#and given the later bits about both their traumas around water that was just plain completely not gonna work for me anymore

[aquilamage]

keep thinking about this fic over and over in my head so putting it up. little bit of just having fun, little bit of projection, little bit of headcanons Featuring leif and vi and my love of their interactions. human fables au because I was specifically thinking about them and hair.

.

Vi would never, ever admit it out loud (not after she’d fought tooth and nail for a shift, against Kabbu’s protests that she was “still growing” and whatever, and still only been allowed half of one, always at the beginning of the night), but keeping watch was boring. It had hardly been any time at all and she was already halfway towards clawing at the walls of the little recess they’d camped out in. And it wasn’t going to get much better because nothing ever happened.

So she was experimenting with her beemerang (the new feature was great, but ooh, once she got that new password she was going to have words with Shades). Right now it was trying to get a feel for stopping it midair when she tossed it up.

The bonus of doing that now was that no one else was there to see when she messed up. Especially the time she got smacked in the face and hissed a word that would have made Kabbu gasp.

She’d just recovered from that enough to start looking for where her beemerang had fallen when she heard a shuffling in the direction of the camp.

Energy surging, she dashed over, only to find it was only Leif turning over in their sleeping bag. She groaned. “Figures.”

But when she finally found the beemerang (in some tall grass) and got back to her original lookout spot, Leif was tossing around more, mumbling something in their sleep. Which was none of her business. And she would have kept on ignoring it until they stopped or her shift was over, but the noise was starting to get on her nerves, quiet enough you couldn’t really hear it, but loud enough you knew it was there.

So she got up and walked to stand over Leif. She watched them for another minute in case they decided to pick just then to stop.

No such luck. With a heavy sigh, Vi prodded them in the side with her foot.

Vi couldn’t say exactly what happened in the ensuing moments, except that there was some yelling and flailing on both their ends, ending with her on the ground with both legs frozen (one just past the knee, the other almost to the hip) and Leif crouched forward as well they could while still in the sleeping bag, another spell dancing on their fingertips.

Their mutual staredown was broken by a soft noise they both immediately looked toward. Kabbu shifted, sleepily mumbled something, and then settled back to sleep.

Leif gave an extended, heavy sigh, and curled up into themself.

“You’re welcome,” Vi grumbled, scrabbling around for a rock to start chipping away at the ice.

They didn’t react until the first sharp crack, whereupon they stared for a second before moving over and starting on her other leg.

“This would be a lot easier if you could actually control the ice once you make it.” She’d said it for the sake of saying it, no real heat behind it – she still meant it as much as the first time, during a practice incident, but wasn’t feeling it the same. Still, she’d expected them to snip back with something (last time, xe’d replied that when xe found the source of xyr powers, xe would bring that up).

So when they didn’t respond at all, she knew something was wrong. Ugh. “Do you need to- to talk about it, or whatever?”

They just made a noncommittal noise, so she slapped their arm.

The ambient temperature dropped as they glared at her. “What was that for?”

“I’m trying to help, and you’re...I don’t know, but you’re not paying attention!” She tried to yank her foot the rest of the way out, only to slam her ankle against a piece of it. “Get me out of here so I can wake Kabbu up.”

“That’s not…” They hesitated. “We don’t need to bother him about this.” They combed a hand through their hair. “Just...a bad dream, less than pleasant memories.”

When she was free, Vi walked unsteadily to a rock high enough for her to sit and kick her legs out, sticking her hands under her arms to warm them.

After a few minutes, she noticed that while Leif had gotten back into their sleeping bag, they were sitting up against the wall, both hands playing with their hair. She would give one more effort, and then they were on their own. “You should probably go back to sleep.”

They sighed. “At the moment, it would only become a repeat of our previous state, which we’re not exactly interested in.”

“...Okay.” She turned back to the lot of nothing happening outside their camp.

The back of her neck prickled, and though she tried to ignore it, eventually she had to turn and face Leif’s watching her. “What?”

They looked down. “May we ask a favor?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“Would you do our hair for us?”

“What?...Why?” They couldn’t do it themself? It looked fine, anyway.

“We used to ask M-” Leif froze, going quiet for a long time before saying, hoarsely, “We find it soothing.”

She stared at them.

“You don’t have to if you don’t-”

“No, that’s- I just- ...soothing?” As a child, she’d thrown fits when anyone so much as adjusted flyaways. Even as she grew up, haircuts had been an ordeal of tensing her whole body to stay still and hold in a scream while she endured the sensation.

“Yes?”

Weird, but whatever, she guessed. “Bring my sleeping bag over with you.”

She folded it over into a cushion on the ground as Leif sat in front of her. Taking the brush, she started.

Barely any time after, they reached back and stopped her. “Is that really how you brush your hair?”

“Uh, yeah?” She just did whatever to make sure it looked decent and didn’t have knots.

They sighed. “Try like this.”

She copied as best she could, and they didn’t correct her, so it must be okay at least. Even at a glance, it was impossible to miss how much hair Leif had, going almost all the way down their back, but seeing was still different from handling it. For one, it wasn’t as heavy as she’d expected, from her own thick hair as baseline. But still, even without any snarls or anything to work out, it took a while to brush the whole of it.

She definitely took it slower than needed, but it was something to do, and much more tolerable on this end. Besides, once she’d started properly, Leif had relaxed dramatically.

When she did finish, they stayed still for a little longer, took a slow, deep breath, and said, “Thank you.”

Vi shrugged, then remembered they couldn’t see her. “Sure.”

Another soft lull.

“Would it be too much to assume you know how to braid?”

She huffed. She’d never really done one, but how hard could it be?

...Apparently quite a bit, she realized after a while. She knew it was three pieces, and then you wrapped them around each other, so she’d gotten that far. But then she’d started to think it was too loose, and then she’d tried a different pattern, and somewhere in there she ended up with a fourth section of hair. Now she was just trying to undo the whole thing and failing spectacularly at even that.

Her tugs must have gotten rougher, because Leif turned to look over their shoulder. “What are you doing?”

With a groan, she flopped onto the ground. “I don’t actually know how to braid, okay?”

They pulled their hair to the front so they could see it better and burst out laughing.

“Shut up!” Pressing her hands over her eyes, she kicked at them. “It’s not that bad!”

“No, it’s worse,” they gasped. “We don’t think we could do this if we tried.”

“Fight me.”

“We’ll pass.”

She kicked them again, although not as hard.

When Vi finally sat up, they’d worked out the worst of it. “Do you want to learn how to actually braid?”

“You’re just offering so you can bother me into doing it for you later.”

They shrugged, smirking.

“Yeah. Teach me.”

---

Leif rolled out of the inn bed and stumbled through the dark toward the bathroom. Groggily, she noted the faint light under the closed door. As she raised a hand to knock, she heard a litany of muttered curses, clearly in Vi’s voice.

She knocked.

A yelp, the sound of something falling. “What?”

Resting his head against the door with a clunk, Leif said, “Does your crisis require you to stay in there?”

“Wha- I’m not- Back off and mind your own business!”

“We would but we have to pee.”

“Ugh!” A lot of shuffling and a couple more curses later, Vi opened the door, a towel draped over her head and shoulders, and shoved past him.

When he was done, he found her sitting on the edge of her bed, pulling the towel tight around her head as she stared at the door. As soon as he opened it, she tried to dash back in.

But Leif stayed in the doorway, blocking her. “What did you do to your hair?”

“Nothing.” She ducked down to crawl between her legs.

He let Vi, and used the opportunity to yank the towel off her head.

Barely stifling a shriek, she tried to shove him back into the bedroom.

But he just dropped his weight, leaning against her. When she stumbled back, he pulled the door closed behind them.

She’d hastily replaced the towel, and was glaring up at him.

Yeah, she didn’t want to do this either, but something was up, and she couldn’t tell if it was Vi’s natural stubborn reticence about even tiny stuff, or an actual issue. “We can do this the easy way and you talk to me, or the hard way, where I go wake Kabbu up.”

Somehow her glare managed to intensify even more. As they stared each other down, Leif noticed her eyes were red, skin around them a little blotchy.

After long enough that she was about to go for Kabbu, Vi spoke up. “I was cutting my hair and I messed up a little, and I didn’t want you to see because it looks stupid and you’d be joking about it for the next month.” Crossing her arms, she huffed. “There. Now get out.”

A whole month? No, that wasn’t the important part right now. “Why were you cutting your hair in the middle of the night?”

“Hey! I’ve been cutting my own hair since-” She stiffened, then went back to even more shouty. “for a while now. I know what I’m doing!”

The rhetort ‘and yet you managed to mess up on it’ came so easily it almost flowed right from his brain to his tongue before he even knew it had formed. But he stopped himself. That was only going to put her on more of a defensive. “We didn’t mean it like that. Why now?”

Vi narrowed her eyes, but responded. “It was getting long, and I didn’t have the chance to do it the past couple days with camping out, and then we said about getting an early start, so I wanted to get it done while I had a chance.” As she spoke, she became increasingly worked up, until she was flailing her arms as she added, “Why do you even care?”

Because she was his friend. Maybe not to the most common meaning, and certainly not as mushy as Kabbu meant it when he said it, but. She’d stuck with them when it really counted, and despite all of her other talk of seeking a reward for the slightest help, hadn’t spoken a word like that when he’d made his request or since. She’d been supportive, comforting even over the past few days as he processed the revelations about...about his family.

And over the past few days, he and Kabbu had watched her become more withdrawn and irritable the closer they got to the Bee Kingdom. It didn’t seem likely to be a coincidence this was happening the night they’d arrived on the outskirts. She was his friend, and he was going to help her whether she liked it or not.

She leaned back against the door. “First of all, we’re extremely nosy. And, despite everything, we do give a shit about you.” The curse got the tiniest huff of amusement out of Vi. Kabbu still had a thing about watching their language around her, but the way Leif figured it, she was seventeen and had been on her own for who knew how long, interacting with some...questionable figures (if this “Shades” she’d mentioned but refused to elaborate on was anything like they seemed). Besides, she wasn’t using anything she hadn’t already heard Vi use.

Vi didn’t snap about it, but neither did she say anything else even after a bit of time.

“Do you feel confident fixing your hair on your own?”

“I’m not going to a hair place,” Vi spat.

So, no. “Well, we’re not going to let you embarrass us by going out looking like a disaster, so something has to get done about it.” Softening minutely, he added, “We also have some experience with this. If you let us help, we promise not to tease you about how it looks.”

She eyed him, then finally yanked the towel off, throwing it in his face.

Her hair was bad. Before, it had been halfway between her chin and shoulders, a single unstyled length, often teetering on the edge of acceptably neat. Now...it varied in length from hardly any shorter in bits of the back to a section in the front left side that was maybe a couple inches, the rest with no pattern to it.

There was really only one way for that to have happened, and thinking about it made Leif want to throw her scissors out the window, wrap her in a blanket until she couldn’t move, and sandwich her between himself and Kabbu until she told them what was going on. The ferocity of it scared him a little.

Instead, Leif sat on the floor, sighing dramatically and putting her head in her hands to disguise any outward reaction she might have had and to give herself a moment to calm down and think about what to actually do. “...What were you attempting to get it to look like?”

Vi gave her a look that said she was at least a fraction as on to her as she was Vi. “At first I was just gonna make it shorter, like usual.” She made a motion at about the height of her earlobe. “But I remembered I don’t actually like how that looks…” she ducked her head “or feels, either. I just wanted it to be shorter, now, and…” She didn’t move for almost a minute before she whispered, “I don’t know.”

Cautiously, Leif scooted around until she was next to Vi, brushing shoulders. “How short would make you happy with it?”

She stared at him, razor-sharp. “Are you fucking with me?”

“No?”

“What if I said I wanted to shave my head?” Still glaring.

Leif shrugged. “It’s your hair, although I’d insist you let someone else do it this time. Do you?”

Her eyes went wide. Then, she abruptly turned her head away. “...No. But I know I want most of this” she grabbed a handful of hair and tugged on it “gone.”

“But not an exact style?”

She shook her head.

Leif thought for a moment. “How much creative liberty do you trust us with?”

In response, she turned just enough to narrow her eyes at him.

“If you really hate it, we’ll buy you lunch for three days.”

“A week.”

“...Fine.” She got up, stepping towards the door. “Don’t do anything else to it until we come back.”

“What? Where are you going?”

She leaned on the doorknob. “Are we correct in assuming you don’t have hair clippers?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Then we’re going to that all-hours store and hoping they have some, or we’ll have to change our plans or wait until morning.”

They did, fortunately, and she got back in something like a reasonable amount of time. From there, she dragged the desk chair into the bathroom in front of the sink and sat Vi down in it.

As she was getting things set up, Vi handed her a pair of regular scissors.

“What?” Her mind went blank, thrown.

“You still gotta cut it down the regular way first, right?”

“Yes, but-” Horror dawned. “You’ve been using these to cut your hair?”

“What else would I use?”

“Hair scissors?!”

She stared at him through the mirror. “That’s a thing?”

Leif sat down for a minute. When he’d settled, he put away Vi’s scissors and took out the ones from the set.

He started by assessing the damage. Fortunately, there wasn’t much he’d actually have to work around, given the dramatic length change. But as he was pinning a section, he realized something and paused. “What’s the matter? Is something pulling too hard?”

“No. It’s fine.” Vi was tensed as if in pain, eyes squeezed shut. “Just. Keep going.”

Then Leif remembered her reaction to them asking her to do their hair a few days ago. Ah. “Here.” He forced the scissors into her hand. “Shorter hairstyles mean cutting more often, and we don’t want to get stuck doing it for you every single time. So we’re going to show you.”

He did finish the sectioning off, showing her where he was doing it, but then he let her loose with the scissors on the rest. When told she should take it down to about an inch, she went about it with a glee that was infectious.

After that, she got the clippers, explaining how they worked. She did one little section herself so Vi could see, and then put her hand on top of Vi’s to guide, talking her through getting the trickier spots and angles, and where to step so the line between this and the pinned length wouldn’t be jagged.

“How do you know all this stuff anyway?” Vi asked when they’d taken a break (she’d complained about her hand getting numb, and Leif had to agree).

“We did try this, once. It turned out not to be what we wanted, but there was also a point where we had it partially short with the rest long.”

When they finished with the clippers, Leif took out the pins and guided her through scissor-trimming the rest.

Vi had watched the whole process happen, so Leif figured if she had any complaints she would have already voiced them. Loudly. Still, after he’d taken the towel off her shoulders and rubbed a clean side over her head to get rid of more of the loose hairs, he told her to give it a final look-over.

“We picked something where you can use product to style the longer part, but it looks fine if you don’t,” he said as he swept up the hair from the floor as best he could. There was a lot of it, but at least most of it was larger pieces. He was going to have to remember to leave a good tip for the housekeeper. “So you’ll have to let us know if you want to get some. But does it at least look acceptable for now?”

Silence. Leif looked up, and realized she was staring into the mirror, frozen. With a sigh, she tossed the hair in the garbage and stood. “What, did we really do that horrible-”

And then she saw Vi’s expression.

Her eyes were wide, staring at her reflection, mouth ever so slightly open. With both hands, she combed through the ‘longer’ portion on top. A smile, and a single tear ran down her face.

“So it’s good?”

She flinched away from Leif, apparently just remembering she was there. “It’s fine.” She tried to shrug it off, but her voice was far too choked up to manage it. (Not to mention the way her eyes softened as she rubbed at the buzzed portion at the back). One of her breaths caught, and she scowled. “You’re still buying me lunch.”

Leif smirked. “You’re welcome.”

[athys-obelia]

summary: the non dysfunctional!imperial family au hcs no one asked for 😳👉👈

character/s: anastacius de alger obelia, claude de alger obelia, athanasia de alger obelia, jennette de alger obelia

here's part 2 :)

let’s set our stage, shall we?

first of all claude n anastacius’ dad is dead coz we don’t like him at all ew

so ana is the emperor, and claude is his heir presumptive (aka he’s got the strongest claim to the throne rn, but this can be changed by the birth of someone who has a stronger one - ie, anastacius’ child who would be the heir apparent) also bc “i know my mom and i gave u lots of childhood trauma that you prlly won’t be recovering from because therapists aren’t a thing here but here’s a crown you might get to make it better”

claude’s in a position where after the birth of ana’s kid/direct descendant, he’s gonna be given a duchy that athy should inherit after him while still retaining the title of prince

but after hearing of diana’s pregnancy, ana tells her and claude he doesn’t really plan on having children and wants to make their future kid his successor

he basically reserves a spot for their child in the directory and rather than announcing anything publically, anastacius names her athanasia after the sex is confirmed

then this mf obviously pulls a clown move and gets penelope pregnant and complicates things, ultimately naming her jennette, finding the name fitting - ‘god is gracious’

and really, what could be more evidence of god’s grace than the child he’s now fathering, when he thought his legacy would be ending with him?

anyways!!!

so since athy and jennette are born near the beginning of ana’s reign, both claude and anastacius are wayyy too busy trying to bring back the empire from the literal brink of bankruptcy and a possible war to really spend time w their kids

it’s alright, though!! lily is hired as athy’s nanny, while jennette gets kiel’s mom as hers

they all still live together, though obviously the main palace is for ana + jennette while claude + athy are in a separate one

this 'separate one’ is ruby palace after ana dismisses the concubines and he definitely 100% did this on purpose, and whenever he’s summoning claude he’s such a shit about it and goes about it the way you’d summon a deadass concubine

on a separate note, it’s surprisingly claude who visits athy first - he’s seen her here and there with lily but hasn’t ever had the chance to spend time w her. but now it’s almost been a year since athy’s birth (or diana’s death), her first birthday is fast approaching, and he is drunk

lily is a reallyyyy light sleeper and enters the nursery upon hearing someone inside

she doesn’t expect to see the prince standing above his daughter’s crib, a strand of her golden hair between his fingers as he just…stares at her

she approaches quietly, curtsying in greeting - he’s too absorbed to notice, and after a few minutes of silence lilian tells him, “babies can get lonely too, your highness.”

he glances at her then, confused. “how?” he really can’t understand how this girl, who can’t even speak yet comprehend something like loneliness

“princess athanasia is very responsive to her surroundings, much more than children her age usually are,” lily says, “and i like to believe children are able to tell when their parents are with them.”

he scoffs - what a foolish thought. still, claude sits by her bedside, and before he can register it, he’s taken over by sleep

the next night, claude makes his way towards the nursery and stiffly asks if athy could sleep beside him for the night - it’s fairly late, but lilian allows it

he’s gone to the main palace too early the next morning for athy to be awake, but she spent about two minutes tops worrying about the strange surroundings, saw the shiny chandelier and fancy bed and decided yes, she doesn’t mind this kidnapping

this becomes somewhat of a regular occurrence soon enough, and sometime that week she wakes up in the middle of the night with her nose pressed into something soft and literally falls off the huge ass bed at the realisation that this something soft is actually her papa’s hair (you just know that hair smells great i mean uh-)

this mans wakes up and peeks at her on the ground, reaches out to grab her from the front of her nightdress (he swears it’s exactly how he’s seen lilian do it) and plops her back onto the bed

she backs up OBVIOUSLY, you don’t just wake up with a random ass man in your bed and just vibe together?? lee jihye is dying but he glares at her for disturbing his sleep and athy pulls her act together in 0.000001 secs as claude pulls her closer and goes back to sleep

as athy grows, claude starts allowing her to visit his office during the day until it becomes a sort of ritual - he’d have tea and milk prepared and she’d come, sitting somewhere completing a puzzle or sum while he works

mans nearly tears down the entire imperial palace the day she doesn’t show up until he finds her in the garden, teaching jettie the 'proper’ way to hold a teacup during tea parties while lilian and roger’s wife, vivian, watch

athy emotionally blackmails asks him to join the tea party, so half an hour later, anastacius finds his brother sitting on the grass with a plastic teacup that athy’s filling with hot water as she lectures him to learn to fix his posture from lily so he can sit like a “proper dignified lady”

so in the beginning, jennette actually ends up spending more time with claude than her dad. though one day, the brothers are in the audience hall when athy runs in with felix running after her telling her not to run (there’s a shit ton of guards surrounding anastacius so felix has orders to be with princess athanasia when claude is with ana)

anastacius is used to this sight, and watches, smirking at his brother’s subtle smile as athy offers him this wonky looking flower crown - claude accepts it wordlessly, and ana wants to slap his ass to sanity, who wouldn’t thank their kid when they do adorable things like this??

but then they hear another voice, and in comes jennette with vivian not too far behind her. now jettie has a much cleaner looking crown in her hand, but she glances at her father’s elaborate and beautiful crown all embedded with gems and glittering and then at the one she’s fashioned out of daisies

she's always thought she was much like her uncle - jennette was so fascinated by the plain daises, they weren’t flashy but caught her eye all the same - while athy was shiny and bold like her dad

but now she’s second guessing her choice, how could she make such a simple crown for her dad, the emperor??

claude sighs from beside anastacius and literally picks off his brother’s crown before tossing it towards a very tired felix

athy urges jennette forward, and with a bright red covering her entire face she offers the crown. jennette glances at her uncle for comfort before muttering, “for papa”

anastacius.exe has crashed

this blushly, embarrassed, and apparently talented at flower crowns kid was his?

