#and the one who lives never says that they're not

[rizsu]

ꪆ୧ ── HUSH-HUSH ┊ KEEP IT A SECRET ﹑ JJK ⤿ starring: g. satoru ◟ choso ◟ sukuna ◟ f. toji.

꒰ love simulation ﹢ headcanon-type · most to least likely to keep your relationship a secret!

𖧷 · love, ‘su: i have nothing to say here but I Need To have this here for layout purposes. it Bothers me if its not there.

most likely 𓂃 can hold themselves back. choso and somewhat toji.

( pda = public display affection. )

listen, CHOSO can keep a secret, but leave it up to him and he would've made it known you two were dating. he's only keeping it a secret because you said to. when it comes to you, everyone knows he never questions your words.

in terms of pda . . . he doesn't do it — actually, he does, but only you know the true meaning to his touch. it's a regular thing to have an arm wrapped around your friend's shoulder, standing close to them, blah blah blah. you get the point: he keeps it entirely friendly.

this doesn't mean he's not clinging onto you the moment your peers aren't around! once they're out of his view, choso will not waste time to satisfy the itch he's been feeling. either he buries his head in your shoulder, whining about not being able to touch you at least, or his hands are intertwined with yours.

in mr. TOJI FUSHIGURO's case, your words are law. he usually sits back and let you do as you please — obviously he'd go along with whatever scheme you planned. he doesn't mind keeping to himself at all; he's not one for much pda anyway.

there are times where he gets touchy, though. he tries to keep it at a minimum, but don't let him be near you during a dinner-out with friends or anything of the sort. if he's seated next to you, trust, his hand will find comfort sitting on your thigh, occasionally squeezing here and there.

sometimes — really rare times — his friends suspect him. they don't reach the “are you dating y/n?” conclusion, but do they reach the “you got a thing for y/n or what?” one. it's all due to the fact that he softens his language with you. he doesn't curse, tone lowers an octave, and has a slight smile. three things his friends will never experience. he doesn't deny it, but he also doesn't confirm; he simply shrugs at their questions and never satisfies their curiosity.

least likely 𓂃 sorry, he's a bit selfish. satoru and sukuna.

SATORU . . . yeah, no. there's no way he would've succeeded. that's like asking him to not breathe for a day. when you brought up the idea of keeping the relationship a secret, he tried talking you out of it. why are you denying publicizing his affection for you? you must hate him, or are you hiding the fact that you're taken? satoru's dramatic, and his favourite literary device is hyperbole. he will exaggerate.

at first he tries his best to keep it a secret, but old habits die hard. calling you names clearly reserved for someone's romantic partner, arm snaked around your waist all the time, glaring at anyone who tries to flirt, giving you quick kisses — yeah, no way.

but, satoru does apologize for failing to obey! if you're mad at him for outing the relationship, he'll spend days upon days begging for forgiveness in creative ways til you accept his apology.

SUKUNA does not give a fuck. he's lived long enough to not care about secrecy. it's cute that you want to keep it on the low, but he prefers letting it known. pair that with him disliking physical contact with anyone else and you've got yourself the perfect recipe for disaster.

whenever he's not with you and someone approaches him — no matter the reason — he's quick to ring up his favourite sentence: yeah no, i'm taken. either that, or he's holding his palm up to reject them. he does not wish to engage with strangers. even his own friends struggle to get him out.

when he's with you, however, he's clinging to you like a magnet. game night with friends/family? he's pulling you to lean on him, doesn't fetch drinks for anyone but you, gets revenge for you if you lost the game, demands that they “go easy on y/n.” the list goes on. it took everyone zero time to put the clues together and figure out sukuna and you are a thing. it's entirely out-of-character for him to be nice in the first place.

[unendingwanderlust]

It's always a pity when no one leaves flowers on graves. Understandable, but a pity nonetheless.

Hopefully, paper flowers are an acceptable substitute. Lindaeareth always leaves one on those graves after cleaning the headstones and trimming the grass around them, humming a little song to the departed. It's slightly off-tune, as she never mastered the art of singing.

The grave Lindaeareth has left most of her paper flowers on belongs to Elizabeth, surname illegible due to time and neglect, who died at seventeen years of age back in 1824. Lindaeareth is only two years older than the girl ever was. Did she have a family? What was their relationship like?

Why is no one visiting her anymore?

Lindaeareth can't ask these questions. Not because Elizabeth has passed, but because she has never made an appearance. After all, death means little in this graveyard. Lindaeareth is on a first-name basis with many of its denizens, and they're more than eager to share stories from their lives with her.

In turn, she asks them whether they've seen her father. So far, no one has, and maybe she should stop asking altogether. Maybe he truly is forever lost.

When Lindaeareth rises after having placed the paper flower on the grave, she's no longer alone. The girl wears a long floral dress, with dramatic gigot sleeves and a lace collar. Strangely, her hair is loose, flowing down her shoulders in gentle waves.

“I need your help,” Elizabeth says.

“A message for your family?” Lindaeareth asks. It's by far the most common request.

Elizabeth shakes her head. “There is no body in this grave. I was never found."

"Can you remember where your body is?" After all, the memories of the dead are rarely intact. In certain cases, they resemble a broken mirror: all jagged edges and distorted images.

"Approximately. There are... others with me."

"A serial killer?"

Elizabeth nods. "One who was never caught."

Lindaeareth fishes her phone out of her pocket so as to let her mother know that she'll be late for dinner...

You've been hired to clean a graveyard every night for 80 bucks an hour. Its haunted. And by god you are going to make that 80 bucks an hour

[meltinglatte]

Bestfriend's Sister

Pairing : Mingyu × afab reader

Synopsis : in which mingyu has a crush on his best friend's sister but is too scared to ask her out ;)

Genre : short story, smut

Warnings : size k!nk, creampie, boob play, drinking, masturbat!on

[ New author, so if there are any mistakes let me know, will try to improve ]

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Chapter 1 : Meeting you again

Mingyu sat at his desk, the glow of his laptop illuminating the darkened dorm room. His notes sprawled chaotically across the table, mirroring the chaos in his mind. College life wasn't the smooth path everyone had promised.

"Just get into SNU," they said.

"Life will be set." Those words now felt like a cruel joke.

Surrounded by prodigies and overachievers, he often wondered if he truly belonged. Balancing academics, friendships, and the rare moments of self-care had become an exhausting juggling act.

And just when he thought it couldn't get more complicated, fate threw him a curveball.

At the 2024 fresher's party, amidst the crowd of enthusiastic new faces, his heart froze. There she was—his crush. The girl who had unknowingly stolen his heart years ago now stood a few feet away, laughing effortlessly with a group of freshmen. Mingyu's pulse quickened as a wave of disbelief washed over him.

"What is she doing here?" he muttered under his breath. For years, he'd assumed she would follow her brother's footsteps and study abroad. Her brother—his best friend—had often talked about how their family prioritized prestigious overseas education. Seeing her here, in his university, was the last thing Mingyu expected. It wasn't just her presence that threw him off. It was the tangled web of emotions that came with it.

Mingyu had long accepted that his feelings for her were off-limits. She wasn't just any girl; she was his best friend's sister. And if there was one unspoken rule in his life, it was this: never break the bro code.

He could already hear his friend's voice in his head, joking yet firm: "You even think about my sister, and I'll kill you, dude." It wasn't an actual threat—probably—but Mingyu had never dared to test it. Yet, seeing her now, radiant and completely unaware of the storm she'd just stirred in his heart, made things infinitely harder. As the evening wore on, he tried to act normal. To blend into the crowd. But his eyes kept drifting back to her. She looked different—not the high schooler he remembered but someone more confident, more vibrant. 

"Why now? Why here?" he thought. Life was already overwhelming, and now he had to deal with this? But deep down, he knew the truth. He wasn't mad because she was here. He was mad because, for the first time, he couldn't ignore the possibility of something more. And that scared him more than failing his next midterm.

"Eoh? Mingyu oppa?" Sera's voice broke through the noise of the crowded room. Her eyes lit up as she smiled at him, her face the perfect blend of surprise and warmth.

"It's been so long, right?" Mingyu froze for a moment, caught off guard by how effortlessly she drew his attention. Rubbing the back of his neck—a nervous habit he couldn't seem to shake—he managed a coy smile.

"Yeah, it has," he replied, his voice quieter than he intended. A brief silence settled between them, the kind that felt heavier than it should. Mingyu scrambled for something to say, anything to fill the growing gap. "Congrats," he finally offered, his tone sincere. "Getting into SNU's med school isn't easy. You must've worked really hard."

"Thank you, oppa." Sera's smile widened, her cheeks slightly tinged with pink.

Before either of them could say more, a loud voice cut through the moment. "SERA-YAH!" Her friends were calling from the other side of the party, their laughter and energy adding to the lively chaos of the party. Sera glanced over her shoulder before turning back to Mingyu.

"I think they're waiting for you," Mingyu said, his tone gentle but his expression unreadable. She hesitated for a moment, as if weighing whether to stay or go. "You're right. I'll see you later, oppa," she said with a small nod before heading toward her friends.

Mingyu watched her retreating figure, her laughter blending into the noise of the party. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair again, the familiar ache in his chest returning.

------------------

Some weeks later

"Bro, let's win this game," Joo Hyuk said, clapping Mingyu on the shoulder, his eyes brimming with determination.

"Yeah, let's do this!" Mingyu replied, his voice full of energy as he tightened his shoelaces and jogged onto the field.

The match between SNU's engineering department and the medicine department had drawn a sizable crowd, the atmosphere electric with cheers and chants. From the whistle's blow, it was clear this wasn't going to be an easy game. Both teams played fiercely, each pass and tackle charged with adrenaline.

It was neck-and-neck, the score tied until the final moments. Then, with a perfectly timed pass from Joo Hyuk, Mingyu seized the opportunity. With a sharp kick, the ball soared past the goalkeeper and into the net.

The engineering department erupted into cheers, their players rushing to huddle around Mingyu, who was grinning ear to ear. "We did it!" he shouted, his voice barely audible over the roar of celebration.

On the sidelines, Sera watched the scene unfold with a smile. The medicine department's supporters were quieter now, some already drifting toward the exit. She turned to her friends and laughed lightly, saying, "I guess we'll have to cheer a lot louder for our medicine department next time."

Mingyu, still catching his breath, heard her words over the noise. He glanced toward her, his grin softening. Her laugh, her effortless charm.

It wasn't the words that caught him off guard but her outfit — her cheerleading outfit. 

The way the uniform fit her, or how the vibrant red skirt clung to her thighs, drawing his eyes in an almost magnetic pull. It was the sheer presence she exuded from across the field that captivated him.

Mingyu had always been aware of her beauty, under the stadium lights, she was a vision that sent a rush of heat through him. Every leap, every sway of her hips was a siren call, pulling him in deeper despite the distance.

He gulped hard, trying to focus on the other celebrating their victory, but distraction had a way of creeping in when least expected. Mingyu felt an undeniable pressure building within him, an urgency that demanded his attention. "Oh shit, not now," he muttered under his breath, realizing he couldn't ignore the undeniable reaction his body was having any longer. The heat radiating from his cheeks was felt in more than just his face.

He excused himself, the camaraderie of his teammates drowning in the chaos of his thoughts as he slipped away towards the washroom. Once inside, he swiftly closed the door behind him, locking it with an almost desperate urgency. The small space was eerily quiet, but in the stillness, the rush of blood in his ears was deafening.

With shaky hands, he fumbled with his pants, feeling the strain of his arousal pressing tightly against the fabric. The image of Sera in that unforgettable outfit - the way it hugged her curves, the glimpses of her pale skin - played behind his eyelids. It was intoxicating, igniting a fire within him that was impossible to suppress.

As he freed himself, his breath quickened, the need to release the tension almost overwhelming. He thought of her laughter, the way she sparkled with energy, and the sight of her moving gracefully with each cheer. Each thought sent shivers through him, and he couldn't help but quicken his pace.

Mingyu leaned against the cool tiles of the wall, consumed by the moment, lost in his mind as the outside world faded away. In that tiny sanctuary, he allowed himself to indulge in the fantasy, letting the image of Sera dance across his thoughts, a vibrant whirl of red and gold that pushed him closer to the edge.

Chapter 2 : Pride First

Mingyu stepped out of the washroom, his face flushed, beads of sweat dotting his forehead. He ran a hand through his damp hair, avoiding Joo Hyuk's gaze as he leaned casually against the wall, arms crossed.

Joo Hyuk shot him a side-eye, his expression somewhere between amused and exasperated. "Seriously, dude? GET SOME PUSSY MAN," he muttered, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"I didn't come to the washroom to hear my roommate release himself in the university washroom," Joo Hyuk continued. 

"Sorry", Mingyu mumbled, his ears burning as he hurriedly brushed past Joo Hyuk.

Behind him, Joo Hyuk shook his head, muttering to himself, "This guy... hopeless.". 

-----------------------------

Two weeks had passed since that day, and Mingyu had made it his mission to avoid Sera. He steered clear of the med department entirely, choosing routes and spots where he knew he wouldn't run into her. It wasn't easy, but he convinced himself it was necessary.

That afternoon, he sat in the bustling campus canteen, savoring his boba and relishing a rare moment of peace. The sweet tapioca pearls were a small comfort in an otherwise chaotic schedule.

But peace was fleeting.

"Mingyu oppa!"

Her voice rang out, bright and unmistakable. His heart sank as he looked up to see Sera rushing toward him, her long hair flowing behind her, her smile as radiant as ever.

Mingyu forced a small, polite smile, his grip tightening on his drink. "Oh, hey, Sera."

"This weekend, can I go home with you?" she asked, her tone casual but her eyes hopeful. "My mom sent something for your mom, and she told me to give it to her directly."

Mingyu hesitated, the words catching in his throat. He scratched the back of his head, trying to buy himself a second to think. "Oh, um, sorry, but I'm not going home this weekend," he said, his voice as nonchalant as he could manage.

Sera tilted her head, her expression puzzled. "Huh? But you go home every weekend," she said, her brow furrowing slightly.

"Yeah, I know," he replied, quickly averting his gaze. "But I've got this big project to work on. You can go without me, though."

Her smile faltered for a moment, but she quickly recovered, nodding. "Oh, okay. I see."

Before she could say anything more, Mingyu stood, grabbing his cup. "I've got to get going. I'll see you around, Sera," he said hurriedly and walked off, leaving her standing there. 

----------------------

That weekend, Sera found herself standing in front of the Kim family's home. She rang the doorbell, clutching the small package her mother had given her. Moments later, the door swung open.

"What took you so long?" came a familiar voice, half-scolding, half-teasing. Mingyu's mother stood in the doorway, her expression softening the instant she saw Sera. "Oh, it's you, Sera! I thought it was Mingyu."

Sera offered a polite bow and a small smile. "Hello, auntie. Sorry to drop by unannounced."

"Nonsense! Come in, come in," Mrs. Kim said warmly, stepping aside to let her in. "It's always a pleasure to see you."

Once inside, the comforting scent of freshly brewed tea filled the air. Mrs. Kim led Sera to the living room, gesturing for her to sit. "Honey!" she called out toward the garden. "Look who's here!"

Mr. Kim emerged a moment later, wiping his hands on a towel. His face lit up when he saw her. "Ah, Sera! What a nice surprise. Come, have a seat," he said, pulling out a chair for her.

Sera couldn't help but smile at their warmth. "Thank you, uncle. I came to drop something off from my mom," she explained, holding up the package.

"What is it?" Mrs. Kim asked, curiosity flickering in her eyes as she watched Sera carefully unwrap the package.

As the final layer of wrapping came off, Mr. Kim leaned in for a better look. "Omo!" She exclaimed, her tone filled with surprise and admiration.

Inside lay a pristine, carefully preserved 30-year-old ginseng root, its rich golden hue a testament to its value.

"Mom heard that you weren't feeling well recently," Sera explained with a soft smile. "She said this 30-year-old ginseng would be perfect for you and insisted I bring it over."

Mrs. Kim's hand flew to her chest, her eyes widening. "Omo, Sera! This is so expensive. You didn't have to go through all this trouble!"

"Please, just take it," Sera said, her tone gentle but firm. "Mom would be upset if you didn't."

Mrs. Kim glanced at her husband, who nodded approvingly, a proud smile playing on his lips. "Your family is always so thoughtful," Mrs. Kim said, her voice tinged with gratitude. "Thank you, Sera. This means so much to me."

"Of course, auntie," Sera replied. "Mom said your health is more important than anything."

Mr. Kim chuckled warmly. "Looks like your mom has great timing. This will definitely help her feel better."

Mrs. Kim placed the ginseng back into its wrapping with care, her expression softening. "You must stay for dinner, Sera. I won't take no for an answer."

Sera laughed lightly and nodded, her heart warmed by the sincerity of their gratitude.

"I don't understand why Mingyu didn't come home," Mrs. Kim said, her brows knitted as she placed another dish on the dinner table. "He told me just last Monday that he'd be coming back to pick up some important things."

She sighed, her frustration evident. "He should have at least given us a call," she added, shaking her head.

Sera, seated across from them, glanced up from her plate. "Oppa said he had a project to work on," she said casually between bites, trying to downplay the situation.

"Project?" Mr. Kim interjected, his fork pausing mid-air. "What project? He told me just last week that he was finally free because his project was done." He frowned thoughtfully. "Did the professors give him another one so soon?"

Mrs. Kim crossed her arms, her expression softening into mild concern. "Something doesn't add up. He's usually so responsible about keeping us informed."

Sera's thoughts clouded as she processed the conversation. Mingyu was avoiding her—she knew that much—but to go to such lengths to steer clear of her? That realization hit harder than she expected.

She forced herself to finish dinner quickly, the food tasting bland against the turmoil in her mind.

"It would've been nice if you stayed the night," Mrs. Kim said warmly as Sera got up to leave.

"Next time, Auntie," Sera replied with a polite smile, bowing deeply before stepping out of the house.

The moment she was outside, the weight of her thoughts bore down on her. "Does he really hate spending time with his best friend's little sister this much? Am I... that embarrassing?"

"Fine," Sera muttered under her breath, clenching her fists as she walked to the bus stop. "If I'm that embarrassing, then I'll avoid him too. I'm Jeon Sera, after all."

Her voice carried a defiant edge, as if saying it aloud would make her resolve stronger. She straightened her shoulders, forcing herself to hold her head high as the bus pulled up.

The ride back to the college dorms was quiet, save for the hum of the engine and the occasional chatter of other passengers. Sera stared out the window, the city lights blurring past her.

"If he doesn't want to see me, then so be it," she thought, though a small pang of hurt lingered in her chest. "I've got my pride too."

Chapter 3 : Make Him Jealous

Three weeks had passed since Mingyu last saw Sera. At first, when he was avoiding her, he'd still catch glimpses of her around campus—a fleeting silhouette in the crowd, her laughter echoing in the distance. But now, it was as if she had vanished into thin air.

Not once did he see her near the library, the canteen, or even the med department corridors.

Mingyu adjusted his bag on his shoulder, glancing around the campus grounds as he walked to class. The familiar buzz of students chatting and rushing past him felt oddly hollow. He shook his head, trying to push the thought away.

"I guess it's for the best," he muttered under his breath, his words lacking the conviction he wanted them to carry.

"Bro, wanna party after class?" Joo Hyuk leaned over, grinning as he nudged Mingyu.

"Nah, I'm fine," Mingyu replied, shaking his head.

"Come on, man," Joo Hyuk pressed, but before he could push further, the professor entered the room, silencing the chatter. Mingyu turned his attention to the front, zoning in on whatever physics the professor was explaining.

When the bell rang, signaling a break, Joo Hyuk was already on his feet. "Oh, finally a break! Come on, let's roam around the campus."

"It's just 15 minutes," Mingyu argued, opening his book. "What's the point of going out?"

Joo Hyuk rolled his eyes. "I'm not hearing all that." Without waiting for another word, he grabbed Mingyu's arm and dragged him out of the classroom.

"Damn, it's sunny," Joo Hyuk groaned, shielding his eyes as they walked toward the canteen. Once inside, he headed straight for the cashier. "Two iced Americanos, please."

While Joo Hyuk waited, Mingyu wandered near the seating area, his eyes scanning the room. He paused mid-step when he saw her. Sera.

"Oppa?" Her familiar voice rang out, accompanied by a bright smile as she moved in his direction. Mingyu froze, his heart skipping a beat.

But just as quickly, reality hit him. Sera walked past him without a second glance. Mingyu blinked, confused, and turned around to see her approaching someone else—a tall guy standing behind him.

"Oppa, can I borrow your biochemistry notes?" Sera asked the tall guy, her tone warm and friendly.

"Sure," the guy, Sera's senior, Jin Sun Ho, replied with a casual smile. "But, Sera, I'm afraid you won't be able to read my handwriting. How about I help you with them in the library?"

Sera laughed lightly. "That sounds great, thanks!" The two walked out of the canteen together, chatting as they left.

Mingyu was still staring after them when Joo Hyuk returned, handing him an iced Americano. "Woah," Joo Hyuk said, watching the pair disappear through the door. "Looks like the med school god and goddess are finally hitting it off."

"What do you mean?" Mingyu asked, his voice unintentionally sharp.

Joo Hyuk raised an eyebrow. "Do you live under a rock? Jin Sun Ho is the med school's god—smart, handsome, and rich. And Sera? She's the goddess. Pretty, brilliant, and, well, rich. Everyone's been saying they'd make the perfect couple."

He sipped his drink, oblivious to the way Mingyu's grip tightened on his cup. Mingyu said nothing, his eyes lingering on the door where Sera and Jin Sun Ho had just left. 

--------------------

"Your handwriting isn't that bad, oppa," Sera said with a small smile as she diligently copied down the notes. Her pen moved swiftly across the page while Sun Ho leaned slightly closer, pointing out key terms and concepts.

Sun Ho chuckled softly, resting his chin in his hand as he watched her work. "Maybe you just have extraordinary deciphering skills," he said, a teasing glint in his eyes. "Most people look at my notes and call them hieroglyphics.

Sera laughed, the sound light and genuine. "Well, I guess I have a knack for cracking your code," she replied, glancing up at him briefly before focusing back on the page.

"Or maybe you're just too kind to admit how terrible my handwriting actually is," Sun Ho quipped with a grin, tapping the edge of the notebook.

Sera shook her head, her lips curving into a soft smile. "No, really. It's not bad at all. And your explanations make everything so much clearer," she said earnestly, her brown eyes meeting his.

For a moment, Sun Ho's teasing demeanor softened. "Glad I can help," he said, his tone warm. "Not everyone would put up with my chicken scratch."

"Well, I'm not just anyone," Sera said with a playful shrug, her confidence shining through as she continued writing.

"How about a selfie?" Sun Ho asked suddenly, pulling out his phone with a playful grin.

Sera looked up from the notebook, a mixture of surprise and amusement on her face. "In the library?" she whispered, stifling a giggle.

Sun Ho leaned in closer, angling the camera to fit both of them in the frame. "Relax," he said with a smirk. "No one's going to say a word to me." Without waiting for her response, he snapped the photo, capturing Sera mid-laugh.

"Sun Ho!" she scolded lightly, though her smile betrayed her amusement.

He examined the picture with a satisfied nod. "Perfect. My followers are going to love this," he said as he began typing a caption.

"You're posting it?" Sera's eyes widened in mild disbelief.

"Of course," he replied, his tone casual as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "Why wouldn't I?"

Sera shook her head, unable to suppress a laugh as she returned to her notes. Moments later, Sun Ho's phone buzzed with likes and comments flooding in, his followers reacting to the unexpected post.

On the screen was the caption: "Study buddies" .

Chapter 4 : Drunk Mingyu

"Woah, check this out," Joohyuk said, grinning as he waved his phone in front of Mingyu after their last class of the day.

Mingyu glanced down at the screen, his eyes narrowing as he saw the Instagram photo of Sera and Sun Ho standing side by side, their smiles bright and carefree. A strange feeling twisted in his chest—something between envy and frustration—but he masked it with a shrug, trying not to let it show.

"Since when did you become so invested in other people's business, huh, Joohyuk?" Mingyu asked, raising an eyebrow and trying to keep his voice casual.

Joohyuk chuckled, unfazed by Mingyu's tone. "Oh, come on, man. You need a little gossip to survive the madness that is SNU," he said, tapping his phone's screen. "Everyone's talking about this picture. It's like the campus's new hottest trend."

Mingyu rolled his eyes but couldn't hide the small, reluctant smile tugging at his lips. "Yeah, well, maybe I don't have the time for that kind of stuff."

"Right, of course," Joohyuk replied, his grin widening. "You're too busy being the mysterious guy who doesn't care about anything except his grades." He nudged Mingyu playfully.

Mingyu shrugged again, trying to brush off the weird fluttering in his stomach. "Just don't get too wrapped up in it, alright? We've got our own lives to focus on."

"Sure, sure," Joohyuk replied with a wink. "But you know, it's always more fun to watch the drama unfold from the sidelines." 

Joohyuk leaned in with a mischievous grin. "Alright, enough of this. Come with me to the club and let loose for once."

Mingyu hesitated, glancing at his outfit. "Like this? My clothes are too plain, I need to change." He tried to muster an excuse, adjusting the collar of his shirt.

