you once his heart gets out of his throat.

But you’re acting normal. Suspiciously so. You’re acting like you never told him you liked him, like nothing has changed between you. He rereads your letter the second he gets back to his dorm. He’s not crazy, it’s written right there, I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. He knows the words by heart now, but he checks them anyway. So why are you acting like you never said anything? Had you really not meant to send that letter? Did Jay actually intrude on your private thoughts by reading words that had never meant to be seen by another soul?

You continue to behave as you usually would around him, but if he couldn’t go back to vicious bickering when things changed the first time, he can’t go back to friendly bickering now that things — for him — have changed a second time. He doesn’t even want friendly to be in your shared vocabulary anymore. 

So he stops giving in. If you make fun of him, he just stands there with an unimpressed if amused look on his face. If you pedantically correct him on something, he just nods his head and accepts it. He can tell you’re bothered by it, but he needs to show you that he doesn’t want to go on being just friends with you—he wants to compliment you without having to pass it off as teasing, he wants to stare at you with hearts in his eyes without having to look away when you catch him, he wants to spend every waking second of every day with you, he wants to hold your hand, hold you. 

He could wait for things to change slowly again, but why wait when he could help things along?

--

It’s nine p.m. on a Saturday and you’re sneaking Jongseong into your dorm. Liz is away for the weekend, gone back home to celebrate her aunt’s birthday, so you have the room to yourselves. It took some convincing to get him to come — What if we get caught coming in, What if your T.A. sees us, What if I get reported to campus police — and so when your verbal reassurances failed to work, you resorted to blinking up at him through your lashes and that did the trick.

Jongseong was in many ways unlike any other man you’d ever met; in some other ways, he was the exact same.

Plastic bag of the tteokbokki you’d asked for in hand, he looks around the deserted hallways like someone might jump out of nowhere and beat him to a pulp at any given moment. At this time of the week, everyone’s out partying or holed up in their dorms, presumably either to rest or because of a lack of friends so early on in the semester. You grab his free hand and hurry him along to the elevator—once inside, it takes you a few seconds before you realize you’re still holding it, and you retract your hand quickly while he just smiles. 

You settle yourselves on the floor—comfort is not worth getting gochujang sauce on your white sheets. You sit criss-cross in front of each other, the food between the two of you, and catch up on your first week of class in-between bites of spicy, gooey rice cakes and fish cakes. You wonder, if one day you and Jongseong are no longer friends, how long you will keep associating tteokbokki with him.

When you tell him that you and Jake share a class, Introduction to Film Studies, he gives you a look. “What’s that face for?” you ask.

“Did you guys sit next to each other?”

You chuckle. “Of course. We only knew each other in that room, it would’ve been weird not to.”

He continues to stare at you. After a while, he muses, “You’re not…?”

You halt in your tracks, rice cake at the end of your plastic fork hanging in the air, halfway between the container and your mouth. “Whatever you’re thinking, the answer is no.” Still in love with him, interested in him again, you don’t know the exact details of Jongseong’s thought process, all you know is he has nothing to worry about—if it’s something he worries about.

When a smile slowly grows on his lips and he nods, saying, “Okay, good,” you let yourself think it might be.

Later, you’re ten minutes into a senseless blockbuster movie when he suddenly pauses it. It snaps you out of a trance—his hand was awfully close to yours, so is his shoulder, his thigh, his knee, everything, really, and you haven’t been able to concentrate on anything but the warmth radiating off his skin and the intensity with which you crave to feel it intentionally rather than accidentally. When he speaks, there’s something serious in his tone that makes you nervous. “Y/N,” he says as he turns to you, and now his face is awfully close, too. There’s still many centimeters separating you, but in this tiny, barely lit-up room, he feels closer than ever before. “Do you remember when I said I’d reply to your letter in real life?”

You tilt your head. “Yeah, that was ages ago.”

“Well, I thought I’d do it now.”

“Now?”

He takes a deep, shaky breath. “Now.”