long story short he forgets to breathe or react and jettie thinks he hates the crown and hates her and won’t ever like to see her again so she starts getting teary

claude pushes his brother’s head down before athy can be convicted for murder

ana 100% almost faints when her tiny chubby fingers delicately place the crown in place, he’ll never admit it but he closed his eyes and almost hugged her instinctively as she shyly adjusted some of his bangs around the new headpiece, muttering, “papa pretty”

jennette rushes back to her sister, who’s glaring daggers at the emperor

anastacius tries to smile to calm jennette a bit and maybe look nice enough for his niece to not kill him in his sleep

right well kiel becomes the royal playmate for both the princesses - athy has her classes with him since she’s advanced and honestly they’ll be going back forth with infodumps one minute and he’s teaching her to make paper airplanes the next

(she writes notes on the paper airplanes the next time she’s in claude’s office and flies them towards him, stuff like, 'does uncle cius also snore loudly like papa?’ and he gets seriously offended like a pissbaby)

jennette first met kiel when he was visiting his mom - vivian had to leave for a bit and she taught him a bunch of flower names and their meanings in the meantime - he makes sure to research a new flower every time he visits her, and brings her a bouquet of said flowers she always knows them but never says anything coz she doesn’t wanna hurt his feelings and he gets so excited as he tells her about their meanings it’s so cute

speaking of jennette - claude and ana may seem worlds apart but they’re at the same level of emotionally constipated

ana watches his brother and niece interact and he craves that, an unconditional, timeless love that can’t possibly be tainted by ulterior motives or the like, but he just doesn’t know how to approach little jettie

it seems easy enough - she’s a smiley, sweet girl and theoretically would be friendly if he is to approach her

but gods he’s just so ashamed - such a sweet babe grew without either of her parents and he doesn’t have an excuse because holy hell, even claude is close to athy

he’s being served food in his chambers when he asks the maid about jennette, and she tells him how among her first words was 'love’ and the brunette would just stroll the palace pointing at people and declare “love you” and watch their face light up

thats so CUTE OMFG

his jaw is touching the floor when he’s told that his daughter knows the names of every worker within the palaces

at this point he’s honestly questioning whether this child is his at all

he’s absolutely horrified at the realisation that this maid, who doesn’t even work in jennette’s part of the palace, knows more about her than he does - hell, he hadn’t even asked vivian to keep him updated on her growth, what right does he have to stick himself into her life now?

now, the maid quietly suggests starting with something small like inviting jennette to tea and

of course he goes about it the wrong way??

poor jettie thinks she’s being tested by the ruthless emperor on her etiquette and spends the entire day practicing with claude after athy guilted him into it

she’s so nervous in front of her dad that he honestly feels even guiltier, and anastacius hurries to grab her hands in his to calm their tremble as she reaches to serve him tea

she apologises lmao and he’s just so flustered himself that he orders for her to sit down and instructs her through a few deep breaths

as she calms down, ana serves her the tea before asking whether girls her age even drink tea

she says no and you can literally hear the crickets

he slides the cup he’s poured for her over to his side before gesturing towards the deserts (it was claude’s daughter-luring pro tip) on her side

“you look like you read a lot,” ana says, before asking whether she’s been reading anything interesting lately

“i don’t, actually,” she tells him shyly

anastacius laughs at how of all things his hate for books is what she got from him - and only when jennette chuckles does he realise that he said that out loud

he lets her go around her bedtime, feeling rather… energized? he doesn’t know how to explain it, but it’s a good feeling

he’s busy again the next day, but has an aide send her flowers - the same ones she had put in her flower crown for him

yes lucas is still sleeping in the palace, yes athy still finds him

so athy sees the flowers from uncle cius and is enraged, literally walks up to her uncle and demands he leave jennette alone if he’s only gonna break her heart by neglecting her

and so we have fifteen minutes of the emperor of obelia stuttering as he explains himself to this seven year old

smfh his cluelessness reminds her of her own dad and she takes pity on ana’s suffering soul

the next morning, to give him a chance to redeem himself, athy asks all four of them to have breakfast together - they accept the invitation, and despite an awkward start, the meal seems to be going well

peace is not written in this family’s fate however, and this is where the first coughing up blood thing happens

ohhhh the palace staff almost gets massacred that day

athy’s limp body is moved to jennette’s room since it’s the closest - lily bursts into tears at the very sight of her princess, jennette refuses to eat or drink until her sister can, felix hears his heart break, claude is barely holding himself together

ana is livid - who dares poison a member of his family? what has he even done to earn the privilege of calling these girls his family, when he can’t protect them, at the very least?

claude absolutely refuses to leave her room and finishes all his work right outside her door, lest she wake up in pain again

anastacius can’t keep his own anxiety about jennette at bay, insisting she sleep with him as long as claude stays with athanasia - he can tell she’s drained, and she ends up sharing some of her worries late at night. he soothes both her worries and her cries, letting her curl up into him despite it being a rather uncomfortable position

the family is thrown into chaos again once they realise it was never poison, but athy’s own magic that caused this

aka when chibi lucas drops by and voodoos her back to 100%, everyone legit starts worshipping the ground he walks on - he saved their precious princess!!

ana insists on making him athy’s royal playmate after hearing she isn’t fully healed yet

what does this give us? well, a very very early lucas vs kiel

since they’ve both got the title of royal playmate, they constantly argue on whether being the future duke alpheus is a better title than the future royal magician

the girls are always dragged into this - athy always takes kiel’s side to avenge blackie, and jennette likes kiel too, but the young magician sir saved her sister!!

so.

when vivian passes away due to an illness, it’s like roger is an entirely different person

jennette + kiel + athy all help with the funeral preparations since she was a mother/aunt to them all

felix seems to be paying extra attention to kiel

it isn’t long after this that roger decides to send him to arlanta for his studies, leaving behind two disillusioned princesses

athy spends her time viciously studying to stay ahead of arlanta’s curriculum, while jennette takes an interest in cooking

(athy tries and fails spectacularly; lucas laughs at her and jettie accidentally serves him his favourite food too salty to be edible)

a/n: this would be the first of the two parts, so stay on the lookout, hope y'all enjoyed n have a great day <3

edit: part 2

[plutoswrath]

i’m sorry to annoy you with this again. i just look up to your kpop mixed with astrology content. but lucas’s neptune contact with his mc is going to annoy the shit out of me until this is fixed. the cloudiness that neptune brings to his public image is something that i think possibly fuels these situations further. false accusations and mixed perceptions based off of them is exactly what makes these scandals to continue on and on. and i’m sick of it. both sides ignore what the other is saying and it gets nowhere. neptune, the malefic bastard.

Hello! I saw your recent asks and I appreciate your words regarding my content, thank you so much for the kind words! <3

I will touch on astrolgy under the cut, but before this happens, I want to leave a few words. There's a reason why I didn't answer the previous questions I received (not only yours op) regarding the Lucas situation so far. For several reasons I didn't want to feed into any sort of (perceived) sensationalism in regards to the Lucas situation, even though I'd really love to look at the situation from an astrological point of view. That people are divided on this topic is to be expected, but I think the way it has been handled by majority so far is very bad. I really want to elaborate on my reasoning why we should rethink the way we talk about/represent the Lucas situation right now, but as this topic is very kpop specific everything will be under the cut.

My reasoning for avoiding any questions about it until now:

1. People already don't take the situation seriously enough: Regardless of what your standpoint is, I'd like for people to consider looking at it from a more critical point of view for a second: The allegations are not about him being exposed as ‘just a f-boy’ as some people make it out to be, they are more serious than that. Lucas allegedly manipulated and used these women for his own emotional/sexual/financial needs and ego boost. The fact that he has money and allegedly still used other people to provide financially for him just demonstrates the power play underneath it all. He abused his position of power as an idol, the power dynamics between him and fans who idolize him are plain and simple just completely off. Please think about the fact, that he allegedly decided who to date on at fansigns. This alone gives no security to any fans that want to attend fansigns in the future. TW SV: he also talked one of these women into having sex with him + doing it unprotected, which is not only emotionally/sexually manipulative/coercive and can possibly be traumatic for them but also heightens the risk for transfering STD's as END TW he was supposedly seeing people at the same time/cheating. In general, the behavior he gets accused of leaves trauma and is abuse, to be more specific abuse of power on multiple levels and his social position makes it just easier to continue abusing that power. As you've mentioned yourself op, there is a huge back and forth about the allegations, and I know people like to take situations like the one of Taeyong as an example to justify that not every public apology is real and that allegations turn out to be false years later, but I believe it's different this time and that the allegations that came forward were real. Even his cbar closed, a fanbase that works closely with Label V (!), that alone shows that there is 'at least' some truth to the story, or else his hardcore fanbase wouldn't have decided to turn their back on him in matters of just days. Also, all the 'jokes' and the portrayal of 'juicy gossip' people make about the situation just downplays and ridicules the possible traumatic experiences of the people that were hurt by his actions. If anyone decides to not believe these allegations until SM gives a more specific statement, that's fine, but please do so without making fun of the people who were victims of his behavior, as there is already little to no sympathy for them online. It makes it just way harder for any survivors in the future to speak out on their experience. People say it's 'nothing illegal, just morally wrong' but given the fact that he is also a person in power, the line between 'just' morally wrong and illegal can be very thin in some cases. And please overthink arguments such as: 'this is typical boy behavior for someone in his 20's'/ 'he's just an f-boy' or 'boys will be boys' because they are deeply misogynistic and we shouldn't normalize behavior like that, thus making the root of the problem actually way deeper than most people think.

2. WayV's future: This mainly goes for people who are fans of WayV. I know not everyone probably likes to hear this, but another thing why wild speculations, sensationalism or even possible defence about this situation should be kept on the low is WayV's career. I want to be honest here, but I'm scared for their future, their comeback for october has been cancelled for now and they are put on a hiatus for several months as far as I know. They were on a good path of gaining more and more recognition and establishing themselves even better as a c-pop group, but now Luca's reputation in China (their target audience) is as good as gone and that pulls all of WayV down to rock bottom with him. People really need to try seeing the story out of the eyes of the korean and especially chinese fans as well, their perception of the allegations (especially after the Kris Wu situation!) are way different and more serious than the ones of i-fans and i-fans have to accept that. Also, we all know how companies (especially SM) handle these type of situations: keep the people on the low till the storm has calmed down. But will the storm ever calm down for Lucas when his public image is basically destroyed, and thus WayV as well? What I want people to understand is that this whole situation affects WayV and their career directly, actually on the biggest scale possible. All the work so far is at risk to be for good and I think a lot of fans tend to forget that, things look especially critical for HenXiaoYanKun if WayV would be to continue/redebute/fall apart. It doesn't matter if Lucas talking bad about the members/the companies/shows he works with/for was real or not in the end, because unfortunately damage is already done, WayV's image (WayV= family) is already tarnished and WayV as a group will suffer from this. You summed it up with malefic Neptune the best actually: We all don't know the full confirmed truth about the situation and will most likely never know it. (small astro insight here as well, but part of Neptune is to accept fantasy for what it is: fantasy, and thus turn to cold reality when you're in too deep)

3. What O'd advice the fandom to do right now: Regardless of your opinion on the situation, what we as a fandom can do best right now is staying on the low, wait things out, and stop adding more fire to the situation with our actions and wait how the situation actually developes, since a) we can not fasten the process and b) a lot of rumors, false information and unnecessary details get exposed to mudd the waters and to discredit the statement of the victims as well. I've seen some strong reactions from both sides, but as someone who's a big fan of nct in general I really just want to say that part of the fandom throwing a fit on the internet leads basically to nothing, it actually only reflects even worse on nctzens/weshennies and thus on WayV's (and also NCT as whole) image as well. Things right now are handled internal, not extern. Whatever gets through to the public will be half of the story anyway. A lot of people seem to forget, that we talk about SM and all they care for right now is saving themselves economically (think about the domino effect this situation has on the whole group/company), so we will have to see what their final decision is going to be, if anything will happen at all. For now, be patient, wait and see. Last words: It's okay to feel hurt/confused/angry/drained. Even though most of us are aware that we dont know any celebrity's character, it's still hard to swallow and to digest because you were a fan of that artist. Let it take time and vent. Take a break from it if it gets too much! Talking about it to process your emotions better is okay and very valid, but keep in mind that you should not worsen the situation by doing so - it's already absolute chaos.

Also: This statement is by no means a direct attack to anyone or me trying to push my opinion onto you, just my two cents in how to handle the situation best right now, because our hands are basically tied. Also: agree to disagree. If you don't like that I side with the victims (unless there is an official statement that Lucas is proven not guilty, which I doubt, unfortunately) then so be it, but don't start a war in my inbox for our opinions differing.

-------

Now, to astrology:

Disclaimer: This analysis will not be very light-hearted, but remember that it's just a theory and not me trying to confirm anything!

First of all op, sorry for just answering you know, but I neded some time to think through how to adress this without adding to the fire with my astrological analysis! Boy, does the birth time fit the shoe right now. To be fair as I did my short rising sign analysis about him recently, I cancelled out every other fire rising except for Leo, because I got stuck on the ego part a bit. Anything for me made sense, as long as it highlights his ego, which by itself doesn't have to be a bad thing automatically, but there's always two sides of the coin as we all know.

I looked into the transits the past week and added a few asteroids/mathematical points as well. An anon before pointed to the full moon happening in his tenth house, conjunct his sun, etc. (I deleted the ask because I didn't know what was going on at that time and thought it was just the 'usual' rumors that once in a while get spread around, but after looking more into it I decided this was not the right time to stirr the pot in any kind of way or treat it as funny, hot gos). But yeah a full Moon in Aquarius happening in his 10th house AND on top of that Saturn in Aquarius, conjuncting that Moon and his natal Uranus in the 10th! Talk about destrcution of any stable foundation and a change in a public image! Honestly, looking at astrologically the way his public image just got radically destroyed over night, with Saturn and the Moon having been in a conjunction (in his chart it was in the 10th house) is kinda eery even. Talk about collective consciousness - not only exposing quiet literally the feelings of the collective, but also doing so in the favor of others and gaining collective emotional consciousness. Take this with a grain of salt (!), because we're still in a tense situation, but I'm tapping into the darker, unfriendlier side of astrology now. Taking his confirmed birth time, he has Nessus in Sagittarius in his 8th house and as I saw that I could feel myself shifting into the surprised pikachu face. I am not saying that this prooves the allegations whatsoever, but as you seemed to be very interested in anaylzing the case in-depth as well, the allegations fit his Nessus - jumping from partner to partner, carelessness (regarding physical intimacy as well), making people share all their ressources with him/finacial gain, and basically the whole jist of gaining control/being in a power position in intimate connections. Keep in mind that this is only one interpretation of Nessus though, Nessus can also show the complete opposite to someone 'turning to their dark side'. On top of that, his Nessus was conjunct transit Phollus the past week, so if anything, we can see that a large event triggered him to 'open his eyes' and face anything of an 'obstacle' that hinders him from seeing the 'truth' to a larger picture and his own nature/destiny. Pholus can symbolize change that will alter your perception of the responsibility you have for yourself and others.

But my latest new interest with these two asteroids aside (asteroids just add a little more nuance to a situation after all), I want to touch on Lilith too, since you (op) have mentioned Lilith before in one of your asks!

He has his Lilith exactly conjunct his Descendant when we consider his confirmed birth time. What happened just now can be seen as 'backfiring' of his actions, either Lilith embodying the women who expose him now for his 'inappropriate' behavior, but also simply fans shaming him now for his alleged manipulative/imoral behavior, especially shaming him about who he chose to date and how. Next to that, you've mentioned Lilith opposite Moon and it just makes me think about him possibly feeling very indecisive and potentially in denial about what he actually needs to be fulfilled in order to be emotionally happy and thus leading to him appearing to have this 'second, dark side' to him now. BML is not necessarily opposite the Moon in my opinion, it's just the side of the subconscious we don't really like to deal with and all we're told not to express and desire because it can be conflicting in the eyes of others (thus BML also leading to a lot of recklessness on the negative side). I think if we take the allegations into consideration, regardless of how much of it is true of it, it can be a good example what happens, when an opposition gets out of balance, as it also manifests outwardly a lot! Lilith shows in his 'double life' aka what he allegedly did with fans. Lilith wanted an outlet and found one by working behind the scenes. If we take in his supposed Taurus rising, which his Lilith is in an exact opposition with, it's a good example of what can lurk underneath the surface.

And of course, last but not least, Neptune and Sun conjunct his MC. People are quiet literally blinded by him more than they would like to think. Also: Lucas was always known for his 'flirty & charismatic' nature, this is another reason why people think we shouldn't be surprised he 'turns out to be like that in real life'. I'm not analyzing this argument right now, but what I think is very interesting is how Sun conjunct MC literally ties a good amount of their personality to their career - they want to be accepted and shine for their personality/big part of their individuality. Idols play a role, no matter how transparent they appear to us, but it's really funny how this 'image' of him melts almost seemingly with parts of his personality (almost af if you were to quiet literally sell your self) and as you've mentioned: Neptune only adds to that, unfortunately.

[pastelwitchling]

I’d Remember You

“It’s a good thing we’re both level-headed people, otherwise this would be really scary,” Liz said, and Alex smiled.

He looked over his shoulder at the scientist, pacing the cave floor. Her fingers were covered with scars, her nails cut up and ruined from scratching at the rock walls, but still she looked for handholds, anything to hang onto.

“Good thing,” he muttered, squinting up at the small circle of open sky high above their heads. When he and Liz had walked the desert plains, looking for any sign of other pods that may have been saved and hidden, he had not expected to come across a burrow in the cave walls. He had expected even less to slip through one of them after trying to catch Liz who’d lost her footing.

Alex sat back against the cave wall, the pain in his leg on the fall down having been too much to help him stand for long. He put his head in his hands, and looked up to see Liz watching him with concern.

He chuckled. “You need to calm down.”

“This is all my fault,” Liz said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Alex—”

“Liz, I’m fine.”

“If I’d just watched where I was standing—”

“Seriously, you need to stop,” Alex said. “Michael and the others will find us, they’ll use their powers, and we’ll be out in no time – would you please stop pacing? You’re making me dizzy.”

“Sorry,” Liz said, leaning against the wall, her arms crossed tightly. A beat, two, then—“Do you need some water? I still have my bottle.”

“You do remember that I’m an Air Force captain, right?” Alex asked. “Believe it or not, I have dealt with worse than being stuck in a cave.”

Liz nodded to herself. “You’re really not scared at all?”

“Michael will come,” Alex said, leaning his head back, his eyes fluttering shut. The rocks poked his head, but he was so weary from the fall, barely managing to turn his body at the last second to land on his crouched legs, that he couldn’t muster the energy to move anymore. “You’ll see.”

“You believe in him,” Liz said. It wasn’t a question, but an observation. And it seemed to help take her mind off the situation, so Alex nodded.

“I trust him with my life,” he said. “Don’t worry, Liz. Everything’s going to be okay. You want to come sit next to me?”

Liz looked conflicted between wanting to take Alex’s offer, and afraid of looking weak. But her pant leg was torn and she was bleeding and there was a bruise on her cheek that was turning an alarming shade of purple, and Alex knew what it felt like to want protection and be afraid of asking for it.

He reached a hand out to her, and she hesitated for a second longer before crossing the unsteady grounds and taking it, latching onto his arm and clinging to him as they waited. He hummed his song quietly, the one he’d sang at the Wild Pony all those nights ago, the one that had given him the courage to seek something with Forrest, to kiss him. The one he had not sang since because of a cowboy that had decided not to stay. Still—

Alex heard Michael calling his name, and without even opening his eyes, the corners of his lips quirked up.

“Here comes the cavalry,” he muttered.

“Is that Michael?” Liz straightened, her eyes wide.

“Always the hero,” Alex said with a small smile.

“Alex!”

“Liz!” Max’s voice sounded.

“Alex, where are you?!”

Alex pushed himself off the cave wall as Liz stepped into the circle of light shining down from the only exit they had.

“Michael!” Liz called. “Max! We’re in here!”

“Liz?” Max’s head appeared in the opening, followed quickly by Michael’s.

“Where’s Alex?” Michael asked urgently. “Is he with you?”

“I’m right here,” Alex called, wincing as he stood. He covered his eyes with his hands at falling rubble from the cave ceiling. He narrowed his eyes at the rock. Was it about to collapse?

“Are you guys okay?” Max asked, and Liz nodded.

“Yeah, we’re fine, but . . . the footholds aren’t strong enough to carry us out.”

Max and Michael looked to each other, and Max nodded once, as if they’d just shared some silent plan.

“I’ll keep you guys up with my telekinesis,” Michael said.

“I’ll reach down,” Max said. “I can pull you guys up the rest of the way.”

“Hey, Max,” Alex called as Liz nodded and began to climb. “Watch your head. The ceiling doesn’t look stable to me.”

“Got it,” Max said.

Alex started to climb after Liz, but more rubble fell, and he stepped back, covering his eyes. “Alex?” Liz called worriedly, glancing over her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Alex rubbed his face. “Look, Liz, you go on ahead of me.”

“What?!”

“If there’s too much vibration, the cave might collapse,” Alex said. “We should go one at a time.”

Michael leaned down. “If the cave is going to collapse, you’re not waiting, Alex. Climb.”

“Guerin—”

“Climb, private!”

