#a book being shitty because it's middle-grade does not excuse it being shitty

[aroaceleovaldez]

a quick helpful reference guide:

Children's books - Target demographic is generally up to like age 10 - basically elementary school and below, for us Americans.

Middle-grade books - Target demographic is approximately middle schoolers (ages 11-15).

YA (Young Adult) - Target demographic is about 15-20ish year olds, so high schoolers and early college.

There is such thing as "upper middle-grade books" (targeted more towards the upper range of middle grade, so middle schoolers going into high school) and other such more specific intended target demographic age ranges within those groupings.

What these ranges mean is that the books differ in how they present subject matter to be appropriate to the intended audience demographic. Obviously, books geared towards younger kids are going to be shorter, use simpler language, and present concepts in ways that are easier to understand for younger children. As the target age demographic increases, the length, word choice, and presentation of topics will become more complex. The actual subject matter within the book itself is unrelated to this classification system for the most part - the books are graded on what's presumed appropriate for that age-range in terms of how children learn and their presumed literacy and reading comprehension at that age, rather than the topic itself.

Rick Riordan is a middle-grade author, and his books are usually middle-grade - including the entirety of the Riordanverse and Daughter of the Deep. The only exception is The Sun And The Star, which is loosely either upper middle-grade or YA, as Mark Oshiro is a YA author and co-authored it.

[sinagrace]

On the subject of marvel comics ...

If we’re gonna talk about how Marvel does literally nothing about giving a leg up to marginalized creators and staff members, I’ve got another story to tell. Towards the end of my time there, I’d been getting a sense that marvel editors were lying about keeping me in mind for projects after iceman, and the following incident sealed the deal in terms of being told (not in any legally binding way) that I had overstayed my welcome at the house of ideas. Sometime in 2018, an editor at a different publishing house asked if I’d pitch for an all-ages Spider-Man book they were licensed to produce. Considering I saw CB Cebulski have a conniption at a comic con party when another Marvel Comics writer told him he’d been courted to do the same for avengers, I asked that editorial to make absolutely sure marvel was cool with me pitching for this project. The editor got approval, and I wrote a damn good idea that was on the fast track to being the next arc in the series. For those who aren’t familiar, when you’re not a household name, pitching for a legacy character is quite a bit of work. Given my lifelong love of Spider-Man, it wasn’t exactly grueling to come up with a handful of ideas and then properly outline the one my editor liked the most… but it’s still work. All that being said, I felt great about the final document, and that I’d bought myself a few more months of being Marvel-adjacent so I could continue growing my reputation for being known for my writing chops, and rinse off the notion that I was ever anyone’s diversity hire. Cut to a few weeks later, and my editor tells me that I can’t be used for the series. The exact words he relayed from Marvel were: “they’d like to keep the focus on iceman for now.” That e-mail came in the day I turned in my last script for Iceman. I reached out to Marvel’s talent relations guy, and he got me on the phone to explain a completely different reason why I was taken off the book: he said that Marvel only wanted people with experience in all-ages because there were different formatting rules than what goes into a standard comic script (a half truth that doesn’t matter when you read the next sentence). I mentioned that I did an all-ages book for Simon and Schuster, a middle grade series for Image Comics, short stories for Boom Studios, and edited an all-ages title for Robert Kirkman. The talent relations guy was like, “Oh, I didn’t know all that.” He then went on to say that Marvel had a list of people they wanted this editor to approach and as a result some wires got crossed and thus I was out of several months’ work. He didn’t offer to fix the problem, he didn’t offer to throw me on any number of space-filler mini-series that were just basically keeping Jonathan Hickman’s seat warm… nothing. In response, I said to the talent relations guy: “Do you believe what you’re telling me?” He didn’t have a particularly good answer. Oh if you’re wondering: like NONE of the writers who did end up getting hired for these all-ages titles had legitimate experience with all-ages material. They’re all great writers and some of them are my homies, but it’s not like they came from scholastic or random house. All of this is to say: I went above and beyond to make sure I was approved to pitch on a project, I worked my butt off and wrote something my editor was incredibly enthusiastic about, and then I magically got unpicked and wasn’t offered a reasonable explanation, a substitute gig, or a kill fee for the work I had put in on the proposal. Thanks, Marvel. This whole debacle wasn’t included in a piece I wrote last year because the editor I was working with asked me not to. Given that his relationship with Marvel was already tenuous, he didn’t really need more pressure/ stress. This guy went to bat for me and helped get me one of my favorite gigs, and having been in his position as an editor dealing with multiple bureaucracies, I didn’t want to make his life any harder. But he’s no longer at that company, and he gave me permission to bring this up. So here we are. I hate that I’m once again in a position where I have to call out Marvel on some BS, because I don’t know that anything positive will come from it, and that everything I’ve done in my career will once again be boiled down to: “semi-attractive queer comic creator complains about marvel comics.” Like, never mind that I’ve been at this since I was in high school, ran Kirkman’s imprint on my own before I was 25, and have gone on to write almost all of my favorite DC Comics characters after leaving Marvel. It’s shitty to be an individual talking about a beloved company... but it’s the right thing to do. The only thing I can 100% predict will happen from me speaking up is: a bunch of haters are going to get back on my dick again and make social media unbearable. To those folks, my birthday is on Monday… can you maybe not? Just this once? Stories like what I've written need to be considered when discussing if Marvel has actually done anything to be accountable for not only hiring more diversely, but for fostering an environment where those people feel valued. My only advice to Marvel would be: fucking hire a third party organization to teach you all how to do this right… you can’t keep propping Sana up on a podium and pat yourselves on the back for doing half of the bare minimum. I hate that I still love your books (I spent good money buying the oversized Silver Surfer Black collection), and I just wish that the gatekeepers were a bit more responsible and cognizant of how deep their behavior and apathy cuts. Granted, this is a company that has a bad reputation for not treating anybody fairly, so there is always the argument that Marvel Comics is just run by a box of pythons who indiscriminately poison and devour folks. I’m not sure... after 18 months away from them, I still try to excuse the bad behavior and blame myself for how things went down.

[axwalker]

Creep 2: I don’t care if it hurts

HIGH SCHOOL AU

Pairing: Drake Walker x MC  (Lexie O’Brien) Book TRR

MASTERLIST HERE

Synopsis: Drake and Lexie are star-crossed lovers. Her father hates him and forces Lexie to stop any contact with Drake. Lost and heartbroken, he “bullies” her for two years until he discovers the truth of Lexie’s behavior.

A/N 1 This came up to me after I got an ask from @nestledonthaveone​ to write a fic based on the song CREEP.

I used to hear this song when I was a teenager, so when I read this ask, I immediately wanted to write something angsty but situated in high school.

A/N 2: Because they’re younger than usual, I decided to change my  FC. 

Words: 4,110 

WARNINGS: Parental abuse, domestic violence, toxic love.

THIS IS NOT YOUR USUAL MARSHMALLOW DRAKE. He was abandoned as a boy, he’s tortured and he doesn’t know how to express his love. His behavior is not excusable.

This is a dark love story. If you’re not comfortable with it, PLEASE do not read it.  

ALL MY FICS ARE 18+

TAGS ON THE COMMENTS

As this is darker than usual; I’m only tagging the people who commented in the previous chapter. If you want to get on or off the list for this fic, please do not hesitate to ask!! 

DRAKE

Even if she never looks at me or speaks to me again, she’s mine. Even if I’ve been a horrible jerk to her for two years and she pales every time I pull into the parking lot on my motorcycle, she is mine. Just seeing her with him enrages me, so I walk straight toward my usual seat, directly behind Lexie, and slam my textbook down onto the desk.

Startled, Rys looks up at me, “Hey, Walker. What’s up?” 

It’s not the first time he tries to make a move on Lexie. Last time –two years ago, we almost killed each other. Pretty boy might be an entitled ass, but he knows how to fight. Maybe he thinks Lexie is game again after all this time. He couldn’t be more wrong. 

 “Don’t you have a class this period?” I ask him. Liam cocks his left eyebrow, adjusting the straps of his backpack. 

“I fail to see why that concerns you, Creep.”  

My smile is murderous. “Get the fuck out of here before I break your face, pretty boy.”

I think he has a death wish because he looks at Lexie when he talks, “See you after class, Alexis, when your watchdog will be busy mowing my lawn.” Finally, he just shakes his head and gets out of the classroom. I resume my daily routine. Staring at the back of Lexie’s head, tracing the curve of her perfect neck, my cock getting hard over her perfect cherry scent. 

“So that’s what you like,” I say, leaning forward to speak an inch from her ears. “You like them with blond hair and pink polo shirts. Prospects for Cambridge or shit. A huge trust fund. Don’t you? A brat like you needs someone who can spoil her. I bet you’d introduce him to daddy, wouldn’t you?” 

She doesn’t respond. She never does. Her eyes stay stubbornly on the front of the class where the teacher has started writing today’s lesson on the board—my hands fist in desperation. I’m dying for her to talk to me. To look at me. Anything. “Too bad, Lexie. I’ll scare every single one of those fucking entitled boys off. You’re going to sit alone in your house on prom night, crying into your designer sheets like a baby. And I’m going to enjoy it.” 

The only sign that she hears me at all is the quickening rise and fall of her shoulders. Even that tiny display that I’ve upset her is agonizing, floods me with self-loathing, but I can never stop. She ripped out my fucking heart, and I can’t deal with the consequences of that alone. I can’t let her go. I’ll never let her go. This toxic feeling is the only thing left between us. My hands shake with the urge to take her in my arms, to stop the trembling I caused. To protect her from everything. Even myself. I’d love to move my fingers up into the silky, brown hair that reaches the middle of her graceful neck. I don’t have a lot of money; most of the cash I earn as a handyman goes to food and fixing my dad’s cabin, but I’d give every last cent for her to turn and lock those soft brown eyes on me, just one last time. Sometimes when I jerk off, all it takes is fantasizing about Lexie looking at me, giving me one of those shy smiles, and I lose it. One stroke. Maybe two. Done. I can’t breathe without having her close. And I can’t breathe with her close. It’s a strange condition, this obsession, but she’s an addiction that I just can’t give up. 

How could I? She’s intelligent, strong, and so damned gorgeous. Once upon a time, I thought she had a good heart too. But that was before she broke my pathetic heart only because I’m poor. I’ve been hurting since then, and I need her to hurt too. To know what it feels.

“Do you actually think that dumb rich boy would be a good choice for your first time, Lexie?” I grip my desk so tight it nearly breaks down, just thinking about her being kissed –touched by someone else. “At least that’s one thing us poor motherfuckers have going for us. We know how to fuck. If you went out with Rys for a while, you’d eventually give in and come slumming it one night, wouldn’t you? Knock on my rundown cabin door, begging me to fuck you as we both know you’d like.”

A pretty blush is starting to climb her neck. I have to take a deep breath to keep from kiss her pink cheeks. But I think if I got to touch her skin, my wall of bullshit would crumble. I’ve only fucked one girl. Since seeing Lexie for the first time freshman year, there’s been no one but her. I want no one else. She owns my cock as sure as she owns my heart. How easily she’s forgotten about both leaving me in agony. 

“Stop,” she breathes. I freeze. Did she just speak to me? It’s the first time in two years that she’s even remotely acknowledged my existence. 

“Lexie,” I managed to say. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. That’s all it took. One pleading word out of her mouth, and I’m done. 

“Just stop,” she says again, turning her head slightly. “Please.” 

I fall back in my chair, my heart thundering on my chest. If we weren’t in the middle of class, if I didn’t feel like a monster, I would pull her into my arms right now. I’d hug her until she stopped struggling, then beg her to hit me, bruise me, make me pay for every shitty thing I’ve ever said to her. But before long, the class is over, and she’s leaving the classroom to get out of here. To put distance between us as quickly as possible—and I have no choice but to watch her because I feel physically ill. Still, I manage to get out into the student-packed hallway, my plan to apologize for being crude and a jerk and torturing her for so long. 

My head is telling me not to apologize, though. It’s telling me she deserved it for being such a snob, for breaking me, for valuing money and status like everyone else. My damned heart is telling an entirely different story. It’s insisting there is an explanation for her behavior. Am I going to apologize or not? The decision is taken out of my hands when Lexie opens her locker, and the little gift I left before class falls down. It’s a picture I cut out from our last yearbook. In the photo is a gorgeous smiling Lexie above the caption Most Likely to Succeed. Except I’ve crossed out the caption and added my own. Most Likely to Be a Trophy Wife. Watching her read it, I almost get sick right there in the hallway. Usually, she’s perfectly composed, not betraying a trace of emotion where I’m concerned—a real Ice queen. I’ve always thought she honestly didn’t care. Today, though… she’s not pulling it off. Something is not okay with her, and I don’t like it. She has to bite down on her bottom lip to stop it from quivering as she puts the photo back into her locker, out of sight, her bright eyes finding me briefly, massacring me where I stand. Betraying with one single look how much she has been affected by my actions. Christ. She hasn’t been indifferent at all.

Before I can react, before I can call her name, she’s gone, vanished into the crowd of wild students excited to be leaving for the day. And I know what I have to do. I have to see her. To apologize. To get an explanation for everything. Tonight. I’ll return to her house for the first time in two years.

LEXIE

I’ve known this was coming all day. Sitting on the couch in my living room, trying to make myself as small as possible, I watch my father pace. He rants, gesticulating noisily. This isn’t new, my father’s rage threatening me. But it’s going to be worse than usual. Business has declined for him and it’s put his temper on a trigger. Dad’s new wife, Nancy, hates to be on a budget, and she’s been spending his money like crazy all over Paris --where she’s now. When dad gets home from the office, he’s rarely in anything but a horrible mood. A tornado eating up everything in its path. Completely terrifying. At least dad’s temper makes me forget what Drake told me today, the ugly words he said to me, the boiling anger in his eyes when he looks at me. 

“Are you even listening?” The slap across the face comes as a shock because I’d momentarily disappeared into my thoughts, but the sting quickly brings me back to reality. 

“Yes, sir,” I say, my ears ringing. “I’m listening.” 

“This C on your algebra test is going to drag your whole average down.” He’s waving the test in my face. “What a disappointment you are, Alexis. Your teacher shared my disgust.” I nod solemnly, but I’m listening for the rain outside. “I guess you’re your daughter’s mother after all. A poor Mexican girl who could barely count.” It’s not true. My mom learned English and Greek by herself, and she was a great Spanish teacher in Portavira, but my father would rather die than acknowledge how smart she was. 

“Don’t talk like that about her,” I retort.

My father snorts. “I beg your pardon?” He takes a step towards me, and I can see the threat in his eyes. 

“I’m sorry.” I hate to be such a coward, but I know what he can do to me.” I’ll do extra credit. Something to bring my grade back up to an A.” I wet my lips. “Even if I can’t manage to raise the grade, it’s not going to show up on the college transcripts I sent off with my applications.” That’s the reason I let my focus slip a little in algebra. The finish line is in sight for everyone, and we’re just waiting to find out where we’ll be accepted for college. It’s a wonder I’ve been able to maintain my focus this long in any class, considering Walker sits behind me in every period, brooding making me feel … something. At the reminder of him, I want to close my eyes and dream about him. I replay that night in my garden when he kissed me two years ago, so tenderly and passionately, when he spoke to me so sweetly and honestly before he became the second villain in my story. Someone I dread, as much as I crave the sight of him.  

At least that’s one thing us poor motherfuckers have going for us. We know how to fuck. If you went out with that punk for a while, you’d eventually give in and come slumming it one night, wouldn’t you? Knock on my trailer door, begging me to ride you right. 

Should I be ashamed of the way my body reacted to those words? I grew uncomfortably damp in the hard plastic chair, the center of my body clenching, seeming to beat like a heart. His breath on my neck made me shiver, head to toe. Even the way he scared off Liam Rys did something to me. Aroused me. Deeply. It got so bad that I broke the rules and asked him to stop. I can still hear him saying my name in that tortured way after. That shocked, uneven sound. Lexie. And whether I’m ashamed of myself for it or not, I know I’ll think of it when I touch myself tonight. His voice, his hands, his eyes obsess me. 

“College?” My father snorts, tearing the test in half. “You’re not going to college.” 

This grabs my attention. A horrible feeling is making me cold. “I’m…what? What do you mean? I applied to nine different schools. I have a four-point five GPA.” 

For the first time, I notice his red face is about more than just rage. There’s…humiliation. I’ve never seen him display that emotion. 

“None of the American colleges that accepted you offered scholarships.” 

“I’ve been accepted?” I gasp, sitting forward, heart pounding in my chest. “Where? I didn’t see the letters—” 

“All the mail in this house goes through me, Alexis. I read them. And you failed to get academic scholarships. You failed. Not that I’m surprised.”

 I don’t point out that his refusal to let me participate in any extracurricular activities is more than likely to blame for that. I’m too worried about what he’s saying, what this means. The blood is draining from my head, making the room spin around me. 

“Okay, I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry. But…we have money. We can pay tuition, can’t we? Or colleges in Cordonia are almost for free. I can go to any of them; I don’t have to go to NYU.” I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here. This is my way out. College is the escape route. I counted on going back to New York, but I can stay here and go to college in Cordonia City. 

“Listen to you, so quick to spend my hard-earned money—spoiled brat. And of course, you can’t go to college in Cordonia. What for? To end up being a schoolteacher like your mom? A housewife as Nancy?” He laughs bitterly. “No, you’ll stay here, and I’ll help you find someone suitable to marry.” 

I shake my head. “There’s financial aid, then. Loans or I can get a job and go to college in Portavira…” 

“You want to leave, just like her, don’t you? You’re all the same.”

 I don’t even flinch when he yanks me to my feet, shoving me into the wall. In fact, for the first time, I took him right into his eyes. And I can see the violence burning on them has nothing to do with me. It never had anything to do with how I behave, my choices, how hard I worked in school. How welcome I made Nancy feel or cooked a roast. It’s about him and his self-loathing. It’s his sickness. Not mine. I can also see that he was never going to send me to college. Because he wouldn’t be able to control me from a distance or stop me from sharing what I’ve been subjected to since my mother died. Not like he does now. He wasn’t physically abusive all the time. Especially not when his new wife is around. But she traveled often, and then he’d push me. Shove me. Slapped me several times. I’ll graduate at the top of my class for nothing. He knew I would all along. 

That’s when I realize I’m free. I don’t have money, but college is free in Cordonia. I can work, save a little and go to college in one or two years. I’ll be a writer; it’ll just take more time than I thought. “Go to hell,” I whisper. 

He steps back, giving me the momentary satisfaction of his shock. “What did you say?”

Liberated, I scream it this time. “Go to hell!” From the moment I sat down to have this conversation, I knew tonight would be worse than usual, but I’ve just bought myself a ticket to hell. Usually, I can retreat to the untouchable place inside of me as he unleashes his rage, but not tonight. He doesn’t stop at one or two slaps. He punches and kicks, and I’m present for every punch and kick. Every yelled insult. Finally, I start to get scared. I’m crawling across the carpet on my hands and knees, searching for a weapon I can use in my defense when I glance out the window and see Drake staring back at me, his face a mask of horror.

 Drake

 What I’m seeing just isn’t possible. It can’t be real. My head won’t accept it. Not until her terror-filled eyes meet mine through the window and the truth pounds on my chest, leaves no doubt that this is real life. Lexie’s father is beating her. Her mouth is bloody, one of her eyes beginning to swell, arms and legs visibly weakened. I can barely fucking process it before my body is springing into action, desperate to protect her. To put a stop to the worst thing I have ever seen. What the fuck. Scorching hot rage takes over. I kick in the front door and throw myself between Lexie and her father. His fist is raised, but it pauses when he sees me, his momentary confusion giving me the time I need to knock him out cold. It only takes one right uppercut from someone his own size, and he goes down, his blank, glassy eyes staring at nothing, mouth opened. It’s not satisfying enough.

Nothing will ever be satisfying enough. I want to kill him, destroy him, but my Lexie is struggling for breath behind me, and she’s all I can think about. Turning, I approach her, my heart threatening to jump off my chest. As gently as I can, I catalog all of the cuts and purpling skin. No. No. Who could do this to her? Who could lay a finger on her in anything but reverence? Get her out of here. Calling her name, I reach down to pick her up, but she flinches and hurries back, bringing her body up against the wall. 

“Don’t touch me!” Those words filled with fear rip the soul clean out of my body. My hands drop limply to my sides and two years come rushing back, hitting me in the chest like a hammer. Every word, every action. Everything I did to make her life harder when this is what she’s been dealing with at home? Fuck me. 

“Lexie…” My voice is as kind as I can. I feel broken. “I’m sorry. I came here to apologize. For everything.” 

She puffs a humorless laugh, testing her cut lip with the tip of her tongue. “Bet you weren’t expecting to see this.” 

“If I knew this was happening, I would have been here a long time ago. I would have stopped it. I swear Lex.” 

Her expression can only be described as stunned. Maybe even a little pissed. “You are not my savior, Drake. You are my enemy. You’ve been for two years, and I want nothing else from you now.”

 “I am not your enemy.” Those words barely make it out of me, my chest hurts so fucking bad. “Don’t say that.” 

Unsteadily, she uses the wall to try and stand. I try to help her, but she recoils, and it’s a dagger straight into the center of my throat. Nothing less than I deserve, though, isn’t it? Her distrust of me is entirely my fault. I’ve made her hate me. There has to be some way to fix what I’ve done. Please God, let there be away. But right now, my main concern is her physical safety. Knowing she’s been in danger all along is unbearable. I only decided to come here tonight a few hours ago. What if I didn’t? What if I arrived an hour later? The possibilities are going to haunt me for the rest of my life. From the floor, her father groans, shifting slightly. 

“We need to get you out of here,” I say, anxious to get her free of this place. “Now, Lexie. I need to get you somewhere safe.” 

She’s standing now. Leaning against the wall and cradling one arm to her stomach, regarding me warily. “How do I know I’m safe with you?” It’s so much worse that her question is honest. Not meant to hurt me. She honestly doesn’t know if I pose a threat. It guts me where I stand. 

“You are the safest with me,” I say thickly, cursing myself. Wanting to erase the last two years so badly, my hands shake. “Please believe me. I’d die before hurting you. I’d never, Lexie. I’d never do something like that.” 

Her father rolls over onto his back and slurs a few words before losing consciousness again. Still, the sound of the older man’s voice seems to scare Lexie, “I…maybe you can just give me a ride to…a motel maybe?” She pushes off the wall, her step uneven as she walks toward the stairs. “I need some things from my room.” 

It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her we don’t have time, but I’m just grateful she’s trusting me enough to leave with me, so I don’t argue. I just wait until she’s halfway up the stairs, then tie her father’s hands behind his back with my belt in case he wakes up before we leave. I have no problem knocking him out a second time, but Lexie has seen enough violence for one night. Cautiously, I walk up the stairs toward the light coming from a room halfway down the hall. This place is a far cry from my home. It’s elegant and clean, and tasteful, but it lacks any warmth whatsoever. It’s cold, like a museum. Turning the corner into Lexie’s room, it’s time to hate myself all over again. There is nothing on the walls, none of the expensive furnishings. Just four white walls, a bed, and a dresser that doubles as a desk. Several textbooks. She looks back at me over her shoulder as if judging my reaction, and I keep my features impassive, though I’m dying on the inside. 

“What can I do?” I ask. 

“How long do we have?” 

“As long as you need.” It’s physically painful not to pull her into my arms when I’m standing this close, and she’s hurt. Sad. Yet full of more inner strength than I’ve ever witnessed in another human being. I’m lucky just to be in her presence. I fucked up royally. And if she allows me back in, I’ll never do it again. It’s probably, definitely, too much to hope for. Being allowed back in. She doesn’t even look sure about having me in her room. Let alone her heart. I was trying to protect my own heart, but I lost it instead. 

 “Um…” She closes her eyes to focus, a familiar trait I’ve seen in class countless times. “There is a black bag in the hallway closet. Can you just stuff anything into it from the bathroom that looks useful?” 

Ask me to bring you a unicorn. I’ll find a way to do it. “Sure.” We work in silence, Lexie taking things out of drawers and adding them to the bag, which I’ve left open on the floor. I add toiletries from the bathroom, and once it’s zipped, I wait, watching her hesitate in the doorway. 

“Lexie?” Conflicted chocolate eyes meet mine. 

“I can’t just leave, can I?” 

“You’re not safe here, baby,” I say softly, trying to keep the residual rage at bay because it’s the last thing she needs. Not to mention she’s had her fill with negativity from me. No more. “How long…how long?” 

She shrugs, the saddest expression in her eyes. “My mom died five years ago. Ever since then, it’s gotten worse and worse. Although I never had a chance to talk to anyone about what happened behind closed doors, you know? I don’t think a person can evolve into a monster. It’s inside him.”

 “I don’t know,” I say. “I became one, didn’t I?” 

That gives her pause, forms a line between her delicate brows. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.” 

She starts to walk past me, stops, standing close enough to fill my nose with cherry. “He told me if I ever spoke to you ever again, he would hurt me. Ruin you, have you evicted. Make sure you never got hired again. I didn’t mean to…hurt you. Or hurt your feelings, if that’s what happened.” 

That revelation destroys me, sets me on fire. “Jesus, Lexie. You were protecting me? And I…I tortured you for it?” I twist the neck of my T-shirt, trying to calm down, but it doesn’t work. I’ll never be calm again “I’m so fucking sorry.” 

She glances at the doorway, then back at me, eyes closed again in that way that says she’s thinking. “All I want from you now is a ride out of here, okay? And on Monday morning, you’ll stop.” She opens her shining eyes again. “No more bullying, Drake. If you’re really sorry, you’ll do that for me.” 

Fuck. I couldn’t say one more single shitty thing to her if my life depended on it. Put me at gunpoint, and I’d rather get shot at than torture this girl for one more second. But I’m highly, painfully aware that with an end to the bullying comes an end to the possessiveness. No more scaring off guys who show interest in her. No more getting close enough in class to count the hairs on her head, to smell her sweet fragrance. And to tell the truth, I’m pretty fucking worried I don’t know how to give those things up completely. I don’t think I can physically do it. This addiction with Lexie isn’t something I can cut off. A leg would be easier to sever. But my hesitation is causing her eyes to worry. If I don’t agree to, essentially, let her go… she’s not going anywhere with me. And that means her safety won’t be guaranteed. I need it to be. More than anything. 

“No more bullying,” I say, finally. A moment later, I follow her out of the room and down the stairs, trying desperately to count the hairs on her head before I no longer have the chance.

[carriagelamp]

I read more books this month than I anticipated. I should probably wait before doing a February book round up, but I already feel like I’m struggling to decide which ones to cut from my list so I’m doing it this weekend instead of next. If I read much next week I’ll bump ‘em up into March’s round up

Asterix and the Missing Scroll / Chieftain’s Daughter

I got the last two “new” Asterix books out of the library so I could officially say I had read them all. Over all my opinion is… they’re fine! None of these would ever become one of my favourites, but they’re all fine stories. The art is good, it is completely in-line with the original, and the stories are… fine. I liked The Missing Scroll quite a bit more than The Chieftain’s Daughter but I never find a ~hurr hurr teenagers~ plotline that interesting, whereas I do enjoy seeing Romans get chased down by unicorns so that’s probably not surprising. There’s some spark I can’t put my finger on that the new Asterix books just seem to be missing though… a bit of humour or cleverness or something. Still, they’re fine reads if you’ve been hungry for more Asterix and I’m glad I read them. (Though the library gave me the American translation of The Chieftain’s Daughter, something I didn’t realize until I started reading and realized that this is wrong??? I’ve been reading these books since I could read and I know this is wrong??? What the hell is happening??? The I realized the publisher was different and I simmered in fury the whole time I read it — WHY ARE YOU CHANGING NAMES AND WORD CHOICES IN A WELL ESTABLISHED SERIES THAT ALREADY HAS AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION YOU ANIMALS WHY ARE YOU DUMBING DOWN THE LANGUAGE AAAUGH

The Bride Was A Boy

This one was cute! The Bride Was A Boy is an autobiographical manga written by a transwoman recounting her experience with transitioning, meeting her boyfriend, and eventually getting married. It’s mostly done in a 4-panel style and is interspersed with lots of information about the LGBT community, particularly in Japan. A lot of it was stuff I was already familiar with, but I still found it adorable and a very worthwhile read. it would be a fantastic book for young queer people who are looking for more of an introduction into international queer space

Cul de Sac: Children At Play

Cul de Sac is just a weird, fun newspaper comic series about the children who live in a small neighbourhood. It fully taps into the children-as-semi-feral-chaos-agents, and there’s something hilariously nostalgic about the whole thing. Lots of times when stories try to portray children there’s always something… wrong about it, something that doesn’t mesh with true childhood, but in this comic I can see glimpses of my grimy, dirty-covered self as a preschooler running around the pages. I would definitely recommend trying them!

The Cremation of Sam McGee

I reread The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan McGrew and man, they don’t stop being buckwild. These are two really famous Canadian poems that were then illustrated by equally famous Canadian artist Ted Harrison. Harrison’s style is gorgeous and distinct and given what strangely grisly stories these poems are they fit the mood perfectly. Everything feels just a little tilted and wrong and unsettling. If you enjoy an occasional poem (especially ones that are super fun to read out loud) and haven’t read these before, I would recommend them! Or do what my teachers did, and read Sam Gee to a young child in your life and watch them be baffled and concerned and horrified.

There are strange things done / in the midnight sun / by the men who moil for gold...

The Gryphon’s Lair

The second book of the Royal Guide to Monster Slaying series written by Kelley Armstrong; I’ve been eagerly awaiting this book! It’s a very cool fantasy series because it really leans into environmental stewardship and the importance of studying animals and conservation so you can find ways to live alongside a healthy ecosystem. In this book Rowan is officially accepted as the Royal Monster Hunter, which means a whole new set of trials and burdens. She has to contend with a baby gryphon that is becoming increasingly large and dangerous, plotting family members, doubt about her abilities, a potential curse, and a daunting quest deep into the mountains in order to set things right. If you’re looking for some very gentle high fantasy, this series delivers.

Hogan’s Heroes comics

What to say here. Anyone following this blog has suffered the knowledge that I’ve been rewatching Hogan’s Heroes lately. When I found out that there was a short-lived, shitty comic series in the 60s? Of course I had to hunt them down. And so I’ve read them! And they sure were a shitty comic series from the 60s! They were, shall we say, of wildly varying quality. Some were actually really funny (like #5, it easily had the best art and best jokes imho), others were a slog, and most were fine and amusing enough to read the whole way through but not much more.

If you don’t know what Hogan’s Heroes is about: it was a 1960s sitcom that took place in a WWII POW camp, in which the Allied prisoners trapped there had a massive, complex sabotage/spy ring right underneath the camp. The whole show is about constantly outwitting the bumbling Germans while keeping up the pretense that they’re all just normal prisoners. The show is hilariously funny and I would recommend that, even if I can’t say the same for the comics unless you’re like me and are just really thirsty for more content...

Magic Misfits: The Fourth Suit (Ripley)

The final book of Neil Patrick Harris’ middle grade series, The Magic Misfits. In this fourth book, the group is fragmented and forced to meet in secret to avoid notice from the mysterious and powerful Kalagan whose cruel machinations have already turned the quiet little town on its ears, putting people’s lives in peril and destroy Leila’s fathers’ magic shop. The Misfits are going to need all their skills to finally unmask this sinister magician and break the mesmerism he seems to have placed over the entire town before it’s too late to save no only the town, but their friendship and trust.

Super charming series, and the illustrations are gorgeous.

Marsupilami

HOUBA! I watched a very bad TV adaptation of this as a kid that still managed to find a place in my heart, and so I decided to finally try reading some of the original comic! On one hand: it was exactly what I had hoped! The art is cute, the marsupilami is so dynamic and fun to see on the page (and has a way better characterization than he does in the show), and it’s really funny! Unfortunately! It is also pretty racist! Yikes! That seems to be a reoccuring downfall for some of these older Belgian comics... I also tried reading the first book of Les Tuniques Bleues and aye ye ye… I couldn’t actually get through that one. That being said, these were older volumes and frankly, North American media was also real fucking racist at that point so I’m not gonna write them off either. I really liked most of this book, and will probably try to get my hands on one of the more recent volumes of both Marsupilami and Les Tuniques Bleues to see if they get better with time. (If you’ve read either of those series and have volume recommendations hmu)

The Pagemaster

I’m a sucker for novelizations, I have no excuse beyond that. I recently rewatched The Pagemaster and decided to read the chapter book. And it was a solid little adaptation! It’s about Richard Tyler, a young boy with a head for statistics which unfortunately means he lives in constant fear of (in his opinion, statistically likely) injury or death. However that fear is put to the test when he gets caught in a horrible thunderstorm and has to shelter in a nearby library with halls and shelves that stretch beyond the imagination and with untold perils hidden among the pages of the books. Richard, with only his library card and three novels that hope to be checked out, has to venture through the different genres and horrors housed int he library if he ever wants to find the exit and get home to safety.

Pumpkinheads

A very charming little graphic novel. Cute art, and really loveable characters. Josiah and Deja work every year at a local pumpkin patch, and are best friends during those weeks. However this is their last year working there before going off to university and as the last day at the patch comes to a close they realize that they both still have regrets. Deja sets off on a mission to avoid work, eat all the interesting snacks around the patch, and get Josiah to find the girl he’s been crushing on every year and has never worked up the nerve to talk to.

After being deprived of human contact for almost a year, this book really hits you right in the heart.

The Screwfly Solution

A deeply upsetting scifi/horror short story! I read it on the recommendation of a friend and, yes, can confirm that this fucked me up a bit. I honestly don’t even know what to say about this that wouldn’t spoil it, but frankly with everything being as it is, this hit a little bit too close to reality. (That being said, it was very well written, like this is a very good story on a literary level and it does exactly what it sets out to accomplish.) If you feel like reading twenty pages and being really disturbed, give it a go! Otherwise go and read any number of the much happier books on this list!