Joohyuk rolled his eyes, his expression turning playful but firm. "I'm not hearing any of that, man. I know you'll find a thousand reasons to back out and never show up. We're going, and we're going now."

Mingyu opened his mouth to protest, but Joohyuk was already dragging him toward the door, his grip surprisingly strong. "You're coming with me, no more excuses. Tonight's about fun, not studying."

Mingyu sighed but couldn't help the reluctant grin that crept across his face. "Fine, fine," he muttered. "But you owe me a drink for this."

Joohyuk flashed a victorious smile. "Deal." 

The neon lights of the club flickered around them as Mingyu and Joohyuk settled into their seats, the music pulsating through the air. Mingyu was already deep in his drinks, the bitter taste of alcohol doing little to numb the ache in his chest. He stared into his glass, his heart heavy, thoughts swirling around Sera and the distance between them that felt impossible to bridge.

Joohyuk, ever the party animal, raised his eyebrows as Mingyu downed another drink in one go. "Ayo, man, slow down," Joohyuk said, his voice slightly slurred. "We have class tomorrow. You're gonna regret this."

Mingyu looked at his friend, a wry smile twisting on his lips, but it didn't reach his eyes. "What's the point of this life if I can't be with her?" he muttered, his voice thick with emotion. He didn't care that he was starting to sound like a mess—he was already too far gone.

Joohyuk blinked, suddenly aware of the shift in Mingyu's mood. "Oh, no, not here," he groaned, slapping his palm against the table. "I brought you here to have fun, not cry over some girl you can't get over. This night is supposed to be fun, man!"

But Mingyu wasn't listening. He tipped his head back, gulping down another drink, his emotions taking over in a drunken haze. "Is there any way to make her like me?" he slurred, his eyes glassy. "I can't stand seeing her with someone else... I just... I just want her to be mine."

Joohyuk let out a low whistle. "It's kinda hard to believe that you, with that handsome face of yours, can't get a girl," he teased, leaning back in his chair, his buzz starting to kick in.

Mingyu's face crumpled again, and Joohyuk frowned, his tone shifting to concern. "Who is she? The girl that's got you all twisted up like this?"

Mingyu's words came out in a jumbled mess, and soon enough, his eyes were glistening with tears, the alcohol fueling his emotions further. "You remember my best friend... the one who studies abroad?" he began, voice cracking. "She's his..."

Joohyuk froze for a moment, eyes wide as he processed the situation. "His girlfriend?" he asked in disbelief, his lips curling into a half-smile. "Bro, you gotta be kidding me. Out of all the girls in the world, you fall for your homie's girl?"

"NO, NO!" Mingyu shot back, waving his hand in a frantic motion as his emotions overtook him again. "She's not his girlfriend!" he repeated, his voice breaking.

Joohyuk blinked. "Then what's the problem, man? If she's not with him, what's stopping you?"

Mingyu's face crumpled in despair, his voice almost a whisper as he stumbled over the words. "She... she's his sister," he confessed, his drunken state making it feel even more tragic. He pulled Joohyuk into a tight hug, his body shaking with the weight of his emotions. "I don't know what to do, man. I can't... I can't have her, but I can't stop wanting her."

Joohyuk sat there, stunned for a moment. He didn't know how to respond, his mind processing the ridiculousness of the situation. "Bro," he finally said, a slight chuckle escaping him. "You're... you're really in love with your best friend's sister? That's the problem?"

Mingyu sobbed a little more, the alcohol making everything feel more intense than it probably was. "I know, I know," he said, his voice muffled in Joohyuk's shoulder. "It's messed up. I just... I just can't stop thinking about her."

Joohyuk shook his head in disbelief. 

Joo Hyuk, with a mischievous grin, urged Mingyu to let loose and find some companionship for the night. He grabbed the alcohol glass from Mingyu's hand, downing the remaining contents in one swift motion. "Come on, forget everything and let's hit the dance floor," Joo Hyuk said, leading the way.

Mingyu followed, his mind still hazy from the alcohol. As they stepped onto the dance floor, the pulsating beat of the music consumed them. Mingyu felt the weight of his worries melt away with each step.

Before long, Joo Hyuk had already found a companion for the night, disappearing to the other side of the club with a sly wink. Mingyu, on the other hand, was approached by a stranger.

"Hey, aren't you Mingyu Sunbae from the engineering department?" the girl asked, her voice like a melody.

Mingyu looked at her and nodded. "Nice to meet you, I'm Seyeong from the medicine department," she introduced herself, flashing a bright smile.

Before Mingyu could respond, Seyeong had already moved closer, her body swaying in time with the music. She placed her hands on his shoulders, pulling him closer until their chests were touching. Mingyu was taken aback, but the alcohol coursed through his veins, numbing his senses.

Seyeong's movements were fluid, like a dance. She pressed her cleavage against his chest, making it a full display of her assets. Mingyu's mind was consumed with thoughts of Sera. In his alcohol-infused haze, he couldn't help but think that Seyeong was Sera, sent to him as an answer to his prayers.

"Want to get a room?" Seyeong whispered in his ear, her breath hot against his skin. 

Mingyu's vision swam in a hazy blur, the flashing lights of the club illuminating the space around him. His mind felt foggy, and the alcohol had wrapped him in a warm cocoon of numbness. But then, his eyes caught something—or rather, someone. At the entrance of the club, standing like a figure from a dream, was her.

"Sera?" Mingyu mumbled to himself, blinking rapidly as if doing so would somehow snap him out of his daze and make everything clearer. He squinted, the familiar silhouette in front of him. He stumbled back slightly, his voice slurring as he spoke louder than he intended. "TWO TWO SERA?"

The girl in front of him, who had been dancing with him just moments before, followed his gaze, confusion painting her face as she turned her head toward the entrance. She froze for a second, processing what he said, before her own realization hit her.

"Sera?" she echoed, her voice laced with disbelief as her eyes locked on the girl Mingyu was referring to.

Mingyu, still drunk and caught in the throes of his mixed-up emotions, looked between the two—Sera at the entrance and the Sera in his arms. "Wait... no way, how come there are two Seras," he muttered under his breath.

The music seemed to throb louder in his ears as he fumbled to make sense of the situation. Seyeong's expression shifted from confusion to mild irritation, her eyes narrowing as she took a step back from him.

"Did you seriously think I was Sera this whole time?" Seyeong's voice was sharp, tinged with disbelief. She crossed her arms over her chest, her face now set in an indignant frown. "What a jerk."

Before Mingyu could say another word, she pushed him lightly but firmly away from her, the force of the motion knocking him off balance for a moment.

Seyeong shook her head, her disappointment evident, and with a final glance at Mingyu, she turned and walked off into the crowd, leaving him standing there, still trying to piece everything together.

Chapter 4 : Confrontation

As the adrenaline faded away, he found himself seeking a way out, desperate to escape the turmoil of his thoughts.

"How long are you going to keep yourself away from me?" Sera's voice sliced through the noise, confident and unwavering. Mingyu, taken aback, feigned ignorance. "I don't understand what you're talking about," he responded, but there was a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

Without hesitation, Sera moved closer, closing the space between them. Her hand reached for his, holding it firmly as if refusing to let him slip away. "You can drop the act now, oppa," she insisted. The tone in her voice was resolute, a stark contrast to Mingyu's hesitant demeanor.

"I heard it all," she leaned closer, her breath warm against his ear. His heart raced as she held onto his neck, standing on her tiptoes to bring her face near his. Her proximity was intoxicating, yet troubling.

"You are Jeonwoo's sister. I can't—" Mingyu tried to back away, but Sera was relentless. She cut him off, sealing her defiance with a kiss on his cheek, a playful yet poignant gesture that sent a thrill through him. Mingyu's heart sank and soared all at once as he finally met her gaze.

"Okay, then I will go to Sunho Oppa," she teased, her demeanor flipping from assertive to mischievous in an instant as she turned to walk away. The implication of her words hit Mingyu like a freight train. His grip instinctively tightened around her wrist, pulling her back to him.

"Please, Sera," he pleaded, his expression shifting to one that could only be described as puppy-like, eyes wide with a mix of desperation and longing. The playful banter began melting away, leaving behind the raw emotion that had bubbled just beneath the surface. 

"Then tell me," Sera said suddenly, her voice soft yet filled with an urgency that made Mingyu's heart race. In that moment, he felt as though the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders.

Mingyu looked deeper into her eyes, a vibrant mix of curiosity and vulnerability reflecting back at him. It felt as if time had come to a standstill; the noise of the bar faded into the background, leaving only the two of them in a bubble of fleeting possibility. A sudden wave of courage surged through him, igniting a fire within that he had kept at bay for far too long. Without thinking, he leaned in and kissed her.

The kiss was electric—a culmination of longing and love, a blending of dreams that had been waiting for this moment to manifest. Their lips brushed against each other with a tender urgency, savoring every fleeting second, as if trying to grasp a moment that could slip away at any instant. In that enchantment, everything else ceased to exist, and all they could feel was each other.

"I like you," Mingyu confessed, his breath mingling with hers in between kisses, each word carrying the weight of a thousand unsaid feelings. The revelation hung in the air, both exhilarating and terrifying, yet it felt right.

Sera pulled back for just a moment, her eyes sparkling with surprise and delight. "We can continue at the hotel room," she said, a playful smile curling her lips.

-------------------------

The hotel room door creaked open, the sound amplifying the electric atmosphere that buzzed between Mingyu and Sera. As they crossed the threshold, their lips met in a fervent kiss that seemed to encapsulate the world outside—one that held no constraints or responsibilities. Nothing else existed in that moment but the two of them, lost in each other's embrace.

With a swift kick, Mingyu nudged the door shut, intent on carving out a little world where only they mattered. He traced Sera's delicate figure with admiration, lifting her effortlessly into his arms. The nearby table became their temporary sanctuary as he gently set her down, still locked in a passionate kiss. "You are too short; my neck hurts," he murmured playfully, yet his eyes spoke of hunger, desire.

Sera, feeling emboldened, wrapped her legs around his waist, a teasing move that brought their bodies even closer. The heat between them ignited as Mingyu's hands found their way to the hem of his shirt, pulling it off to reveal his toned physique. To him, she was petite and enchanting, every curve inviting exploration.

Their lips collided once more, becoming lost in the rhythm of soft sighs and heated breaths. Mingyu's hands, skilled yet gentle, began to undress Sera, each layer he shed revealing a tantalizing glimpse of her form. As he unclasped her bra, he feasted his eyes on her plump breasts, a sight that made his heart race with insatiable desire.

Mingyu leaned down, his mouth enveloping her soft skin, a rush of adrenaline coursing through him as he lavished her with attention. His hands wandered, finding their way to her clit through her clothing, caressing her softly. Sera responded with soft moans, a sound he felt in the depths of his being, urging him on.

As passion thickened the air, Mingyu's urgency grew. He quickly shed his pants and retrieved a condom from the drawer, his determination evident. Positioning himself at her entrance, he locked eyes with her, seeking her silent permission as he began to enter her slowly, their lips brushing together in a tumultuous dance.

With each thrust, a primal intensity enveloped them both. Moments turned to a haze of sweat and ecstasy—Mingyu transformed, becoming both lover and beast, a force of nature that left Sera breathless beneath him. "Ah, fuck," she gasped, each thrust sending waves of pleasure coursing through her.

As they reached the precipice of their desires, Mingyu shifted her position, bending her over the table. Sera felt the cool surface against her skin, a stark contrast to the fervent heat igniting in her core. "Sera-ah," he moaned, hands gripping her waist, driving deeper with each rhythm.

Their bodies moved in perfect synchrony, the tempo rising as their breaths grew heavier. Mingyu sensed the climax approaching, a rush of exhilaration. With one final thrust, he pulled out, a guttural moan escaping his lips as he released onto her skin. At that moment, time seemed to suspend—their eyes met, and Sera's gaze sparkled with an innocent allure as she too reached her peak, a beautiful symphony shared between them. 

-----------------------------

As the steam from the bathroom lingered in the air, Mingyu stepped out of the shower, water droplets cascading down his toned frame. The casual, effortless nature of his appearance was endearing, yet it evoked an unexpected shyness in him.

"Don't look at me like that," he said, a playful edge to his voice, as he caught Sera's gaze from across the room.

Wiping her hair with a towel, Sera chuckled softly, her eyes sparkling with mischief. "Whoa, look at you getting shy after all this," she teased. 

----------------------------------

Two weeks had flown by since that steamy night in the hotel room. And in the aftermath of their passionate escapade, Sera had become a frequent visitor to Mingyu's room. With Joo Hyuk often occupied with his part time job, the two had explored the thrilling dynamics of secrecy, indulging in their hidden desires whenever the opportunity arose. Each rendezvous was charged with excitement—a dance of passion that ignited every corner of Mingyu's otherwise mundane days.

Today, however, was different. Mingyu was on a mission to pick up his best friend, Wonwoo, from the airport.

As he arrived at the bustling airport, he spotted Wonwoo making his way through the terminal.

"Brother!" Mingyu called out, his face lighting up in a broad smile as they both rushed to embrace each other. It felt good, the familiar warmth of friendship rekindled after a few months apart. "Missed ya," Mingyu said, clapping Wonwoo on the back before helping him with his luggage.

"Why did you only call me to pick you up?" Mingyu probed as they loaded the bags into the car's trunk, genuinely curious about his friend's whirlwind life abroad.

"Mom and Dad's 30th anniversary is coming up, and I want to give them a surprise," Wonwoo replied, excitement bubbling over in his voice. It was classic Wonwoo—thoughtful and family-oriented, proud of planning something truly special.

Once settled into the Uber, the chaotic energy of the ride kicked in. Wonwoo dove into a barrage of stories about living abroad—the food, the people, the experiences—but amidst the laughter and reminiscing, he posed an unexpected question that made Mingyu's heart race for an entirely different reason.

"Ah, by the way, do you know which jerk is dating my sister?" Wonwoo asked, casually leaning back in his seat. The smoothness of his nonchalant tone did not betray the depth of the question.

Mingyu felt the color drain from his face. Coughing splutteringly, he quickly grabbed the water bottle beside him to take a sip—a feeble attempt to mask his reaction.

"Like, two weeks ago, I saw my credit card was used to bill at a hotel—the same card I had given to my sister," Wonwoo continued, his voice laced with incredulity. Mingyu's heart raced again. If only he knew...

"You know it would've been better if you were dating my sister, can't trust her with the jerks nowadays", Wonwoo casually said.

The neurological pathways of panic ignited as Mingyu choked once more on his drink, causing a cascade of water to spill across the upholstery of the Uber. The driver shot a frustrated look through the rearview mirror, and Mingyu hastily apologized while trying to wipe away the mess with his sleeve.

[heavyhitterheaux]

No Judgments

See Me Through You Blurb

Synopsis: You and Joe do the 'We listen and don't judge' TikTok challenge 🤭

Pairing: Husband!Joe Burrow x Wife!Reader

Requested by: a few gorgeous anons 💕

Series Masterlist

Please Do Not Repost My Content Anywhere

After wiping your mouth and rinsing it out with mouthwash from your sudden episode of morning sickness, you made your way back into the bedroom where your husband was still peacefully sleeping.

You attempted to climb back into the bed without waking him up, but feeling the weight shift made him flutter his eyes open. Joe had never been a really deep sleeper, but since he found out you were pregnant, usually he wakes up at the smallest noise and it left you surprised this morning when he didn’t feel you get out of bed the first time.

“Baby, you okay?” He asked as he pulled you towards him so he could wrap his arms around you and kissed the top of your head.

“Your children won't let me be great and made me throw up again.” You quietly answered and you had now grown frustrated since it seemed like the morning sickness wasn't only happening in the morning, but throughout the day.

“You want me to make you some tea?”

“Yes, please. I'm miserable.”

Joe then placed his hand on your belly and began to rub small circles on it as he noticed that your bump was actually starting to show.

“Babies, stop making mommy sick so she can sleep. Daddy’s orders.”

“Hopefully they'll listen to you because clearly they pay me no attention.”

“When they hear ‘the voice’ for the first time, they're going to be running for their lives.” Joe said, referring to the first time he heard it and made sure to stay out of your way for the rest of the day.

“I still to this day have no idea what you are talking about when you say that.”

“It's a voice you make when you get really annoyed. Ask Ja'Marr, he'll back me up.”

“I just think you two are being dramatic.”

“Says the most dramatic person in the room….”

“Husband! Take it back!”

“Nope, it's facts and I'm not going to lie to you.”

All you did was roll your eyes in response as Joe raised his eyebrows at you.

“Don't catch an attitude with me because it's something you didn't want to hear. Fix your face.”

“I'll fix mine if you let me ride yours.”

“I… These pregnancy hormones are giving me a run for my money and got me fighting for my damn life. One thing at a time and let's get your nausea under control first.”

Later on in the day, when Joe was sitting at the island in the kitchen, you went and sat next to him while setting up your phone. He quickly noticed and looked over at you.

“Whatever it is, no.”

“But baby! Pleaseeee?!”

You knew Joe hated being in front of a camera, but you loved doing TikTok challenges with him from time to time.

Sighing and finally giving in, he put his phone down to give you his undivided attention.

“Okay, what are we doing?”

“We listen and we don't judge challenge. I sent you a few so you would have an example to know what to do.”

“Only because it's you. Let's get this over with.”

“Yay! And I want you to go first.” You told him as you pressed record.

“We listen and we don't judge.”

“When I feel like I'm getting sick, I act like I'm so drained so I can't do anything so you'll baby me.” Joe was the first one up and smiled at you when he was finished.

“What the? I baby you anyway! Like 98% of the time.”

“AHT! No judging. You just take it to a different level. Moving on.”

“You are literally MY baby though. My 6’4 baby and I'm 4'11, but who's to say anything about that? I love you bad and I see you're using it to your advantage.”

“To get endless cuddles from my wife? Hell yeah I'm taking advantage of it.”

“Okay, next.”

“We listen and we don't judge.”

“So after you fall asleep since your bedtime is like 6 pm.. like a grandpa…” You started to say, but was immediately interrupted.

“9 during the season!”

“Stop interrupting me, husband! After you fall asleep, I go and buy things on your phone and make sure to delete the notifications so you don't find out.”

“BABY!”

“HEY! I BUY YOU THINGS TOO!”

“And you hide the packages too because I literally never see any of them.”

“Hmm, maybe.”

“Fine. Keep your secrets.”

“We listen and we don't judge.”

“When we were at LSU and we were just friends, I memorized your schedule and knew you had a lot of late classes and I would purposely wait for you if it was dark outside to walk you to your car to make sure you were safe. And it gave me a chance to spend more time with you.”

“So, that's why it seemed like you were always around? Aww, you love me!” You told him as you pinched his cheek.

“And don't you ever forget it.”

“We listen and we don't judge.”

“During last season when I saw you wore THOSE PANTS, yes you know the ones I'm talking about, after I specifically told you not to because they looked crazy and you wore them anyway, you kept asking if I've seen them but I hid them somewhere in our house and they have been hidden for so long that I forgot their location.”

“I LOVE THOSE PANTS, BABE!”

“THEY ARE HIDEOUS, BABY. NO!”

“I'm making it my mission later to find my pants.”

“I know Ja'Marr probably bought you those ugly ass pants.”

“AHT! You're judging!”

“We listen and we don't judge.”

“When you're mad at me, I purposely go into the cabinet and make all of the jar lids tighter so you have to come and talk to me.” Joe confessed and you rolled your eyes and crossed your arms at the same time.

“SERIOUSLY? And here I am thinking I'm a weak bitch! I can lift almost as heavy as you can! And a jar lid is what does me in?!?”

“Works every time.”

“I'm going to have to do it myself next time.”

“Like that will ever happen…” Joe said and you playfully rolled your eyes.

“We listen and we don't judge.”

“Okay, so….” You started to say as you glanced at Joe and he sighed knowing that something crazy and out of pocket was about to come out of your mouth.

“Oh shit, here we go.”

“Sometimes, I purposely piss you off and I don't know that you know you do this but your voice gets deeper and it turns me on so bad. Like your voice by itself turns me on, but when you get mad, whew. Sign me up for EVERY position. It's happening now and I'm just thinking about it. Gets your girl all hot and bothered.” You quietly said as Joe stared at you since you were now squirming in your chair and trying to keep your legs as tight as possible.

“Are you seriously squirming over there? And I’m not surprised by this in the slightest. Just wait until we're finished with this, I'm about to turn you every way but loose. And hold on! I thought we were keeping this PG!?” He asked as he leaned over and kissed you.

“Don't threaten me with a good time and when are the videos we do ever PG? Especially when it's something like this? And don't get me started because I will literally rip off your clothes at this very moment.”

“Good point and see? And that's why you're pregnant now.”

“Because my husband is fine as hell and I'll fu-” Joe's eyes went wide as he promptly covered your mouth with his hand and in protest, you licked it, making him look at you dumbfounded.

“No! Do not finish that sentence. This is really about to turn into something else if you don't stop. And did you just lick my hand!?”

“I wanna lick something else too, but I'll save that for when we turn the camera off.” You tried to whisper, but failed miserably.

“BABY QUIT IT!” Joe pleaded and all you did was shrug.

“I was like this before you married me and you should have known that once this ring was on my finger, I was about to be ten times worse.”

“Hmm, that's putting it lightly.”

“We listen and we don't judge.”

“I hide some of your perfumes so that you'll only use my favorite ones that I've bought for you.”

“Babe! How many have you hidden!? And here I am thinking that I've lost them!”

“Hmm, not telling.”

“You're annoying.”

“I'm cute and you love me.”

“Survey says that both of those responses are correct.”

“We listen and we don't judge.”

“So, when you got hurt during your rookie year, I was watching the game and saw it happen and my heart immediately dropped. Because we literally had an argument hours before that game and we weren't talking and now I think back on it, I had no idea what the argument was about. But, I low-key felt that you getting hurt was somehow my fault. I remember packing my things and getting on a plane and crying the entire way there and I honestly didn't know if you wanted to see me at that point. Because I had sent you a text right before the game and you didn't respond. And to this day, I still feel like that.”

It was quiet for a few seconds before Joe said anything.

“That… baby that wasn't your fault. It was a bad hit. And of course I wanted to see you. You were actually the first person I asked for. I never knew you felt like that.”

“I hate seeing you in pain and I…. I'm about to cry again.”

“I can tell, hormones.” Joe replied as he wiped your eyes for you.

“But I came back from it because of you and how you helped me. You being there was enough. You love me bad, don't you?” He asked as he was trying to get you to smile.

“So much, and you know it.”

“We listen and we don't judge.”

“Ever since you told me you were pregnant, I watch you until you fall asleep to make sure you’re okay. Doesn't matter how long it takes or if I have to get up early. You're my priority.”

“And, I'm about to cry again. Damn these hormones.”

“You are literally MY person and I don't know what I'd do without you.”

“Ladies, get you a husband who treats you like the queen you are every day because….. shoutout to Jimmy and Robin because the two of them gave me one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

“Wait… ONE of the best things? I'm not THE best thing!?”

“Hmm, you're top five.” You replied as you shrugged.

“Uh? You mean number one?”

“If it makes you feel better, the top five things all have to do with you.”

“That sounds suspicious, but I'll let it slide for now.”

“I love you Joseph Lee Burrow!” You exclaimed as you kissed his cheek and wrapped your arms around him.

“Stop trying to change the subject and I know for a damn fact you didn't just call me by my full name. I get anxious when you do that.”

“Wait, huh?”

“We've gone over this a million times. My name is BABY to you. When it comes to you I don't know who Joseph is.”

“And he calls me the dramatic one.”

[hadersversion]

‘tis the damn season.

“so we could call it even, you could call me babe for the weekend.”

pairing: rafe cameron x pogue! reader

warnings: 18+, SMUT, p in v, fingering, begging, overstimulation, use of babe....let me know if i forget anything lol. ALSO in some places in america, thansgiving eve is literally just a holiday to get drunk in your hometown

your home for the holidays for the first time in years. you've been avoiding rafe, the reason you've been away for so long, but after seeing him again all the old feelings come back. when rafe sends a text one night, you end up in the back of his truck like old times.

i parked my car out front of my childhood home, staring at the old exterior.

somethings never change.

being back in the outer banks felt strange. it has been a while since i have been back, avoiding come home for as long as i can. but with a few begging phone calls from my mom and kiara, here i am.

i knock on my front door and am greeted with a bright smile.

"jj?" i ask, confused.

"welcome home, stranger." he says, with a hug and grabbing my bag.

i walk into my living room and see the pogues, sitting with my mom. a homemade 'welcome home' banner hanging above their heads.

my mom comes over and gives me a big hug. "i thought i would never see this face again." she says with a squeeze.

"boston isn't that far, mom." i tell her but i know she would never leave the outer banks. never in a million years. i turn towards the others and smile. "i wonder who could've put this together?" i say, looking at kiara.

"hey it wasn't all me, pope was the one who brought it up." she says, engulfing me in her arms.

"guilty." pope chimes in, joining the hug. i feel jj and john b join in as well. my family.

we break away and hang out in the living room, catching up.

"don't tell me you went all city on us, y/n." john b pokes fun at me.

"not completely. but it is nice having more things to do than hang on the beach and smoke." i wink.

