#but I already had an idea for his halo and I really wanted to draw this lol

[everbloomly]

[kinopio-writes]

Hi! Would you be willing to write something for Adam with a sensitive reader?

Everyone knows that he is loud-mouthed jerk, even reader, and she loves him regardless, but one day he crosses the line and says something particularly mean that makes her cry. Like REAL mean. To the point that he pauses because he did not think before speaking (or, well, less than usual lol)

I'm happy with whatever format you feel like using! Thank you!

A/N: I will be more than delighted to write that for you. But would you excuse me for a moment? AHHHHHHDISJDIOEOFJSKXJND—I’m sorry; I love this idea so much. Reading ‘Adam with a sensitive reader’ got me hooked instantly. But I’ll go over that in the headcanons, along with the general stuff. And I’ll add a oneshot at the end that plays the exact scenario of Adam taking it too far.

Holy sh!t. I made it so that the reader being sensitive is their greatest but also weakest point and it turned out pretty angsty. Has a bit of hurt/comfort, though. Did I go overboard? Maybe. That’s why it took so long. Sorry, anon.

Words: 2,328 (edited)

Warnings: Sex is mentioned (only a bit, surprisingly), Angst, Adam being Adam

———

Adam w/ a Sensitive!Reader

• ha, this man is also sensitive himself

• well, sensitive about himself

• he feels his own emotions strongly, so he’s not the caring, easily able to pick up on other’s feelings and empathize type of sensitive

• you, on the other hand, are on the opposite end of the spectrum compared to Adam

• so you experience other people’s emotions just as strongly as yours

• you easily know what makes someone tick

• you’re selfless

• you’re able to admit your mistakes and apologize

• you’re respectful and actively listen to people when they talk about themselves

• you don’t push people down to make yourself seem better

• you try to make everyone feel good and comfortable

• you’re everything he isn’t

• because you fit in Heaven perfectly

• you deserve to be there

• and Adam knows that he doesn’t belong (subconsciously at least)

• you’re able to draw people in just for being yourself

• and he’s envious of it

• so he demeans you and is snarky about everything you do, and every time people give you praise or affection, he tries to divert the attention to himself or just stares at you with utter hatred from afar

• although all of that is just when he hasn’t even had a conversation with you

• after a while of being around you, he’ll cling to you because you give him the reassurance and validation he oh-so craves (he acts as if he didn’t hate you before. What do you mean? You two were always buddy-buddy!)

• you acknowledge all of the things he puts his worth to

• heck, you hang out with him—you sometimes even initiate it—willingly, and you’re genuinely interested in everything he has to say

• but he‘ll only hang out with you where no one recognizes you (so you don’t get all the attention)

• terrible transition here, but he notices that you mimic people’s expressions often

• he definitely makes fun of you for it

• and also mocks you

• up until he realizes that you do the same thing to him, too

• which is fine and all, if only you didn’t do that when he’s upset

• well, you mimic him when he’s joyous as well, but he (already subconsciously) expects you to. I mean, why wouldn’t you? He’s fucking hilarious!

• so you copying his negative emotions just stands out more

• and he…doesn’t like it

• that’s only really what he doesn’t like about you

• and the fact that you hog all the attention

• and the fact that people see you as perfect…

• buuut what happens when he gets to see a new side of you that isn’t exactly upholding that image?

———

Your phone lit up from your bedside table, brightening your otherwise dark room along with the soft glow of your halo. You only moved your eyes to the light, not wanting your tears to spill and dampen your pillows.

You had an inkling as to who was texting you this late—if the fact that your phone lighting up several times in the span of 5 minutes had anything to say.

When the texts stopped pouring in after a few seconds, you heavily sighed, wings ruffling. You resisted the urge to rub your face as you went to grab your phone.

HEY (2:34) HEY (2:34) HEY (2:34) ARE YOU UP? (2:35) I’M BORED (2:35) GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE (2:36) IF YOU’RE UP (2:37) ARE YOU? (2:38) DID I TELL YOU THAT BITCH WITH THE HUGE TITS GOT FIRED TODAY? (2:39)

Figured. Of course, it was Adam. He was the only person you knew who’d be awake at this ungodly hour. And the only person you knew who’d disturb your peace if it meant curing anything that ailed him. Which was now about boredom, it seemed.

You read a few of his texts displayed on your lock screen before tapping one of the notifications and opening the app, scanning the rest of the unread messages.

Adam was going on about ‘that bitch with the huge tits’—her name was Tiffany, you were sure—and how she was rumored to have slept with an archangel to assume higher authority. He also went on to complain about how he didn’t have the chance to bed her anymore since she was basically deemed an outcast and that he couldn’t be seen with someone like her.

You frowned, not believing any of it, but you didn’t have time to think about it enough when he began typing again.

SO YOU’RE AWAKE (2:43)

You barely finished reading the new message when another one popped up.

DON’T IGNORE ME BITCH (2:43)

You frowned deeper, quick to type out a reply.

i’m not (2:43) i was just reading your texts (2:43) don’t worry (2:43) i’ll be there soon (2:44)

When he stopped typing, you placed your phone back on the nightstand, sitting up on your bed as you carefully wiped away your teary eyes. You hugged yourself for a moment, wings functioning as a cocoon while a hand tugged on your hair.

Today had been draining—both mentally and emotionally. Just like the day before, and the day before that. But you didn’t want to think about it, lest you start to cry some more and smear your face with tears this time. What mattered was that everyone was back on their feet again.

Since you didn’t bother changing into your sleepwear when you got home, you only checked your face in the mirror to see if your eyes were puffy or not. You then took in deep breaths, holding up your drooping wings before putting up a charming smile.

You couldn’t stay in the bathroom for long, quickly leaving to tread the path to Adam’s.

•••

“BOO!” Adam’s masked face suddenly peeked from the corner of his hallway, earning an indescribable scream from you as you jerked back. He burst out laughing, brows creased in confusion but also amusement. He couldn’t even make fun of you for getting scared. “What the—what the fuck was that scream?”

Recovering rather quickly as you blinked, you only smiled at him. You were expecting him to wait for you on his couch as his front door was left unlocked, but you weren’t complaining; his action took away any drowsiness you just had.

When Adam didn’t hear you laugh with him, his laughter subsided as he opened his eyes to look at your face. He raised his brows and placed the back of his hands on his hips. “What’s up with you?”

Shit. There was no way Adam was seeing through you.

“Nothing; I just love hearing you laugh.” You heard a tiny squeak in response. “Anyway, what did you make me come over for? Surely not just to scare me.” You moved past Adam and tightly crossed your arms, entering his spacious living room.

“Pshh, fuck no. You’re so easy to spook. Though that was a first. Didn’t know you could hit high notes, (Name).”

You didn’t know what to say to his…compliment? And sort of insult? Was it really either of them? Should you thank him? But in a sarcastic way? No, you weren’t known for being sarcastic, so he might think you were being genuine and look at you weirdly. And it would also seem highly egotistical.

Not as if Adam had much to say about that…

You tugged at your hair when you caught yourself with those thoughts. Shit, that’s so rude! You can’t think that! You shouldn’t think that!

You settled on an awkward chuckle, making yourself appear smaller as you averted your eyes to his TV space.

It was different, certainly. The modular couch pieces were rearranged into a pit sectional. And it looked as though he had chucked a bunch of pillows and one large blanket as an afterthought. It appeared messy, but at least it looked cozy.

“What’s this?”

“Hm? Oh, well, since you were taking your sweet ass time coming here, I thought to switch things up a bit.” You flinched when his head appeared right on your shoulder. “What’d ya think?”