And then those safe centimeters suddenly disappear, and Jongseong’s lips are on yours. It’s a brief, chaste kiss, so quick you wonder if it even happened when he leans back again.

“I like you, too,” he says, and your heart stops.

“W-what?” is all you can say back, eyes wide like he’s just admitted to killing someone rather than reciprocating your feelings.

His confident facade quickly crumbles. “God, this was so much cooler in my head, I-I’m sorry.” He pulls something out of his sweatpants pocket, pages folded over and over into a tiny square. As he unfolds them, you recognize your paper, your handwriting—but what do your letters have anything to do with him kissing you, of all things? “I don’t think you meant to send this. But I’m glad you did.”

He hands you the pages and your eyes skim over the words, not detecting anything out of the ordinary, until—But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you. You remember this line, because you had made sure to strike it and everything that came afterward out when you rewrote the letter that you would actually send Jongseong. So how was he giving you this? 

“I-How do you have this?” you ask, voice trembling. You feel as though your heart overflows with all kinds of emotions, and so your eyes follow, tears staining your lower lashes. 

But Jongseong is not one to let you hide things from him. “Hey, no, it’s okay,” he says, warm hands coming to cup your face. “Look at me.” You have no choice but to oblige—his gaze is somehow both soft and stern, a mix of concern and determination. “Did you mean what you wrote in here?” You nod. “Then everything’s okay. You don’t know how happy I was reading this.”

The tension in your body slowly starts to fade. “Really?”

“Really. I cherish every single word in there.”

“Really?” you repeat, and he chuckles.

“Really.”

Your heartbeat speeds up as you gaze into his eyes, as you let yourself bask in the affection and endearment you find there. You can’t quite comprehend what’s happening. The letter, the kiss, his confession, your inadvertent confession, it’s all a mess in your head; so sudden, but such a long time coming at the same time. You never imagined that things would change so quickly—less than a year ago, you thought Jongseong was the most irritating person on this planet. After meeting his 28-year-old self, you thought it’d take ages for the two of you to be on such good terms. But now, just a week into your first semester of university, belly full of tteokbokki and Sprite, you like each other enough not only to be in the same room without hurling insults at each other but to actually be smiling at each other, willingly at that.

Your eyes drift down to his lips, just like in the hallway all those months ago, and the words slip out before you can stop them. They’re a mere whisper—”Kiss me again.”

Jongseong doesn’t need to be told twice. Still cupping your face, he bridges the gap between the two of you again, and this time, when your lips meet, they don’t come apart so quickly. It’s your first kiss, and it’s nothing short of magical, better than any romance novel could’ve prepared you for. His lips are warm and soft against yours, moving slowly, gingerly; as if he’s scared to take any wrong step, he lets you control the pace, follows every tilt of your head this way and that. It’s a relief that he seems to know as little about this as you do—his hands haven’t moved from your face, yours are on his knees, all you can do is focus on the movement of your lips, to think of anything else at the same time would be overwhelming. 

“I’ve liked you from the start,” he suddenly says, face still so close you can feel his breath on your lips as he speaks. 

“Hm?” you hum, body reeling from the kiss.

“I’ve liked you from the start,” he repeats, grinning—he looks relieved, like he’s been waiting to say these words for a long time. “I can’t believe this is happening after all these years. Or at all, really.”

“I think I did, too.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that in your letter.”

Your eyes widen and you bury your face in your hands as Jongseong laughs. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” you mumble.

He smooths over your hair with one hand, brings your face back up with the other. “Don’t worry. I won’t ever make you regret this.”

Your brain and heart are too all over the place for you to come up with a coherent answer, so you lean in and reconnect your lips to his. It’s already becoming your favorite sensation, feeling him smile into the kiss, threading your fingers in his soft hair.