The Whipping Boy

This was a book I remember reading as a lit circle book back in elementary school and really loving. After telling myself I’d reread it for years, I finally sat down with it again. If you somehow got through school without reading this one, it’s about a brat of a prince and his whipping boy — since it would be unspeakable to strike a prince, when the prince misbehaves it is Jemmy who gets whipped. Unsurprisingly, there is no love lost between the two of them, because the prince is always intentionally causing problems that Jemmy has to suffer for. Things begin to change though when the prince decides to run away and drags Jemmy along with him. On the run, being chased by highwaymen, and desperately trying to hide their identities, these boys go on a fast-paced adventure beyond the castle walls. It wasn’t as special as I remembered it being as a kid, but it’s a fine little chapter book.

[qvid-pro-qvo]

we meet now and then on a winter’s day (and i am all the better for it)

rafael barba x female!reader. 

word count: 13,187 (forgive me for either writing less than a thousand words or over 10k. one day i’ll learn moderation.)

rating: teen, for growing pains, and learning to love home no matter where you are (canon-typical mentions of sexual abuse/sex crimes). 

link to it on AO3. 

-

You’re too clumsy for your own good. 

Your limbs are gangly, your feet are too big, and every step feels like a struggle to stay upright.  It’s the worst of times, tenth grade.

And high schoolers are brutal, and you get a feeling it’s extra so in New York.  They don’t take no for an answer, they laugh in your face and spit on you (figuratively… sometimes). Girls trip you in their stunning shoes that your feet could never fit in, poke at your knobby knees, and boys don’t even bother with you.

You’re new, and a loner, and can’t keep your books in your hands, and it all seems to combine into an ugly cocktail, one that makes you lash out. Other loners usually have one thing wrong with them. You have two left feet and a name no one knows. Easy target.

So you don’t see the three boys in front of you, walking home, because your head is ducked and your knees ache from the way you fell in the middle of the damn hallway. And one of them for sure doesn’t see you. He’s walking backwards, his mouth running, but you don’t hear anything either, not what he’s saying, not his friends who try to warn him in attempts of Spanish and English. 

You feel the collision, though. It’s not violent, but the girth of his bookbag into your chest knocks you backwards onto your ass. You cry out in pain, one of your ankles catching underneath you, and it feels like something twists, hard enough to hurt. 

Well. It wasn’t as if you were having such a good day before.

“Jesus fuck,” you hiss, and when you look up, a boy is leaning over you. His green eyes are startling, and you think he’s apologizing, but your eyes have to blink away some reflexive tears to really see the way his lips are moving. You’re still dazed, but you realize that it’s three of them, leaning over you, and you don’t like the way they’re staring.

“That’s what you get for running your mouth, Barba,” a boy teases, reaching forward to punch the kid directly above you in the shoulder. He takes it, but he’s still focused on you, those eyes not giving you a break. It makes your face redden, and you dip your chin, clench your jaw.

“Shut it, Eddie,” he says quickly, and it takes you a moment to recognize the words. You just manage a tight smile and groan as you shift off of your ankle. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” you tell him. He nods at that, but he still doesn’t really take a step back. Just pulls up from his crouched position. “Really, just. Uh. Sorry, I guess.”

“You don’t have to give him an excuse,” the third boy informs her. “Hey, Rafi, give her some space, you don’t have to keep her on the ground.”

With that he pulls back, and you get a good look at them. The three of them are in uniform. You recognize the colors, your block a healthy mix of that particular school’s students and the P.S. you attended. The two behind the one who ran into you – what was it, Rafi? – have their ties undone, shirts untucked. The boy in front of you has his uniform perfect, however, and you watch as he lifts his hand to run through the front of his hair. He looks a little older, almost adult, and your limbs feel like the legs of a fawn, a jumbled heap. You know you look disheveled, in comparison, making you drop your eyes before you push yourself up.

“Can you stand?” he asks.

“Yes, I’m fine,” you bite out, and the day comes back to you in a wave, one that makes your eyes began to water. “Just. Leave me be, all right?”

“And leave you on the ground?” He scoffs like the implication itself is an offense. It’s as if he doesn’t recognize the scowl on your face as being directed towards him. “Come on, take my hand.”

He reaches out to you. His hand is almost shoved in your face, and you pull back for a moment before looking at the group of them.

They don’t seem… mean. Just… boys. Your mother’s voice sings in your head, reminding you that asking for help isn’t a weakness, just a fact of life. And while you wish that wasn’t true, the fact of life was also you were in a lot of pain.

With a sigh, you settle on reaching out and taking it, and when he starts to help pull you up the other two assist. You tried to ignore the prickle of your eyes, closing them as you were lifted from the ground.

However, your ankle gives out as soon as you put weight on it. You make it to your full height for a moment, before suddenly you’re falling forward again.

But they catch you. Rafi does, really, and the other boys help get you to standing. You ignore the look that the two of them give you, eye rolls and shared smirks.

“That ankle’s not going to take you home,” the Barba kid tells you. You glance down at it, wincing at the swelling, and he turns to his friends. “Let’s walk her.”

“Oh, no, did you break it?” Eddie asks, horrified, but that earns him a smack on the back of the head from the third friend.

“Que eres estúpido? Shut up, Eddie, it’s twisted at the worst.”

A snort left you. You can’t get a word in edgewise, the way they start clambering over each other, arguing, but you raise your voice, make yourself heard. “I’m just… hey, I’m just down the street, I can manage. You guys seem like you need to go somewhere.”

“Well, if you’re just down the street then it’s not a problem.” Rafi’s voice is matter of fact, and with a grin he reaches for your arm. “Alejandro, get the other side.”

“Rafi, no offense, but, uh, let Eddie handle that. You and me together will make her even more lopsided.” Alejandro has a grin, bright at the not-so-subtle dig.

“Eres el peor,” the boy mutters, and with a roll of his eyes, he pulls back, hands lifting in surrender.

Eddie and Alejandro laugh, and so do you, a little chuckle, more for the tone than the actual words. Their banter makes you forget your shitty day, focusing on the group of three as they tussle for a place at your side.

“Where do you live?” Rafi asks, and you point down the street.

“I’m the… fourth building on the right?” you guess, wincing as your foot dragged along the ground. “Fucking, fucking shit, lift it, lift.”

“You’re not exactly helping,” Eddie shoots at you, and your eyes roll, the urge to yank away overruled by common sense.

“I’m trying. Look, you can just leave me alone. It’s not broken, and I’ll make it,” you point out, but all that earns is a scoff from Rafi Barba, an eye roll as he turns to face the three of you as you hobble along.

“Not happening. Look, we’re almost there. Then we’ll leave you be, and you can tell your family how you were rescued by los tres mosqueteros de Jerome Avenue.” His eyes are alight with a kind of mischief, and Alejandro snorts next to him.

“Does it count if one of ‘em is the problem?”

You chat the rest of the way. They bombard each other with questions, and a couple to you, most of which you can’t manage to answer as they tease each other and poke and prod. A couple of times you stumble, but they’re there, keeping you upright, and Rafi makes sure that you don’t fall face first onto concrete. He walks backwards, then forwards, then backwards again, always making sure that you can hear him as he talks about whatever crosses the mind of the three.

It seems like a lifetime, but no longer than a minute or two. You walk, forward, forward, forward, and then you’re up against your building, leaning against it after forcing Eddie and Alejandro to let you go.

“I’ve just gotta buzz my mom,” you tell them. “Trust me, you’re free to go, I can make it.”

“Not likely,” Rafi’s incredulous at the suggestion, but you just roll your eyes. “You can barely stand up straight.”

He’s firmly planted. Eddie and Alejandro look more ready to skedaddle, bouncing on their toes as the cold hits them. Rafi is just staring, and you find yourself meeting his gaze, lifting your chin. “Look, I know you feel obligated, but I don’t make a habit of showing strangers my exact address –“

“And I would contend we’re not strangers. Acquaintances at the very least, maybe even friends. We know each other’s names; we’ve been quite friendly.”  

“Oh, yeah? You know my name?”

The silence is deafening. That wins it. Because Rafi Barba, in all of his urgency, in all of their chatting, never once asked. None of them did. Which doesn’t hurt your feelings. It’s easy to pull away from people you don’t know, and you’d rather just make it up the rickety elevators in peace. Crawl into your bed and die from mortification and exhaustion.

You asked for help. Now the help was over.

“Look, you did your good deed for the day, I made it home,” you counter, “now please, can I get there on my own?”

Just then, the door opens. Your mom comes out, sees your swollen ankle, and that should be their cue.

“Oh, sweetie,” she hummed. “No more dancing for a while, huh?”

“Dancing?” Rafi asks, and he looks between you and your mother with curiosity. 

“Nope, nothing,” you scramble to say. Those moments weren’t for anyone else, just the two of you. “Anyways, thanks so much, but I should really be getting upstairs, and… sleeping. Yes, sleeping. Okay, thanks again, bye!”

You turn to hobble away, hoping your mother will say goodbye and follow you. But instead, she just smiles at the boys and looks at each of them in turn, looking over their uniforms and identical grins, Eddie and Alex lingering back behind the real culprit.

“Thank you so much for bringing my girl home,” she tells them. Her smile is bright, almost incandescent. She has that way about her, your mother, the kind of face that everyone loves, the kind of laugh that everyone is drawn to. You wish you’d inherited that, instead of gangly limbs from a man you barely knew. “She always walks home alone, and it worries me every time.”

“Mom, they were nice and all, but they probably have lives,” you sigh out, and Eddie and Alex seem to agree. They already seem to be creeping away, but Rafi is stubbornly still. “Let them get home, get out of the cold.”

“Oh, all right, all right.” She reaches for you, wraps your arm around her shoulders, and you wince as it scrapes the floor again. “Thank you, boys.”

“We should get home, Barba,” Eddie calls out. “Tus padres estarán esperando, vamanos.”

Something passes across Rafi’s face. It’s quick, and dark, but it’s there, and he nods, his jaw clenching.

“Thank you,” you say again, and it’s a little more heartfelt, genuine. You even smile, a little, an effort to wash that sour look from his face. But you’re turning away, too, when you suddenly hear Rafi Barba call out to you.

“Your name?” he asks. “Just so I know what to yell next time we almost collide.”

“If he’s facing forward,” Eddie mutters to Alejandro, who you can hear snort and shove his toe against the sidewalk.

Your eyes roll, and you look over your shoulder at the boy. He waits, patiently, for the answer, even as Eddie and Alex start moseying down the sidewalk, and his smile is more a smirk, proud of himself when you give it to him, first and last.

He repeats it, gesturing to you and making sure he gets it right. And then he points to himself, his lips quirking again. “Rafael Barba.” He reaches for your hand, and when you hesitate, he raises a brow. Those eyes pierce you. “Not friends. But. Acquaintances?”

“Cute,” you retort, but you’re reaching to shake his hand without thinking about it, gloved hands warm in each other’s grip. “Deal.”

You don’t remember why the day was shitty anymore. Just that your ankle hurts, and you now know that his full name is Rafael.

-

College is complicated. College is sitting and studying in your dorm room and then sitting and studying someplace else. College is hitting your head as you wake up because you have the top bunk. College is crying with frustration over chemistry.

But college is also realizing you really like what the psych professor talks about. College is finally making some real friends, and mellowing out because of it. Your lashing out fades as your anger does, the realization that people can be kind. College is getting a job and not minding that either, because you don’t mind serving others coffee if you get it for free.

So you end up liking Hudson, overall. It’s nice. College, the feel, the people, they’re nice. And you’re close enough to home that you and your mom end up still having a little bit of a dance party every so often. New York isn’t too much of a home, it never will be, but Hudson and your friends and your mom are, and it’s… it’s good, for once.

The holidays approach. Your first real break is coming up, but so are finals, and so your eyes are forcing significant figures back into your brain as you walk to your mom’s place. You had promised her you’d take a break to have dinner, but as your eyes cross with the rules you’re realizing it’s becoming less and less likely that you’ll be able to stop and talk much at all.

Your feet start tangling. You’ve gotten better at walking (only took you nineteen years to really master it), but you’re distracted and frustrated, and it’s not long before you’re tumbling forward, knees scraping the pavement, elbow smacking against the ground. You’re lucky the fall is buffered by your heavy winter gear, but your arm goes numb anyway as you nail your funny bone. Your notes go flying, your knowledge of significant figures scattering across the walkway.

“Fucking shit,” you hiss, holding your arm against your body. It’s not broken, but it hurts like a bitch, and you start crawling over towards where your notes fell to start gathering them up when a pair of gloved hands join your sole functioning one.

“Thank you so much,” you start saying, not really looking up in case the bitter winter wind takes away your notes before you can reach them. “I’m so sorry you had to see that, I just wasn’t watching my feet.”

“It’s really okay. Are you all right?” a voice asks you, and when you look up to see the kind of stranger who would help a poor student out on the street, you’re assaulted by startling green eyes.

Suddenly a memory comes back to you, of a wintry street and an ankle that twinges now in remembrance. You don’t know why you remember, but it’s there, three years past suddenly right in your rearview.

“Are you all right?” he asks you, and you realize you’ve just been staring at him. But a name is struggling to come to the surface, and you blink a few times, still captured by those damn eyes.

“Uh,” you get out. Y’know. Intelligently. He just raises a brow.

“Do you… have these?” he tries, and you realize he’s been holding onto a stack of notes that he collected, holding them out to you.

It hits you, then, and you reach for the notes with such ferocity that he immediately drops his hand when you snag them. You remember.

“Rafael Barba,” you breathe out, blinking a bit.

A beat. “How do you know my name?” the stranger asks. But this guy isn’t exactly a stranger, and of course, he’s now seen you fall to the ground twice in one lifetime. Too many times, if the lifetime is asking you, but it’s not, and it’s still far from over.

You pull back, with your notes, absently trying to get them all right-side up. You’re seeing all of him now, kneeling on the ground, face red with the wind, and it’s definitely him. The slicked back hair, and he’s even wearing a sweater over a button up. Very Catholic school.

But all he knows is that a strange girl has been staring at him, openly, and just blurted his name out of nowhere. You scramble to explain yourself. “Sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, just – I – we’ve met,” you stammer out. “Briefly. We’re… acquaintances. I don’t even know how I remember, but you… you might remember my ankle better than me.”

You see him thinking. From furrowed with concern to suspicion. And then recognition, and he’s smirking and shaking his head, glancing around where the two of you are basically sitting on the concrete. He says your name, slowly, like he did that first time too long ago. “I was just thinking about how little things have changed,” he chuckles, and you smirk, shrugging. “Seems like I was right in more ways than one.”

“Well, I don’t think clumsiness goes away,” you admit, “and this time it wasn’t your fault, so you don’t have to walk me to my apartment if you don’t want to.”  

He laughs. It’s short, but bright, and you smile, cutting it with a wince as you slide the backpack on your shoulders. “Might have to, to make sure you stay on both feet.”

“I’m sure I can make it,” you assure him, but when you straighten out the elbow you injured, your face contorts, and he winces in sympathy. “I can walk this time, at least. No getting carried by los – los tres mos –“

“Los tres mosqueteros,” Rafael tells you. His voice is soft, and his eyes are ducking now, watching the sidewalk as the two of you start to stumble to your feet. He doesn’t say it with reverence. Is it… is it bitterness? “Well, solamente un mosquetero aqui, pero… I hope that’s enough.”

Self-deprecating. It makes your nose wrinkle. While college mellowed you out, it only seemed to harden Rafi. “More than,” you tell him. “But… I should be heading home. Don’t want my mom to think I bailed on her.”

“I can take those,” he offers, gesturing to your notes, the book you have. Never mind you have a backpack; he offers and you end up taking it. You don’t really know why at first, but as the two of you walk towards your apartment it starts to come into focus.

He’s grown into his voice, his attitude. He’s not just older, he’s grown, and you find yourself studying him, if only because when he talks it’s hard not to look away. He’s handsome, with those green eyes and firm voice and quick turn of his lips. The lift of his chin, as he listens, gives you a smile. But the smile feels flinty. Even after offering to carry your books, your notes, you realize it’s more out of manners than kindness. But he takes them, and you’re walking side by side for long enough that you gather some courage.

“School out of state, then? If you had to come back, for family,” you ask, to keep the conversation going, knowing that as you reach your door it’s over.

“Harvard,” he tells you, and your eyes widen at the tone. He says it with force, as if he has to keep reminding himself as much as he reminds other people. “I’m planning to go to Harvard law, too, after I take my LSAT this summer.”

“Same,” you shrug. He almost trips over his own feet at that, and when he turns to you with a raised brow you just smirk. “I’m fucking with you, obviously. Hudson. For psychology. Right now. We’ll see.”

You don’t plan on feeling bad about it. It’s what you could get, and you’re proud of it. But there’s something about standing next to a Harvard student that makes you get defensive, ducking your head. He has a little smirk, too, and you find yourself glaring.

“It’s what I could get, and that’s fine, you know. I just want to help people –“

“I know, I know,” he laughs, shaking his head, and there’s nothing mean in it. “Just… fucking with you.” It’s the hesitation that gets you, the little hiccup of years of repression, and you just snort.

“That’s right. Catholic boy. I remember,” The jab comes out without warning, and he just blushes a little. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell if you don’t.”

His head is shaking again, and when he smirks it’s at you. “Trust me, I think my mother will know even if your lips are sealed.”

“Not worried about God?” you laugh, and he mimes glancing around the whole street.

“Trust me, my mother puts the fear of God into me without any help from the Almighty.”

And then you’re in. The conversation starts flowing more freely. He talks about his family. Talks about coming home, to see his mother, his grandmother. There’s something warm when he talks about the homemade holiday meals, the Christmas mass the group of them will attend. It’s just small talk, but you also know enough not to ask about Eddie and Alejandro, to keep walking with him, keep the topics light. He asks about your family, and you tell him it’s just you and Mom, and perhaps a Christmas dance party around the plastic tree.

“Christmas dance party?” It’s skeptical, but your shrug at him, smiling at the memories of years past.

“Family tradition. I dance, my mom laughs. In the end, we end up usually knocking off some ornaments, maybe upturning a tray of cookies.”

“The whole thing?” Skepticism turns to incredulity, and you snort.

“I have a list of casualties. Three trays of cookies, one pan of brownies, a very nice-looking angel. This isn’t even counting the stuff at New Year’s…“

Rafael’s head is shaking, but you’re just dissolving into giggles as the list expands. All at once, you’re telling him about the time you tripped over an armchair right into a perfectly fine plate of muffins on Christmas morning, and he’s either too polite or too horrified to stop you. But in the end, he laughs. At you, probably, but he’s smiling again, and there’s no putting himself down anymore. Just listening to you take your clumsiness in stride.

Tt’s nice. At least you think so. There are bits of laughter that echo down the street, yours and his, and as your door approaches you find yourself dreading it a little. You missed your friends, and this was… close to something.

“Well,” you say, when the two of you arrive. The door is firmly closed, to keep the cold out, and you reach for the buzzer, turning back to look at Rafael with a smile. He hands over your notes, and you ignore the twinge in your elbow to grip everything firmly. “Thanks. For the company. Not thinking about finals was worth the tumble.”

“I was… also glad for the distraction. It’s been a while since I’ve been home and...” He doesn’t elaborate any further, but his face looks a little pinched, and you nod. Family… friends. It’s complicated.

After a moment, though, he’s looking at you as the two of you hear the door click unlocked. “You’ll get through it, though. Finals. I know it,” he assures. “And then it’s just seven more after that. Trust me, I have three left. It gets better.” He’s watching you, as you rub your arm, and though his brow pinches again, he manages a little smile. “It was good to see you again. Glad I didn’t end up doing permanent damage.”

“Well, I don’t know, future lawyer,” you tease. “Maybe once you get all rich and famous I’ll send something about damages your way. Remind you that I knew you when.”

He huffs out a little scoff, shaking his head. “Future psychologist, right? Don’t you want to practice what you’re going to preach? Forgiveness? Acceptance?”

“Where’s the fun in that? I’d rather humble you, Harvard boy.” When he scoffs again, it’s with a hand raised to you, turning back towards where you know his mother must live, the same direction he walked those years before.

As you move toward the door, pulling it open, you pause, looking back over your shoulder. He’s walking away, hands in his coat’s pockets, elbows shaking a little with the cold.

“Take care of yourself, Rafael,” you call out. “Happy holidays, too!”

Another wave, and he’s gone, and you find yourself thinking about those eyes a little later, distracting you from those significant figures you were so desperate to save.

-

Fuck grad school. Really.

You don’t know what possessed you, when you decided to go. Probably the same thing that possessed you to push to graduate a year early, and the same thing that encouraged you to decide on a doctorate at Fordham instead of a M.S. and moving on.

Masochism. Obviously.

But you’re stuck with it, and every three days you regret it. A new assignment, a long-ass reading, a book you want to throw out of your apartment’s window – it’s too much, and you don’t do enough, and pretty soon you’re drowning. On top of that working, so you and your mom can keep your apartment, buy her medication, and keep the world turning, things that start to feel impossible.

Does everyone feel like this? you want to scream in the world. Does every student after undergrad hate themselves?

You know the answer is yes, but you wish you could hear it from someone besides yourself. Because your mom, bless her, refuses to let you quit, still taking time to dance with you when you need it.

You just don’t want to fail. You can’t fail. So you keep pushing, and find yourself cooped up in libraries, in coffee shops, wherever-the-fuck will take you, doing what you can as long as you can, as much as you can.

There are places you end up frequenting, in the search for a place to get work done, and end up, like most grad students, in a coffee shop. The dim lighting sometimes hurts once you hit your page limit, but the coffee is cheap and strong, and they let you linger in a corner booth with your books all spread out on the table. It’s worth the carpal tunnel, the edges of the tabletop digging into your wrist, because you get shit done.

So it comes as a surprise that your safe haven, your perfect locale, is occupied by Rafael Barba.

At first you don’t even recognize him. When you first notice him, after all, he’s already sitting down, and you can’t see his face. He just looks like another student, after all, bent forward and buried in a book that is even bigger than yours. But when he stands to go get another coffee, and you catch sight of him, it’s immediate.

Of course, he doesn’t see you. Just goes back, sits down with a giant mug, and keeps chugging along.

You keep your smile to yourself, look down at the pages you’ve lost your place in and do your best to get back on track, but now you’re distracted, and Rafael is still just there. It would’ve been less shocking, maybe, if you had perhaps known he’d be in town? But now you’re just thinking about the last time you saw him, the way he laughed, smiled at you before he left…

Oh, fuck it. You just think he’s handsome.

But… it’s been a few years. There’s no way he remembers you, confirmed by the way you stand, to go get another coffee, and he doesn’t even glance up.

So you resolve yourself to doing nothing, acting on nothing. Besides, you have actual work to do, and the third cup of coffee should probably be your last before you’re bouncing off of the walls. But when you turn around, to head back to your seat, you definitely make an impression on Rafael Barba, and the impression is the massive stain on the front of his shirt.

“Oh, my god,” you cry out, and he can’t say anything, the two of you just staring at the mess. “I’m – I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you – oh, god, your shirt.”

“It’s… okay,” he sighs, and he seems to be in just as much shock. You move to grab some napkins from a table. His voice is dry, when he speaks again. “Isn’t a holiday back in the Bronx without some kind of disaster.”

You wince at the wording, but keep blotting, and then your handful of dirty napkins is useless. You pull back, and you think you’ve actually made it worse, but Rafael is just smirking at you.

“I think… it’s beyond help. But thank you for trying.”

The napkins hang limp from your hands. You feel like an idiot, but Rafael just keeps that smirk as you go to throw them away and turn back. When you do, he’s still standing there.

“I didn’t burn you, did I?” you ask him. “That was a fresh cup, I –“

“Really, it’s fine. A shirt. I’ll survive.”

He looks even better up close. Eyes bright, playful, smart. He seems to look you over with an appraising eye, and you don’t know if you measure up but you hope you do. There’s no hint of remembering, but there’s something, and you glance over at your table.

“Well. I owe you,” you say. “For the shirt, at the very least. How much is your dry cleaning? I have some cash.” 

He scoffs, and you’re thrown back to high school, that same scoff telling you that you can’t possibly stumble home alone. “No, that’s not going to happen. You’re not paying for my dry cleaning.”

“Then something,” you say.

He takes a moment. Looks over you. Eyes narrow as he turns to your table, the papers fluttering in the heater’s breeze.

“Coffee? We both look like we can use a break.” And then he smiles, and you’re swooning.

He ends up sitting at your table, brings his book over to stack on top of one of yours. The two of you get to chatting, just small talk, and about halfway through your coffees it seems to click with him.

“Do I – have we met before?”

You just chuckle, shaking your head. “Believe it or not, yes. This is not the first time I’ve stumbled in front of you.”

His eyes widen. “I couldn’t place you, I thought I was –“

“Crazy? No. It’s just been… years. And each time, somehow, I manage to take a spill.”

“Clumsy, then?” he asks, teasing, and you snort.

“I wish I could say you just catch me at bad times, but. Yeah. I’m a certifiable mess.”

He laughs, and you chuckle, and the two of you keep talking the hour away. By the time you’re done with your coffee you’ve ordered a pastry, too, and for some reason you keep doubting the fact that he’s been looking at you with bright eyes the whole time.

But when the meal is done, you end up packing up your books, getting ready to leave. You say it’s because you should be getting home, but really it’s because you think if you stay there in the booth any longer, you’ll do something crazy, like ask him out. But instead of letting you go, he offers to walk with you, and the two of you leave the shop together.

“So, you stuck around, huh?” he asks, and you can’t help but notice the tone of his voice. “You enjoy the Bronx that much?”

“I figured Hudson U was enough distance between me and my mom. Fordham had the program I wanted, plus, I could stay back and take care of her.”

He huffs a little laugh. Something about it rankles you, but you put it behind you, and the two of you keep walking.

After that, you start to notice other things. Like that fact that he doesn’t stop bringing up Harvard. At first, you deal with it, because yes, it is a big deal. A kid from the Bronx, ending up at Harvard Law? But he won’t, and can’t, shut up about it, and it makes you antsy.

Other ways, too. Talking about Boston like it’s the be-all, end-all. Mentioning how if he came back to work, he’d settle in Manhattan, not back home.

“I want to become a judge, at some point, and Manhattan’s the best way to get there,” he explains, and you nod, but it keeps… bugging you.

“I’m sure,” you concede. “But I don’t know. I like it here. The people, the town.”

When he scoffs, it’s almost cruel, and your heart aches at the way he dismisses it, all with a hand wave. “Yeah, but, Hudson isn’t doing anyone any favors. You should try to head out, spread your wings. Manhattan’s always in need of psychologists.”

Maybe it’s supposed to be nice, some advice. Yet, advice you didn’t ask for, and to you, all it says is that all he can remember about you is the unfortunate undergrad you went to. It infuriates you, makes you halt walking, your bag with all of your books jostling against your back.

“Oh, my god. You truly think you’re doing me a favor just by talking to me, don’t you?” you say, and he just rolls his eyes at you. 

“Of course not, that’s not what I meant.” But it’s the final straw, and no longer does Rafael Barba look handsome. He just looks like an ass.

Part of it is that you’re tired, stressed, overwhelmed. Talking instead of studying. But all you can focus on is his tone, his act. “You think you’re so much better than me. What, because you… you ‘got out of here?’ Out of shitty apartments and neighborhoods, and you can already see the big bucks?” you sigh, and Rafael’s brow only raises at you, looking down his nose at you like that’s how they’re trained at Harvard Law. Maybe they are – an image comes to mind of students preparing to pass the bar by practicing evil smirks and sharp looks.

“Look, I had to fight to get to where I am now, and I’m always fighting to stay there, you understand? I come home to visit, and I’m just saying that you could be wherever you wanted to be,” he tries, but you’re past rational thought. “Come on, don’t you want to get out?” 

“Barba, this is where I want to be,” you tell him, but when he raises his brow, you put your hands up in surrender. In the end, you’re too exhausted to be truly angry at him. You simply shake your head and begin the long trek back to your apartment, the glory of the coffee shop well behind you.

“Where are you going?” he asks, and you just shrug one shoulder as you walk away, turning to look at him over your shoulder. There’s a stinging in your eyes, but you tell yourself it’s just the bite of the wind.

“I’m not going to let you bully me, Rafael. I got enough of that in high school. If you want me to pay for your dry cleaning, or your shoes, I’ll do it, but I won’t let the payment of some spilled coffee be me spending time as your punching bag.”

“Bullying you? So, I’m bullying you now?” It’s incredulous, his question. 

You turn on your heel to face him.

“Harvard isn’t an excuse,” you snap. “Just because you got to go off and do great things doesn’t mean the people who stay here are somehow lesser. Like we’re not accomplishing anything. And right now, you’re really acting like it.”

A beat.

“And it’s Fordham, now, asshole. At least get it right.”  

You don’t wait around to hear his response. You’re walking off, and the only thing you hear is the wind whipping around you.

The ride back is lonely and the scent of coffee has gone rancid. It just feels like another slap in the face, a reminder that no matter how hard you work there will always be something, someone. You’re discouraged, more than a little. When you make it back to the apartment you share with your mother, you’re on the wrong side of miserable, and your reading that you’re already behind on gets more than a little neglected as you choose to watch something on TV, a warm cup of cocoa instead of the coffee you craved.

But it’s halfway through your own pity party that the way Rafael Barba looked at you makes your mouth curl into a sneer, and about two-thirds through the second movie that you realize you’ve wasted the day. Horrifying. All over a man who did nothing but look down at you, for being home, still.

A fire you needed, and looked for, when you started grad school. Besides helping people, why else did you want a doctorate? What was going to push you to getting that damn Ph.D. and across the finish line?

In the end, it’s the feeling of squirming under Rafael Barba’s gaze. Harvard Law or not, the fucker shouldn’t have looked at you like that. Shouldn’t have talked to you like that. And by the time you’re stomping over to your books and opening it with a vengeance, you’ve made a deal with yourself that no one will ever talk to you like that ever again.

Fuck Rafael Barba. He could have his juris whatever, settle in Boston or Manhattan. You were getting a practice, to help the people in your borough, and one of these days he’d have to look at you and refer to you as doctor who got her degree from Fordham whether he wanted to or not.

-

You should’ve gone with the slacks. The slacks don’t have a hem that needs to be tugged down every twenty seconds, that’s for sure, and the feeling of your skirt’s hem is all you can focus on. The way it slides up as you hustle to the elevator, the way it rides as you sit on the subway. By the time you get to where you’re going, you’re going crazy, your hair frizzing with the energy.

Not to mention, it’s fucking cold while you wait, your knee bouncing as you sit in an endless hallway, waiting for them to call your name.  

But you look better in the skirt. You feel better in the skirt, you rock the skirt, and for an oral defense you want to feel your best, so. It’s the skirt. The skirt, and those heels with a splash of color, and when you leave and get a good distance from the clear glass door you get to pump your fist and dance in the skirt.

You did it.

You’re going to be a doctor. You’re going to be a psychologist. Someone’s going to meet you, for the first time, and call you by your title, and come to you for help.

And you’ll be able to help them. On your own. Terrifying, but it gives you a rush, the strength of which makes your head spin, makes your eyes cross just a little. Your fingers move to text your boss, your mother.

“I did it.”

You whisper it to yourself the whole way back. All that’s left is the rest of your internship, and then you’re home free. You’re done. You’re a doctor.

“The worst part is over,” Dr. Olivet reminds you when you make it back to her offices, “but there’s still work to be done.”

“I know, I know,” you tell her, lifting your hands. “I still have to finish my work here, and there’s, you know, getting a job…”

“But you did it.” Her voice is warm, and you’re not afraid to give another little dance, and she obliges you with a hug.

It’s sweet. It’s more than sweet, and your eyes are brimming with tears. God, you have to call your mom. A text isn’t enough, you have to tell her everything –

A hand reaches out to stop you with a gentle touch on your arm. You hadn’t even realized you were talking out loud, but thankfully you’re done in an instant. “You can call her on the drive. We have a full day, then the Brooklyn DA’s office.”

The thought makes you wince. “Two birds with one stone, hopefully?” you ask her, but she just shakes her head, the excitement from the morning bleeding into preemptive exhaustion in the blink of an eye.

Long day is right, when it comes to the law. There’s never been a time when cops have been your biggest fans, but it seems the tensions are always high with them. Nowadays, at least with Olivet, the two of you prefer to go straight to the D.A., when he calls, simply because at least as an expert witness, there’s some respect.

Some. But it’s there.

But not always.

So, the two of you make the journey to Brooklyn, a forty-minute commute from Manhattan, and by the time you show up at the Kings County D.A.’s office, you’re already exhausted. The D.A.s that Olivet consult with are nice enough, you suppose, for lawyers, but only because they have to be. It’s part of the position, and if they want to be re-elected, they don’t want a reputation of being hard to work with. But the A.D.A.s tend to sprint first, ask too many questions later, and every moment is a battle.

But when you get there, head up to the office that Olivet was told to go, there’s a pair of striking green eyes that lift from their spot on a stack of files to meet yours, widening when yours do. They’re matched with a pale lavender tie, and a grey ensemble that compliments him nicely. You suppose it’s made for that, considering how it’s tailored.

The room isn’t posh. The opposite, in fact, a couple of chairs in front of a desk, a table to the side with various books to add onto the bookcase full of them. But there’s flair, and clutter in equal spades. It feels worked in, maybe even lived in, judging by the only other piece of furniture being a couch behind you.

It’s been a long time since high school and wintry streets in the Bronx, that’s for sure, for you and for Rafael Barba.

He stands when the two of you step into the room, and moves around the desk. You watch and wonder what he remembers from the last time you stumbled into each other, but his body language doesn’t betray a whole lot besides his exhaustion. You wonder if he can see the same in you, or if the tapping of your finger against your side is informing him just what you think of him. The great lawyer from Boston, here instead of the Bronx. Never going back home, just like he wanted.

His jacket is off, and you can see the vest and slacks of a three-piece suit as he moves to greet you, sleeves rolled up, a couple of blinks as he takes the two of you in.

“Mr. Barba,” Olivet says politely, reaching out her hand. “You’re the A.D.A. we’re working with, then?”