“It looks super comfy.” Adam wore a goofy grin behind you as you walked closer to the area and noticed that he already prepared snacks on the low table. “Is this a way to say you wanna do a movie marathon?”

“You know it, baby.” He flew past you and landed on the sofa, patting the space beside him with a smile you just couldn’t reject.

•••

Heaven’s natural light beginning to peek through the open windows indicated that it was already dawn. Thank goodness you didn’t have work today.

You two—or rather, Adam—had settled on watching the film series, Die Hard. Every single one. You didn’t mind, but you didn’t understand why Adam invited you over if you two were just going to rewatch the film series for the eighth time.

He had also been pretty immersed in the large screen in front of him, so he hadn’t attempted to converse with you ever since the first movie started. In all honesty, he could have just watched them all by himself.

But you didn’t question it. This time was the same as the last seven, after all. You always concluded that maybe he just wanted someone to watch movies with, no talking necessary. Even if the no-talking part sounded a bit out of character.

Was it though? Because he did that quite often. For instance, he constantly brought you along to whatever mundane errands he had to do during the weekdays and never really talked with you unless he found something cool and pointed it out.

Although, the earlier times you tagged along with him on his errands, he kept yapping his mouth off about the ‘totally awesome’ things he does. He talked about music, his own albums, his band, women, sex, and himself as the first-ever man.

As time went on, however, the talking was replaced with silence. You wondered if he just ran out of things to say or if he found it unnecessary to talk anymore.

You also sometimes wondered what was going through his head when he thought you didn’t see him glancing at you while he was doing something he believed was boring.

The sound of Adam’s stomach rumbling broke you out of your train of thought.

You both looked at each other blankly as if either of you were to blame.

He blinked to break the eye contact between you. “(Name), I’m hungry.”

You snorted, facing ahead. “You ate all of our snacks before the first movie even finished.”

“Don’t blame me.” He hugged the pillow he held tighter. “I’m still fuckin’ hungry, though.”

You hummed as you reached for your pocket. “Do you want me to—oh. I…I forgot my phone.” You frowned. You never forget to bring your belongings.

Adam merely stared at you, unblinking.

You averted your eyes and held your legs tighter. “Uhm, We could get delivery if you want. Can you lend me your phone?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” He casually tossed you the device before laying on his back and looking up at you. “I’m down for anything.”

His phone hit your knee before you could catch it, silently landing on the cushions. “Are you sure?” You picked it up, opened his unlocked phone, and stared at his basic home screen.

He didn’t really use his phone that often to know that it could be changed. He only really used it to fetch one-night stands or occasional dates, text, play music aloud, look at outdated memes, take random blurry photos, and right now, order delivery.

“Totally.” His crow’s feet displayed on his mask as he puffed out his cheeks.

“Because last time you said that, you didn’t like what I had to pick.”

“That’s because the 5 ʼn 2 is so fucking overrated!” he suddenly started to complain. Your wings ruffled. “Jeez, I swear, every fuckin’ time I take a chick out and ask her what her favorite eatery is, basic bitches always go, ‘Oh, bREaD & fIsH, ceRTAinLy’ or ‘bReAD & FiSh’S a cLAsSIC’” He used his hand as a puppet to imitate their words before waving it. “Like, helloooo? Can’t you see the joint that’s literally on the other side of the street’s a hundred times superior? It’s cheaper, too, unlike Bread & Fish. Overpriced ass. You get me, right—?”

“Then you pick!” Adam jumped at your volume, and your eyes widened upon noticing yourself. You quickly gave back his phone as you turned your face away from him, and he slowly took it with a weird look.

“Shit, chill, (Name). The fuck’s up your ass?” He kept his gaze on you before turning to his phone.

While he was serious about his opinions of your bland tastes, he didn’t think it was that personal. Your preferences were the same as everyone else and that was boring. He was just being honest. And you usually didn’t take the things he said that seriously.

“Adam, I’m sorry,” you spoke up after a moment of silence and ran a hand through your hair. “I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

“ʼs not a problem.” He was still a bit weirded out, but he was willing to shrug it off.

You insisted, however, “I mean it. I’m not mad at you.”

“Okay…?” he muttered when he saw a notification pop up from Lute. Her message consisted of how some of the exterminators got into a quarrel during roll call and the ones involved got injured in the process. She said she was going to discipline them.

Adam did not want to know what she meant by that and was most likely not going to stop by their place today.

“Really. I’m not. Sorry. It’s just that yesterday’s been…”

“Uh-huh…” At this point, Adam was not listening to anything you were saying. But when he still heard the static noise that was your words, he groaned. “Look, sweetie, I really don’t give a fuckin’ shit about your fuckin’ apology, ʼkay? I don’t fuckin’ care. Now what do you want?”

You saw Adam’s confused yet concerned expression after he looked up from his phone and immediately noticed that you were starting to cry. You instantly turned your face away as you carefully wiped your eyes.

“Sorry. Sorry. I’m not crying because of you.” You didn’t know if that was true. You didn’t know if you were crying because of his words or were crying because of everything else.

That was the first time he ever used a sweet petname for you in a long time. He only ever used that to demean or mock other people.

Shit. Stop thinking—you were going to cry more. But even after carefully wiping your eyes away, new tears kept flowing. You couldn’t stop. This was humiliating. You wanted to disappear. You didn’t want anyone to witness you in this state. It was mortifying.

“Shit.” Adam’s voice came out panicky as he held his hands out towards you, but he hesitated. Hesitated in what, he didn’t even know.

He…didn’t think you could cry.

Adam didn’t know what to do; this emotional shit wasn’t his thing. He couldn’t ask you to leave, he knew that much, but he didn’t want to leave himself. This was his place. Why should he leave?

So, he did the only thing he could do in this situation.

You suddenly felt something warm envelop you.

You didn’t look up, but you knew it was Adam. You could feel the texture of his robe on your hands and the side of your face. You could feel his hands on your shoulder blade, but you couldn’t quite feel his arms on you.

You stopped wiping your eyes for a moment.

No one had ever hugged you before when you were sad.

No one had ever let you be sad.

Adam heard you sob.

Fucking great. He made it worse. What the fuck was he supposed to do then?

But when he went to unwrap his arms, he felt yours slip around his midsection, pulling him closer than before as he grunted from your firm hold.

So you wanted to be hugged? Alright. Whatever.

Adam slowly hugged you back after you muttered a ‘sorry’ and loosened your grip.

The next seconds were silent, so when he heard muffled words coming from you, he looked down. You also looked up moments later when he didn’t respond, realizing he must’ve not heard you.

Your gaze softened as you two held eye contact, and with teary eyes, you smiled. “Thank you, Adam.”

Something about his expression changed, but before you could stare any longer, you felt a hand behind your head push you back to his chest as the arm on your back held you tight.

“Yeah, whatever…”

[aventurineswife]

Thanks for answering my ask about comedic nudity!

So I ended up forgetting about the og idea I wanted to send because I didn’t write it down. 🙂‍↕️

But I do have another idea that involves Reader being a freak for art! If you’ve ever played (or watched someone play) Persona 5, Reader is a little bit like Yusuke, they love to draw and paint and all that fun stuff. They’re also a bit of a simp and have pages in their sketchbooks dedicated to drawing people they fancy.

So, not really nudity here, but one day while drinking, Reader gets so drunk off of their ass they finally dare to ask the question that’s been gnawing at the back of their mind:

“Hey, [muse]…D’ya wanna model naked for me?”

Bonus points if they’re trying to ask it to their muse in question, but they’re so drunk they don’t realize they’re facing someone else entirely.

Like, their muse could be Sunday and they’re trying to ask Sunday to model naked for them, but they’re facing Robin.