Alex sighed, and followed Liz. They made it halfway before a lot more rubble fell, this time enough for everyone else to notice.

“Hurry,” Max said, stretching an arm out as far as he can go. Michael’s face had turned red with the effort of keeping both Alex and Liz up. Alex knew he wouldn’t hold out much longer.

“Alex,” Liz warned, and Alex put a hand on her back.

“Keep going, Liz,” he said, his fingers also stained with his blood and rubble from the sharp rocks. “I’m right behind you.”

Except he wasn’t. His leg ached so badly that his eyes burned with the strain of keeping himself up. A few more steps and he was starting to feel woozy, his breathing heavier, his grip weaker. Max reached for Liz, and Alex felt the cave vibrating with an impending attack.

Max may have been focused on Liz, but Michael’s eyes were on Alex. Somehow, Michael knew that Alex was struggling more than Liz was, and he was focusing on keeping the airman up. But Alex wouldn’t make it. The ceiling was about to collapse, and Liz was closest to the exit. If she didn’t get out now, those rocks would fall on both their heads.

Liz reached for Max, their fingers touched, more rubble fell, and Alex spotted a foothold high enough just for him to reach.

He caught Michael’s eye, unable to hold the contact for long before he forced himself up the foothold. He came up just behind Liz’s back with nothing to hold onto, but that was fine. He wasn’t looking to stay up.

With all of his strength, he pushed Liz up the rest of the way, just as the cave ceiling collapsed. Then several things happened. Liz got out on the other side of the rocks. Max caught her. Michael screamed for Alex, but it was too late. Alex was falling backwards, and just before he blacked out, he felt a searing pain in his head, the small bit of light disappeared, and someone, though he couldn’t tell who, was calling for him.

*

Michael couldn’t forget Alex’s face. The way he’d glanced at Michael before he’d shoved Liz through the exit, as if in quick, silent apology. But now, as Michael sat at Alex’s hospital bedside, the airman’s head wrapped in a white bandage, a respirator helping him breathe, the monitor’s steady beep beep beep, waiting for his Alex to wake up, Michael felt he could do nothing but mutter silent apologies himself into Alex’s fingers.

Alex had warned them, but Michael couldn’t hear him. Not when his airman’s life had been at risk. And now it was at risk again.

“Hey,” he heard Max’s voice, a hand on his shoulder. “You need to rest.”

“I’ll rest when he wakes up,” Michael said, his voice hoarse from lack of use.

“Michael,” Max said. “He’s asleep. He’s not going anywhere—”

“You heard Kyle,” he said without taking his eyes off Alex. “Severe head trauma.”

“Michael, that wasn’t your fault.”

“He tried to tell us, but I just couldn’t think straight seeing him down there.”

“I get it,” Max said. “I would’ve done the same for Liz. She’s ridden with guilt, too – Michael, you both can’t blame yourselves.”

“I’m not leaving him, Max,” Michael said. “When he wakes up, he’s going to find me right here.”

Max sounded like he wanted to argue, but Michael leaned forward on his knees, Alex’s hand clutched tightly in his, and his brother seemed to relent.

“All right,” Max whispered a moment later. “Well, Gregory’s on his way. He was frantic when I told him about Alex, so heads up on that.”

Michael heard Max leave the room, closing the door behind him, and he kissed Alex’s fingers. He tried closing his eyes, and saw only Alex’s body on the cave floor, lying in a pool of his own blood, his hair soaked red. And now he was covered in bandaged cuts, oiled-up bruises, and a bandage around his head that glared threateningly at Michael, as if to say that no one who had had so much damage to their head usually survived, and Alex would be no exception.

If he wakes up, Michael thought to anyone who would listen, if you give him back to me, I’ll do anything. Please, just give him back to me.

               Hours later, Gregory arrived, swinging the door wide open, breathing heavily. “Where is he, where’s . . .” his words trailed off as he spotted Alex on the bed.

               And so Michael and Gregory silently sat, on opposite ends of Alex’s bed, Gregory’s head in his hands, Michael’s hold on Alex’s hand relentless. Forrest, they were told, would not be coming because he was out of town and was better off not knowing.

               “Alex will wake up,” Kyle had said. “There’s no point in calling Forrest here.” But even to Michael, the doctor sounded more hopeful than certain.

               That was why, when Alex’s eyes fluttered open around dusk, his fingers twitching in Michael’s, everyone (because everyone else had soon come to join Michael and Gregory in their wait) was instantly on their feet.

               Kyle had rushed in almost at once, and helped ease the respirator off Alex.

               “Hey, buddy,” he said, his voice soft. “How are you feeling?”

               Alex’s brows were furrowed with pain as Kyle helped him sit up against his pillows. Michael instinctively took his hand the moment Kyle had stepped back, and Alex looked startled.

               “Do you remember what happened?”

               Alex slowly shook his head, his eyes still on Michael’s hand tightly gripping his own. Michael probably should’ve let go then, but he couldn’t. In fact, if not for the slight frown on Alex’s lips, Michael would’ve been willing to slide into bed with him, to hold him tightly in his arms. He thought he showed great restraint by refraining.

               “Alex, we were in a cave,” Liz said quietly, coming up to Michael’s side. “You saved me. You really don’t remember?”

               Alex blinked. “I . . . saved you?” Liz nodded, and Michael touched Alex’s cheek.

               “It’s okay,” he said softly. “Don’t force yourself.”

               “Um,” was all Alex said turning away from Michael’s touch, as if uncomfortable by it. “Sorry, could you . . .?” He trailed off, gesturing at his hand caught between both of Michael’s, and slowly, his heart quickly turning to lead, Michael let him go.

               “I’m sorry, Alex,” Michael said. “I should’ve been able to save you. I – I should’ve listened –”

               “You were there?” Alex asked. “At the cave?”

               “Yeah, Alex,” Max nodded, frowning. “So was I.”

               Alex winced, reaching up to touch his head only to feel a bandage wrapped tightly around it instead. He turned to Gregory, looking more and more confused. “Were you there, too?”

               “No,” Gregory said, taking a seat beside Alex, putting an arm around his shoulders. “No, little brother, but I should’ve been. Problems tend to follow the Manes men wherever we go.”

               Alex’s frown deepened. “Manes . . . men. . . .” He was starting to look panicked. Michael reached for him again, but he flinched away as if the cowboy’s touch burned him. “I don’t . . . uh . . .”

               “Alex, hey, what’s going on?” Gregory tried as Alex even turned away from his brother.

               “I don’t remember anything.”

               “No, hey, Alex,” Kyle tried, putting his hands on Alex’s shoulders to calm him down. “We know, it’s okay, don’t force yourself to remember.”

               “No, I – I don’t know anything!” Alex said desperately, and Kyle’s expression was confused for only a second longer before it fell.

               “Wait a second, wait, it’s okay. Hey, look at me,” he said. Once he had Alex’s attention, he asked, “Do you know what your name is?”

               “Uh . . . I . . .” he stammered, then looked to Gregory, and tried, “A-Alex Manes?”

               Kyle clenched his jaw. “Did you remember that on your own? Or is it because that’s what we’ve been calling you?”

               Michael’s heart quickly turned to stone, and he could hear the word, “No,” escape his lips in a whisper as Alex asked, “That’s . . . not my name?”

               Kyle’s hands fell back to his sides. “You don’t know who any of us are, do you?”

               Alex miserably shook his head. Liz covered her mouth with her hands, Max put a comforting arm around her, but Alex looked terrified of everyone around him. Gregory slowly moved off the bed, his dark eyes on his brother, and Michael tried moving closer, but Alex scooted back to avoid him.

               Then he seemed to realize he had only one leg. And he screamed.

               Everything happened very quickly after that. Michael tried to comfort Alex, but Max and Liz had dragged him out. Gregory helped Kyle still Alex while they sedated him, and as Alex’s room door closed, Michael saw Alex’s face, terrified and streaked with tears.

               It felt like days later when Kyle and Gregory emerged, though Michael knew it couldn’t have been more than an hour. Michael was on his feet in a second, the white wall having given him enough back pains that he was sure he wouldn’t be properly asleep for weeks, Alex’s expression after he’d awoken the worst haunting of all.

               “He’s asleep for now,” Kyle said when Michael, Max, and Liz crowded him. “Should be for the rest of the night. You guys should go home.”

               “What happened to him?” Liz asked. “Has he got amnesia now?”

               “I’m going to need a second opinion,” Kyle said. “Neurology isn’t really my specialty. And he’s going to need an MRI, and—”

               “Valenti,” Michael said through grit teeth. “Give us your best guess.”

               Kyle sighed. “He sustained a major head injury when he fell. Best guess? It’s pretty simple; he’s suffering memory loss.”

               “How long will it last?” Max asked.

               “Well, usually this kind of thing goes away after a few days. In most cases, after a few weeks. But some cases . . .”

               “Yeah?” Liz prompted.

               Kyle shook his head. “Look, Alex is a war vet. He has enough memories he wants to keep hidden away, he’s been through enough trauma. Usually, the brain takes to blocking a lot of that stuff out, but with Alex, he’s barely been keeping it at bay. All I’m saying is, it may take a little longer for him.”

               “Can I take him home?” Gregory asked softly.

               “No, I can—” Michael started, but Kyle was already turning him down.

               “I’m sorry, Guerin, really, but,” he sighed. “It may be better for his brother to take him. We don’t want to force the memories back, that’ll just put a strain on the brain. And besides, Gregory probably has more happy memories with Alex than you do. He’s already freaking out with finding out that he has one leg, we should keep his trip down memory lane as smooth as possible.”

               It meant something, it really did, when a Manes man could be said to have more happy memories with Alex than Michael did, and then have those words be true.

               Eventually, Max and Liz were convinced to leave, give Alex space, but Michael stayed watching from the corners. He watched as Alex was led out of the room, leaning against Gregory as he tested his weight on his prosthetic, the prosthetic he’s worn for years, and the one he struggled with now.

               Michael watched as Alex asked question after question, Gregory answering patiently and with kindness.

               “Where are we going?”

               “Your house.”

               “But . . . I don’t remember where that is.”

               “It’s okay, I do.”

               “Are you staying with me?”

               “If you want me to.”

               “I want you to.”

               “Then, I’m staying with you.”

               Slowly, Alex got used to Gregory brushing his bangs away, to holding onto his brother’s arm, to leaning more of his weight against him. Gregory handed back a clipboard of paperwork to a nurse, and led Alex out to his car. Michael then got into his own and followed.

               His hands were tight on the wheel, his gaze focused straight ahead. He stayed well behind Gregory’s car and parked behind a cluster of trees as the Manes brothers came to a stop. They both stepped out, and Michael watched as Alex looked around at his home, completely unfamiliar with it.

               “I live here?” Alex asked, and Gregory’s smile turned small as he nodded. He reached an arm out, and Alex hesitated before coming to his side, allowing his brother to put an arm around his shoulders. He gave Alex his own spare key, told him to go on ahead and make himself comfortable, and disappeared around the corner.

               Michael peered closer around the fence, watching as Alex stepped inside, leaving the door open behind him. He was just starting to think that the old Alex would never have kept his home open, even with his brother right behind him, when he felt someone yank him back, and he was pushed against the wall.

               “What the—” Michael started, but once he saw Gregory, he relaxed.

               “Damn it, Guerin,” Gregory sighed. “You’re following us now?”

               “You knew?”

               Gregory raised a brow. “You do know the whole Manes family is military, right? There’s not much we don’t know.”

               “I want to see Alex,” he said, knowing what Gregory’s answer would be before the words even left his lips.

               “You heard Kyle,” Gregory said, not unkindly. “You don’t have a lot of great memories with him—”

               “I won’t remind him of anything, I’ll just quietly sit there,” Michael said, and he knew he sounded desperate, but Alex didn’t remember who he was or what they meant to each other, and being away from the airman had been agonizing before, but Alex needed him now, and Michael needed to be near him.

               “Please, Greg,” Michael tried. “I just – I just want to be next to him. If his boyfriend can’t be here—”

               “No, Forrest isn’t Alex’s boyfriend,” Gregory said dismissively. “They’ve just gone out a few times, Alex told me – but that’s not the point!” he added quickly as Michael’s expression turned surprised and hopeful despite himself.

               “He doesn’t know who I am,” Michael said, aware that he was pleading and not caring. “He won’t let me touch him. Please. I won’t say a word.”

               Gregory searched his face, then sighed. He pointed a finger warningly. “Not a word, Guerin.”

               It pained Michael how much Gregory sounded like his brother, how much he reminded Michael of Alex, and, desperate to see the airman now more than ever, he nodded and quietly followed Gregory into the house.

               “Alex?” Gregory called as Michael closed the door behind them.

               “Uh – here,” Alex called back, and they found him sitting in front of the keyboard in his living room, his hands curled to fists on his lap as he stared at the keys.

               “Hey,” Gregory said gently, coming to sit beside him. “You okay?”

               “I – what is he doing here?” Alex demanded as he turned and caught sight of Michael. He stood quickly, the piano bench keeping him from moving further away, but Gregory had already stood beside him, his hand on his shoulder.

               “Whoa, calm down, brother, he’s just here to check on you.”

               “Well, are,” Alex started, glancing between Michael and Gregory, “are we friends or something?”

               Michael nodded silently, pressing his lips together. He hated this; seeing Alex stand so far away from him, missing him so badly and not being able to touch him, the apprehension in his eyes. Michael knew it wouldn’t have helped, but all he wanted was to take Alex in his arms and never let him go again.

               “Alex,” Gregory said, “Michael was the one who tried to save you in the cave. He cares about you.”

               Alex’s shoulders slumped. “And you were at the hospital. You looked so relieved when I woke up. I’m sorry, I – I freaked out, and—”

               “Don’t be sorry,” Michael said, despite the warning look from Gregory. “I always hold on a little too tightly to you. I can’t help it.”

               Gregory pinched the bridge of his nose, but a faint pink blush touched Alex’s cheeks, so Michael was struggling to regret any of his decisions.

               “Right,” Alex said tentatively, then scooted out from behind the bench and sat down on the armchair beside it, leaving no room for anyone to sit beside him. Michael took a seat at the edge of the couch, closest to him.

               Alex scrunched his shoulders, hugging himself as he gestured at the piano with his chin. “Do I know how to play that?”

               “Yes,” both Gregory and Michael said at the same time, amused.

               “Very well, I might add,” Gregory said. “If Open Mic Night at the Wild Pony was any indication.”

               “I don’t know what that is,” Alex confessed.

               “The local bar,” Michael explained, and saw the briefest expression flicker on Alex’s face before it was gone. He changed the topic quickly. “You know how to play the guitar, too. You’re pretty much the smartest guy I know.”

               Alex gave him a half-smile without meeting his eyes. “I don’t really feel like the smartest guy right now.”

               “Hey,” Gregory said. “This is temporary. You’ll remember everything soon enough. Until then, try to enjoy it.”

               Alex scoffed. “Ignorant bliss?”

               “Ignorant bliss,” Gregory nodded.

               Michael thought that nothing could’ve possibly been worse than Alex enjoying the time that he couldn’t remember him.

               Alex’s brows furrowed slightly. “Was my life really that bad?” he joked, though his voice was quiet. “Before?”

               Gregory sighed. “It was getting better. The Manes family is . . . kind of cursed.” Alex laughed, and even Michael couldn’t help a begrudging smile. “But after dad died – hell, even before he died, your life was changing, Alex. You’ve always been the strongest of us.” He ruffled Alex’s hair. “You’re going to be fine. I promise.”

               Alex exhaled a shaky breath, smiling nervously. “It’s – it’s a lot.”

               Michael looked to Gregory, silently asking for permission, and when Gregory nodded, Michael reached out slowly to touch Alex’s hand. Alex reacted no differently than he would’ve to anyone else’s touch.

               “I’m going to help you,” Michael said.

               “We all are,” Gregory added.

               “That’s nice of you,” Alex said, and covered Michael’s hand with his own. He didn’t hold Michael’s gaze or smile softly at him or blush again, as he normally did. It was as if Michael was a complete stranger. “We must’ve been really close.”

               “Yeah,” Michael said, surprised at the lump in his throat. “You could say that.”

               And so the time passed, with the three of them seated together in the wide living room, going over some of Alex’s memories as a child. Alex’s eyes were distant, his expression polite, his brows furrowed at times when Gregory tried to evade the topic of their father and why Alex acted and dressed certain ways as a teenager. Michael smiled, and pretended that every time Alex casually touched his shoulder or reached for Michael only to quickly realize what he’d done and pull away with an apology, that it didn’t stab at his heart a little bit.

               When night came, Alex began to doze off, and Gregory told him where everything was so that he could prepare for bed. An hour later, Gregory came back into the living room, his brows furrowed, his lips pursed.

               “What’s wrong?” Michael asked, standing, but Gregory was already shaking his head.

               “He’s just asleep.”

               “That’s . . . a good thing, isn’t it?”

               He shrugged, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed. He looked to be deep in thought. “Alex never sleeps. PTSD usually keeps him up. I thought you’d know that.”

               But Michael, who had been processing that answer, realized too late that he was being spoken to. “Huh?” he asked distractedly. “How would I?”

               Gregory blinked and looked away. “My bad. I just thought you guys had . . . you know . . .”

               “We have,” Michael said almost defensively. It was ridiculous to want to assure Alex’s brother that he and Alex had had sex, but the idea of Gregory thinking that Alex had only slept with Forrest was bothering him beyond reason.

               “And you’ve seen him sleep?”

               Michael opened his mouth to answer, and shut it again. Now that he thought about it; had he ever seen Alex sleep? Every time he’d woken after one of their nights, Alex had almost always been out of bed, or he was awake, watching Michael instead.

               “Well, good thing,” Gregory said airily, clearly regretting having brought up the topic at all. “I should make a call to the school,” he muttered, more so to himself. “Tell them I won’t be able to come in next week.”

               “You’re staying in Roswell?”

               “Alex needs me,” Gregory said casually, as if he needed no other reason to leave work and his home and stay in the town he hated as much as Alex did. “But you should go home, get some rest.”

               “I don’t need rest,” Michael said.

               “Haven’t you been up for a while?”

               He shrugged. “I’m not tired.”

               Gregory’s shoulders slumped. “Guerin, he’s asleep, I’m here, he’s fine.”

               “Well, what if he wakes up later?” Michael asked. “What if he needs something?”

               “He doesn’t remember who we are,” Gregory said patiently. “He’s not a kid. And I’m here to watch over him.”

               Michael sighed. “I just think I should—”

               “You may not get sick,” Gregory cut him off, “but you’re not immune to exhaustion. You need to go home.”

               Michael looked desperately between Gregory and the hallway through which Alex had left earlier to go to bed. He relented eventually, forcing himself into his truck with the promise from Gregory that if anything – anything at all – were to happen to Alex, Michael would be the first to be notified.

               He reached his airstream and couldn’t imagine himself falling asleep, but as soon as he fell on his bed and closed his eyes, the darkness engulfed him. Michael woke almost instantly, in a cold sweat.

               “Alex,” he breathed, thinking of the airman in his nightmares, the one that had smiled kindly to him, had walked into Michael’s embrace, had allowed Michael to kiss him until neither of them could breathe – and the one that had shot Michael’s heart and killed him.

               He hastily looked out the window and saw the gold light pouring through the blinds. He muttered a curse and quickly scrambled out of bed, washed up, changed his shirt, and got into his truck.

               “What’re you doin’, boy?” Sanders called, and Michael’s hand on the gearshift stilled.

               “I gotta go, Sanders!”

               “What for? We’ve got work!”

               “I need to go see a friend—”

               “Yeah, yeah, a friend,” Sanders grumbled. Then, louder, “Max and Isobel called, told me all about your friend! He came by here earlier.”

               “What?” Michael frowned, turning the engine off to hear him better. “Did you say Alex came here?”

               “I’m old, boy, don’t make me repeat myself,” Sanders huffed. “Yeah, he came by with his brother and that doctor girl.”

               “Why the hell didn’t you wake me?”

               “Fix your tone when you talk to me!” he scolded. “And I tried to wake you, but when Manes heard you were sleeping, he said to leave you. Said he didn’t want to bother you. Never thought I’d like a Manes man, but those two sure are somethin’ else, aren’t they?”

               “Sanders,” Michael grit out. “Focus. How long ago did they leave?”

               “Eh?” Sanders squinted with his one good eye. “Oh, about an hour ago.”

               “Did they say where they were going?”

               “What’d you think, I got time to stand around and ask them about their personal lives? They came by to get a look at the junkyard, jog the poor kid’s memory, then they left.”

               “And?” Michael pressed. “Did Alex remember anything?”

               “Hell if I know,” Sanders muttered. “I went back to work, like you should be doing – hey, where are you going?!” he called as Michael turned the car back on and rapidly drove backwards and out of the junkyard.

               Michael returned to Alex’s house, but saw that Gregory’s car was gone. He knocked on the door, called for Alex, but no one responded. His heart hammering, he drove to the Crashdown Café next, and to his relief, found Alex laughing in a booth beside Gregory, a milkshake and fries in front of him. Across from him sat Liz and Isobel.

               “And then,” Liz tried to say through her laughter, “this big guy, covered in tattoos and piercings, just kept petting your head, looked me straight in the eye, and said, ‘Honey, I think your little brother needs to go home.’”