“Doctor.” His voice is formal, and when he shakes it, there’s a quick one-two before he releases, turning to you without hesitation. “Yes, I don’t think we’ve had the opportunity to meet officially. Rafael Barba, thanks for coming.”

“Mr. Barba,” you greet him, when he turns to you, and when the two of you shake there’s a twitch. “It’s a... pleasure.”

How’re you doing, Harvard boy? Still looking down your nose? is what you want to say, what you remember from him, but you manage a little self-control. You think he reads your mind, and it makes him nod.

“The pleasure’s mine,” he returns. So, he does recognize you, because the familiarity has to the be the unexpected warmth you hear. Or maybe amusement, because your last attempt at friendliness was resolved with little more than chills in the air. “Intern for what exactly?”

There’s a spark in his eyes, and you find yourself lifting your chin. No stumbling at this meeting, just two kids from the Bronx, all grown up. God forbid he thinks for a moment that you ran away and gave up. “For my doctoral courses at Fordham. In about four months, I’ll be a clinical psychologist like Dr. Olivet. She’s who I’ve been training under.”

You dare him to say something. To make a dig. 

“Fascinating.” It’s what he settles on. He seems actually impressed,, when he looks at you, and you try to ignore the way his smile makes your heart pound. It’s just because he’s a handsome man in a three-piece suit and smiling, not because he’s Rafael Barba. After all, Rafael Barba was pretty sure you’d never get out of the Bronx, and downright rude because of it. “Shall we get started, then? I want to know everything I can about this guy.”

“Of course,” Olivet returns, and the three of you get situated to get to work.

It’s long. It’s exhausting. By the end of the day, your head is pounding, and Olivet and Barba have exchanged enough words to fill a novel, trying to argue the benefits and the harm of taking this particular offender to trial. He wants to get an answer to his boss by the end of the day, and your boss is not one to make it easy for ease’s sake. You had taken the role of notator, going through the files offered and marking anything for Elizabeth, and the back and forth had made you dizzy. After all, after everything, Rafael Barba was a great lawyer, a fantastic prosecutor, according to a Google search during a break. Leave it to him to make your eyes blur.

“The precedent is set for it,” Barba repeats, for the third time. He’s gone from sitting, to pacing, to sitting again, his eyes closed as he runs a hand through his hair. “And the defense is going to argue that his illness is an excuse for his behavior.”

“I know what the precedent says,” Olivet returns, for the third time. “But I also know that while diagnoses are never an excuse for a behavior, they can explain one. It’s what the defense will argue. His impulse control without his medication – which he has a right to refuse – is significantly lowered –“

“But not completely. Mr. Nelson understands what he did was wrong, he basically confessed –“

Your eyes roll, and you find yourself speaking before you can think. “In an interrogation room in which his counsel, which he did not waive, was not present. Just because he has a diagnosis in the DSM-V does not make him any less deserving of a proper interrogation.”

The two of them turn to look at you, Olivet with a smile, Barba with a scowl. His face pinches as his eyes scan you, and you just stare back.

He may be where he belongs, in a three-piece suit, but you’re where you need to be, too. And he needs to make sure he understands that, because the last thing you’re gonna let him do is underestimate you again.  

“No one is saying that,” Barba starts, but you just raise a brow at him.

“If I’m looking at these transcripts correctly, something tells me the cops themselves said that. Look, Mr. Barba, Dr. Olivet and I might not be this man’s direct health care providers, but we still have a duty to advocate for him.” You glance over at your boss, and her hand is covering her mouth, but you see the edges of a smile in her tired eyes. “If I were a doctor, and an expert for the other side, I would make sure my team knew the violations that occurred in that room.”

The room is silent. When Barba looks at the doctor, she just drops her hand, the smile replaced with a somewhat-serious look that threatened an I-told-you-so. “I’d be saying the same thing. She’s right.”

A new energy flashes between the two of you, and when Barba contemplates his options, his lips a little pursed, it’s with you staring him down. It’s a sparring match, your gazes, and it’s a firm draw. That alone seems to perturb Rafael enough for him to relent, just a little. “I’ll worry about the… legality of the confession,” he sighs out. His pages flick to a different section, and he glances over it. “We’re all tired here, so I’ll wrap, but I need to know if he’s competent for the stand without his medication. That’ll be the last thing we cover today.”

“If he’s not a danger to himself or others, then getting him to take it will be difficult legally,” Olivet reminded him. “But. I’ll do an evaluation. See what we can determine while he’s off.”  

Another time, another date is set, for the evaluation. You and Dr. Olivet start getting ready to go, and the polite farewells are given and gone.

But before you leave, and the handshakes are made, Rafael looks you over, from head to toe. It’s quick, but you catch it, and it’s before he turns to Dr. Olivet and nods.  

“I’ll be seeing both of you, then? Day after tomorrow?”

If it makes your cheeks flush, you don’t mention it, especially not when he glances back at you again, gives you another handshake with a firm squeeze.

“Both of us,” you affirm, inform, and then you’re gone, Rafael Barba’s office behind you, something else entirely in front.

“You know, he never asked you your name, when we went in,” Olivet notes, on the ride back. It’s mild, nothing really there, but the two of you have worked together long enough that you know there’s a million unasked questions down that rabbit hole.

Your eyes don’t leave the windshield. “Oh, yeah. Uh, we lived on the same street. He – him and his friends, really – they almost broke my ankle, my sophomore year of high school.”

A hum from her makes you break from your trance, and you see the edges of her lips curl up. “No, no,” you clarify. “It wasn’t like that, it was never like that. I’ve only seen him, what, three times over the years? He’s just someone I see every so often. New York is the smallest city in the world, I guess.”

“Will this be a problem?” she asks next. You find your cheeks flaring again, turning from the windshield to your own window.

“Nothing there for it to be. Last time didn’t end so well, but… we’re past that. We’re adults.”

Right?

When she laughs, it’s a gentle prod in the direction you were already going, nothing more than fuel to the fire that you barely understood was being lit.

“Well, I know for sure he didn’t shake my hand twice, and I’m the one who’s going to be on the stand for him if this goes to trial. Maybe last time didn’t end as poorly as you thought.”

You refuse to think about it, though. For a little while. After all, it’s work that has to be done, and you’re not across the finish line, yet, so you show up prompt and on time two days later to assist Dr. Olivet with her evaluation and the conclusions that are inevitably drawn. You don’t end up coming until the end of the workday, and when you’re finished it’s well into evening.

“He’s unaware that what he said in the interrogation room amounted to a confession,” she tells Barba, afterwards. After watching the whole thing, the way that you and Olivet had slowly gained trust and revealed the truth, the clench of his jaw is mighty. “There’s no way he gave it willingly.”

“You’re certain?” When he turns to look, it’s at both of you, equally, his eyes flicking back and forth before looking back into the room where you had left him. His voice sounds exhausted, and for a moment you feel pity for him.

You open your mouth to speak, but he cuts you off with a hand wave. “Don’t bother. I know the answer.” His frustration is apparent, and you find yourself sharing a glance with Dr. Olivet before nodding. “So, we have nothing.”

“Nothing except someone who needs to return home to his family,” you tell him, and his shoulders slump. It’s not meant to be a jab, but when he looks at you again there’s something in his eyes that tells you he takes it as such.

“Right. Of course. I’ll talk to the captain.” He sounds so worn, and you almost feel sorry for him.Your smile is sympathetic, but he’s not really looking at you. There’s something that tells you to walk away, another part that insists you stay, figure this man out.

“Mr. Barba?” Dr. Olivet murmurs. “I’ll get a full write-up of what I saw here to you tomorrow, but we really should be going now.”

And that makes him straighten, his manners coming back to him as he gestures towards the door. “Right, yes, of course. Thank you so much for your help, Dr. Olivet. Miss Y/L/N.”

“Not a problem,” you say, and the two of you part. No fanfare. No nothing. Just. Done.

You don’t realize how distracted you are until you’re standing by Dr. Olivet’s car, ready to take the two of you back to her office, where you can return to the Bronx.

“Are you all right?” she asks you, and you realize you’ve been fingering the handle for a minute, as she rummages for her keys.

“Yeah, just. Thinking.”

After another minute, Olivet curses. “I must’ve left them inside. Do you mind if we head back in?” When there’s no protest, the two of you walk quickly to get out of the cold, and you find yourself hoping against hope that Rafael Barba is still in there, that there’s something more you can say.

Your head is down, your eyes are closed to protect from the wind. So you don’t see the door, nor notice when it swings out. Neither does the other person behind it, and you feel the edge of it nail you in the forehead.

You’re stunned, stumbling backwards. Your fingers come up to press on where the door hit you, and the person behind the door is muttering curses. A couple of hands come to steady you, and luckily there’s no blood on your hand when you pull it away.

“Are you all right?” a voice asks you, and you have to blink to let the face focus.

“Just when I thought there’d be no stumbling around this time,” you groan, and Barba’s small smile to you is brimming with concern.

“Completely my fault,” he sighs. “Are you okay?” You’re still blinking, but the dots connect, and you realize that Rafael Barba is the one who smacked your head.

Goddammit. And you just starting to like the guy again.

“I got a door to the face, I’ve been better. Fuck, I’ve gotta be careful what I wish for,” you groan.

“Let’s get you to a chair,” Olivet whispers, and the stars you’ll still seeing start to fade as you stumble to a seat in the entryway of the precinct. “Mr. Barba, do you mind staying here with her? I think I left my keys upstairs, and I need them to take her home.”

“Doc, you don’t have to do that,” you tell her, but the lights in the place are killing your eyes. Quickest concussion you’ve ever gotten, you assume, and Barba indeed tells her that he’s got you. Heels click away, toward the elevator, and even the ding makes you wince.

There’s silence, for a few moments. Quiet, as you hold your head in your hand. After a few moments, you’ve realized Barba’s left and returned, holding out a cold water bottle to you.

“Another thing I owe you for?” you ask him, and you must be imagining his wince as you hold it up to your forehead.

“I think by this point we’ve come full circle,” Rafael tells you. “I’m truly sorry, I just didn’t see you when I pushed the door open.”

A brow raised in disbelief, and you tilt your head up so he can see your scorn. “Aren’t the doors clear?”

“My phone,” he offers, and you scoff.

There’s silence again. His shoes are tapping against the tiled floor, and you switch hands as condensation drips down your arm. It sends a chill through you.

“Do you… need my coat?” he asks, and you can’t help but raise a brow at him again.

“I have my own coat,” you tell him, bluntly, and it almost looks like… wait.

Is he blushing?

“I know, just… do you – do you need another one?”

So. This is the great Harvard graduate Rafael Barba, stumbling over his words, offering you a coat. If anything told you he remembered what happened way back when, and felt bad about it, it was that. You’re chuckling a little now, the anger passing into disbelief.

“How bad does your head hurt?” he asks, horrified, but you just keep laughing, dropping the water bottle and leaning back in your seat.

It’s a full-on cackle right now. “You’re telling me this isn’t hilarious?” you ask him. Gesturing between the two of you, the bottle in your hand, the offer of the extra coat. “Every time we meet, something goes horribly wrong, doesn’t it? We can’t just have a coffee, I have to spill it on you. We can’t just catch up, I have to vow vengeance.”

He raises a brow at that, but you wave him off. “I don’t know. I guess I’m telling you that maybe this is what we’re meant to be, Barba. Bad luck for each other.”

Rafael murmurs something, in Spanish. Repeats it, even, but you can’t catch it.

“What?” you finally ask, and he looks at the water bottle next to you and shakes his head.

“I’m saying that’s not true. You’re not bad luck. You… helped me.”

It’s your turn to raise your brow, and you have a feeling if you knew him a little more, it’d be a perpetual expression. But he keeps plowing forward. “You know, when you walked away, last time? I watched you the whole way down the block. I couldn’t stop thinking about how you… said I was using Harvard as an excuse.”

He leans back. Tilts his chin up, and you find yourself watching the line of him. He seems to sink into the seat like it’s the first time he’s sat for a week.

“Excuse to do what, I didn’t know. So I tried to ignore it, and then… it just kept… sitting in the back of my head, the sight of you, looking at me –“ He cuts himself off, and you watch him sit up again, rest his elbows on his knees.

“What?” You prod him, move your knee to hit his, and he sighs, both hands over his face.

“You were right. Harvard was my excuse. It was a way out, but I forgot home on the way. Forgot my mother, in everything, my grandmother. Took steps away from them, and ended up losing sight of myself.”

All of that because of what you said? Something twists inside of you, and you shake your head, lifting the bottle back up to where a good bruise is forming. “You don’t have to feel guilty for working, Rafael,” you murmur to him. “For having a dream. I saw you, and I – I saw a guy who got it all, and I took my frustrations out on you. I’m sorry, for making you think that going out and accomplishing what you have means you’re not – not, y’know. You. I barely know you, for fuck’s sake.”

The curse makes his lips twitch, but he doesn’t look away. “But you never lost sight of home. You were always right there, where you needed to be,” he urges, and you shake your head.

“And that’s me. I love home. I love being home. But maybe you needed to get out. I don’t know your life,” you laugh. “I would love to, but I don’t and… and maybe you needed to step away from… family, from friends, to find yourself. Look at you, you’re an A.D.A. in Kings County. I know you’ve got headlines already. That’s just who you seem to be. You’re the Harvard boy. Don’t feel guilty about that on my account, it’s a big accomplishment.”

A pause.

“But the Bronx isn’t so bad, if you ever wanted to journey back every so often. Not a bad thing to remind yourself where you came from.”

“I don’t think I can forget,” Rafael admits. “Es en mi sangre, just like being a lawyer is.”

Then he smirks. “Plus, those pants still have a stain right on the hem. I keep meaning to throw them out.”

You snort, loud, and then shift to face him. It’s uncomfortable, the little bench the two of you are on, but the position is worth it. “Seems like you’re investing in good-fitting suits. Might be time.”

Olivet is taking forever, it feels like, but you don’t mind. This has been good, a resolution to things, and you don’t really want it to end. Even if it means that you can get home and nurse your head.

“You know, you’re the one who got me through my first year of my Ph.D.,” you blurt out. “After our last meeting I vowed you’d call me doctor. That’s what I meant… by vow vengeance.”

“So you…”

“Yeah. I guess that means you’re good luck, huh?”

He’s agape. “You pushed through grad school out of spite for me?”

“Yup.” The ‘p’ pops in your mouth, and his eyes flicker down to your mouth before he can stop himself.

And then, there’s a beat. And then he’s laughing. His laugh, when it’s light, and free, is contagious, for sure.  Shaking his head, running a hand through gelled hair. When he pulls it away, the mess makes it look softer, and you get the sudden urge to run fingers through it.

Damn concussions.

You have enough sense not to mention the craving. You just smile, and drop the water bottle in favor of shoving a hand towards him for a good shake.

He looks at your hand. It’s offered to him in a symbol of peace, but he looks so skeptical still, as if you’ll call him out on not calling home every now and again.

“Since I’m not your bad luck, then. Friends?”

There’s no hesitation. He’s grabbing your hand, firm and warm, and the one-two shake seals the deal.

“Friends,” he concedes, and the two of you sit on that damn bench, the silence more than a little comfortable.

His coat does end up around your shoulders, eventually. It’s nice, another layer of warmth with the windows to your back. It seems silly, but it feels like a shield, a layer of protection.

Olivet comes down eventually. She doesn’t comment on the second coat, but you see her head tilt a little as you stand, hand it back to him.

“You know where to find me, if you’re ever in town,” you tell him, and he nods.

“I’ll see you around, Miss Y/L/N.”

Your grin stretches across your face. It hurts your head, a little, but it’s worth it. “You’ll call me doctor, one day. Next time one of us almost kills the other.”

His smile back is warm. “I have no doubt.”

When you and Olivet leave, she’s just humming a little. You don’t say anything, but when the two of you get in her car, she pulls her keys from the depths of her purse, starts the engine. You realized that you didn’t see them in her hand when she left the elevator, and the dots connect even with the way your brain has been rattled.

The sight makes your eyes widen. “Were they –“

She laughs now. “Oh, you know things like that. Not a problem, we’ll just take you home now.”

“Now?” Your voice is cracking a little with the indignation.

“Now. If we hurry, I’m sure your dinner will still be warm.”

-

Rafael watches as Liv’s voice gently soothes the woman, her eyes flicking back and forth between the Lietenant and Carisi. There’s hesitation in her statement, the kind that makes the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

When the two of them leave the interrogation room, he’s clear, or as clear as he can be. “She just confessed to murder, and right now that’s all the D.A. is going to see.”

Carisi’s response isn’t exactly friendly, but Barba looks up at the detective steadily, trying not to let his eyes roll. “You’re telling me you don’t believe her?”

“I’m saying that we’ve already had two victims recant their statements, for one reason or another. Their unwillingness to testify against Mr. Jones gives us very little in terms of evidence,” he sighs out. There’s a weariness as he looks at the woman, moving to lean against the glass and watch as she lays on the couch to rest. He wants to do the same, sometimes. Let his exhaustion take over. “I want to know what she knows about the situation, what she thinks. Otherwise, it’s a cut and dry case, and she gets locked away.”

“But she came to us, Barba,” Liv offers, looking at him with those pleading eyes of hers. They know how to sink right into his soul, and he ducks his gaze for a moment to collect himself. He has no time for being tired, and there’s something infectious about her conviction. But he needs more than a detective’s gut instinct and a lieutenant’s insistence. “We can’t just let her sink. She doesn’t belong in Rikers, she needs help.”

There’s a long silence, and Rafael finds himself sipping from a cup of coffee that has long gone cold. It’s Carisi that speaks up, those classes at Fordham law behind him. “What about a psychiatric evaluation? If an expert can sign off on her testimony, perhaps back up the fact that she was indeed abused, then as a battered woman…”

“Fordham law strikes again,” Barba quips, and then winces at his next sip. Such a shame the precinct couldn’t afford better coffee. Or more skilled coffee makers. “I can see who the D.A.’s office has lined up for those kinds of calls.” He looks between the two cops. “I don’t usually do the defense’s job for them, but this…”

“Is different.” Liv fills in the blanks, and he offers a small smile to her as he moves to the door. “I think we’re rubbing off on you, Barba.”

“God help us all,” he throws back, and her and Carisi’s chuckles are what leave him as he pulls out his phone.

The calls are straightforward. First to Carmen, who finds the list of names and numbers, and then to those names from his desk, seeing who is available as soon as possible for a psychiatric workup. There are options that she trims down, out of the goodness of her heart, leaving him with about ten that he can choose from.

But when he gets the list of names, there’s one name that stands out. One that reminds him of smiles shared across a cup of coffee and a pastry, one that makes him think of Catholic school uniforms and twisted ankles. One that makes nostalgia swirl in his gut. Or is that longing? Either way, it makes his lips purse.

Maybe it’s because in those moments, there were bright spots. Light in days and years that seemed to blur with a lot of struggle.

Or maybe it’s because he’s being dramatic. Either way.

He picks up his phone, prepared just for a consult. Nothing to yearn for, certainly. But he pretends not to notice when he looks up your office and gets a thrill when it’s in Manhattan, or swallow tightly when a photo appears on your website, and your eyes seem to gaze into his.

You’ve made a name for yourself. Any competent A.D.A. would feel comfortable with you in their corner. His fingers fly across his keyboard, looking into cases, finding what you’ve done. Your doctorate from Fordham is only the beginning, and he’s surprised he hasn’t seen you at charity events with all of the credits next to your name. Three years into practice, and he sees you headlining research into veteran populations, starting funds for LGBTQ+ counseling, lighting a fire in your community.

Any A.D.A. would choose you. Never mind the other names.

Yours ends up being the first number he dials. It rings twice, three times. Nothing yet, and his pen is spinning in his fingers. Four times, five times, and for a moment he thinks he’ll just have to try the number at the top of the list –

“Dr. Y/L/N’s office,” a voice answers. “How can I help you?”

It’s not you. It’s a secretary, or a receptionist, but her voice is kind enough. “Yes, is Dr. Y/L/N in? I’m calling about a consultation for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.”

The little hum that the receptionist gives is… uncertain. “Unfortunately, she’s in with a patient. Can I take a message?”

He’s done his due diligence. He’s tugged on the heartstring, and now he should move on. Try the next name. But something makes him set down his pen, bite his lower lip. A whim, really, that makes him speak.

“Just tell her Rafael Barba called. And if she’s interested, to return this call. I’ll give you the number.”

When he recites the list of ten digits, however, it’s his cell phone. And there’s something in him that hopes you’ll call back with yours. For old times’ sake.

“All right. Thank you so much, I’ll be sure she gets it.” The receptionist hangs up, and Rafael feels like he’s run a marathon the way his heart is pounding.

Each call he gets the rest of the day is enough to get him tensing. Ready to lift and see an unfamiliar number, with your voice in his ear. What he gets instead is silence, and a couple of calls from Liv, during which he does his damnedest to keep the tension out of his voice. By the end of the day, he’s resigned to the fact that it’s simply a missed connection, two ships passing in the night. Another moment of dramatics, but he feels this one.

And then his cell rings once more. He doesn’t look at the screen, just answers and closes his eyes, ready to hear Liv’s voice again, or God forbid, Carisi.

“This is Barba,” he answers. That tension bleeding in once again, and the response he gets makes him a little breathless.

“Kings County not enough for you, Harvard boy?” you ask. It’s teasing, light, and it feels a little like he’s outside in the cold winter wind chill the way his nose surely must be red. “Now I know to send the damages lawsuit to Manhattan.”

His laugh comes out of him suddenly, and it matches yours. “I’ll give you the address. How are you, Doctor?”

You hum a little, and it buzzes against his ear. “Oh, it feels good to hear you say that, that’s for sure. But, honestly, I’m doing pretty well. I’m… doing what I love. Helping people.”

“Too good for the Bronx? Manhattan your mainstay?”

“Oh, please,” you huff. “My office is firmly in the old neighborhood. And on top of it, if I don’t come by every week, my mother has a conniption.”

“Glad to hear.”

And it’s just that simple for you. Rafael has always had his sights set on the future, but you’ve reached it. And you’re content, and still with one foot in the place the two of you grew up. It’s… right.

“What about you?” It’s a question he’s honestly unprepared to answer. He doesn’t linger on it too long, because he doesn’t want to sound like he’s lying, but the truth is perhaps too much to admit to an acquaintance.

No. A friend.

“Manhattan is a little like home now. A lot like it,” he admits. In that moment the SVU crew comes to mind, but he pushes them away. But I have a case here I’m ready to be done with. I’m trusting your receptionist gave you the gist?”

“What she could.” Your voice is no longer light, something firm in it that he recognizes. The tone of work. “The message wasn’t a lot besides your name and your title, but am I right in thinking I’m going to be evaluating someone?”

“It’s a woman who was a victim of sexual abuse. I need to know what your read is on her.”

You hum again, lower, contemplating. “Anything in particular I’m looking for?”

“I don’t want to influence you, or give any unnecessary details over the phone. Just know she’s in our custody, right now, and this case has been complicated.”

There’s a pause, and he does his best to emphasize what’s necessary, what’s true. “We’re trying to help her. Get her where she needs to be. I know it’s last minute –”

“I know the system, Rafael,” you murmur. You don’t hesitate to use his first name, and he tries not to think too much about how it sounds in your mouth. “Am I right in assuming that she’s potentially spending the night in the tombs?”

She’s not, but he doesn’t get the chance to respond, and he doesn’t have to. You’re telling him you’ll be there tomorrow, prompt, early, and he lets out a sigh of relief. Doesn’t mention that waiting for your call could’ve cost a valuable day’s worth of time.

“Thank you,” he breathes, “I owe you.”

“For doing my job?” you chuckle. “This isn’t a personal favor, we should make that clear.”

“For taking my call. Getting back to me so quickly.” For humbling me when I needed it. For being a reminder every few years that home isn’t a bad thing.

“Anything for a friend,” you return, and he ducks his head to hide his smile from the room.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then. And I do insist I owe you. For the nearly broken ankle, at least.”

There’s a pause. He can hear your breath catch, and he hopes, hell, he prays that there’s a smile on your face as you think of him.

“Then, let’s not wait three years to meet again,” you tell him. There’s a click, surely a pen in your fingers, perhaps spinning like his. “I’ll take drinks, once the case is done.”

“How about dinner?” Rafael returns, and he stands to his feet, his window gazing out on the street below. He’s glad he’s not limited by the cord of his desk’s line. The cabs breezing by too quick on roads with black ice, the gusts blowing the flags outside One Hogan Place. “More equivalent, I would say, if we consider twelve years’ interest.”

“I’m also counting the spilled coffee, of course,” you add, and Rafael scoffs.

“Didn’t you spill that on me?”

He walks into it, he supposes, but he doesn’t mind. “Well, then, I’ll return the favor. Two-dinner commitment, and all before we hit fifteen years of acquaintanceship.”

“Friendship,” he amends, and your little laugh is what lingers with him, what he thinks about as he prepares for tomorrow.

“Right. Friendship. Good night, Rafael.”

“Good night.”

The two of you say friendship, as you rise the next morning. Say friendship as you meet, and Rafael introduces you to the precinct. Say friendship, as the case ends, and those dinners begin, with laughter and warmth even in a snowy Manhattan evening.

But at the end of those dinners, twelve years in the making, the friendship is only the beginning.

After all, you look stunning, in your dress and heels, a deep red coat that compliments your lip color. Your hair is pinned up, but some of it has come loose, during the night, and those strands frame your face perfectly.

“Maybe Manhattan isn’t too bad,” you laugh, as the two of you step into the night air, “if it means you get to eat like that all the time.”

“There are definitely some low points, but the high points make it all worth it,” he tells you. He can’t stop looking at you, even as you pause at the curb, side by side and turning to each other. “Back home, then?”

“You’re not the only A.D.A. I work with.” You nudge him with your elbow, hands in your pockets to block out the cold. “Other boroughs, other work. Not to mention that Monday’s coming up quick. Patients.”

There’s a stab of jealously in him. Thinking about you spending time with the other boroughs, with other A.D.A.s at his office. But for some reason, he can’t help but hope that the smile on your face is just for him.

He takes a moment to pull out his phone, stare at the date on the screen. “Well, tomorrow’s not Monday,” he tells you. “Do you… think you could spare a few more hours? Another day, maybe?”

Your brow raises at him, and he finds himself loving the arch of it, especially paired with your smirk. “What are you thinking, Barba?”

“A couple of drinks, maybe.” He nods down the road, trying to play it cool even though his heart is pounding in his chest.  

You’ve gotten the gist. The idea. He knows it, and you know it, but you’re daring him to act with the way you bite your lower lip. “And after that?”

It’s a dare he takes. Jumps at the chance to act on, one of his hand lifting to cup your cheek, the other reaching for your waist. He kisses you, there, on the curb, winter in full swing around you, and there’s nothing else can think about but the way you feel against him.

When it’s over, it feels unfinished. Mainly because a part of him doesn’t want it to.

“What do you say? Willing to stay in Manhattan a little longer?” he asks, a little breathless as he looks down at you. Your lipstick hasn’t miraculously hasn’t smudged, but he still lifts a hand to trace his thumb along the perfect lower line. “I know a place you can stay.”  

“I’m almost convinced,” you reply with a laugh, voice light. “But if you kiss me again, we can make that an absolutely certainty.”

[oh-sweet-mama]

Lonely (VI)

T.W - talk of self harm, talk of suicide

3 weeks later 7 days until the full moon Remus

The feeling of my shoulder blades cutting into my ribs, just added to the feeling of the dulcet ache that seemed to consume me.

3 weeks. 3 fucking weeks. Y/n can't stand to be in the same room as me. Let alone my D.A.D.A partner, but she somehow tolerates it.

Fully cooperating with the work we have to do, like a royal servant. Matching purple under eye bags adorned both of our faces, but somehow made her more eternal.

Over the weeks she had slowly stopped coming to the meals at the great hall, and the effects were starting to show. Her cheek bones were becoming more prominent on her face, and her usually rosy color, long faded away.

The usual radiant y/c/e's faded away to leave a monotone grey. She seemed so fragile, like a Porcelain doll, if only I had treated her that way.

So fuckin' stupid Remus.

A note hit my forehead and landed in front of me.

Keep staring at her like that she'll end up with two holes In the side of her head.

S.B

Recognizing the messy handwriting, before even finishing the note, I immediately knew who it was.

The feeling of tears pricked the sides of the eyes, but I ran out of tears to cry long ago. Instead the feeling of a dulcet ache in the chest replaced the physical show of emotions.

6 days until the full moon Y/n

My shitty diet consisted of Tea, cigarettes, and what ever my friends brought me back to the dorm. Of course I tell them that I'm not their responsibility, but they still bring me the occasional muffin or biscuit.

James brought me entire meals, of which I could barely consume the entire thing.

You have to do it you have to tell him.

No. No I couldn't. I can't risk losing someone else. He would hate me if I ever told him. Send me to the ministry, report me to Dumbledore, hell I'd get kicked out of Hogwarts.

I still maintain physical hygiene and grades. The two most important things. Can't smell and can't fail.

The ache in my chest was never there, maybe it had to do with the fact that I'm always high enough to fend it off.

First tip, the best way to get over someone, get all the emotions out, get numb, act like it never happened.

Easy, right? No. You can't just act like it never happened, he was all I had, all I'll ever have.

I just wasn't good enough.

I stopped going to parties, instead focused on my studies. One of the best in my class.

'Y/n what's your secret?'

'I don't know, uh drugs? Heartbreak? Both?'

5 days until the full moon Remus

The increasing uncomfortable pressure on my joints was almost enough to distract me from her. Almost.

I just want to run up to her and tell her everything, drag Sirius, and make him confess too. Maybe we'll all be happy together.

The imagine of the three of us happy together and in love. Clouded my head. I thought about it so much it was almost tangible.

Her daily routine trips to Madam Pompfrey had me assuming the worse. I had my fare share of bandaging up Sirius' forearms and upper thighs.

I tried to think, her period maybe? No, she's had hers for years, she would just excuse herself to the toilet.

My mind just defaulted into the worse case possible.

Suicide?

My heart thumped in an uneven painful rhythm. Swallowing a lump in my throat I hadn't even known formed I continued to attempt to let my teacher teach me the material of today's lesson.

Please be ok y/n, please, I love you to much to lose you, even though I've already have

4 days until the full moon

Tell him, tell him, he'll help you. The pain is too much, please it hurts.

I took a deep breath calming the clamoring thoughts in my head. A very dangerous place to be at this time of the month.

James was sitting next to me on my bed, the way he usually does, reading something. I noticed the title of his cover.

Lycanthropy: Everything you need to know and why their still human

"Didn't know we were learning about Lycan's in D.A.D.A." I murmured, focusing back on my own book.

"We're not, personal purpose." James answered back.

"What's your opinion on them?" I asked getting more nervous for James' answer.

Tell him, tell him, he'll help you. James loves you, he'll help you.

"There people, humans, witch or wizard, just with a condition. Doesn't make them dangerous, just misunderstood." James answered, "why do you ask?"

My eyes went wide, my pulse sky rocketing, the sudden awareness of the blood rushing through my veins.

"N-no reason." I desperately hid behind the small potions handbook from the library.

"Y/n/n?"

"Hmm? Very interesting potion here yes-"

"Wolves bane potion? How ironic, oh and your little wolves bane garden?"

My face paled, all of the blood rushing from my head into my toes.

Oh why can't I just sink to the bed and disappear?

"Very lovely flowers yes?"

"Do you, have, anything you want to tell me?" James asked causally not looking away from his book.

Oh what the hell.

"Fine! Fine!" I got up from the bed, tossing my book in the process, "I'm a werewolf!"

James froze in his spot. Before slowly lower his book so his eyes could peek above.

"What?"

"I contracted Lycanthropy ok?"

"Y/n sit down, and tell me everything, ok?" A sweet tone, of compassion and understanding, allowed me to sit and tell him everything.

3 days until the full moon

Remus

Nearing the summed of the month, a deep pit of anxiety took place, along with the increasing pain across my body. Sleep easily overcome me at any point possible, but restlessness at any other time.

Dozens of old scars, reminded me of the painful transformation. I pondered the lonely pain, that radiated through my diaphragm. Even being with one of the loves of my life, the immense feeling of being alone, was over clouding my mind.

Though James had been acting different, skittish, more than usual. He was usually found escorting Y/n.  

Again in D.A.D.A, We were granted a study hall period, in the Great hall. Books open, parchments being scratched on, quills moving from their ink pots, and light chatter amongst the tables. The table segment of which I sat was mostly empty, Sirius lightly leaning on my left side. A soft voice came by and stopped right in front of me.

Glancing up for a moment, my eyes glued to the figure in front of me. Y/n. oh shit oh shit, keep it cool Remus, don't scare her away now. Though a few seconds later James adorned her side, as usual.

2 days until the full moon Y/n

The secret was out, at least a little, an invisible weight was lifted off of my chest. Granting less anxiety about the first shift of the school year.

Actively avoiding the conversation, about where I go, or how it happened, I seemed to feel free. I guess I hadn't seemed to notice the weight of the secret I had been keeping.

It had become second nature, to harbor such a deadly illness, no harm shall come to them. I promised myself. Even if it meant lying to them.

It's better to not have them know, than having them risk their lives for something I can handle.

1 day until the full moon Remus

Y/n seemed to be getting healthier with the promotion and consolation of James. Every one needs someone to lean on.

I just wish I had been me. Maybe if I had told her, told her about my illness that seemed to consume me at times. Hell, my best friends and boyfriend knew about me long before we even started dating.

Yet 2 years had gone by and I couldn't bring myself to tell her, I was afraid of losing her. But I still did.

The day of the full moon 3rd person

"Y/n, please come with me, trust me please!" James begged to the girl, that refused any type of help. "You've already taken the wolves bane potion, and you can't hurt me. You know why? Because Lycans don't attack Animagus'"

"You're an Animagus?" Y/n whispered, just above her breath.

"Yes. Now please." James held his hand out to her, in a silent last offer of help. Y/n laced her fingers with James' and he sped off with her close in tow.

James pulled a seemingly blank piece of paper from His hoodie pocket, and let go of her hand.

"James, what are you doing?" Y/n asked in a hush tone.