It can also be other combos!

Like, Muse:the person Reader is actually facing

So—

Gepard:Serval

Blade:Firefly

Dan Heng:Sushang

Lingsha:Yunli

Jing Yuan:Yanqing

These are just examples off the top of my head but basically pick any one or think of another pair yourself and make it as chaotic as you possible can. 🤣

If you make the title “Draw Me Like One of Your French Girls” istg—

Portraits of Desire

Tags: Sunday x Reader x Robin, Aventurine x Reader x Topaz, Artist!Reader, Fluff and Humor, Alcohol-Induced Shenanigans, Artistic Obsession, Mild Suggestive Themes, Confessions in Chaos, Playful Banter.

Warnings: Alcohol consumption and intoxication, Light innuendo, Embarrassing humorous situations.

A/N: sadly i already named a previous fic that, so I can't name this one the same title 😕💔

(Credits to @kakyoriya on Twitter/X)

The Charmony Festival's afterparty had always been a lively affair, filled with music, laughter, and the clinking of glasses. You, an artist swept into the chaos of Penacony’s surreal world, found yourself seated at a circular table with Sunday and Robin. Despite your initial plans to observe the Halovian pair discreetly, the generous flow of Halovian wine had turned those plans into a swirling mess.

Your sketchbook lay open on the table, pages flipping as a gust of laughter erupted around you. The pages showcased the delicate strokes of your pencil—portraits of Sunday, Robin, and various festival moments. They were all expertly rendered, but your fascination with Sunday was painfully obvious. His eyes seemed to pierce through the pages, and even his halo was meticulously detailed.

Robin chuckled softly, her hair shimmering under the festival lights. “You’ve truly captured his essence.” she remarked, pointing at one of your sketches.

You hiccupped, the wine adding a rosy hue to your cheeks. “Well, it’s ‘cause he’s so damn… inspiring!” you slurred.

Sunday, ever dignified, raised a brow but allowed a faint smile to curl his lips. “I see. I suppose I should thank you for the flattery.”

The room swayed as you turned, your intoxicated mind suddenly consumed by a thought you’d never dared voice. You reached out, grabbing Sunday’s gloved hand—or at least you thought it was Sunday’s.

“Hey… hey, you!” you stammered, squinting up at Robin instead. She tilted her head, bemused.

“Yes?” Robin replied, her voice lilting like a melody.

“I’ve been… thinking,” you began, leaning closer to her. “You’re… perfect. Your symmetry, your aura—it’s breathtaking!”

Robin’s brows knitted in surprise, her cheeks flushing faintly. Sunday, watching from across the table, cleared his throat. “They mean to ask me, Robin. I’ve noticed their fixation.”

But you, oblivious and unbothered, barreled forward. “Model for me. Naked. Just once!”

Robin sputtered, her elegance momentarily faltering. “I beg your pardon?”

Sunday, his eyes narrowing slightly, stepped in to steady you. “I believe you’re mistaking your audience.” he said, his tone carrying both humor and restraint.

You blinked, your intoxicated brain struggling to process the situation. Then, your gaze shifted, landing on Sunday’s halo. “Oh, right!” you exclaimed, jabbing a finger in his direction. “You! I meant you!”

Robin burst into laughter, her melodic voice echoing through the room. “Oh, this is priceless.”

Sunday, maintaining his composure, leaned down to meet your gaze. “While I appreciate your artistic passion,” he said smoothly, “I fear your request might be better suited for sober conversation.”

The IPC gala was a hub of high-stakes networking, dazzling lights, and endless champagne. You, an artist with an eye for detail, found yourself amidst the extravagance, clutching your sketchbook like a lifeline. Aventurine and Topaz had invited you along, each promising you’d find inspiration among the elite.

You had taken them at their word, sketching furiously as your muses moved through the crowd. Aventurine, with his flamboyant overcoat and peacock feather earring, exuded charisma that demanded attention. Topaz, on the other hand, carried herself with a composed confidence, her hair catching the gala’s light.

Hours later, you were drunk. Not tipsy, not buzzed—drunk. Your sketchbook was open to a page filled with Aventurine’s smirk and Topaz’s sharp gaze. The champagne had loosened your inhibitions, and you found yourself staring at Aventurine’s eyes.

“You’re like… a painting.” you slurred, pointing at him.

Aventurine, ever the gambler, leaned forward with an amused grin. “Am I now? Flatter me more.”

Topaz rolled her eyes, sipping her wine. “They’re drunk. Don’t encourage them.”

But you were already gesturing wildly. “I gotta ask. It’s important. Life-changing, even!” You turned—or at least thought you turned—to Aventurine, but your gaze locked on Topaz instead.

“Will you model naked for me?” you blurted.

Topaz choked on her drink, glaring at you with wide eyes. “Excuse me?!”

Aventurine burst into laughter, clapping a hand to his chest. “Oh, this is rich. I think they meant me, darling.”

You blinked, confused, before swiveling toward Aventurine. “Wait, yeah! You! You’re, like… perfection. I need to capture it!”

Topaz shook her head, a small smirk tugging at her lips. “You’re impossible.”

Aventurine leaned closer, tilting your chin up with a gloved finger. “Flattery will get you everywhere,” he purred. “But we’ll discuss terms when you’re sober.”

Topaz snorted. “You’re both ridiculous.”

And in your drunken haze, you could only laugh, thrilled by the chaotic charm of your muses.

[mrs-elsie-barnes]

Chapter 22 - The Old Gods and The New

Boundless Insolence | Loki x Reader

You refuse to wait for permission to speak to Bres and find out what he really wants. At the Asgardian Court, Jane reveals hidden talents.

Warnings: Mysogyny, fighting, still angsty sorry!

Dividers by @firefly-graphics and @reveriesources

Series Masterlist | Loki Masterlist | Masterlist

You’d wanted to attack, to run to the top of the cliffs where Bres had stationed his legion, and burn them all to cinders for their threats. You’d wanted to rage and fight. But Val had placed a hand on your arm and suggested you wait, guiding you across the deserted village and back home. 

She called a small council at your cottage, Thor pacing by the window, one eye on the cliffs above as if waiting for a surprise attack. He’d been in his armour since Bres first announced himself, calling Stormbreaker to his side. 

“We can draw this out, buy ourselves time.” The King suggested, “he gave us until noon tomorrow, let’s use that time. We still need more backup, we still need to get Loki back and I haven’t heard back from Carol. But we can do this. 

“Jane will want to help also. She is a fearsome creature and we already know she is willing to help us.” 

“Jane should be in charge of evacuating the village.” Brunnhilde drifted towards Thor, leaving you to your thoughts, watching the fire dance in the grate like a hypnotised snake, reaching upwards and then spitting embers. 

He still wasn’t home. How could you face any of this without him by your side. 

“Okay, we wait. But then what?” 

You looked over the frightened village. No one had dared to venture out during the evening. The normally bustling pub had not only been closed, but, like the rest of the village, shuttered.  The closed windows and doors, the quiet streets and empty market. Even the boats were all out, hovering on the horizon instead of coming and going as usual. You knew from the empty car park by the quay that many families had already left, rising in the milky dawn and fleeing over the border or taking their boats out as far as they could to wait out whatever incoming war was waiting on the cliffs. 

Anger burned inside of you on behalf of your home and then, as if in answer, along your finger tips and up your arms. You had worked too hard, for too long, gaining control of your memories, of your powers and building your life in Tonsberg to put up with someone trying to make you leave. No longer would you bow to these gods, these men, and their whims and ideas about you. Fire flared around you, a halo around your brow and your spear in your hands. You’d end this now. 