"who could want more than that?" jj asks, making us all laugh.

"speaking of," kiara starts. "there's a little thanksgiving eve celebration happening at the wreck. just some people from high school. nothing big."

"just a chance to get drunk of our asses and go to dinner the next day hungover." jj says, causing kiara to nudge him.

"what do you say? want to join us?" i look around the room at my friends, all eager waiting for my response. with a sigh, i nod and they all cheer. "thank god, i don't think i could've done that alone."

i smile and nod. it should be fun, it will be. but my brain can't help to wonder if the one person who's kept me away from coming home will be there. no, he wouldn't. not with the pogues. but a part of me can't help but hope to see his face.

───✱*.｡:｡✱*.:｡✧*.｡✰*.:｡✧*.｡:｡*.｡✱ ───

i fix my sweater in the mirror in my room, my body fidgeting from anxiety. it's been a few days and i still can't shake that feeling from my body about being home. sure, i'm happy but this place holds so many memories. memories i wish to bury. i stare at the photo booth picture tucked into my mirror of him and i. i guess i forgot to hide this with the rest of the stuff. i take it off the mirror and sigh, examining it.

almost four years since it was taken. almost four years since we called it quits. and yet, he still haunts my memories. his presence making itself known through cheap beer at the bar, expensive men's cologne at the mall, exhaust that leaves motorbikes as they ride down the street. he's always there, whether i like it or not.

the sound of a horn breaks me free of my thoughts.

"y/n, they're here!" my mom calls from downstairs.

"coming!" i open my dresser drawer and slip the photo in before racing downstairs. i kiss my mom on the cheek and slip out the door, rushing into the van.

"ready to get fucked up?" jj asks with his devilish smirk.

i roll my eyes and laugh. "let's go."

we pull up to the wreck, it's already dark outside and a slight breeze fills the air. we all hurry in, greeted by familiar faces. my name is called from every direction, old friends from high school or the beach. all my fellow pogues who i know and love. when i'm done making my rounds, i head over to our table. everyone has some drink in their hand, beer or cocktail, and they all smile up at me.

"who would've though little y/n y/l/n would be a pogue celebrity?" pope jokes.

i flip him off and slide in next to john b. kiara hands me a beer and i take a sip. "i'm not a celebrity, i'm just one of the only people from this island who actually made it off."

they all make jokes at my despair, teasing me in any way they could when sarah walks up. i feel my stomach flip and i smile at her. "y/n!" she embraces me. "i'm so happy to see you!"

i hug her back and smile. "me too, sar. how's everything been?"

"the usual but i can't complain." she sits next to me and lays her head on my shoulder. "it's been forever."

"it has." i sigh. "it really has."

we all share stories and laugh around the table. we take shots, chug beer, and play different drinking games. just like old times sake.

"i need another beer." i say with a slight slur in my voice, standing up. "anyone else?" everyone shakes their head as i excuse myself.

i walk up to the bar and wait my turn, twirling my debit card in my hand. it could be the alcohol but i feel content and happy to be home.

"y/n?"

until that moment.

i don't want to turn around, i don't even want to accept my fate in this situation.

i know that voice, i could recognize it in a crowd of millions of people. it was the voice that lingered in my dreams, my thoughts.

i turn around and look at the man.

"rafe."

he looks older, his hair buzzed and some facial hair covering his face. but those eyes. they are the same eyes of the boy i loved.

we stood there, not saying a word. just taking the sight of one another in.

"i didn't know you were home." he says, not breaking eye contact.

i nod, biting my lip. "i am, i got home monday."

he chuckles to himself and shakes his head. "how long you here for?"

"till saturday. then i'm going back to boston." my throat feels scratchy and my face is on fire. i want to be anywhere but here now.

his eyes continue to study me. "two more budweiser's, please." he says to the bartender. i open my mouth to protest but he shakes his head. "on me, think of it as a welcome home gift."

the bartender hands me the beer and i smile. i turn back to rafe and tip the bottle to him. "thanks."

"no problem." he clinks his bottle to mine. we both take a long sip. my eyes are desperately trying to find a place to land, ending up on the bright sign above the bar. but rafe's are still on me.

"you okay?" kiara asks as she walks behind rafe. she is my gurdian angel.

"yeah, just waiting for my beer. excuse me." i squeeze past rafe and walk back to my table. i look back at him and smiles. i hate him.

a few drinks more and my ears are ringing. it was loud and everyone was far too drunk. i excuse myself for air outside. there are a few people lingering, smoking cigarettes or waiting for ubers. i smile and take in the nostalgia.

"you know, it would've been nice to know you were home." i hear rafe's voice next to me.

i roll my eyes and look up at him. "oh, would it have been? sorry, i didn't think you'd care." i say coldly. that liquid courage is taking control.

he looks down at me. "and why would i have not cared?"

"hmm, let me think." i put my finger to my chin. "oh, right. 'don't ever contact me again. we're so over. i wish i never met you. blah. blah. blah.' do you want me to go on?" i say to him.

i watch as he processes what i said to him, the words of our last fight. he looks guilty, for once in his life. "that was years ago, y/n. w-we were just kids."

"oh, really? then why haven't i heard from you for the past few years? phone works both ways, rafe." i say, shrugging.

he stands there quietly, i got him.

"how's school been?" he asks, nonchalantly.

"are you for real?" i ask.

"what? i'm being nice." he says.

i huff with frustration. "you are such an ass." i push pass him and walk onto the sidewalk.

"where are you going?" he asks, following after me.

"away from you." i say, not looking back.

i hear him run up behind me and he gently grabs my arm. "y/n. y/n, stop."

i turn to look at him. "what do you want from me, huh? you want to torture me even more?"

he stares at me, hand still on my arm. "what? of course not. y/n, i missed you."

"fuck off." i spit out without thinking.

"you're drunk."

"and you're an asshole." i say, flatly. "you...you fucking broke my heart and you expect me to act like everything is fucking dandy?"

"y/n." he tries to plead his case.

"no, rafe. you don't get to waltz in here and act like everything is okay with us. do you know how much you fucked me over? one day you're telling me you love me and you want to move to boston with me and the next, you're dumping me over the phone." i poke his chest. "i did everything you wanted, i kept what we had between us a secret, i took care of you. and nothing was enough for you."

he looks down at his feet in guilt. "i-i know, i'm sorry. i was...i was fucked up back then. with my dad on my case and the drinking...i wasn't okay. i felt like..." he cut himself off.

"what, rafe? you felt like, what?" i ask.

"like i was going to hold you back, alright?" he raises his voice. "you are too good for this place, for me. i didn't want to hold you back. i loved you too much to do that to you." i stare at him and laugh. "what? what's so fucking funny?"

"you, rafe. you." i sigh. "instead of being a man and handling your emotions, you ran and hid. we could've worked that out. but you were too scared." i close my eyes and shake my head. "goodbye, rafe."

i walk down the street, hugging my body as the wind blows. a weight has been lifted off my shoulders but there's still that feeling i get whenever i think of him. that feeling that i miss him.

───✱*.｡:｡✱*.:｡✧*.｡✰*.:｡✧*.｡:｡*.｡✱ ───

thanksgiving flew by, even though i had a hangover that felt like it would last a lifetime.

i helped my mom clean up the kitchen as the pogues did the dishes and took the trash out. just like old times.

once we were done, we sat outside around the bonfire. you would think after yesterday, drinking would come to a halt but jj found a bottle of vodka in the freezer and mixed it with kiara's apple cider. we all enjoyed each other's company but my mind could not help but wander. my last conversation with rafe ringing through my head.

"instead of being a man and handling your emotions, you ran and hid."

i shake my head and take a sip of my spiked cider. as much as it rang true, there was still that part of me that wonders 'what if?'. the more i thought about it, the more i wanted to pick up my phone.

no, i need to be the bigger person. i'm stronger than that. i can't text him first.

then i felt my phone buzz in my lap.

rafe: hey

i stare at the text and bite my lip. i know i should ignore it, let it go unread. but my fingers work against my brain and type 'hi' back to him. i sit there, eagerly waiting for a response.

rafe: can we talk?

rafe: i'm sorry about last night, i'm a fucking idiot.

rafe: there's so many things i could say to you rn

rafe: but i miss you.

rafe: i wanna see you.

i look around at my friends and sigh, they would be so mad at me for this.

y/n: sure, give me like an hour.

y/n: park down the street at the usual spot.

my friends leave my house, mainly due to me faking another wave of hungover puking. i run upstairs and check myself out in the mirror, i look damn good. when i get his text, i sneak out the backdoor and hurry down the street. i see his truck parked under the big tree, the spot he always parked in.

i open the truck door and hop into the passenger seat. i look over at him, he's still in his dressy clothes. a blue polo that hugged his arms right and khakis that made his thighs look exceptionally big. he knew what he was doing and i can't tell if i hate him or love him for it.

we drive in silence for a bit, his radio playing music faintly. his hands grip the steering wheel as his mind looks like he's on another planet. i play with the ends of my sweatshirt, anxiously waiting for him to do something. anything.

he pulls up to the beach, the spot where we would always come to. it was dark and the waves crashed against the shore loudly. he turns the car off and looks over at me.

"thanks for meeting me." he says simply.

"sure."

"i'm sorry about last night. you went out to have fun and i ruined it, i know i did."

i just nod at him.

"and...you were right. about it all." he sighs, running his hands over his face. "i should've manned up, talked to you about how i was feeling. but you know how i get. i get too in my head and just jump to conclusions. it wasn't fair to you." he looks into my eyes. "these past few years without you have been a living hell and i have only myself to blame."

"are you drunk? high?" i ask.

"w-what?"

"are you not sober?" i ask again.

"i'm sorry, what? of course i'm fucking sober." he says. "why would i not be?"

"rafe cameron...taking accountability? i'm sorry, it just seems so...foreign?" i laugh.

"i'm being serious, y/n."

i laugh again. "oh, i'm sure. and...the sky is green. we live on the planet pluto. aliens exist and so do unicorns!"

he pinches the bridge of his nose. "y/n, i'm telling the truth! god, you always joke around."

"yeah, because i know you." i say to him. "and you would rather eat concrete than admit you are wrong."

"eat concrete?" he asks, with a smirk.

"you know what i mean!" i huff with frustration.

he grabs my hand and stares in my eyes. "y/n, i am fully sober. we are not in another universe, it is not opposite day. i was wrong and i am sorry."

my brain malfunctions as i look into his eyes. "y-you mean it?"

"every word i said."

my brain not working means i experienced a lack of better judgment. i grab rafe by his collar and connect our lips for the first time in years. this kiss, the one i have longed for since i left this place, was the missing puzzle piece i've been searching for in my life. everything seemed to make sense again.

his hands cupped my cheeks as his tongue slipped into my mouth. he was hungry for me and i wasn't going to stop him because i felt insatiable as well. his hands roamed from my cheeks down to my neck and onto my shoulders.

i needed more.

i climbed onto his lap and straddled him. my arms connected around his neck as he pressed against me. i felt his cock hard against his khakis and i wanted it. i wanted it all. i rubbed myself against him, causing us both to moan.

he continued to kiss me until he broke away and looked at me. his puffy lips formed a cocky smile as he brushed his nose against mine. "you missed me."

"shut up." i was itching for more.

"admit it, you missed me. you missed the way i made you feel." he states.

"rafe, shut up and kiss me, please."

"ah ah ah." he shook his head. "not until you tell me."

"you're such an ass." i roll my eyes, trying to catch my breathe.

"yet, here you are, rubbing yourself against me in my truck." he says, kissing my cheek. his lips then go to my ear and down my neck. "i want it all with you, right now, babe. but i need to hear it."

"fine! fuck, i missed you. are you happy?" i groan, needing him.

"very. get in the backseat." he demands. i quickly follow his order, hopping in the back over the seats. he gets out of the truck and opens up the back door, sliding in next to me. "come here." he pulls me back onto his lap and we pick up where we left off. i continue to rub myself against him as he sloppily kisses me. "just like old times." he jokes and i hit his shoulder. "c'mon, don't act like you don't think about it."

"oh, i do. but i bet you think about it more than i do." i smirk.

"probably." he laughs. his fingers fall to the hem of my sweater and he plays with it. "now are we only here to kiss or?"

"why? you wanna fuck me in your truck? just like old times." i say, making fun of what he just said.

"i do, i wanna fuck you right here, right now. it's all i've been wanting to do." he kisses my jawline. "do you want me to fuck you?"

this is what i missed the most, our back and forth.

"yes, rafe. i want you to fuck me." i moan out.

with that, he practically rips my sweater off my body and starts to kiss down my chest. his large hands palm my clothed breast. i bite my lip and let my head fall back, missing the way he affected my body. i felt his hand snake around to the back and unclip my bra quickly.

"show off." i say, out of breathe.

i smirks and connects his lips to my nipple, sucking and licking it. his hand massaging my other. "don't pretend you don't like it."

i smirk and shake my head.

he continues to focus on my tits, going back and forth between the two.

"more." i whisper, eyes clenched shut.

"what was that?" he asked in a teasing tone.

"i need more, rafe. please." i beg.

"look at you all needy for me. i knew you missed me." his hand slipped under my jeans and panties, stopping right at my core. i felt his fingers curl inside me, going in and out. "all wet for me, huh? what a good girl." he pushed in, fingering my cunt, when his thumb found my sensitive bud. he added pressure, circling it, and i felt as though i was seeing stars.

"s-shit." i cry out, moving my hips to try and gain some friction.

"feel good, baby? let me hear how could i make you feel." he picked up his pace and a pornographic moan escaped my lips. it's been forever since someone has made me feel this good. rafe knew my body like it was his own, he knew how to get me going. "there we go, like how my fingers feel?"

"u-uh huh." i nod, mouth hanging open.

his fingers worked their magic, rubbing my clit at a pace that'll make me come undone in no time. "love the way you look on top of me, baby. so fucking sexy." he attached his lips to my tits again and continued fingering me.

i felt on fire.

i place one hand on the window and the other on his shoulder, holding on for dear life. the more he whispered about me and the faster his fingers were going, i was cumming on his fingers before i knew it. i rode out my high, screaming his name. once i was done, i felt him pull his fingers out of my pants, my juices getting all over myself. i stared down at him, trying to catch my breathe, as he popped his fingers into his mouth and sucked.

"just as good as i remember." he cleaned his fingers off and kissed me again. my hands ran down his buff chest and stopped at the bottom of his polo, lifting it up. his gold chain laid against his chiseled body, he was perfect. i felt as though i was in a trance as i began to kiss down his chest. i could feel his groans vibrating in his chest and i smirked because i was the one making him feel this way. "i need to fuck you."

"you need to?" i laugh, kissing lower and lower.

"yes, y/n. i need to bury myself inside of you, please." he pleaded.

"i like when you're the one begging." i bite him lightly, causing him to hiss.

"i bet."

i unbuttoned his khakis and sat up so he could slip them off. his grey boxers were discolored from the precum leaking off his cock. he took his underwear off and his cock sprung out. "i-i don't have protection." he said, mentally cursing himself out.

"well, are you clean?" i ask.

"yes. i-i haven't been with anyone since." he openly admitted.

i felt the darkness overtake my eyes as i lower myself down onto him. his breath hitched as he slipped all the way in. he was deep inside of me, causing a few tears to leave my eyes. but the pain subsided as he started to rock my hips with his hands, moving me back and forth. i picked up the rhythm he started with me and placed my hands on his shoulder to steady myself. i felt the truck rocking back and forth as i did so.

his hands found my ass and rested there. "fuck, i missed your pussy. so good, takes me so well." he kissed my chest as i grinded back and forth.

i felt my finger nails dig into his shoulder as his cock hit all the right spots. i looked down at him and he stared at me in awe, like i was some work of art. "fuck, rafe. you're so big."

i bite my lip as i let my head fall back in pleasure. i ride him fast as i keep saying his name. "shit, y/n. you're such a good girl, you're so hot. you feel so tight."

i connect our lips, i feel his hands tighten around my ass. this means he was close. "i want you to cum in me, rafe." his eyes widen as he opens his mouth to ask for permission. "p-please fill me up. i miss it so much." i say, trying to catch my breathe.

with that, he lets out a groan and my name falls from his lips like a prayer. "y/n." i feel him coming inside me, painting me. it doesn't take long for his thumb to find my clit again. with the extra pressure applied to my overstimulated cunt, i feel my head reeling. the air in the truck is hot, making it almost hard for me to breath. it all feels too much, my body releasing onto rafe yet again.

we sit there, panting with our eyes closed. i rest my head on his sweaty chest and he kisses me gently. he rubs my back, tracing circles into it.

"felt even better than i imagine." he says, his voice gruff.

"you thought about it a lot, huh?" i smirk.

"all the fucking time."

i take him out of me and sit next to him in the truck. the windows are foggy and our hands find each other, holding them. i get a sense of weird nostalgia, from how things used to be with us.

"well that was a thanksgiving to remember." i joke, trying not to feel overwhelmed by what happened.

"'tis the damn season." he replies.

i slowly slip my sweater back on and try to find my pants.

"w-wait." rafe says. "is this...is this it? just a single fuck and you're gone."

i look at him, his eyes pleading with me.

"i go back to boston on saturday rafe, we only have like a day and a half."

i wish we could keep this going, i wish this was how things always were. but i had to think realistically. i have to go back home, i have to move on with my new life.

he grabs my hand and squeezes it. "boston is only an 11 hour drive. hour or two by plane."

"rafe." i say.

"i can't lose you again. i can't, y/n. these past few years have sucked without you. i can't wait until you come home for christmas again. now that i've got you again, i can't risk it."

i sigh and kiss his hand. "i know. i know." i close my eyes and shake my head. "we'll make it work. we almost did it before."

"we can do it again." he smiles sweetly. i kiss his lips gently, laying my hand against his chest.

"you'd do an 11 hour car ride for me?"

"y/n, i'd fucking walk if i have to." he smiles.

i roll my eyes and kiss his cheek. "you're so cheesy."

he lays me back against the truck seats and kisses me. "don't act like it doesn't work for you."

[strangeaxel]

I hate BPD so much, i hate it so much, i just want it to stop being like this.

I'll just go to sleep maybe I'll dream something nice but my god i hate my brain so much I don't even know who i am or what i need, i just want to feel okay i feel like im never enough for anyone. Im just tired and scared,ni hate how life isn't like the movies, i want my life to be a big fiction where im the protagonist, i watch movies and series and i just feel so much jealousy.

I wonder where my friends are, i wonder where my parents are. I wonder where's that childhood I've always wanted. I know I only have one chance to be alive and this is what i get? Remembering my childhood with a 8 year old me begging my mom to kill me bc i didn't want to keep being alive, i just wanted life to end at the tender age of 8 years old and my mom only laughed at me. And my dad doesn't even love me, he never did, i hate him so much as much as he hates me or even more. Idk what to do.

I ain't no perfect human, I'll never be as im sick since i was born and everywhere ill go I'll disgust everyone. Idk what to do anymore. I just want this suffering to stop. Talking isn't useful either, i just want some lovely arms to rest on and feel like I'm in the home i never had.

I hate to know how tough it is to have someone with mental illness as your friend or family, i hate to know im a burden and i hate to know that nobody will actually relate to any of my interests. The world should have stopped in 2015. i envy people that have friends and still do that bullshit of "no, im fine" and say internally "oh i love them, they're so lovely but I'll just keep quiet so i don't bother them" and their friends and family would die to know their state, selfish bullshit, i know you're sad and all but where tf did you get that idea??! I literally would die for your situation. My lord. I wish i could just have what you have. I wish i was skinny, i wish i was innocent, i wish i was a kid again and stop everything that's coming to me, i wish i had born somewhere else, i wish i wasn't me, i wish my brain wasn't like this, i wish nobody hated me, i wish i didn't hate everyone, i wish i could live, i wish my dad love me, i wish my family love me, i wish everyone love me, i wish i was a good person, i wish i was somewhere else.

I won't accept im 20 next year, I won't accept my life is ruined, I won't accept i am still alive.

I wanna be an idle teen. Something i couldn't even do. Im that autistic girl that died in her couch, that's me, it's just that nobody know it, nobody knows my parents don't care enough, nobody knows i drop off school bc of bullying and depression at 13 and that i rot in my bed.

The whole, "K*lling urself is a permanent solution to a temporary problem" bullshit is spouted by the ignorant lucky ones who have only had temporary problems. Some people's problems are permanent so maybe try offering actual help and support to them rather than regurgitating an overused phrase that means nothing to people with real struggles.

[thatmexisaurusrex]

Comes up to the front of the room with pitch notecards in hand, okay, I have an idea that has two very controversial things in it. And idk if people want this, but I keep thinking about it, so here goes nothing.

So, I was thinking, post-breakup, Tommy and Buck bubble each other not talking. Tommy has spiraled inwardly. Buck is using up all the flour in Los Angeles.

It's a problem.

On a call one of them gets on shift, there is a big pileup. A huge pileup.

And in the pileup?

Connor, Kameron, and their son.

The one Buck helped them have with his donor sperm. All of them have significant injuries. Maybe either Connor or Kameron are already dead. They're rushed to the hospital. The only one who survives - the kid.

Buck, who is the biological father of the kid and never technically waved his rights, decides he should take the kid in. He doesn't know if there's anyone there for the kid other than him. There hadn't seemed to be when he was helping Connor and Kameron out. He kind of impulsively rushes into it.

However, there seems to be a wrinkle. Connor and Kameron had a will. Their will states that if they were to die, it designates the child's guardian to be Kameron's older brother. And who would that be?

Tommy Kinard.

And what at first looks like it could possibly become a messy custody battle ends up settling in a co-parenting situation where the kid spends time with both of them.

And as they keep co-parenting, well, maybe something happens to Buck's loft. A pipe bursts, something.

So, Buck decides to stay at Tommy's place as the pipe gets fixed. And maybe, well, Buck never leaves. It's kind of nice to be all under the same roof, after all.

And maybe they start to actually talk about why they broke up. Why Tommy was scared. Why Buck rushed into the idea of potential marriage down the line and moving in without saying I love you first. Talk about all the baking and talk about the bubbling.

They're reluctant at first to try to make up; try to date. Because what if it doesn't work out again? And where would that leave the kid?

While they figure themselves out, another devastating thing hits them. The kid? He is predisposed to cancer, and he gets juvenile leukemia.

And you're probably thinking it's going to be Buck. Buck's going to be the donor again. And he's also going to have to go through what his parents had all those years ago.

But.

He's not a match.

Buck is not a match.

But Tommy is.

And it's this whole vortex of unpacking childhood trauma while coming together for this kid that's just really become part of their lives. And it works out because I can't bring myself to not let it work out, but it's a lot.

And by the end of it, after the kid is in remission, after everything, they admit it. They admit they want this. They want to be together. They want to be a couple. They want to be a family with this kid.

And it's beautiful.

[queer-geordie-nerd]

the leftist vehement hatred for anyone who's served in the military is so divorced from reality too. like they love to trot out the fact that poverty/lack of education are used to recruit poor minorities that don't have other options, but the moment someone joins the military they're the literal scum of the earth. like I'm sorry, I thought these ppl were victims a second ago?

& then shouldn't that extend to ppl who live in countries w mandatory military service? shouldn't we recognize that the lack of options makes these ppl victims? but leftists who largely come from middle class American families who have never been anywhere CLOSE to an active warzone will say that "good" Israelis would go to prison or leave the country, even though they KNOW some ppl don't have those options. the gall to pass moral judgments on ppl living in a political situation they will never understand. but these ppl are strangely silent on Iranian mandatory military service.

"I would die before serving in the military" 1) no you wouldn't 2) you got one whiff of nazi rhetoric & immediately started posting "zionist blocklists" you would literally be helping them round up the jews

ABSOLUTELY THIS.

[icarusredwings]

Thinking about old Worst Wolverine being called by each of the X men individually after they have a falling out because Logan injured a child very badly to the point the only reason they didn't die is because another classmates healing abilities all while he just... walked away.

Well- ran.. away... leaving a child to die. He's tried to explain thousands of times that he blacked out, that he didn't remember doing any of this. He tries to say that maybe it was someone else, that mystique did this shit all the time in his universe.

"Yeah, well!? This isn't your universe! Because the REAL Logan would never do this.." Scott screams at him as Logan leaves the Mansion for the last time. He doesn't come back. He didn't even get to tell his Xkits goodbye. It got to the point where Laura dropped out, taking Gabby with her, wanting nothing to do with the school anymore.

So now, here he is. In Maine, an old fisherman, part-time hunter, and the only people he lets around him have healing factors.

He lives with Wade, who still- by the way- doesn't have any grey hairs (maybe because hes bald but- yk)

One night, while Logan is out, making himself feel useful by feeding the small town they're in, providing for more poor families, feeding their children's hungry mouths and asking nothing in return but respect. (It gets to the point that the children cheer when they see Logan, wanting to hug him, but he growls at them to get off, too afraid of hurting them) Wade finally awnsers the ringing phone.

"What." There's vemon in his tone, but soon his eyes widden, and he frowns.

Walking outside he stands there a moment, knowing Logan can hear him.

He ignores him, looking at the fish, litsening, his breathing slowing as he skewers some with his claws. Its not exactly spear fishing but- close.