A wild grin played out on James' face, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." The Incantation, followed through the tip of James' wand and caused ink to spread around the parchment. Names moved across through what looked like halls.

"What is that?"

"Marauders map, shows what every one is doing, every minute of everyday, see, there Dumbledore, in his office. I was just making sure the rest of the marauders were on their way and was no one coming."

"Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs?"

"Yea you'll see, come on now." James snatched Y/n's wrist and ran, taking her out of the castle and towards the shrieking shack.

"James the willow! Be careful!"

He continued to tug the girl behind him.

"James!"

"Hurry, there almost there." Reaching the edge of the field where the whomping willow resided, James stuffed the map back into his pocket.

"James? What the hell, where were you?" The rest of the marauders came out from behind a group of trees, "and what the fuck is she doing here?" Sirius snapped

"Can I tell them, Y/n?" James asked.

"I will," y/n replied in a hushed tone.

"Tell us what! You're dating?" Sirius scoffed.

"No, I-I'm a werewolf, a Lycan, a lycanthrope, whatever you want to call it! James said you could help me, last time I went to my usual spot, I fractured both of my legs and laid in the middle of the forbidden forest for 3 days"

Sirius paled out, and looked back to Remus.

"If you want me to go, tell me now, I've taken the Wolves bane potion, it's only a couple hours hike into the forbidden forest."

Remus felt his heart drop, then a deep ache. How long? I guess she also had no right to tell me, just as I never told her.

"No, Y/n stay, let's go inside." Remus said, sincerity laced into his voice. Her face softened.

"Where?" She asked.

Remus pointed to the willow. Her face paled.

James headed over to Peter to discuss who would stay outside in case anything went south. Sirius looked to Remus.

Remus took a few hesitant steps toward her. Before reaching his hand out offering her safe passage. Instead she swooped in gently under his arm.

Remus' heart swelled, maybe she does still love me after all.

1888 words

Ahhhahahahhah

It's finally coming together baiwbsiaiensl

-Kal

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 202

Last episode, Gohan created a superhero persona to disguise himself while he fights crime.   By acting as the Great Saiyaman, no one at school will find out that it’s really Gohan.

This episode, he blows the whole thing on the second day, because some girl is on the roof when he switches out of his costume.   Hijinks, as they say, shall ensue.

Gohan isn’t sure what to do here, so he just sort of walks past the girl and worries about it.

He gets so wrapped up in the problem that he doesn’t pay attention in class, so the teacher makes him stand outside.  

Meanwhile, the girl is in the same class, and she’s doodling Gohan in her notebook.    This looks pretty good, but I always wonder if when cartoon characters sketch someone in the house style, is it supposed to be photorealistic, or cartoony? 

Anyway, the girl, Angela, is so consumed with thoughts about Gohan that she doesn’t pay attention to class either, and she breaks down in tears when she gets in trouble.

But she uses this as an excuse to go stand outside, where Gohan is.   The teacher didn’t actually tell her to do this, but what’s he gonna do?   Punish her for pre-emptively punishing herself?  

So, out in the hall, Angela asks Gohan if he has a girlfriend, and when he doesn’t answer right away, she gets all upset.   Then she threatens to tell everyone his secret unless he takes her on a date, so Gohan agrees.     Angela tells him to meet her in town tomorrow on Sunday.   Wait, so they’re in school on a Saturday?    That’s bullshit.  Also, why does Gohan have to hold pails of water but Angela doesn’t?  

Gohan tries to deal with this properly, so first thing’s first, he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do on a date.    So he asks his mom, who probably isn’t the best person to go to for advice on this, but who else can he ask?   Piccolo?  Krillin?  Yamcha?   These guys all have no business giving out advice.

Chi-Chi fondly recalls the time she and Goku hung out alone while Emperor Pilaf and Colonel Silver fought over a Dragon Ball.   I want to say this was Dragon Ball Episode 31?   This isn’t a flashback to that episode, though, since this is all-new footage, so I sort of wonder if Chi-Chi might not be embellishing things somewhat.    In any case, she tells Goku they’re on a date, and when Goku doesn’t know what that is, she tells him that it’s the most fun thing a boy and girl can do together, so he naturally assumes she wants to spar with him.  

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww...

So yeah, none of that helped Gohan at all, so he just asks Angela not to reveal his secret, and she tells him to take her to see a movie.  

Here’s a nice shot of the Satan City Theater.   I guesss this movie is about a volcano?   Anyway, Gohan falls asleep in the middle of it, and Angela gets upset and thinks he doesn’t want to spend time with her.   Well, duh.    You’re blackmailing him, remember?

Gohan follows her outside and tries to patch things up, and she immediately cheers up and tells him to take her to a cafe.  

There, she instructs him to ask her how many sugars she wants in her coffee, so he can add them for her.   

So, I get the sense that Angela really wants to have a paint-by-numbers romance, hitting specific moments that she’s seen in books and TV shows.    But she needs a boy to actually execute all of these spots, so she strongarmed Gohan into doing all of these things, but it’s never going to feel quite like it did when it happened on TV, because it’s not spontaneous.   Right now, she’s only enjoying this because she’s experiencing it firsthand, but it’s a hollow fantasy.

I say this because I’ve seen men over the years pining for similar fantasies.    Well, maybe not similar, but the same formulaic approach.   Like, “I gotta get me a girl who will dress up in a red wig and a yellow dress and a white vest and ask me to tell her how many sugars she wants in her coffee, so we can re-enact this episode of DBZ.    Yeah, that’s hot.”  Or whatever your thing is.    The reality is that even if you found someone to humor such a specific request, it would never quite hold up in real life.    You can’t manufacture this stuff.    

Maybe that was the point of Chi-Chi’s story earlier.  It was romantic for her because it actually happened, and it wasn’t just Goku doing whatever she wanted him to do.   They were both being themselves, and they hit it off, and that’s why she thinks so fondly about that time he punched a tree.   Krillin’s first date with 18 was probably nothing at all like he had in mind, but he probably loved it because it ended up cementing his relationship with the love of his life.   And I’m sure he would have loved to take 18 to a movie and a cafe, but not as an end unto themselves.    You can scoop your own sugar, and if you wait your whole life for someone else to do it for you, you might miss out on something better.    I’m not sure where I’m going with this analogy.    I take my coffee black, so maybe I should move on.   

Anyway, Angela wants thirteen sugars in her coffee because of course she does.

Over coffee, Gohan tries to get some sort of reassurance that she won’t tell anyone his secret, but that’s the furthest thing from her mind.   She mentions that “it” is cute, but that’s about all she has to say about it.  

Then there’s a fire at Satan Tower.    Well, I think this was supposed to be Satan Tower, because that’s where they were going to go next, but maye they saw this building on fire while they were on their way.   

So, little bit of trivia here, this episode didn’t air on Cartoon Network because it was originally scheduled for September 19, 2001, eight days after the 9/11 attacks.   That sort of flew under my radar at the time, because I had already seen this episode on VHS a couple of months earlier, but when I heard about it I wasn’t sure what to make of it.   Were they just not going to show any TV program that featured a tall building on fire?   I think for a little while, that’s what the networks did.   At the time, no one really knew what was appropriate and what wasn’t.    I have to admit, seeing this screencap does remind me a lot of the footage of the towers burning.   But at the time, that was a very distinctive image, and no cartoon of an unrelated incident could compare. 

Anyway, the episode finally aired on Toonami about eight weeks later, but this is a filler ep, so it’s not like anyone really needed this one to keep up with the story.

So when Gohan and Angela find this, they hear that there’s people trapped on the roof, and Gohan realizes that he needs to change into Saiyaman and save them.

But Videl’s already on the scene.    Her aircraft can’t land because of the thermal updrafts, so she jumps down to the roof herself and tries to open a valve on a water tank, figuring that flooding the roof will at least buy time for a rescue.    There’s a whole sequence where she consults a team of computer guys about it, and this dude checks the building’s schematics and runs a simultation to see what good the water will do.    But Videl’s not strong enough to open the valve, and her fingerless gloves don’t help matters.    They’re stylish, but not much protection against the hot metal. 

But then Gohan rushes in, despite Angela’s protestations, and Saiyaman shows up to save Videl when the water tower falls over.    He punches a hole in it, which I guess does more than Videl had counted on?    Anyway, he saves all the people on the roof, including Videl.

Afterward, Videl spots Gohan in the vicinity, and she wonders if that might mean something.   Remember, she still harbored suspicions that Gohan is the Golden Warrior, and this is the second time she’s seen him at the scene of a crisis.   

Then Angela finds them and assumes that Videl is Gohan’s girlfriend.   Uh-ohhhhh!

Funny thing is, despite knowing Gohan’s secret, she seems to have no idea why he ran into a burning building a minute ago.   She thinks he was just trying to save Videl, or maybe she thinks they like to make out in burning buildings?  I dunno.   

Heartbroken, Angela tries to play her best card, and tells Videl Gohan’s secret.   Gohan’s horrified, but he can’t really do anything, so he just starts screaming, as if he can drown out the truth.   Then again, screaming usually works pretty well on this show, so I can’t fault him for falling back on the basics. 

But between breaths, Angela gets the secret out: Gohan wears teddy-bear underwear.   Wait, what?

In perhaps the stupidest flashback ever, we see Angela wandering around after gym class, only to find Gohan pulling up his pants.    I guess he was changing out of his gym clothes?   Why would you do that with the door open?   

So that’s the secret Angela’s been holding over Gohan’s head this whole time.    So what about on the roof?   Didn’t she notice Gohan wearing the Great Saiyaman costume there?   No, she didn’t, because she didn’t have her contact lenses in at the time.    Womp-womp-waaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Videl is not amused.    I’m pretty sure in the dub, Angela wonders what Gohan is talking about, so she asks him if he had his pants down on the roof too, and Videl tells him to keep his pants on, or else.

Of course, Gohan could care less about how many girls see his sexy undies, so he just laughs the whole thing off and claims that his mother bought him the wrong kind by mistake.    Really?   That’s the best you can do?    She bought the wrong kind, and you just keep them in your rotation anyway?    My mom bought me this shitty tank-top looking thing when I was in seventh grade and I absolutely despised it, but she wouldn’t listen to me and bought it anyway, so I knew she’d probably try to make me wear it and I wanted no part of that, so I stuffed it in a box in my closet where she wouldn’t be able to find it.    Out of sight, out of mind, right?   Well it worked.    I still don’t know where that fucker went.    I probably threw it in the trash one day just to be safe.    That shirt sucked.   Not just because it looked stupid, but because my mom wasted money on it rather than just listen to me, the only person who was ever going to wear the thing.   

Sorry, I went off on a tangent there.  That’s what this liveblogs are all about, though.    If you just wanted a dry recap of the action, you’d watch these yourself, or look it up on the wiki.   Point is, Gohan wouldn’t wear teddy bear underwear unless he wanted to.     He killed Perfect Cell.    He wears a vest.   He does what he wants.

So Gohan’s secret is safe, but he still feels terrible about hurting Angela’s feelings, so the next day he goes to apologize to her, only to find that she’s moved on to some other boy, and she’s got a date with him next Sunday.   Badda-bump da-da-bump!

[kagehinataboke]

23/19 tdbk please!!

these were both highly requested so i paired them up!! enjoy y’all ^~^

tdbk: [19] you see your favorite book on their desk during class and ask them about it afterwards, and [23] happening to sit next to each other on a park bench, reading the same book.

***

Bakugou doesn’t like to be known as a nerd, but when it comes down to either paying attention in class or reading, he’ll choose books in a heartbeat. It doesn’t really matter either way: he likes reading, and he’ll fuck go anyone who tries to make fun of him for it. They’re all just brainless mobs, anyway.

At least, Bakugou thought so. He’s one of the last to pack up after an English lecture, having been too absorbed in his book, and he spots something interesting. It’s one of his favorite books, sitting on the desk of a guy he’s never seen before—or never paid attention to, at least. He’s either forgettable or a transfer student. Bakugou would guess the latter, because a guy this pretty seems impossible to forget.

“That book,” he finds himself saying, “is Sprout Man*, right? Do you like it?”

The boy looks at him out of the corner of his eye, then picks up the book. “I wouldn’t read it if I didn’t like it,” he says, shoving the novel deep in his bag. He hesitates on his way out the door, running a hand through his red-and-white bangs. “It’s actually… my favorite book.”

Bakugou has never said more than two words to a classmate before, so his next sentence is a miracle. “If you like that, you should read Clover Woman.”

The boy pauses, then nods slightly. He bows his head and disappears into the hall without a word.

Inexplicably intrigued, Bakugou follows him at a distance, leaning against the wall to watch him open his locker. His name’s ‘Todoroki,’ huh? Bakugou has never heard of him, so he must be a transfer student. A damn gorgeous one, too. Shit, he should be a model.

“Um… excuse me, Bakugou-kun.”

Bakugou jumps, whacking his elbow against the lockers. The girl who’s apparently been trying to get past him flinches when he glares at her, hurrying past with a stammered apology. By the time Bakugou looks up again, Todoroki is already gone.

“Damn…” Bakugou clicks his tongue in mild irritation. “Well, at least Half n’ Half’s in my class, I guess.” A smile crosses his lips as he peers at the cover of Clover Woman in his bag. “I wonder if he’ll actually read it.”

“Katsuki, you’re blocking the path for the other students!”

“Fuck you, old man.”

“You— How many times do I have to tell you not to talk to teachers like that? You’re on cleanup duty.”

***

“Shitty fucking Aizawa,” Bakugou mutters, wiping sweat from his brow. He’s been laboring under the sun for two hours and only just finished the yard work he was assigned. This is more like child slave labor than a punishment. He’s been at school for so long now that it’s almost dusk.

Bakugou returns the broom he’s been using back to the equipment shed and trudges toward home, more tired than pissed off. Mitsuki will give him hell if she finds out he badmouthed a teacher again—or that he’s been reading in class. What does she really have to be mad at, though? He’s top five in his grade for every exam.

Damn, now he doesn’t want to go home. Maybe he’ll stop in the park and read for a bit. It beats being nagged to study when he doesn’t need to. He’s been wanting to finish Clover Woman, anyway. Bakugou picks a bench in the middle of the park and picks up where he left off. It’s almost too easy to get sucked back into the story.

Bakugou barely even notices the presence on the bench beside him. He doesn’t glance up a single time until he finishes a chapter and hears a cough and the scuffle of shoes shifting against pavement. His eyes move up a pair of red sneakers, jeans, and a sweatshirt, to a lowered head of red-and-white. Todoroki.

Bakugou doesn’t realize he’s said it aloud until Todoroki lifts his eyes, using his finger to bookmark his page. “Oh… Hey.”

“How long have you been here?” Bakugou asks after collecting himself.

“Don’t know. I was reading.” He glances down at his book, and Bakugou’s eyebrows twitch in surprise.

“Clover Woman,” he mutters. Todoroki really is reading it, and… “I’m reading that, too. Do you like it?”

“It’s good.” Todoroki smiles faintly. It must be his secret attack: it’s cute as hell. “Thanks for recommending it.”

“…Sure,” Bakugou mumbles after a stupidly long pause. “Uh… I guess you… probably want to keep reading, right? I’ll leave you alone.”

“Okay.” Todoroki opens his book again, but he pauses and flashes another small smile. “I’ll… talk to you after I finish it.”

Bakugou’s throat has gone dry, so he just nods and opens his own book again. His eyes devour the words: the sooner he finishes, the sooner he can look at Todoroki again.

***

* the titles Sprout Man and Clover Woman come from a favorite webcomic of mine, The Best Smell by Lee Man-Se (〃∇〃)

[ryncorrect]

university!au: day6 young k

hello this is my first attempt of writing scenario or imagine or whatever you want to call it bshsnsnsbd and yes it should be young k bc i love him so much

actually i wasn’t sure if i should do college or university but because here in my country we don’t really have colleges (i think???) idk how they work so i’ll just go with university lol i hope this isn’t too bad ok lezgedit

WARNING: THIS IS LONGER THAN I WANTED IT TO BE IM SORRY SHSJDNDJDB

name: kang younghyun

major: business administration

other activities: bassist and vocalist of university band, part of faculty’s basketball team, vice president of music club, member of creative writing club

let’s be real kang younghyun will definitely be that Popular Student™ even though he’s not trying to be one

it’s just that he’s been and always will be a social butterfly

he can be easily found everywhere

sport events? he’s in

festivals? he’s performing with the band

speech competitions? count him in

seminars and all those stuffs? there he is

he enjoys being actively involved in a lot of things and everyone loves his enthusiasm

also he’s hot so there’s that

trust me he’s the embodiment of attractiveness i mean h a v e you seen him—

and despite of all his activities, he still manages to get decent good grades

of course there are days when he’s so exhausted from all the work it seems like he’s gonna pass out anytime but even then he still looks like he just showered under the fountain of youth

how is this possible

ngl half of the students have crush on him

the other half either haven’t realized it yet or just in denial

you’re the in denial part

i’m lame as fuck

you’ve heard a lot about this younghyun guy and you’ve even watched him performing once last summer

but,,,,,,, what’s the big deal

yes you admit he’s kinda cute

and kinda hot as well

too hot holy frick those thighs—

he sings well

also smart and hardworking

he’s fluent in english because he attended high school in canada

it must be nice being his friend ugh

but you’re too shy to approach him and you don’t think it’ll be worth the effort anyway

most of popular boys are so full of themselves and younghyun is probably no different, so you leave it as that

gotta save yourself the heartbreak oops bye

anyway whatever major you’re in, the first time you actually meet younghyun is in the writing club

there’s nothing wrong with being both a business major and a member of creative writing club, really

but honestly you don’t know why younghyun joined when all he does is literally nothing

he doesn’t show a lot of interest in shakespeare or stephen king or anything

he doesn’t even seem to like reading either

he’s just kinda

be there

everyone welcomes him anyway so whatever

and after some time you see that he’s actually really friendly and kind

needs help to translate anything from or to english? he’s always ready

wants to discuss some business issues and marketing strategies for your paper? he’s all ears

sometimes he cracks a joke at serious time which makes everyone laughs in the middle of book discussion

dork

you laugh along anyway although his jokes are somewhat lame

just like this au

oh right have i mentioned his voice

that deep, smooth, sexy voice? yeah

no you don’t like him no you don’t no you—

however you and him barely interact because you’re not really good at chit-chat or small talks

if you’re an extrovert who likes chit chat then sorry my bad

the conversation you two usually have is like

“hey what’s up” “how was your day?” “the weather is nice today” “did you have lunch yet?” “see ya”

until one day you accidentally get a look of his notebook (in your defense, he kinda dozes off so you just want to check if he’s actually sleeping and the notebook just happened to be there, opened)

he’s?? writing a poem?????

“uhm no, it’s lyrics from my song…”

hE??? WRITES HIS OWN SONG????? AND IT LOOKS LIKE A LEGIT POEM?????

you’re amazed

yes we’re that easy

“is that why you joined this club? to help you writing lyrics?”

he nods and smiles sheepishly

soul: sold

uwu: spilled

so yeah from there you two start to talk a lot more

surprisingly you two have similar taste of music thanks god

he tells you that he’s into composing these days and he wants to perform his own songs in front of people one day

you recommend some books that you hope can help

he admits that he never finishes any books you lend him because he ends up falling asleep but okay we know boi is busy af

you and him spend time together outside the club either watching movies, books or CDs hunting, or just hanging out for coffee

sometimes you ask him to sing you a song because whenever he plays guitar he’s like all focused and his fingers move so prettily and honestly we you will Die™ for his singing voice okay he’s really that good if you disagree you’re an alien

he says you have to pay for it

don’t worry he knows we university students are broke he just wants jjajangmyeon

he eats five portions of it and has stomachache later what a loser

you cry hard watching sad movies and are embarrassed, also your face is swollen oml

“it’s okay, you still look cute”

you outside: shut up younghyun

you inside: SJNSHNAHDNSKNAYD

him calling you cute whenever there’s a chance and you dying

HIS. FUCKIN. SMILE. DAMMIT MY HEART

him spamming you selcas he takes in class secretly, in the bathroom (im not talking about dick pics dw), and in the band practice room

“my phone lags younghyun pls stop”

*he sends 27 more*

“okay who’s that behind you?”

“huh? it’s jae”

“wow he���s,,,, really cute. say hello to him for me”

he ignores your reply and resends the selca after he cuts jae off it

“how about now? does he look cute?”

...really younghyun

at this point no one ever says “just date already” because everyone thinks you two already are

but you aren’t dating

just being younghyun’s friend is enough for you

really

or perhaps it isn’t but apparently tumblr has 100 blocks limit on phone so i can’t write more than this ahsjsnhansjsnnsh

oooookay that’s all I have im sorry for the shitty content i just love day6 and i barely find anything about them here so i just,,,, want to contribute,,,,,, excuse my mistakes and grammar errors as im still learning english lol and if you happen to read this until here,,, kindly leave me some words maybe? oK BYExzcx

[katwritesforfun]

Jackie Bell’s Guide to Being a Hero

This is somewhat of a WIP re-introduction because my GENIUS BRAIN decided to revamp the whole thing out of the blue so just ignore the other one this is the new name.

Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult, Adventure

Current Status: Halfway Through Planning

Plot:

Step 1: Don’t be a hero.

Finding out at the ripe age of eleven that you are the protagonist in a young adult novel is damaging, to say the least. The fact it wasn't even that good just adds insult to injury. Jackie Bell has spent the last five years of her life ensuring that she won't save the world. Plans of shitty apartments, cats, and a big middle finger to the frankly lacking author that created her universe ruled her world. But she's forgotten something important.

She wasn’t the only character in that book.

An assassin, a mage, a soldier, a starlet, an oracle, and a trust-fund kid walk into a diner, looking for a hero. Jackie wishes it was the terrible joke it sounds like. Are these six beautiful, fucked-up people willing to pay her so much money to save the world going to be the one to break her pettiness? Or will her fear win out?

Because for all her jokes about tropes and the villain with the stupid name, saving the world means more than giving in. It means admitting the book was right, and she was supposed to die last year. 

Setting?

The whole story takes place in the future, in the town Glasscliff Coast. Glasscliff Coast is something of a glitzy beach town in California, famous for its red sunsets and bustling technological community. It was once thought to be the edge of the world. Due to the amount of technological development, certain criminals took advantage of that. While uptown Glasscliff is glamorous, downtown is a cesspool for illegal weapons development. This much experimental illegal shit has resulted in rupturing the reality of nearby communities, and downtown is riddled with multi-dimensional portals. Not that that’s anything new. Portals haven’t been new since before Jackie was born. 

What’s the deal with the magic?

As I mentioned before, portals aren’t anything new. Magic, it seemed, has come through the portals years and years ago, and affected more than a few people around the world. Magic is passed down autosomal recessively (is that how you say it?), so it sometimes skips a few generations. Luckily, a good number of them joined or started cults that think they’re the wizarding world or something, and enough powerful magicians joined that they do a good job of covering up and recruiting magical people. A few people did try to take over the world, but none of them had been powerful enough to succeed. This generation of mages has had a few anomalies, though, of concentrated magic. 

Characters:

I’m going to make individual posts eventually, but this is just a few quick bits. 

Jackie Bell is our reluctant protagonist, with a tragic backstory, that, in her eyes, isn’t even that tragic. She has been living in her room for the past five years and has two goals in life: to spite her creator and buy a kitten. She’s practical, adaptable, and wields a metal baseball bat.

Kara Nakamura was supposed to be the foil. A trained assassin from birth, cold and snarky. But she’s hyper-empathetic, not cold in the least bit, and Jackie likes snarky. And after Jackie gave up the prophesized heroic magic, Kara became the accidental holder of it, manifesting in her care as teleportation power. Freedom is what it meant, and if she could just thank the girl that gave it to her...

Spencer Willis is the ‘smart one’. There wasn’t much else to do after his cowardly parents abandoned him in a forgotten theater near Glasscliff. He raised himself on books and the colorful pamphlets in the dressing rooms on costume and acrobatics. But there was a reason his parents were scared, and that much power can’t hide forever.

Miguel Lopez is the knight in shining armor. Ever since he was a child, he was groomed to be Prince Charming carbon-copied from a picture book, gallant and chivalrous and smooth. Blue eyes, blonde hair, skill in magic and battle. But Jackie Bell doesn’t love him, and, horrifyingly, it seems he doesn’t love her. And even worse, he’s starting to realize he was raised in a cult.

Jade Phillips was supposed to be the heart of the group. ‘Sweetheart Starlet that moonlights as a healer for the ragtag gang’. That’s who she was in the book, but it’s becoming increasingly clear it is that it was just a part Jade played. This Jade is controlling, sickly sweet, and has an uncomfortable knowledge of human biology. And she is willing to do anything to get what she wants. 

Amelia Walker is the picture of an old oracle, with her mysterious smile and smoky magic. But she also makes a lot of dick jokes and hasn’t told a real prophecy in thirty years. She is tired of sending children into battle because of some stupid thing like fate. So she scams the cult she belongs to, she sets up a spy network, and tells destiny to suck it. She’s going to save the world. 

Ren Park is a 'bad boy’, and Jackie was supposed to fall in love with him. But he’s a grade-A douchebag with a lot of cash, using ‘rebel-without-a-cause’ to excuse his needless destruction. Someone Jackie has no time for. But his father owns a lot, and they kind of need him to chill out. And it seems nothing makes one question themselves more than saving the world from someone too familiar.

Nadia Carter is Jackie Bell’s best friend, and she wasn’t supposed to be here. With her slight obsession with boys and paint-twisted hair, she’s meant for a different sort of book, the kind with indie-rock montages and sepia tones. But, while she might not be a genius magical super-spy, she has does have a knife. Jackie is her best friend too, and Nadia will not eat alone at lunch.

--

@writeblrshowcase

[staircasttext]

Ep 11 Transcript: Mashy Type of Place

Episode 11

[intro music]

PAZ: Hi everyone, welcome back to Stairway to StarClan, a Warriors Cat reread pawdcast. I'm Paz.

JULIAN: I'm Julian.

LIZ: And I'm Liz.

PAZ: And we're back after our brief break to read and discuss chapters 11 through chapter 14 of Fire and Ice. I just realized I don't know where my notes are.

JULIAN: The forbidden love angle in this one is great.

PAZ: Oh, they're on the floor. Okay, that was my chair squeaking as I leaned over to pick up my notes. Yeah, this is the start of the forbidden love situation which Warrior Cats so dearly adores. I don't know, any other pre-summary thoughts?

JULIAN: This set the tone for so many roleplays, um.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Just like if you were doing a Warrior Cats RP, and there wasn't someone who wasn't doing an interclan sneaky forbidden romance, were you even doing a Warrior Cats RP?

PAZ: I mean, like, that's just the book, too, frankly. I don't understand how it's still forbidden in future books because everyone and their mom is doing it, but. It's fine. Yeah, I guess we'll just get into the summaries. A lot happens. So bear with me.

So chapter 11 opens with Graystripe and Fireheart and their two apprentices heading out for hunting practice. The four travel to Sunningrocks to hunt. While there, the apprentices ask about Redtail's death at Sunningrocks, and Fireheart thinks again about Ravenpaw's accusations against Tigerclaw. The group moves on after Fireheart catches a vole and Cinderpaw ends up running into RiverClan territory to look at the frozen river. Graystripe then ends up falling into the icy river after accidentally breaking through the ice on the banks. Fireheart cannot find a way to pull them out and Graystripe is only saved when a RiverClan shecat jumps into the river and pulls him out. The cat introduces herself as Silverstream and says she doesn't want to see any cat drown and acted on instinct. The group of ThunderClan cats make their way back to camp and resolve to lie about where Graystripe fell into the water. Tigerclaw is waiting at the entrance of the camp and rightfully accuses them of having entered RiverClan territory.

In chapter 12, Cinderpaw easily lies to Tigerclaw about how Graystripe got wet and covered up their trespassing. Tigerclaw believes her and Graystripe is sent to Yellowfang. Fireheart thinks about how easily Cinderpaw lied and wonders again if Ravenpaw had also been a well-meaning and honest cat who stumbled into a lie. Fireheart then becomes frustrated that Bluestar's attitude towards Tigerclaw has not changed at all. Graystripe joins him at dinner with a cough and distracted attitude that Fireheart attributes to fever.

A few days later, Fireheart is told to see Bluestar and Tigerclaw. Tigerclaw thinks it's time for Cinderpaw and Brackenpaw to have an assessment to determine if Fireheart needs help mentoring them. Tigerclaw wants them sent hunting near the Twolegplace, which makes Fireheart nervous, but Tigerclaw says Sunningrocks is too dangerous to hunt near because of RiverClan. Fireheart then follows the apprentices as they hunt. The two apprentices do very well and capture a lot of prey. After they meet up, Cinderpaw asks him if Fireheart was really born at the Twolegplace. He says yes and she doesn't seem to mind. But it leaves Fireheart wondering if he's really happy that his old life is over.

In chapter 13, back at camp, Fireheart reports back to Bluestar and Tigerclaw. Bluestar approves of the apprentices' progress and allows him to continue overseeing Cinderpaw and Brackenpaw's training alone. Graystripe, who had been missing from camp, then returns. Fireheart tries to cover for Graystripe, and Tigerclaw is annoyed Graystripe is not focusing on recovering, as sickness is spreading through the camp. Fireheart then confronts Graystripe and asks him if he's leaving the camp. Graystripe is noncommittal in a way that basically admits to having left. Fireheart thinks about how the way Graystripe has been covering up his tracks is similar to his visits to Princess. Fireheart resolves to find out what Graystripe is doing.

The next day Runningwind and Fireheart train Brackenpaw and Cinderpaw together. However, Fireheart remains distracted throughout and eventually makes an excuse to leave training. He then waits to see where Graystripe is going outside the camp, and is disappointed to see his friend is actually sneaking out. Fireheart secretly follows Graystripe, who goes into RiverClan territory. Silverstream, the RiverClan shecat, then shows up, and the two act very friendly towards each other.

Chapter 14, Fireheart is horrified and calls out to Graystripe, demanding to know what he is doing. Silverstream says everything is safe and she knows there won't be a patrol coming, because she is Crookedstar's daughter. Fireheart demands that Graystripe leave and the two return to ThunderClan territory. Fireheart tells Graystripe he has to stop seeing Silverstream as Graystripe is breaking the clan code by seeing her. Graystripe refuses and is angry that Fireheart doubts his loyalty to ThunderClan. Graystripe declares that StarClan must have planned their meeting.

The two sneak back into camp and Fireheart goes to visit Yellowfang to maintain his cover of having a bellyache. Yellowfang seems stressed as supplies are running low and sickness spreading through the camp. Fireheart leaves, still bothered by the day's events. While out hunting, he decides the only way to solve this is to convince Silverstream these meetings need to stop and heads to RiverClan territory. The chapter ends with Fireheart picking up the scent of RiverClan warriors and hiding. And that's all of our reading this week.

JULIAN: I wish that like-- cause like the stuff with Fireheart like feeling conflicted about confronting Graystripe about his like forbidden interclan romance while continuing to visit his sister, it's interesting character-wise, but I wish we saw any more of his visits with his sister. Because the tension-- because they're all off screen, the tension is like less strong.

PAZ: Yeah, I was definitely disappointed. Like, we kind of just get told and not shown that he's having more meetings.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Yeah, because he also has a thought at one point where he's like, Oh, do I really like not regret leaving my kittypet life? Like my meetings with my sister have been so nice. And it's like, well, we only saw one. But okay, I'll take your word.

JULIAN: It's been a month. Has she delivered her kits yet? How long are cats pregnant for?

PAZ: That's a great question.

JULIAN: Sorry, not to be like a CinemaSins ding, but.

PAZ: Yeah, she was supposed to be heavily pregnant I think.

LIZ: Oh my god.

PAZ: Like if I remember correctly.

LIZ: How long are cats pregnant? Listen, let's lay this to rest. 58 to 67 days so she could still be extremely pregnant.

JULIAN: Alright, I take it back. Maybe she's just about to pop.

PAZ: Great. Yeah. Great. Yeah, so I mean, I guess this set of chapters is sort of these like... I mean, the one side of it is like the apprentice training. And then the other side is this shit with Graystripe and like the parallels and like hypocrisy of Fireheart, who's also been sneaking out off screen to see his sister. I would like that people stopped going into RiverClan territory seemingly no reason over and over and over again.

LIZ: I can't believe he just did it again on a whim.

PAZ: I know. Ahh.

LIZ: He was thinking so much again, and then it just like... Fireheart please. You're killing me. You're killing me personally.

JULIAN: I mean, it does make sense-- for a certain level of sense. It does make sense for him to be like well, my idiot friend won't listen to me. Like, maybe his girlfriend will. Like, nice thought. Won't happen.

LIZ: Nope.

PAZ: No

JULIAN: But God. Graystripe being like StarClan-- we were fated to meet. It was StarClan. It's like, no, it wasn't.

PAZ: I gotta know what Silverstream is seeing in him cause...

JULIAN: Yeah, no, I also don't know what she sees in him. He is... I mean, it's very much like competent girl/real dumb boy that she has to rescue.

LIZ: Kind of like extremely right off the bat too.

JULIAN: Yeah, which like I do think-- if this were an animated media, there would be a million little... I'm sure there are like AMVs of their meeting with romantic music as she pulls him out of the water.

PAZ: Absolutely.

JULIAN: And you know, I'm not opposed to a boy in distress as like a first meeting. But also he keeps being dumb.

LIZ: Right now, they have a real like... the main couple from Ratatouille.

PAZ: You're right.

JULIAN: It is. What is it, Celeste, I think? And Linguini.

PAZ: Graystripe is Linguini.

LIZ: Graystripe, you're a pasta to me.

PAZ: Yeah, I mean, he just... I still feel like he hasn't established a distinct character, although his character is quickly developing into a shitty friend.

LIZ: Shitty friend, centrist, doesn't believe their traumatized other friend.

PAZ: Yeah. Graystripe has a lot of dings against him here.

LIZ: He's also kind of a shitty teacher.