Marching towards the cliffs you allowed your power to swirl around you, taking over every inch of space between you and the towering rock face before you. Bres’ army was still stationed there, even if some of them had clearly fallen back in order to bed in and build tents and fires. This wasn’t your world, war and battlefields, but the village was yours, and the people who lived there were yours to protect too. 

You wanted your picnic spot back, the cliff tops where you walked with Loki after dinner, the fields where you’d strolled with Val, greeting the tourists and the villagers alike. 

This was your village, your home - your Loki. You refused to have a distraction when you needed to focus on getting him back. That’s all Bres was now, a hurdle between you and the only God you wanted to see parading on that cliff top. 

The steep march up was fueled by your anger and the swell of magic that was building inside. Never had you felt so in control, so drawn to your magic. Even when you’d been caught off guard by Lugh it had been your subconscious that protected you, now your fire moved naturally with you, another limb that reached out and made the braziers that Bres’ army were placing around their camp build until their basket’s melted, spilling ash onto the grass and sending the assembled soldiers stumbling back. 

In the centre of the camp one of the tents sat larger than the others, the deep green of the fabric snapping taught in the wind over the tall pole at its centre, the two open flaps were protected by the soldiers flanking either side and, as you approached, they crossed their swords. 

“Lady Estrid,” the older soldier spoke in a gruff tone and angled his head. You’d expected a fight, to be instantly jumped upon and bound as you had been before. But instead the camp fell silent around you, every pair of eyes turned towards you. 

“I wish to speak to Bres. To settle this matter.” You made your back as straight as it would go, channelling every one of Loki’s princely mannerism, every ounce of Thor’s presence, all you’d seen and learnt at The Golden Palace of the ways of a God. No one needed to know that your toes were clenched with fear inside of your boots or that your palms were damp with sweat. 

“His Majesty is indisposed at present, milady.” 

The soldier looked awkward, his eyes darting from you to ranks behind the tents, and then back over the sea. 

“He has specifically requested my presence, and yet now he’s indisposed?” You raised an eyebrow, one hand on your hip, the other turning your spear slowly, the flame dancing as the wind caught it. 

The soldier’s eyes darted to the white hot flame and then back to your face, the colour draining from him, “he left a note, milady.” He motioned uncomfortably for a messenger to approach, an ivory envelope in his outstretched hand. 

You snatched it from him, frustrated beyond reason that you were prepared for a fight with a man who was now, apparently, too busy to even show his face to you. 

At first the writing looked blurred, swirling together in unfamiliar patterns, but the more you looked the more familiar they became and the memory surfaced slowly, revealing the message. 

Estrid, 

Your insolence knows no bounds and I shall not subject my court to it a moment longer. Your engagement has been confirmed for many centuries and you will fulfil the promises made between our houses. 

You will stay with your guards until he arrives and then you will be married. You will fulful the prophecy and marry Vani of Vannaheimr and in our name bring about the second Ragnarok. 

Do not disappoint me again. 

Bres. 

Your hands shook as you read. He believed in the prophecy, and not only that, but he was counting on it to shake the foundation of the Aesir and Vanir. Clearly this plan was centuries in the making and, somewhere between his time and now, Bres had forgotten that there was nothing left to fight for. 

The people of Norway had been shocked by the knowledge that there truly was a Thor, a Loki, an Asgard. But since arriving their awe had turned to intrigue and, rather than worshipping them, they had taken to visiting as tourists, on cruise ships and in coaches. Perhaps the gifts they left at the site of Odin’s death could be counted as offerings, but it was their money, spent in gift shops and cafes in the village, that truly kept the place alive. 

Would Bres really burn down everything the Asgardians had built for some long lost jealousy? To take over a kingdom that no longer existed and was now a honeypot tourist trap on an otherwise empty coastline.  

You read the note again. 

Another Ragnarok. You’d seen enough in Loki’s memories to understand the destruction wrought on Asgard, you could never allow it to happen here. But then the destruction had been to take the palace, the land, the planet. What could Bres hope to conquer here? A few hundred people and an, admittedly, thriving tourist business. Would people even still come? 

You scrunched the note in your hand and looked up at the guards. 

“I will do no such thing. If Bres wants to discuss an engagement then he can come and talk to me like a civilised person.” You kept your chin high, looking down on the men despite their height. 

The second guard step forward, lifting his sword and pointing it at your chest. “Milady, Bres is no civilised person. He’s a God, a warrior, he will not-” You swung your own sword knocking him back and, for a moment, you sparred, parrying each attempted hit until he managed to back you up against his fellow guard. “He will not let you simply walk away from this arrangement.” He growled, spittle flying from his gritted teeth. 

Despite your position you held your head high, “well I suppose that’s his problem, isn’t it. Because I won’t be discussing anything here. If he wants to talk we can meet on neutral ground outside of the village. I won’t put my people at risk.” You shoved, knocking him off balance enough to free yourself from the pressure of the flat of his sword. 

“Your people?” The sneer came from behind you and you whipped your head around to glare, summoning every ounce of the fierce warrior goddess Loki believed you could be. 

“Yes, my people. I am a member of the Asgardian court and a sworn protector of the people of this village. I don’t care what imaginary claim Bres has on me-” The guard deftly swept your sword down towards the ground, silencing you again. 

“It is no imaginary claim, milady, you are of his house. He is your mother’s husband and therefore -” 

Anger flared, roiling like lava. “My mother is dead.” You choked back your emotion but the fire was already there, steaming from your skin. “She is dead and he is nothing to me, he has no claim on me and he does not control me. Tell him to meet me at the edge of the village if he wants to talk, otherwise his presence here is an agitator of war and the Asgardian crown will not allow it. Either meet me properly, or move.” 

Fire erupted from your hands, carving a path over the grass and back to the worn path down the cliff. The guards stepped back from the heat, the other soldiers following suit, turning their eyes away. 

With that you turned to leave, allowing your cape to swirl behind you and your magic fizzing over in sparks of blue and silver before making your way back into the village. 

Whatever Thor and Val were planning, you just hoped they were right. 

Darkness crept up from the coastline, like a high spring tide it lapped at the pools of light dotted along the quay, taking them over and creeping ever higher up the coast. The sleeping village, cottages with drawn curtains and shops locked up tight, under the waves of depthless black that crept closer and closer, devouring every spec of light, snuffing out the dream of morning. 

Ghosts stalked the streets, warriors clad in clanking armour with glinting swords and spears, shields held high as they swept through the village.

You pulled away from the windows and back into the darkness of your bedroom. When Loki was with you it had felt so welcoming, like being embraced by the god himself in all of his velvet and brocade finery. Now it felt like a cage, gilded and beautiful, but useless against the advancing army that was taking over your village. You weren't protected, you were ensnared, that's how they saw it from their clifftop vantage. A snared animal thrashing against its trap, and there was no one to save you. 

Bres had never showed himself but, high on the clifftop where his army camped, there were now two tall silhouettes, picked out by the bright moon behind them.

Bres and your betrothed. The Vanir Prince was taller than Bres, and broader. Although Bres was a God, he had been for aeons and the years showed in the way he held his sword and placed his weight. The prince was younger, stronger, more cocksure even if he was less skilled. And that was a dangerous combination. 

Your stomach roiled, fighting the urge to throw up at the dread that sat heavy in your stomach. For all your posturing with the guards, you were still frightened. 

Thor had advised you to get an early night, to dig deep into your magic and spend the evening exploring its depths. Brunnhilde suggested lying in your bedroom in the dark, allowing the feel of the fireside to crackle through your veins. 