"What?" His voice is almost annoyed, as if knowing what his long time Husband was about to ask him.

"Logan.."

"No."

"Logan-"

He shakes his head. "Don't care."

"...She's missing."

He pauses, turning after scraping the dead fish into a bucket. "Who's missing?"

"There's a little girl missing."

"So?"

"Logan!"

"I'm not helping them, Wade. That's final." He growls.

For a moment, Wade frowns, but he didn't learn to obey thy husband like the bible said.

He never did.

"Logan, there's a 6 year old out there. All alone. Cold. Probably going to be eaten by wolves!" He shouts from the back porch, knowing his place enough to stay here and not come near his fish. Even after all these years, Logan was still finicky over his food. "And all because some old fart won't help her!"

The silence thickened as Logan thought about it, the hero side of his brain yelling 'We'll find her!' And the hurt old part of him saying 'That's not my buisness.'

".. You find her then." He compromises.

"I can't! And if anyone knows those Canadian woods, it's you! You said you knew those forests like the back of your hand!" Wade protests. "If I could smell someone through miles of freezing snow, I would. But I can't. So here I am, asking The Wolverine to go do what he does best."

He grunts, glaring. "And that is?"

"Helping a little girl get back to her mommy..." Wade says, knowing that he was sold. He knew he was sold the moment he told him to do it himself. "She doesn't have much time, Logan." He sighs, putting a cherry on top.

The greyed man huffed, grumbling under his breath for a moment. "Who will stay here with the dog?"

"Gabby can! She loves gabs." Gott'em.

"What about Laura? Why can't she find her?"

Shit.

"Logan, Laura has barley been in those woods. You've lived in them for years. So. What will it be. Pull up your panties and go save a little girls life? Or do it anyway when our baby girl gets lost too?"

Logan scoffs, disappointed. "..She wouldn't get lost.."

"She would if the scent kept being blown away.."

Wade adds, seeing the 'god damn it, he's right.' look on the old mans brow.

He lets out a large sigh. "...I don't want any help."

"Oh well too fucking bad bucko, I'm gonna go pack my snow suit!"

"No! I mean... I don’t want any help from THEM.."

"No promises. I'm not letting poor Susie die just because you have a grudge. Now put your fish in the freezer and lets go! They're coming to pick us up-"

"I ain't flying!!" Logan snarls, watching as his lover ran off, having a deep feeling that he would be in the air shortly..

[space-blue]

Fixing Vander and Silco's story (a bit)

Using canon events! Sadly we can't actually fix it, but I hope this makes it a little better. I make my own edit proposal at the end that changes the bar scene to include Felicia without issues.

They meet in the mines, and meet Felicia and her partner there too. They end up together somehow (I think we can put the brotherly allegations to rest now, eh?) and one of them (or both) inherit/buy a bar.

Although Vander is the barman, there is no indication Silco doesn't own or co-own the place. After all he comes to take it eventually as his own, and he's still not bartending. That's just not his gig.

It's implied that Vander and Silco made it, as in, got away from the mines, while Felicia clearly didn't, as she comes home to both her daughters with mining gear and gloves.

So despite Vander and Silco building the Lanes together, the mines aren't closed, and the work "isn't done".

Felicia says they've done it, and Vander is happy to celebrate their success. Meanwhile, Silco has his "NoZ" Nation of Zaun book in which he's scribbling, still planning.

Vander's first memory that Viktor sees even has Silco holding that book.

Later, in season 1 episode 3, we see that Vander tells Silco that he had Vander's respect, the Lanes' respect, but it "was never enough".

There's also this fakeout moment in the memory at the bar, where Vander says they're done, and Silco replies with "You're gravely mistaken". And I thought he was going to go all zealous and say "We'll only be done when we have the Nation of Zaun", but no, he claims he's Bozo 1.

And imo, he is probably right. He calls out Vander in act 1 saying "I trusted you and you betrayed me", and Vander does not contest this. It makes the most in character sense as well that Silco is the brains of the operation while Vander is the brawn.

And we can conclude that Silco's goals were always "bigger" and that the Lanes were indeed not enough.

Years pass, during which we can only assume Silco keeps building his Nation of Zaun and Vander happily bartends and manages the Lanes with Silco. Felicia keeps working the mines and raises Vi, then Powder.

Vi is at least 11, if not more, by the time she's on the bridge. This is just consistent with her model, but also to make her 18+ by the time of act 2.

It's a long ass time for Vander and Silco to be running a bar and the Lanes together. Even assuming Vi is more 8 or 9yo, Vander and Silco spend all that time being together.

Sadly, their models aren't aged very well.

We are also forced here to make some unfortunate assumptions.

It's not a problem, IMO, for Silco to know Felicia and be close to her. It's a problem for him to not be close to Vi and Powder too. Close enough to recognise them at least.

It's easy to say, "Well, Felicia went back to the mines and raised her kids and wasn't super involved with Vander and Silco, who lived much higher up in their bar." Adult friendships and all that.

IT MAKES SENSE, but then it makes zero sense that Vander would murder his life's partner, a man he's been with 10 years at MINIMUM (fuck knows how long they were together while in the mines), over the death of a friend in a revolt they allegedly BOTH participated in.

The memories also imply that Silco is responsible somehow, for throwing a molotov. And yet the molotov doesn't kill the enforcer.

But Vander is shown in the opening of Act 1 season 1 pummeling one to death himself, long after the rest of the revolt has died down. That enforcer wasn't getting back up lol

So whatever we pick, because the writers made Felicia and Silco close, they create a plot hole either way.

Either Vander is whacko and murders his husband over a dead friend at a revolt he set up (since he repeatedly apologises for what he did, and claims he "lost his head after she died" and had that guilt on his hands too)

Or Silco and Vi and Powder spend ALL of season 1 acting like they don't know each other at all. Then Silco takes in Powder and somehow never comments on the fact he was friends with her mom.

Everything being triggered by Felicia's death also means that Vander's emotional thematic moment dropping the gauntlets after seeing what his violence led to is then followed up by a horrible attempted murder on the love of his life, which is... you know. Bad writing.

So I propose that they indeed drift apart. Silco knows of Felicia's kids, and they hangout a bit, but they aren't that close. She's busy mining and being a mom, and Silco is busy making the safe Zaun he promised to deliver.

The creation of that Zaun leads them to act out revolts and uprisings. Vander is happy to follow. He's angry, like he tells Vi. And this manifests in violence. Silco points his violence. It's how they create the Lanes and the moniker of Hound of the Underground. A hound usually has a master, after all.

Vander is Silco's hound, and I think, in Vander's mind this absolves him of some of the consequences of his actions.

So when his friend dies on the Bridge, even if they haven't been that close in a while, well, it's easy to put the blame on Silco.

Since we're following the new canon timeline... we'll have to have him go back with the girls, ready to turn a new leaf.

I think the best way here is to have him either dropping them at an orphanage, or back at their home (trusting Vi to look after Powder for a while) or with friends.

That way, Vi and Powder aren't immediately in Silco's legs back at the drop.

Then Vander and Silco take part in the "clean up" at the bridge. They go get bodies, and since they have no real estate in the fissures, they commit them to the sea (we have canon monsters in there, so I'm sure it all gets gobbled up).

That way, we explain why Vander is weirdly shaved, and why Silco and him are at in the Pilt: they just commited the bodies of the fallen to the waters.

There may have been many others, but Silco and Vander stay there, in the shallows, as they talk.

Vander is done. He doesn't want more of this. He thinks Silco went too far with pushing this one to the bridge. Piltover got defensive and they lost too many people.

Silco doesn't get it. Where he goes, so does Vander, but Vander is his own man, he decided to come too, and he killed enforcers too. Felicia's death is tragic, but as he later will tell Renni about the death of her son: at least she died fighting for the cause, and not some petty infighting, or worse, an accident at the shitty mines.

Vander, the Hound, is not only mad with grief, he refuses to carry the blame of his own actions. It's a character flaw and that's fine! The angry man channels that anger with violence, the only way he knows how.

Silco is probably shocked, and may not say the right things to calm Vander down.

Silco is under the assumption that Vander BELIEVES IN HIS DREAM. That he's a true believer of the Nation of Zaun, like Sevika turns out to be. A true believer would understand sacrifice. A true believer would understand too, that stopping now, after Felicia's death, would make THAT VERY DEATH POINTLESS.

So maybe he screams at Vander! What do you MEAN abandoning the fight? What do you mean, being content with the Lanes? How dare you? You'd make her sacrifice meaningless! You'd make Felicia die a pointless death!

And Vander would bellow that it's over. No more death. No more bloodshed. He rescued her kids from that bridge, and they don't deserve to die too, they don't deserve to see more death.

And Silco screams back that it's their job to create Zaun so these children won't have to see more death. Vander is just delaying the struggle.

And then, perhaps, Silco may even mock him. Say that Vander can't change like that. That he's not that sort of person, to just hang up his gauntlets and go peaceful. That Felicia's blood is on his hands too, and that the only way out is through more blood, more sacrifice.

It would be a horrible point to make, if then Vander truly loses it. Silco runs, and Vander's hound comes out, just grabbing Silco and trying to drown him.

It would be poetic, because then Vander goes home in shame. Gets his arm patched up, hides the scar under a brace, collects the kids and tries to pretend like HE CAN BE THAT MAN. Even though he surrendered his gauntlets and metaphorical violence, and tries to lean into the bartender chill persona, there's what he did to Silco.

And later he'll tell Vander "I'll show you what you really are". Because Silco knows that Vander's promises of being a peaceful good dad are flimsy at best.

Anyway, Vander goes home, and eventually the impact of what he's done really hits him. He's single now, and with kids, and the Lanes to run, and nobody knows where Silco is.

Vander slowly realises Silco was right about one thing. Just because Vander followed, doesn't mean he wasn't behind that event on the bridge. Becoming the solo leader of the Lanes has to have hammered that home for him. Suddenly so much responsibility thrust on him.

So Felicia's death was on him too, and his actions against Silco are the proof that he is indeed the sort of man Silco said he was. At any rate, surrendering violence as his first reaction to any trigger will take a lot of work.

He goes to their old hideout and leaves a letter for Silco.

In the happy AU, Silco finds it, and returns to Vander BEFORE ever meeting Singed. There is no glowing eye, no shimmer, and no cannery.

In our AU, Silco never finds the letter. He finds Singed instead. Starts helping him develop shimmer.

I've been thinking that since the goal of shimmer is a form of "keeping alive" and also "bringing back to life", then it's possible that Silco's glowing eye is a byproduct of shimmer experimentation.

And that the only way to keep it alive and function is more shimmer injections. It would otherwise be grey and dead like in the Nice AU.

So Singed is also a factor here. He gives our Silco a real way to deal scary violence to Piltover. And this changes our Silco. He's more radicalised, and more opposed to Vander, having discovered that Vander works with Grayson to keep Zaun under Piltover's boot (basically making sure the boot stays, but doesn't press down too hard).

Vander is, as always, the enforcer of the status quo.

And though this works for them timeline wise, it sadly doesn't change the fact that Silco should know who Vander's kids are.

Vi and Jinx can be excused for not recognising him, what with him being one of their mom's adult friends, and scarred. But Silco doesn't have that luxury. His great friend Felicia had two very distinctive kids, ONE OF WHICH VANDER FUCKING NAMED! And her death triggered his husband so badly he tried to kill Silco over it. If anything, Silco would be hyper-aware of Felicia's kids.

And no amount of alternate fix-its changes that. It's permanent damage to season 1's Silco.

I feel like we can fix Vander's side of things by inventing an entire scene at the Pilt as I did above, but we can't fix 10 years of knowing your friend's kids and then a lifetime of acting like you don't know them.

I think it also cheapens the found family aspect of both Vander and Silco's adoption. You're left to wonder if they took in the girls only because they were friends with the mom.

Silco's adoption of Jinx and co-dependence with her was great because it spoke of the similar shape of their traumas, and how unexpected their bond seemed.

But now it's redolent of friendly obligation. And lies.

How would I fix it by keeping Felicia in the picture?

I would fully remove Felicia's one-on-one with the boys. That night at the bar? It's a party. Young Sevika is here too!

Felicia and many others are there, all congratulating Vander and Silco over the creation of the Lanes. Eventually Silco tires of the social niceties and goes to write in his notebook at the bar. Or maybe there's a montage of the night as the crowds thin.

In the end, Silco is writing, and Vander is still socialising. He talks to 3 people--Felicia, her husband, and a random person. They thank him for all his work. They've done it! And the conditions in the mines are so much better now thanks to XYZ!

Vander is beaming, he's just so pleased. It's clear for him this is the end goal. Felicia asks him, pointing to Silco, if he's okay.

Vander laughs, says Silco is fine, but he's already got his head back in the clouds. You see, Silco doesn't just want the Lanes, he dreams of a free Nation of Zaun.

The other 2 laugh, but Felicia sobers up. She rubs her belly, thoughtful. Then she says "Sounds like a dream worth fighting for."

I don't think she even needs to say anything about being pregnant, but she could go on with something like "I'm expecting. A girl, I think. I know. And I would love if she could grow in a safe city. I'm so scared she'll have to live the way I did, growing up.'

And Vander smiles sadly and tells her, 'We've gotten this far, and we're not going back. We'll make Zaun safe for your kiddo, I promise you that.'

And that's it.

Vander knows OF Felicia. She is a community member. He knows her enough, maybe from Lanes meetings, that eventually he can recognise her children. But they're not friends, and SILCO definitely isn't friends.

And the disagreement after the bridge is fully about where to go from then on, and Vander deciding he wants to run the Lanes and keep them safe, that what they have now is good enough, while Silco wants "more".

That disagreement can turn nasty, and the fact Vander tried to drown Silco becomes a statement about how violent and temperamental he is as "The Hound of the Underground". Something he'll regret soon enough and spend the next few years working hard to try and change.

What do you think?

[hyukascampfire]

𝑯EART 𝑊ORM ⸺ hueningkai ℘˒´ˎ˗

  ⨾𓍢ִ໋ ˒˒ 𝚑𝔢art𝚠𝔬rm

[𝑛]. a relationship or friendship that you can't get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire.

⸺ listen to the playlist .ᐟ ‧˚

〝﹙ 📼 ﹚“I was just... wondering,” you say, blood roaring. "Well, Yeonjun wants me to come over to his place this weekend, and... I’ve never...” Sucking in a quick breath, you just spit it out to get it over with, “Would you be my first kiss, Kai?”  ˛ ､､

wc ➛ 17.9k

𝔭airings childhood bsf!kai x reader (lowkey soulmates?) ⤷ ft. asshole!yeonjun x reader

𝒢 ‎; smut ˒ angst ˒ some fantasy

𝔴arnings angst, family issues, fingering, jealousy (i’m sorry i just love ts), yeonjun really is an asshole, orgasm denial, thigh fucking, unprotected sex (they're stupid!), strength kink a lil bit, breeding kink, possessiveness, cream pie, choking... i think that's all, lmk if i missed any

✎୭ ashlynn's note omg. this was such a fun palate cleanser to write. this wasn't supposed to be as big as it is, but it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and i got super into the story. this kai is SOOOO!! yeah. i’m so nervous posting this because i’ve only ever posted TSFAWC, but…. here you areee (^^;; this is not proofread, so if you see a mistake... give me a sec. i'll get to it. hehe

Though you fan your hand furiously over your face, the little breezes washing over your clammy skin are not enough. The air is thick and heavy with summer’s heat. So thick that you almost feel it each time you swallow. It’s better than just letting yourself melt away, though. The cushion at your back doesn’t help much. It holds your warmth and returns it to you the longer you sit slumped back into it. You suffer it though—you’ve gone too sluggish to move.  

You let a leg dangle over the arm of a chair, watching a hopeful moth dance in the light of the buzzing porch light overhead. It flutters frantically in it, making a grand fight to reach that false moonlight, only to drop away when it realizes that it’s being burnt. You watch it rinse and repeat, relentless and sure, for who knows how long. It’s no special moth—no luna moth or the ones with the pretty pink wings—but the light falls down on it and colors it a pleasant stardust silver.  

You delight in letting your conscious brain turn off to watch it. It lets you forget the sweltering under your skin, and also that Kai had drug you out here. His dad gave him shit when he plays inside, but it’s way too hot to be out here. Isn’t it supposed to cool off after the sun goes down? It doesn’t feel like it. The deep acoustics are drowned out each time a car whirrs by. Playing outside should be the best option, but you and Kai live right on a busy road.  

When the roar of some car going ten miles over the speed limit doesn’t obscure his playing, though, you admire the intricacy of it. His fingers work up and down the neck, jumping frets that you imagine would be impossible to anybody without those long fingers of his. You had always been a loud supporter of his playing, even way back when the most he could play were simple chords, but you became especially so when a few years back he put a guitar in your hands and tried teaching you. Even with his fingers guiding yours, it was quick to learn that the effortlessness with which Kai handles the instrument is hard earned.  

He practices on the acoustic guitar, but that’s not his domain. With houses just a dash across the street from each other, Kai had grown up at your home more than he had at his own. So vividly, you remember the stars in his eyes when he’d listen to your dad’s music. Metallica, The Smashing Pumpkins, Linkin Park, any of it. He had fallen in love with it a long time ago. Your whole life you knew that it was only a matter of time before he was in his own band, chasing his dreams with a boundless mind and an indelible vision of himself on stage. How had that time come so soon, though? You don’t know if the notebooks full of inky lyrics that live wherever he deems inspiration might hit him make you proud or nervous. He’s making good on his dazzling aspirations, and you? 

You speak finally into the air, cutting through heat waves and his music and the night. “Isn’t it weird that we’re not going back to school after this summer?” 

He doesn’t have to even stop playing to answer you. Playing comes to him as a second nature. “Kinda,” he answers, brown eyes flitting up to you. “But it’s not like you won’t be back to it in September. College is the same shit.” 

The leg you’d been dangling and bouncing pauses. That’s right; you’re supposed to be going to that college you’d chosen because it was only a three-hour drive away from here. You pluck at the seat’s threadbare fabric, and the moth, still there, becomes oh-so-interesting once again. When his playing stops, you drop your head back with a cushioned thud and a groan that you wrangle in your throat. 

“Why are you acting like that?” he says, voice gone sharp like accusation. He doesn’t even know the truth, but he’s known you too long.

Can’t you just keep secrets for yourself, sometimes?

Kai, arms clad in a well-loved hoodie even in this dreadful weather, lays the guitar down. You maintain your silence. “Seriously, what?” 

Some secrets have timers, though. This one could only last you until about September, or even August when he realizes that you’re not preparing to return to school. A controlled sigh from your chest isn’t enough to soothe the nerves that sparks. “Nothing.” 

“Secrets, huh?” Kai says. When you do finally look to him, black spikes of hair frame his eyes and the accusation in them. 

It’s a simple poke, but it gets under your skin as sharp as any thorn might. It’s not like you don’t keep secrets from him, and you’re sure he keeps some from you too. But those are the little kinds, the inconsequential ones—like I ate already when asked why you’re not eating or like Yeah, I’m fine when it’s been a bad day. You don’t hide this kind of stuff from each other. Usually, you’d run over to his place to tell him whatever’s bothering you. Why not, when he’s known even the worst details of your life for almost the entirety of it? You’ve been holding this one close to your chest since somewhere around the end of senior year, though. The longer you let it fester, the worse your nervousness snowballs. “C’mon, Kai. Let’s not do this. Can you keep playing?” 

He doesn’t like that, of course. But you watch recognition dawn over his chocolate brown eyes, helpless to stop it. “You’re not going,” he says. It’s not a question nor a suspicion, it’s a bone-dry fact.  

Well. There that goes. You want to tear every hair on your head right out. Why had you even thought you’d keep him in the dark about it? When he’s not out in some garage making music, you two are together. The conversation was going to stroll by at some point; this was only inevitable. His disappointment radiates off him in waves and blisters you. He hasn’t even said anything yet, but you know exactly what he thinks of it. It’s why you kept it from him in the first place.  

Your silence is enough confirmation from him. “Why?” he says. “I thought you were excited to move out.” 

Wincing, you nod slowly. You were. Even went through the whole application process, along with most other kids your age. Ultimately, you never went through with declaring a college. You don’t exactly know why, but somewhere weaseled down in the shadowy recesses of your soul, you know. Taking those steps, the massive and terrifying ones from adolescence into adulthood, meant agreeing that this form of your life was over. It meant that at some point, you’d be moving away from here to where living your days away in Kai’s room would not be a choice. Everybody has to do it eventually, you know that. Kai’s music gig could take off any day, too. He’s going to make it happen. And then what? All this stalling and wishing on just a bit more time would mean nothing, he’d be off and chasing that dream. As excited as you are for it to finally become reality for him, there’s a nasty bitterness that’s budded in your chest, infecting your person.  

Can’t things just stay like this? 

“I was,” you say. It comes out of your mouth heavy.  

“Then why aren’t you going?” he says. Crickets, never seen but always heard, sing their song into the night’s darkness. “You didn’t get rejected. You’re too smart for that.” 

An ache sits heavily somewhere near the center of your chest, maybe over your heart. All those good grades, nights spent bent over a desk and AP paperwork—you’re wasting it. You shake your head. “No... just...” It’s an effort to dress your thoughts in a way that might appease him. A quiet moment stretches with your thinking before you continue, “I don’t know what I want to do.” 

He doesn’t like that, the yellow wash of the overhead light dancing over his taut lips and hard eyes. “Don’t know what you want to do?” he says, bringing his legs up onto the seat to crisscross them. He wears his favorite jeans. They’re heel-bitten and baggy enough over his legs that he can wear them around the house without any bother. “You’ve wanted to be an artist your whole life. You know exactly what you want to do.” 

Your chest only seems to ache harder. When the both of you were only young and hopeful, you both had big dreams. Kai was going to be the face of a metal band, and you were going to be an artist. A painter, potter, sculptor, even doing animation for those big companies like Dreamworks and Disney. You wanted any of it, just as long as you were doing art. You’d even promised him that you’d do the cover art for his albums with interlocked pinkies and flushed, hopeful cheeks. That passion and love wasn’t gone from you, it blazed strong in your veins. This blaze wasn’t the kind that kept you warm and excited to push forward into life, though. It had morphed into something that scalded you when you got to close, or started imagining yourself pursuing its call. It’s a taunting silvery glow, no longer a guiding north star. Taunting words of family members stamped down on that hope hard. When you were little, it was said lighthearted and in passing. The older you got, though, the more serious their faces became. They wouldn’t say it outright perhaps, but you hear what they think well enough. Art is a dead-end career.  

Shifting in your seat, you tell him, “I don’t know.” 

“What do you mean?” Kai says. “There are good colleges for that.” 

“I just... don’t know.” 

Shaking his head, he tells you, “But you love it.” 

You do. In its every form, you love creating. But loving it doesn’t mean that it’s right for you, or that you should trust your future in its hands. “I think I can do it in my own time,” you say, finally pushing yourself upright from the cushion. “Don’t wanna kill the passion by doing it for a living, you know?” 

He thinks on that for a moment. “If you love it, you should do it,” he says. 

An awful frustration bubbles in your chest. Kai has always had a clear life path, the steps ahead of him set in stone and waiting for him to follow in them. It’s hard for him to see why you might not want to do the same. There’s nothing that makes you as happy as the fact that he has it all figured out, that he knows just where he’s going and that he’s so incredible at it that he doesn’t have to worry about meeting the requirements, but your path seems obscured and untrodden. Punctuating a deep, resonant sigh, you say, “It’s not that easy, Kai.” 

“If you’re not doing that, then what are you going to do? Are you just going to settle for a nine-to-five?” he says full of accusation, the tapping on his knees gone still.  

A dry laugh, you say, “Maybe I’ll marry a super rich guy and just do my art for a living. No nine-to-five.” 

His face flashes. He’d always been a bit reserved, especially around others, but he bared his emotions freely around you. You hold them dearly to your chest and made sure to do your best to make good on that trust. He says, “You’re more than some guy’s housewife.” 

Cheeks radiating in the heat, you snort. “I know, dork. I’m a rockstar’s best friend. It’s my personal favorite achievement.”  

His face sours when you reach out and pinch hard at his cheek, but he doesn’t pull away or brush you off. The skin there is warmed and clammy. Really, the two of you should go meet the cool AC inside before you suffer heat stroke. But this moment feels so nice—your shoulders feel tons lighter without something to hide. If you had it your way, things would stay like this forever. Just the two of you, sat here like you have so many times before, just taking for granted the time you’ve got together.  

His mouth opens to banter, probably something about how he’s not a rockstar yet or to get you back for calling him a dork. Wingbeat and sterling dashes about your face send the image into a blur, though. You’re a quick mess of limbs and a whipping head, as if it’ll chase the thing away from you. 

“Seriously?” Kai says. You’d climbed halfway over him, elbows digging into him and knee doing a number on his thigh. “It’s a moth. You’re not scared of moths.” 

Lingering for a few moments later to ensure the flying thing was nowhere on you or around you, you hold back a laugh before you climb off him and fix your hair with undignified tucks behind your ears. “He was in my face,” you say around a laugh, because you know it was a bit too much. Nobody likes wings in their ears and spindly legs in their face, though, and you’re in no control of what you do when anything with six legs tries and get too friendly. Even moths.  