               “No!” Alex exclaimed, laughing. “No, no, no, you are making that up! I wore nail polish and eyeliner in high school?”

               “You did,” Isobel nodded. “We weren’t friends then, but you pulled it off, I promise.”

               “That’s reassuring,” Alex said, then turned as his eyes caught Michael’s. “Hey, uh . . .” his brows furrowed in concentration.

               Michael’s heart sank, but he forced his lips into an amused smirk. “Michael. Guerin.”

               “Michael,” Alex nodded, and Michael tried to pretend it wasn’t weird to hear Alex say his first name so casually and with such a carefree smile. “We went to the junkyard! You were asleep.”

               “Yeah, I know,” Michael said, immensely relieved when Liz relinquished her seat to get back to her shift. He took her place, and Alex’s folded hands on the table didn’t move back. “Did you remember anything?”

               Alex hummed. “I think so,” he said, and refused to say anything else. “What about our parents?” he asked with the air of someone eager to change the subject. “Can’t they help me?”

               “Uh,” Gregory hesitated, glancing at Michael and Isobel, as if this was the last place he had ever wanted to talk about their family history. “Mom’s out of town, I thought it’d be better if she didn’t know what happened. She can’t really come back yet, so—”

               “It would just make her worry,” Alex finished. “Better not, then. I’m sure my memories will come back soon.” He smiled. “And dad?”

               Gregory said nothing a moment, then, “He’s dead.”

               Alex’s smile dimmed slightly. “Oh,” he said quietly. “Did I know him?”

               When Gregory and Isobel didn’t answer, Michael said, “His memories won’t come back if you keep them from him.”

               Alex looked to his brother, who was shooting daggers at Michael with his eyes, a frown at his lips. “I take it . . . we’re not close?”

               Gregory merely shook his head, his lips pursed. “Dad lived a certain way, with certain beliefs, and he wanted us to follow along with everything he said. You didn’t.”

               Alex looked down at his hands on the table. He didn’t look bitter or angry or any of the emotions Michael had come to associate with Alex when his father was mentioned. Just curious.

               “Hence, the nail polish and eyeliner,” Alex muttered, and smiled at everyone’s surprised looks. “Please, I was so clearly rebelling against someone.”

               “The trials of being a Manes Man,” Michael said with a smirk, and Alex’s expression faltered.

               “Manes . . . man,” he said quietly, his brows furrowed. He repeated those two words, his eyes slowly drifting out of focus.

               Gregory frowned. “Alex? Are you okay?”

               Alex shut his eyes, reaching up to touch his head. “There are . . . no Manes men left.”

               Michael froze. There are no Manes men left. Jesse’s last words after Gregory had shot him. After Jesse himself had beaten Alex and almost unwittingly killed his entire bloodline.

               “Alex,” Michael leaned forward. He had been there with Alex that night, words had been said, Michael had refused to leave Alex behind. “Do you remember something?”

               “Uh,” Alex put his head in his hands. “Um . . . dad . . . was . . . ah!” he winced, pressing the bottoms of his palms against his temples, his expression pained.

               “Alex, hey, it’s okay,” Gregory said quickly.

               “Yeah, don’t force yourself,” Isobel tried.

               “A toolshed,” Alex winced. “And a hammer. And blood, there was so much blood, how could he do that?!”

               “He’s panicking,” Gregory said, looking around desperately, as if forgetting that they were in a diner instead of the hospital. “We need to sedate him.”

               “Isobel,” Michael said quickly. “Get into his head.”

               “What? I can’t do that!”

               “He was screaming!” Alex cried, pressing harder against his temples. The few people there were starting to look around, Arturo and Liz looked over with concern from the counter. “I couldn’t save him!”

               “Guerin’s right,” Gregory said urgently, pulling Alex in against his chest. “Isobel, you have to. Please!”

               With a nervous look at Michael, Isobel reached out and took Alex’s hand. Despite the fear in her eyes, when she spoke, her voice was steady and soothing.

               “Alex,” she said softly. “You’re calm, you’re not afraid. The bad memories can’t hurt you here.”

               A tear fell down Alex’s cheek, but as Isobel held his gaze, his eyes seemed to come back into focus. “He was attacked . . . because of me.”

               “Not because of you,” Isobel said before Michael could manage it, which he was grateful for. He didn’t think he could breathe as he watched Alex, let alone speak. “Alex, you’re exhausted. You need to rest.”

               “Rest,” Alex repeated in a whisper. Slowly, he began to nod. “I need to rest.”

               Isobel assured him that he was right, as if it wasn’t her own command that he was following. Alex nodded off against Gregory’s shoulder, his eyes fluttering halfway shut. When it was clear he wouldn’t freak out again, Isobel slowly released his hand.

               “You okay?” Gregory asked quietly.

               Alex said nothing, staring off into the distance, and had his eyes not been open, Michael would’ve thought Isobel had put him to sleep.

               “What’d you do to him?” Michael asked her.

               She shook her head, her jaw clenched as she swallowed. “His mind’s like a freaking minefield. I can’t go back in there. There are so many traumatic memories, it’s like his brain is on overdrive trying to sort through everything.”

               Isobel scoffed, though her eyes had turned glassy and her voice cracked. If Michael had not known his sister so well, he might’ve missed it, but he did, so he couldn’t.

               “He’s always so put together,” she muttered, her eyes on the airman. “Always taking care of everything. I had no idea. . . . I never thought I’d say this, but . . . poor Alex.”

               “No,” Michael said right away. He knew Alex, whatever this version of him remembered, and he knew his airman would’ve wanted nothing less than to be pitied. As far as Michael was concerned, Alex was the strongest person he knew. Hearing about him spoken as anything otherwise was insulting.

               “He’s fine,” Michael said, even as Alex’s eyes closed for several seconds before they opened again. “He’ll be fine.”

               “You promised me you wouldn’t say anything,” Gregory said sternly. “Guerin, you almost reminded him of dad.”

               “That toolshed had followed the both of us around for a decade,” Michael defended. “Believe me, if he didn’t remember now, he would’ve remembered later.”

               “Still,” Isobel cut in as it became obvious that Gregory was willing to argue. “We have to be more careful. Remembering clearly hurts him.”

               “So, what?” Michael asked. “Keep the memories away forever? Only let him remember the good stuff? How long do you think that’ll last? What about when Greg needs to go back to work on the reservation?”

               “I’m thinking of taking Alex with me,” Gregory muttered absentmindedly into Alex’s hair. “I think it’ll do him some good. Getting out of Roswell, being in the place where our mom grew up.”

               “If nothing else,” Isobel added comfortingly, “it’ll be away from his worst memories.”

               “No, no way,” Michael said, his hand reaching for Alex, then he realized the airman had probably forgotten any of them were there, locked in his own haze, and his fingers curled to a fist on the table. “He’s not leaving town.”

               “Are you not listening to me?” Gregory said. “It’s better for him. And that’s what we have to think of now, Guerin; the best thing for Alex.”

               “The best thing for him is here,” Michael said desperately. “With me. Look, no one is going to take better care of Alex than me—”

               “And you think you guys will just go back to dating or whatever you were doing before? You’re a total stranger to him, he’s not going to be comfortable around you!”

               “You’re a stranger, too!”

               “But his worst memories aren’t tied up with me,” Gregory said, and immediately looked apologetic at having said it. After a moment of utter silence at the table, the rest of the diner turned to background noise, Gregory quietly said, “I’m sorry, Guerin, I am. I know how much this must hurt you—”

               “No, you don’t,” Michael grit out, his fists so tight that he felt his nails digging crescents into his palms.

               “But,” Gregory continued as if Michael hadn’t spoken, “Alex remembers more about me than he does you. You guys haven’t spoken in months. You dated one of his best friends for, like, a year, didn’t you?”

               “That wasn’t—”

               “I don’t care,” Gregory cut him off. “I don’t know you, Guerin, you can do whatever you want, but I know Alex, and I know the last thing he needs is one more reason to give up. So, please, just give him some time. Okay?”

               Michael clenched his jaw, but leaned back in his seat, pursing his lips. His eyes fell on Alex who he saw was watching him back, his brows furrowed slightly, and whether that was because of the painful migraine, or because of something else, Michael didn’t know.

               When Isobel went to the bathroom, Alex slowly reached across the table, and Michael, hesitant, reached the rest of the way. Alex squeezed his fingers weakly as if to say, I’m sorry I can’t be with you anymore.

               Michael felt that lump in his throat return and threaten to suffocate him. He let Alex’s hand go when he had to step out for Isobel and wouldn’t dare take it again.

               So for a week, Michael stayed away from Alex, watching only from afar as Alex spent time at the diner, talked to friends, visited the museum. Michael had expected him to regain some important memories in the UFO emporium, but when he came out, he had worn an unreadable expression for a moment, then shook it off with a smile and resumed his day with the others.

               Most of the time, he sat with Liz who seemed determined never to leave his side aside from shifts. Michael assumed it was because she blamed herself for what had happened to Alex. He thought it was ridiculous, as he was sure Alex would’ve, but having someone constantly at Alex’s side, even when Gregory had to return to the reservation that following Sunday night to prepare a room for Alex, made Michael feel better.

               The next day, Forrest had come back, and Michael saw – from behind his own truck’s windshield – that the historian was not thrown off by Alex’s accident, but happy to help him in any way he could. Michael’s hands clenched on the steering wheel, and he watched as Forrest held his arms out for Alex, the way Alex easily stepped into them and wrapped his own arms around Forrest’s waist, the way Forrest made them sway on their feet as they hugged tightly.

               Forrest and Alex then spent the rest of the day in the diner with Forrest talking animatedly, waving his hands around, undoubtedly telling Alex about all of their interactions since the day they met. Michael wondered if Forrest might lie about some of the details, then realized that was insanely stupid and that he needed to calm down.

               Still, Michael pushed himself out of his car, unable to help but make his way into the Crashdown with every brush of Forrest’s fingers against Alex’s jaw or hair or hands.

               When he came in, he expected Alex’s eyes to jump to him as they always did when a stranger entered the building, but this Alex didn’t have his memories or trauma from war. This Alex didn’t fear strangers or jump at sudden sounds of the bell above the door jingling or keep his eyes on all the entrances and exits to a place before he sat down.

               Michael went to the counter, glancing at Alex every so often, until he felt someone hit his shoulder.

               “What’re you doing here?” Liz said, her all-knowing eyes boring into his.

               Michael held up his hands in mock surrender, plastering a smirk that felt forced with the sound of Alex’s laugh in the background. “I’m just hungry. Can I get a burger, please?”

               Liz looked between Michael and the Alex who still hadn’t noticed that the cowboy was even there, and sighed. “Sure,” she said. “But just—” she huffed. “Don’t go near him. I’m serious, Michael,” she said when Michael laughed. “Gregory put me in charge of taking care of him, and he said, ‘Don’t let Guerin near him, whatever it takes.’ So, please—”

               “I won’t go near him,” Michael said with a slight edge to his voice. He was getting really sick of being treated like some infectious disease that would kill Alex if he touched him. Didn’t they know that no one cared more about Alex than he did?

               But Liz wasn’t Alex, no one was, and so no one could read Michael’s thoughts or sense his concerns or anger the way Alex always managed to.

               And so with a sad upward tilt her lips, Liz went to the back to get his order. Almost right away, Michael felt someone touch his arm.

               “Hey,” Alex said, smiling cheerfully, his hands folded playfully behind his back. He looked so carefree, so full of laughter, that Michael almost didn’t recognize him.

               “Uh – hi,” he said, and glanced to the back where Liz was too busy talking to one of the cooks to notice them together. He should’ve ignored Alex, should’ve made some excuse to leave, but the airman smelled like wood and maple syrup, and Michael hadn’t been close to him in almost two weeks, and technically speaking, he wasn’t breaking any rules because he wasn’t the one going near Alex, it was the other way around.

               “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

               “I was – uh – busy,” he said, then, as an afterthought, added, “Sorry.”

               Alex shook his head. “I know my brother told you to stay away from me.”

               Michael raised a brow. “If you know that, then why’d you come over here?”

               Alex’s smile faltered. “Because I saw you the second you came in. I always see you when you come in, even when I don’t know who you are. I want to know why.”

               Michael glanced at Forrest only to find that the historian had left. Alex followed his gaze and shrugged. “So? Will you help me?”

               Michael looked down, huffing a chuckle. He scratched his cheek and said, “You know, if you were Alex, my Alex, you’d know that you never had to ask me for anything. I pretty much do whatever you tell me to.”

               Alex narrowed his eyes as he searched Michael’s face. “No,” he said, slightly amused. “You don’t. I remember that much. I remember you saying no, but I can’t remember what for.” He laughed when Michael looked surprised. “See? I always remember more when it comes to you. So I’m going to ask you again. Will you help me, Michael?”

               Michael hesitated, looked again to where Liz had been, and saw that she had spotted them. She was trying to excuse herself quickly from the conversation with the cook, but Michael had already taken Alex’s wrist and was leading him towards the door. The airman looked startled, but followed along. Michael was glad to see his motor skills had come back to him.

               “First of all,” Michael said as he burst through the door, pulling Alex along behind him, “you don’t call me Michael. Not really. You always call me by my last name.”

               “Why do I do that?” Alex asked, and Michael shrugged.

               “You always have. It’s our thing.”

               “Our thing – ow, slow down!” Alex said, and Michael turned and caught him just as he stumbled against his chest.

               They stood there a moment, beside Michael’s truck, lost in each other. Alex was panting, his hands curled to fists against Michael’s chest, his lips all but pressed to Michael’s collarbone.

               “Where are we going?” Alex asked quietly.

               “To get your memories back,” Michael said into his hair, his eyes almost fluttering at the touch. It had been too long since he’d held Alex. “Come on. Get in.”

               Alex obediently did as he was told, sliding into the passenger’s seat just as Liz came out of the diner, looking panicked.

               “I don’t get it,” Alex shook his head, watching Liz with furrowed brows as Michael sped off. “If you were evil, they would’ve told me. But they obviously like you. So why doesn’t anyone want us together?”

               “Because we hurt each other,” Michael said as he drove off and down the road. “We always have. We’re kind of cursed.”

               Alex laughed. “Oh us, too, huh? I don’t think so.”

               “Well,” Michael smirked, unable to help it, “you wouldn’t remember anyway, so.”

               Alex whistled quietly, but when he spoke, he was smiling. “Low blow.”

               Michael laughed himself, and when he looked over at Alex, he saw him leaning back comfortably in his seat, sighing contentedly. His own smile faltered at the sight. “You’re so much . . . happier now.”

               “And I wasn’t happy before?”

               Michael considered this. “Not that I can remember, actually,” he said. “I think the only time I ever saw you laugh was . . . in the toolshed. That didn’t have a happy ending, though.”

               “That toolshed,” Alex sighed. “A lot’s happened there. Gregory showed it to me, you know. He said you and I destroyed it.”

               “We did,” Michael said, waiting with bated breath for Alex’s reaction.

               But Alex only hummed, and slumped down in his seat, pulling his left knee up against the dashboard. Michael didn’t know why he was expecting him to care; this Alex knew nothing of their history, and even if he did, it wasn’t as if he had the same feelings and emotions connected to everything.

               “You know,” Michael said before he could help it, “the old you had years to deal with this stuff. To accept the kind of man your father was. The kind of men your brothers were. You don’t have that kind of time.”

               Alex raised a brow. “You think I’ll explode if I learn too much? Because I’ve already had this conversation.”

               “You won’t explode,” Michael said. “You’ll be fine. But the last time, I pushed you away because of all of that. And you handled it fine. In fact, some might say you were better off without me.”

He said so with a smile, but Alex turned his head against his seat, searching Michael’s face with his dark eyes. He reached over and took Michael’s hand in his own.

Michael cleared his throat, but he held on to Alex’s hand. “It was like one thing at a time. Now it’s all going to hit you at once.”

“You’re worried about me,” Alex noted.

Michael shook his head, feeling a smile tug at his lips despite himself. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” he laughed.

“Like . . . like . . .” Like you love me. It made the reality all the more painful, and even worse when Michael knew that the second Alex remembered who he was, he would put distance between them again.

“Where are we going anyway?” Alex asked, clearly sensing Michael’s desire to change the subject. It was a comfort to know he could still do that; still read Michael to some extent.

Michael shrugged. “I don’t know, actually.”

“Just thought you’d kidnap me and drive us around till the gas runs out?” Alex asked, smiling.

“They weren’t leaving me any other choice,” Michael said.

“It’s nice,” Alex said. “So many of them care about me. I don’t understand what they’re scared of me remembering.”

Michael’s grin faltered. “Maybe it’s not always like this.”

Alex raised a brow. “People don’t always care about me?”

“Not as much as they should,” Michael said before he could help himself. Then, he looked over to Alex and saw a small smile at his lips. “You’re not mad?”

Alex shrugged slightly, helplessly. “I don’t really know anyone. And I think it would be worse if I knew anything about my life, but everyone just feels like a stranger. I’m sorry,” he said, his voice soft.

Michael realized then that his jaw had been visibly clenched, his brows furrowed. He cooled his features, plastering a smile on his lips. He automatically brought Alex’s hand up to his fingers and kissed them.

“Don’t be sorry,” Michael mumbled against his fingers. “I’m right here. And we’ll fix it, Alex. I promise.”

Alex didn’t pull away or seem the least bit bothered by Michael’s hands on him now. “Fix me, you mean.”

“No, not you,” Michael said. “Never you.”

Alex turned his hand in Michael’s hold and held onto his fingers. “Something about you, Guerin. I can’t put my finger on it.”

Michael’s heart jumped in his chest. “I think I know where to take you.”

                 “Liz is pissed at you, you know,” Maria said the second Michael and Alex had gone through the doors of the Wild Pony. She had her hands on her hips, but the anger in her voice was undermined by the concern in her eyes as they fell on Alex.

               She reached out for the airman who, startled, stepped back from her. Maria halted in her tracks, hurt crossing her expression only barely before it disappeared and she smiled kindly. “Sorry, uh, force of habit.”

               “Oh,” Alex nodded, then, “How many friends do I have?”

               “A lot,” Maria said, clearly choking but making an effort to smile.

               Alex raised a brow. “You’re not gonna cry, are you? A lot of people have already cried.”

               “No,” Maria said with a huff, shaking her shoulders out. “I’m not going to cry. God, this is weird.”

               “No kidding,” Alex muttered, looking around the bar as if hoping for his memories to reveal themselves in the walls.

               “Michael, Liz has been calling all of us to know if we’ve seen you,” Maria said, throwing glances at Alex every so often. “What am I supposed to tell her?” she demanded.

               “That you have no idea where we are!” Michael smirked. “Alex needs me if he’s going to remember everything.”

               “But Gregory said—”

               “Gregory is handling his brother with safety gloves,” Michael said. “Alex needs someone who isn’t afraid of breaking him. He remembers more around me anyway, don’t you, Alex?”

               But it was as if Alex couldn’t hear him, his attention on something behind them as he hummed. Michael’s eyes narrowed. That song. . . .

               “What’re you singing?” he asked quickly, and Alex, surprised at Michael’s reaction, blinked.

               “What’re you talking about?”

               “That song you were humming just now.”

               “Oh,” Alex said as if he didn’t realize he’d been humming at all. He shrugged. “I don’t know. Just some song.”

               But it wasn’t just some song, Michael thought. It was the song. The song Alex had written and composed himself, the song he’d gotten up in front of an entire bar of cowboys to sing, the song he wrote about himself and Michael and everything they were.

               Alex, however, didn’t seem to find any significance in it other than a tune stuck in his head.

               “Hey, what’s that?” he asked, pointing at one of the instruments in the back.

               Maria came to stand beside him, her arms crossed, but her eyes going to Alex’s face so often that she may as well have been staring at him. Despite her smile, Michael didn’t think he’d ever seen her look so sad.

               “The keyboard we use for Open Mic nights. You remember it?”

               Alex brows furrowed. “I think so. Gregory told me I played piano. Maybe that’s why?”

               “You performed once,” Maria said wistfully. “It was amazing. I think. I wasn’t here to enjoy it. But everyone else told me it was amazing.”

               And by everyone else, Michael knew she meant Isobel. His sister had been talking about Alex’s voice since that night.

               “That can’t be true,” Alex laughed, and Maria’s smile turned more genuine despite her eyes filling with tears. “I can’t tell if everyone’s telling me the truth about this stuff, or if . . .” he trailed off at the sight of Maria.

               Alex sighed, smiling softly. “I knew you’d cry.”

               “I’m not crying,” Maria sobbed as she wrapped her arms around Alex’s shoulders. He patted her back consolingly, but Michael could tell he was at a loss for what else to do.

               They left soon after with a promise from Maria that she would give them a five-minute head start before calling Liz.

               Alex was silent as they drove on, knee up on the console as he hugged himself.

               “Alex?” Michael asked, but it was as if Alex couldn’t hear him. “Hey,” he asked again, reaching out to touch Alex’s shoulder. “You okay?”

               Alex shook his head and covered his face. “I’m fine,” he muttered, his voice muffled. “I’m okay.” He pressed his hands against his temples again, his face red as he strained to contain what Michael assumed was the same throbbing migraine that had haunted him at the Crashdown over a week ago.

               “Do you remember something?”