PAZ: No, like that-- yeah. That's part of him being a shitty friend is like one, you're leaving your best friend to take like double duty teaching, and you're also a shitty teacher because you're leaving your friend to teach your student.

JULIAN: I feel like the thing with Graystripe is as obnoxious as he is proving to be, he is-- like everyone has had a friend like Graystripe, especially like for like the middle grade/early high school audience. Like everyone has a friend who ends up dating someone and like completely ditches you for them.

PAZ: That's very true.

LIZ: I guess it is like his first romance, too. I don't know how old these cats are supposed to be at this point, like mentally.

PAZ: I think they've reached like--

LIZ: Early...

PAZ: --fully, like young adult.

LIZ: Yeah, like 20?

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: Ish. I mean, they're... they've got students, but I don't know. They're cats.

JULIAN: Yeah, I don't think human ages map very well.

LIZ: No.

JULIAN: Oh, you know, I'm actually-- I'm going to revise what I said. Graystripe isn't the shitty friend. He's like a combo of the shitty friend and also the shitty boyfriend somehow at once. He's like, simultaneously your shitty friend and your friend's shitty boyfriend who's always around.

LIZ: Yeah. He's Linguini.

PAZ: Like Fireheart has apparently been sneaking off to see his sister, but he seems to have been keeping up his teaching duties too.

JULIAN: Right, it doesn't seem to have affected his students, who are very good hunters and very enthusiastic.

PAZ: Yeah. Also Graystripe is like getting everyone sick apparently through his...

JULIAN: Is he a disease vector?

PAZ: That's what's implied.

LIZ: Now is he-- does he just like pretend to drown every time he sees his girlfriend? Is that why he's always like, oh, I've got a cold. I'm so sick. Achoo.

JULIAN: I can't think about their drowning RP.

PAZ: Oh god. Yeah, I mean, like, it's one thing to be a shitty friend. But I think you're also now indirectly responsible for mass sickness. So good job, Graystripe.

JULIAN: Well done. I mean, I think it's implied. I'm not sure if it's implied right now. It seems like it's like he had a cough because he got wet and cold. And he's not like healing, because he's sneaking out and being active and smooching his girlfriend instead of like, convalescing. So I'm not sure if it's like, is there sickness in the RiverClan camp that he's also bringing back?

PAZ: Yeah, I mean, I also thought he just got sick from being wet. But the way the book kept mentioning his name in connection to like, everyone else getting sick made it seem like... I don't know. Maybe he got weak and got a virus and that's his sickness. I don't know. Also, the cats don't know anything about germs really, so.

JULIAN: Yeah, the cats do not have a robust germ theory.

LIZ: No. I mean, it's been mentioned before that, like RiverClan is having problems finding food in the river. So I don't think it's like some sort of waterborne illness or like pollution or something. But it would be interesting if it was.

JULIAN: Mm. Graystripe has been eating diseased fish.

LIZ: Can you imagine this big, just like soggy cat rolls up to you, just like sneezing and snotty and is just like, fancy meeting you here, cat of an enemy clan. Do you want to like... do you want to hang out? Are you free? Heyyy. Achoo.

JULIAN: He can't even hunt.

PAZ: God. Yeah. I'm very frustrated with him.

JULIAN: All the stuff with the apprentices is very cute though.

PAZ: Yeah, they're so cute.

JULIAN: As annoyed as I am with Graystripe, there is a moment at the very beginning where he like, catches a leaf and then tries to play it off like oh, you always gotta be ready. Gotta practice your hunting. And it's like, aw, he's just a little guy. But he's a shitty little guy, so

PAZ: Yeah, that was really cute. Cinderpaw is extremely cute. She's very like, little kid energies.

LIZ: Yeah, these are like kitten kittens, you know. There's the one that's like, jumping around and knocking shit over and then the other one just looks permanently serious and confused. You know what I mean?

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: Yeah, I mean, Cinderpaw did lead to this horrible forbidden romance inadvertently cause she rushed into RiverClan territory, but I forgive her because she's so cute.

LIZ: Just a baby.

JULIAN: She does stress me out a lot because she keeps doing shit. She keeps just running off and like, you know, might--

LIZ: Is that what it's like to have children?

JULIAN: Well, my old babysitter instincts are like, Oh, God.

LIZ: It's like, it's terrifying. She just keeps... she just goes.

PAZ: Yeah, I mean, like, I know what this is setting up.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: So it's extra, like stop doing this.

LIZ: I'm sure that means nothing.

PAZ: Yeah, don't worry about it.

JULIAN: Don't worry about it. It's definitely fine.

LIZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Yeah, no, it is very much like, you know, flashback to being a teen and trying to keep my little sister from yanking out of my hand and running into the road.

PAZ: Yeah, I mean, the other thing is Tigerclaw keeps being the reasonable one.

JULIAN: I know.

PAZ: Which is still very funny, just because everyone is acting like a buffoon, everyone else.

LIZ: I like it a lot. It's just, it's so interesting because it's like, oh, you're my enemy. You definitely are a murderer. But I guess... hmm. It's fun energy after he was just so comically evil before.

JULIAN: I know.

PAZ: Yeah, exactly.

JULIAN: It's also like, the little interaction that Fireheart has with Cinderpaw where he's like, Oh, you trust Tigerclaw, and she's like, Yeah, why wouldn't I? It's like, well, he is comically evil, but like, she hasn't really seen him be comically evil. She was a baby.

PAZ: Yeah, I do like that it's still pulling through the plot thread of like, Fireheart doubting because nobody else is taking, like, what Ravenpaw said seriously. I am as frustrated as he is with Bluestar for like...

LIZ: Yeah, what the fuck?

PAZ: Just completely ignoring this.

LIZ: She's had so many people die on her, like.

JULIAN: Well, speaking of, she's like, yeah, we lost five kits last winter to this sickness. I'm sure it's fine, though. Like, what are-- what?

LIZ: Hey, hello.

JULIAN: The infant mortality rates here are bananas. Are y'all good?

PAZ: No, they should be inside. They should be.

LIZ: Right. There's like 30 of them or something.

PAZ: Yeah, I mean, they have like fucking Dark Age Europe infant mortality rates going on here.

JULIAN: I guess this explains why, like, you know, despite the fact that cat litters are usually like, you know, three to five to six. I don't know. A number of kittens. It seems like everyone only has like one or two siblings. Half of them are dying.

PAZ: Do you think they do that thing like people used to do in the old days where they don't name the kids until they're a certain age because they're like, well, half of you are just gonna fucking drop dead?

JULIAN: Well, is that why they don't get their full warrior name? Is that what warrior names are?

LIZ: Oh my god.

PAZ: Oh my god.

JULIAN: Cause it's like, oh, you're just sort of an interchangeable like kit/paw until like, you reach adulthood because you might just die.

PAZ: This is dark.

LIZ: We just cracked this wide open.

JULIAN: Oh God.

LIZ: That could explain why there's like so many, I don't know, Ashpaws or whatever around. It's like how you keep naming your children like James or something because they just keep dying, and then some of them do survive.

JULIAN: Right, eventually you'll get one.

LIZ: Yeah, and then you're like, stuck with two of them.

PAZ: God.

LIZ: Bluestar at like a baby naming ceremony just like, okay, now you're Leafpaw and you're Leafpaw, and you're also--

JULIAN: Bluestar just scrolling down a list of names like the way they name hurricanes.

PAZ: I mean, Bluestar doesn't pick the first half. That's the moms I think.

JULIAN: That's true. It is the moms.

PAZ: That'd be real fucked up if only your leader could name your children.

LIZ: Only the president can name you. Do you think Tigerclaw in his coup-minded like headspace is like thinking about the infant mortality rate? I don't know because he tried to kill one of them. But is this part of his dissatisfaction politically?

PAZ: Well, that baby gave him bad vibes.

LIZ: Oh true.

PAZ: What if the child simply had bad vibes? Then it's fine.

JULIAN: The infant mortality rate is only a problem when it's inconvenient for Tigerclaw and not...

PAZ: Yeah. I mean, I'm sure--

JULIAN: Yo Tigerclaw, what's your health care plan?

LIZ: He says 99.9999999% of babies will live. The other percent is just Ravenpaw.

PAZ: Oh god. You know, I'm glad Ravenpaw got out of this mess because--

LIZ: Yeah, it sucks.

PAZ: Fucking everything's bad here. Even your friend group is shitty now.

LIZ: This is what happens when the gay cat leaves. It's just like, oh.

PAZ: Yeah, Graystripe is off--

JULIAN: Ravenpaw went to cat New York. God, I do like-- how traumatic must it be to be like a queen where your kids are constantly dying?

PAZ: Yeah. Yeah, it sucks to live here in the forest.

JULIAN: Like, Princess's kits are going to get veterinary care.

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: And apparently they all just live next to each other too. So like separation's not even a problem and they get to go outside.

PAZ: Yeah, you mean the kittypets?

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Yeah, maybe Fireheart should be like reconsidering if he wants to go back to being a kittypet because, uh, I would be.

LIZ: It's not too late.

JULIAN: Well, I'm a little concerned about his visiting Princess now that there's like disease running rampant in the camps. Like what's going to happen if he gives them some weird forest disease?

PAZ: Well, that's the beauty of it. They can go get veterinary care.

LIZ: Do you think Fire--

PAZ: Also, I mean--

LIZ: Oh, sorry.

PAZ: Oh, well, Fireheart probably has some amount of shots also, which is why he's so powerful.

JULIAN: That's true.

PAZ: So maybe he won't get anything.

JULIAN: You're right, I had completely forgotten about how he probably had some shots.

LIZ: Yeah, that's why he's the chosen one.

PAZ: He's like an ubermensch.

LIZ: Like Spottedleaf having her prophetic vision, like, I see an orange cat, who's never going to get the cold or rabies. He will save us all.

JULIAN: Fireheart's true power was immunity to heartworms.

LIZ: I don't know, where do we go next?

PAZ: I don't know, we've kind of just been jumping all over the place.

JULIAN: I feel like these three chapters-- or four chapters are like, they sort of grow, but they kind of loop back on themselves sort of. Like it's not as direct an arc. It's like Fireheart, trains the apprentices, and then he worries about Graystripe, and then he trains the apprentices, and then he finds out that Graystripe's been actually doing some shit.

PAZ: Yeah, it was like, a lot of like, small details happened, but also like, nothing really happened.

LIZ: Yeah, it feels like-- the way that nothing happened, but also a lot of problems are introduced, is it kind of adds the feeling of anxiety. I think also it's been a while since I read this part. But like, doesn't Bluestar say like, she's gonna move the kittens' training to someone else?

PAZ: No, she decides that like, Fireheart's doing fine.

LIZ: Oh okay.

PAZ: Yeah, it's what the like assessment was about.

LIZ: Oh, right. Right. Then nevermind.

JULIAN: The assessment was very, like fun to read. Hunting sequences are always really evocative and fun. There's one bit where Cinderpaw like, sees Fireheart and is like, am I doing good? Which is really cute.

PAZ: Yeah, it's so cute.

LIZ: When she sneaks up on him.

PAZ: Yeah. It was like a sweet little moment where like, she was like, so were you a kittypet? And he's like, yeah, and she's just like, okay. I'm fine with that.

JULIAN: Good for her.

PAZ: Yeah, I hope she doesn't internalize prejudices soon.

JULIAN: I really-- I know this won't happen. But I would love for her to get to meet Princess. I think that would be very fun.

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: Aw.

JULIAN: I just think she'd be very curious in a very cute way about kittypet life.

PAZ: I mean, I guess going back to Graystripe's forbidden romance, Fireheart definitely had points about like, well, what are you gonna do when we go to war? Cause that seems like it's gonna happen.

JULIAN: God. Well, and the bit where she's like, using her knowledge of the patrol routes because she's the leader's daughter.

PAZ: Right? That's so funny.

JULIAN: She's gonna get in trouble for that, dude.

LIZ: This is-- it'll be fine. Don't worry, nothing's gonna happen. This is a regular, safe situation. And none of these cats have ever been stupid.

JULIAN: Right.

PAZ: No, never.

JULIAN: Nothing bad has ever happened to a cat in a Warrior Cats book.

PAZ: I mean, it is highlighting like the fucking like stupidity of the rigidity of the warrior code, but they're not gonna change that. So stop sneaking off.

JULIAN: I mean, is there literally a rule somewhere in the warrior code that says you can't date cats from other clans? I just, I'm so confused about how specific the warrior code gets.

PAZ: I thought there was. Yeah. I feel like that might actually be up on the official website somewhere.

JULIAN: Oh, really?

PAZ: But yeah, I always assumed like interclan relationships were like, codified no-nos.

LIZ: I don't know if-- this is like just me lacking, like, lore knowledge. But like, it felt like it is not allowed, but it's not unheard of as a bad thing that has happened, right?

JULIAN: Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that it like--

LIZ: Like quote unquote "bad."

JULIAN: It has to have happened-- well, first off, it happens a lot in the books.

PAZ: Yeah, it's definitely happened. I think you find out about that later.

JULIAN: But also like, it must happen, because otherwise they wouldn't have like-- it wouldn't be such a taboo if it wasn't, you know, a thing that happened. But foolishly, they've just made it much more sexy by forbidding it.

PAZ: Yeah, they really messed up there. Everyone loves a forbidden romance.

JULIAN: Right? They should have just been like, oh, the cats from the other clans... I mean, you can date them, but like, they're really boring. Nothing to see here.

PAZ: Yeah, I know what, like where Graystripe ends up, but I have no idea how that happens. So I'm looking forward to that.

LIZ: Oh, you mean happily married after like, I don't know, six years of really slow dating? And then they like move in and start a cat bakery. I don't know. They have 2.5 kids. It's really boring. Average.

PAZ: 2.5 kids because half of their children died.

JULIAN: Does Graystripe have a lawn?

PAZ: Yeah, yeah. He feels like the guy.

JULIAN: He feels like a real barbecue dad.

LIZ: Yeah. I was just gonna say that.

PAZ: Yeah. His big like riding lawnmower that he's really proud of. And he's like, really boring and frustrating also to be around. That's him.

JULIAN: You meet him at the neighborhood barbecue and he corrals you to like talk about the upgrades he just made to his riding mower.

PAZ: Exactly.

JULIAN: It has like a little flag on it. I don't know what the flag is but it is there.

LIZ: Halfway through the barbecue he disappears. And you find out that he's fallen into the pool. His wife has to go get him.

JULIAN: They met in high school.

LIZ: Oh no.

JULIAN: She was a cheerleader at the rival football team.

LIZ: She's like, from the rival school but she's like, the star water polo athlete who's also like the daughter of the principal.

PAZ: Hold on, I'm googling Graystripe hate because I need to...

JULIAN: Oh god. I bet there was so much Graystripe hate back in the day.

PAZ: Why Graystripe Annoys Me by Foxtail.

JULIAN: Oh good. I mean like--

LIZ: Wow. Do you-- no, go ahead.

JULIAN: As a teen myself, I was very into Graystripe's story at the time. I thought it was incredibly romantic. I was fully in support. As an adult, I'm like alright buddy, calm down.

PAZ: Yeah, I liked him, starting with the New Prophecy. Is that the second series? Because I didn't really have this context. Like yeah, seeing him be a shitty friend I am a little annoyed with this guy.

JULIAN: Yeah, no, 11 year old me was like, why isn't Fireheart more understanding? Graystripe is in love. And now as someone who's worked on group projects, I'm like, fuck.

LIZ: Uh huh. I would-- imagine you have to work on a PowerPoint with Graystripe for like your very most final project. It's like 75% of your grade.

PAZ: Oh my god.

LIZ: You can't be judged individually. It's terrible.

PAZ: Sorry, I'm reading this blog post. This person fucking eviscerates Graystripe. "Graystripe never even thought about what could happen. Fireheart knew that Tigerclaw was beginning to get suspicious and tried to warn his friend. But Graystripe just snapped at him and said to stay out of his fur. Fireheart was a better friend of the two, in my opinion. He stayed loyal to Graystripe even if Graystripe didn't stay loyal to him."

LIZ: No.

JULIAN: No!

PAZ: "But Graystripe didn't care. He didn't care if he was betraying his clan or not or how much hurt he caused Fireheart. All he cared about was his feelings and what he wanted. He even ditched Brackenpaw's training, which was highly important, just to get away and sneak out." I agree with all of this.

JULIAN: They're making some good points. He did ditch Brackenpaw's training.

LIZ: Poor Brackenpaw, who is-- you know, we've talked about Cinderpaw a lot. He's getting a lot less characterization, which makes me worried.

PAZ: He's just a polite little boy.

JULIAN: Yeah, he's just a sweet little guy.

LIZ: I don't know, you guys haven't talked about him much. So I don't know.

JULIAN: No, I don't think you need to, like worry about him. He's just like, you know, he hasn't really been given much of a personality.

PAZ: I mean, he has a personality. The personality is just like, good student.

LIZ: It's just me, aged like 12 to 17.

JULIAN: No, he's just a little guy.

LIZ: He's just a little guy.

JULIAN: Um, and it does suck that Graystripe is ignoring him because he seems like the kind of little guy who would like take that personally and be like, aw, well, I guess he just doesn't... I guess I'm not very interesting. You know.

LIZ: No.

PAZ: Aw.

JULIAN: In a way that makes me very sad.

LIZ: Well, Graystripe's my enemy now. Before I was like, yes, he's annoying, but I do enjoy what this is doing for character conflict, but now he's just my enemy. Thank you, Julian.

PAZ: Right? What if he gives Brackenpaw a complex about how he's not good enough and nobody wants him?

LIZ: No! Justice for Brackenpaw.

JULIAN: I mean, here's the thing. Like Bluestar does, like threaten to take away Brackenpaw as an apprentice. So clearly she is concerned about Graystripe's--

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: And she doesn't know that he's fucking off. But you know.

PAZ: This poor kid. I mean, I guess at least he doesn't have his mentor trying to murder him. But.

JULIAN: Yeah, the bar is pretty low.

LIZ: The bar is underground.

JULIAN: The bar is in snake hell.

PAZ: I did like that brief scene with Runningwind, who was just like being completely normal and a good teacher. Thanks.

JULIAN: I thought it was very funny. There's a sequence where Fireheart is like, really, he's really distracted because he's worried about Graystripe, which is very sad. But he's like, Oh, I'm going to demonstrate how to track a rabbit or whatever. And then he realizes halfway through that he's like, showing how to track a bird and the kits are very, like, ya dumb. It's really cute.

PAZ: Yeah. Yeah. And Runningwind is like... when he came up with an excuse to leave, Runningwind was just like, yeah, you seem to be out of it. Like, go ahead. I'll take care of it.

LIZ: Yeah, I'm not sure how much more senior like Runningwind is, but there's a good sense of like Fireheart is trying to be more of a mentor, like act older and more mature, but he's still kind of young. So like, there's gonna be hiccups like this. And there's that interesting struggle between that, which is really, you know, it feels natural for young adults, that awkwardness.

JULIAN: Oh definitely. Like when you have to train someone who's a lot older than you at work, and you're just like, hi.

LIZ: Yeah, this is the feeling I had when I was, um, like a college tutor at a community college, and I had a lot of older students. It's like, Oh, God, you know what taxes are. I don't know. Should I be doing this for you?

JULIAN: Fireheart trying to put on his customer service voice.

LIZ: (perkily) Hi, welcome to ThunderClan.

JULIAN: (equally perkily) Today, we're going to be learning about hunting rabbits.

LIZ: And Excel. You just let me know if you have any questions.

PAZ: Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I have much else to say, really.

JULIAN: I think we've kind of covered it.

PAZ: Yeah.

[meow]

PAZ: So I'm sure everyone has heard about the imminent death of Yahoo Answers. Pour one out. So, you know, we felt the need to scour it for Warrior Cats content before it's axed. So we're gonna bring you some highlights here.

JULIAN: Do you want me to go ahead and start reading the first one?

PAZ: Sure.

JULIAN: All right. So the great thing about Yahoo Answers now is that because all of these answers are so old, all the timestamps are "one decade ago."

LIZ: Oh my god.

JULIAN: Which I hate to see. But one decade ago, user Sophia Utley asked in Pets: Cats, "does anyone know any good websites on how to draw a Warrior Cat??? Question mark, question mark, question mark. I'm soooo frustrated. I can't draw a cat or find anything on how to draw it on paper."

LIZ: Oh my god.

PAZ: I feel this. This is a mood, Sophia. Um, there's two answers. The favorite answer, from Mallory H: "I do not know anything about what the heck a Warrior Cat is. But I can give you some advice on drawing. What I do with cats-- I suck at them-- is I find a good reference picture online, then print it out." I have to-- I have to interrupt. This person is just randomly capitalizing words in this answer.

LIZ: Ahead of the game.

PAZ: Kind of ahead of the time, yeah. It's a tone. Okay, Mallory continues. "Use your pencil to draw out the basic shapes in the cat. Circle for the head, torso and rump. Black circles for the joints and the legs, and lines to connect the joints. After that, copy it onto the paper, make sure all the circles, lines, and joints are in the right places. Then add the flesh, muscles, etc. Hope I helped."

LIZ: It feels-- it's like medieval because of all the capitalization, but also like, you know, your bog standard blog posts from 2020 now.

JULIAN: I mean, this is like, you know, legitimately helpful. This is the drawing advice that was in the book of how to draw cats that I checked out from the library in 2008. And it was, you know, well, it's sort of useful because like, yes, that is how you draw something. You draw the base shapes, and then you extrapolate from there. But the jump from like, here's circles to here's a cat, it's a big one.

PAZ: It's like the joke I saw where it's like art advice. It's like draw a circle and then the next panel is just like a fully shaded portrait. The other answer simply links to some books, one of which is MechaMania: How to Draw Warrior Robots, Cool Spaceships, and Military Vehicles.

LIZ: Wait. The last link is to idrawgirls.blogspot.com.

PAZ: Yeah, it's How to Draw a Werewolf Pizza Monster.

JULIAN: How to draw a werewolf. Nothing about cats. And then the links in between are possible-- I presume this person's actual drawings. Unfortunately, the images are now broken, but it is a drawing of a warrior cat and a drawing labeled "Matrix Cat."

LIZ: Oh my god.

PAZ: Yeah, this post was disliked. It was not helpful.

JULIAN: I do want to see if I can find-- if Matrix Cat was perhaps archived because I would love to see it. Damn, it was not archived. Lost to time.

LIZ: Can we boolean search Matrix Cat? There has to be something, right?

PAZ: This is tragic.

LIZ: Oh, it's something.

JULIAN: Oh.

PAZ: Is this like the Matrix guy as a cat?

LIZ: It's just like a little cat with sunglasses.

PAZ: Yeah, that's the Matrix guy as a cat.

JULIAN: Aw, that's really good.

LIZ: And also cats made of like green hacker code. There's a deviantArt sticker.

JULIAN: Um, the next one is also very good. Again asked in the Pets: Cats section.

PAZ: Of course.

JULIAN: Anonymous asks, "what are some good powers that a Warrior Cat can have? I am writing a Warrior Cats by Erin Hunter fanfiction. But the cats can control stuff, sort of like X-men can...... so yeah..... what's some good powers they can have? Example: flame ice water thunder."

LIZ: That's such a good question.

PAZ: This is an important question.

JULIAN: It is.

PAZ: What if the cats had powers?

JULIAN: There's a lot of very good powers in the answers.

PAZ: Do you want to read part of the next one, the answer, Liz?

LIZ: Yes, I do. Alright, this is from-- this is the favorite answer, from Josie Jayfeather Mulcaney and some sort of symbol, which really adds to it.

JULIAN: It's a little trident, the psi.

LIZ: Alright. "Here's a list of all the things that your character could control. I list the main element, then the side powers that come with it. Example, when you control fire you can also control ashes, fire, ash, lava, embers, and coals. Ice, snow, frost. Water, just water. Lightning, electricity and storms. Venom, poisonous snakes."

PAZ: Yep.

LIZ: "Regeneration, you can regenerate/heal like Wolverine. Earth, flowers, stone, vines, roots, anything earthy. Stone--" which is kind of confusing, given the first one-- "can turn cats to stone and control boulders, rocks, pebbles, etc. Light, can give life to dead plants or cats."

PAZ: What?!

LIZ: "Can control light and create light, etc. Darkness/shadow, can kill plants or cats, can control shadows, necromancer. Wind, can control wind, use wind to lift or bury things, can use wind to lift self and fly. Shapeshifter, can shift shapes, change into any creature, from fish to hawk to deer to human. Storms, can control/change weather, can control rain, lightning, tornado, winds, clouds, anything. Dreams, can control dreams, walk in dreams, and send visions to other cats. Teleportation, can teleport self through time a few hours or to different locations. Telepathy, can read minds. I think that's all... That's all I have used. Anyways, I hope I helped. Josie Jayfeather. Heart emoji."

JULIAN: This is-- I have some problems with this person's characterization. But the idea that Josie Jayfeather has used all of these powers in her Warrior fanfictions is incredible. Imagine how the story changes if you can turn a cat into stone.

PAZ: I know I was reading fic with that kinda shit in it.

LIZ: Okay, what if they're like twin cats and one of them has earth powers, which controls stone, and the other cat has stone powers, which turns cats into stone.

PAZ: Oh shit.

JULIAN: Oh shit.

LIZ: They're evil twins.

JULIAN: Dynamic duo.

PAZ: Oh my god. That's frightening.

JULIAN: Absolutely incredible. Also the shapeshifter that can turn into humans?

PAZ: Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. Um, here's another good answer from Lee. "Redirect electricity bolts after chewing through an electric cord, power to invisibly sneak up on people, power to lick holes into things with their rough tongue, power to freeze things through their annoyed ice kitty stares. The power to make others become unconscious with their fishy breath." I like Lee's commitment to the theme here.

LIZ: Yeah, he's having a little fun too.

JULIAN: Lee seems like a regular reader of the Pet Cat section and maybe not a regular reader of the Warrior Cats ouvre.

PAZ: Yeah, this was disliked, which I don't agree with. I think it's good.

JULIAN: I don't agree with that. I'm going to give it a like.

PAZ: Can I like it? Yeah, I'm giving it a like.

JULIAN: Oh, I have to log in my Yahoo account to like it.

PAZ: Oh, I'm actually logged in.

LIZ: There's one more answer at the end if someone wants to read it.

JULIAN: Oh, yes. Sorry. I lost the page. Let me go back. The final answer, by Princess is-- oh, there's two more.

LIZ: Oh, yeah.

JULIAN: One of them is "invisible missile launchers, the power to see through wooden doors--" only wooden-- "they can jump on top of skyscrapers..."

LIZ: Perfect.

JULIAN: And then the final answer, from Jim. "Kill just by staring."

PAZ: Jim's answer was from six years ago. He revisited this.

JULIAN: He waited four years to come up with that answer.

LIZ: He thought about it. And he came up with the best one. Well, just important question here. Which of these powers would you guys have?

JULIAN: Ooh.

PAZ: Oh, that's a good question.

LIZ: We can also put this-- I think this is a good Twitter poll. We should put this up somehow, even though there's like 15 answers.

JULIAN: We could pick our top four favorite powers and let people vote. Um, if I were to pick the power that I think would be most useful in the Warrior Cats universe, it would be earth because there's a lot of plants.

PAZ: Yeah, that's true.

JULIAN: Although venom is compelling because then you'd be immune to snake hell.

PAZ: Light, where you can apparently give life to cats would be great. You would solve that infant mortality problem. I like that light, you can give life to cats. But darkness is necromancer. So I guess there's like a good revival and a bad revival.

LIZ: Interesting.

JULIAN: Oh, yeah, those are the same thing. I guess it's the difference between like, bringing someone back to life and like, controlling their corpse.

PAZ: Philosophical questions here. What would you choose?

LIZ: I would choose winds. I want to fly. Flying cat, make it happen. Surprised it's not a thing in this book, this series. But I don't know. Maybe physiologically they stay pretty cat standard.

JULIAN: There were a lot of--

PAZ: Cats with wings?

JULIAN: Yeah, a lot of wingfic.

PAZ: Yeah. I know it well.

LIZ: I can imagine. Imagine you live in England, in just like a town. You know, with some like forests or whatever nearby where there's a lot of fuckin feral cats and you're just like, walking home. You see like a cat with wings.

PAZ: Fuck yeah.

JULIAN: That's good as hell. I think there was a book about that. Like Catwings, I think it was called.

LIZ: Wasn't that the one by Ursula Le Guin?

JULIAN: I think so.

PAZ: Wow.

JULIAN: Yeah, it was by Ursula Le Guin. There were four of them. Kittens that were born with wings. Oh, they were children's books. Yes. Aw, these are really cute. I didn't-- I only read the first one. I didn't know there were four.

LIZ: Well, you know what kids like, clearly.

JULIAN: Cats with wings.

LIZ: Yeah. She knew.

JULIAN: Oh, these overlapped with-- these overlapped with the Warrior books, like sort of. The last one was published in 1999.

LIZ: I thought you were gonna say like Left Hand of Darkness. It's like oh, is this an interconnected universe?

JULIAN: Left Hand of Darkness/Catwings crossover.

PAZ: Should we move on to the next question?

LIZ: Mm-hmm.

PAZ: This one is titled "/?" and it was asked in Arts and Humanities, Books and Authors. Oh, wait. Slash question mark was the person's name. Sorry. This is the title. "?? Warriors series?????" I would guess there's about 30 question marks following that. "Warriors series age? Hi. I recently heard about Warriors series by Eric Hunter cats are involved. What are the ages for that book? I'm 13. Is that a right age? Please answer. And is it a good series for a boy? What's it about? Does it go in order? Does it jump around? Thanks so much."

LIZ: Oh my God.

JULIAN: Josie returns.

LIZ: Josie!

JULIAN: "The Warrior Cats series is for all ages. I'm 17 and I read them." This was a decade ago. So Josie is now 27.

LIZ: She's our age.

JULIAN: I know.

LIZ: Well, she's almost my age.

JULIAN: Hey, listeners, if you are Josie Jayfeather, we would love to hear from you.

PAZ: Yeah, please.

JULIAN: "I think that both girls and guys can love the series and characters. They're universal. Four clans of feral cats live in the forest, ThunderClan, ShadowClan, WindClan and RiverClan. They fight for prey and territory, etc. It sounds bland, but it isn't. Trust me." And then Josie has helpfully given all of the books in order, which I will not read aloud.

PAZ: Yeah, she does it in chronological order actually, like, including some of those special books that were like chronological timeline order.

LIZ: Wow.

PAZ: That's very thorough.

JULIAN: I mean, I guess that kind of makes sense. If you are invested in the characters, you might want to read the special editions.

PAZ: Yeah. Wow.

JULIAN: This is incredible.

PAZ: This is a long list. Thank you, Josie.

JULIAN: One thing I did notice when I was going through the-- when I was searching for some of these Yahoo Answers is that there are a lot of people who are just asking for a list of all of the Warriors series in order, because they want to know what order to read them in.

LIZ: Well, if you're 13, you don't know what Wikipedia is, right? All your teachers are saying, okay, this is your first essay. Don't plagiarize. You can't use Wikipedia. So where else can you go?

JULIAN: That's true. Um, my favorite answer is the next one.

PAZ: Yeah. Should I read it?

LIZ: Oh my goodness. Yes.

PAZ: This one's from anonymous. "Please choose me as best answer. I am 13 years old too, and the Warriors series is the only book I've ever liked. Ever. It begins with a house cat (kittypet) named Rusty. This curious cat ventures--" wow. I can't talk. "This curious cat ventures out into the wild trying to catch a mouse he spotted. As he is walking in the strange land filled with new scents and feelings he gets attacked by an apprentice, a gray tom (male cat) becomes his best friend throughout the series. Will he be accepted into the clan?......... Warrior Cats is a book that is definitely a boy book (however I'm a tomboy so I like it anyways.) It is a book filled with adventure, mystery, excitement, and well, lots of battles. xD. I've never seen a person pick up that book and put it back down. And it's not a six book series. It's about 30 maybe books. And yes, it is age appropriate. xD Well, that is if you don't mind, death, blood, and violence of any kind."

LIZ: Oh my god.

PAZ: "Anyway, it's a very fun book, and it never gets boring. Smiley face. I first read it when my brother dared me to read the first book."

LIZ: Aw.

PAZ: "On the very first chapter I was sucked into the story. And btw, the people not person who writes these books, it's actually their code name Erin Hunter and it's actually it's three people who write the books. And they do not jump around. They are in order." And then lists an order of which to read. And then they finish, "actually I forgot the others because I am not actually done with the series yet. Little sweating smiling emoji. Lol. Sorry. Anyways, that could keep you bust for a while. And they say at the end of each book what the next one is. Well, have fun reading them. Best books ever. Have fun."

LIZ: Precious.

JULIAN: I love this so much.

PAZ: So cute. I hope they read the rest and had fun.

LIZ: Um, just to draw attention to not-- these are really long answers, all of these, mostly because they have all the books in order, all of them, forever. But the next one says, "they are perfect for any gender," and then also defines the four clans in a very interesting way. "There are four clans: WindClan, fastest runner, like the open space. RiverClan, best swimmer, like to live near rivers, streams, ponds. ShadowClan, known for being very secretive, like mashy type of place. ThunderClan, bravest, strongest, like to live in forest with lots of trees."

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Oh, okay. I think they meant to type marshy instead of mashy.

PAZ: Yeah, they did. But I like mashy.

JULIAN: Oh, very good.

LIZ: Potato fans.

JULIAN: I'd also like to draw attention to this answer from arceo, four years ago, which is "fashionable sustainable character? Graystripe fashionable minor character? Hawkfrost fashionable drugs cat?"

LIZ: Wait.

PAZ: Jayfeather? Why?

LIZ: What?

JULIAN: I think it's a bot that's just, um, like, listing things that appear in like Google searches or something. Um, the last sentence is "Foxtail visual charm? Jack dark ginger tabby shecat with bright eco-friendly and a hairy tail like a fox's preferred prolonged relatives? From tale, ShadowClan. My own. ShadeClan."

PAZ: Yep.

JULIAN: Like this is clearly a bot. But I'm so...

PAZ: I love it.

JULIAN: --confused about how it was coded.