“You just wanted me to protect you,” he says. A sarcastic, shit-eating smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.  

“Oh,” you scoff, batting your eyelashes and clasping your hands together all saccharine-sweet. “Yes, Romeo, won’t you kill that bug for me? This girl’s heart just can’t take it!” 

Kai’s nose crinkles, and the playful light twists into a glare. “Nasty.” 

“That’s how you sounded,” you say. “I only reacted accordingly.” Laughing, you kick your legs out over his lap and sprawl back out. He takes the guitar back into his hands. 

As much as you want to escape the mugginess, you’ll survive it for just a little while longer—if only with the force of an indulgent heart. The eternal moments are those you allow to linger.  

⚝⭒ 

Some things, you forget when you’re older. Maybe it’s time’s hand, eroding memories down and stuffing more in the longer you live to experience them. But also maybe because they’re the sort of things you can’t say in the adult world without a laugh in the face and a look from down their noses.  

This memory is one of those forgotten things. It’s moth-bitten and dusty, something you one day folded up in a moving box and decided to never revisit. 

You’d been down at the creek. Kai and you had spent so many summer days there. It wasn’t too far from home, just past the filbert trees and into the shallow neck of the backwoods, but there you were out of sight and free to get up to nothing good. It was a wonder your mom ever let you do it. Kai’s dad didn’t care too much where he went or what he did, but your mom dug her claws in deep. You like to think that she imagined you two would have each other, if anything ever happened. 

Usually, you’d be there holding your jeans up from the stream and Kai would be letting his jeans go dark with it. The bite of water was nice as it washed over warm skin. Fun was a simple thing to find, then. You dug your fingers into the mudbanks and tossed stones way too big to be throwing at each other, just because you two remembered how much the adults hated it when you did. Then, you’d drag tired limbs home avoiding sweetgum tree spikes that had fallen to the ground and dug splinters out from your feet.  

This day, you had been in the blackberry bushes. It was maybe late June or early August, and they’d gotten heavy on their branches. You’d waited until the smell of them, summer-warmed, was sweet and cloying in the air to pick them. With buckets in your hands, you plucked only the fattest berries from their bunches. Your fingers were stained a delightful purple and perhaps a bit thorn raw, but you didn’t mind much then. You plucked for hours, and it was dusk before you could catch it. Dinner was no doubt waiting for you back home. 

“There’s a bunch over here,” Kai had said. He reached a long boyish arm, still awkward and lanky with puberty, up high for ripe bush. You finished off picking before climbing around thick branches sticking out to take a peek. A bunch, there was. 

When you went to drop a handful of them into your bucket, Kai hissed. He’d been snagged by a vicious looking branch, those ones as thick as a finger with thorns to match and you’d warn each other tongue-in-cheek to watch out for that one. He’d worn those ridiculous shorts that day, the ones that looked half pants half shorts with how long and baggy they were, and the claws of the bush had jumped at the opportunity. At first the scrapes were white, but then red blood crawled out and down his leg.  

“Kai,” you said, some parts chiding and some parts just wondering how he’d managed that. You surveyed his leg for a bit, and then determined that he should wash his leg off in the stream. He walked there strong, but of course you noticed the hobble beneath his acting. When you squatted down into the dry grass and cupped water to wash off his leg, you laughed. 

“What?” he had said, holding the shorts up. You covered your laugh with a hand, but it erupted past your palm. You remember the glare on his face very well.  

You still laughed. “You’re stupid,” you had told him. 

“I didn’t see it,” he said. “I tripped over it because it was sticking out.” 

That time when you brought your hands to catch some water, there was a twinkle in its surface. You didn’t notice it for a second. The creek moved fast and you could see a lot of things in its reflection. When it lingered, that’s when your brows furrowed. It seemed to twirl, dancing around like alive over the stones. 

The sound of Kai’s voice remains with you. “Hey,” he had said, strong to call your attention but also wavered with uncertainty. 

When you looked up, there was silver dust dancing around you. 

It was fluffy and whorling, fine silver stardust. It’d moved weightless in the air, as though it barely existed. In the center of it were a few moths. They seemed to be made of sterling powder just as the dust was, and they glowed against dusk’s backdrop. If your memory serves you right, there had been a sweet hymn of coos from them. They beckoned you. Summer’s heat felt lighter, and so did your chest. You wondered where they had wanted you to go. 

Almost afraid that if you spoke they might have fluttered away, you whispered soft and low to Kai. “What is that?” He was stood frozen there, pant leg still scrunched up in his fist. Stardust glowed soft in his brown eyes while he took it all in, you remember. It wasn’t a scared frozen. You weren’t scared, either—rather, it was as if that lightness had found its way into the core of your being and brushed over it with mending hands. 

He whispered back, “I don’t know.” How could he have known? It was absurd. 

Those whisps had beckoned you, flowing toward the deeper woods. The soft moths, their murmuring brushing up against your ears, seemed to wait for you to follow. You remember a pull, soft tendrils wrapping themselves around your heart and the yearning it planted there.  

But there was also this reluctance, a bone-deep answering that had told you: No. You’re not ready. 

“Kai, I wanna go,” you told him. 

You didn’t even need to tell him twice. Berry buckets forgotten; the journey home was a stranger one. When your dad asked why you returned from berry picking emptier handed than you had left the house, Kai and you only shared a look. You pair kept that evening at the creek hidden so well that it became more forgotten than shared secret.  

⚝⭒ 

Once, you had been the type of girl that loved being around family. Some of your favorite days of your life were spent in this living room, T.V. roaring over bouncing conversation. Some of those nights ended in rosy cheeks and laughs, and some ended with words thrown angry like fireworks. You never knew which you’d be getting, but you endured the fear of not knowing because it was a simple love—the basic kind built with biology into you the moment your infant skin touched your mother’s. You endured it because eventually, sleep washed away the bad taste left in your mouth and you forgave them quick, sometimes quicker than you ought to, and things would go on as if it hadn’t even happened. You endured it because you could handle its burden, if only to feel the warmth you feel when it’s a good day.  

Kai was always there—his dad was hardly home, so he found family in yours. When you were younger, you’d been embarrassed he was there for caustic, spitted words and intimate fights. Now, you’re just grateful for his shoulder.  

So, yes. Once, you had loved being around your family. But things feel tenser now, nights spent all together less frequent and when they do happen, they’re tainted by a strange air. You think that this strangeness is new, but an awful worry also makes you think that it’d always been there, that you only feel it now because you’ve grown into your adult mind. A hollow ache stakes its claim in your chest, declaring that it won’t leave until you find that youthful ignorance and joy once more. You think that it might stay there forever. 

Bare feet bounding down the stairs, you make a rare appearance downstairs. The cupboard is only half open to make way for a snack raid before your mom’s voice cuts through the air. You know quickly just by the look on her face that you should’ve stayed upstairs. 

“Hey,” she says, gathering laundry into a basket. “You’ve been applying to jobs?” 

With an anxious belly, you tell her, “Yeah. A few. They’re not really, like, ideal, but I sent applications.” You don’t remember when it got hard to look into your mother’s eyes, but you can’t bring yourself to do so now.  

“Not ideal?” she says. “It’s not like you can be picky. Mcdonalds or wherever, I don’t care, you’re going to need to get a job if you’re staying here.” 

“I know. I applied,” you reiterate around a mumble. You close the cabinets, not so interested in a snack anymore. “I just... I don’t know, ma. I don’t want to do that for a living, going between those sorts of jobs.” 

Face hard and abrasive against the truth you bare, she does that awful taunting smile that makes you feel small. Stupid. “You’re not going to college, so that’s what it’s gonna be. You can’t sit up there and draw for a living. You’ve gotta get into the real world, get some real experience.”  

There’s a burst of hurt in your chest, dazzling and gnawing. She’s getting closer to saying how she really feels about your dreams out loud every day. Your face burns and so do your eyes, knot thick in your throat. “Yeah, okay. Got it,” you say, nodding. You’re at the front door before you even know it slipping on shoes and fighting the greatest internal battle to will back tears. She’d use those against you, no doubt about it. “I’m going to Kai’s,” you throw over your shoulder.  

Whatever she barks back at you, you’re glad you don’t hear. Bells on some old Christmas decoration hung on the door that had yet to be taken down, even into summer, jingle and wash it away for you. 

Kai’s brows shoot up when he opens the door to your face crumpling. You’d done so well at damming it up, but the wall cracks and the water crashes through once you see him. If it were anybody else, you’d feel icky and attention seeking, but you’d held Kai to your chest through gut-wrenching sobs as much as he’s done it for you. Without question, he takes you into his arms, warm hand running up and down your back. The warm soothing is so familiar. You melt right into it.  

He keeps you there for a long moment. Then, his chest rumbles as he tells you, “Come on.” The walk through the AC to his bedroom is nice. Having a house like Kai’s to come to where it can just be you is nice, too. You step around the mess of clothes and scattered belongings on his floor like you have a muscle-memory roadmap of his room. Boxsprings creak and hard mattress welcome you back home. His room is dark as always, a night-dweller you call him. The array of peeling band posters plastered over walls you two had painted blue some years ago, when it’d been his favorite color, don’t help to lighten it up. He keeps a low lamplight on.  

“She never listens to me,” you say, crying gone to occasional sniffles from your chest. You rest your cheek on your bent knee. 

“I know,” he says. “But at least she cares about you. Pays attention to you.” His voice is soft and deep and right next to you. Always right next to you, there for you even when you might not appreciate it as you should.  

His dad cares too little what he does, and yours care too much. The grass is always greener on the other side, you know it. Still, you hold a fantasy where you’re able to do teenager stuff. Where you’d allow yourself to do bad things, because you weren’t so intent on painting yourself with their will. You two hold eyes for a long moment, your twinkling ones caught in that steady brown. “I just want to get away. Be my own person.” Your words are muffled in the softness of your skin. 

“You had the chance to do it,” Kai says, hand playing with your fingers. “But you didn’t.” 

Holding your legs closer, you lick your lips. What do you say to that? Would it ever be the time to tell him that you did it because you think that your soul is pathetically intertwined with his, and that it might snuff your lifeforce out to even try pursuing life without him? Without this? How do you tell him that you’re so frozen and unwilling to pursue any sort of future because it means accepting that this chapter is over? You clutch childhood to your chest like a wild animal guarding scarce food; you refuse. You refuse to acknowledge its end.  

“Kai,” is all you say, trembled and thick. It’s not just your mother’s words that dig at you and tear to shreds the last bits of what dreaming you had left in you, but so many other reality checks too. This isn’t the first time you’ve heard those sorts of words, urging you forward. You can only dig your heel into the ground for so long before you’re swept away in time’s ruthless, endless moving.  

He understands. Lifting your face with warm fingers against your cheeks, he says, “Hey. How about we go get ice cream, or something?” 

Ice cream does sound nice. “Dairy Queen?” 

Smirk tugged over his mouth, he says, “Yes, Dairy Queen. A blizzard. C’mon, let’s go.” Sliding off the bed, he offers you an urging hand up. 

But you falter. “I don’t know if we can. She’s mad at me. I don’t think she’ll let me go.” 

“Let you go?” he says, eyes narrowed. “She doesn’t have to let you go. You’re an adult now, you go if you want to.” He offers his hand to you again. 

It’s so him, freely going wherever he ordain it. The bullheadedness is very him, as well. Always the devil on your shoulder, he was the root of any rebellious thing you’ve ever done. He could never understand your apprehension, or why getting in trouble was such an awful thing to you. “I have to ask to get money.” 

Brows pinching, he says, “You think I’m not gonna pay for you? You don’t need them to give you money, I’ll pay. I’ll take care of it.” He drags you up from the bed this time. “Live a little. Do you want to go?” 

It was never the punishments or the getting in trouble that you were scared of, though. Disappointment was a scarier word than grounded. Sneaking out and those sorts of things, it’s not like you had angel wings at your back and never considered them. It’s that you are deeply, utterly terrified of changing how they look at you. You begin to tell him, “I do, but—” 

He cuts you off, adamant. “Then do it. Let’s go. If you want to go, then go,” he says. “At some point, your life needs to become your own. It’s not sneaking out when you’re graduated and nineteen years old, it’s going wherever the hell you want. You’ve... You’re gonna end up stuck here, in this town, forever. You don’t deserve that.” 

That sounds like both the best and the worst thing you’ve ever heard. You take his hand.  

⚝⭒ 

Your frozen fingers nurse your ice cream. The cup itself is cold, but the Dairy Queen on your side of town is always thirty degrees below what it should be. It’d always been that way. Even way back when you two couldn’t drive, you’d get dropped off here to escape the melting weather and get a frozen treat with a handful of dollars. Each time, you’d start off sagging with the relief of summer’s weight off your shoulders and left the place shivering and sugar-mouthed.  

It’s really only you two in here. You crinkle your nose when he takes a spoonful. “Out of all the flavors...” 

Unbothered and no doubt expecting you to say it, he offers you a flat, “You get your flavor, I get mine.” He makes a point of taking an extra-long bite. His lips linger around the red plastic of the spoon and his brows rest high in silent challenge.  

The corners of your lips twitch up. “Hmm. Well. I just have a hard time believing that Oreo... or, like, brownie fudge, is right there, and you actually want M&M. I don’t get how M&M your favorite.” A familiar banter falls over your tongues. Your heart buzzes and your cheeks radiate. This is the first you’ve done this all summer, and it’ll be weaning off into fall soon. Any other summer, you would’ve been here on all the hottest days. You hate that Kai’s been so busy with his music; you hate that you can hear the resounding ticks of the clock counting down your time. You also hate that the stubborn depths of you still believe that if you freeze yourself here in stasis that the world will relent and stop along with you. 

You look over the sharp lines of Kai’s jawline as it feathers with his chewing, and the broadness of his shoulders where his jacket stretches around it, and the starkness of his collarbones against his chest and the bobbing of his adam’s apple when he swallows. No, time doesn’t stop. Some of him remains the same, though. In it, you see the boy that had love creeping up on you so long ago, with all its aching and all its hope. That freckle on the column of his neck, the bump in his nose leading down to the button tip that beckons your lips to steal a quick kiss.  

And, those lips. They’re as soft as ever around the discontented grimace he pulls. “M&M isn’t my favorite.” 

With a pursed mouth and patronizing brows arched over your eyes, you say, “Oh, huh. That’s funny, because if my memory serves me right, it’s the only flavor you’ve ordered for the past... six years.”  

Kai husks a laugh at that. “That’s because they haven’t had my favorite for years,” he tells you, scooping up the final bit and then pushing it off to the side. “It was a blizzard of the month that they discontinued. The blackberry cheesecake one. I made peace with it, though. It lives on in my heart.” He grins, arms crossed over his chest and his back settled into the booth seat to let you finish your cup.  

“Blackberry cheesecake,” you say, voice made taunting. Your nod is slow and taunting, too. “Well, forget M&Ms.Why would blackberry cheesecake be your favorite? Ever?” 

His face falters, a moment where something flows over his eyes as if reliving a memory in a few short seconds. Then, he shrugs. “It just is.” 

You roll your eyes. “Whatever,” you laugh. “Maybe my palate is unrefined.” Imagining the tarte fruit in purple swirls of ice cream, you’re taken back to a humid July day and the scent of churned mud.  

The strange memory unfolds itself quick. As if it were waiting for you to find wherever it’d hidden itself away. With a sharp gasp, you say, “Oh my god, Kai. Do you remember that one day? That weird stuff we saw down at the creek?” 

He nods. “Yeah. I was just thinking of that the other day, actually...” 

Less interested in finishing your cup now, you let the spoon rest. “What?” you say, the word peaking in the middle. That day hadn’t crossed your mind once since it’d happened. “How weird is that?” 

Scoffing a laugh, he says, “Weird, yeah. Just as strange as two kids high on fermented berries.” 

That draws a breathy laugh from you. “Is that what you think it was?” you ask him with knitted brows. The berries had been fresh, and you two had popped plenty into your mouth. But no doubt, you’d have spat them right back out if they were that ripe. “I mean, we saw the same thing.” 

“It happens to animals all the time. Squirrells, and stuff.” He lends you a gallic shrug. “We just freaked ourselves out. Like that one time you said you saw the shape of something in the dark and we freaked out. And it was clothes.”  

Well, hallucinating, in tandem, a glowing mist because you two by chance ate fermented berries is a very long shot. However nonchalant he acts about it, he seems to have thought long and hard about it. Enough to reason it away with some far cry explanation. Would you have even been able to get drunk off a handful of fermented berries? And, god, you’re really sure that you’d have noticed. That taste isn’t really one you just don’t notice.  

Whatever. Maybe you were just drunk idiots. That’s a lot easier to swallow, anyway. 

“Okay, but you saw that. Did it not look sinister?” you say. With your spoon back in your hand, you punctuate the sentence pointing it at him. “You freaked out with me, too.”  

An unsatisfied scowl on his lips, he steals a spoonful of your dessert. You don’t even swat him away—your phone buzzes in your pocket. 

Catching sight of who’s calling, you share a long look with Kai. It’s funny, how fast those three white letters scramble you up. When you hesitate to answer, Kai tells you, “Answer.” 

You hope she can’t tell you’re not at Kai’s by the refrigerators’ dull buzzing. It’s an effort to tussle that invasive worry back. You’re at Dairy Queen. Getting ice cream with the boy she’s known since childhood. She should clutch her hands and thank the sky that you’re here, not out in some nasty frat house like you could be. You thumb the green button. 

Her voice comes through the speaker crackled and asking you to run over to do a quick dish load. For a heartbeat you consider telling her that you will and then start rushing home. Instead, you fork out the truth through resistant lips. 

The hangup tone sits heavy on the air between you and Kai. Having listened to the whole thing on speaker, he says, “What was so hard about that? The world didn’t end, did it?” 

The plush of your lip takes a hard gnawing. No, it hadn’t. “I know she’s not going to get mad at me for just going here,” you say as you rest your elbows onto the table. “It’s that they’re supporting me right now. I still live under their roof. The more I go around and insist I can do whatever I want, they’ll start reminding me of it.” 

His face drawn, he lets his mouth twitch to one side. “Yeah,” he muses. “I never thought yours would be the type to kick you out.” 

Kai’s dad had started threating him with getting kicked out years ago, when he first started telling him that he wanted to do music. How many times had he let reluctant tears flow into your shoulder over it? Because music wasn’t a real job? Back then, you’d whispered in his ears that he’d become everything he’d dreamed of and more as your fingers carded through shaggy locks of hair.  

“I don’t know,” you say, humming it out noncommittally. “Is your dad still... y’know?” 

Nodding slowly, his eyes tell. “Yeah. Always.” 

“Because you’re taking the band seriously, now?” you ask.  

“Probably. I don’t give a shit what he thinks about it. If I’m just his goddamn problem, I’ll give him what he wants soon enough.” His eyes blaze with promise of it.  

It takes a bit out of you to not wince. Kai living anywhere but in the house across from yours is wrong. “I don’t think he necessarily wants that, Kai...” You take his hand in your icy ones, the urge to reach out to him thinly veiled under the guise of searching out warmth. He’d always run warmer than you—your personal heater. “It’s probably because he can see that you’re doing it for real. Not just saying it anymore.” 

“Yeah, well,” he spits, “I can’t fucking wait to see what he’ll say to me when I make it. That piece of shit, though, he wouldn’t even care. It’s not like he ever gave a shit about me enough for it to matter.” 

But, it matters to you, you want to tell him. You understand his need to throw it all in his face. Though. “Is that one label going to sign you? The one you were talking about?” 

His tongue darts out to wet dry lips. “They haven’t yet. I don’t know. But I don’t need that money to get out of here, I’ve been working on it.” 

“They will,” you say. “But, where would you go? Not too far?” You try and keep it light and playful, even as your heart aches. 

“Come with me,” he says. It’s painfully blunt, as if it were that simple. “Let’s go get and apartment; you and me.” 

“Kai...” you say. “You don’t have to drag me along because you feel bad.” 

The idea doesn’t sound half bad, though.  

“What?” His face tightens, as if somewhere under the surface your words had scraped somewhere tender. “You don’t have to stay here forever. Please. I want... I want you to come with me. You wouldn’t have to even tell them; just bring all your stuff and go together. We could do it together. Like we said we would.”  

“We were like, five. Everybody tries to pretend running away at five,” you deadpan. It’s a washy attempt at lightening things back up. 

Living with him, moving out together, should feel like everything you’ve ever wanted. And, maybe it is. But, he’s not asking you to live with him the way you want him to. Not in the way that your aching heart wishes he would.  

Kai doesn’t share the laugh you give him. “Yeah, okay,” he says, leaning into the table.  

Perhaps you should consider the potent disappointment he’s terribly masking with a face of indifference, though. 

⚝⭒ 

Slowly, the knots in your belly have worked themselves out. When Kai had dropped you off, they’d been so awful that you felt borderline sick. You sat the whole ride there in his old beat-up truck picking at your nails and rambling to him. He listened to you the whole time. And then when it was time to walk in, it had least felt a little easier to do so with his eyes on you, watching to make sure you made it in safely. 

You’d gotten a job. It’s not too bad, folding clothes out on display. It would be nice if they kept the lights a bit brighter, but you’ll get used it eventually, you hope. 

Most of your coworkers are around your age, but the one showing you the ropes... your heart had fluttered. 

“You’ll get it,” Yeonjun says. The smile you find on his lips once he straightens up from placing product on a display is smooth and smug. Sleek strands of black hair fall over his eyes. You fluster under his gaze.  

With arms crossed over your chest you say, “Yeah, probably.” You reach into the cardboard box for stock to practice on. 

“Where’d you work before this?” he asks, leaning back into a wall to watch you. Suddenly, you make sloppier work of your folding. “Your first retail job?” 

Some obnoxious pop song falls down from the speakers over the store. Nobody’s in here yet, thankfully; you’ve got some time to try and get a handle on everything. “No, this is my first job. I was so nervous walking in.” 

Interest catches in his eyes. It encourages that smooth smile on his lips further. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll show you the reins.” 

Your mind stalls. The suggestive, sly flicker to it—are you looking too much into it? Maybe that’s just how guys like Yeonjun act. It’s hard to pretend that you don’t see how he’s looking at you, though. It has your belly twisted up in fluttery knots. It’s not like you hadn’t had your share of his type. But, for some reason you’d rather not address, he’s got your heart thumping in your chest. 

He laughs at your fifth attempt to fold up the shirt. When he takes it from you to help, he smells of musk and vetiver. “You going to college near here?” he continues.  

“Nah, just doing this, I guess,” you answer, watching him fold it up to try and soak it up.  

“Really? Why not?” he hums, crossing his arms about his chest. “You seem like a smart girl.” 

Buffering, your blood buzzes in your veins and your cheeks burn. “Dunno. Not really sure what to do. Are you in college?” 

“Nah. I’m trying to figure things out, too.” 

The both of you pop your heads up when the bell rings to announce the arrival of a customer.  

“Yeah,” you say, eyeing him. He’s a few years older than you, no doubt, and yet his life hasn’t fallen apart because he’s not done anything grand yet.  

Time’s hand around your neck loosens. Just a little bit.  

⚝⭒ 

You sit crisscrossed on top of Kai’s bedsheets. He’d thrown the windows open because the AC died, but it’s no help. The hot air wafting about the room sits heavy on your skin. You’d dressed in as little material as possible to let it breathe, bare thighs clad in a pair of loose shorts and a thin tank top, but it’s still miserable. 

Perhaps you two should be going over to yours, but you haven’t had time alone with him for a few weeks now. You hate this busier life, where you struggle to make room for this. 

Your new job isn’t so awful, though. Especially with Yeonjun there. A bout of nerves flows up through your stomach. That reminds you. 

Sitting up a bit straighter, you consider not doing it. In fact, you really shouldn’t. But your mouth moves before you can put a stopper on it. 

“Hey, Kai,” you say. The thickness in your throat makes you believe that your heart’s jumped up into it, caught. God, what are you doing? The unsure waver in your words has you regretting. 

His eyes flicker up to yours. He hums out a, “Huh?” 

No, this is wrong. You mess with the thin cotton strap of your tank top where it’d slipped down. “Never mind,” you tell him, trying to shrug it off.  

That piques his interest. “No, what?” His brow pinches.  

You lick your lips and shake your head. “Nothing, never mind. Really.” 

His eyes search you from where he sits up against the wall. “Tell me,” he demands. 

Really, you shouldn’t have said it in the first place. It was a ridiculous idea. But now you know he’s not going to let it go. And, ridiculously, you say it. “I was just... wondering,” you say, blood roaring. "Well, Yeonjun wants me to come over to his place this weekend, and... I’ve never...” Sucking in a quick breath, you just spit it out to get it over with, “Would you be my first kiss, Kai?” 

Insects buzz outside as he looks at you, frozen in spot. You reject the urge to dart away or throw up. You’re honestly just as shaken as him. But really, who else could you trust with something like that? You don’t want Yeonjun to be disappointed if he kisses you, or to seem inexperienced to him. 

And, perhaps, the hopelessly in love part of you hopes to at least feel his lips on yours at least once. If you’re going to be alone forever in your longing, you just wish that you can have this. 