You remembered the fire with Loki, at his cabin, and how safe you’d felt, how secure in your knowledge that he would protect you by any means, that he had fought for you. The glow of the fire in the village pub, dancing merrily along with the chattering of friends. The fire in your own home hearth, welcoming you back after a long, cold, day out in the village. The vein of molten lava that curved its way through your life, lighting every wonderful moment. It filled you until you glowed, until the moon outside glowed brighter as well, lengthening shadows spreading across the carpet and up onto your bed. 

You could feel him then, Loki’s touch on the back of your hand and his silken voice whispering to you across the ocean. 

I believe in you, Asynja. You and only you. 

Focussing your energy on the thought you closed your eyes again and thought of him. 

I believe in you too, Loki, my one God. My love.

You hardly slept, tossing and turning in the empty sheets of your bed. Despite your prayers and calls, you hadn’t felt Loki last night. Even in your dreams he was gone, replaced by fire, endless fire that raged across the village consuming everything in its path. You shuddered, too frightened to open the curtains, too lonely to face a morning without Loki’s smiling face. 

Loki woke with a gasp, upright and panting, clutching at his chest and surveying the still bright, still mostly empty room. He’d dreamt of you, your long dress sweeping through the grass, and at first he had thrown himself at you as if he was still a boy, chasing you through the palace gardens. But as he followed, his eyes trained on the glitter of your dress, panic began to rise unbidden until he was sprawled in the morning dew and watching you walk towards a faceless man. The vanir banners that flanked him told him enough about his worst fears, but he didn’t expect you to follow. 

Fire licked up the banners, but didn’t burn them. Instead it danced through the fabric and into the Vanir man’s waiting hands. His clenched fists controlled the flame, squeezing it tighter until it squirmed through his fingers in blue ribbons. The Vanir merely laughed, releasing the flame and then trapping it again, his dark chuckle echoing into a void of darkness. Loki felt sick, choked, and had awoken expecting to find himself lying in his own vomit. 

Though he’d managed to contain his last dry and disgusting meal, he was still drenched in sweat, his heart racing. He didn’t dare drop his body temperature to that of his Jotun form, though his body cried out for the relief his magic could give to his heated skin. Instead Loki removed the regulation pyjama top that had been slid through the feeding hatch. It did nothing to cool his skin, but he rubbed his chest and arms with the fabric anyway and the act felt enough like cleansing that he managed to calm his heart rate. 

He couldn’t help but think of your own beautiful flame, how the heat called to his own, frostier, magic and played with it. You never sought to control his sedir and his own magic never thought to snuff out your own. Instead they twined together, teasing and playful. Controlling your spark, hurting it for fun, had never - would never - cross Loki’s mind. Even in his worst moments he had a reverence for magic, it was the only civilised way to respond to another’s talents. To quash another, unthinkable, yet the thought of the Vanir doing just that had crossed his mind. 

He tried to shake the dream away from his mind, but he couldn’t help feeling the painful nagging sense that this was less a dream and more a prophecy. 

It was hard to discern when morning arrived in Tonsberg, the fog that weighed on the land was so heavy it blocked out the light, leaving the village street lamps still flickering even when the school bell had rung, the shops open once more despite the threat that loomed above them. The Asgardians were sensible, staying away from the cliffs and the god that paced them, but they weren’t cowards. They’d spent too long worrying about Ragnarok, too long worrying about Thanos, they would not be bullied from another home. So the village woke, despite the fog and the fear, and they went about their business in the gloom. 

Brunnhilde called an early meeting, opening the doors of the long hall herself, before the sparse staff that made up her, albeit relaxed, royal court had arrived. There was tea and biscuits, as usual, Thor leaving a trail of crumbs from the kitchen to the fold out table that now took up the space in front of the King’s throne. Jane brushed at them without looking away from Korg who was animatedly telling her about a new video game he’d been playing at the after school club. It all looked so normal, so wholesome and relaxed that the anger you had so carefully banked threatened to well again. 

Did no one else care about Loki? Did no one miss him? Was this some godly game played between mortals to them, when your whole life was in the balance. 

You sank into your seat, pulling a steaming mug towards you, allowing the increasingly loud conversation to drown you. 

It was Jane who noticed you first, reaching out and placing her hand on your arm. 

“How’re you doing this morning?” The tender way her eyes softened made you feel sick, you didn’t want pity, you wanted revenge, you wanted to march into the Avengers stupid, cold, awful compound, rescue Loki and burn the rest to ashes. Fire flared from your finger tips and Jane snatched her hand back. 

Instead of the harsh words you’d been thinking, panic rose - “I’m so sorry - I -” 

“It’s alright, it’s shit, isn’t it? Being stuck left behind, feeling powerless?” 

You nodded, looking back down into your tea, now scalding hot from the power surging in your own hands. 

“Well, Trouble, fear not, you are not powerless and neither are we. We will get your Loki back and we will see these unwelcome guests thrown from our town.” Thor placed an unusually gentle hand on your back and rubbed it up and down. Despite yourself you turned into his embrace and allowed him to wrap an arm around your shoulder. “Come, sister, Warriors of the Asgardian Court do not cry over their tea.”

You looked up at his twinkling smile and couldn’t help but let out a wet laugh. He’d never called you sister before and although your stomach still roiled at the thought of Loki being alone, at least you felt at home. 

“Let’s do something then, Thor. We have to make a move at some point, or who knows who’ll turn up to kidnap or invade or whatever those arseholes on the hill want.” 

“They want you.” Brunnhilde’s voice was low and smooth as always, her eyes trained on you carefully. 

Thor nodded, “but we shan’t give you over to them.” 

“Perhaps it would be better if you did.” They had watched, yesterday, as you’d approached the cliffs, ready to attack or shield depending on the outcome. The quiet of the camp had surprised you all and left you somewhat on the backfoot, primed and ready to fight with no outlet for the sedir and adrenaline building across the village. But they’d been proud to see their warrior defend herself, and had not felt the need to intervene. 

Brunnhilde paced in front of the throne, hands in her pockets, pushing her suit jacket back as always. But she looked tired, disappointed. 

“I had a call with Carol last night and it’s not good news.” She sighed, leaning on the table with one hand, nails tapping. “She had intended to visit sooner anyway, but has been called away and will not be able to help.” 

“Why not!” Thor complained, eyebrows furrowed, “I thought you were -” 

“Yes, we are and she’s not coming, is that okay with you, Thor?” 

You’d never seen her snap like that, her anger as quick as a viper and the whole table went silent in its wake. 

Jane tensed beside you and shifted into your side, “they’re, well, they were dating, I don’t know what’s going on.” She whispered. 

“Who is she anyway? Carol?” 

“Captain Marvel?” Jane offered and she tried not to show your shock. You’d had no idea such help was even on the table, but knowing that you were losing it - she could have changed everything. 

Brunnhilde turned again, her slower pacing somehow more worrying. 

“I was counting on her being able to negotiate with the Avengers, but we will have to strategise. Rethink.” 

“We will still be able to beat this Bres- I have no doubt.” Thor relaxed into his chair and frustration built again. 

“Thor, this may be a huge joke to you, but it’s not to me, if you have a plan, share it.” You rounded on the god, allowing your fire some outlet around your fingertips. Beneath the table Jane squeezed your elbow reassuringly. 

“He’s bluffing, Trouble, he wishes to frighten you and make us nervous. If he wanted to attack, he would have done it by now.” He scoffed. “He wants you, I would place a hefty bet he needs you for some scheme of his. We shall keep you safe and keep him waiting.” 

“And Loki, how are we getting Loki back?” 

Thor went quiet, the Avengers were equally so, no longer communicating with Thor and refusing to answer any calls. 