               “I – I don’t know,” Alex said miserably.

               “It’s okay,” Michael said. “Don’t force it.”

               Alex shook his head, his smile pained. “I feel like I’m letting everyone down. A whole town of strangers expecting me to know what they want me to know, and I just don’t.”

               “It’s okay.”

               “It’s not okay, Guerin,” Alex said. A breath, two, then, “We were really in love, weren’t we?”

               Michael faltered and nearly hit the truck in front of him. It honked loudly as he passed it, but Alex looked unruffled, his eyes steady on Michael. “You remember?”

               “Bits and pieces,” Alex said. “Always of you. Always bad. I’ve either been angry with you or you’ve been angry with me, or I’ve cried because of you or you’ve cried because of me. One of us is always walking away.”

               Michael clenched his jaw, and pulled over to the side of the wide empty road, parking the truck. Neither of them said anything for a moment, nothing but the wind in the sand blowing past, and neither of them in a hurry to get into this conversation.

               “Then how did you know?” Michael finally asked. “That we were in love?”

               Alex have him half a sad smile. “Because you keep looking at me like I’m breaking your heart.” He shook his head, a tear escaping down his cheek. “I don’t enjoy this. It’s like I can feel there’s a big part of me missing, and I don’t know how to get it back. I know it’s a miserable, and dark, and messed up part, but I would do it for you, Guerin. I would remember if it meant I got to remember you.”

               Michael shook his head, unable to look away from Alex. He whispered, “Why?”

               “Someone who loves as much as you do,” Alex said, “has to be worth putting up with the rest of it.”

               And while Michael knew he shouldn’t, that it might hurt them both, he closed the distance between them, and took Alex’s lips in his. Alex did not seem startled, kissing back gently as Michael tilted his head and deepened it. His heart was overflowing, he could hardly contain it. It had been too long since he’d touched Alex, his scent and taste the same as ever.

               Michael knew they had to be okay if Alex was kissing him back, if everything about him from the way he dressed to his voice was all the same as before. Michael decided that, no matter what it took, they would be okay. They would have to be.

               But just as he reached up to cup Alex’s cheek, the airman pulled away with a wince.

               Michael panted against his lips, his brows furrowed. “What’s wrong?”

               Alex looked confused at what had just happened as well. “I – I don’t – ah!” He pressed his hands roughly against his temples, all but screaming in pain.

               “Alex?” Michael pulled back, trying to hold onto Alex’s shoulders, to cover Alex’s hands on his head with his own, but Alex doubled over, screaming. Then his nose began to bleed, and Michael felt panic quickly seep in.

               “Hold on, Alex, hold on,” Michael said desperately, undoubtedly breaking every speeding rule as he raced the streets on the way to the hospital. “Hold on, I’m gonna get you help, hold on, baby!”

               But if Alex heard him, he didn’t show it. He was trembling in his seat, bleeding all down the bottom half of his face, his shut tight. The second Michael parked the car in front of the building, Alex collapsed against the car door.

               Michael felt a sickening sense of déjà vu, sitting here in front of Alex’s bed, watching him lying unconscious, waiting for him to wake up. He hated being here, he hated seeing Alex here, he hated these damn white walls and white sheets. He wanted to take Alex and go somewhere far away, somewhere danger and white hospital rooms couldn’t follow.

               But, as Liz had pointed out when Kyle had insisted on calling her after what had happened, Michael taking Alex anywhere alone didn’t always yield the best results.

               “What did I say?” Kyle said as soon as he came in, clipboard in hand. “I said don’t stress him out, Guerin. Don’t scare him, Guerin. Don’t push it, Guerin! Does anyone even listen to doctors anymore? No, of course not, because you all just know better, right?”

               “Kyle, Michael couldn’t have known this would happen,” Liz tried. She sounded weary, her eyeliner was smudged from when she had been crying. Michael wished Max and Isobel could be here, but they had gone to the reservation with Gregory to see if they could gather any of Alex’s old things, help jog his memory, and weren’t scheduled to be back for another day.

               “Actually, Liz, he could have,” Kyle said. “Because I warned you it would.” He checked Alex’s vitals, his scans, and turned to glare at Michael. “You’re really lucky Alex is as strong as he is, or who knows how much worse that reaction could’ve been.”

               Michael tried to muster the will to be angry, but he couldn’t. All he cared about was Alex. “Is he going to wake up?”

               “I don’t know,” Kyle admitted. “A breakdown like that, in the state he’s in – it could make things worse. Decades worth of trauma all hitting him at once. If he does wake up, you better hope he remembers how to speak.”

               Michael’s heart climbed into his throat. He looked up at Kyle, hoping to see him rolling his eyes, to hear him reassure them that he was kidding, that Alex’s memory couldn’t regress that far, but the doctor was only looking at Alex.

               Kyle rubbed his face and sighed. “If he doesn’t wake up by tonight, I should call his mom. I’m going to go have a look at his records and pull up her number. I’ll be back later to check on him.”

               Michael briefly registered Liz nodding before the door opened and closed, and she pulled up the chair beside him and took a seat.

               “You should—”

               “If you tell me to go home or get some rest, Liz,” Michael cut her off, his eyes on the airman, “I’m going to scream. It’s my fault he’s here in the first place.”

               “No, it’s not,” Liz said slowly. “It’s mine.”

               “Liz—”

               “We were in that cave because of me,” Liz said. “I was too eager, not careful enough, and Alex did what he always does. He saved me. He would’ve remembered sooner or later.”

               “I forced him into it.”

               “It was what he wanted, Michael,” she said. “He chose you because he knew you would help him remember faster. Don’t you see that? He just wanted to remember you.”

               “A lot of good that did him,” Michael said bitterly. “Even when I’m not in his life, I ruin it.” He reached out and took Alex’s hand in his own. “But I can’t stay away from him. You must think I’m a real dick.”

               Liz shrugged a shoulder. “What I think doesn’t matter. Alex loves you, no one else. I can’t shut that off, any more than you can.”

               Michael shook his head, his eyes filling with tears. “I can’t lose him.”

               “You won’t,” Liz said. “You can’t.”

               Michael vaguely registered her standing up an hour later to get them some food. He nodded numbly as she grasped his shoulder and turned to leave.

               It wasn’t until two more visits from Kyle and a frantic phone call from Gregory that Michael realized he felt something in his hand move. He looked up from where he’d dozed off, with his head on Alex’s bedside, and saw that it was Alex’s fingers twitching in his, lightly holding onto Michael’s own.

               Michael sat up with a gasp, staring intently at Alex, but after half an hour, the airman’s eyes remained shut and his fingers did not move again. Michael’s heart quickly turned back into lead as he stood up, gently releasing Alex’s hand. He stepped into the bathroom, wondering if maybe he’d imagined the whole thing, maybe he’d dreamt it, maybe his long days of not eating enough and his even longer nights of not sleeping enough were getting to him.

               He came out of the bathroom and froze. There, struggling to sit up against his pillows, was Alex, wide awake. Michael didn’t dare move, afraid that he would shatter the dream, but Alex’s expression turned startled at the sight of him, and the airman narrowed his eyes as if to make sure Michael was actually there, and Michael knew it was real.

               “Alex,” he breathed, throwing himself onto Alex, wrapping his arms tightly around his shoulders.

               Alex was stiff in his hold, his hands in his lap. Michael remembered the last time Alex had woken up here, the way Michael had frightened him by getting too close. Michael forced himself to let the airman go, and he stepped back, holding his hands up to calm what he was sure was going to be a terrified Air Force captain.

               “Don’t freak out,” Michael said gently. “It’s going to be okay.” Alex’s brows furrowed. Michael swallowed, remembering what Kyle had said about the probability of Alex not remembering how to speak, then said more slowly, “I promise . . . I’m your friend. . . .”

               Alex raised a brow, then, rubbing his forehead painfully, he said, “What the hell are you doing, Guerin?”

               Michael’s face fell and his heart jumped. “You – you remember me?”

               Alex sighed, the sound alone so familiar that Michael thought he could burst into tears right then and there. “What?”

               He stepped closer to the bed, not daring to hope, and wishing for it despite his better instincts. “Do you know who I am?”

               “Yeah?” Alex said, though it sounded more like a question. “I’ve only known who you were since we were in high school. Did Kyle ask you to question me? Because I feel – oh!”

               Alex never got to finish because Michael had closed the distance between them again, wrapping Alex in another tight hug. As he was not caught so off guard this time, Alex settled his chin on Michael’s shoulder and hugged him back.

               When they finally broke apart, Alex was rubbing his temples, wincing. “My head is killing me.” His eyes widened. “Liz. Where’s Liz, is she okay? Did she make it out of the cave?”

               “The cave?” Michael’s brows furrowed, though he didn’t dare leave Alex’s side again. He planted himself beside him on the bed, and while Alex seemed both surprised and confused, he was giving Michael his full attention once again. “That’s the last thing you remember?”

               “Yeah,” Alex said, but he frowned as he looked himself over. “My injuries shouldn’t be healing yet, not unless . . .” he trailed off, realization dawning. “How long have I been asleep?” he asked, not afraid or concerned, only calculating, as if he was drawing up a battleplan on how to deal with the answer when it came. God, Michael missed him.

               He shook his head and reached up to cup Alex’s cheek, kissing the other. Once again, the airman seemed at a loss for words.

               “Not long,” Michael said honestly. “Not long at all.”

***

Goodness gracious, I’m rusty.

[oh-so-scenarios]

ᴛʜᴇ sᴇʀᴇɴᴅɪᴘɪᴛʏ ᴏғ ᴛʜɪɴɢs...♠| 07

⤖ ᴡʜᴏ ʜᴀs ᴛɪᴍᴇ ғᴏʀ sᴏᴜʟᴍᴀᴛᴇs? Jᴜɴɢ Hᴏsᴇᴏᴋ ɪs ᴛᴏᴏ ʙᴜsʏ ʙᴇɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴇᴀᴅ ᴏғ ʜɪs ᴍᴀғɪᴀ ɴᴇᴛᴡᴏʀᴋ. Hᴇ ᴡᴏɴ'ᴛ ʟᴇᴛ ᴛʜᴇ sᴇʀᴇɴᴅɪᴘɪᴛʏ ᴏғ ʜɪs sᴏᴜʟᴍᴀᴛᴇ ᴍᴏᴠᴇ ʜɪᴍ…ʀɪɢʜᴛ?

⤖ Mᴀғɪᴀ Lᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ Hᴏsᴇᴏᴋ x ᴅᴏᴄᴛᴏʀ Fᴇᴍᴀʟᴇ Rᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ, Aɴɢsᴛ, sᴍᴜᴛ, sᴏᴜʟᴍᴀᴛᴇ!ᴀᴜ,

A/N: Unedited. Ignore any errors, please! whoa, word count is 8k o.o I surprised myself. I feel like this chapter is pretty okay. Didn’t feel like re-writing it for the 5th time so please enjoy! (Word Count: 8.13K )

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Narrator’s POV:

Y/n sits at a small circular table in the hospital cafeteria. The sun was setting, turning the sky an orange hue. She was given a beautiful view as her table face the huge window. At that moment, Y/n sat with her legs crossed and her lunch sitting in front of her. All she felt was tired. Tired and overwhelmed. 

The recent surgeries that have been performed at the hospital were draining. She found herself doing fewer operations but they were growing in length. There weren’t enough hours in the day to recharge and sleep. She felt like she was lacking sleep and the bags making appearances under her eyes was all the proof needed. 

The Charity Gala was approaching, making Hoseok grow busy with his schemes. Schemes of which she still didn’t know. It’d been 5 days since she saw Hoseok. Their last conversation being when he scolded her for trying to get information on him. She was also 2 days past the due date for her “assignment” to find another assistant. 

She had settled on picking Jennie, but couldn’t muster the courage to ask her. How do approach someone about something like that? Oh yeah! Just join me in this illegal practice for my mafia boss soulmate! 

Y/n wouldn’t dare utter such words. Not that she could speak at all. All of the trauma department have been working like crazy. An increase in car accidents has left everyone drained and it seems things have just started to settle. Even Dr. Lee lacked the energy to show his award-winning smile. He didn’t even come on to Y/n like he usually does. 

Finding out that Hoseok was her soulmate wasn’t stopping him. 

Hoseok hadn’t made any attempt to reach out to Y/n. She was supposed to meet him at the “headquarters” 2 days ago, but she ended up falling asleep the moment she got home. Her eyes snapped open the next morning, expecting a few missed calls or angry text messages. There was nothing. 

She was eager to see him again, banter with him or just be near him again. Jungkook wasn’t even replying to her texts, telling her that they were truly busy. She didn’t want to get in their way, so she found that it would be best to not go back to HQ till she was told. 

Sleeping with her eyes open at this point, Y/n didn’t notice Jennie take the seat beside her. Her white lab coat hanging loosely off her shoulders. Her hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was bare-faced, not even her eyebrows filled in. Her peach top was ruffled and her white dress pants were the same way. 

“I got dressed in the dark.” Jennie finally speaks. Y/n’s eyes slowly move to Jennie, who is staring at the table blankly. 

“I don’t remember how I got here.” Y/n croaks, her voice coming out a bit rough. The two then sit in another heavy silence. 

“How is Hoseok doing?” Jennie attempted to make conversation. Y/n only shrugged in response. She didn’t have the energy to hold a real conversation. She was running on empty, but there is still a stack of paperwork waiting for her. She threw her head back, ready to cry from the stress weighing on her shoulders. 

Jennie stood up from her seat. It was a sluggish movement, making the young woman look like she was ready to collapse. 

“Well, I’ll see you later tonight,” Jennie muttered. 

Y/n was too tired to catch Jennie’s odd words. See you later tonight? Was she supposed to be hanging out with Jennie tonight? Cause y/n planned to go home and sleep as much as she could. 

Snapping out her exhaustion trance, Y/n moved forward to take another bite of her fruit salad, thinking of grabbing the piece of apple that laid at the bottom. She remembered reading something about apples helping people stay awake. 

She ate away at her fruit salad, little by little. Her phone dinged from her white coat pocket as she took a swig of her water. She took a look at her phone and felt an exciting knock from the heart. 

Hoseok: Doc, you know where to be. Tonight. call JK when you’re done with your shift.

She was ready to celebrate being able to see Hoseok, but her exhaustion came to damper that. Ugh, what work would he have for her? She was so tired! He’ll definitely say something about her lack of an assistant. 

She rolled her eyes at just the thought of his disapproving and dark eyes. 

After finishing her lunch, Y/n sat in her office for a while; typing away at her computer. She wasn’t watching the clock, knowing that this paperwork was what kept her at work. So she did it, typed and typed till she was sure the sounds of the keyboard would haunt her dreams.

The moment she submitted her paperwork, she folded both arms onto her desk, resting her head on her arms. 

“I’ll just rest my eyes.” She muttered to herself. Her eyes fluttered closed and a long sigh left her lips.

~!~

“Y/n!” A voice chimed. 

Before fully waking up, Y/n internally groaned. Who is bothering her? Who is waking her? How long had she been asleep?

Her eyes opened painfully slow, spotting the clock on her wall first. After the tired blur wore off, she was able to notice the time. 

3o minutes. She had only been able to sleep for 30 minutes.

“Noona?” A different person called this time.

Y/n sat up, her eyes scrunched into narrow slits as she came to. It took a moment for her to process the two people in front of her. 

Jennie stood to her left, a smirk on her lips. Though she still looked tired in her eyes. To Y/n’s right was Jungkook who stood in an oversized grey hoodie with distress jeans. Her eyes darted between the two figures, trying to collect her thoughts. The room stayed silent for a moment and Y/n wordlessly stood up from her seat.

“Hoseok wants to see me.” She was reminding herself, “I nearly forgot.”

Jungkook snickered, his lips turning into a tight smile, “Boss had a feeling you were going to fall asleep. You did the same thing last time.” 

She slipped off her white coat, draping it over her chair and gathering her things. It was till she had her bag on her shoulder that Y/n stopped to look at Jennie. The two stared at each other, Jennie blinked with a friendly smile while Y/n’s brows furrowed.

“Jennie..what’s up?” Y/n asked her voice still raspy from her brief nap.

“I’m also meeting Hoseok.” She answered simply. Jennie looked towards Jungkook innocently. 

“She doesn’t know?” 

Y/n gawks at Jennie then stiffly turns to Jungkook, “Know what? Why is Jennie meeting Hoseok?”

Jungkook shrugged and shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, “Boss got impatient waiting for you to find an assistant--”

“--So he hired Jennie?” Y/n cut off Jungkook’s words. She wasn’t surprised that Hoseok took matters into his own hands, but that he picked Jennie to be her assistant. How much did Jennie know? How long had she known?

“Yup!” Jennie pops the ‘p’ and grins. 

“You’re okay with the type of work you’ll be doing?” Y/n was almost whispering now. 

Jennie looked confused by Y/n’s question. Jennie wasn’t as stuck up as Y/n was thinking. Hoseok knew what he was doing when he approached her. Jennie, despite her loud exterior, is a secretive and observant person. She learned that from her father who was a lawyer. 

When you’re friendly and appear ditzy, people let their guards down. Watch closely and take notes for when you need them.

“Black market work.” She answers simply before walking around the desk to stop in front of Y/n. Jennie was now wearing black leggings with a plain red shirt and a cardigan. She had changed out of her work clothes and Y/n wished she had done the same instead of sleeping. 

With her hands-on Y/n’s shoulders; Jennie speaks, “I know it all. Mafia soulmate. Mafia doctor, transplant surgeries and the latter. No need to worry, I know what I am stepping into.” 

Jennie sounded too casual for Y/n. The innocent and bubbly gaze Jennie held while speaking about the illegal situation left Y/n feeling uncomfortable. Maybe she’s the only one sensitive to these things. She didn’t reply to Jennie, but walking past her and out her office, hearing Jungkook and Jennie trailing behind her. 

“She took that better than I expected.” She heard Jennie mutter behind her. 

Y/n really wanted to yell, throw a fit and lecture Jennie for so carelessly stepping into this tight situation. Frankly, Y/n was too tired. She didn’t have the energy to. Her mind was throwing angry and distasteful thoughts, but her body was too tired to execute them.

Y/n would just turn to stare at Jennie in the backseat as Jungkook drove the car. She was making sure this wasn’t a fever dream and was trying to process the situation.

They pulled up to the brick building that had become familiar. While ignoring Jennie’s questions about Hoseok, Y/n followed Jungkook into the HQ with Jennie trailing behind.

They came to the lobby area where the circular table was. The black and whiteboards stood in their regular places. Things were written on them. Y/n didn’t try to read them, but her eyes searched for Hoseok who was present. Everyone else sat at the table, papers spread out among them. 

“Y/n!” Taehyung chimed as the others noticed her. She gave a weary smile, her eyes darted around the room to at least look every man in the face. Her footsteps stopped as she spotted an unfamiliar face. Well...not unfamiliar.

She’s seen his picture on the whiteboard before. The artist! What’s his name again?

“Jaehyun!” Someone screams. Oh right! His name was-- oh wait. 

Y/n spins around just in time to see Jennie stalk past her to the quiet man at the table. She notices Jennie’s wide eyes and her face turning a cherry red. The other men in the room watch intently. 

Jaehyun stands up from his seat, also surprised to see Jennie here. 

“Is this the kind of work you’ve been doing?” Jennie hisses at her boyfriend. 

He glares at her, “Is this the kind of work you’ve been doing?” He shoots back. Y/n walks over to one of the empty seats at the circular table. She plops down and watches the couple as they aggressively argue.

“How do you think I pay for those fancy dates of ours Jennie? I am doing my best to make a living! It’s still painting! I am still doing art! What are you doing? Black market surgeries? You can’t call me out!” Jaehyun argued back. 

Yoongi looked at Y/n for an explanation. The action itself was small. He pointed to the two, who was standing to his right. Y/n just shook her head and rolled her eyes. They bickered back and forth and everyone watched silently. 

No one noticed Hoseok who stood a few yards behind Y/n. He glanced at the Jennie and Jaehyun, already knowing the connection between the two. He knew it would make things a bit messy...but those two being soulmates would come in handy. 

Then his eyes flickered to Y/n. He could only see her back, but the way she clutched in her seat was a dead giveaway. She was tired. The constant sighing, made visible by her shoulders rising and falling. 

He hadn’t seen her in a few days. He wasn’t keeping count but...her absence was noticed. He knew he probably had 30 minutes max before she started to nod off. Work has probably been draining for her. His eyes moved back to Jennie, also noticing her tired appearance. 

Hoseok quietly takes the empty seat beside Y/n who notices him immediately. She manages a soft but weak smile. 

“You look tired,” Hoseok states as a matter of fact. 

She chuckles, “Just say you missed me so we can move forward.” His words weren’t malicious and though they were monotone in some aspect, Y/n understood that. She playfully snapped back at him, giggling quietly. Hoseok didn’t want to admit the small satisfaction he got from the small interaction. Despite her fatigue, she still smiled that beaming smile of hers. 

He looks away from her quickly and down at the papers on the table. 

“Let’s get started. You can have your arguments after this.” Hoseok stated. 

This mission was big. A single error could result in failure and jail. Hoseok hasn’t been caught yet and he doesn’t plan to. 