PAZ: I'm clicking on this. Can I click on this profile?

LIZ: This just generated us a new character, I think.

PAZ: This user's activity is private? Fuck you.

LIZ: What happened? They've given almost 2000 answers.

PAZ: Yeah, I mean, if it's a bot, I guess they can just...

JULIAN: Damn.

PAZ: My gosh. That's great. I love it. Um, do you want to read the next one? It's kind of long.

JULIAN: The next one is pretty long. It's just, uh, someone is asking for ideas for a Warrior Cats fanfic. The reason I really liked this is that the first answer is someone giving an incredibly long and very detailed, like plot summary, with lots of characters, lots of like... I'm not sure if this is this person's OCs or like. It's a lot. It's a whole lot. And then the last answer is from user Scribbles. But each letter in Scribbles is its own little, you know, special symbol. So it's like, S is a $ sign, etc, etc. And it just says, "this is copying."

LIZ: No, it's fanfic.

PAZ: I don't know.

JULIAN: I can't tell if Scribbles is upset about the concept of fanfiction or if Scribbles is like, you're stealing other people's idea. You're crowdsourcing your fanfic ideas off Yahoo Answers.

PAZ: Yeah, it's hard to say. It was an unpopular answer though. It got six downvotes.

LIZ: Good.

JULIAN: Scribbles in general does not have a great-- only 15% of their answers have been favorited.

PAZ: Damn.

LIZ: Wow. There's an answer from Anonymous that just says like, "sounds pretty good, but I think you should move away from the names and think of description. Nothing makes a book better than if it has a balance of description, dialogue, action, humor, and heartbreak. I have written an 80 page fanfic, and believe me, that is how I got anywhere."

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: That is how you do it.

LIZ: Thank you, Anonymous. Yeah. Gotta have a balance of description, dialogue, action, humor, and heartbreak.

PAZ: Yeah, I mean, that sums it up. That's the best writing advice you can get. So we have one more. This is from Sarah, one decade ago, in Entertainment and Music: Movies. "Please somebody tell me about the warrior cat movie. I am dying to know if there is or if there is on or when," Sarah asks.

LIZ: Oh, Sarah.

PAZ: Well, Sarah, I'm sorry to tell you. The answer though, from Jewishgirl1994, "As of now, there are no definite plans to make a Warriors movie. This was confirmed by one of the Erin Hunters on an author chat and posted on the Warriors site and the Warriors Wikipedia page as well." This is a quote. "'Oh, the fickle world of moviemaking. Well, there are currently no Warrior movies in production or even under consideration. The economy is not in a state to invest in a rather dark animation about feral cats apparently. I promise I'll let you know if there are any changes.'"

JULIAN: Oh, I really wish I had a timestamp on whether this was like-- when it says a decade ago, was this like--

PAZ: 2008?

JULIAN: --actually from a decade ago, or is this from like 2009?

PAZ: As they typed this, the stock market crashed. I love this answer because it does have a sources and the sources is just Wikipedia and WarriorCats.com. Thank you.

JULIAN: I also like Brambleclaw's answer, which is, "Unfortunately there isn't one, though I would definitely watch it if one were to come out. I wonder if I could write the soundtrack for them."

LIZ: Aw.

JULIAN: And then the same quote from the author chat.

LIZ: Oh, no. Morris says that there are rumors and that "it won't be out until at least 2011."

PAZ: Darn.

JULIAN: Well, Morris.

LIZ: Morris.

PAZ: Yeah. Yulie also says, "if one was to come out, it would probably be around 2011-2014."

JULIAN: The best part of that one is it's written 20,014.

PAZ: Yeah, that might be when it comes out.

JULIAN: Yulie really covering their bases there. Sometime in the next 20,000 years, someone will make a Warrior Cats movie.

PAZ: That-- I don't know. That might be optimistic, but we'll see.

JULIAN: I mean, do you count-- what critical mass of fan animations do you have to have before you can consider it a movie? Because if so, I think we've hit critical mass. Someone did the entire book of Into the Wild with Littlest Pet Shop figurines.

PAZ: They sure did.

JULIAN: That's a movie.

LIZ: They did Fire and Ice too, didn't they?

JULIAN: They did.

LIZ: Yeah, that's a movie. I don't know. Can we get like a dark CW reboot? Where they're all just like--

PAZ: Oh my God. Wait, hold on.

LIZ: --30-year-old teenagers?

PAZ: Doing a Google search.

LIZ: You wouldn't have to change the name. It'd just be Warriors.

JULIAN: Course. KJ Apa plays Fireheart.

LIZ: Maybe they can transform into like little CGI werecats or something. And it's supposed to be really badass and cool.

JULIAN: We already talked-- did we talk about this on the podcast already that the film rights had been purchased?

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: I don't know if we super went into it.

LIZ: Like briefly.

PAZ: Yeah, I have to do more research on that.

LIZ: It just sounds like yeah, standard like production hell for a book adaption thing.

PAZ: Yeah. Okay, my search for Warrior Cats and CW network has actually not turned up any results.

LIZ: Rats.

PAZ: So we may be on the cutting edge of this idea.

JULIAN: Do we know anybody at the CW?

LIZ: Or Netflix? I mean, there's that Powerpuff Girls thing going on.

JULIAN: God.

LIZ: Can we get some adult teens to play some cats?

PAZ: That's so scary to think about. Um, I guess that that's it. Those were the highlights of Yahoo Answers.

JULIAN: I did save all of these answers to the Wayback Machine.

LIZ: Thank you.

JULIAN: So they will be preserved for as long as the Internet Archive exists.

LIZ: Good.

PAZ: That's so important. Thank you.

LIZ: Josie, if you're out there...

PAZ: Please write in.

LIZ: You know where to find us.

PAZ: So that's it for us this week. I guess we'll probably be on a hiatus for a little while, undetermined how long that will be.

JULIAN: Yep. Still very unclear on how long that will take.

PAZ: Yeah, but we'll figure it out and keep people posted on Twitter when we know. Whenever we do return, we're gonna be reading chapters 15 through 18. So look forward to that. And as always-- I guess not as always. Well, our show is on pretty much every platform, I think. I guess leave a review if you want. Yeah, that's it. You can find the show @staircast on Twitter. And if you're Josie from Yahoo Answers, you can send us an email at Stairwaytostarclan@gmail.com.

JULIAN: You can also email us if you're not Josie.

LIZ: If you're not Josie, don't even think about it.

PAZ: Don't even try it.

LIZ: Josie only for this hiatus.

PAZ: So that's it for us for now. So until next time, may StarClan light your path. Bye.

JULIAN: Bye.

LIZ: Bye.

[outro music]

[zoemurph]

dewey decimals

on ao3

i was doing a close reading assignment the other night and i started thinking about connor as an english major and then i started thinking about connor as a librarian and now im here

enjoy this and also my opinions on wuthering heights

Connor loves books.

He does, no matter what look Larry gives him whenever he locks himself in his room to read for a few hours. Larry probably thinks he’s getting high. Okay yes, sometimes he’s just getting high. But he also reads.

It’s cliche as fuck, but books are the best friends Connor’s got. They can’t hate him or judge him or abandon him. They’re just there. Plus it’s pretty morbid to sometimes think about how they’re insights to the minds of people who are dead.

So yeah, Connor likes books. He likes classics and gothic novels and young adult lit and middle grade books. He doesn’t really get book snobs, because there are shitty books in every genre. He tries to give all books a try.

Except Twilight. Zoe went through a Twilight phase. Fuck Twilight.

Loving books means that he should probably like his job more than he does. But he doesn’t love it. Because being a part time librarian is boring as shit.

All Connor has gotten from this experience is minimum wage and the ability to alphabetize things relatively fast.

Libraries are not active places. They just sort of exist. If Connor were anything like his father — and the day they become alike at all is the day he jumps out a window — he would say that libraries were dying because everyone was too focused on technology these days or something. Which is partially true, but the local library also…sucks.

They don’t get new books quickly, the computers they do have are old as fuck, and everything is slightly dusty. Which is just annoying, because Connor literally dusts on a weekly basis. It’s part of his job. Where the fuck is this dust coming from? They may be right across from the high school, but most high schoolers have better things to do than sit in a dimly lit library for a few hours. Like getting high behind McDonald’s.

Most of Connor’s job is cleaning. Which is ironic because his room is a travesty. But as boring as it is, there’s something weirdly calming about shelving books. There’s a nice routine in pushing the cart through the shelves, making sure all the books are in the right order, pushing them all up to the right part of the shelf so they’re all perfectly aligned.

Sometimes the head librarian misplaces the duster. That switches things up.

Once all the books are reshelved and the shelves are straightened and dusted, Connor makes himself comfortable at the front desk. On slow days like this (but who is he kidding, every day is a slow day), he just sits at the desk and reads a random book until someone needs to check out books or needs help. Usually he’s kind of shit about the help part, but he’s getting better.

Some of the more elderly visitors like him, they find him charming or something. Entertaining maybe. Suburban mothers judge him for having his combat boots up on the desk. They also judge him for his hair and his piercings and the fact that he hasn’t worn a color other than black in two years. They literally keep their children away from him as long as they can. It’s more amusing than insulting, besides, kids think his hair is fucking awesome.

But almost no one is in the library today. It’s one of the slowest days they’ve had in weeks, which means Connor is able to get comfortable in the old desk chair and ignore all the other happenings of the world for much longer than usual.

Today, he’s reading Wuthering Heights. It’s for class, but he doesn’t hate it so that’s an improvement from the last book they were assigned. Supposedly it’s a romance but Connor isn’t seeing it. Some girl in his english class is trying to convince them all that it is, but whenever she brings it up, Connor just flips back to the page where Heathcliff breaks into Catherine’s coffin to see her dead body.

Sexy.

He tugs on his hair as he squints at the page, trying to see any sort of romance in any of these relationships. It all kind of just sucks.

“E-excuse me?”

Connor looks up without lowering his book. Libraries aren’t known for their customer service, right? “Can I help you?” he asks flatly.

“I-I…” The boy furrows his eyebrows and pulls on his sweatshirt. “There’s a book I’m— looking for a book.”

“Cool.”

“Uh… I’m…”

Connor sighs and puts down his book, marking the page with a sticky note. “Is there a specific book, because you can look it up on the computers.” He jerks his head toward the old machines that everyone pretends aren’t five years out of date.   

The boy stares at him with wide eyes. “H-how?”

Connor stares right back at him, expression blank. “I’m sorry, how?”

“I-I know how to use a computer!” he says quickly. “I just don’t know how to use those and I kept getting weird pop up messages and then something happened and I think maybe one of them timed out but I don’t really understand what I’m doing and I think I actually might’ve broken the middle one because it started making a weird noise and—”

“That thing is a fuc— freaking dinosaur,” Connor interrupts, catching himself on the swear and glancing over to the children’s section. No one’s here right now, but moms are like hawks. It’d be just his luck for one of them to swoop in and get him fired for swearing. “It’s impossible to break but if it’s broken it’s because it’s old as…crap.” He leans back in his chair. “Just follow the instructions.”  

Connor moves to pick his book back up. The boy does not move.

Shit. He’s going to be one of those people.

“Do you need me to show you?” Connor asks, trying to sound like he doesn’t hate life too much.

The boy jerks away. “N-no! It’s fine I’ve got this I just have to, um, figure it out quickly and then I think I should be able to get it but I just don’t want to break anything because if I do I might have to pay for it but I don’t actually think I can do that because computers are expensive and then not only will I not have my book but also I—”

Connor stands and the boy stops talking, shrinking away. Connor blinks. Holy fuck he’s a lot taller than this kid than he initially thought. “Do you need me to show you?” he asks. The faster this kid gets his book, the faster Connor can go back to reading.

“Yes,” the boy says shaking his head no. “I-I mean—!”

Connor sighs and steps around the desk. “Let me just…” He leads him to the computers and doesn’t even bother sitting down. He bends over and clicks the mouse a few times until the monitor wakes up. “What are you looking for?”

“A-a book for class,” the boy sputters. He digs through his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper, holding out the crumpled page to Connor.

Connor resists the urge to roll his eyes, smoothing it out on the desk and skimming over it before turning back to the computer. He inputs all the information, the book sounds familiar to him which is promising, and then lets the piece of shit they call a computer load.

The boy just awkwardly hovers next to him as he works.

If Connor were better at his job he’d probably, like, explain this process. So next time, the kid can do it himself. But he’s not.

“We have it,” Connor says when the page finally loads. He turns to the boy. “Can you find it with this info or…” he drawls. He really wants to sit back down.  

The boy steps a little closer and squints at the screen. He smells like cinnamon and something else that Connor can’t name but knows smells nice and this is creepy and he needs to stop immediately. “Is— um…” He tilts his head.

Connor raises his eyebrows at him. “It’s a science book. So it’s shelved using the Dewey Decimal System. Do you…?”

He stares at Connor with wide and terrified eyes. Yeah that was what Connor thought. “Follow me,” he mutters. The library isn’t big. It’s almost directly proportional to the size and quality of their town. So small and shitty. But if you don’t know your way around it is a little confusing. The labeling is bad and Connor still hates the Dewey Decimal System, even after working here for over a year.

He glances down at the boy, who’s trailing slightly behind him. He looks…familiar. “Do you go to school here?” he asks, gesturing vaguely toward where the high school probably is maybe. Usually Connor hates small talk, but this is bugging him.

The boy looks up with a start. “Y-yeah,” he says, getting the gist of Connor’s strange hand motions. “I’m a, uh, senior. There. Yeah.”

Connor slows his strides to study him carefully. Admittedly, Connor doesn’t pay much attention to anything in school, but most of the people in this town are born here and die here. He notices the collar of a shirt under the boy’s sweatshirt and it snaps into place. “Evan Hansen, right?”

Evan stops walking. “Ye-yeah? I’m not— you know who I am?”

“Vaguely,” Connor says dryly. He doesn’t think they’ve ever had any classes together and Evan isn’t exactly a memorable person. “I haven’t had a reason to.” “F-fair.”

“You know me, though.”

“I never said that!” Evan blurts out.

Connor looks at him with raised eyebrows. “Are you telling me you haven’t heard rumors about me.”

Evan pulls on the strings of his sweatshirt. “I-I never said that either. I just meant—”

Connor crosses his arms.

Evan ducks his head. “Okay yeah but I wasn’t going to… I should shut up now.”

Connor shakes his head. “Come on, let’s get your book. Who do you need it for?” He still hates small talk, but now he feels obligated. Fuck.

“AP Environmental Science,” Evan mumbles. “With Ele— Ms. Daniels.”

“Isn’t that the fake AP class?” Connor asks. He stops walking and skims the shelves. He sees Evan turning pink out of the corner of his eye.

“I-I mean… Yeah everyone kind of treats it that way so I guess it is but it could be more interesting if people actually tried and we get to go on field trips to like forests and stuff and it’s, um, I mean not fun but... It could be…worse?”

Connor pulls the book off the shelf and turns to hand it to Evan. “That’s cool.” He surprises himself by genuinely meaning it. He’s not super into the ideas of the outdoors, bugs can go fuck themselves, but it sounds like a chill class. Anything to get out of the hell hole that is their high school.

Evan takes the book and laughs awkwardly. “You’d be the first to think that, it’s a joke.”

Connor shrugs. “So is life.”

“I…guess that’s one way of looking at it.” Evan glances down to the floor, smiling a little.

Connor clears his throat and shakes his bangs out of his eyes. “Do you need anything else or do you want me to just check you out?”

“Please,” Evan says, his voice almost a squeak.

Connor leads Evan back to the front desk, grabbing a few misplaced books as he does so. Those will have to be reshelved before he leaves later. He takes the book back from Evan and Evan’s library card, scanning it and printing out the receipt.

“We got rid of the index card things,” Connor explains, grabbing his sticky note out of Wuthering Heights and flipping the book upside down. It’s not his book. Who cares if the spine breaks. “The due date is just on the receipt but honestly it’s shitty and easier to forget. So here.” He writes the due date on the sticky note and pauses for just a second before scribbling down ten digits in slightly messier handwriting. He sticks it on the inside cover before he can change his mind. “Here. You’ve got two weeks without renewal or we fine you some money because we need to make money somehow.”

“T-thanks.” Evan takes the book and opens the cover, checking the date. He frowns. “Wh-what’s that one?” He tilts the book so Connor can see what he’s pointing at.

“Haven’t you seen a phone number before?” Connor asks, raising an eyebrow.

Evan’s ears go red. “O-oh! That’s…” He ducks his head, but Connor catches the ghost of a smile. “Th-thank you I…yeah! I’ll uh…see you around? I guess?”

“In case you need help finding a book or something,” Connor says with a shrug.

“O-or something,” Evan repeats. “I’ll see you in school.” He smiles at Connor quickly before rushing out the double glass doors.

Connor grabs Wuthering Heights off the desk and hides his face in it. He’s almost smiling and if anyone sees him smiling that’ll definitely wreck his reputation as the grumpy emo librarian. He doesn’t manage to read any more of the book in the remaining hour of his shift, but he can’t bring himself to care. He’s got a better romance, anyway.

[outrowings]

fall into these arms | kth

description: the one where taehyung is a stranger until he isn’t genre: fluff, angst, college!au pairing: reader x kim taehyung word count: 2,466 warnings: none loosely based on the song fall into these arms by new politics

masterlist

Perhaps the beginning of your sorrows that day (and what would eventually become your week) was the shattering of your cellphone screen much earlier in the day than you were ready for things to go wrong.  You had watched with resignation and defeat as the device slipped off the edge of the cafe table where it had been precariously perched and onto the floor face down with a crunch undeniably indicative of breaking glass.  Of course, this would not be the end of your troubles today (or the rest of the week for that matter).

There had been some sort of procession taking place smack in the middle of the one courtyard you needed to cross in order to get to your physiology lecture.  And so you found yourself stumbling into the lecture hall barely five minutes late, but your professor felt the need to pause his words and glare at you like you were in high school.  

You made your way to your regular seat, head down to avoid attracting any more attention than you already had.  The guy who always sat next to you was already there as per usual, looking far more put together than any college student reasonably should for a nine am class.  He smiles at you as you sit down and drop your newly broken phone onto the table.  “Good morning,” you hear, like you hear every day.

And you’re tempted to ask him, “Is it really?  Is it a good morning?  Are you wishing me a good morning?  Or telling me that it is one?”  But you don’t.  Because he really does wish you good morning every day with good intentions and you know that.  And you also know that you’re having one isolated shitty day and that’s no excuse to ruin someone else’s day.  And you also know that he’s in at least one class that you have every day and you still don’t know his name despite it being a good two months into the semester so you’re not exactly in a position to be snappy with him.  Instead you turn to him and give him a tight lipped smile.  “Good morning.”

Of course, Taehyung immediately notices that something is wrong when you walk into class late.  You’re never late, not for any of the classes you share.  When you sit down beside him and drop your phone on the table with a little less care than usual, he looks from the cracked screen to your furrowed brows and he has a feeling that you aren’t having the best day.  When you forgo your usual bright smile and enthusiastic “good morning” for a forced reply to him, his suspicions are confirmed.

But he doesn’t do anything except write “heres what u missed” in his notebook on the top of the page he was taking notes on and slide it over to you silently.  And perhaps it’s enough because you look at him with exhaustion in your eyes but a grateful smile that takes too much of your energy to muster up.

Taehyung assumed that you had a case of the Monday blues but he can’t seem to find you in your shared ten o’clock chemistry lab class until, well, ten thirty.  You rush to your lab station to find your partner glaring at you for being late and you shoot him an apologetic look.  Taehyung says good morning to you from his own lab station across from yours and this time you can’t find it in yourself to do anything except nod at him while trying to convince an angry Seokjin in a lab apron that no you weren’t late because you were hoping he would have all the work done by the time you arrived.

Taehyung watches you try to untangle your hair from the messy bun it sat in, no doubt a result of oversleeping and prioritizing getting dressed over haircare, and tug it into an equally messy ponytail.  He watches you fumble with your goggles and your own apron until his lab partner Yoongi smacks the back of his head and tells him to focus.

He laughs sheepishly, hoping you didn’t look up and see his cheeks tint pink as he quickly averted his gaze away from you and towards the titration exercise in front of him.  It takes Taehyung and Yoongi just ten more minutes to successfully complete the lab, turning the solution the perfect shade of pink in no time, at which point Yoongi makes his way out of the lab without turning back.

Taehyung sighs, though his partner’s antics are common enough for him, and proceeds to finish up documentation, clean out all the equipment, and place it back in storage.  By 10:50, the other groups have started to follow in his footsteps, and yet, you and Seokjin remain, frustration evident on his face and anger on yours.  Everyone else clears out, but Taehyung stays under the guise of talking to the TA supervising the lab about some things he didn’t understand from his last chem lecture (it’s a lie; chemistry has been a breeze).  The TA drones on and on about titration and Taehyung takes this time to watch your eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth attempts at the lab, but to no avail.

Seokjin packs up his things and leaves, willing to sacrifice his grade in this class for a better grade in his next class that he now needs to sprint to.  But you have nothing for the rest of the day and Taehyung hears an unmistakeable sigh of resignation as you begin the whole titration process over again.  When he finally turns away from the TA that can’t stop talking, Taehyung sees tears pooling in your eyes behind the clear goggles you don.

The TA calls out to you, “I don’t really want to be here too much longer and I can’t leave you here alone.”  At which point, you squeezed your eyes shut, begging the tears not to spill.

“I can stay,” Taehyung finds himself saying.  And it probably only works because Taehyung is brilliant at chemistry and all the professors probably agree that he’s the most trustworthy person on campus, but the TA shrugs and makes his way out of the lab as well.

When Taehyung is beside you, looking for a way to start a conversation, you do it for him.  “You don’t have to stay you know,” you tell him, feeling especially guilty since you don’t even know his name.

“No, it’s not a problem at all,” he tells you with a warm smile and when you turn to look at him, you know he means it.

You hold out your hand to him, “I’m--”

“Y/N, I know,” he cuts you off, grasping your hand and shaking it.  “I’m Taehyung,” he says, and though you’re obviously embarrassed he knows your name and you didn’t know his, he doesn’t seem to care.

“Let’s get that baby pink the TA wants so much, yeah?” he asks you.  You nod at him and force all the moisture into your eyes back into your tear ducts.

Maybe it’s Taehyung’s magic fingers that ensure your success in a mere fifteen minutes, but while you’re cleaning up he makes sure to point out, “I didn’t do anything.  I was just standing beside you.”

And for the first time this week you smile and then you tell him, “I guess it must have been your wisdom and all-knowing presence.”  And he smiles too, not because of what you said, but maybe because your week finally might be looking up.

But Taehyung thinks he jinxed it just from those optimistic thoughts because he turns around too quick from putting away your stand only to bump into you and cause the flask in your hand to hit the floor and shatter.  Taehyung looks from the shards on the floor to your face, mouth open in apology.  But your brief smile was already giving way to a wobbly lower lip and yet another sigh.

“I’m sorry,” he tells you, and you look at him with the same strained smile you gave him the day before.

“Don’t worry about it.”

He helps you clean up the glass largely in silence and the rest of the clean up process follows in the same way.  You smile that same tight lipped smile and tell him, “Thank you for helping,” before turning and walking away from him.  Taehyung can’t help but think that everything was going so well.  Until it went wrong.

Wednesday morning finds you in your physio class again, ten minutes late this time.  You weren’t entirely sure why a broken phone screen would also disable all of your alarms, but it probably had something to do with the universe hating you this week.  You’re so simultaneously tired and frantic that you don’t even register how odd it is that Taehyung has two to go cups of coffee in front of him.  All you can think of as you sit down is how much you really need caffeine.

You go to pull your physio notebook out of your bag, but only find your chemistry lab book from the previous day.  You try to groan and bang your head against the table as subtly as possible, but you find a warm hand pressed to your back, rubbing soothing circles.

Taehyung isn’t sure what made him do it, but he couldn’t stop himself and suddenly his hand was on your back.  He was praying you didn’t look up or say anything because you would definitely notice the fear on his face and the red in his cheeks.

You lifted your head up and looked forward, but didn’t say anything.

“Bad week?” he asks you, and you nod wordlessly.  He slides one coffee cup and his notebook over and you feel a sudden urge to hug him and thank him profusely.  But you don’t want to get in trouble for disruption with a professor who is already apprehensive towards you, so you settle for a quiet “thank you” and a long sip from the coffee.

The caffeine brightens your mood considerably and its does help that your professor decides to end his lecture thirty minutes early.  You pack your bag and go to pick up your phone, but drop it again when you feel a sharp pain on your thumb.

“Fuck!” you exclaim and examine the blood pooling at the tip of your thumb, a gash running from one side of your thumb to the other where your broken phone screen had cut you.

Taehyung looks up at you immediately.  “Are you okay?” he asks.

You sigh (for maybe the one hundredth time this week) and show him your thumb.  “Yeah just a little cut.”

“You know,” he begins, “there’s a place downtown that repairs phone screens for pretty cheap.  And they usually do it in an hour or so.  I can take you there now if you want?”

You’re too preoccupied staring at your bleeding thumb and trying to remember if you had a class later in the day to notice Taehyung’s face lit up in hope.  “Sure.  I don’t have anything else to do today anyway.”

Taehyung didn’t let on that he actually has a statistics class in less than an hour and his excited grin as he led you out of the lecture hall didn’t hint at it either.

He walks you through the busy streets of the city, bustling as ever on a Wednesday at noon.  He asks you about your favorite color and your favorite anime and if you’ve ever been to a live concert and pretty much talks about everything under the sun except for school.  There’s a little tech shop that looks a little sketchy, but Taehyung doesn’t seem the least bit nervous when he opens the door for you.

When you step up to the counter, the old man behind it looks at Taehyung knowingly.  “Did you break it again?” he asks an amused smile on his face.

“No! Of course not! It’s only been a week!” Taehyung exclaims, defensive.  The man laughs.

“I’m just teasing,” he looks at you.  “This kid comes in once a week needing a new screen.  I swear he’s so clumsy.”  You look at Taehyung curiously and he looks sheepish.

“It’s probably that big head of his throwing off his balance,” you tease and grin.  A really big full grin that Taehyung thinks he could easily fall in love with.

You’re not sure how or when you crossed the line from friendly chatter to banter like this, but once you did, there was no going back.

The man behind the counter tells you your phone will be ready in an hour and Taehyung takes you (drags you by the wrist rather excitedly) to a ramen shop a block away.  The lady in the front and the waiters greet him by his name and with smiles and you wonder if Taehyung has some kind of magical power that makes everyone around him smile.

He orders for the both you and slurps his noodles loudly like a twelve year old.  Between bites he tells you about his brother and sister and his grandmother’s strawberry farm and you know he does it to distract to you from your woes, but it’s working.  He doesn’t let you pay, though you fight for the bill valiantly, but ultimately he holds the black folder too high for you to reach and you curse your height and his generosity.

The walk back to the tech shop Taehyung makes you link arms with him, not that you mind.  Though your mind is racing at the intimacy of the act especially since your first real conversation with him was just a little over twenty four hours ago.  The man who fixes your phone only takes twenty dollars, “Friends and family discount,” he says, glancing at your arm in Taehyung’s.

The walk back to campus is too short and Taehyung decides to walk you all the way to your dorm despite his being on the opposite end of the school.  The smile still hasn’t left your face.  When he stops outside your door you look up at him.

“Thanks for fixing my week,” you tell him, tears pooling in your eyes, because it’s too hard to tell him that everything was going wrong and he swooped in just as you were about to break, so you express it with the salty liquid slipping down your face.

Before Taehyung can say anything, you fall into his arms, face buried in his chest, trying to explain how grateful you are with how tight you hold him.  Maybe your troubles began with a broken phone on a Monday morning, but they ended with Taehyung just two days later.

[vrenaewrites]

CRAVE by Tracy Wolff thoughts: Ch 22 - ch 48

Full video here.

CH 22: Baby, it’s hot in here

Like, baby it’s cold outside?

Sooooo much internal monologuing about her first boyfriend and how no one has made her feel like Jaxon does…

“The big picture is that the most popular boys in school are obsessed with you”

“He looks at you like it physically hurts him not to be touching you. Baby, if he wanted you anymore he’d spontaneously combust”

Macy wants the tea about her and Jaxon

She says flint and him had a “massive pissing contest over her” lmao

“Are you trying to be reassuring or scare me?” “yes”

She tells heather ttyf? Am i stupid??? What does that mean?

TALK TO YOU FOREVER?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?

“It sounds like every cliche in the book, but he’s different around you. Somehow less intense, but more intense.”

“You can trust me, we’re family” and grace almost starts crying :(

CH 23: never bring an ice cream scoop to a gunfight

Macy FINALLY comes clean re: flint and jaxon are mortal enemies

“What is this the breakfast club? Even they figured out they could all get along” grace just be quiet and let the girl who actually knows wtf is up at this school tell you wtf is up. You been wanting her to talk for so long, be quiet.

Ooh something big happened a year ago that made them all break up into factions

It’s about hudson jaxon’s brother!

Or is his name spelled Hyudsin because stupid spellings

Ooh macy warned grace not to become the chew toy between flint and jaxon

CH 24: waffles are the way to a girl’s everything

I want to hate this but i fucking love waffles so like…

Someone’s texting her about her ankle...i thought it was jaxon...AND IT IS!

“I don’t know the punchline to whatever knock knock joke you’re setting up” I BURST OUT LAUGHING BECAUSE “he’s funny over text” ma’am...this isn’t funny? Maybe a lil snarky, but funny?

Now she’s telling jokes over text and we’re having a whole long stupid text fucking exchange….i hate this so much

Then he tries, “what do you get when you cross a vampire and a snowman? Frostbite” and my soul leaves my body because what in the 8th grade twilight fanfiction is happening…

She texts him brb instead of just responding when when she was done peeing and then he stops answering her, this used to happen to me with the toxic dudes i talked to in high school...am i reading too much into this? Idk yet

And then she’s spiraling about why he stopped texting and UGH I REMEMBER THIS FEELING!!!!!!!!!

Jaxon has food sent up to her room from the...cafeteria? Wtf…

He says he doesn’t like the food and she says “So what do you like to eat” and then is like “wow that sounded suggestive” lmao

And he says “i don’t think we’re there yet but let me know when we are” WHAT DOES THAT MEAN

CH 25: truly madly deeply bitten

And we’re really just gonna keep texting 21 questions

She loves tatbilb...i mean same lana condor is the loml, but

Jaxon loves rogue one………

I don’t care AT ALL. NOT ONE BIT DO I CARE, TRACY WOLFF.

“I wish i could ask the real jaxon vega to please stand up” i rolled my eyes but i also giggled

“You suck” “you have no idea how much” i threw up in my mouth.

Niall horan reference, hozier reference, rhianna reference

JAXON’S. FAVORITE. SONG. IS. TRULY. MADLY. DEEPLY.

INSERT SNAPCHAT OF ME CRYING LAUGHING HERE

Gambino reference, beethoven reference???, and then brown-eyed girl which personally offends me because my mom used to sing that to me

This makes her hands shake

She plays brown eyed girl a bunch of times

Then another woman comes to deliver a package to grace...from jaxon...it’s a library book

It’s twilight

Insert snap of me screaming stfu here

Macy is laughing her ass off about this because she isn’t stupid, she knows what jaxon is

And grace says she never read it when it was popular all those years ago…

Baby you said you liked reading. No way did you survive middle school without reading it.

And then he shows up!!!!!

She makes a shitty joke to lighten to the mood

He’s massaging her hurt ankle...oh shiiii

They ALMOST kiss

He gives her a little note wrapped in a ribbon

“I wonder how i’m going to keep this beautiful, broken boy from cracking my already battered heart wide open”

Hades voice: we were so CLOSE!

CH 26: the uniform doesn’t make the woman, but it sure brings out the insecurities

He ripped a page out of anais nin’s journals that says some shit like “i dreamed you, i wished for you”

So cute sentiment but you ripped a book my dude? Cardinal sin

Grace is finally going to class

The cafeteria is goth as fuuuuck

The music is “creepy af”

Jaxon sits next to her in front of everyone

CH 27: 10 degree weather gives a whole new meaning to “the cool kid’s table”

He sits in the super ornate chair backwards and it makes her horny

The order is kind of ragging on jaxon about being cute to grace which is funny

We get all the dude’s names at one - raphael luca liam mickey?? I think

“A dark and devastating desperation” in his eyes

And then we got byron who’s more angsty than jaxon - “mad bad and dangerous to know” just like his namesake

CH 28: “to be or not to be is a question, not a pick-up line”

Jaxon walks her to class

Wanting him feels like opening a vein

“I love the way your hair smells”

“My heart is beating like a heavy metal drummer”

We were so close!!!!!!!!!

We’re doing hamlet in class ofc

The teacher says “although you look like the shy type despite your association with katmere’s most notorious student”

Instead of just saying the halls are like playing frogger she describes the old video game where you try to get the frog across the road...is it just people in the south that say playing frogger when describing crossing traffic? Or is this a well known phrase??

Apparently there’s hidden tunnels so flint takes her to them

Her intuition is like BITCH DON’T GO IN THE TUNNELS but she ignores it AGAIN

CH 29: with friends like these, everyone needs hard hats

There are beds with shackles?!?!?!?!

Leah shows up and turns out they’re going to the same class? But flint insists on walking her to class…

Leah and flint are NOT friendly

Damn she offends flint with a buffalo bill joke

There’s bones in the tunnels and a giant chandelier in the rotunda that’s also made of bones…

There’s an earthquake!

CH 30: you make the earth shake under my feet, and everywhere else too

And it stops as soon as they get out of the tunnel

Jaxon is there and being a dick to flint and grace has HAD it

CH 31: big girls don’t cry, unless they want to

Grace gets hit with a basketball in gym

All the order has been walking her to class because jaxon knew she was mad at him

Does jaxon cause the earthquakes somehow?

She finally reads the texts jaxon had sent and feels bad for being mad at him when he was just worried - no he acted like a dick. Be mad.