“Someone needs to go there,” you implored, “we need to go and just take him back.” 

“They’re the Avengers, we can’t just march in, we need to be smart.” Jane said, trying to calm the tensions at the table. “And we do need more back up, we can’t leave the village without their King.” 

“So Brunnhilde stays here and Thor comes with me?” 

“You can’t go there alone,” Brunnhilde rounded on you now. “I won’t let any of my subjects take on the Avengers alone. If Loki cannot escape himself then they have him kept somewhere either impenetrable by force or by magic. They will have anticipated you and Thor as well as your combined abilities.” 

Jane tapped on the table. “What about me?” 

Thor shot her a look and shook his head subtly. 

“What do you mean?” Brunnhilde looked between Thor and Jane. 

“Well, Thor’s told you about -” 

“How clever she is!” Thor cut in, “is she not so very clever?” 

Korg nodded emphatically. 

“Thank you, but I actually meant -” 

“She can work the computers very well, she knows all about the electronic mail and even has a device to read it with.” Thor continued to shake his head at Jane. 

“Thor!” Jane and Brunnhilde shouted at once and, in the millisecond of quiet that followed, Jane lifted her hand and beckoned. 

At first you thought nothing was happening and then Mojlnir appeared from the coat rack, racing towards Jane. Thor panicked, attempting to hold his hand up, but Korg pushed it back down, allowing the hammer to sail past him and into Jane’s hand. 

Lighting crackled around her in a flash so bright you had to squeeze your eyes shut. When you opened them the lightning had gone, but so had the Jane you were used to seeing. Her hair was longer, blonder, and her normally plaid covered arms were bare and bulging with muscles. Her jeans and shirt were replaced with Asgardian armour, a red cape flowing from her shoulders. 

Thor had buried his head in his hands while Brunnhilde looked at the newly revealed Jane, silent and agog. 

Korg smiled, opening his arms, “oh wow, a new Thor!” 

<<Chapter 21

Chapter 23>>

[hashtagdrivebywrites]

Y'all bear with me on my bad phone pictures and excessive notes lmao, but, uh, ask and you shall receive.

Here's my concept art for Jason in my fic Imprint, where he's a halfa and Danny's biological dad and the king father/king regent? of the infinite realms.

Here's the first ever sketch I did somewhere around chapter 2 or 3:

Featuring larval Ghost!Jason, Pit madness/Lazarus Water and little bitty Ghost!Danny.

I was already thinking about the possibility of a crown but didn't know what to do with it yet so I just left a halo as a placeholder DBZ-style, which you'll see in the next few concept stages until I finish the latest one.

Ah, the oldest concept I had for the Pit is that it laid dormant in Jason's mind and would physically pull itself out of his head, which is why it's kind of half melded with Jason's helmet in this one. And I'm still kind of considering that idea, but I'm leaning more towards it coming from the bulk of Jason's body instead, as we see it in chapter 8 of Imprint when readers get to see Jason's ghost nonsense from an outside perspective. They (the Pit) is definitely more tiger-like now, and you'll catch a glimpse of a sketch dump where I'm trying to get a handle on tiger shape language (?). They'll still be water based and colored like the pits/a lagoon. It may be hard to picture- just trust me.

Uhhh let's see....the "lantern ribcage" is a part of the design that's really important to me so you'll see me consistently playing with it as I go through these early concepts. That's his core nestled in the lower part of his ribs, visible but protected behind the iron cage of his bones.

I wanted to incorporate Jason's helmet and other parts of his vigilante/hero uniforms in his ghost form since that part of his life is deeply personal to him.

I also knew that I wanted him to have a very monstrous aspect to his design- and I can't resist slapping pointy teeth on any of my concepts that deviate from being strictly human. So those aren't going away. Nostrils to breathe smoke and fire so Jason can better emote with most of his face being metal.

Danny's default ghost form, opposed to Jason's will still kinda be the one he has in his original dimension- black and white suit and the classic DP symbol on the chest, but probably better armored and with a bat emblem thrown in somewhere. So thats what I drew him with here- though little kid sized, with an added black streak in his hair to complete the inverse of the Lazarus Pit streak he has in human form.

In ghost form, when Jason needs precision, his go-to weapon will be the All Blades, which I have kinda illustrated here.

I may kinda set the bones of this design aside to use as a more humanoid ghost form that's closer to his living form, but that's still up in the air.

Here's concept 2, which I did on chapter...5? I think? Which is when I decided I wanted to make Jason's most comfortable ghost form to be kinda big and outrageous:

This one's got some notes doodled around it- but I'll type them out in case you can't read my handwriting.

Jason was definitely leaning more toward dragon (and I'm still trying to find the balance between dragon and phoenix that works nicely for him, but we're getting there.)

I decided not to put heat pits on his face recently so that the parts of his head modeled after the helmet are smooth metal armor. I tried to elongate the head but still keep the lines of his helmet in the design.

This is also the first time I started messing with horns- which have been bent in just about every direction at this point trying to make them mesh well with the rest of his design. The uppermost notes in the image mention basing the shape of his horns off of one of his weapons. I thought that the flaming all blades would just be overkill at that point and decided to play with using the Kris knife he gets from the League. Which is....still overkill but it's less fire to draw, so we'll call it a even. There is also a note on my decision to make his horns into a pair only because of being Bruce's second son and the second Robin. (I have put way too much fucking thought into this if you haven't figured that out already).

Tried a different look for the teeth and ended up scrapping it.

I also started leaning more into making his back look as messed up as possible at this point and started thinking of the....mountain range in plated rows like a croc's back.

And here's concept 3, which also starts playing with colors and the all-tail, no-legs look that I decided to stick with:

This is definitely the biggest jump between concepts so far and was sketched up while writing chapter 7, which I think is the first time we get to experience his ghost forms (there's 2 that we saw in that chapter).

So I continued to smooth and lengthen the head and tried a different thing with the teeth- which I kept. I also felt a lot better about the lines from the helmet with this concept. I tried curling his kris knife horns forward, trying to play with their form. Those have changed since.

This is the first time I added hair, but it's hard to see. He, like Danny, has an inversed streak of black at the front of his 'do to reflect the Lazarus stripe.

Again with the halo placeholder because I was still on the fence about the crown. Started trying to make the mountains of his spine more volcanic looking. Don't know if I'm keeping that or not yet.

So the three major differences between this and it's predecessors is the 1) mantle of smoke that is constantly being expelled from his body that is supposed to imitate a kinds cloak/mantle; 2) the tail, which has since been changed into a fiery tail instead of a ghostly one; and 3) I slapped his Robin 'R' from the movie UTRH on him to make this form more...him, I guess, and also to make Bruce cry like a baby.

So the things that I have changed is the ribcage, the shape of the horns, the crown (which finally has a rough design and a name based on the fight he has to win to earn it- yes, I already have that arc scribbled out and will most likely be adding it into the story) and I added some extra stuff to the face to match the written descriptions in Imprint.

SO. -Claps hands together- I'd love to hear your thoughts on everything, and I am always interested in hearing how y'all have interpreted these characters for yourselves.

If this is something you want me to do again with other character designs, let me know and I will. I am working on Jason, of course, and the Pit, Frankie boy, Danny's big long boi form, Gotham and some other odds and ends.