Time passes delicately like this, the two of you on your single bed, in the sheets that you bought three weeks ago. A lot of it is spent kissing and learning how to fall into each other’s rhythm, but you also spend hours talking, comparing situations and how you’d experienced them. You thought his occasional acts of kindness were done out of guilt, evidence that he did have some morals; he was trying to show he cared about you. He thought you’d despised him from the moment you saw him; you reiterate in more detail than your letter what really happened, you say you wish you knew then what you know now. 

“But I never hated you, Jong. I think I wanted to believe that I did, but I never actually did.”

“You glared at me everytime I walked past like I killed a member of your family.”

You groan, ashamed of yourself. “I did, didn’t I?”

“You did,” he says, chuckling, placing a kiss on your forehead. His arms are around you, your head rests atop his heart—you’ve never felt more comfortable in your life. “But it’s okay. We’re here now, and I don’t want us to have any regrets about high school. We had a good time, didn’t we?”

You tilt your head up to look at him. “I’m sure you did, stealing all my erasers.”

He lets out a hearty laugh. Clearly, he’s very proud of his feat. “Hey, I gave all of them back.”

“And what am I going to do with a hundred erasers, Jong?” you ask, laughing too, pecking his cheek aggressively—your way of punishing him for a grave deed.

“Keep them as a token of my love for you,” he says, and your breath falters at the mention of that word. “In fifty years, it’ll be a sign that I’ve liked you since the beginning, I just had a funny way of showing it.”

“Fifty years, huh?”

He grins. “Fifty, a hundred, whatever. You’re not getting rid of me.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

You’re both smiling so wide, you can barely manage a kiss. He trails kisses from your lips to your ear. Holding you close, he whispers, “It’s always been you, Y/N. Always and only you.”

There may be thorns on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life, but Park Jongseong was never one of them—all along, he was a bud waiting to bloom.

--

The more time passes, the more you wonder whether that night you had seen in your vision will ever come. There’s been evenings similar to it—crashing the minute you came home from a long day on set, telling yourself you’d take a fifteen-minute power nap only to wake up three hours later and coming downstairs to find your husband cooking dinner, cleaning the kitchen, taking care of your son or simply watching TV, but waiting for you, always waiting for you. He seems as happy now watching you come down the stairs as he was then finding your face among all the students flocking out of lecture halls. 

The details are blurry now, but many small things seem to be different from what you’d seen. He still tries to recreate your favorite meal, but it’s not pasta all'arrabbiata, it’s laksa, because your first date as an official couple was to a Malaysian restaurant, not an Italian one. He’s still the best father you know, but you have one son, not twin girls—although that offer to “give him a younger sibling to play with” is always on the table. Even the house you live in is different from the one in your dream, which has now become nothing more than a funny anecdote you share with people when they ask you the story of how you and Jongseong met.

You think of Sunoo’s words from all those years ago: Sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. Had 18-year-old you been in such denial over her feelings for Jongseong that she’d had to convince herself a magical well had bestowed a crazy dream upon her to admit that, yes, there was something there, something other than childish hatred?

It doesn’t matter anymore. Months pass without you thinking about that well, anyway. 

Tonight, you come home late from work after having had to do last-minute changes to the script for your current project, a movie that starts shooting in a few days. Jongseong texted you that he was going to bed an hour or so again, so you’re greeted by a plate of japchae covered in film paper. The post-it note stuck to it reads, I’m afraid of the repercussions of too much curry consumption on our son, so no laksa tonight my love. Hope you like it. Come to bed quick. You were starving a second ago, but you decide food can wait—other things can’t.

You tiptoe up the stairs and into your son’s room, breathing in the scent of his hair and placing a kiss there. His hair is still worryingly sparse, but if he’s anything like his dad, it’ll come in a bit later than the other kids. You always thought babies with a full head of hair were freaky, anyway. He doesn’t budge a bit, sleeping like a log—his dad is another story, shuffling in bed the moment you step into your shared bedroom. He opens his arms wide, a silent invitation.

“You’re home,” he says as you attach yourself to his body, your leg hiked up over his, your face buried in the crook of his neck, your thumb caressing the start of stubble on his cheeks.

You smile. “I am.”

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