She’s making sooooo many excuses for his anger: the earthquake, the fact that he’s already rescued her before so of course he’s worried…

Aww a student is playing autumn leaves which was her dad’s favorite song :(

She starts to boo-hoo “grief is a wild thing within me”

Civil twilight AGAIN

Jaxon is standing there when she finally stops

CH 32: it’s not a coincidence that denali and denial use all the same letters

He opens the door in the alcove and it’s like a clubhouse? Oh it’s his dorm room???? Confusion

So it’s like the living room and NOW he’s leading her into his bedroom

She says she’s terrified of him touching her because of the intensity but then says she has no trepidations about doing or being anywhere with him...ya just said...nvm

They go out to the roof

CH 33: Madonna’s not the only one with a lucky star

Please decide if grace is a silly teen who doesn’t know what frogger is or an old soul who loves madonna pls

She asks if he’s an alien…

And she tells him he’s the hottest person ever and that his scar makes him sexy as hell and he's all like “me?!” which is a nice role reversal

This is his favorite place

And there's a meteor shower!!

CH 34: all’s fair in love and earthquakes

Thanks i hate this

When she touches him she realizes how cold he is and thinks it’s from being outside which makes him act all weird

Someone please just tell this girl what’s going on!!!!!!!!! I HATE when the reader is 8,000 steps ahead of the MC

“A craving in his eyes” WE’VE SAID THE TITLE FOLKS!

She makes the move to close the space and says she’s dazzled, GUYS

She’s making the MOVE! “Did you ever want something but you were scared of taking it?” “yes” “what did you do” “i took it anyway” and then he kisses her!!!!!!

The kiss is as soft as a snowflake, as delicate as the permafrost

Then “his mouth goes crazy on mine lips tongue teeth, it’s a cacophony of sensations, a riot of pleasure”

“My knees go weak at his tongue on mine, just like one of those heroines in a novel”

His hands are vices on my biceps...his hands were around her back at first which seems way more romantic than manhandling her arms??

There’s an earthquake...and jaxon is like you have to go

A window breaks and cuts her and then she blacks out????

CH 35: baked alaska is more than just a yummy dessert

Intimidating af is the nurse

The glass nicked her artery!!!!!! The FUCK. or did jaxon bite her?????

Her mom died like that… yikes on bikes

He fucking bit her...this is a lie...i’m calling it…

FINN ABOUT TO COME CLEAN!!!...but the nurse stops him.

Macy is an OG bff she is the best

Or is grace the one making shit happen??

Grace notices the sheets are fixed but that macy never went to the bed

Macy asked what they were doing when the earthquake hit...WHY

CH 36: no harm, all foul

Grace goes after Jaxon and he’s like “our kiss didn’t matter”

He says he put her in a lot of danger by being around her, a “target on her back” and wants her to stay away from him but he can’t pull himself away

But then he does

CH 37: don’t ask the question if you can’t handle the answer

Leah drops the bomb that she and Jaxon are expected to carry on like a family dynasty sitch since Hudson died

CH 38: nothing says “i like you” like a fang to the throat

She’s freaking out of course

Mickey says jaxon def didn’t bit her and she’s even more confused and me too

Jaxon is in the mountains...he wants her to wait but she’s pissed

“I take a deep breath and hold onto it with both hands” ….?????

Because i have to hear it out loud, “what did make these marks?”

Say it, out loud

CH 39: there’s never a hallucinogen around when you need one

She’s furious and she should be! I’m glad she’s not replying to Jaxon

We finally get to the bottom of it all!!!!!!

Macy admits Jaxon is a vampire

Leah is one too!!!!

Flint is a dragon!!!!! CALLED IT

He’s got fire? With a name like flint how could he not PUKE

“Who needs LSD when you go to monster high?” Shut UP

Macy is a witch DUH

“You should have been one too”

CH 40: be careful what you witch for

GO FUCK YOURSELF WITH THIS TITLE

Grace’s dad was a warlock but he lost his power when he fell for grace’s mom...oh no was their accident like a magical mafia hit??

“What kind of witch are you if you can’t do something an 11 year old can?” “the kind that doesn’t come from JK Rowling’s brilliant imagination”...THAT aged poorly…

“This is a less bloody version of game of thrones” shut UP

The school nurse bit her because jaxon used his vampire venom to heal her cut, and it worked too well so she needed to cut through the healed skin with her vampire teeth

Because this is twilight satire so of course they have venom…

“So vampires can just override each other’s venom?”

Most of the vamps would have had a hard time not draining you dry, but not jaxon

I absolutely called it: witches, vampires, dragons, and werewolves confirmed.

CH 41: Vampires dragon and werewolves, oh my

This physically hurts

She’s kind of categorizing the students now that she knows which is totally something i would do

God almighty is flint just a jacob clone…

CH 42: good thing pancakes aren’t on today’s menu

The chandelier is falling onto her and someone pushes her out of the way - it’s jaxon!

His eyes smolder at her

She dresses his cut on his head and his arm

“I wouldn’t have had to save you if you were in your room where i told you to be” he grinds the last part out through clenched teeth

He finally lays it out that someone has been getting her hurt on purpose

CH 43: what doesn’t kill you still scares the hell out of you

Her uncle wants to talk to her before she sees jaxon again and i smell an info dump coming

Dangerous af

“Macy told me she spilled all the tea” said her UNCLE with no hint of like “is that what you kids say these days”. GTFO

“I wait for the other shoe to drop even though 100 have already fallen” that’s not how that idiom works

She’s like “how could he think i wouldn’t figure it out i knew something was wrong” no ma’am! No you didn’t!! You kept shrugging it off until chapter 24 at the EARLIEST when you settled on aliens

Getting the tea on the turf war between dragons and vampires - so it’s not like twilight because it’s not the werewolves. Whatever.

Uncle says it was probably some witch who got too loose with her powers and grace is like yeah no absolutely no one is trying to kill me it was yet ANOTHER freak accident

Uncle wants to sent her back to cali

CH 44: Sweet home alaska

So she doesn’t wanna go because of jaxon, not because her only family in the world is in Alaska….

It’s only been a WEEK

“I know jaxon can be...seductive” says her UNCLE

the guys in the order are born vampires, not made, it’s a v big deal

Info dump city re how vampirism is a genetic mutation…

There are 6 ancient families of vampires...this all sounds like the first draft of my new wip where I was trying to figure out how the secret society worked…

Then he says he’s not in the habit of talking students with other students….we just did...this whole chapter…

Another earthquake???

Ch 45: I always knew there was fire between us, I just didn’t know it was your breath

Dude shut up

She goes to the library and wonders if the books about vampires etc would be under non fiction or biology lmao

The librarian is a native Alaskan with elemental magic….yikes

She does a weird eye swirling “you’re more than you think you are” thing to grace

Flints in the library and she asks him about dragons and I swear to god if we get a chapter devoted to learning about each species via info dump I will burn this place to the ground

He singes the marshmallow with his fire breath, loves it

And he can breathe ice? He cools the water down

He can bloom flowers in his hand????

“They’re beautiful” “you’re beautiful” “but I’m not hitting on you??”

Because when I hit on you, it’ll be because you want me to!!!!! We Stan flint!!!

Ch 46: I’ll get you and your little dog too

Enough

Dry throat around flint now, oh shiiiiiii

Oh shit the order is on the move!! There’s trouble

She chases them into a classroom and sees jaxon making shit fly everywhere with just his mind...is he a vampire and a witch??

There’s a werewolf vampire brawl

Damn jaxon can freeze everyone with his mind!

She tries to stop him but he’s put up a barrier

She breaks through!!!!

And jaxon bites cole!!!!!!! ALMOST KILLS COLE!!!!!!!!!!!

“This is your only warning”

CH 47: the first bite is the deepest

Jaxon pulls grace away, this whole time grace’s inner monologue is her feeling responsible for the carnage

“I won’t hurt you” “I know” “you know? do you have a death wish?”

But jaxon is so disgusted at himself that she's just like “well did he deserve to almost be killed?” She has accepted this shit with sociopathic speed

“The power you wield...it’s unfathomable” sis has turned the corner

“You don’t scare me jaxon”

They flipped the script and she breaks down his defenses and it’s kind of hot ngl

She tells him she needs him and he bites her??????

Ch 48: is that a wooden stake in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

They’re getting worse

But it’s not a hurting bite it’s like a sex bite…like she describes an orgasm basically..

Then they kiss

The earthquakes are jaxon! Called it

At this point I am sooooo annoyed because just make him a witch!!!! We really wanted the twilight combo so badly we made him a telekinetic earth-shaking vampire?????????

They go to his room...and she goes to his drum kit instead of his bed, you dumb bitch

Now they’re talking in the bed

The jokes are just so fucking bad

He cuts them off by pulling her on top of him and kissing her!!! In bed!!!! We ain’t in twilight no more henny