“What?” Kai says. He looks rattled.  

Of course, he’s shocked. You shift. “Forget I said that,” you tell him, unable to meet his gaze.  

String-roughened fingers wrap around your upper arm. “I didn’t say anything,” he says, voice strained and face less shock-fallen and more darkened. “But... I mean, you want me to teach you to kiss for some other guy.” He spits out the last bit as if bitter in his mouth.  

“You don’t have to do it,” you say. “I just... thought that I might ask you to do it. I don’t know, I’m sorry I said it. I’ll just wing it or something.” His room’s grown ten degrees hotter, if that was possible. Especially where you feel his eyes on your face.  

Almost imperceptibly, his hand tightens around you. He swallows hard. “You want to learn how to kiss?” he says. “Fine. I’ll teach you.” 

In a heart-stopping moment, your eyes snap to his. Brown and familiar, they hold you with an intensity that turns your limbs into jelly. The air is stifling. “What... do I do?” you ask when the silence becomes too heavy.  

A muscle feathers in his jaw, reflected in the low light of his room. It’s quick and so easy to miss, but it tells you everything you need to know about how this is making him feel. How much disbelief he’s in. “Come here,” he says, stilted around the absolute absurdity of it. He pats on his lap. 

You make a hesitant crawl across the bed toward him. It seems as though your elbows might buckle beneath your weight, but you make it despite the odds. A fog settles over your brain when you rest your hands on his shoulders and bring your legs to straddle his lap. 

But you shove it back; you want to live and breathe every last second of this. No matter how unbelievable or blistering it is.  

Breaths fan out over your face. It’s seizing your mind like undiluted liquor. “Where do I put my hands?” you ask him. It’s breathless, the air stolen right from your lungs though your mouths haven’t even touched.  

“There is fine,” he says. His words sound breathless, too. The weight of his touch on you as he runs his own up to support your back is unsure. “And then...” he says. It falls out on your mouth slowly, and then he’s taking your lips onto his. 

The walls melt away, sound does too. All that is real is the taste of his lips and how they move against you. Your lips start tentative, but you try his mouth movements yourself. It feels like a timid dance—it feels like deep, deep down, finally everything is right. That mist, thick and blinding, falls back over you. 

Something changes. Something in it, where you two meet, changes. He becomes hungry. Softly locked lips turn biting and nipping, shaky breaths exhaled slow through your nose. His hands on your back become surer, and one even ventures off to grab your chin. The other holds you to his chest, melded together despite the intense smoke and flame rolling off your bodies. You wonder if he can feel your heart beating a mess there. 

Reluctance paints you both when you pull back. You’re panting deep drinks of air. It’s hard to think; your mind’s run off and sits just out of reach. Licking your messy lips, stained with illicitness, you can only manage to brush your fingers against it to form words. “How... was that?” you say, searching his eyes. You find his pupils blown so wide that they consume the warm brown. You’re ready to jump out of your skin with that look pointed at you.  

Kai doesn’t answer, though. He slams your mouths back together as if starved by just the brief moment you’d parted for air. Nips on your bottom lip and emboldened hands—he moves like roaring water through a dam. A dam that he’d worked hard to fortify, and yet, at a crack it’s all falling down. Fingertips digging through the fabric of your shorts down to your soft hips, his chest rumbles. You feel it reflected in your core, electricity charging there and shooting up your spine and down your thighs. 

You kiss him for all the times you wish you would’ve, but didn’t. The slight rolls of your hips down onto him come easy. You love how it has him making a sound into your mouth and taking the fat beneath his fingers harder into his hands. He helps you. 

He drops his head into your neck. Your head swims for air and he has you shuddering with just the brushing of his nose against the column of your neck. The walls of his room spin around you. “Kai,” you whine, every bit of friction his jeans provide, even clothed as you are, just enough to rile you but not to give you what you need. 

“God,” he growls, thumbs hooking under your waistband. “You always fucking run around dressed in nothing,” he says, letting his fingers linger like a suggestion of undressing you. “Did you do it on purpose? Expect to make me crazy, knowing I couldn’t touch you?” 

And, in those words, it seems that he steals every last bit of breath from you. How often had you gone braless or worn something like this around him? Laid here, in his bed, like that? 

Grown tired of your fruitless grinding, he brings a hand down to support your lower back and says, “Turn around.” 

Though you explode with the prospect of what he might be intending to do or what’s next, if you’re really going to do this, you do so in a flash of eager limbs. His chest is solid against your back, you melt against the feeling of it. He’d become such a man lately, filled out, and you watched it happen. It was hard for your eyes not to catch on muscle-corded forearms while he picked at strings or to not appreciate the timbred rumble of his voice when you’d feel it come from his chest. How could it not do things to you? Now, he’s dragging your shorts down your legs and you’re in disbelief.  

“Fuck,” he breaths out. His fingers find your panties soaked through. “So, you’re the type to get dripping wet.” 

An embarrassed blush decorates your cheeks. Kai drags his index finger in circles around your clit through the fabric as if enamored with how much of a mess you’d made of it. Your hips twitch every time he rolls right over it. It’s strange how he’s got your body acting on its own volition with his touches. Even stranger that it’s your best friend doing it. “Sorry,” you tell him, wavering.  

He continues those terribly slow circles. “Sorry?” he says, chin on your shoulder. He’s got you wrapped up in him, with nowhere to go but to melt back into him and let his fingers work. Free hand on one of your inner thighs digging divots into the plushness there to hold it still, he tells you, “It’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s hot as fuck. You’re so excited for me to touch you, huh?” 

The words wreak havoc on you, feeding the flame that has your belly twisted up tight and the ignition point between your thighs pounding. To hear them coming from him, reserved Kai, has you digging your fingers into his forearm to prove that it’s real. You’d never have imagined him being so... filthy. You imagine him behind falsely nonchalant eyes, devouring you with a perverted mind all the times you’d spent innocently sitting together in this room.  

Your cheeks squish beneath his fingers as he takes your face and turns it to him. He wants to make sure you’re look at him as he asks you, “Do you want me to finger you?” 

Like a record, your brain skips. Between the blunt, lewd question and his hand on you, it’s in overload. How could ask something like that so simply? Stunned as you are, of course you want him to. You want him to do anything to you. You nod.  

Every last nerve and neuron in your system, just below the skin, cry out when his fingers slow down to nothing. “Hmm?” he says, ignoring the chasing of your hips and the opening of your thighs to invite him into paying your poor pussy the attention he’d ripped from it. He wants to hear you say it.  

About ten minutes ago, you lost your mind. It does not return to you now. “I want you to,” you say, chest beating in tandem with your cunt. 

“You want me to, right? Not some dumbass you met a week ago, huh?” he says. “Because you know that this is what it’s meant to be. Me, doing these things to you. Not some twenty-five-year-old piece of shit. He doesn’t deserve you, baby. Understand?” 

His fingers slider under your panties. Dumb brained and cognition gone muddled, you nod. All you can really think about is the moment his fingers slide over you. Fire licks up your lower belly and your insides as he brushes calloused finger tips finally right against your clit. 

Puffed breaths of a scoff raise goosebumps over your skin. “Teach you to kiss so that you can go over there and get his hands on you,” he says, middle two fingertips prodding at your entrance. “As if you were ever anybody’s but mine. You’d come crawling back to me, baby, because it was always meant to be us. He could never satisfy you.” 

His words might alarm you or have you asking questions if he hadn’t pushed his fingers into you and begun curling them with strong, pointed presses, pulling soft mewls and hums from you until he finds a spot that twists up your insides. Even through the palm you press over your mouth, your moans come out more like wavering grunts and croaks. Your thighs quiver and twitch, threatening to snap closed against your own will with each. Only your feet stay planted to the mattress. Like a cone of soft serve under the sun’s blistering attention, you melt down him. Just his frame keeps you upright. 

“Right there, huh?” he says. The smirk on his mouth filters his words into something taunting. “That’s where you like it.” It’s like he’s learning your body step by step, fulfilling all the questions he’d been forced to only guess at before this.  

“Uh-huh.” It comes out whiny and cracks in the middle, but you can’t find even an ounce of you to care right now. If this moment had been a long spiral, a fall from grace, down into a dark pit of forgotten inhibitions, you’ve just hit the bottom. Cheeks blazing cherry blossom pink and with your fingers curling into his pant leg, you don’t doubt that you are a picturesque mess. The kind of mess that’s beautiful because it’s dirty. Your teeth are not gentle on your plush bottom lip. It stings, tugged back and bitten and still a bit swollen with kisses. Perhaps you taste the tang of metal on it, but you pay it no mind. 

Kai redoubles his efforts. Now that he knows exactly how to play you, he’s fucking you on his fingers without mercy. The sounds coming from your cunt were wet, but now they’re different— nasty squelching. The only noises coupling with your pathetic keening. Forget anchoring yourself on his thigh, forget muffling your sounds. Instead, your hands fly to encircle his flexing forearm. Under your nails, angry red crescents dig into the muscle there. What had been a languid, building pleasure suddenly becomes everything. Your breaths run away from you, and you chase them frantically. Deep down in your core, the muscles spasm and rage against his fingers. “H—oh god,” you groan. Even the muscles in your thighs and tummy tighten up. 

“So whiny...” Kai mumbles, voice taut with the effort of eroding you down into pure, blinding-white pleasure. 

And then, in a swoop of mercy, your belly tightens. You hover here, on the precipice of something so consuming and voracious that your muscles and bones reject it, and yet your heart sings. Your eyes and cheeks and lungs and belly burn, the flame charring the edges of you in a beckon. You answer its call. Kai doesn’t mind the snapping of your legs shut around his arm, nor does your bucking or shaking deter him. He just holds you through it, arm like a metal bar around your waist. He’s everywhere, in this moment—the smell of him, leather and utterly familiar, his mouth dusting hot kisses over your skin, his fingers guiding you through orgasm. Where you’d gone silent in the initial crash of it, you devolve into mewls and grunts as you come down.  

He holds you even as you slump against him boneless. Afterglow simmers in your veins and has your brain all lethargic and lazy. Neither of you speak for a while, your pulse thumping a rhythm. His breaths rise and fall against you; it grounds you in this moment where you feel all spacey and gone. You become aware again of how disgustingly sweltering it is in his room, your skin sheened. 

That brainless bliss only lasts you for so long, though. When rational mind returns to you, no matter how you wish it wouldn’t, you’re hit in the chest with regret so hard it knocks the wind out of you. 

How will anything ever be the same after what you’d just done? Stricken still by the thought, you barely register him pulling his fingers out of you. After all your worrying about making sure no wedge comes between you two, look what you’ve gone and done. No; nothing ever will be the same again.  

⚝⭒ 

A couple of weeks ago, you ruined the one friendship you were supposed to have forever. It presses down heavy one you while you sit sprawled out on Yeonjun’s couch, his arm around your shoulder. His phone casts a glow over his features with all the lights out. 

It doesn’t smell like home. He, pressed against your side, doesn’t smell like home.  

Some stupid movie that he’d picked out, yet somehow you’ve ended up the only one still watching it, weaves a hum into the quiet of his apartment. Tangy hurt wells up in your throat. Even the moments when you and Kai would sit in mutual silence on your phones never felt like this. This is different.  

You haven’t seen Kai since that night. He’s been busy getting ready to move out, and you’ve been here most days. How fast all of it had changed. You wish you’d feel whiplashed, left empty, by the drifting that you’d been so terrified of. But you don’t. It’s just been you, locked on land, watching him being taken away by the ocean’s tide with no way to change its course. You tried and screamed to call him back, but now your voice has gone hoarse.  

And instead of watching him go, you choose to look elsewhere. It’s all you can do to protect yourself from the hurt. 

“Hey,” Yeonjun says, finally addressing you rather than whoever’s he’s got in his phone. “Did you bring anything to change into?”  

“I brought stuff to sleep in,” you say, eyeing him. You know that’s not why he’s asking. If it came down to it, you could just steal something from him and pull it on. He means going out clothes. Your jaw tightens. “But nothing nice. Why?” 

He stretches his arms behind his head in a flaunt of long arms and tanned muscle. Hours spent at the gym lent him those; you appreciate the look of it with a watering mouth. Kai had earned his build by hours spent outside with your dad, because his own could care less, helping him fix up cars and vehicles of all ridiculous sorts. You remember when Kai had first gotten his truck—junk on wheels, honestly—he’d spent so much of summer out there getting it running. And, well... the sun-kissed bronze of his skin and frame that came with it, you had no qualms with. 

But those memories only sit heavy in your chest as you’re sat here beside Yeonjun. You banish them elsewhere; you need to let him drift off. If you can’t have each other, and your feelings won’t permit just being friends, then you have to. You want him to do amazing things, and you fear that it’s your presence in his life that will interrupt that. As much as your feelings are real, they are selfish. You, your unsure direction and all your dead weight, should let him go. Because you love him. 

“The guys want to come over,” he tells you, pushing off from the couch. “You should probably into change into something less showy.” 

Less showy. Your mouth drops into a scoff of disbelief, looking down. A pair of shorts and a shirt, showy? You have to laugh, or else you’ll succumb to the strange embarrassment crawling at the back of your skull. What’s he trying to say? Is that what he thinks of you? “What’s that supposed to mean?” you say, face tilted up to him in a twist of distaste. “I’m wearing something comfy.” 

He shrugs, hands shoved into the pockets of his black sweats. “Don’t want to give them the wrong idea about you, that’s all, baby. They’re guys; I just want to protect you.” 

“No,” you say, the word falling out in a barked laugh. “Why would you even be bringing over dudes that you think will look at me like that? Why are you even friends with people that you think are gonna make moves on your girlfriend?” He holds a hand out to you, but your hands stay right where they are: crossed solidly over your chest. 

Throwing that hand up in audacious exasperation, he gives you a look that makes you feel small and petulant—like you’re throwing an overblown fit. And, maybe you are. You should probably just do it; him seeing you as some overbearing or high maintenance girl has that embarrassment flaring like wildfire that’s found dry brush. “C’mon, baby,” he says, a lazy smile on his mouth that gets under your skin. “Let’s just have an easy night. Don’t make it a big deal.” 

Let’s just have an easy night. As if you’re the one ruining the night. Something snarky tries to seize your tongue, but you hold it down. “I thought it would be just us. We wanted to watch the movie together, Yeonjun. Can’t you wait to hang out with your friends? Let’s enjoy our time together; you’ve got your shift tomorrow.” 

“My fucking god,” he groans, running a hand through his hair furiously. “You’re needy, you know that? The neediest I’ve ever had to put up with. I don’t put up with needy, baby. Can’t you just chill out a little? My last didn’t mind when I’d have friends over.” 

Your eyes burn. Your cheeks burn. He’d been with plenty of other girls before you; that, you’re well aware of. It’s been a corrosive source of self-doubt for you. You don’t want that title: the neediest he’s ever had. Don’t want him to think of you as some prude that won’t let him have fun. Just... hearing him bring up the other girls he’d been with before you stings and leaves welts no different from a slap in the face. Feelings of inadequacy shackle you and have you saying, “Fine. I’m gonna borrow some of your clothes.” 

Heavy resentment blooms on your skin where he bends down and presses kisses to your cheek, and then mouth, and then down your neck. “Thank you, baby.” 

And, where those ugly, wilted flowers of it bloom, you hear echoes of something. Something that tells you that Kai wouldn’t treat you like this. But you’ve made your bed, decided to do it yourself, and now you’ve got to lay on it. 

⚝⭒ 

The frat parties are the worst kind of social outing that Yeonjun insists upon. The smaller kinds, more intimate gathering with just his closer friends, you tolerate much easier. You’re not fond of the circles he chooses. Breathing in thick, smoked-out air surrounded by alcohol-coated breaths is not your type of fun night. Somehow, you end up doing that more than date nights. But that’s better than being here. The base rumbles up through your feet and makes your stomach sick, and it reeks of grinding bodies and body odor, and condensation coats your fingers from the red solo cup as full as when you’d first gotten it. 

But, still, you come along. Not every time, but when you don’t, you lay in his bed sickening yourself with images of what he might be doing here. How pathetic is it to attend parties with your boyfriend because you fear that otherwise, he might stick his tongue down the throats of other girls? 

You’re looking for him right now, awkward and left alone. He’d promised to stick around; you had begged him to. That was pathetic, too. You know that you put up with too much. If he loved you, or honestly even liked you, you two would be in the thick of the throngs dancing or off somewhere talking with others. Together. The frantic skimming and weeding of your eyes through the blur of faces is not right. That’s not how he should make you feel. It’s not how Kai would make you feel. 

Well, Kai would never have you here in the first place. 

Venturing out from your little corner, you sift between the bodies of people have a hell of a lot better time than you. Drunken, some you bounce off of like bumper carts. You press your palm over the round face of your cup to spare the floor from spillage threatening to pour over the lip. It’s not like a splash from yours would matter much, though. The linoleum has already been made a fetor mess of dirt off shoes and the sticky sugar of liquor. Your shoes peel from it as you walk. God, what would your parents think of you being here? 

You peek around corners and eye big groups. He’s not in the kitchen when you look there, either. Your stomach feels sick in a knowing way—a gut feeling that doesn’t justify anger or tears just yet, but you know. Right in the center of your chest, you know. 

It’s in some room that you find him. Sat on the floor along with a few faces you don’t know, he pulls from his bottle. And on his shoulder, he lets a girl with shining curls and pink cheeks rest her head. At your busting in on the intimate gathering, Yeonjun’s eyes slide to you. Recognition flashes over them and wars with bleary drunkenness. 

“Hey, baby,” he says. Their gazes all fall on you, but you can hardly see them through blurry eyes. 

The girl lifts her head from his shoulder. She’d caught the memo. 

“I think I’m gonna go.” You make it sound resigned, try to not let them see your shame, but your voice betrays you and crackles. Maybe it’s better to pretend it doesn’t feel like you’ve just been kicked in the stomach and left to reel against the force, but you can’t. You’re nowhere near shocked, nowhere near blindsided, but still you hurt. 

He follows you down the hall. “What’s your problem?” he says, the few, plain words mending and waving into a slurring. 

You’ve got one goal: get to the front door, away from the shitty music and him. His words, sharpened, fall off your skin despite his efforts. What good would fighting do you, anyway? It was always going to end up this way. This is just who he is, and he doesn’t give two shits enough about you to want to change that. 

“Baby, seriously? That made you this mad? I didn’t even fucking do anything. Stop being insecure,” he says. At the gritting of your teeth, he sees an opportunity and pounces on it. “You don’t need to be jealous. I don’t do jealous shit. We can dance, or something. Shit, I don’t know what you want! Just stop throwing a fit.” 

Didn’t do anything? You have to laugh. Maybe you didn’t walk in on him fucking someone else, but that’s not what this is about. Not even a little bit. You’ve checked out, and the fact that he thinks he can make you believe that it’s your fault this time only drives the killing stake in harder. 

Maybe you’re bitter. It claws at your insides—turns your face hot and screams in your face that you’ve been used. But beside it sits a sadness. Not the slow kind, but the quick sadness of hurt. Why hadn’t you been good enough for him to love you? To like you? You’d left behind Kai and rested your new life on Yeonjun’s shoulders. You’d wanted so badly for his approval, or for him to want you. You did your best to try and make this work out because you needed it to. You needed so desperately proof that you could fall in love with somebody else. But your best was not what Yeonjun was interested in.  

Pins and needles prick your skin as you step outside, like jumping into an ice bath. It shocks you out of dizziness. Words surge up and out in a flash flood like hard reality. You spin on him. “Jealous?” you say, choking out a scathing laugh. “The last thing I’d ever let myself suffer over you is jealousy. Get over yourself. I’m going, stay here if you want. I don’t care.” 

“How are you gonna do that, huh?” he says. The flickering yellow of the porchlight paints his features. The shadow of something fluttering around it cuts dark spots in the light, and then a small little moth comes down and jumps around in his face. He waves it off. “Gonna have bitch boy come pick you up? You can’t leech off him forever; he’s gonna get sick of picking up another man’s girlfriend.” It seems like you walking in on that had sobered him up, but his breath still curls out onto your face with the reek of alcohol. “It’s not a big deal. You’re making this a bigger deal than it has to be. Do you not trust me?”  

“You are such a piece of shit,” you grit out. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Ever. I don’t know how I let this go on for so long.” You don’t like him having Kai in his mouth, don’t like him trying to act like you’re conflating things, and especially don’t like that face he’s making. As if you’re acting crazy and overblown. “No, I don’t trust you. You didn’t fuck her, but come on, Yeonjun. Seriously? You think I’m stupid, and I’m sick of it. You thought this would be easy because I didn’t have the experience you have, but I’m sorry. I don’t like being walked over.” 

“If you’re gonna be so goddamn jealous, then maybe we aren’t gonna work,” he says. 

That moth, floating light in the air, is right back in his face. Yeonjun takes two hands and smashes it between a clap of his hands. He shakes its flattened, broken body off his hand. Looking down at it laying there on top of dirt-caked concrete, you get this... feeling. A tickling around your person.  

“See if I care,” you snap, throat aching against the onslaught of emotion and held back tears.  

⚝⭒ 

Rivulets of raindrops dilute the tears on your cheeks. Your hair plasters to your face and your clothes to your body.  

For a week, you’d went about it all as if it hadn’t happened. And then you came here.  

It’d not been this rainy when you first got down to the creek—just a gentle trickle, really. You hadn’t been crying then, either. But, watching the water work at babbling over stone, you let yourself feel it. Here, where you’d had so many good memories. You’ve gone and tainted it, now. But for whatever reason, you’d just wanted to be here. Arms curled around yourself and fingers digging into drenched sleeves, you don’t wipe away the tears or cover the sounds of your crying. You let the stream hear it; it’ll sweep it right up and down the way. Somewhere far off, where you don’t have to feel it anymore. 

You realize that, usually, you’d be over at Kai’s right now. The fact that his room was not the first place you thought you could go to anymore is a punch to the gut. You drop your face into your hands and cry harder. Really, you’ve got to stop doing that to yourself. Thinking of sad things—putting your hurt under the microscope to see it closer. It’d be easier to just fold it up and tell yourself that it’ll pass, and that relationships end all the time. 

It’s not him that you cry over. Well, maybe some of it is. Rather, it’s that you have absolutely no idea where you’re going. Where you are. Finally, you’d built yourself a raft to get off the shore and go out to sea, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and it’s breaking apart right beneath you. And, stranded and alone in the water, you’ve got no way to get back to shore to build yourself another raft. You’re stranded, and the scariest bit is that you’re doing it all alone. You weren’t supposed to do this alone. You two made promises back then. 

You suppose that a promise is one of those things you were supposed to leave faith in back on shore. 

The raindrops are heavy over you. The fall of it roars against the ground, a torrent downpour. It’s not coupled with whipping wind or flashes of lightning—just straight, still falling. It’s a somber feeling no different from the gnawing in your chest. 

Like chimes, there’s a distant, gentle sound. Maybe water falling over creek rock, but it’s more like suggestion. A sweet sound that you shouldn’t even be able to hear over the rest of it, it’s as if it’s right in your ear. A whisper.  

You fix your blurry eyes with a wet sleeve. Rain falls right back into its place, but you see it: a silvery, whimsy haze. And the moths. They jump and call you, this time. Their glow bounces off the rainy mist against the grey of night’s arrival. Then, all you can hear is the whispering. Where you stand frozen, your feet beg to move. To follow them. 

So you do. 

Their entourage of moondust trails them where they go, wrapping you up and weaving between raindrop and space. You don’t worry where they’ll take you, or even try to wrap your head around this happening again. You just follow, mind glossed over and entranced with how beautiful it is. When you’d seen them before, it’d made you uneasy. Mostly because it looked so unearthly and unbelievable. But this time you just follow. 

A far-off voice, one oh-so-familiar, peaks through the haze. It’s not enough to stop you, but then you hear it again, louder and closer. 

You blink a few times. Once to break away the fog, and then twice to focus your eyes on Kai stood in front of you. His hair lays in wet spikes over his eyes and beads rain trace the planes of his face. He’s as soaked as you. 

“Kai?” you say. Looking around you, you’ve ended up somewhere in the field between your houses and the creek. But you’ve got no recollection of walking here. Whatever that mist is, sentient or not, had swept you here.  

His voice is strained, but you appreciate hearing it. “Break up with him,” he tells you. 

In his eyes, as you search them, there’s stardust glowing like reflection. Your face twists up. “What?” you say, breath a puff of smoke ahead of you. Summer had come and gotten away from you so fast, and now it’s gone all cold again. 

“Break up with him,” he echos, face solemn. He looks ruffled. 

“Why?” you ask, “And why are you out here?” 

“Because I’m moving out today, and I think I deserve to at least see you before I go.” His eyes look over you. “And... your dad said you went down to the creek.” 

He’s moving out today, and you had no idea. And really, it’s your fault. You’d driven that wedge between the two of you. “I did break up with him.” 

Downpour fills his quiet for a few moments, his face swirling with emotion like the clouds above you. He nods. “Good.” 