(Whoops forgot tags again)

[mothmage]

6. Show us a bit of a wip!

14. Is there a character or ship you were sure you’d never write/draw for but now you’ve changed your mind?

22. Give us a headcanon for Armand!

14. armand/marius!! i really disliked marius when i first read TVL (the classic "he comes across as so arrogant" and "how could he just abandon armand like that" crisis), but then i thought about it for longer and realized that, actually, theyre the perfect level of complicated and a little fucked up for me, so :)

22. oooooh i have many, ok a sort of silly one is that i think he really dislikes synthetic fibers, like all of his clothes are leather or silk, linen, or cotton (or hemp, maybe). i think this is a combo of enhanced vampire senses, human autism (another hc), and "if youre going to do something, do it right." that said, i do think he has a weird obsession with plastics more generally! he definitely collected bakelite trinkets and dishes and stuff. i bet he dragged poor louis to home showings all over the place. oh, that's maybe a second headcanon -- i think the loumand years pre-interview probably went like this: a period of hyper-romantic and suave love interest armand, a period of armand getting more comfortable and dragging louis all over the place and trying new things (the happiest period for both of them during these years, i think), and then a period where louis started to retreat into himself again and armand eventually gave up and left him (which, honestly, the fact that armand left is still crazy to me. but, to be fair, armand is much older and probably left knowing it wasnt the end of loumand and that he would be back, whereas for all louis knew, that was goodbye armand forever :sadtoad:)

6. little bit from my reverse devil's minion wip below the cut!!

The door swung open, the ruined lock cast aside. Daniel cringed back against the light from the street, a hand shielding his eyes.

There was a thud, a muffled cry, and Daniel opened his eyes to see that a man had been thrown down from the doorway, bound and gagged.

He didn’t hesitate, lunging and draining him immediately, without a second thought. He forced himself to break away just as the man’s heart stopped, breathing heavily. Then he turned to look up at Alexei, still standing in the doorway, haloed by the light from the street.

He wore thick clothing, something like wool, that covered him from neck to ankle, and wore a sharp-looking sword tucked into his belt.

Daniel just stared at him for a moment, his brain still trying to catch up. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked, hoarse. “What are you, some kind of…” He didn’t even know. “Serial killer?” He’d heard about those.

Alexei raised a brow. “Not very creative, Daniel.”

He huffed a laugh, almost hysterically amused. “Well, what the fuck else am I supposed to think?”

Alexei cocked his head, looking a little disappointed. “Really? What could a mortal possibly want with a vampire, you wonder?”

Daniel recoiled, repulsed by the idea. “What? You mean to – to force me to turn you? I could kill you now,” he said, suddenly enraged. “Maybe I should!”

Alexei grinned, sharp and a little mean. “No, Daniel. I don’t want you to turn me. But that’s a fair guess. No, I have something far greater in mind. I needed to see if I could do it, first, if I could capture a vampire. I thought it best to start with one as weak as you.”

Daniel laughed, shaking his head. “Stupid even for a mortal. Weak? I could kill you in the blink of an eye.”

Alexei raised a brow. “And yet, you kneel on the floor before me, even now.”

He stood, then, and moved in a flash to grab Alexei by the jaw, to hold him up against the wall. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you now,” he hissed, close to the boy’s ear.

He smiled, slowly. “You wouldn’t be asking if you didn’t have a reason already, Daniel Molloy. You’re curious.”

Daniel dropped him, stepped back with a sharp inhale. He put a hand over his face. “Oh, fuck me,” he groaned, barely audible.

Alexei looked smug. “Very good, Daniel. You’ll stay here while I take away your garbage? Like a good boy?”

Daniel just stared at him, expression twisted in disgust.

Alexei walked past him, bent to grab the corpse and haul it up over his shoulder.

“All that stuff you said last night,” Daniel asked, unable to help himself. “Was any of it true?”

“Any of it?” Alexei asked, amused. “Most of it was true, Daniel. All of it, one way or another. I’m not a liar.”

He brushed past him, and Daniel let him go, instinct making him cringe away from the corpse draped over his shoulder. “Which parts weren’t true?”

He stopped, just by the door, and looked back at him, a strange expression on his face. “My name is not Alexei. My name is Armand. That’s the name they called me in the circus.”

Daniel absorbed this. He wasn’t sure why he cared. “So Armand is your circus persona, right. Who is Alexei?”

“Alexei is no one. Who is Daniel?”

Armand shut the door before Daniel could reply, leaving him again in darkness.

[thepaintedlady00]

Nightshade

Chapter 6 | Chapter 8

Outfit Inspo for this chapter

Chapter 7: Topsy-Turvy

TW: mentions of nudity if you squint really really hard, language, Simone sucks (y'all already know the drill), some cancer mentions & a pinch of dark humor, vague mentions of drinking and smoking, a bit of jealousy 👀, a little brotherly threatening, some close quarters flirting, laser tag, panic attacks. This chapter is the longest so far of this series, so enjoy y'all!

Jake felt light, almost weightless, as he lay in the warm bed basking in the rays of sunlight. The air around him was laced with the sweet smell of perfume, cherry with hints of rose, and light woodsy leather. It was intoxicating, and the more he breathed it in, the more he found himself craving the smell. A weight was comfortably settled onto his chest as his fingers ran through silky strands of hair. His blunt nails scratched her head, drawing out soft noises of contentment. He chuckled, an odd sense of joy rushing through his veins.

“What’s funny?” She asked, lifting her head off his chest.

Opening his eyes, he smiled up at the sunlit halo of red hair and sparkling green eyes that stared down at him. “Nothing at all.”

Her eyebrows lifted as amusement made her face even more beautiful. “Nothing at all? Why do I not believe you?”

“Calling me a liar?” He teased, his hands running along her smooth skin, tracing the curved shape of her snake tattoo up her spine. “In my own bed, that’s rather inconsiderate.”

“You weren’t complaining earlier,” she teased back, leaning into him, her fingers tracing his lips. Jake watched her face slowly soften, looking at him like he was everything to her. “You never thought you’d get this attached, did you?”

Cold weight started creeping back into his body as his mind recognized the dream. He still clung to her, clung to her soft skin beneath his fingers, the loving gaze she gave him, the smell of her perfume. Jake still closed his eyes when she leaned in to kiss him, and he hesitated to pull away even though he couldn’t feel her lips against his.

When he opened his eyes again, she was gone, and he was alone. He set his hand against his chest, taking deep breaths to escape the sudden slight feeling of breathlessness. Then, rolling onto his side, he looked at the empty space beside him, quietly recalling the sight of her bare back and that damn tattoo that he now knew painted her skin. Jake forced himself up and followed his shitty routine to prepare for another long night of service. It was starting to get ridiculous the never-changing nature of bartending at 22West.

He found himself thinking about what would have happened if he had gone through with his plans with Scott. Would he have his own restaurant? A bar that wasn’t constantly surrounded by rich assholes with more money than god and still stingy with their tips? Would he get to wear what he wanted and throw people out when they’d had enough? No. He reminded himself. It was a dumb idea, rushed and poorly thought out. It would have failed before it even started. Simone was right; all that was just a pipedream meant to help keep him from going insane with the mundane normalcy of life.

It was a fine day, not too hot but not cold either, as he rode his bike through the crowded sidewalks of people and even more crowded streets of cars and noise. Simone stood in the kitchen with a sweet smile as she fixed the collar of some girl. For a second, he thought she was Tess; they looked similar enough with the same bangs, brown hair, and big nervous eyes. He moved past them, an unsettling feeling of repressed emotion churning his stomach. “You’re late, my love,” Simone called to him.

“Not later than usual,” he replied, looking over his shoulder.

“I saved a plate for you.”

“Whatever,” he grumbled, starting up the stairs.

“Comb your hair!” She hollered.

“Fuck off, Simone!” He yelled back with a tiny smirk.