“The kiss curls my toes but the yank curls everything else” wut

“I don’t want you anywhere near that world, and I sure as hell don’t want that world anywhere near you” - someone. Anyone. Take a second pass

~~~

[gukyi]

white chocolate fudge | ksj

⇒ summary: you and seokjin are the heads of your class, but recently he’s been sneaking off with shitty excuses and leaving you to watch over the students. when you finally follow him after he abruptly bails on your evening walk, you find yourselves in the forbidden forest with… a hippogriff hatchling? 

⇒ hogwarts!au

⇒ pairing: seokjin x female reader

⇒ word count: 11k

⇒ genre: tooth rotting fluff

⇒ warnings: alcohol mention if you consider felix felicis an alcohol

⇒ a/n: guess who’s going to be a starting a series (it’s me)! this will not be a continuation of one specific fic, but rather a compilation of hogwarts!aus for each member, set roughly during the same universe. it’s called SORTED, and this is the first part! i hope you enjoy and please leave me any messages here. (this is unedited, because of course it is.)

It’s no secret that Seokjin is a fantastic student. Prefect, perfect OWLs, Gryffindor’s star Keeper. He’s every teacher’s dream pupil, always attentive and obedient and helpful, so much so that it comes as no surprise to see him be voted Head Boy for your final year, all of the professors beaming as they announce his name. His walk up to the front of their table in the Great Hall is followed loudly by applause as people from every house cheer, because of course it’s Seokjin, who is so powerful and enigmatic that he can unite the houses.

What does come as a surprise, as you continue to applaud the boy you find so enthralling yet so far away, is when your name is the one that’s called next, the teachers equally as proud to be announcing you as Head Girl. It’s not as though you are as eccentric as he, but you certainly do not live up the standards he has set. Your grades are decent, better than most, and you have good relations with the student body and your teachers, but that hardly qualifies you to uphold the responsibility of Head Girl. However, you’re not one to object, especially when the position will look attractive on your resumés and transcripts, so you, too, stand up from your seat at the Ravenclaw house table and walk to the front.

People applaud you just the same, but you know that their excitement does not compare to theirs when Seokjin was announced.

As you stand up there, nearly a meter apart and stiff as statues, he turns his head and shoots you his Signature Seokjin Smile, and it takes all of your restraint not to melt. You send a small grin in response before facing forward.

Your harbored crush on the boy has been steady for a while, morphing from a mere attraction to genuine care as the years have passed, as you spent brief moments together in the hallways or on projects. It’s never enough, but then again, neither are you, and you’re all much too busy to be spending time on relationships, anyway. But he is unattainable, out of your reach, because who could ever match the greatness that he embodies, as it’s certainly not you. Even as you shake hands, excited to be partners for a full year rather than a simple week, you keep him at a distance, fearful of what may happen if you let him draw too close.

It’s nearing the end of the November of your final year at Hogwarts and despite your vow to keep him distant, Seokjin has become closer than ever, and your heart is eager to open itself up to him, even with your warnings. You know every word you say to him makes the bubbling volcano in your chest get hotter, and you worry about what will happen when it explodes. For now, the friendship the two of you have built is enough.

Ever since the summer, Seokjin has been sending his faithful owl to your window, a tiny little pygmy that’s as cute as he is, with a heartwarming letter attached.

29 June

Hey Y/N!

It’s Seokjin, and I’ve sent my owl to you so that we can become closer before the next school year when we are plagued with the responsibility of being Head Boy and Girl. It’s a daunting task, isn’t it?

I know you’re wondering how I got your address and how my little owl didn’t collapse during the journey, and I can assure you that I found your place completely legally in the Wizard Handbook (your family’s Malfunctioning Magical Tools business seems fantastic, by the way) and that this little tyke (her name is Pudge) is a strong gal, so she can make it. She would appreciate it if you rubbed her right behind the ears, though. Gets some kinks out.

I’ve only sent this letter as a starting off point, so hopefully you don’t find it too awkward. Hi, I’m Seokjin, I’m in Gryffindor and I play Keeper on the house team, and I really, really love Pumpkin Pasties. In fact, I love all pumpkin-flavored edible goods. I would probably have sex with them if it were morally acceptable.

You?

Love, Your hopefully new friend, Seokjin.

14 July

Y/N,

Happy Bastille Day! I know I don’t look like someone who keeps up with most of the muggle antics in the world, but Bastille Day seemed like something fun to mention. Speaking of muggles, I was wondering what your blood status was? No hate, I promise, I just wanted to find out. It’s a nice thing to know about people, especially your friends.

Fine, fine, you can stop pestering me. I’m half-blooded, but spend so little time in the Muggle world that people often think I’m pure. No purity in this one! It gives me quite a laugh, sometimes.

I do hope you consider us friends as well, because if you don’t, I’ll be hypothetically mortified. But we’re close enough, right? I know your favorite animals and spells and food, so I think that counts as a friendship.

Also, attached is a photo of Pudge and I. It was supposed to be a Polaroid of just me, but Pudge loves technology and couldn’t resist. She’s adorable, isn’t she?

Talk to you soon, Seokjin (and Pudge)

20 August

Salutations, Y/N,

Since our final school year is fast approaching, I was wondering if you wanted to meet up in Diagon to buy all of our stuff? We could probably drop by Hogsmeade too if you’d like. How does the 24th sound?

On another note, I finally passed my Apparition test! Took a solid three tries, but I did it! Aren’t you proud? I’m very excited.

I must warn you, though. If and when we meet up in Diagon I will be incredibly sappy and nostalgic due to the fact that it will be my last time buying my cauldrons and books and pet food as a student, and that will make me sad. I hope you’re prepared.

I think this marks the 25th letter I’ve sent to you, which means that you’ve sent me 24 back. Soon we’ll be at 50! Also, I think Pudge has taken quite the liking to you, so be sure to give her some extra love during her brief respite on your windowsill. She’s practically beaming every time she returns from her odyssey.

See you soon? Seokjin

Somehow, even through mere words on a piece of parchment, old and worn at the edges and tucked under the beak of a bird the size of your palm, you fell harder.

But when September came, it meant school, and that meant you would be seeing each other daily, and not just for a brief second but for hours on end.

You’ve been able to witness all sides of Seokjin, and while he does have his bad days his mood is uncannily bright, as he converses with the ghosts, directs a first-year to their class, trains tediously on the Quidditch field. And you are there through it all.

You have become, dare you say, close friends, the obligations of Head Boy and Head Girl drawing you together when you had hoped they’d keep you apart. You’ve even been acquainted with his friends, a rowdy group of mismatched boys scattered across different houses and years. They’re a difficult group to miss, not when they’re almost always causing some sort of trouble, trouble Seokjin suspiciously lets slide most of the time.

But as November draws to a close, you notice Seokjin becoming more distant, more secretive. Your nightly tours around the empty castle have become more sparse, ever since Seokjin said he was going to help Sprout and plant aficionado Hoseok with some outside work, but you can’t imagine why that would be any reason for his disappearances. His answers to your questions are becoming shorter, quick spits of a “Yes” or “No” or “I don’t know” before he’s off, off somewhere you don’t like thinking about.

You can’t help but wonder the reason for this shift in behavior. Seokjin has always been attentive, always friendly and always understanding. He still is, make no mistake, but simply not to you anymore. Is it something you said? An accidental slip of the tongue, an insensitive comment? It can’t have been. Seokjin is caring and sympathetic, but he doesn’t fear a little confrontation. He is a Gryffindor, after all. He would have told you.

The possibility of him having a girlfriend hangs high above your head, flashing red whenever he blows you off without an explanation. You don’t mean for that to be your primary worry, but somehow it is, you having convinced yourself that the time you spend together warrants something more than friendship. He has every right to not tell you what he’s doing (it’s none of your business, anyway), but that’s no reason for his abrupt goodbyes.

Late at night, after doing your final rounds alone and going back to your dorm to finish up the schoolwork you have, you bitterly hope he doesn’t have a girlfriend. Unfortunately, there’s not much you can think of that would explain his behavior, other than having a significant other. Why else would he be so secretive?

“Have you guys noticed anything about Seokjin recently?”

It’s the middle of lunch and you see his scraggle of friends camping out in the middle of the Hufflepuff table, pigging out over what looks to be a delectable meal of pizza and fries. You don’t really expect anything less from the group, especially not when you catch Hoseok insisting on some sort of greenery with the food, shoving broccoli towards the rest of the boys as he pops an entire stalk in his own mouth.

“What?” Taehyung asks, his mouth overflowing with gooey cheese.

“Have you noticed anything different?” You repeat. “He’s been acting strange lately. It’s worrying me.”

“I haven’t noticed anything,” Namjoon replies. Namjoon finishes the slice of pizza in his hand, leaving the crust and dropping it onto the his plate, untouched. Jimin sneaks a hand over to snatch it up.

“Then again, you spend more time with him nowadays than we do,” Taehyung says, swallowing down his mouthful of cheese.

“Don’t be worried, Y/N,” Hoseok says reassuringly, sneaking a piece of broccoli into Taehyung’s mouth before he can do anything to protest it. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

“Why are you worried? Do you have a crush on him or something?” Jungkook quips. He makes your face heat up at the mention of a crush, which only earns a chuckle from him and Jimin. You can’t even hide in the Great Hall.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” You lie, maintaining a stiff stature and steady voice.

“Oh come on, Y/N, you really don’t think you’re that inconspicuous, do you?” asks Jungkook.

You try not to meet his eyes, but you know all of them already know. Turns out your secret glances at Seokjin in class and the hallways and during meals weren’t so secret after all.

“It it that obvious?” You ask.

“Sort of. All of us know, but Seokjin is blind as a bat,” Namjoon sighs. “It’s quite sad, actually. He seems to really enjoy your company.”

That gets your spirits up a little. You knew you both liked spending time with each other, but hearing it from Namjoon makes it seem like it’s natural, like Seokjin doesn’t feel forced to tell you he likes spending time with you just because it’s you.

“He does?”

“We’ll let you know if we notice anything change,” Yoongi promises.

“Thanks,” you say, turning on your heels to go finish your work in the library. You’re technically not allowed to have food in the library, not because they might dirty the books but because some of those books might smell it and come alive, but who’s really going to call you out?

“Wait, Y/N,” Jimin says. “I don’t think you should be too concerned.”

You raise your eyebrow in question, turning back.

“He’s probably just getting more uncontrollable boners around you,” Jimin says, earning cackles and snickers from everyone else.

You shake your head fondly as you walk out the Great Hall, their laughs fading. You expect nothing less.

Over the next few days, you become adamant about Seokjin spending more time with you. He seems apologetic enough for not sticking to your designated Head Boy and Girl schedule like he had at the beginning of the year, so you suggest that you hang around each other after curfew to do your rounds, at least for a little while.

You meet him outside the Gryffindor common room after the first warning for curfew sounds, and he smiles as you approach him. It is warm and inviting, and briefly makes you forget about all the times he’s blown you off.

“How have you been?” You ask him, strolling casually down the halls next to each other as students rush to make it back to their dormitories before Filch catches them out. Your hands gloss over one another, but you don’t make a move and neither does he.

“Busy,” Seokjin replies, and you can’t help but wish he didn’t respond with such an ambiguous answer. Busy can mean a lot of things, and you know it’s not just with schoolwork.

“Me too,” you say, unsure of what to talk about next. Some nights, like these, are nights where the two of you say very little, if anything at all, instead merely relishing in each others’ silent company. The night is quiet, and so are you. “It’s so difficult being in our last year. I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything.”

“You’re Head Girl,” Seokjin says, smiling as he motions towards the badge pinned on your chest, gleaming gold. It weighs down your robe, heavier than you wish it was.

“But I feel like that’s my only accomplishment in this school. My lasting impression on this school is another plaque on the wall in the Trophy Room, forgotten until Filch forces one of the students to clean it for detention,” You sigh. Compared to Seokjin, you’re just another fly on the wall.

“That’s not true,” Seokjin says. He takes your hands in his and looks to straight in the eye. “You’ve left a lasting impression on me,” He says softly.

You glance into his chestnut brown eyes and take a frantic step back, the ambient softness replaced by stiff awkwardness.

“Well,” you begin. “That’s all very well and good.”

“Yeah, um, I guess so,” Seokjin says, scratching the nape of his neck. You know he’s embarrassed, but you don’t know why.

The rest of the evening, you try to keep the mood light, hoping to recover from the sufficiently awkward incident at the start of your time together. Seokjin has been doing a lot, from applying to jobs in the Ministry of Magic to finishing up final graduation projects. It’s not even December yet, and graduation looms above your heads like an unwelcome grey cloud.

You’re in the middle of a very intense friendly discussion on whether Felix Felicis does more harm than help. You say it’s dangerous when used recklessly, and Seokjin, ever the adventurous Gryffindor, insists that Felix Felicis is a harmless potion that exists purely to engage the drinker in a little bit of fun.

“I’m telling you, Seokjin, Felix Felicis has so many negative side-effects—”

“Is one of them being a party pooper?” Seokjin retorts, poking you on the nose and making you scrunch up your face.

You roll your eyes and continue. Ravenclaws are bad at a lot of things, like having good alcohol tolerance and keeping their mouths shut, but the one thing they can do extremely well is argue. “No, hear me out. When we consider the ingredients of Felix Felicis—”

You barely notice the clock strike eleven, too enraptured into your debate to care about what time it is. You haven’t gotten more than eight hours of sleep since your fifth year, anyway. In fact, you’re listing off the ingredients of Felix Felicis on your fingers when you look up and see Seokjin bolting down the hallway, already nearing the next corner.

“Seokjin!” You call, insulted. You can’t believe he’d blow you off so blatantly.

He turns his head around to face you, but continues running. “Sorry, Y/N! We’ll have to continue the debate in the morning!” You watch him snatch a lantern from a ledge outside the Charms room before he’s off.

Oh no. This is not happening again. You’ve gone through this one too many times and you are determined to figure out where he keeps sneaking off to, even if it may mean a couple days of heartbreak for you. Before, you weren’t lucky enough to find him actually going on his journey before, but your nagging and his sympathy have allowed you to finally catch him in the act.

You hear Filch muttering a couple hallways down, scheming with Mrs. Norris, and while you know you are technically allowed to be out, you’d rather not deal with his bitterness and Mrs. Norris’ worryingly frightening cat stare tonight.

So, you do what any normal, well-mannered Hogwarts student would do, which is dash. There’s no lantern by the Charms room to save you, but there doesn’t need to be. You remember the way Seokjin turned after he ran off, and you follow him.

Granted, it is a bit stalker-ish and a bit unorthodox, but it truly is the only way to find out Seokjin’s whereabouts.

One thing you pride yourself on his having a great memory, such a Ravenclaw thing to be proud of, which means you don’t need any Marauders’ Map to help you find the path that Seokjin took. That, and you’ve gotten close enough to him to catch the dim glow of the lantern he’s carrying with him.

At first, you think he’s headed to a girls’ dormitory. It’s a bit of a rushed assumption, but it’s late and your mind can’t help but get the better of you as you trace his steps. If he has a girlfriend, then so be it. The distance you’ve kept from him will allow you to simply sneak off without him ever knowing that you followed him or that you have a massive crush on him, so it’s a win-win situation.

However, as you continue to trail him you notice that he’s making turns that will lead him not to a common room, but outside. What?

More than once, Seokjin nearly catches you. He turns around often, clearly worried someone will catch him, especially when he’s muttering Alohomora into a door lock or tiptoeing down one of the many staircases in the castle. Luckily, the night is on your side, and when he turns around after hearing a floorboard creak, you can hide in its shadows.

When he actually does lead you outside, you know it’s not a girlfriend that he’s hiding from you. He traipses the ground carefully, though to be honest, there’s no need for him to, not when no one’s going to find him outside.

You both reach the Forbidden Forest, a place you most certainly did not expect Seokjin to be sneaking off to. There are only so many things he could get up to in the Forbidden Forest, and you know that he’s not going in the middle of the night to drink unicorn blood.

You have to distance yourself from him for a little, whispering Lumos into your wand to keep your path illuminated. You follow the shadow of his body for another several minutes before you lose him after being frightened by some small night creature. You shine your wand in the direction and find a little bunny, eyes blinking red in the light.

“You scared me, Jesus,” you whisper to the bunny, a hand over your chest to calm your racing heart down. The bunny tilts his head at you curiously before hopping away, the fallen leaves crinkling under its feet.

You hear the crunches of the leaves a mere few meters away, and immediately spring up. However, the light from Seokjin’s lantern has disappeared, meaning you can only trust the sounds you hear to lead you to the right place. As you creep around, you hear a faint squawk from below you, causing you to stumble.

“Fuck,” you swear, hoping Seokjin doesn’t hear you. You look down and shine your light at the source of the noise, only to be met with a little hippogriff. “Oh, hello.” You smile at the little tyke, looking up at you with innocent yellow eyes. “Are you all alone?”

The hatchling squawks again.

“Y/N?”

Your head shoots up and your hand instinctively goes to point your wand to the sound of your name, when you come face-to-face with an illuminated Seokjin, confused, surprised, and wide-eyed.

“Seokjin?”

“What are you doing here?”

You don’t have an excuse for this. I wanted to see where you always sneak off to is too stalkerish of a thing to say, and I just so happened to stumble out here is illogical.

“Um, I forgot I had something to tell you,” you fib, stalling so you can get more time to think of a believable lie. “I just wanted to catch up so I could say it.”

“You followed me?”

“Not purposefully. I just wanted to get to a comfortable stopping point, and apparently this is it.” You motion to the hatchling on the forest floor, between both of your legs. “With this little guy.”

Seokjin shifts his gaze nervously from your eyes to the hippogriff. “What did you want to say?”

“Just that… uh… I wanted to know if you had a girlfriend. Your friends think you’ve been secretive recently,” You pause, making up the words as you go. Sure, throwing Namjoon and them under the bus isn’t the best way to go about this, but there’s nothing else you can think of.

“I don’t,” Seokjin spits harshly. “Is that it?”

“Why are you trying to get rid of me so quickly?”

“Why did you follow me?”

“I already told you why, Seokjin. It wasn’t on purpose,” you sigh.

“But you did,” Seokjin reasons. “Do you not trust me? Am I not allowed to keep secrets?”

“What on earth are you so afraid of telling me?”

You don’t realize how much your voices have escalated until Seokjin almost shouts at you. “I’m taking care of him!”

“Him?”

“The hippogriff,” Seokjin elaborates, his voice significantly softer now. You see the worry in his eyes, and wonder if it reflects your own.

“This hippogriff? You’re taking care of him? In the middle of the Forbidden Forest?”

Seokjin chuckles at your shock. “Yeah, it’s me. His mom abandoned him, and I found him when I strayed off the path when I was helping Sprout and Hoseok. He’s cute. I’ve been doing a lot of research on hippogriffs. He needs attention and food or he’ll grow up to be reclusive and afraid, and I don’t want him to grow up like that.”

Instantly, your anger at him subsides. Sneaking off to care for an orphaned baby hippogriff was nowhere close to what was on your list of possible shenanigans Seokjin was getting up to when he blew you off, but in hindsight, you should have expected something like this. Only Seokjin would do this type of thing. You can just imagine him, in the brisk fall weather, leaning down to feed the baby small bits of ferret and vegetation, nuzzling his nose, stroking his feathers, all while you fume to your friends about how much Seokjin doesn’t care about whatever relationship you share.

“That’s so sweet, Seokjin,” you say, touched. “But why so late at night?”

“I never have time during the day. I see him once in the morning and once at night, but I make sure to leave food around in case he gets hungry. He’s very loyal, so he doesn’t normally stray too far from this vicinity,” Seokjin replies. “I’m sorry I kept running off.”

“It’s fine. It’s not your fault, really,” you assure him. “But I’m not so sure about this, you know.”

“What do you mean?” Seokjin asks, trying to uphold his facade. You know he knows what you mean, or he wouldn’t have been so secretive.

“I mean, this is sort of illegal. Without the approval of the school board, we can’t take care of Level Three animals like these,” you say, avoiding his eyes so you don’t have to see the hurt in them.

“But he’s just a baby,” Seokjin says, looking longingly at the animal. He looks back up at you. “I don’t want to put him in the hands of the Ministry. They’d put him in a zoo, or experiment on him. I can’t let that happen.”

“Seokjin, this could get us suspended,” you stress. With every word, he becomes more frantic. “We need to tell someone.”

“You can’t.”

Your head shoots up at his stern words, and you’ve never seen Seokjin look so determined.

“I can’t?”

“You can’t, Y/N,” Seokjin repeats. He comes closer to you, making you tense up as he firmly places his hands on the sides of your arms. You stare into his eyes and see only desperation, Seokjin putting himself out on the line just for you. It makes you shut your eyes, the only way to avoid his, boring into your soul. “You have to trust me.”

“Okay,” you say. “I trust you.”

“I trust you too.”

You take those final words as cue to take a step back, nearly running over the little hippogriff at your feet. He cries out as you step on one of his wings, and your face immediately shifts from one of solemness to worry.

“Oh no! Oh no, I didn’t mean it!” You cry, turning around to apologize to the creature. As you approach him, he backs away from you rapidly, until Seokjin comes in from behind to sooth it.

“No, no, it’s okay,” Seokjin cooes, scooping him up and petting him gently. “Y/N didn’t mean to do that, did you?”

You shake your head.

“See, she’s friendly,” Seokjin promises, ushering the animal closer to you.

You hold a hand out for him to sniff you before he accepts your touch. He looks so comfortable in Seokjin’s hands, like that’s his home rather than the cold forest floor.

“Did you name him?”

“Fudge.”

“Wow, very original,” you comment, making Seokjin chuckle to himself. “I wonder where you came up with that.”

“It was all I could think of,” Seokjin says defensively, smiling.

You point to the little thing, curling up inside itself in Seokjin’s palms. “He’s not even brown. You fail the name game.”

“We’ll call him White Chocolate Fudge,” Seokjin decides. “Fudge for short.”

“Fudge for short?” You ask incredulously. “You’re the worst.”

“Fudge doesn’t think so.” Seokjin raises an eyebrow.

“God damn you, Fudge,” you mutter, reaching a hand out to pet his head. You rub Fudge behind the ears and he folds into your touch, beaming in the darkness of the night.  

“You can always help me take care of him, you know,” Seokjin suggests. “I could always use the helping hand.”

“Really?” You ask, intrigued. “I’d love to.”

“That’d be great!” Seokjin exclaims, nearly shouting. “I’m always so busy with applications to the Ministry and our NEWTs, so if both of us work together, Fudge can get more food and attention. Nice!” He holds up a hand for a high-five, and you take it.

To Seokjin, this is just a more efficient way of taking care of the hippogriff before he grows up. To you, it’s a sign that things might be changing.

You and Seokjin have a pretty decent schedule worked out. He visits Fudge in the morning and you visit in the afternoon, on your way to your usual Herbology class. Normally, Sprout doesn’t mind if you show up a bit late, especially since you have some of the best grades in the class and are always willing to stay back a bit afterwards to help clean up after the plants inevitably get out of hand. The both of you grab dinner from the Great Hall (and some extra meat, as well) and meet up in the Forbidden Forest to eat on the grass with Fudge next to you, waddling around to bite pieces of chicken dangling from your hands. It’s a good system, and all the better that you get to share it with Seokjin.

“Fudge! Come here, Fudge!” You say, trying to coax him over to you as you lean against a dead tree the school hasn’t bothered to cut down, holding a piece of chicken in front of his nose.

“You’re treating him like a dog,” Seokjin says, laughing as Fudge flits his way over to you.

“Just because he’s a hippogriff doesn’t mean he can’t be loved like a dog,” you tell him sternly. The chicken piece hangs from your hand just high enough for Fudge to be unable to reach it from the ground, so he flaps his wings and snatches it from you a couple inches in the air. “Good boy! Who’s a good boy?” You exclaim excitedly, rubbing Fudge right by the wings, where you’ve discovered he likes it the most.

“He’s a good boy,” Seokjin mimics, in that enunciated, high-pitched voice that you have every time you see a cute animal.

“Oh, shut up.” You sneer at him, kicking him in the shin.

“It’s cute,” he laughs, aggressively stuffing some garlic bread into his mouth before Fudge can get a whiff. Like a dog, he seems drawn to most edible things, but the textbooks in the school library clearly state the creature’s diet cannot be anything except his usual bugs, birds, and the occasional small land animal.

“You’re cute,” you say before your eyes widen as your brain catches up. Fuck.

Seokjin chuckles. “Thanks, I know.” He pretends to flip some imaginary hair.

“I didn’t mean to boost your ego, smartass,” you grin.

“You’re cute too,” Seokjin says, and you try to keep smiling through the heat rising on your cheeks. “Now we both have boosted egos.”

“Oh yes, very even,” you comment.

“Only the best for the Head Boy and Girl,” Seokjin says. His watch dings, meaning that the two of you have to finish doing your rounds before getting back to your designated dorms and finishing up the homework for the night. The best part about being Head Boy and Girl? Free reign of the library. “Come on, let’s go.”

You hum in response, getting up. Fudge has been flying a lot more than before you came around, so watching you stand up prompts him to start flying around as well, landing on Seokjin’s shoulder.

“Look at this little guy,” Seokjin says. “I almost want to bring you with.”

“Another day,” you advise. “When it’s legal.”

“Aw, don’t you ever want to do anything bad? You’re so… good,” Seokjin says, teasing you.

“Yes, and I like being good. It means I don’t have to worry about getting expelled,” you sneer, taking Fudge from Seokjin’s shoulder and setting him on the pile of leaves below. He squawks in disappointment, so you take one last piece of chicken from your plate and drop it to him below. He eagerly gobbles it up. “Get your priorities straight.”

Seokjin laughs at that before bidding farewell to Fudge, who knows well enough not to follow the two of you.

On your way back, you say, “I’m going to transfigure my Alchemy homework into a pillow for Fudge. He seems so cold these days.”

“His feathers have gotten a bit thicker since it’s winter. But if you’re going to do that, I’ll transfigure my Alchemy homework into a nice wool blanket,” Seokjin adds.

“I guess we figured out what subject we both hate,” you laugh. “But please, leave the transfiguring to me. You’re absolute shit at it.”

“Hey!” Seokjin exclaims, mouth open wide, insulted. “Just because I accidentally set fire to your Arithmancy textbook that one time—”

“You were trying to transfigure my textbook into a box of Bertie’s! That textbook cost at least seven Galleons more than a box of jellybeans,” you retort, defensively.

“Okay, but nothing burned down, so it’s okay.”

“You roasted my textbook! I’ve been stuck with a shitty, beat-up school one ever since,” you sigh. “I don’t know how they haven’t revoked your Head Boy status yet.”

Seokjin bats his eyelashes at you. “It’s because everyone is in love with me.”

Especially me, you think to yourself.

A crash sounds from one of the hallways windows.

Seokjin looks at you, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

“Come on!” He shouts, grabbing your hand and pulling you across the field, towards the entrance to Hogwarts. Hopefully, he doesn’t hear how quickly your heart is racing.

“You don’t look too concerned about anything anymore, Y/N.”

You look up after shoving a forkful of scrambled egg into your mouth to see Namjoon looking at you, expecting some sort of reply.

“What? I looked concerned?”

“Yeah, like two weeks ago when you came barging in during lunch stressed about Seokjin,” Jungkook reminds you.

You only remember then that Seokjin had “forgotten” to tell the rest of the boys about Fudge the Hippogriff and abstained from saying anything else. So there they were, his clueless best friends who like making dick jokes and shoving food into each others’ mouths, blissfully unaware of the baby hippogriff in the Forbidden Forest.

“Oh yeah, we sorted it out,” you say simply.

Namjoon wonders aloud. “Did he finally ask you out?”

“What?”

“Guess not, then.”

You begin to trip over your words. “But—when—why—would he have a reason to?”

Jimin sniggers, and you shoot your head in his direction and give him a poisonous glare.

“I don’t know, don’t you want him to ask you out?” Namjoon asks.

“Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean he does,” you reason, treading carefully. One wrong move and you could easily expose yourself to Seokjin.

Namjoon hums, finishing the last of his glass of orange juice. “Don’t be too sure about that.”

You’ve been thinking on Namjoon’s words for the past weekend, and because you’ve been thinking, you’ve subsequently been avoiding Seokjin, spitting out excuses reminiscent of his pathetic ones before he told you about the whole hippogriff deal.

“Oh, I got caught up with some first-years who needed help transfiguring their matches back to needles.”

“I had to help Trelawney with cleaning up her classroom after a messy Divination class with the third-years.”

“I was with some friends.”

“I had homework.”

“I’m busy.”

Was Namjoon right? Does he really feel like that about you? Are your feelings actually mutual? You’re very skeptical, especially because you haven’t seen Seokjin himself give you any hints. Sure, Namjoon is more observant than all of your professors combined, but how can you trust him when he’s not Seokjin?

You can only dream about what it might be like to have Seokjin reciprocate your feelings instead of you confessing and him rejecting you in a maelstrom of I’m sorry’s, I only see you as a friend’s, and I have eyes for someone else’s. What it might be like to have him hold your hand all the time, not just in private, to look at you like you look at him, like he has supernovas in his eyes. What it might be like to not only love but also to be loved.

You have to admit, avoiding Seokjin is a difficult task. He’s practically always around you, and if he’s not, he’s often barely a few meters away, talking to someone else. You don’t like to think about how many times you’ve seen him talking to another student or a professor and immediately dashed the other way, hoping he doesn’t see you.

He eventually catches you. You can only stay away from the boy for so long, you suppose.

“Y/N!”

You whip your head around—a rookie mistake if you’re being honest (you should have just kept walking)—to find Seokjin speeding towards you, his robes flying elegantly in the wind as he reaches you.

“Seokjin?”

“Finally,” he says, heaving as he rests his hands on his knees in an attempt to catch his breath. You know the boy is joking with his need to rest, what with all of his experience with Quidditch. “You run fast.”

“You fly faster,” you say back quickly. “What’s up?”

“Meet me in the Forest tonight,” he says, still heaving loudly. “It’s urgent.”

“I am not going to let you practice the Body-Bind curse on me.”

“No, not that!” Seokjin laughs. “It’s about Fudge. I need you to come when you’re finished your rounds. I’ll be there.”

“Is everything alright?” You ask, seemingly more concerned now that you know it’s not one of his terrible pranks. “Is something wrong with him?”

“I just need you there, okay?” He asks, eyebrows raised. He doesn’t even leave time for a response before he’s off, jogging away in the other direction, worried, afraid, and anxious.

Night falls and Filch catches you out this time as you’re finishing your rounds in the most secluded part of the castle, calling you out before realizing that it’s you and apologizing before moving on his way. Once he’s gone, you drop the feigned smile on your face and make a dash for the Forest, hissing Alohomora into the lock of the door that leads to the grounds. Your wand is your only source of light as you make your way down the hill and into the forest, where you whisper Seokjin’s name.

“Seokjin?”

“Y/N?” He whispers back. “Get over here.”

“What’s going on?” You ask, voice tense. “Is Fudge okay?”

“He’s fine,” Seokjin assures you, and you immediately fume at the fact that he got you all worked up for nothing.

You smack his shoulder aggressively, making him yelp in pain. “Why did you make it seem like he was dying, you asshole?”

“Hey! I needed some way to get you down here to see this,” Seokjin frowns, rubbing the spot on his shoulder where you hit him.

“See what?”

At that moment you are presented with Fudge in front of you, except he is lying on a fluffy pet bed on the forest floor, complete with several very tiny pillows and a violent purple blanket. He looks right spoiled, judging from the content smile on his face as he dozes off.

“You’re kidding.”

“No way, man. Transfigured it all myself, no homework was harmed in the process,” he proclaims, beaming as he rocks back and forth on his toes.

“So what did you use?”

“Let’s just say my roommates may be missing a few of their less vital items.” Seokjin winks at you, making you scrunch up your nose.

“He looks fantastic,” You say. A breeze blows by, making your nose turn even more numb than it already was. You can feel your ears freezing. Below you, Fudge shivers, even under all of that warmth.

“Another thing I wanted to quickly bring up is the reason for your avoidance of me this past weekend,” Seokjin says, hitting the nail right on the head. Ouch. “Did I do something wrong?”

“You? No! No, no, of course not. I’ve just been out of it, you know?” You say hesitantly, trying to make sure he knows that it’s not his fault. “I’ve been swamped and kind of sick and lack the motivation to do almost anything.”

“I believe the American term for that is Senioritis,” Seokjin says, matter-of-factly. “But I get it, I get it. I just don’t understand why you’re pulling a Seokjin towards me, a Seokjin.”

“Oh, shut up! I’ve been busy, ‘ts all,” you exclaim. “It’s revenge for what you did to me before you told me about Fudge.”

“Alright, you got me,” Seokjin says, smiling. He holds out a hand. “Even?”

“I don’t know…” you trail off. “Maybe I need to just keep avoiding yo—”

“Don’t do that to me, Y/N!” Seokjin pouts, crossing his arms. “I need your company.”

“You’re so very whiny, Seokjin,” you complain. “You remind me of Jungkook.”

“I picked it up from him,” Seokjin jokes, and the two of you laugh together. The air is chilly and the wind is biting but he is warm and sunny, and perhaps it’s inappropriate for the season but you could bask in his burning rays for the rest of the night.

Seokjin spots you as you’re leaving the Headmaster’s office as another professor rounds up the third-years for their first trip to Hogsmeade a couple days later. You’re surprised to see him walking up to you, bounding up the stairs two at a time to meet you as the top.

“Oh!” You exclaim, your shoulders jumping. “You scared me, Seokjin.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to seem so intense walking up those stairs. I was wondering if you wanted to go to Hogsmeade together? We could sneak our way in with the third-years,” he offers.

You shift on your toes nervously, “With the third-years? I’m sure we could get in some other way.”

“We could just say we’re going to watch them for their first trip,” Seokjin suggests, already linking arms with you and walking you down the steps, two at a time. “The teacher’s will be fine it with. They get tired of Hogsmeade sometimes.”

“Are you sure?” You ask. “You seem to have too much faith in your schmoozing abilities, sometimes.”

Seokjin stands up taller. “My schmoozing abilities are phenomenal, thank you very much.” He taps you on your nose before dragging you to the Professor reminding the third-years of their permission slips and rules and restrictions.

He does all of the talking, and you are able to witness first-hand how good his schmoozing abilities really are, because it’s only a matter of a few sentences before the professor is gladly handing the reins to him, alerting all of the third-years that “Seokjin and Y/N will be supervising you!”

You sneer at him, and he winks.

“The third-years don’t know how lucky they’re getting,” Seokjin mutters into your ear, his warm breath tickling your skin. The professor walks off delightedly, proudly alerting another one of the teachers that it’ll be you guys who watch the third-years, rather than them. “I have no plans on supervising them.”

You smack his shoulder, the same place you hit him previously.

“You really have to stop aiming there,” Seokjin says. “That’s my catching arm.”

“Both of your arms are catching arms, smartass.”

“Yes, meaning that one is still my catching arm, smartass,” Seokjin mimics your tone, making the two of you sneer at each other as you move your heads closer to each other, noses nearly touching.

You’re joking like that with each other for the rest of the way to Hogsmeade, barely spending a second glance to keep watch over the third-years. You’ve worked with them before, and they are by far your best class to supervise. For some reason, they’re all just well-behaved kids. It’s very unusual.

When you get there, Seokjin immediately makes a beeline for the Three Broomsticks, but not before he grabs your arm and pulls you with, dashing through the snow like St. Nick’s reindeer. The rapid gust of heat as you enter causes your ears and nose to burn. As you turn to Seokjin, you notice that the tip of his nose and the tops of his ears are tinted red.

“Butterbeer?” He suggests, and you nod.

“I’ll get us a table.”

You take a seat at one of the benches in the furthest corner from the door to avoid the cold air, warming yourself up by the single lit candle in the middle of the table. Soon after, Seokjin walks over with two hearty glasses bubbling with butterbeer, and some straws.

“Nice,” you say, rubbing your hands together. “I’ve been looking forward to this ever since Hogwarts.”

“Me too,” he grins, setting the drinks down on the table. He sits down across from you and pushes your drink to you, a straw placed down right next to it.

“Straws are for the weak,” you comment as he takes his own and jams it against the wood of the table until the paper breaks.

“Hey,” he frowns as he places it in his butterbeer. “I’m insulted.”

“You don’t know butterbeer until the bubbles tickle your nose,” you tell him adventurously, making a show of you drinking the beverage to prove your point.

“Alright, fine,” Seokjin says. He picks up the straw in his drink and slams it down onto the table. “Let’s go. Butterbeer drinking contest.”

“You’re on.”

The subsequent three minutes are spent chugging down your butterbeers until there’s only beige bubbles at the bottom of the glass, drinking and drinking and drinking as you both eye each other with a ferocity. Seokjin beats you, obviously, but you come damn close.

“You have butterbeer all over your mouth,” you say when you both put your glasses down, their contents empty.

“So do you,” Seokjin laughs back. He burps, loudly too, and you can smell the butterbeer in his breath. He gets up to grab a couple of napkins before sitting back down, wiping his mouth. He reaches over the table to get the butterbeer remnants around your mouth, catching you by surprise. “You really aren’t a clean drinker.”

“Not when you challenge me to a drinking contest, asshole,” you retort, letting him continue to rub at the side of your mouth before he leans back. His ears are burning red again, but you don’t think that that’s because of the cold.

Merely a few days later, you and Seokjin are hanging around the Forbidden Forest during your shared lunch hour. Seokjin has on a thick coat, complete with his Gryffindor scarf and earmuffs, and you’re bundled up in several sweaters under your robe. It’s gotten too cold for Fudge to want to hang out on the forest floor, so he opts for warming up in his little bed.

“This is so quaint,” Seokjin comments, looking around the frost-covered forest. “Us, and Fudge, in a forest in the middle of winter. I feel like I’m in some sort of movie.”

“Some cheesy Christmas movie,” you add, chuckling to yourself.

“Where’s St. Nick when you need him? I want a new cauldron.”

“St. Nick is too busy to listen to your demands, Seokjin. How do you even know you’re on the ‘Nice’ list?” You retort, crossing your arms kind of to make a point but also because you’re getting colder as the night wears on. ��After all those terrible things you’ve done to me this year.”

“Hey! I can be nice. I bought us Butterbeer when we went to Hogsmeade,” Seokjin protests. “Isn’t that nice?”

Fudge squawks from below the two of you, toddling up to Seokjin’s lanky legs and rubbing his beak against them.

“See?” Seokjin motions to the hippogriff. “Fudge thinks I’m nice.”

“I think you’re evil.”

Seokjin pouts, one of those big-lipped sad-eyed pouts that are too cartoonish to take seriously but too cute to ignore. “I think that you just think that you think I’m evil.”

You blink your eyes rapidly and shake your head, taken aback by his confusing, philosophical, word vomit. “I don’t know what you just said.”

Seokjin takes a step closer. You refuse to take a step back, because you know it’ll only make him step closer and closer to you until you’re backed up against a tree trunk in true cheesy Christmas movie fashion. “I think that you think that you like me.”

You blink again before clearing your throat, placing a pointer finger on Seokjin’s chest. Your typical reaction to Seokjin calling you out for your crush is instant denial. “I think that you think that I think that I like you,” you challenge. It’s one of those friendly competitions that you always have, but this time it’s a bit different. This time, it’s a bit more intense.

The both of you are so busy staring each other down that you don’t hear the crunch of leaves from a few meters away, not until Seokjin’s face is illuminated like a criminal caught in the dead of night.

“Headmaster?”

You whip your head around to find your Headmaster, merely beaming at the two of you. Seokjin meets your eyes as you look to each other with fright, and his eyes are blown wide.

“Mr. Kim, fine evening, isn’t it?”

“I-I suppose so, Professor,” Seokjin stutters, avoiding his gaze. Hopefully he hasn’t noticed that you aren’t doing the same. “What brings you here?”

“Just some browsing around the grounds. I’d love to get to know all of its inhabitants, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, I guess I would,” Seokjin continues, his confidence knocked down several levels.

The Headmaster smiles. “Including your little hippogriff, am I correct?”

You knew the words were coming, knew he would mention the little tyke eventually, but even when they arrive, you aren’t prepared for the look Seokjin gives you. It’s not one of anger, or betrayal, or shock, it’s one of regret, and you most certainly aren’t accustomed to it. Not from bright, bright Seokjin, who is friendly and teasing and appreciative of you all the time.

“H-How do you know?”

“I’m afraid, Mr. Kim, and Ms. Y/L/N, that I have to take him away from you. The two of you simply do not have the authorization to take care of a creature such as he as students at this school,” the Headmaster says.

Seokjin breathes in a deep breath—he knew this was coming, too—and opens his eyes. “Must you, Professor?”

“I’m afraid so, Mr. Kim. This is not your duty.”

Seokjin nods, and from behind the Headmaster emerge two fellows wearing very official-looking Ministry outfits, equipped with cages and tranquilizers, the whole deal.

“No, it’s fine, you don’t need any of that stuff,” Seokjin assures them as they approach Fudge, who is currently terrified and shaking in the corner of his little bed. Seokjin leans down to Fudge, bending down on a single knee to hold his cupped palms out. Fudge doesn’t want to go into them, you can tell, but Seokjin coaxes him in anyway and gently places him in the open cage. Before the two men can close it, he snatches up the pillow and places it inside as well. “You’ll be okay, Fudge. They’ll take good care of you.”

“Thank you for your understanding, Mr. Kim and Ms. Y/L/N,” the Headmaster says. “Neither of you will face any penalties for this. I trust that I will not see you around the Forbidden Forest at this hour again.”

You both nod to the Headmaster before he and the other men vanish, taking Fudge with them. Seokjin makes no attempt to rescue him.

“Listen, Seokjin,” you immediately begin before he has a chance to storm off without listening to you. “You and I both know we couldn’t have continued to take care of Fudge. Or raise him on our own, watching him grow up for the rest of the year. Hippogriffs grow quickly and we aren’t accustomed to it, nor are we prepared to hide an ever-maturing creature in the shadows of the Forest, I had to—”

“Just when I started to fall for you,” he mutters, and it’s so inaudible that you’re sure it’s the trees that said that for a second, before you realize it was him. You can’t respond to his words, because he walks off, the skip in his step gone. The light on his wand is fading as well, and it seems that everything around you reflects the now somber mood.

You follow him back to the castle without saying another word.

Taehyung is the only thing separating you from Seokjin a week later, all three of you sat on the same side of the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall. The past several days have been met with mostly silence, the both of you going out of your ways to avoid each other. Seokjin doesn’t seem very keen on ending the Silent Treatment towards you, and to be honest, you’re perfectly fine with that, especially after the fiasco that was Fudge, the Hippogriff.

“You guys seem awfully down,” Taehyung comments from in between you two. “Did something happen?”

“No,” Seokjin says at the same time that you say, “Yes,” making the two of you glare at each other and the rest of the table look up in concern.

“Are you sure about that?” Taehyung asks Seokjin, clearly in disbelief. “It doesn’t look like you guys are very… friendly right now.”

“We’re fine,” Seokjin says, eliciting something of a snort from you. Taehyung turns his head sharply towards you as you keep your eyes trained on the plate in front of you.

“The people who didn’t know they had the Black Plague said that too, and look at where it got them,” Namjoon says. “Seriously, you two. We can tell when something’s up. We’re not stupid.”

“Well, maybe Jimin is,” Jungkook jokes. Jimin drops his spoonful of mashed potatoes on his plate with a clang as he tackles him.

“We’re fine,” Seokjin repeats. “Trust me. Nothing’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong, but the two of you are suspiciously unhappy at the exact same time,” Yoongi observes. “Huh.”

Just then is when Seokjin decides he’s had enough, standing up with his plate in hand and migrating out of the Great Hall. You watch him with a study gaze as he exits the room, leaving the rest of the group in silence, something you don’t experience very often.

“Now that he’s gone, Y/N can tell us what happened,” Jimin says eagerly, facing you. “Tell us the deets.”

“Don’t ever say the word ‘deets’ again,” Taehyung quips.

“There’s nothing to say,” you reply, oddly secretive of the drama between you and Seokjin. It just doesn’t feel like something you should spill out to the rest of the boys, especially when telling them The Story of Fudge, the Hippogriff requires lots of time and background knowledge on your crush on him, which they also don’t know much about. Quite frankly, you’d rather not. “I don’t have anything to tell you.”

Jimin whines in response, but Namjoon can clearly see your hesitance of the topic, and changes the subject.

As the second week since the incident in the Forbidden Forest blows by, you notice that Seokjin’s attitude towards you has shifted from mere avoidance to blatant annoyance, evidenced by his snappy tone every time you ask him to pass the salt. Your obligatory weekly meetings as Head Boy and Girl are brief, like they once were in the beginning of the year, and he normally just spits out information before walking off without hearing a single thing you’ve said.

You’ve long let go of the whole Fudge thing, finding it ridiculous to be so pissed with someone for more than a week, and while you try to make amicable means with Seokjin and repair the friendship he seems adamant about avoiding, he’s having none of it.

Seokjin knows exactly how to push your buttons, but you’ve tried to keep yourself calm around him, refusing to stoop to his level. You are Head Girl, after all.

You’re studying in the middle of the Ravenclaw common room when the door opens, Seokjin right behind it. Of course he solved the riddle, of course. You meet eyes briefly but turn your head immediately back to your textbook, the shitty replacement one after Seokjin barbecued your original copy. Jungkook is sitting on the chair opposite you, and you know Seokjin’s here for him.

Jungkook looks at you uneasily, and you shrug.

“Ah, Jungkook,” Seokjin says as he walks over, book in hand. “Here’s your book.”

“Thanks,” Jungkook replies, smiling.

“Hi, Seokjin,” you say, your eyes still trained on the words on the page. “How are you?”

You know Seokjin looks directly at you, yet he makes no note of you. “No problem.” With that, he’s gone.

You hear the door shut and look up from your work, closing the textbook roughly and crinkling up the notes you were taking.

“Are you okay, Y/N?” Jungkook asks, concerned.

“I’m fine,” you hiss, clearly not fine.

“You don’t seem fine,” Jungkook says. “I’m sorry Seokjin ignored you.”

“He’s being such a little bitch,” you say. “I don’t know why he can’t just move on. I did.”

“He’s a Gryffindor,” Jungkook says, as if that provides any consolation. “‘Moving on’ isn’t in his vocabulary.”

“Well, it should be,” you retort.

“Have you tried to talk to him?”

“Yes, multiple times. And he just keeps blowing me off, like dandelion wisps.”

Jungkook sighs. “Maybe you should just find a way to talk to him when he can’t blow you off.”

That gives you an idea. “Maybe I should,” you nod, smiling now. “Thanks, Jungkook.”

The younger boy nods in response before sitting back down in the chair, perusing through the book Seokjin brought back. You shuffle through your papers until you find a spare piece of parchment, and write a note.

The next morning, you catch Seokjin doing his homework in the library. As you walk by the desk he’s sitting at, you slam a note down next to his textbook.

6:30 in FF, tonight. Same spot. Meet you there.

This feels like the worst kind of first date ever, you think to yourself as you loiter around the Forbidden Forest, waiting for Seokjin. You have no watch on you but you know it should be nearing 6:30 any minute now. You’re wondering if Seokjin decided to bail on you, but you don’t think that he would do that. He’s been acting like an asshole recently, but he’s not that much of an asshole. At least, you hope he’s not.

You’re kicking around the dead leaves peeking out of the snow for what feels like a few more minutes before you hear a cough coming from your right. You whip around to find, sure enough, Seokjin standing there awkwardly, hands tucked into the pockets of the sweater he has on.

“You came,” you declare, though it’s more of a reaffirmation to yourself.

“Yeah. I got your note.”

“I should hope so, what with the elaborate display I made of getting it to you,” you say, walking towards him.

“Why did you want me here?”

“To talk.”

“I’m not here to talk,” Seokjin says, turning around on the heels of his feet to go back to the warmth of the castle.

“That’s too bad, because I have things to say.”

That makes Seokjin stop in his tracks. “Like what?” You can hear the venom in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” you begin, knowing fully well that he’s listening to you. “I never actually said that before, but I’m sorry. Not for Fudge, but for betraying your trust. I know that was a really shitty thing to do, and I’m sorry.”

“Is that it?” Seokjin’s turned around now, facing you as you take a daring step closer to him.

“Nope. I’m glad I told the Headmaster about Fudge, and you should be too. You’re smart, and you knew we weren’t prepared enough to keep taking care of him as he got older. We’re still students, and have almost no experience with magical creatures outside of our classes. Watching him as the autumn months turned to winter ones was a good idea, and I’m glad we did that because it’s likely he would have died without us. Other than that, I think it was time to hand him over to the professionals. It was what was best.”

“Are you finished?”

You nod, half expecting him to say something in response, half-expecting him to turn around and leave you.

“You’re right,” Seokjin says quietly, and you probably wouldn’t have heard him if it weren’t for the silence of the night. “I was too ambitious.”

You take a step closer, or maybe he moves towards you, but you’re face-to-face now.

“I thought I could just keep caring for him as he got older, but I couldn’t. It was dumb of me to think otherwise,” Seokjin admits, and it’s nice to finally hear him say it. “But I’m not avoiding you because of that.”

“Why are you avoiding me, then?” You ask, surprised.

“I thought we had something, you know,” Seokjin says, and it’s clear that he wishes the two of you still did. “Taking care of Fudge, spending all this time together, having butterbeer drinking contests. I thought we were something.”

“And?”

“And?” Seokjin asks. “And you broke your promise. You betrayed me. How can you still care for me if you did something like that?”

That leaves you in stunned silence as the words settle in, like dust after a storm. Seokjin has nothing else to say either, and you wonder what thoughts must be racing through his head. You wonder if they are the same as yours.

“I still care about you,” you whisper, your warm breath visible as it hits his throat. “I never stopped.”

“What?”

“Just because I turned Fudge over doesn’t mean I wanted what we had to end. I thought you—we—would move past it,” you explain, your bodies growing ever closer. “I turned Fudge in because he wasn’t our responsibility, but I also turned him in because I didn’t want you to get in trouble. You have so much going for you. Fudge can’t be the reason why it all goes to waste.”

“You care about my future like that?” Seokjin asks, eyes soft.

“Of course,” you reply with ease. “I love you.”

The words slip out before you have the chance to stop them, but you don’t even have time to say anything afterwards anyway, not before you feel warm hands cup your cheek and lips planted firmly on yours.

Your eyes spring open to see Seokjin’s closed ones as the two of you kiss, you easily melting into the warmth that is Seokjin as the air outside freezes your fingertips. It’s not a deep kiss, and the two of you part without heaving breaths and sweaty foreheads, but your lips are red and his cheeks are pink.

“I think I love you too,” Seokjin says.

“Do you think you love me or do you just think you think you love me?” You ask, smirking a little bit.

Seokjin chuckles, his breath fanning out in front of him. “I rephrase my original statement. I know I love you.”

You beam at him, grinning from ear to ear as he holds out a hand for you to take. The two of you walk back to castle together, swinging your hands as you go. There’s no need for you to look at him. You know he only sees you.

“Yay! The couple finally got together,” Taehyung cheers as the two of you stroll into the Great Hall. “It’s been so painful watching you pine. I wanted to die. Or set the two of you up myself.”

“No need for that, Taehyung,” you laugh.

“Obviously. I assume you’ve everything sorted out, right?” Namjoon asks, an eyebrow raised. You can tell he’s pleased.

“No. We still hate each other’s guts,” Seokjin says in such a sincere manner that for a second, you think he’s telling the truth.

“Of course, my mistake,” Namjoon chuckles.

“I forbid the two of you to be sappy around me,” Yoongi instructs. “I already have to deal with Mr. I Fall In Love With Pretty Butterflies over here,” he says, motioning to Hoseok.

“Listen,” Hoseok says, affronted.

“Oh! I have a surprise for you,” you remember, grabbing Seokjin’s hand.

“Seriously? We just sat down,” Seokjin says in disbelief as you drag him out of his seat. “I wanted food.”

“It can wait. I want to show you something.”

Seokjin huffs. “This better be worth it.”

You lead him down the hallway and outside, to the grounds where the third-years are currently in their Care of Magical Creatures class. Seokjin looks particularly disgruntled the entire way there, having to be dragged rather than brought to the damn class.

“What do you have to show me from the third-years?” Seokjin asks, confused.

“Oh, just a little something,” you shrug like it’s no big deal.

You bring him closer to the class, waving to the Professor as he instructs his third years about the animal of the lesson. He smiles back and nods, letting the two of you continue to traipse through the grounds.

“What is this?”

“A gift. A post-Christmas gift.”

“What?”

As the two of you reach the bottom of the hill, a little hippogriff comes into view.

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[rowan-buzzard-whitethorn]

Guess who’s finally on their computer instead of shitty mobile??

Now I can FINALLY answer all these tags!! BTW, I freaking love being tagged in things you guys, and being sent asks, and messages and I JUST LOVE YOU ALL OKAY?

ALSO, because I’ve been tagged in multiple of those question things I will just answer them all in one go. And because I’m pretty sure most people don’t want to see a post a mile long where I drone on and on about my little life, I will put it under the cut.

LET’S DO THIS.

FYI, I guess I won’t tag people because I feel like I am WAAAYYY too late on this train and that everyone’s already been tagged multiple times and are probably “done” with this tag meme lol

Firstly, I was tagged by @court-of-wildfire AKA the most adorable little sunflower that’s ever existed.

1. What ancient God / Goddess is your favorite, and why?

You know, I don’t remember enough to pick. Which really, I should. In my ancient African history course we talked at length about Egyptian gods, and then in pt 1 of my world history course we talked about Egyptian and Roman gods. If I think real hard on it I remember being the most interested in the ones that rule/ had association with the underworld. Like, Osiris, Anubis, Hades, etc. Huh.  

2. What are five things (tv shows, candy, shoes, etc,) that was popular in your youth that you wish you can bring back today?

Lol I was just talking to my sister about how we wish Goucho pants didn’t go out of style. I wish kids shows were as good today as they were back then. Angry Beavers, Hey, Arnold, AHH Real Monsters. Sigh.

3. Name your top five meme’s.

I don’t really hold onto them long lol I’ll just throw some out there: The willy wonka one, The Boromir one, The little girl unimpressed with going to disney one, back when Leo never won an oscar, etc

4. If you could choose your own 7 wonders of the world what would they be?

Hmmm... I don’t know I think the one’s we’ve got are alright. lol oh god im lame

5. If you could have a mythical animal as a pet what would it be?

I’m sorry, who doesn’t want a pegasus??

6. Pick three artist / bands to compose a score for the story of your life.

M83, Thomas Newman, Flo + the machine

7. If you could only keep two of your five senses which ones would you pick?

sight and touch

8. What is your irrational fear?

Is it irrational? I am terrified of going off a bridge and into water in a car. Like I brace myself for it every time I cross a bridge and I have a tool to break the window in my door lol

9. What rule did you have to follow as a kid that you didn’t agree with?  

My mom was QUEEN of saying I couldn’t go to a friend’s house just “because”. It always just meant she didn’t want to deal with taking me.

10. What are some weird quirks / rituals you do everyday?

lol the only thing I can think of is that I HAVE to pee right before I get into bed. It doesn’t matter if I just went and I only have a drop left, it must happen.

11. What was the weirdest / craziest thing that’s happened to you at work and/or school?

hmm... the only thing I can think of right now is from 3rd grade when I was playing soccer and the kid with the strongest foot punted the ball and it went smack into my face and I flew backward and blacked out. I totally had that playground moment of waking up with the whole student body looking over me and them going “UUUGGHH” when I sat up and bled from both nostrils.

These questions are from the beautiful, the flawless, the perfect, @vukica10. You complete me.

1. If you could go back at any time in history what would it be? (Ancient Egypt, Victorian era…)

By that do you mean, if I could go back and be a man in any time period because let’s face it... I’ve always been really interested in Rome... but I also really like Victorian stuff too.. idk IT’S TOO HARD

2. Fictional world you’d like to be a part of (except for SJM worlds)

Harry Potter duh

3. If you could visit only one country in your life, which one would it be?

France I guess? I’ve been there and I want to go back and stay for like 2 months.

4. Describe your perfect boy/girl

lol well... If we are talking about like the UNATTAINABLE PERFECT then:

Once I get my BSN I will be doing international nursing so I want some badass buff guy who like.. works for the UN, or some nonprofit, or like does security and is mr tough guy. Anyway you probably meant personality. I for sure have a Type, and that Type is confident cocky asshole on the surface with a warm gooey middle. Who knows the times that I just need a big shoulder to lean on and when I need someone to like, call be on my bullshit and be able to read me super well and just pokes and prods all my buttons instead of just sitting there oblivious to everything going on in my head. Those guys that are able to read you immediately and call you on it are super fucking hot.

5. If you could change one thing in history, what would it be

LOL JUST ONE??? I’d say eliminating the Cold War would rid the world of many ills. The US and Russia wouldn’t straight up fuck every other country over in their stupid propaganda war. Can you imagine how different things would be if we had somehow remained allies after WW2??

6. Tell me one embarrassing story

Well the most embarrassed I’ve ever felt was at a friends house when I was in the bathroom for a while and there was no TP, I yelled and yelled and yelled for my friend to bring me some and no one heard, so I walked out and her whole family was out there??? and her mom goes “... wasn’t there no toilet paper in there?... do you need to go upstairs and clean up?” And I was like hey thanks cunt yes I do, excuse me while I go die.

7. What language would you like to know?

I’ll go practical and say Spanish. Just because I keep thinking about how it would help me A TON as a nurse. But I also wish I actually got proficient in French

8. What was the happiest day of your life

I honestly have such a terrible memory for stuff like this. I can’t pick a single day!

9. If you have a chance to meet any celebrity and ask them one question, who would it be and what would you ask?

Pssshhh idk. Maybe Michael Fassbender or Jason Momoa and ask him to marry me??

10. Have you ever done something illegal/dangerous?

Nothing more than some pot and underage drinking. Now dangerous... Idk that’s a flexible term lol

11. What was on the latest photo you took?

My sister and I at a burgers and booze fest

These questions are from @starofvelaris

First of all. OMG I LOVE YOU. YOU’RE ART IS AMAZEBALLS. like how even do you do what you do??? I bought a tablet and i haven’t used it because photoshop is terrifying THANKS FOR THE TAG!!

1. An evil witch casts a spell on you, turning you into a plant. What kind of plant would you want to be?

Hmm... I’d like to be one of those really tall trees in the Amazon or something

2. If you could step into any fantasy world from any book series, which would you visit?

Harry Potter duuuuhhhhhh

3. Would you rather live in the Autumn Court or the Spring Court?

Well, are we talking about with the current people there... or like, if they were gone? Because I would totally choose Autumn

4. What toppings do you order on your pizza?

Pepperoni and Sausage!

5. Describe your ideal Friday night.

Well, if I’m not being a homebody and actually being social for once, then dinner, drinks, piano bar

6. Worst book you’ve ever read?

Frankenstein. I did a Classics binge and I could NOT make it through that one. I tried multiple times. Sorry guys I just DON’T get how that is a Classic other than the “never been done” aspect. Then again, there’s several beloved classics that I hate. Like the Great Gatsby. Ugh. Kill me with a spoon.

7. Night or day? Dawn or twilight?

Day, I can’t go all night I like sleep. Twilight- well it’s funny because I actually really do like nighttime but it’s like... the hours between 4 and 10 are my best hours LOL