There are a few more long minutes between you; just you two searching each other's faces, antsy to say so much that it bunches up in your chests and stalls. It’s what a summer of longing does to you. Even with Yeonjun, even trying to slowly chip away the stitching that had connected the two of you at the hip, you were helpless to stop the gnawing of the love you bear for him. Even just seeing him now, you feel those threads mending back up. God, why does it have to be so hard? 

He just looks at you. For a few beats, he just looks at you. There are so many questions in his eyes. They flit across and turn over, but all he settles on is, “Why?” 

There’s so much you want to tell him. Words pile up to the top, some threatening to spill over. But you know that if you tell him some of it, just to make up for all the time you’d missed out on together, it’ll all come crashing out. And you don’t think you want him to know just how much you accepted, the way you let yourself get treated. So, you shake your head and say, “It doesn’t matter.” 

Kai looks like he wants to push that issue, but whatever look he finds on your face deters him. “Come with me,” he pleads. “I want you to come with me.” 

Your throat tightens. Curling your arms around yourself harder, the rain only coming down on you harder, you say, “Kai, I want to. I want to. I just... I don’t want to freeload off you, because you’re doing great things, and I’m just...” Your tongue darts out to wet your lips, but they’re already as soaked as the rest of you. “I’m just going nowhere. And I don’t want to be a burden, or ever be the reason that you can’t do what you dream of. If staying here means that you become everything that you’re destined to do, then I’m happy with that, Kai. I am.” 

He shakes his head, stumbling toward you. “No, no you don’t get it,” he says, frantically taking your shoulders into big hands. Under his touch, every taut muscle goes slack. You melt. “You don’t get it. You are the music. Every single song is about you. Every single fucking song is about you. I want you to come with me, please. I love you, I have always loved you, and I will always love you, and I thought you’d loved me too, and I don’t want to do this alone. I can’t do it alone.” 

He loves you. Kai loves you. The enormity of it rumbles the ground where you stand on legs you fear might just give in. You flex your fingers to combat the tears pricking your eyes. It doesn’t work; they brim and well up, spilling down over your cheeks. “What?” you say, voice softly breaking. “Kai, I didn’t...” 

“And just when I thought I finally had you, you left me,” he says, throwing a hand up beside him in a big gesture. “You left me! I woke up thinking you’d be there, and that maybe you loved me too, and you had left me. And then you threw me away for some piece of shit, and you stopped coming around.” His chest heaves for breaths. 

Your face contorts. That night, the one where you two had slipped up, you’d fallen asleep curled up against his chest on undiluted contentment. When you woke up, you had panicked. You thought he’d wake up and pretend it hadn’t happened, or he’d be uncomfortable, or even be disgusted and regretting. You couldn’t handle that, so you slipped out before he woke up. It’d been an attempt to protect your tender heart, but looking at the twitching of his lip now, you begin to think it’s the most selfish thing you’ve ever done. He thinks you used him and left him. Your stomach twists. Voice thick, you say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you, Kai. I thought you didn’t... I thought you didn’t see me that way. I was scared. I’m sorry I hurt you.” 

Brows knitted together, he says, “Thought I didn’t love you?” His hand cups your cheek, warm against the soft frozen skin he finds there. “I’ve... I’ve dreamed of you almost every night of my life. In my sleep, I see you, and you’re happy and glowing, and that damn... mist is all around you. I couldn’t get away from you even in my sleep.” 

Darting between his eyes, soft and reflecting your face back to you, it’s hard to breathe. Kai’s dreamt of you; he’s as sickly in love with you as you are him. Thunder claps, and the ground shakes, and the heavens open up above you, the trumpets belt, and you two are in love. Somewhere deep in your center, you feel it—your soul nodding yes. 

The mist. You know exactly what he’s talking about. “I saw it. That stuff, those moths. The stuff we saw back then.” 

“I did too,” he says, wet spikes of hair bouncing with a nod. “Not that long ago. It was the first time I saw it out of a dream since that day.” 

Back then, you two had only budding, innocent love for each other. Things hadn’t become mangled and lost to confused hearts or expectations. When they’d appeared to you, you hadn’t needed it. This time, you’d followed it. And it had led you here—somehow had led you right to the very spot you needed to so that every last piece might fall into place. For this moment to happen. You know why it did. 

“I’ll go with you, Kai. I’ll go wherever you go; I love you. I’ve loved you since forever,” you say, each and every word massive and lovely on your tongue. “I’m sorry I didn’t say it earlier.” 

So unlike the last times your mouth had met, he brings his mouth to yours with a dazzling clarity. No longer is it confused kisses; he locks his lips against yours with the urgency of so many years being unable to. Kai’s hands cradle your wet cheeks, hold you so tenderly into his kiss. His touch grounds you, makes the moment real. You melt into him—your fingers curled into his shirt as if holding him there so that he won’t disappear like something of an incorporeal dream. He sighs through his nose, kissing you harder. Even if it all were fake and this was nothing more than a feverish figment of your imagination, you think you could die happy just knowing this once. 

But it is utterly real, and utterly yours. You kiss him harder, too. 

When your lungs start to burn and plead for breath, you two pull away from each other. Your eyes flutter open to capture his. Warm and brown and the same ones you’ve stared into so many times before, but not like this, you sink into them. He runs his thumb over your cheek as he sinks into yours. His tongue darts out to lick lips painted with you. In the inches between you, space no longer feels heavy or charged with grievances. Every last unsaid thing had been answered. 

“I have my stuff up in the truck,” he says, breaths soft. Brown eyes dart around your face. “I’ll help you add your stuff to it.” 

You shudder out a breath. Add your stuff to it. A nervous energy settles down over you, but it doesn’t seem so bad if you’re doing it with him. Together.  

“Okay,” you whisper, a balmy secret just like the ones you used to share in small, giggly voices so many years ago. “Okay.” 

⚝⭒ 

Shivers seize you like jittering bones, all wrapped up in a blanket. The velour cushion seats beneath you have soaked up water and become damp, but Kai’s got the heater blasting. You wind around back roads, headlights illuminating the way ahead of you. Stray droplets whip in them, but nothing much. Isn’t it funny how the rain had just stopped like that? That’s just how the weather is, out here. You wonder how the weather might act wherever you’re headed. 

Your teeth chatter as if your jaw had its own will. The two of you had the windows down thinking that the wind might dry you off, but all it’s done is lap at your bitten cheeks. You reach down for the handle to crank it up. You’ve got a long drive ahead of you—either you’ll eventually dry off, or you can pull off at a rest area to change in a bathroom. The wet clothes are really not helping. 

With an arm up on the steering wheel, Kai turns his attention on you. You know that smile. “Cold?” he asks, eyes darting between your face and the road. With the hand he’s not got working the steering wheel, he runs fingers over your thigh. Soft, gentle massages, yes. The number it does on your core is absurd. Each mindless digging into your thighs and brush of his thumb, sparks sputter there. You’ve sat here, right in his passenger seat, so many times before. Day trips up to the lake, the one he’d joined your family camping at for so many summers, all the times he’d driven you to school in this truck, and even just a quick run down to a convenience store for a late-night snack. You’d deemed it your seat. But never once had you sat in it like this. Your heart does a flip. All those times you’d wish he’d reach over and do just this—a small gesture that would’ve been so big then. And it’s your reality, now.  

“Freezing,” you say. A brush of his fingers nearer the apex of your thighs sends you pressing them together and shifting in your seat. “But not everybody runs as hot as you, though, so.” 

His eyes catch the movement in just the split second he looked over to you. “Huh,” he says. He turns to look at you, his gaze flickering with something anew. Something that you’d only ever seen once before. “Is that it?” 

It’s hard to swallow. His fingers brush higher, and higher, feather-dustings of calloused fingertips that sends tingles shooting up your spine at the slightest suggestion of where he’s headed. “Yes,” you say, feigning indignance to cover the shiver that threatens to overtake you. When his fingertips dance at the waistband of your bottoms, it does so anyway. “Kai,” you say, blood hot in your veins. “You’re...driving.” 

His eyebrows pinch into a taunting furrow. “I am,” he says, nodding. “Don’t worry about it, baby. I’ve got us.” 

And he does; fingers slipping under the band of both your bottoms and your panties, he doesn’t even tear his eyes off the road. He’d driven these roads so much, you think he might be able to do it asleep. Even drawing a mewl from you with a brush over your clit, he doesn’t look away more than a quick glimpse at your pinkened cheeks. 

Two fingers dragging up your folds, right over the source of the mess. “You get excited so easily, huh?” he hums. “You like it when I play with you.” 

When he presses those fingers at your entrance, you can’t help but be taken back to that night. It echoes and reverberates through you. Long fingers, strong and punctual brushes against the sweet spot—he was criminally good with his fingers. Playing guitar did more for him than just music. He seemed to know exactly how to utilize those roughened fingers and trained flicks. Your muscles flicker as he abandons your hole for more brushes at your bud.  

Those teasing, sly touches turn to something more serious. His fingers roll over your clit, slow but enough to have you sighing and rolling your hips against the seat belt. But last time had gone just like this, him touching you and receiving nothing. He should feel good, too. “Shouldn’t you pull over?” you sigh, muscles taut. Your breaths come out shuddering and half-controlled, interrupted by the tightness that each delicious swirl provokes. The door takes the brunt of your grip, white-knuckling the interior. 

He laughs, a husky sound that is tinder to fire. He knows what you mean. “Maybe,” he says. “But I think I’m enjoying this plenty. I think I want to see you cum on my fingers again.” 

Fingers pinching and flicking faster, you grow breathy and whiny, hips rolling against the seatbelt and back into the seat. Your muscles, all the way down your thighs and deep in your belly, jump and twitch each time his fingers run over your clit in just the right spot—that tender spot that’s so good that it teeters on overwhelming. The kind that makes you hiss and then want more. “Shit, Kai,” you whine. “Right—there, keep going."  

He doesn’t answer with any teasing words. No, he just doubles down right at that angle and pressure, leaned back into his seat and driving as if he wasn’t fingers-deep in your panties right now. His sculpted profile at total ease—it does something for you. A delicious tightness curls its fingers over your center, promising a sugary ecstasy that you can’t help but chase. Bucking into his hands as best you can, you go quiet. Right there—right there, you feel it. The cusp. Your fingers brush over it, clenching around nothing and squeezing your thighs tight around him. Every last drop of blood in your body reaches for it, singing and dancing through your veins and making you dizzy. 

And then he stops. Your mouth drops open, whiplashed and helpless to its slipping away from you. You whittle your gaze into something sharp and turn to him. “What—why?” you complain. The tide slips further and further and further back, but you still taste sea salt on your tongue. Frustration sets in its place as you feel it go. Seriously, you’d been right there. “You’re so mean.” 

He slows and then with the clicking of the turn signal, he’s off the road and pulling the truck into park on a little secluded side road. Where the headlines pierce the pitch black, nothing but gravel and field surrounds you. He doesn’t kill the engine, instead pulling his hand free from you. 

Your heart, still stuttering with your lost orgasm, kicks back to life as he smears your slick over your mouth, dragging it over your lips and then taking his thumb to run it right over the plush of your mouth. “Am I?” he says, fingers taking your chin to meet your eyes with his. Endless hunger, pupils so blown that his eyes look black, pins you. “I don’t think you’ve seen mean yet, baby.” 

Darting your tongue out to clean your lips, you look at him through your eyelashes. “Show it to me, then.” 

Something dark passes over his face. It has your skeleton jumping out of your body. Then, he says, “Is that what you want? You want mean?” 

Brain gone to mush that can only really think about him touching you, a slow nod is all you can manage. 

The engine’s hum prevails for some long, thick seconds. And then, he tilts his head in a gesture. “Get in the back.” 

Holy shit. You want to sit there frozen in an overwhelming sort of excitement, but his seatbelt clicks undone and you’re set into motion. In a flurry of giggles and clumsy limbs, you climb up over the center console and into the backseat. He slips out of the front seat, not bothering to even kill the engine. 

The door beside you opens in a swirl of cold wind. In nothing more than a blink, a strong hand has both your wrists pinned to the cushions and your back flush against it. Nose-to-nose, his breath his hot over your face. “I’ve got plenty of ideas as to how I can warm you up.” 

You appreciate each other’s faces for a beat more, you looking up at him big-eyed and waiting. Kai breaks the moment to attack your neck in a procession of bites and kisses. Your mouth falls into a silent sound. 

“You know,” he says, free hand working your pants off. His eyes are trained on you, though. “I thought about doing this to you all summer. Touching you again.” He moves on to your top, pushing the fabric up until your chest is freed, clad in soft cotton. He eats the sight up. You want to reach down and cup the back of his head or feel his hair between your fingers as he presses his mouth against the soft beginning of your cleavage, but he’s got your wrists firmly planted. So much so, that you wonder exactly how he’s got you so secure with just one hand. Kai is strong, but maybe you hadn’t seen just how strong. Your skin aches under the purple bites he decorates you in. The sight of him—face in your chest and marking you up so lazily—has your teeth abusing your bottom lip. Whatever sounds you might make otherwise would be embarrassing. Kai lifts his eyes to you. “And I think you thought of me, too. Didn’t you?” 

“Oh, god, yes,” you say, writhing beneath him. He’s going so slow. You want him all over you. “So much.” 

He likes that. He takes your pebbled nipple into his mouth through the fabric. Soft grazes of teeth and sucks, you’re burning all over. When he pulls back, he’s left you dark wet patches when the bra had only just dried against your body heat. “Good,” he rasps, taking his big hands demanding and hungry over your torso. They swallow your frame up, soothing skin but lighting it aflame all the same. “Good girl.” 

You never thought just words could unravel you, but those did the job. Not a gasp, nor a sucking in of breath—no, you go silent and brainless, fumbling for rational thought. 

The dropping of your jaw has Kai delighted. “You’re so pretty,” he says. In a swift and powerful hoist, he’s tugging you down the cushions toward him with greedy fingers. He’s got your thighs pressed up to your chest. You’re bent right in half. 

Out of breath, you huff out, “You too.” 

A quick laugh falls from his mouth, lips pulled into a smug tilt. He nips at your calf up by his face. “So sweet, it almost makes me feel bad for what I’m about to do to you.” Reaching down for your panties, he pulls back on the suffocating press for only enough time to drag them up your legs. Those get discarded somewhere on the floor. Who cares about that right now, though? All you can register is the metallic clinking of his belt being undone. It’s got your nervous system twisting up. 

And, those words. Electricity shoots bolts of pure, sizzling revery into your core. What I’m about to do to you. You imagine a great deal of things that he might mean, but still, you think that none could hold a candle against the promise his voice held in saying it. 

Kai presses his body to your thighs and hooks your calves over his shoulders, and it all becomes real. The press of his heavy cock to your folds, the digging of his fingers into your outer thighs, his pretty eyes sparkling with something feral. As real as it gets—more real than anything you’ve ever felt in the entirety of your life. Your hands find perch flattened to his broad chest. 

The position leaving you two no option but to look right into each other, he holds your gaze and begins slow drags of his hot length up and down your slit. Tantalizing, awful, awful drags. When his tip nudges your eager clit, you jolt. And then he does it again. And again. 

“Kai,” you mewl. A press against your hole has you hopeful, and he lingers there for a moment, but doesn’t give it to you. Can’t he just fuck you? You’ve never been more pitifully in need of something in your life. 

“Shh.” His ruts get more daring, smearing your slick up onto your belly. “Take it.” 

You wiggle your toes in the air and make passes at arching yourself into him in search of better friction. He’s got you pressed so suffocatingly into the seat that it does absolutely nothing for you. In fact, he holds your harder and changes tack so that your thighs press together. At the very apex of them, his weeping cock slips through the seam. 

Pressing his cheek into your calf, he watches you. Every gasp and shaky inhale, he watches. It spurs his rutting on, sticky sounds and pants eating up the air. Your nails claw at his hands as, finally, a knot tightens in your core. 

“Yes, please,” you breathe. He fucks your thighs harder. Faster. Every nudge at your clit and hole becomes euphoric. “Kai, baby—I’m gonna—” 

Just as furiously easy as last time, he rips it all away from you. The rushing away of the buzzing and promise of shaking thighs—he takes it from you again. It brings prickling tears to your eyes. “Kai?” you hiss. “Again?” 

His eyes aren’t playful. He pulls your calves back over his shoulders, handling your hips into a better position to press his cock right at your entrance as if you weigh nothing. Face utterly straight, he says, “I don’t think you deserve it, do you? Not after what you did with Yeonjun.” 

A swallow goes down your throat hard. He presses himself just a bit harder into you. Not in yet, but right there. 

When he does begin sliding in, the stretch of it... You cling to him and squirm between him and the warm cushions behind you. Each inch is a heady feeling, all the way up to the hilt of him. He shudders a controlled breath. “You’re so fucking tight, though,” he grits out. “Did he not fuck you right?” 

Slaps of skin bounce off the car interior and between your bodies. He starts off at a brutal pace; you know it’s meant to make your brain go foggy. Squeezing your eyes closed, you manage, “I... didn’t fuck him.” It comes out strangled, voice bouncing as he fucks you into the car seat. 

Thumb tugging your bottom lip down and then dipping into your mouth, he watches the show of your ecstasy down to every last detail. “Yeah?” he says, voice shaking and almost desperate. “Always thinking of me, huh? Such a good little princess. You know exactly where your heart belongs.”  

You want to answer him, even just with a whine or moan. You try to. But with his thumb pressing down on your tongue, enough to pin it to the floor of your mouth, it’s not gonna happen. He tastes salty in your mouth. 

His truck consists of his grunts and whines, and your taut groans for some moments that seem to stretch forever. The planes of his groin grind against your clit when he delivers occasional pointed rolls, but mostly it’s just an animalistic, feverish dancing of your two sweaty bodies, holds growing more frantic the closer you get.  

Thumb wet with saliva; he frees your mouth. The hand trails slowly down your face and your chin, brushing feather touches, until he finds your neck. 

Your eyes fly open, wide. He pressed his fingers into your neck—no real pressure yet, he looks at you through damp strands of dangling hair and says, “Want my fingers around your neck?” His thumb brushes over the buzzing pulse point there. 

“Yes,” you grit out, body bouncing and back raw with friction against the coarse cushion’s surface. Your breath stutters, your mind stutters. Even your blinks stutter, eyelids too lazy to keep up. “Please.” 

The pressure of his fingers there—it frightens you and has you tightening around him at the same time. But you would trust nobody more with your life than Kai. 

He presses his cheek to your calf to indulge in the sight of you like this: underneath him, folded in two, nowhere to go but to take his pistoning hips, cheeks blazing, and his fingers pressed into your windpipe. If the way he becomes sloppier and more desperate in his tempo has anything to say for it, it does something for him. 

“Gonna be my pretty little girlfriend, huh?” he says. His voice is tight—so is your belly. You’re both so close. Hopefully, this time he’ll let you cum. “Take you to every show; show you off to everybody. Fuck.” 

Brain like static and swimming with a pinched flow of oxygen, you slur your words. “You’re—hah—gonna have other girls all over you.” 

The taunting, split-second raise of his brows flips your belly. You tighten him again. If he keeps hitting that spot, tip ramming into the soft spot deep inside you that he’d taken such delicate care of finding last time, you’re going to burst into sparkling flame and firework. He growls, “Well, I’ll just have to knock you up so that they know I’m yours, huh?” 

Holy shit. You like the sound of that. Your nails dig into his wrist around your neck, but you cry out a pitchy, “Yes!” 

“Oh, you like that?” Kai releases your throat to take both your hips. You gulp for air, finding nothing but the thick air of sex and humid breaths, at the opportunity. He’s ramming into you like he’s found a purpose. “Isn’t this the perfect position to do it? Get you pregnant?” 

With every last bit of brain power you’ve got, teetering on the edge excruciatingly close to salvation, you groan a long, hoarse sound. “Fuck, yes! Please, Kai, inside—” A hot trail of tears roll down your temples. 

It’s all he’s got to hear to still inside you. His growl rumbles deep in his chest, holding you in place and filling you with his hot cum deep in your cunt. That feeling, coupled with his short grinds against your clit as he fucks his seed deeper, takes your soul by sinful claws and crumbles it down into nothing. You burst into a shaking, whimpering peak, sucking your lips into your mouth to bare through the sheer twisting of your insides and the flame that consumes up your thighs and cunt. 

He falls on you heavy, face in your neck. Warm kisses against your clammy skin meld with your slow floating down, the two of you a beautiful, nasty picture of fucked out. He stays right inside you—the absolute stillness of him, you think he has no plans of pulling out any time soon. His long fingers card through your sweaty locks of hair. 

Finally, he presses himself off you. You get a glimpse of the window behind him—fogged up and filthy with your affairs. Anybody to see the truck from the outside would know exactly what went on inside, but right now, you don’t care. Not one bit. Your panted breaths drag in nothing but musk and thick, hot air. The drumbeat in your chest tells you that, despite how you feel ripped straight from your body, you are very much still alive. More alive than ever. 

“Warm?” he says, pushing sticky hair off his forehead. He’s a mess, too. His hair is ruffled with your touch, his clothes rumpled the same, beads of sweat rolling down the planes of his cheeks and neck, and his eyes a lazy smolder. As much as he looks like sex personified, a soft smile twitches at his lips. 

You snort. You can’t help but feel giddy, here with him. You’re with him. Nothing has ever felt more right. Unplugged when he pulls out of you, your mess trickles down onto the seat below you. “Yeah,” you say. “Very.” 

Warm is not enough to begin to describe how you feel. In your ears, you hear whisperings. Soft and gentle. Perhaps it was divine intervention, or the fates lending you their word, or maybe just rational thought. It says: 

Home. You are home. 

✎୭ ashlynn's note how do we feel about this pair? i really didn't mean for this to get so long, but i ended up RLLY liking their chemistry. i had to do their story justice. also, i finished this with kai as a guitarist and then his drummer performance came out... hmm.

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[cheshiresense]

Hello Anon, I hope you won't mind if I screenshot pieces of your ask, I read it but my muse vaulted over your first 3 questions and then took off on your 4.1, and now here we are, so I'm just going to chop these up and post them depending on what I can come up with.

This started out with TBTP!Shunsui never getting his memories and then kind of spiralled. He still doesn't get his memories but... well, you'll see. It really ran away from me lmao. No thoughts behind it, just vibes, I hammered this out in like fifteen minutes and it felt like a fever dream.

Starrk would definitely have complicated feelings about it. Like at the start when he agreed to go back, I think a part of him even then expected for the entire thing to end with his death, even if they manage to neutralize Aizen and defeat the Wandenreich, but whether or not he manages to survive it all, he definitely has no plans to get together with TBTP!Shunsui.

For one, obviously they're not the same person. I wouldn't say they're completely different, and I imagine TBTP!Shunsui would be a lot closer to Winter War!Shunsui, whom Starrk had met first. But TYBW!Shunsui is the one Starrk knew best, and TYBW!Shunsui suffered quite a few losses in a very short time. Like to Shinigami, even a hundred years probably isn't that much, especially to one who's already lived over a thousand years. But TYBW!Shunsui lost everyone he'd known for a thousand years in like the space of a week, he lost his mentor, he lost his closest friend, and on top of all that, he had the weight of a war fuelled by a grudge a thousand years in the making dumped on his shoulders, he had the duties of Captain-Commander of the Gotei 13 dumped on him, he had the deaths of literal thousands of Shinigami dumped on him, and then in this AU he had to be the one to carry everyone else through another 7 years of waging an endless bloody war that after a certain point neither side was ever going to win, but he had no way of stopping it either.

That sort of thing would take its toll on anyone. TYBW!Shunsui was a man changed by loss and grief and more responsibilities than he'd ever wanted. I imagine he would've had very little time or cause to still remember how to be the person he was before the Quincy War when he still had it in him to relax and enjoy life.

But I also imagine that Starrk being there had helped. Starrk has always been a quick learner, and it's not like he'd really known anyone there save Shunsui. He stuck close to his Shinigami, watched and learnd the way Shunsui strategized for each assault and skirmish, contributed what he could where he could, pitched in by keeping the Fourth Divison alive and functioning, shouldered some of that weight by finally wielding all his strength and mowing down entire battlefields of Quincy on his own just so other Shinigami wouldn't have to and Shunsui would thereby have one less thing to worry about.

And in the precious stolen moments in-between, Shunsui had someone to go home with, someone who guarded him while he slept, someone to distract him from the war (from his failure to protect yet more Shinigami fallen in battle under his command), someone to sit beside who knew the same kind of loneliness and didn't recoil from it, who was content to hold him and share in his silence when he just needed a moment to breathe.

I imagine there wouldn't have been many things to be happy about, but I think they'd still manage to carve out some happiness between them. Starrk had known very little of things like human food and clothes and games and books. Shunsui had been delighted to introduce whatever he could to him. They learned about each other, about their similarities and differences, about their strengths and weakness and hopes and fears, secrets exchanged in the dead of night in the safety of a shared office, a shared bed, a shared home. And even in the midst of a war and so much death and destruction, they managed to build something beautiful and strong, something that would've been long-lasting too under any other circumstances.