“The Charity Gala is in a few days. There will be famous art pieces, valuable art pieces. There will be some for Art Gallery and others for auction. The goal is the art pieces for the Art gallery. There are four pieces we’re going to swap out. Jaehyun is well known for painting replicas, so he has already done so for all four pieces.” Hoseok began. Y/n shifted beside him, and though he noticed, he didn’t miss a beat in speaking. He wasn’t aware of it before, but now he sees how close their chairs really are. He wasn’t going to scoot away, seeing as it would draw attention. Y/n made no attempt either.

He caught a whiff of whatever shampoo she used while she ran her fingers through her hair. Y/n wasn’t surprised by the plan. She should have known Hoseok wouldn’t just volunteer to be in charge of the Charity Gala. She crossed her arms over her chest and listened.

“The night is set in such a manner; there is a viewing of the gallery, then there is the dinner which will be held in a ballroom. The gallery room and ballroom are only 4-minute walk down a long hallway from each other. After the dinner, the auction begins while others are free to roam back to the gallery if they please.” Hoseok went on explaining. 

The time frame in which everyone is having dinner will be when the switch is made. Hoseok thought the plan out well, knowing that art professionals will be at the gala, he decided to put the gallery viewing before the dinner. He wanted the professionals to look and confirm that real works were there. So when the fakes are noticed later, only an outside force could be blamed. 

Hoseok wanted to make sure there was no way he could be suspected. 

That’s where Y/n comes in. 

“Y/n,” Hoseok said. She looked at him, raising an eyebrow. 

“You will be my date for the evening.” He informed her. He didn’t even give her a chance to react before moving on. 

“You will be my date, you will be by my side. You need to make sure everyone sees that you are with me and I am with you. We need to convince everyone that we are a couple.”

“Why is that necessary?” 

“Everyone has to believe I was too distracted by you to take part in anything. The boys will be doing all the physical labor. I will be there for face, so work on not stiffening up when I’m close to you.” 

Hoseok expected a retort from Y/n but she only sighed, keeping her arms crossed over her chest. Hoseok to lay out how the fakes would be taken and swapped, along with how Jin would have to do some work with the camera footage. 

Y/n was tuning in and out. She was falling asleep while also trying to ignore the fast pace of her heart. She’s gonna be Hoseok’s date? They have to fake being a couple? So skinship? Hugging? Holding hands? Loving gazes-- is Hoseok even capable of such things?

Y/n can’t be sure when she really fell asleep, but her thoughts tapered off and she was sound asleep. Little did she know the room around her had grown still. 

Seokjin was talking about everyone’s roles in the mission and just how important timing was. Hoseok sat back in his seat, listening to make sure everything would run smoothly when he felt a weight drop onto his shoulder. He looked up from the paper in his hand and to his left. 

Y/n’s head was now resting on his shoulder and she was knocked out. All he was smelling now was the shampoo and light traces of her perfume. He sighed and looked back at the paper in his hands when he realized Seokjin stopped speaking. 

He looked up with sharp eyes only to find all eyes on him. 

“What?” He called out, thinking there was a problem.

He was oblivious. Jungkook beamed, his feature looking bunny-like while he smiled. 

“Continue with what you were saying.” Hoseok orders, looking back down at the words printed on the paper. They went on discussing the plan. It wasn’t much longer till Jennie also clocked out. She rested her head on Jaehyun’s shoulder, throwing her arm around his abdomen and snuggling her face into his neck. Jaehyun seemed unphased by it. 

However, it wasn’t like Hoseok’s indifference. Hoseok simply didn’t mind it, seeing as Y/n wasn’t restricting him in any way. Jaehyun was used to Jennie’s cuddling and even welcomed it.

The meeting went on and Y/n shifted a bit, mumbling something in her sleep and somehow finding one of her hands on Hoseok’s thigh. He stared at her hand for a moment before turning back into the meeting. 

Once the meeting was over, Hoseok watched as everyone went their different ways. He pulled his phone from his pocket, checking emails and text messages. He glanced up once to see Jaehyun scooping Jennie up in his arms like some sort of prince charming. 

“Boss, you guys look cute together,” Jungkook said almost coming out of nowhere. 

“We better,” Hoseok scoffed, “we really need to sell it at the gala so--”

Jungkook softly cut him off and shook his head, “That’s not what I meant. I mean you and Y/n REALLY look cute together.”

Hoseok gave a disapproving stare at the younger man but just got a wider smile in return.

“Come hold her head so I can go. Whether you want to wake her up or not is up to you.” Hoseok barked. Jungkook made no attempt to move from his spot a foot away.

“Hyung,” Jungkook’s voice grew softer. He swallowed and took a deep breath, knowing he was now entering the sensitive territory. 

“I think you should give it a shot, Y/n has shown what kind of person she is. It’s easy to see that she’s nothing like her. She’s nothing like your mother--”

“Kook.” Hoseok’s voice came out hard, and cold. Jungkook stopped, scared to say anymore to his boss.

“Right! Right! Never bringing her up again! Got it! Sorry about that!” The young man rushed out, walking over to get the slumbering Y/n off Hoseok’s shoulder.

~!~ 

 “You’re expecting me to wear that?” Y/n almost snickered. She stared at the dress laid out on her bed, the box it was delivered in tossed aside. 

Both she and Jennie stood in silk robes, hair and makeup done. Y/n trusted Jennie to pick out their dresses, so she sat back and focused on work. Now that the dress was here, Y/n could only gawk at it. It was a beautiful gown and looked expensive, but she doubts she could pull it off.

It was a sleek and sexy dress, form-fitting, with spaghetti straps and that draping neckline that’s been in trend. A slit up the dress looks like it stopped just a bit above her knee and the slight sparkle to the dress was alluring. 

It was a rich and deep green, but the slight sparkle only complimented the satin material in which the gown was made of. It went perfectly with the earrings she had on and the simple pearl necklace. 

“You don’t like it?” Jennie questioned, looking back and forth between Y/n and the dress. Y/n lets out a deep breath and shakes her head. 

“No, it’s a beautiful gown. I’ve just never worn anything like it before.” Y/n answers honestly. 

Jennie can’t help the small chuckle that leaves her lips. Since taking the job offer from Hoseok, she’s seen first hand what Y/n meant when she called Hoseok indifferent. The relationship between the two was ...complicated. Y/n often attempted to meet Hoseok halfway. The few meetings they had in the last few days really showed that. 

It was either Hoseok couldn’t see Y/n’s attempts or he really didn’t care. But what was easy to see was the heart eyes Y/n had every time Hoseok was around. Even in their arguments, Y/n found herself smiling after. 

Hoseok had a charm about him. He was quiet, intriguing and mysterious. 

“Well, you’ll be wearing it tonight.” Jennie replied. She moves towards Y/n’s closet where her navy blue gown hung. It was a bit bigger. Not a ballgown, but not form-fitting like Y/n’s. It was a strapless number with lace detailing. She absolutely loved the gown from the moment she laid eyes on it. 

             Her heels were just as high as Y/n’s. Both dresses would have a small train and seeing how extravagant these gowns were really drilled into Y/n’s head that this event was a big deal. She was too distracted thinking about how she’d have to play ‘couple of the year’ with Hoseok. In front of co-workers and important people. All that while pretending she doesn’t know 1.2 million dollars worth of artwork is being stolen and replaced. 

Stopping by HQ just yesterday was shocking for Y/n. She saw the replicas of the artwork and she nearly applauded Jaehyun. They were excellent. Now, Y/n was no art expert but to the untrained eye, the images were perfect reflections of each other. They even made sure the frames were mimicking the ones to be used in the gala.

I am assisting in a theft mission. Was all that Y/n could think. If she thought she was deep in the hole before, she’s practically digging it now. 

She grabbed the gown and began slipping it on. It felt even more expensive once the material was rubbing against her skin. Jennie zipped her up, and she did the same for Jennie. Just as the two were finished putting their heels on, Y/n’s phone dinged. Jennie’s phone did the same not even 5 seconds later. 

Hoseok: Here.

There was a slight jump in Y/n’s heart as she read the words. When she looked up from the phone, Jennie was already staring back at her. 

“Welp, let’s get this night over with.” Jennie almost groaned. 

The hammering of her heart was all Y/n could hear. Even as she stood in the elevator, Jennie’s small talk was hard to hear. She nervously played with the thin velvet strap of her purse, staring at her foggy reflection in the elevator doors. Her dark red lipstick was one thing that could easily be made out.

She looked good. She looked great. Amazing even. The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Picking up her dress with both hands, Y/n walked out first, already spotting two black SUV’s parked right in front of the apartment building. 

You could imagine Y/n’s disbelief when she saw Jaehyun and Hoseok both stepping out of the SUVs. Hoseok’s suit was dark grey, he wore nice black dress shoes and his brown hair had slight blonde highlights in it. His hair was parted to the side and slicked back, putting his forehead on display. His white dress shirt had no tie or bowtie, but it was unbuttoned. Only two or three buttons but it gave him an edge.

As he adjusted his suit coat, his dark green cufflinks shined. They were matching. Jaehyun walked to open the door that led out of the apartment complex. Y/n thanked him briefly before walking right up to Hoseok. Wow, he looked good. She couldn’t help but take in how he looked in that nicely tailored suit. The coat opened with his hands in his pockets. A stance that held confidence and freedom. He looked like he was on top of the world and owned it. 

The green cufflinks held her attention for a moment. She probably looked like she was drooling over him. She looked up from his outfit only to catch his eyes still trailing over her body. He seemed to take a second to really look at every part of her. She didn’t miss his eyes lingering on her draping neckline, so basically her chest. 

When his eyes reached her face, she tried to figure out what he was thinking. His facial expression wasn’t giving anything away but he looked into his deep brown eyes and thought for a second she saw something new. The noise of cars zooming by and the other noises of a buzzing city was all that could be heard. 

What is this tension? The dense and heavy cloud was looming over them. There were so many unspoken words floating around, while one waited for the other to speak. 

Say something! Say something you fool! Y/n directed herself. 

“We’re matching!” A smile pulls at Y/n lips. 

Looking back at her Hoseok is glad to see that overcast of exhaustion gone from her eyes.

“Of course we’re matching, I picked the dress.” He says, moving back to open the door to the car.

Y/n raises her eyebrows, “You picked the dress? I thought--”

“Jennie only delivered the dress to you. I picked and paid for it.” He explains. Y/n gets into the car, and Hoseok follows in, shutting the door.

The car ride was mostly quiet, with Hoseok speaking on the phone to Namjoon, reviewing plans and times. Y/n twiddles her thumb, and was left alone with her thoughts. She was oblivious to the glances from Hoseok.

“Green must be your favorite color.” She said as Hoseok ended his phone call. 

He narrowed his eyes at her, “What makes you say that?”

Y/n scoffs playfully, “Come on. I’ve seen you wear green suits. My dress is green, your cufflinks and your phone case are green.” 

“There’s nothing wrong with that.” 

“You’re right,” Y/n adds, “Green is also associated with the grinch so it matches you perfectly.” She giggles while Hoseok uncharacteristically rolls his eyes.

“Y/n, I really need to sell your role tonight. But if I do anything you don’t like, tell me.”

Y/n nods, “Understood.”

The gala was definitely a big deal. It was held at the banquet hall not too far from the hospital. There were cameras, media outlets, and big names all there in the name of art and charity. Hoseok jumped out the car and the cameras began to flash like crazy. Oh right...Hoseok is like an actual company owner. 

How much work does Hoseok really do? It’s okay for him to be photographed? As Y/n was helped out of the car, she looked down at the ground, the camera flashes being a bit too much for her eyes.

Hoseok is right beside her, placing a hand on the small of her back and pulling her close to him. They stroll past all the cameras and light and into the building. Y/n tries her best to seem natural with Hoseok’s hand on her back. 

But it felt like the spot he was touching grew hotter and hotter. Her shoulder was pressed into his side and the warmth coming off him was comforting. He wore that same cologne she’s smelt many times.

“Hey, look at me for a second,” Hoseok whispered. Y/n did as he said, meeting a small smile on his lips. She almost gasped. Not a smirk, not a snicker before he messes with her. A real smile, or a real-looking smile.

“Look like you’re happy to be with me,” He said while beaming.

Y/n almost said I am. Almost. The corner of her lips turned up in a smile that didn’t feel so fake. The close proximity of their faces didn’t feel forced. This didn’t feel forced. None of it did. 

“So we’re heading to the gala.” She said, adjusting the purse strap that was on her other shoulder. It wasn’t a question, but as if she had to remind herself. The two walked along, Hoseok removing his hand from the warm spot on her back to hanging by his side. 

Y/n didn’t need any instruction, seamlessly holding onto his bicep. She liked this. She liked this a little too much. 

The gallery hall was buzzing. There were celebrities, influencers, and company executives. It’s a different world for sure. They were able to walk around the gallery for all of 3 minutes before Hoseok was approached. It was some company executives talking about possible investments Hoseok’s company could make.

Hoseok chatted with them a bit, noticed that Y/n was also listening intently. She wanted to know more about Hoseok’s non-illegal work, as well as just how much he works.

“Excuse our rudeness, who is this beautiful lady on your arm?” The Lotte executive said, running his eyes up and down Y/n’s frame.

“This,” Hoseok brushed off Y/n hand and wrapped an arm around her waist, making Y/n face heat up. She grinned at the two men, sticking a hand out to shake their hands.

“This is Y/n L/n, my girlfriend. She is a surgeon for the trauma department at Seoul Sky.” Ugh, his words just roll off his tongue so smoothly.

“It is a pleasure to meet you.” Y/n said. The two older men chuckled.

“We never see Mr. Jung with a woman at these types of things. I just knew you had to be someone special.” The loan company CEO pointed out.

Y/n jokingly pouted and looked at Hoseok, “Not the smooth ladies’ man I thought you to be huh?” I teasing reached up to mess with the collar of his shirt. She narrowed her eyes at Hoseok, and he noticed the taunting gleam in her eyes. She was having fun. 

He chuckled, not at her words up at the realization he’d made.

“Every man has to hype himself up to his women, it’s only natural.” The Lotte executive joked. 

“If I had a beautiful woman like Y/n, I wouldn’t have tried my best to seem cool!” 

Everyone laughed, chatted some more before moving onto other things. This happened a lot. They’d be alone for a few minutes before more businessmen and women approached. The wanting gazes from the women around were annoying, leading Y/n facial expressions to have a mind of their own. 

“It’s no surprise you have a girlfriend just as intimidating as you are Mr. Jung.” One woman had said. Tha told Y/n about her facial expression right there and she worked a smile back onto her face. Now with a glass of champagne in hand, Y/n’s eyes darted around the gallery. She caught a few glimpses of Jennie and Jaehyun, who were seriously looking at the art. 

Jaehyun was thrilled, clearly going on about the works. At one point Y/n noticed Jimin who was dressed as a waiter. He must have had a wig on because his black hair was now a honey blonde. He wore glasses and kept his eyes down for the most part. 

The sigh that left her lips was a mistake, but it was enough to stop the flow of conversation Hoseok was having with some woman who said to be from an Energy Drink company. They all stopped to look at Y/n, and she was unaware, her eyes focused on the further away painting. 

Hoseok’s hand, placed securely on her waist, tighten, and his thumb started to caress her comfortingly. 

“Are you tired already, baby?” He whispered in her ear. Y/n’s head snapped around to look up at Hoseok, trying not to come off as surprised when she noticed just how close their faces were. All she could imagine was kissing him. His breath fanned her face and his eyes bore into her. 

The nickname had been the head turner but the closeness and intimacy were causing her heart to leap. He was too good at this. 

“N-no, I’m just interested in that painting over there.” Y/n answered softly. She gave a pointed look towards one of the artworks. Hoseok was going to say something, clearly about to excuse himself from the women around him. 

“Darling,” She said quickly, making Hoseok look back to her. 

“Don’t stop your conversation for me,” Y/n flashed a small smile, “I will be right over there if you need me.”

Hoseok leans in close and whispers in Y/n’s ear, “Trying to run away from me?” He was teasing her. Y/n smiled, and though others would see it as a couple in love flirting, Y/n was almost snickering at him.

“For my own sanity, yes.” She says quietly. She breaks away from Hoseok, ignoring the cold that surrounded her once his warmth was gone. She walked towards one of the artworks, stopping right in front of it. 

Her eyes were on the painting. It showed a woman staring at herself in the mirror of her bathroom, while the sun outside was black, still shining yellow despite the color. 

“Jaehyun says the picture is about how good can still come from bad.” Y/n jumps slightly as Jennie comes to stand beside her.

“Oh really?” Y/n takes a sip of her champagne, looking over at her friend’s smiling face. Jennie is looking at the painting still while Y/n stares at her profile.

“The black sun that’s shining yellow is the bad thing bringing out something good. The woman is staring at herself in the mirror but there is no reflection. She’s blind to all things good things, and to herself.”  

Y/n looks back at the painting, “I didn’t know you to be so deep.” 

She shrugs, “It’s Jaehyun. I don’t find this art stuff too interesting but I could listen to him go on about it forever.” Her smile becomes softer, a fondness twinkling in her eyes. 

Both of them didn’t speak for a while before Jennie looked at Y/n. She was hesitant to say what was on her mind. She didn’t want to deject her friend even more. But it was on everyone’s minds. Everyone in the room, even the strangers were thinking the same thing. 

“You and Hoseok look really good together.” Jennie voiced. Y/n sighed. There it was. She knew it was coming. 

“Of course we do. We’re both dressed up nicely, matching and all that.” She retorted.

“No,” Jennie now holds her champagne glass with two hands, “You two go together. You had me fooled for a moment and I knew you were supposed to be faking it.” Jennie paused again, not sure if Y/n wanted to interject. When she didn’t Jennie continued.

“And you looked really happy.”

“It’s fake.” Y/n deadpanned, making sure to keep her voice low. 

“But you’re still happy. Hoseok looked...happy.” 

Y/n scoffed at Jennie���s words and took another sip of her champagne. 

“Jennie, please stop. Just let me enjoy it for tonight. I’ll be met with the harsh reality tomorrow. I won’t let you trick me into believing there is anything else here.” 

“I think you need to stop waiting for Hoseok to make the first move. You go for it. Something small to relay to him how you’re really feeling.” Jennie suggested, glancing behind them in time to notice Hoseok’s brief glance at Y/n. 

Y/n downed the rest of her champagne when she noticed a waiter coming by. She placed the empty glass on the waiters’ tray and caught her breath. 

“Don’t make it so you’re some girl crushing on him, make him see you,” Jennie added. 

Y/n decides not to respond, blankly staring at the artwork again. 

The slight jump from her when an arm wraps around her waist was accompanied by a small yelp. She looked up at Hoseok, who was also looking at the artwork now. 

“You scared me,” She says quietly. 

Jennie wordlessly walks off, going to find Jaehyun.

“I can’t believe you left me with those annoying women,” Hoseok said, his thumb rubbing circles on Y/n hip.

Y/n laughed, “You weren’t enjoying the conversation?” 

“Not at all. Those ladies don’t want investments from the company--”

“They want you.” Y/n looks up at Hoseok with narrow eyes.

He changes the subject, “What an interesting painting.” He sounds really intrigued. Y/n went on to repeat what Jennie had said about the painting, explaining the meaning of the black sun and the woman looking in the mirror. 

Hoseok stares on in silence, perhaps taking in Y/n words. 

“Sounds like something my father would say.” Hoseok huffs a laugh, “Stop looking at the bad! Look beyond it.” 

Y/n didn’t want to say anything, excited to hear something about Hoseok’s family. But she didn’t want to be unresponsive.

“Your father sounds like an optimistic man.” Y/n peers into Hoseok’s face.

“Optimistic and trusting.” He added.

Taking a deep breath Hoseok spoke again, “His optimism and trusting character is what killed him.”

Y/n couldn’t stop her mouth from hanging open at Hoseok’s harsh words. She stared at his profile, waiting for him to say something else. 

When he didn’t speak again, she looked back at the painting. Why did the painting suddenly look so sad?

~!~

The gala was pretty boring to Y/n. They sat, they ate and wore their fake smiles for all the people who approached them. Hoseok’s eyes were drawn to his phone every few minutes. Oh right, that’s when they were swapping the artwork. 

Hoseok didn’t look worried or stressed. Y/n knows if she was in his position, she’d be freaking out. What if something went wrong? What if they are caught? Her blood pressure was rising just at the thought. She sat a large round table with Hoseok beside her. His chair scooted close to hers. They had finished eating and watched as others danced about. 

Hoseok took one more glance at his phone, a satisfied look taking over his face. 

“Everything went well?” Y/n already knew the answer. 

“Yes, everything is finished.”

Y/n nodded, reaching forward for a glass of wine that sat on the table. She had been drinking just a bit. Not to the point of being drunk, but the buzz was there. Hoseok noticed but didn’t say anything.

“I’m going to get some air.” Y/n said quietly and rose up from her seat. The auction had already begun in a smaller room down the hallway. The night was coming to a close. It was a lovely evening and she was thankful that a lot of money would be raised for charity. 

But there was a bitter after taste to this happy night. Y/n stood at the large balcony of the venue, staring at the stars that twinkled beautifully. At that moment, she almost felt like crying. 

The violins that were sounding from inside made her feel a bit like she was in a drama. A sad one-sided love story that was taking too long to turn around. His touch still lingered all over her. It didn’t feel weird, uncomfortable or strange. It was so familiar and welcoming. 