Because then Shunsui dies, a year before the true end of the war, and Starrk had perhaps not seen it coming even though there was never any real guarantee on a battlefield, but it had also been an unspoken certainty of his, something he knew the way he knew bones were breakable and blood was red and murder was easy--the day Kyouraku Shunsui dies would be the day Coyote Starrk would also fall. With any luck, Shunsui would only die over his dead body, but fortune has never favoured Starrk, and he'd figured the other way was fine too. That way, Starrk wouldn't be yet another person in a long line of people to have left Shunsui behind and alone once again, and he'd thought it would make no real difference. If Shunsui dies, Starrk would surely be minutes behind, by his own hand or otherwise.

That doesn't happen. It doesn't happen because the rest of the Gotei had gotten over any qualms they might've had about working with an Arrancar or even Aizen's former Primera Espada years ago, and besides, Starrk had already broken all the known rules and beliefs several years back by becoming a whole soul and evolving into something no one had ever seen before. He couldn't really be considered a Hollow anymore, for all that there was no other name for him either. And with all that he'd done - following Shunsui into battles and meetings and everything in-between with the kind of steadfast devotion the tide held for the moon, burning the midnight oil right alongside all the other captains and lieutenants because even a hopeless war generated paperwork and headaches as much as it did low supplies and emergency triage and lists and lists of dead, powering through enemy forces to save even just one more Shinigami with the kind of firepower rivalled only by the likes of Kurosaki Ichigo and Aizen Sousuke, and carrying the Fourth on his back by sheer force of will and a truly terrifying mind that had soaked up every medical text he'd had time to read and every medical procedure he'd had time to learn or extrapolate or straight-up invent out of fatal necessity - Starrk had long become a pillar the Gotei 13 couldn't do without, a figure at their helm as familiar and reassuring as the long unwavering shadow Kyouraku had cast. And in the devastating wake of even their Captain-Commander's death, with only a handful of captains and their squads remaining, they couldn't afford another titanic loss on its heels.

And, as Hirako had been the one to point out, all glittering ruthless eyes borne from desperation and pragmatism--Kyouraku Shunsui had protected Soul Society with his very last breath; if they were to ever meet again, would Starrk even be able to look Shunsui in the eye if he wouldn't even stick around to try and defend the place and people Shunsui had loved enough to die for?

(A year later, Mimihagi would use the exact same argument to receive the answer he needed to send the second envoy the Soul King had chosen back in time to save the world.)

(Perhaps the lesson Starrk had learnt best at Shunsui's side had been the one of duty. Or perhaps it had been the one Shunsui hadn't even meant to teach but Starrk had learnt anyway, had held closest to his heart, the one of love.

They were about the same thing in the end, when it came to what Starrk would do for Shunsui.)

Hirako had even dragged Ichigo to stand before him, Isane too, each and every last person Starrk would even nominally call a comrade and was still alive--Hirako had put them all in front of him, and then he'd asked if Starrk could really go to his grave in peace.

The bastard had gotten his way in the end, and Starrk had never come as close to hitting someone unprovoked as he had right then. He'd been left the sole survivor once again, left to soldier on alone, and some days, he has no idea how he keeps going.

(Some days, Starrk had wondered, still wonders, if Shunsui had known his death was coming, or had known what would happen should his death come to pass, so he had made… arrangements accordingly. Most days, Starrk knows it's best not to know the answer because it would probably be the one thing he would never be able to forgive Shunsui for.)

So Starrk had hung on for another year and done his best for what was left of the Shinigami, for the dwindling pockets of civilians, for Kurosaki Ichigo. Anyone with eyes could tell though, that he'd just been waiting until the war was over one way or another, until the day he could lie down and not wake up again.

Of course, as it turned out, he wasn't even allowed that much, and a lifetime later, Starrk is still alive because death just won't take him, or he just won't die.

He has zero desire to even look at TBTP!Shunsui. The first time he has to anyway and sees two eyes instead of one, it's like a knife to the gut. They're lighter too, somehow, without the void of grief and exhaustion and quiet despair bruising their depths. His gaze still holds a weight to it, he's still loved and lost before, he's still lived a thousand years with all the joys and sorrows that entails, but he hasn't lost everything, hasn't lost those dearest to him, hasn't had to pick himself up and force himself to march on anyway towards a dead-end future, and for a moment, it's like Starrk is looking at a stranger.

He thinks, randomly, bizarrely, in those first few minutes of their second first meeting, that it's a good thing he always wears gloves when he goes out.

He thinks, madly, nonsensically, that if he were to touch this Shunsui now, it would stain him black with desolation, or red with blood that would never run dry.

He thinks, abruptly, hysterically, that he'd somehow forgotten the hole Shunsui had left behind with his death, as if the past year had numbed him so thoroughly that it had frozen even his grief in its tracks, except it all comes roaring back now, an empty pit that's always been waiting for him to remember it, threatening to drown him whole. Frankly, he would welcome it if he thought it would kill him once and for all.

It's frighteningly easy to pretend nothing is wrong. Perhaps it shouldn't be. He's never been one to emote outwardly, always been good at displaying nothing but impassivity without even trying, to the point where Shunsui had remarked more than once that it was difficult to read him (and then pouted and asked what Starrk was thinking - don't leave him out, it's hurtful - and he'd always want to know even when Starrk was clearly thinking of nothing important at all).

He greets this Shunsui politely, with the courtesy an Academy student should afford a captain, he makes smalltalk as necessary, he doesn't look at anyone in particular but also doesn't avoid anyone's gaze, and then he lets himself fall silent as Ichigo draws everyone's attention again with no deliberate effort whatsoever when he blows up at something his cousin says.

It's easy to fade into the background after that, to fade into himself, retreating into his own mind with the ease of long practice. Once upon a time, he could spend years like this, buried so deep in his own head that when he surfaced and became aware again, the sand dunes would've shifted and changed, and new mountains of bones would've already formed around him.

The few times eyes turn back to him, he nods in all the right places and responds at all the right times and pretends the world hasn't become white noise in his ears.

(He'd had these episodes a few times during the war, never when there was immediate work to be done or a fight to be fought, but in their downtime, it would sneak up on him. It had never lasted more than a couple hours at a time, but he'd scared the hell out of Shunsui the first time, had found himself at the Fourth when he'd woken, but then he'd explained, and Shunsui's expression had been unreadable but his eyes had looked pained. He'd shaken his head when Starrk had said he could leave him alone or just smack him out of it, either way he'd come back sooner or later, but Shunsui had refused, and every time it had happened after that, Starrk would wake with his head pillowed against Shunsui's shoulder or chest or thigh, Shunsui's arm wrapped around him or his bulk at his back and a blanket draped around them both, warm and comfortable and never alone.)

(He is alone again now, and he doesn't understand why it's so difficult to relearn something he had known for far longer than he hadn't.)

He's here to check Fujiwara's Hohou - Shunsui's cousin, Shunsui never mentioned her, she must've died long ago in the future - so he does that when he's cued and works her through the problem and suggests a few exercises, and that's that. He practically sleepwalks through the rest of this little gathering, barely manages to feel vaguely relieved when it looks like they can all finally part ways, and hazily wonders if he can get away with booting Ichigo back to his own room for the night. He's pretty sure he's going to end up scaring the kid if he falls even further into his own mind.

Then Shiba Kaien does him a favour out of the blue, nagging Ichigo until the kid snaps and irritably agrees to spend the night at his family's compound. Distantly, Starrk is aware of being invited as well, but that's easy enough to refuse, citing an exam in the morning - or maybe he says assignment due, he's not sure - and the Clan Head says next time then, and- and-

He blinks and it's time to go. Nothing seems amiss so he inclines his head at the captains and lieutenant, bids Ichigo and Fujiwara farewell, and then takes his leave in a flash of Shunpou.

Starrk has seconds to feel nebulously pleased with himself, another second to remind himself to avoid the Eighth like the plague from here on out, and then even that's gone as he locks himself in his room, and the rest of the night is lost. He is more than happy to lose it.

He'd had exactly zero presence of mind to catch the way Kyouraku Shunsui had been staring - if discreetly - at him the entire time, from under his hat or out of the corner of his eye, and by the end of the entire encounter, the man had even shaken his kimono over his hands to hide the way they'd slowly curled into white-knuckled fists.

Shunsui doesn't know how no one else had felt it, bleeding into the air like a severed artery--a bottomless chasm of loneliness and grief that had felt like it should've been screaming with the agony of it, except there'd only been the deafening silence of barren wastelands, an emptiness reflected in Starrk’s perfectly blank eyes and perfectly sculpted non-expression, and Shunsui doesn't understand why he alone had evidently just taken a metaphorical dive straight into the man's very soul.

(Starrk would've, if he'd noticed. After all, a lifetime ago, Kyoukotsu had loved bringing his wolves back to her soulscape to play with, and Katen had often visited his soulscape in turn for tea and conversation. His and Shunsui's souls had long learned to recognize each other, mingling in a way that had transcended all possible boundaries, and in the face of that, what did a little thing like time and space matter?)

When Starrk had left, Shunsui had almost followed, had wanted to with an instinctual sort of urgency he couldn't even explain to himself, let alone anyone else. Several times, he'd almost reached out while the others were talking, to provide comfort perhaps, or to take some of the pain even, and it had only been the equally intuitive certainty that doing so would break something in Starrk that had ultimately stopped him each time.

"Kyouraku, is something wrong?" Ukitake asks once the others are all gone, because of course his best friend had noticed something off with Shunsui, even if not with Starrk.

Shunsui reaches up and tugs on the brim of his hat and doesn't know how to explain that wrong could not even begin to cover whatever the hell had just happened.

His insides are still shuddering like they've been ripped out very slowly. He still wants to run all the way to the Academy this instant. And he feels-

He feels inexplicably like he's lost something beloved and doesn't know if he'll ever get it back.

[gwemmieee]

Yeah. I have a big bone to pick with women who go out of their way to gatekeep someone out of our club. Most of them are cis and straight, but trans fems who do this unfortunately exist. That instance looks like some disgusting hypocrisy to me, because most baby trans fems really emotionally lean on the willingness of this community to emphasize that you are your gender and you are valid no matter how many steps you've already taken and been successful with. That is a crucial, supportive message, and suppressing it in any way is tantamount to pulling up the ladder behind you. Which, yeah, every community has its assholes who pull up ladders.

It is also a tough line to walk sometimes for women, because most of us have learned that there are certain ways we can't entirely just open up to most masculine folks and let them into our entire lives and every space. Not without a lot of pain. So we are incentivized to wait until someone makes it clear that they're safe, before they're let into our inner lives more. This function has caused me SO much strife, because before I was accepted as a woman, it kept me outside in the cold, alone, really close to an early grave, but now that I am fully living as a woman, and even before I was doing that, my efforts to ignore this function entirely and just let any masculine person into my heart, my inner world, and my safest spaces, have not always gone well, and sometimes those efforts have backfired, made me unsafe, and deeply traumatized me.

These days, the only conclusion I've been able to find is that women need to work on what we recognize as red and green flags, for who is safe. It's pretty easy to see that the average set of red and green flags you see most non-queer white women adhere to are... crap. Truly crap. Delusional, not based in reality, etc. And that sucks because it isolates them more and it gives them more excuse to be really shitty to people, or to gossip about them in ways that really aren't fair to them.

Earlier in my transition, I still had it internalized that I had had so much trouble because I wasn't good enough, because I didn't do enough, and that's why women didn't let me in. But I was literally running around freely saying out loud that I was genderfluid, that I had no concept of manhood and little concept of gender, that I thought it would be cool if I was born as a woman, that I wanted other pronouns to be used on me, that I could be pretty gay/queer, acting pretty gay/queer, openly rejecting most masculine behaviors and modes of thought, constantly openly celebrating femininity, experimenting with gender presentation... I was a very queer little dude. And I've only been able to recognize that in retrospect. Because nobody let me in. Trans fems may have let me in, but they weren't around much in the late 00s and early 10s. I never met one. But I did meet and usually deeply connect with countless fellow eggs, before any of us knew. In situations like mine, trans fems generally didn't even get to find themselves until a bisexual cis woman took it upon herself to date them as a perceived man, and then recognize their queerness and allow them to explore gender with her acceptance and assistance. Because being allowed into womanhood was so rare and taboo that it had to happen behind closed doors as part of a romantic relationship. I was aro/ace, and I unconsciously looked to get the same experience out of a platonic friendship, but all I got was led on. Told I was a close friend but still treated like a stray animal compared to their feminine friends. Not let in.

Meanwhile, cis women, and fem-raised queer folks who at the time universally saw themselves as, yknow proudly not quite men at least, universally treated me like a burly cis man deserving of none of their support or curiosity and all of their suspicion and gossip about how "he's creepy." Consistently. Until I finally came out as a woman in 2022. And that's so 100% on them. They went out of their way to not see me for who I was and just keep me out in the cold. So yeah. The state of gatekeeping of womanhood is *bad*. And in my experience, most of it comes from people who had/have easy access to unquestioned claims of womanhood, whether that's because they're AFAB or because their transition into womanhood was really fast and made them really conventionally attractive.

But what about trans fems? Well, we aren't perfect with our red and green flags, either. It's hard to be. Personally, I've noticed there is a small contingent (VERY small) of trans fems my age who operate more like the old world transsexuals in that they really are truscum gatekeepers, often also ableist, and borderline psychopathic in the level of emotional labor they expect from you as a friend vs. what they're willing to put up with in return. And that is very unfortunate. My early transition saw a lot of them genuinely help me as incredible new friends, but then hurt me badly and burn bridges for no good reason. And I feel that there is a bit of a schism in the trans fem community between elders who usually just want to stealth out--who look down on baby transes and cringe and don't help us, or even if they do talk to us and help, there is still a very clear line denominating their actual friends and community that we never get to cross into--and the rest of us who openly embrace being queer and not assimilating all the way. But, frankly? Most trans fems I've met are the most welcoming and least gatekeeping folks on the planet. Most are that latter, queerer camp. And we operate exactly the way that we should: we let anyone safe into our inner world, even if that safe person happens to be a man. And some of us STILL see that backfire. And so even we can't be completely carefree. But we can always learn and grow and get better and better at what we actually identify as red and green flags.

wait where are all the trans guys

Historical-anthropological research, especially the work taking place before the 21st century or outside the West, tends to focus entirely on transfeminized groups. So when reading these works it’s pretty natural to ask — wait, where are all the trans guys? This is a reasonable question with a few clear answers; this post is something quick I can point people to.

The central condition of transfeminized groups' absorption into feminist activism has been to accept a kind of symmetry with select TME groups through the understanding of trans femininity as "gender variance." Under this framework, transfeminized groups' social position can be understood as a consequence of gender variance and some abstract violation of cis norms; this was proposed by people like Susan Stryker and Emi Koyama [1], among others, and continues to structure trans inclusion today. It also fails when considering several basic aspects of these groups:

Transfeminized groups are associated with hyperspecific labor practices, most frequently sex work, but also hair styling, drag, makeup artistry, acting, and other forms of 'gender work.'

Metropolitan transfeminized groups appear in the archive as highly clustered and active groups connected with, but usually intensely split from, the masculine men they fucked.

Transfeminized groups become a kind of 'third gender' on an epistemic level; they are Known to wider society before and after “coming out” in a way that USAmerican transmasculinity has only recently vaguely approached.

Transfeminized groups are heavily clustered in labor practice, social organization, and epistemic position, although this is not universal -- certain strains of USAmerican transfemininity have become a bit more labor-agnostic in the last two decades, not-so-coincidentally alongside more general currents of gender-labor liberation. The messy strains of trans male identity recovered from the archive and from current practice tend to lack labor, social, and epistemic coherence. As Aaron Devor notes in FTM, his 1997 history of FTM men, trans men in the 20th century tended to transition out of cities and into the countryside, finding low-profile places they could exist in. These practices, and the earlier "female husband" practices described by Jen Manion, relied on the labor-agnostic nature of transitioned manhood in order to disappear from public life. Transfeminized groups, on the other hand, are categorically restricted from the main form of economic life historically available to women -- marriage. Their labor practices are heavily constrained and have almost always revolved around some form of 'gender work:' as Susan Stryker put it, you need to get people to pay you for being a trans woman. Transmasculinity pushes away feminized restrictions on labor; trans femininity is labor.

Because transfeminized identities are so often labor-identities, and because their specific brand of 'gender work' and hormonal/silicone/surgical embodiment usually requires both specialized training and community support, nearly every metropolitan center in the world developed highly centralized transfeminized groups over the course of the 20th century [2]. As Ochoa notes, this visibility is partially due to epistemic visibility (everyone knows what a trans is), partially due to group structure (people work and train each other), and partially due to the selectively visible demands of finding clients. Fledglings come in with a way of being that is always already visible to society, but changing the body to match and learning how to fully enact and slowly contest the third-gender labor-identity they've been given takes a lot of community support.

So as labor-identities, transfeminized groups tend to a level of labor/community/epistemic coherence that has no clear counterpart. The news archives we have of trans men (as seen in Manion) position them as singular and easily absorbed back into the female gestalt; the cisgender feminist/gayguy/AIDS researchers that form the bulk of historical-anthropological work saw them as unnecessary to their grand theories of gender; the communities themselves have been materially fractured and, for the groups that rise out of lesbian-feminist activism, only partially committed to their own existence. The result of all this is that there is no clear equivalent to the "transfeminized groups" of Jules-Gill Peterson; there is no symmetry to trannydom, and while additional work to unearth trans manhood in the archive remains extremely valuable, sometimes the necessary level of label-coherence and social existence just isn't there.

[1] Stryker, "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage," Emi Koyama, "The Transfeminist Manifesto" [2] As seen in Namaste, Invisible Lives, Prieur, "Mema's House, Mexico City," Kulick, "Travesti," Newton, "Mother Camp," Ochoa, "Queen for a Day," Hegarty, "The Made-Up State," and plenty more. Most of these works came out in the late 80s and 90s due to a combination of the feminist "third gender" craze, the burgeoning field of masculinity studies, and AIDS.

[lillypad-monopoly]

Wild Life Episode 5 Thoughts

(Except I'm insane about Martyn's ep)

LIFE SERIES TRIVIA is DIABOLICAL! The watchers literally being like "how well do you guys know your pain and suffering?" (also sorry only winners remember theory truthers)

The way Grian and Scar are such bitter ex-soulmates that Mumbo has to point it out is hilarious. (also them getting even and saying "Just like Third Life" hurt my heart)

Grian not remembering iconic moments from his own series is so funny. What do you mean he only knows Martyn beheaded Ren with an axe from fanart? Grian gaining possession of the Red Winter Axe was a whole plot point.

MUMBO FIRST OUT! IN SESSION 5! The canary curse is broken for real now guys but at what cost.

Grian standing on the ruins of the tower by himself going through the five stages of grief over Mumbo's death as the sun rises in the background is a gorgeous piece of fanart waiting to happen

Martyn you didn't need to start the episode by talking about how Ren is providing for you, you're asking for the shipping at this point 🤣

MARTYN YOU DO THE LORE OFC JIMMY AND TANGO WERE OUT FIRST. Also REN YOU WERE LITERALLY IN DOUBLE LIFE. RIP Ren/BigB we know where his true loyalties lie

THE TWO NICKLES MEME BREAKING CONTAINMENT I CAN'T

Ren inviting BigB to join the RenWood Mound alliance WITHOUT REMEMBERING DOUBLE LIFE is so insane I don't even know what to say.

OF COURSE SCAR REMEMBERS THE DESERT DUO FLOWERS I'M GOING TO BE SICK

Martyn and Ren saying they're going to be boat bros. This has been coming since last session but I NEED Joel and Etho to call them out on it

"We're boat boys," MARTYN INTHELITTLEWOOD WHEN I CATCH YOU-

Etho yelling for Bdubs to hit him so they could test if the wildcard affected damage and then Tango going "smack me harder~" in the background was diabolical. Suuuure you guys are all PG.

Etho sitting in a boat for Joel to jump over him feels like some boat boys relationship symbolism I'm not smart enough to explain

So Etho is currently living with team BET, but allied with the Four Gs, and in the family with Gem and Joel. Wildcard Etho is so back!

Of course Impulse immediately remembered the clock question.

Joel boasting about how he immediately knows all the questions is peak Joel form and I would expect nothing less. It is kind of warranted though because everybody else is waffling on the simple ones.

Joel is now two for two on unquestioningly trusting Etho only to have something bad happen to him and not even being mad about it what is wrong with this man 😭

Does Joel have the censor bleep on his keyboard or did he just straight up start swearing at Tango and know they would both have to censor it in post to get the effect that he was also making the noise?

Scott's gone from a creaking fanboy to a body horror situation and I'm living for it (also considering he's agreed to "go wild" this session--am I sensing a Scott corruption arc?)

Scott cutting directly from saying he and Jimmy were never married even though they called each other husbands to a scene WITH Jimmy was kind of an insane choice

Gaslight Gatekeep Girlboss Girldad has been confirmed by Scott as the actual reason for the 4Gs. I still think Gaslight Gatekeep Girlboss ImpulseSV is funnier but good to have an official ruling

Scott giving up his life for Pearl and them being good natured about it and calling it therapy! I love them so much!

Lizzie being the only person who's not exicted when a trivia bot spawns is so funny. Even the other players who weren't in all the seasons don't seem to be as miffed by them as she is.

Lizzie's flaming snail arising out of that hole while smiling is potentially the funniest thing I've seen all day. Why did it look like that 🤣

[nazrigar]

Transformers All-Sparks: The Heirs to Nova Prime and Stormreign

Because Oplita isn't complete with veritable angst. In this, the angst of identity... and how much of you is still... well. You!

In the eyes of the Autobots, Optimus Prime and Elita seem to have it together and are bastions of leadership, wisdom and strength… but deep in their leaders' mindscapes, it's an entirely different story.

Optimus Prime can see and even talk to the spirits of the old Primes, including the original holder of the Matrix, Nova Prime, the original 13th Prime. In stasis, Optimus can even talk to them... and it's a very creepy experience.

Elita meanwhile can feel as if though past Guardians "speak" through her own body. In stasis, she even sees through their eyes and live their experiences.

A grave concern for both Orion and Aerial is, even if they KNOW who they are and think they're still "just" Orion and Aerial... as Optimus Prime and Elita-1, they just don't know HOW much of their identities in their reformatted forms is either influenced or channeled directly from these ancient figures of the past.

Nova Prime, also known as Nova the Conqueror, was the 13th member of the original Primes, and was the original leader. It was through him that Cybetron as a realm went from one world to several, and helped establish the space bridges for easy travel between each. He never once lost a battle, and there was no monster he couldn't beat. He was an inspirational figure who knew how to rally those to his cause… then one day he simply decided he conquered enough and passed on the Matrix and disappeared without a trace. His abdication shocked the rest of the Primes, and is still a subject of heated debate in the modern age. Some say he abandoned his duty, others say he simply had nothing more to conquer. Regardless, he casts an enormous shadow over all other Primes… including Optimus.

Stormreign was the leader of the Knights of Cybertron, the first iteration of the Cybertronian High Guard, later the Guardians for short. Though she indeed helped defend Cybertron, when Nova wanted a world he wanted to claim for Cybertron, it's her cybertronian boots on the ground smiting foes. Said to be consummate professional, but with a firm hand on keeping her forces focused and disciplined. It was her who began the tradition of passing down her T-cog to future apprentices and heirs, a practice long since forgotten except for, as far as Elita could tell, one. Her own mentor, Leader-1.

[merakiui]

The way Ernesto has been rotting my brain since the event ended needs to be studied cuz I’ve been thinking of sleezy Ernesto tricking you into being a new hole for a glory wall he’s got going on to make a quick buck since those rowdy boys never say no to a perfectly good set of wet holes available to fuck and use as a cum dump

AAAA FREE USE HOLE!!!!! OTL wondering what "important role" you're meant to play as it's presented to you as something grand. It's the mystery (and a helpful nudge from his UM) that leaves you stuck in the wall with your hole(s) facing the world..... orz hehe maybe Fellow decides to try you first just to break you in or to test how good of a hole you really are. After all, those snooty brats from that Night Raven College will want only the finest, so you'd better be a good hole for them, he's telling you while he fucks into your tight warmth.

You try to tell Fellow you're not so sure you can do this anymore, but it's difficult to get a word out when his cock is stretching you open. You almost don't want him to leave. You have no idea what any of those guys are like!! What if they're terrible? T^T but Fellow assures you it's all well and good. They won't do anything that goes against park rules and if they do... :) besides, you're the only one who could do this! He knows you're going to perform wonderfully.

Having to endure the afternoon getting stuffed by so many different guys.... cum drooling out of your abused hole(s), your voice hoarse from crying out in pain/pleasure and moaning so much. One of them was scoffing about how the others just don't know how to take care of things. Such brutes... another was going on about how he'd like to bring you back to his dorm so his dorm members can enjoy your company! Maybe you can just live there, he said with bright laughter. :D another guy was whistling about how sensitive you are. Sticking three fingers into your hole just to watch you flinch and tighten up out of instinct, giggling to himself over how cute you're being. Another drizzled some sort of sticky syrup over you and had a swell time licking you clean, his tongue flashing into your hole and curling in ways that were just right. Etc etc~

You lost track of how many cocks and fingers and tongues were spearing you open, but by the end of it you have to lean on Fellow for support, tacky from a day of sex. He's brushing your hair aside and cooing at you for a job well done, draping his blue coat over your shaky form. <3 now allow him to reward you for your excellent work.