She was desperate to break past that stone-cold wall Hoseok had up. Everyone says be aggressive! Make the first move! But the thought of harsh rejection from Hoseok was enough to leave her unmoving in her spot. The buzz from her wine was really catching up with her now, making her head feel a bit light.

“Aren’t you cold?” Hoseok asked. Y/n jumped, placing her hand over her chest.

“You need to stop sneaking up on me like that!” She exclaimed. Hoseok stood there with his hands in his pockets, his eyes focused on Y/n. She felt a bit insecure under his gaze.

“You did really well tonight,” He said walking closer to her. Y/n leaned on the ledge of the balcony, suppressing the scoff playing on her lips.

“Did I really?” She muttered to herself, just loud enough for Hoseok to hear.

He stands beside her, leaning on the ledge. His whole body faces her while she faces out towards the beautiful garden below them. Maybe it’s the wine, but out of the corner of her eyes, it seems like Hoseok is smiling. 

Her heart hummed at his closeness, and just how effortless the conversation was feeling. It’s the wine for sure. They could barely hold a conversation without bickering, now the silence between them was so relaxing.

“Everyone’s eyes were on us tonight. No one will ever suspect me once the fakes are realized.” 

“Was everyone looking at us?” She sounded far away as if she hadn’t heard much of what Hoseok said.

“You couldn’t tell? There were eyes on us everywhere we went. People aren’t used to seeing me with someone.” 

Y/n looked over at Hoseok, taking in every feature of his face for a short second before speaking.

“I guess my attention was elsewhere, cause I didn’t feel a single eye on us.” The soft tone of her voice was enough to figure out what she was saying. Y/n was too wrapped up in Hoseok to notice a judgmental look or a gossiping whisper. He knew that.

 In fact. He’s a liar. He’s lying. Were there eyes on them? Probably? Hoseok doesn’t fucking know cause he wasn’t paying attention either. He was too distracted by...the mission. Right. The mission.

“Hoseok, I have a question.” The wine was giving Y/n confidence, so she was going to go for it. 

The look in Hoseok’s eyes was it pity? Curiosity?

“Despite your underground job...you don’t seem to mind having your face in pictures and stuff. Is that safe?” Y/n set her elbow on the ledge and place her cheek on her hand. She started blinking her eyes slowly and gazing up at him. 

‘Heart eyes.’ Y/n’s heart eyes every time he is around. At first, he didn’t understand. But now, Hoseok gets it, he sees it now.

“You’re really interested?” Hoseok’s lips turned up into a smirk. 

“Yes.” She nods eagerly.

Hoseok bit his lip, a bit hesitant to say anything. 

“I work under the name ‘Seok’. The mafia leader is known as ‘Seok’ but there is no face to Seok.” He leans closer to her, his eyes looking around to make sure no one was close. 

“Ah! I see!” Y/n chimes a bit too loudly, “That’s smart!” Y/n grows quiet and her eyes widened. So knowing who Hoseok really is...is a big deal!

“And...and that alias was started by you?” 

“By my father.” Hoseok’s voice grew a bit cold and Y/n worried that she was digging too deep. She watched Hoseok’s brows furrow and decided to keep digging until he shut her down. The support of some wine glasses made her brave.

“So you took over after your father passed?” Hoseok was a bit annoyed. Not by Y/n but the pity that was dripping off her voice. He hated people feeling sorry for him. His life is his life. He doesn’t hate it, he doesn’t wish he did anything else. He’s fine where he is. 

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry about your father passing.” Y/n picked her cheek off her hand and removed her arm from the ledge. She faced the garden and sky once more. 

“He died when I was 16, I’m okay now doc.” That nickname again. The wall was being put up again. 

Y/n nodded slowly, processing what Hoseok had just said. She realized a little too late that Hoseok’s father dying when he was 16 meant that Hoseok took his father’s position of mafia head at that young age. 

“And your mother?” Y/n asked softly, her eyes staying on the twinkling stars. Hoseok’s jaw clenched the thought of his mother. Y/n was too distracted by the beautiful night sky and the shining full moon to notice Hoseok’s lack of a response.

“Tonight was fun,” Y/n starts again, sighing dreamingly, “I’m just waiting for the clock to hit midnight and for the magic to disappear.” 

Hoseok raised an eyebrow, wondering if the wine had really gotten to her. Was she just talking nonsense?

“Magic?” He scratches his head in confusion.

“For once...it felt like you didn’t hate me.” She says truthfully. Hoseok stares at her profile, a little caught off guard by how fragile her voice was. Genuine hurt.

“I don’t hate anyone.” He sounded offended. And well that was a lie. He hated two people, but only those two. Hate takes too much energy. Hate? She thinks he hates her?

Hoseok’s face scrunched up in angst, “Doc, I don’t hate you.” 

“But you hate soulmates and doctors.” She accused. Hoseok’s face fell into a frown. 

“Who told you that?” He snapped.

Y/n rolls her eyes, “What does it matter? I got the message.” 

Hoseok was getting angry. She spoke like she had him figured out. He knows he can be cold but...hate? 

“What about you doc?” His voice was venomous, “Do you really like me?”

“Yes.” She says strongly. 

“You really like me? Or do you like the image of a soulmate? The idea of a soulmate is what you like. I am not the picture-perfect guy you dreamed of, stop trying to put me in that box.”

She looks at him, scrutinizing his face. Hoseok watched her eyes move all across his face, taking in every facial feature of his. Her eyes were big and honest. He couldn’t doubt anything she’d say with a look like that.

“I do admit, I liked the idea of a soulmate. I liked the idea of meeting someone and just connecting instantly and understanding each other.” She said sternly.

“My point is proven.” Hoseok’s harsh tone and disapproving gaze weren’t scaring her. She didn’t back down, still gazing up at his face.

“But I understand now that soulmates aren’t a guaranteed thing. There aren’t fireworks the moment you lock eyes.” She looks down at her pinky, gazing at Hoseok’s initials tattoed onto her skin. 

“You were not what I expected. Your lifestyle is frightening and dangerous. You are cold, calculating, hard to read and sometimes scary. You’ve probably killed people and I’m sure committed many crimes. Hell, I sat here and played ‘couple of the year’ while the others robbed artwork.”

“Oh--” A voice said from the entryway. Both Hoseok and Y/n turn their attention to Jungkook who stared on with wide eyes. He wasn’t sure what he had walked in on, but he was hesitant to speak. The atmosphere was heavy and uncomfortable.

“Noona, I’ll be taking you home.” He announced, “Just let me know when you’re ready to go.” Jungkook’s eyes flickered between the two adults, wondering what conversation had happened before he walked in.

“Thank you Jungkook,” Y/n’s voice wavered, “I’ll be right there.” She dismissed him. Jungkook gave his boss a pointed look before turning around to go where he came from.

Y/n sighed, pushing her body off the ledge and standing straight. She smoothed her dress and brushed off any possible dirt. 

She looked back up at Hoseok and flashed a sad smile, “Despite all those things. Your lifestyle, your crimes, and your cold attitude ...I still like you.”

Hoseok scoff, “Really?” He was nearly laughing. Not because he found her confession funny, but he didn’t know what else to do. He was rendered speechless. 

“Truly.” She confirmed, not daring to look away from him. The smile remaining from his laughing fell slightly.  Y/n stepped closer to Hoseok. He watched closely, looking down as one of her hands found his. She held his hand, stretched her head up and put her lips to his cheek. She kissed his cheek briefly.

There were traces of wine on her lips, but she certainly wasn’t drunk. She had her balance. Her eyes were shown to doubt or uncertainty. The same and now familiar shampoo tickled his nose. Her hand held his tightly, it was warm and soft. 

Her lips were only on his cheek for all of 3 seconds before she pulled back and let go of his stiff hand. He felt like the side of his whole face was on fire. The skin where she touched had grown hot.

“Tonight was fun. Thank you Hoseok.” With that, she spun around and made her way back inside. Probably going to find Jungkook so she could go home. 

Hoseok stood in his spot, trying to collect his thoughts. His incoherent thoughts were being drowned out by the playing of the violins and drums from inside. 

...wait. Drums? There weren’t any drums playing. 

It was the loud and fast pounding of his heart, overshadowing his scattered thoughts and the violins.

-------

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think!

[argylemnwrites]

Getaway

Pairing: Bryce Lahela x MC (Cassie Vanderfield)

Book: Open Heart (about 5 months after the end of Book 1)

Word Count: ~1000

Rating: PG

Summary: Bryce and Cassie’s weekend trip to Cape Cod didn’t exactly turn out as planned

Author’s Note: The last of my very late Autumn prompts, renting a cabin! This one was requested by @octobereighth way too long ago, but I’ve finally delivered! Trying to be efficient here and also use this for day 14 for 41 Days of Cheer (travel) because I live by myself and therefore feel no shame with a little double dipping!

“Stop hogging all the blankets,” Cassie moaned as she tugged at the fleece currently spread across the center of the bed.

Bryce opened his mouth to retort, but it hurt too much to speak. His throat felt raw and burning, like hundreds of little scalpels were being dragged along his pharynx. He wanted another cough drop, but they were all the way in the bathroom, and the ten feet between the bed and the sink might as well be ten miles for how far away it felt.

This was not how Bryce had pictured this weekend going when he’d suggested to Cassie that the two of them rent a cabin on Cape Cod for a long weekend as a mini getaway after Cassie mentioned having to go from August to April without a week of vacation. But between trying to avoid the insanity of summer costs on the Cape and conflicting rotation schedules, they hadn’t been able to get out there until November.

The cold weather would have been bad enough, but Bryce was confident they would have been able to adapt, find ways to enjoy themselves in spite of the biting winds and gloomy skies. What they hadn’t counted on was an early influenza season. And while being in the OR for his trauma call rotation meant that Bryce always got to wear a mask around patients, Cassie was in the ED this block. Of course, they’d both gotten their flu shots this year, but as they’d informed patients countless times, the flu vaccine didn’t provide perfect protection. This year, they were both in the unlucky camp.

Cassie had warned him that she’d had some chills and rigors a couple of days before they were set to leave, offered to cancel and steer far clear of him, but Bryce had blown off her concerns, convinced that she was just imagining that she’d caught influenza when it was far more likely that she’d contracted some other, less severe virus. He had clearly been very wrong. 

So, instead of a romantic getaway in a little cabin for 4 days, 3 nights, they were instead both miserable, aching, febrile, congested, and just plain gross-feeling. They were paying $145 a night to lay around in bed, buried under every blanket they could find in the rental. If Bryce wasn’t so exhausted, he might have been more annoyed by that fact, but all he could find the energy to do was to roll over before falling back asleep.

Bryce drifted off at some point, even though it was the middle of the afternoon. Between the flu and his weird sleep schedule on his current rotation, falling asleep during the day was very easy. Eventually, he woke up shivering, reaching to tug some of the blankets back from Cassie, but finding her half of the bed empty.

“Cassie?” he croaked out, his voice raspy, dry, and distorted.

A few seconds later, Cassie shuffled around the corner, wrapped in a blanket and carrying a glass of water. “Here’s your Tamiflu,” she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper as she set the glass of water and a couple of pills on the bedside table, “and some ibuprofen.”

Bryce picked up the orange and white capsule, but left the three red tablets on the nightstand, shaking his head, “I don’t need ibuprofen.”

“Bryce, you have a fever.”

“I know. The fever is an evolutionary advantage that helps the human body fight off viral infections. I’m not going to purposely undo that.”

“Fine, be miserable.”

“Fevers are only uncomfortable as you are spiking one. Once you reach your new-” Bryce countered, but he was cut off as Cassie let out a miserable groan.

“Enough, enough,” she said, crawling back under the covers on her side of the bed, mumbling something about “doctors” and “terrible patients.” Bryce took a sip of water to take the Tamiflu, noticing that Cassie hadn’t bothered to unwrap the blanket she’d been wearing as a cape as he did so.

“You planning on sharing that blanket?” he asked as he set down the glass of water and grabbed his phone in exchange.

“No,” she answered matter-of-factly before rolling to face him.

Bryce just stared at her for a moment, but when she raised her eyebrows defiantly, he knew how he had to respond. Mustering all his energy, he flung his body over to her side of the bed, wrapping his arms around her and grabbing at the blanket.

“Bryce!” she rasped out, wheezing out a few chuckles at his sudden move. Unfortunately for them both, the blanket somehow ended up on the floor in the midst of it all. “Now look what you’ve done,” she said, her tone much more playful than her words, wrapping her arms around his neck as they settled into a loose cuddle. 

“Gross, you’re all clammy,” she added with another couple of weak giggles.

“One, you are just and gross and clammy as me. Two, this situation is one hundred percent your fault, so you’re gonna help me pick out a restaurant for dinner.”

“Bryce, you’re insane if you think I’m leaving this cabin.”

He just shook his head, holding up his phone, “Delivery, Cassie. I don’t plan on letting you leave this bed.”

Normally, an innuendo like that would lead to some flirting back and forth before things escalated, but given the circumstances, Bryce was glad to draw a genuine laugh from Cassie, even though it did trigger a bit of a coughing fit. Sure, this was probably no one’s idea of a good weekend trip, but it could be a lot worse. At the end of the day, most trips were more about the company than the destination, anyway.

Tags @mfackenthal @lilyofchoices @thequeenchoices @octobereighth @feartheendlesssummer @tallulahshh @fortunatelywaywardsandwich @dreaming-of-movies @choicesarehard @universallypizzataco @omgjasminesimone @srta-give-me-my-jax-rl  @jlpplays1-41daysofcheerchallenge​

[lindoig8]

Halls Creek (almost) to Katherine, 15-17 June

Tuesday, 15 June

We were preparing the van to move on when I got a call from Toyota in Katherine where I had made an online booking on Friday night for a car service. They have a 7-week waiting list – do I want to add our car to the list? No thank you, I will look elsewhere. I tried Toyota in Kununurra – their wait-list is only a bit over 6 weeks – but again, no thanks! I hadn’t tried Halls Creek where we had the car in a few days ago because they had told me that their mechanics were out of town so their workshop would be closed all week. I just rang them to see if they had any other suggestions and they said it was an easy service and one mechanic was there who could do the job if we came in at 1pm. They had fewer bookings because their main mechanics were away so we got in without delay. They had already promised to make time to replace an Anderson Plug on the van for us as we left town so it was easy to add the service too. We were delighted to get the service done: a few hundred clicks earlier than necessary, but certainly better than 4 or 5000 clicks over given the nature of our travels.

As soon as the service was complete and we had let some air out of our tyres, we topped up with fuel and hit the road at 3.15 pm. We were heading out on the Duncan Road – yet another iconic stock route, very bumpy with steep, deep dips and crests and constant corrugations, but not as horrific as some we have driven recently. Our maximum speed was restricted to about 55 to 60 kph due to the dips – as well as quite a few rough water crossings.

We passed the China Wall as soon as we were on the gravel but didn’t get out of the car – just stopped and looked. We visited it more closely last time we were here – while waiting to get the van towed to Kununurra to get its axle replaced. It is a remarkable white quartz wall up to 6 metres high that runs for over 100 kilometres in a more-or-less straight line – amazing stuff, but we were suitably amazed 4 years ago and kept driving. A little further on was Old Halls Creek that we also explored at length last time we were here. It is the site of the original township and is quite extensive (probably a bit bigger than Farina that I discussed in a post several weeks ago), some of it is moderately well preserved, but most of it is just dilapidated ruins or worse. Once the residents leave and it becomes a tourist destination, there is obviously no reason to spend money on maintenance so the whole edifice collapses – if it didn’t, I am not sure how many tourists would bother visiting. Again, we stopped and looked from the Road, but then kept going.

We only did 42 kilometres for the day and camped in wonderful gravel pit. (We have had some wonderful nights in gravel pits!!!) We were expecting to find a place called Palm Springs (hopefully, with no luxury high-rises, 5-car garages and casinos) but saw an inviting side road that took us out of sight of the main track and we camped there for the night. It was very special! I went for a walk to the top of a craggy hill near the caravan to take some photos and saw some Rainbow Bee-eaters among other things. The whole area is covered with green spinifex so walking is sometimes painful, but the view was certainly worth it. The gravel pit was in a green valley (almost lush by local standards) with a spectacular red stone ridge and associated cliff running for at least a kilometre above it. Quite beautiful.

We sat outside for our Happy Hour with an excellent red, great nibbles, a fantastic sunset, extraordinary fishbone clouds and superb company, surrounded by birdsong in some of the most specky country we have seen. We were looking at the silhouette of a beautiful drooping tree just in front of us when the skyline behind it started to move – and a big old kangaroo hopped from centre stage to exit right! A cool breeze, glorious solitude (except for the world’s most wonderful lover), a velvet sky splashed with glittering diamonds, embedded in nature…….. How could it possibly get any better?

Wednesday, 16 June

We woke a little later than usual for some reason. It was almost full light when I opened my eyes and a wake-up coffee was soon on the way. We both seemed a little reluctant to start the day so sat up in bed and did more than our usual quota of puzzles - but all good things must come to an end and time and breakfast waits for no man.

We ate and did the dishes and were all ready to go when we decided to explore the area a little more as I did last night before moving on. We climbed the nearby hill again, eschewing the spinifex with only moderate success and we were on our way again.

The whole area is a hodgepodge of red stony ridges, green spinifex, beautiful white-trunked (and other) trees, picturesque lumpy hills popping out of the plain at random, rolling pastoral country, craggy rocks – a truly wonderful place to visit. No wonder so many people come to visit and never go home.

After only a couple of kilometres, we found the place we had been looking for the previous evening – Palm Springs! Not too glitzy, but a lovely little area at the side of the road with a very small creek fed by a very small waterfall (one of the springs?), but with enough birds to keep me busy for half an hour or so. The Yellow-tinted Honeyeaters were the best.

It was a great little area and we took a few pics, but we still think our hidden camping spot out of sight of the road last night was better. It gave us some wonderful privacy, and solitude that we wouldn’t have had immediately beside the roadway at Palm Springs.

A few clicks further on, we saw the turnoff to Sawpit Gorge so off we went. It was only four kilometres in - but four kilometres back out again with virtually nowhere to turn around. (Reversing the caravan 4 clicks on that terrain was simply not an option!!!) We did all sorts of manoeuvres to turn the car and van around – and then undid them all when we couldn’t quite get around without completely jack-knifing the rig. We eventually backed far enough into a partially cleared spot to turn around and off we went without exploring the Gorge at all. We were just glad to be out of there after the trauma of turning the van around. Then, perhaps a hundred metres up the hill, we found a place where we could have parked and turned relatively easily, but there were no warning signs and then it was too late.

This whole area is spectacular. It is very hilly with hundreds of dramatic rocky jump-ups, often heavily vegetated and with beautiful, graceful trees. There is a lot of vicious spinifex, but also extensive areas of softly-waving grassy fronds. For kilometres, there was a uniform mantle of soft creamy 30-centimetre high grass, interspersed every 3 or 4 metres with a 2-metre spike of some sort of recently-deceased reeds. The topography was outstanding: colourful rocky outcrops, undulating hills and steep cliffs, but the trees and grasses were also quite arresting – so different from what we are accustomed to.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. After yesterday’s bumpy drive with dips and crests, the road improved. It was still very corrugated with rocky patches and numerous shallow creek crossings – deepest probably 35-40 cm deep – but we were still rarely up to 60 kph maximum. We eventually reached the point where Duncan’s Road turned north and where we turned south onto another stock route, the Buntine Highway – hardly recognisable as a highway, consistently corrugated and sometimes barely wheel-track wide. This track took us back into the Northern Territory again with no Quarantine or Covid notices – but they came a little later.

We only drove 200 kilometres for the day and camped just off the road near a windmill and bore and sat outside the van with cold drinks and nibbles as the sun went down and the heat of the day was blown away by a gentle cooling breeze. There was a bit of dust in the van but not too bad and we are looking forward to some bitumen and slightly faster speeds tomorrow afternoon.

Thursday 17 June

So much for faster speeds! It was pretty rough for half the day, but it certainly improved once we hit the bitumen – not too hot in some places, barely wheel-track wide, but it improved the further we went.

As to internet speeds, the opposite occurred. We had a good signal at Kalkaringi but no signal at all in Top Springs tonight and the people in the Roadhouse say that Vodaphone is the only provider that covers this area. Good old Telstra fails again.

So where are we and how did we get here? We are in Top Springs at the intersection of yet another

part of the Binns Track (part of the Savannah Way that we drove end-to-end four years ago) and the Buntine Highway (aka the Buntine Goat-track in places).

We drove 330 kms today, half on gravel (superb to terrible at times) and half on often quite poor bitumen, mostly barely wide enough to keep all wheels on the paved surface. Almost all drivers we saw today were really good though, getting completely off the road to give us priority - something I have tried to do most of the time, but have rarely seen others doing it before today. It is far better to vacate the road, even to stop, and let the oncoming maniacs roar through on the bitumen than to drive into the wall of stones thrown up by them. And depending on wind direction (why is it always blowing into my side of the car?), we have to stop for up to 30 seconds every time a car passes anyway so we can see the way forward and not drive into a possible second oncoming vehicle.

Today, we drove quite a few kilometres at 20 kph or less due to the vicious corrugations. Faster than that and I had no control at all. The brakes were entirely ineffective and the steering wasn’t much better because no two wheels were on the road at any time. It was horrendous until we got to the roadworks where two graders were carving out a beautifully smooth passage for us, albeit on the wrong side of the road - but out here, there is rarely a right side: the right side is the one that’s not quite as bad as the other side, i.e., the side that everyone uses. Of course, that changes frequently, so we zigzagged back and forth (as did any other vehicles), just hoping that we didn’t zig when we should have zagged or vice versa.

We drove through another area of dramatic jump-ups – small sharp hills erupting out of entirely flat grasslands. I mentioned The Granites on the Tanami and a possible extension of them on the way to Halls Creek and we encountered another similar few square kilometres again today.

We ate our lunch at Kalkaringi, formerly Wave Hill, where we tried unsuccessfully to find a workshop to which we were directed to put a bit more air in our tyres - so we drove the next 170 kms with slightly lower pressures than intended. We also tried to find the Police to comply with the requirement to complete a Covid form immediately we crossed back into the NT but the local cop was out of town. Next cop will be in Katherine tomorrow, but maybe by then, the urgency to complete the form may have abated. (And it had! Approaching Katherine there was a roadside sign asking interstate travellers coming from a declared hotspot to ring the local health authorities – nothing more!)

One good thing about Kalkaringi was the strong internet signal that allowed us to download close to 50 emails each while we ate our lunch, very few of which warranted any action.

We then drove on to Top Springs – bitumen all the way and set up behind the Roadhouse with good water, hot and cold showers, power, but no internet. We were hot and dusty so went for a drink at the Roadhouse bar and the barman recognised us. We had been chatting with him and his girlfriend, backpackers from Germany, when we were all exploring the Henbury Craters south of Alice six weeks or so ago. It is a small world and we may cross paths again on our way back west.

It was great to have a shower and to plug the fridges into AC power overnight as well as mains pressure water. And I even added a couple of bird species to our trip list. It currently stands at 137 including six additions to our Life-list.

Despite our drink in the bar (and one in the van with the fan on), we were still hot so we ate our dinner outside, augmented with some hot chips straight from the bar. They cooked a batch specially for us, all double-fried, and just enough for 3 meals each.

And after dinner we watched the very final episode of White Collar, all six series of which have accompanied us most nights since we left home. We enjoyed the series and I am delighted to report that ‘the gooduns won’.

That just left us with an easy run into Katherine tomorrow, but I will leave that for another post.

[arastiia]

REALLY, REALLY LONG  CHARACTER  SURVEY. RULES.  repost ,   don’t  reblog  !    tag  10  !  good  luck  !

TAGGED BY:@absolutiia & @mammaterasu (lemme luv u) TAGGING: (last few in my activity) @gloriatiia, @starrfated, @vcgabcnd, @aevyternal, @matoiii, @vindictiia, @wingedborn, @way-of-flowers, @tiiamate, @moralistiius​ & @drautcs.

BASICS.

FULL  NAME:  Satsuki Kiryuin. NICKNAME: Sats, sis, nee-san  (Ryuko); Satsuki-chan (Jakuzure) -- mostly post-KLK.  AGE: 18; turns 19 shortly after Ragyo’s death. BIRTHDAY: September 9th. ETHNIC  GROUP: Asian. NATIONALITY: Japanese. LANGUAGE / S: Japanese, English. SEXUAL  ORIENTATION: (prob.) asexual. ROMANTIC  ORIENTATION: biromantic. RELATIONSHIP STATUS: complex. CLASS: High; the Kiryuins belong to the richest & wealthiest families ever known.  HOME TOWN / AREA: Honnouji; later on Kanagawa. CURRENT  HOME: Kiryuin Mansion. PROFESSION: Honnouji Academy Student Council President, Heiress to the Kiryuin Empire; new CEO of rebuilt REVOCs (post-KLK)

PHYSICAL.

HAIR: varies; black. Used to be extremely long (110 cm); short / shoulder-long (post-KLK) EYES: color varies, depending on incidence of light. Dark blue most part of the time, sometimes gray. Satsuki possesses narrow eyes which are framed by very distinct eyebrows. One of the few physical features she definitely shares with her mother. NOSE: Pointed.  FACE: angular, defined jaw & keen contours.  LIPS: rather thin. Perpetually frowning. COMPLEXION: Pale. Almost white when compared to her sister’s skin. BLEMISHES:  if examined close enough one will spot a petite patch of burnt skin on her back right between both shoulder blades (set on her spine). Hinting at the spot where life fibers made first contact during exerted experiments (in her youth). Mere ‘touch’ burnt the child’s skin, rendering her unfit  for further tests. Said piece of skin was later on cut open before both parents eventually realized that aforsaid life fibers could not make contact with her neural system (connection error). Satsuki’s right hallux nail has furthermore been replaced with a custom made steel implement.

SCARS: minor cut (almost bleached out/barely visible) right beneath her left cheekbone. Moreover three insection scars on left brachium, long cut / scar on right side of her neck (knife wound which she often covers with high collars / hair) -- post-KLK. TATTOOS: None. HEIGHT: 164 cm (172 cm with heels). WEIGHT: around 58 kg. BUILD: Slender in shape; defined muscle in arms, back & stomach. Long legs, broad hips + shoulders. FEATURES: sharp & stoic. ALLERGIES: None. USUAL  HAIR  STYLE: hair is kept extremely straight & tidy; both bangs & hair-ends cut in a perfectly horizontal manner. This changes as soon as she shortens her hair. Despite keeping her style 'neat’ still, it often stays more loose & a bit ‘wilder’. USUAL  FACE  LOOK: rather apathetic, devoid of emotion yet undeniably calm at the same time. Brows oft furrowed, eyes steely. USUAL  CLOTHING: various uniforms. Colors of choice are white & blue. Later perhaps even black -- Albeit having been a part of the fashion industry for quite some time already, Satsuki owns no sense for trends at all. This leads to her being prone to dress very formal; rather simple & plain. Items like long blouses & skirts are her favorites; she hardly will wear flat shoes & truly prefers heels (8cm) -- It is also known Satsuki sticks to more loose & unrevealing clothing when being able to choose. 

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR / S: Failure, losing those considered as family, being devoured by Junketsu & (post-KLK) becoming just like her mother. ASPIRATION / S: Killing Ragyo Kiryuin thus stopping her from gaining world domination; revenge for her dead father & baby sister (pre-episode 18) -- later on, protecting Ryuko & redemption become her driving force. After fulfilling this aim (thus losing her purpose), the rebuilding of REVOCs & the idea of helping those once hurt becomes the distraction she direly needs. POSITIVE  TRAITS: Ambition, sheer endless willpower, diligence, intellect, passion, rationality / ability to think out of the box, dedication & will to protect her ‘family’.  NEGATIVE  TRAITS: manipulator, can have an ill-temper when losing control, hardly shows any empathy, can be seen as taciturn, apathetic,cruel & cold. Lacks the will to open up, tends to isolate herself, arrogant. Cannot see herself being human (’an experiment’,etc). MBTI: INTJ. ZODIAC: Virgo. TEMPEREMENT: Choleric. SOUL  TYPE / S: Leader, Thinker. ANIMALS:  Owl. VICE  HABIT / S:  manipulating / torturing others & donning Junketsu thus wrecking own body in the process. FAITH: Satsuki considers herself an atheist. GHOSTS?: No. AFTERLIFE?: in a way,yes. REINCARNATION?: No. ALIENS?: obviously.  ECONOMIC  PREFERENCE: Satsuki owns a high position / plenty of wealth; she does,however prefer a rather humble & minimalistic life style. SOCIOPOLITICAL  POSITION: CEO; business woman. EDUCATION  LEVEL: basic school education + advanced education in several specific fields, excellent business skills.

FAMILY.

FATHER: Soichiro Kiryuin (deceased). MOTHER: Ragyo Kiryuin (deceased). SIBLINGS: Ryuko Matoi (alive). EXTENDED  FAMILY: Nui Harime (’artificial’ second sister.), Devas. NAME  MEANING / S:  To offer a more indepth analysis; the name Satsuki can be translated into ‘moon’; thus refering to most symbolic traits the moon possesses. White & blue are her main colors, water & air her main elements. She is an introvert; reserved & the calm force opposing her sister Ryuko (the sun). Satsuki can also (symbolically speaking) refer to the satsuki azalea: a certain type of bonzai which is famous for its beauty & sturdiness when groomed with enough finesse & dedication.

‘Kiryuin’ roughly means  "imperial house” (refering to her general family & the mere might it possesses) &  “empress, emperor". It is also important to note that the word ‘dragon’ can be found in there too (when analysing the kanji) -- given Satsuki’s role during KLK & the dragon symbolism found in both Junketsu’s activated form & the transformation scene itself, the meaning of said finding can be considered as rather self-explanatory.

HISTORICAL  CONNECTION?: n/A.

FAVORITES.

BOOK: heavy content appealing to her level of intellect. Prose / poetry & various rather philosophical works oft interest her too. It nonetheless depends on her mood. Classic drama / tragedy can be relaxing in her pov aswell. 5 SONGS: Classical music in general; Jakuzure’s  pieces are a blessing in her pov. DEITY: Athena. HOLIDAY: probably Christmas; Satsuki invests a lot of time & effort into preparing meals / gifts for Ryuko & her devas. She loves spending time with those she cherishes & surely takes a liking in the familiar atmosphere it entails. This only applies to post-KLK scenarios. Holidays hardly mattered to her while mother was still alive. MONTH: no specific one.  SEASON: Perhaps autumn. PLACE: despite liking to be among Ryuko & her devas in general, Satsuki oftentimes strives for isolation -- in this case own apartment appears to be the safest choice.  WEATHER: Rain soothes her.  SOUND: Clashing steel, falling rain, soft melody of a piano or quiet pieces of classical music played in the background; to name a few. Kiryuin does nonetheless cherish silence / a certain tranquility above most other things. SCENT / S: brewed tea. old books, freshly washed/ironed clothing, to name a few. TASTE / S: Anything bitter. FEEL / S: nothing specific. Then again Satsuki surely favors the feeling of being in total control & undeniable security. Gentleness is high on her list too for several reasons. ANIMAL / S: majestic creatures with highly symbolic value. She bases her favorites on certain situations or rational choice / value more often than not. NUMBER: no specific one. COLOURS: several shades of blue.

EXTRA.

TALENTS: great leader/motivator, extraordinarily good at rhetoric, manipulation, master in swordmanship / dual swordmanship, several martial arts, master of self-control, good listener/advisor, quick learner, etc. BAD  AT: acknowledging/dealing with own trauma, keeping (platonic) relationships alive, opening up / talking about herself, being ‘human’, coping (post-KLK), sarcasm & humor, picking the right clothes. TURN  ONS: she would rather avoid thinking about something like that at the moment.  TURN  OFFS: ^^^^ HOBBIES: reading & several other rather artistic occupations, sparring (kendo,etc), simply enjoying a cup of tea. She does not frequent hobbies as such given her occupation -- reading is thus perhaps the only activity she can uphold. Other than that she also enjoys being in her sister’s company / doing casual ‘stuff’ alongside Jakuzure.  AESTHETIC  TAGS: strategy, tea, Victorian Age, literature, books, conquer, katanas, control, poetry, classical music.

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1: If  you  could  write  your  character  your  way  in  their  own movie , what  would  it  be called, what  style  would  it  be filmed  in,  and  what  would  it  be  about ? �� I would love to learn more about Satsuki’s childhood as such; about her life during these years, her education, the role she played in later years. How exactly did she conquer Honnouji, how did Ragyo’s & her interactions work out (not necessarily the ‘abuse part’ but more their dialogues, Ragyo’s influence on her earlier childhood,etc), how did the devas influence her life? How did she interact with them? How big was Jakuzure’s impact? How did they develop Honnouji Academy as such? -- to be honest there is a lot I wish to know. Perhaps also more about her mentality. About her redemption post-KLK, yada yada.

I have no specific name in mind but its title would probably be minimalistic. As for the style? I am not really thinking about a movie / documentation but more of a novel, I suppose.

Q2 : What  would  their  soundtrack / score  sound  like? — Heavy & militant pieces which feature a lot of power but also ‘softer’ piano compositions that are rather melancholic. Satsuki would def need some female singers in there too. Maybe also tracks featuring the ‘Aurora’ or ‘Cry no More’ vibe. Songs that seem to start rather atypically but evolve into VERY powerful songs carried by a certain celestical tune. It really depends on the context.The majority of her score would consist out of very strong songs with a bit of fragility / melancholy mixed in here & there. Q3: Why  did  you  start  writing  this  character? —  Satsuki is complex. A masterpiece in terms of character writing. She is certainly one of the richest characters I know & I love the amount of layers her character has. Writing her proves a challenge -- her dialogue is composed, every word often meaning much more than one might believe; also her psyche. Her drive. Her general story. I am simply drawn to antagonistic, manipulative heroes with surprisingly soft hearts & a terribly tragic backgroundstory who do awful things for the sake of serving a noble call. It gives me life TBH. Q4: What  first  attracted  you  to  this  character? — her power. & perhaps her design. The way she walked down the stairs in this undeniably majestic way? The way she held her first speech? I was sold.  Q5: Describe  the  biggest  thing  you  dislike  about  your  muse. — her manipulative streak. How she treats her devas in the first half of the show. Even if I understand why she had to do this / why she performed the deeds she did; it hurts me everytime.  Q6: What  do  you  have  in  common  with  your  muse? — we are both manipulators. We are both hella introvert & driven. I cut my hair short kinda like Satsuki did too; I lowkey love running around in heels all day aswell. Other than that? Not that much.  Q7: How  does  your  muse  feel  about  you? — hmmm. I am positive that she likes me.  Q8: What  characters  does  your  muse  have  interesting  interactions  with? — A lot of characters actually. I love seeing her interact with her devas (Jakuzure, Sanageyama, Gamagori & Inumuta) & ofc also Ryuko. My plots with Ragyo are very painful but feature an unique dynamic that truly strikes me. Then again, I usually only write with roleplayers whom muses could be considered as interesting to interact with.  Q9 : What  gives  you  inspiration  to  write  your  muse? — To be frank, I rarely really need inspiration? I sometimes rely on my experience drawn from similar characters which I wrote before (Kuvira most part of the time.) but other than that? Music, I guess. -- I also gain most of my motivation from writing down potential hc topics & discussing them with the squad. Q10: How  long  did  this  take  you  to  complete? — Sorta long. I rambled a lot + rewrote stuff around a thousand times tbh.

[drink-n-watch]

  Genre : Magical Girl; Fanservice; action; torment

Episodes: 12

Studio: LIDENFILMS

  Thank goodness for Magical Girls! If it hadn’t been for the legendary 5, the world would have been lost to the invading forces three years ago. Now they can finally kick back and enjoy a normal high school life. Well earned, to say the least. Nevermind that the unit was in fact 11 girls, only 5 of which made it out and that the devastating war has ravaged the earth making it ripe for criminal and terrorist organizations to run amuck. Someone probably should take care of those. No need to think about the fact that young girls were made to kill on a daily, and watch their friends die before their eyes or have their families in the line of danger because of them. Surely these things will have no lasting effects. A cute school uniform and some fun at the pool is all you need to wash all your worries away!

I’ve come to realize something about myself. I like the Magical Girl genre. I’m pretty sure I’ve enjoyed every single series that could loosely fit that description. Whether they be the gritty drama, cute innocent action or goofball comedy type. I must have subconsciously known this because I was looking forward to Asuka and brought it up my watch list very quickly. Did my bias hold true?

oh good!

Be honest with me guys, are my little above the fold paragraphs, stupid? I can take it. I really enjoy creating my own summaries, but the teaser paragraphs are another story. It’s just that jumping straight into the technical aspects of the series from there just seems so abrupt.

Anyways, Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka could have used more budget!

Ok, ok. To me, this series is a mix of highs and lows that more or less cancel each other out, and a lot of those lows are on the production side. The best technical asset by far is the character designs which are cute. Actually, they are basic for the most part except the actual magical girls that have that traditional overcomplicated and woefully unpractical aesthetic. I liked it! Everyone else just looks like stock anime characters. The voice acting wasn’t painful and the colours probably won’t hurt your eyes.

they might hurt something…

The rest of the production values should go into the lows. Atmospheric sound design doesn’t seem to have been given any consideration while the soundtrack was uninteresting and occasionally got in the way. Light was flat and framing and directing were basic. Not bad but what you would imagine a first effort to look like. By far the biggest flaw, however, was the animation and art.

Asuka is a high action series and animation was jagged and just unpolished. Occasionally still shots were intertwined to fill things out which made the end product even jumpier. Generally speaking, it gave the impression that the action scenes were just not quite finished and personally, it did take me out of the moment a little. I also noticed that battles are frequent but very short, or at least intercut with moments of stillness (a character lying knocked out while enemies slowly walk towards them, that sort of thing). I guess they couldn’t afford to animate longer sequences. As for the art, as I said the designs aren’t bad but it’s terribly inconsistent. One of the worst offenders I’ve seen in a long time.

great posture

You know what, I was going to talk about this later but let’s just get it out of the way. Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka is a sexualized show. There’s a lot of fanservice and some scenes border on lightly ecchi. This is not a problem in and of itself, however, the art is so inconsistent that instead of being tantalizing, these scenes become distracting if not a little confusing. The girls seem to gain and lose noticeable amounts of weight from one scene to the other. Even from one angle to the other. And not just going from B to DDD cups size. Thighs, waists even faces change proportions in very visible ways.

Moreover, details get lost and character models lose integrity with changes in angles. I have difficulty overlooking bad visuals in animes but I can get past it. However, when you have so many scenes that are supposed to just look great, that’s their main, occasionally only, purpose, then at least for those scenes, you should have really focused on the visuals. That’s my two cents. There are still some very nice fanservice moments if that’s all you care about, but I have a feeling you can find better easily, at least in terms of art consistency.

I know, scary!

The way I would describe Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka is that it’s an interesting plot with a classical premise, delivered in the most uninteresting way possible. I really liked that the story starts after the girls have already experienced (and been heavily scarred by) the atrocities of war. A lot of similar series start off with innocent optimistic girls that slowly get broken by harsh reality. With Asuka, the girls start broken and we get to explore the aftermath which I thought was a good take on it. Putting your weapons down when you essentially are a weapon. Good conflict, lots of potential for drama!

Similarly, the characters are just a little spicier than average. It’s the usual archetypes, the prodigy, the badass, the stoic genius ect… but already twisted and warped by the suffering they’ve had to endure. They’re a little haunted…a little wrong… That’s also an interesting twist.

Unfortunately, both character and plot development are given almost entirely through plain exposition and the writing is not witty or interesting enough to do the story justice. As a result, everything seems a bit more boring than it should and characters never really get to shine despite how potentially interesting they are.

I know right?!?

There’s also the classic problem that they tried to cram way too much into 12 episodes. Because so much of the current story is influenced by events that happened three years ago, the show feels constantly obligated to give us flashbacks to events and people long gone. However, we only get glimpses, so we never really establish and connection to those events. On top of that they need to introduce and develop 6 main characters, 4 main antagonists, an array of supporting characters, explain the laws of this magical universe and cram in some complicated story of interstellar/interdimensional warfare.

It’s just way too overstuffed. To the series’ credit, you do generally understand what’s happening at all times but not always the greater why, or why you should care. Oh, and it’s unfinished. The two main antagonists introduced in the early episodes sort of forgotten midway through and that storyline is never resolved. Instead of long scenes of sexualized torture (not kidding) that added really little to the story, I think we could have used some character-building moments and a little explanation of what the different realms are and why we’re at war. They could have had the characters stand around naked while talking about it, that way they could get the fanservice quota in as well. I’m a genius!

So did my bias hold true? Well, yes! Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka is not an objectively good anime in my opinion. And it’s easy to see that it could have been way better. But I still watched it all and was often curious about what would happen next. It’s a show I wish was better and that’s saying something. I still generally like all Magical Girl shows I’ve seen. But Asuka is possibly the one I liked least.

maybe she reminds me a bit of Tanya?

 Favourite character: Mia 

What this anime taught me: ummm..always have a cyanide capsule when going into enemy territory?

I love drunk me, but I don’t trust her

Suggested drink: Tampico Trauma 

Every time you see lots of blood – take a sip

dismemberment – big sip!

Every time the genki friend tackle hugs someone – take a sip

Every time there’s any Yuri – bow chica whoa wow

Every time– take a snack

Every time there’s a traumatic flashback – get some water

Every time there’s cleavage (front or back) – fan yourself

Every time there’s cleavage during a traumatic flashback – spit take

Every time there’s a magical girl transformation – take a sip

Every time anyone says “Magical girl” – breath in

Every time we see Francine – take a sip

Every time anyone mentions Phoenix is from Russia – switch to vodka

educational!

You know how it goes, I have a tone more pictures you can see/download/use…whatever you like, over here on imgur or if you prefer, on Pinterest. But I will give you a sample here:

    Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka in the Land of Trauma Genre : Magical Girl; Fanservice; action; torment Episodes: 12 Studio: LIDENFILMS   Thank goodness for Magical Girls! If it hadn’t been for the legendary 5, the world would have been lost to the invading forces three years ago.