Her nagging was annoying, but it made him feel like the two of them were slowly beginning to find their normal again. She cared, even after all the bit of a bender he’d put her through in the months after Tess left. Simone always cared and always took care of him. After Etienne’s visit and Jake’s near business endeavor and Tess, Simone had kept him at arm’s length. She’d said she needed space and didn’t know if she could count on him. Now he just hoped her sober appearance and mother-hen nature meant they were both on the right track.

As he sat down at the table across from Sasha and the others, he was reminded that today was one of Lena’s days off. That was good. It’d give him time to get the image of her looking down at him, kissing him, out of his head. Sitting at another table, quietly polishing the salt shakers with a nervous glint in her eyes, the girl Simone was with took in her surroundings. She was cute, innocent, and scared shitless in the new environment.

The rowdy friends talked about her quietly before giving her the usual welcome of a pile of dishes and the order of washing them. She jumped up and did it without hesitation, looking like some lost animal for a second before she jogged to the back. It reminded him of Lena’s first day. She hadn’t even flinched when they dropped their dishes in front of her, finishing her before speaking Russian to Sasha and confidently carrying their dishes to the back. But, of course, not everyone could be like Lena, he reminded himself, eating his food with a smirk. 

Most newbies were like Tess at the start. Timid, innocent, and easy. It was why he’d always had his way with the newcomers. It was easy and uncommitted. And as the night continued, the more obvious the new girls’ doe-eyed stares became. She was enthralled with him, and he hadn’t even spoken to her. God, was it always this easy? He thought after catching her staring for the third time.

Simone stopped by the bar, quietly instructing the girl to get a bottle of wine from the cellar. “So you’ve got a trail?”

She laughed. “Yes, it appears Will is now too important for such things.”

“She seems clumsy,” he replied with a smile. “You’ll have fun with that.”

“Olive is new to this. So, of course, she will be a bit clumsy.”

Jake laughed. “Her name is Olive?”

“It’s a beautiful name,” Simone scolded. “She’s sweet.”

“I’m sure she is,” he replied.

“It seems she already has a bit of a crush on you.”

Jake made a face. “That so?”

Simone merely smiled. “You’re handsome and mysterious. Of course, a girl like her will be drawn to you.”

Something in her tone made that unsettled feeling creep back up. “She looks like Tess.”

“Does she?” Simone asked with a hum. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Jake watched her for a minute, quietly recognizing the lie and thinking about what to do. Simone wouldn’t lie to him. She had no reason to, yet there was no way she didn’t see the similarities between Olive and Tess. Her eyes filled with a gleam of something as she held his gaze… An unspoken expectation, one that Jake wasn’t quite sure he understood. 

“We need more ice,” Nicky said over Jake’s shoulder.

“I’ll get it,” he answered, turning away from Simone to grab the bucket.

Olive hurried back to Simone’s side, glancing at him with a pink blush, tucking her hair behind her ear as he moved past her. Behind the safety of the walls, Jake tried to keep his breath even. Simone was lying for whatever reason. This new Tess, his dream, all of it was becoming too much. The harder it became to breathe, the more he was sucked into the dark pit holding specific memories of all the times he’d spent holding his breath under the water in the bath. He remembered the crushing weight that stole his breath when Simone had told him his mother’s death was no accident. He had to steady himself on the wall as he remembered seeing Lena disappear beneath the water.

Pull yourself together, he cursed. He harshly forced breath into his lungs and shoveled the ice into his bucket until the numbness took over, and everything was pushed down where it belonged. He walked back through the kitchen doors and faltered at the sight before him. Lena always stood out with her vibrant hair, but this was something else. 

The black dress was simple and elegant, unlike what he would have pictured her wearing on a night out. Her hair looked soft, cascading in waves down her freckled shoulders, and if possible, her eyes were even brighter tonight. Maybe it was the lights or how she smiled, but he was enchanted. He refocused quickly, forcing the question to come out as calm and disinterested as he could muster, “The hell are you doin’ here?”

“Our little Red is a guest tonight,” Nicky replied, giving him a light nudge as he passed by.

“A guest?” He repeated, busying himself with refilling the ice to keep his eyes off her.

Lena scoffed at his disbelief. “I could be a guest.”

“So, who’s the lucky guy?” Nicky’s innocent question made Jake freeze for a fraction of a second. Was she here with someone? He wondered swiftly before bitterly forcing the angry thoughts to cover it. Why do I fucking care? He wasn’t going to get into this, not tonight, not here.

“No one,” she said simply. “I’m here for a family dinner.”

He chuckled, imagining her loud and leather-clad family sitting at one of the tables eating fancy food like rich people. “Family dinner? I’m dyin’ to see what your family comes in lookin like.”

“Me too. I told them it was upscale, but Ozzy’s version of that makes him look like an old victorian count, and Patrick...” She made a face and sighed, “Patrick is going to show up in something fucking hideous. So, I guess I should apologize in advance for you guys having to look at them all night.”

“Well, I don’t know about Nicky, but their outfits won’t bother me,” he insisted, failing to keep his attention from drifting to her exposed skin and soft curves.

“Oh?”

“I’ll be too busy looking at yours.” He winked, watching in absolute delight as she turned her head away from him, blushing almost as red as her hair. Seeing her smile because of his flirtatious banter made him remember the dream in even more detail. In an instant, that smell… That damn sweet cherry made his brain feel foggy… foggy with her and her alone.

“What the fuck are you wearing?”

*

Patrick spread his arms wide, revealing more of the hideous orange-colored suit, covered head to toe in bright bedazzled jewels. His copper hair was practically glowing from the amount of gel he’d used to slick it back. “It’s pretty good, right?”

“Oh my god, you look like a cartoon character,” I whined. “I told you this place was fancy!”

“This,” he gestured to his suit again. “Is fancy!”

Turning back to Jake and Nicky, who stood frozen, wide-eyed at the horror of my brother’s suit, I sighed, “It can’t get worse than this, can it?”

Nicky’s eyebrows shot up as the door opened and closed again. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

“Oh god,” I turned and instantly covered my mouth at seeing Ozzy’s outfit. “Ozzy!”

He was dressed in a fine black overcoat that hugged his shoulders tightly and flared into a rounded tail. His neck was adorned with a simple red necktie, and an old watch hung from his buttoned chest. His leather gloves squeaked as he brought the ornate cane forward, clacking it against the floor. He tipped the tall hat to me and smiled, “It’s brilliant, isn’t it?”

“I said no hats!”

Peter rolled himself in through the door, stopping the wheelchair off to the side and giving me a knowing look. “I told them it was too much.”

He wore a very loosely fitting suit and a simple black face mask to protect him from airborne threats. I smiled, gesturing to his outfit. “At least you tried to blend in.”

“Don’t thank me yet, sis. This thing is one wrong move away from sliding right off me.”

Ozzy ran a hand through his hair as he looked around. “So this is the place, huh? I thought it would be a bit more… colorful.”

“People are staring,” I pointed out, looking at the large dining room full of people.

Patrick scoffed and turned to the restaurant with a smile. “Eat yer hearts out, you rich a-”

I slapped my hand over his mouth and dragged him back to my side. “Shut up! You can’t just waltz into my workplace and call these assholes assholes.”

“Oh, lighten up, girly,” Patrick teased.

“I could get fired!”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Howard wouldn’t fire you.” 

“Relax and try to have some fun, tight ass,” Patrick added.

Jake and Nicky stifled their laughter from behind the bar. “Your ass is the one that’s gonna feel tight with my foot shoved up it.”

Peter looked behind the bar and nodded to the two men there. “Nice to finally meet some of Lee’s coworkers.”

“You must be her brother,” Nicky smiled. “I’m Nicky. This asshole is Jake.”

“Jake,” he repeated, looking him up and down. Then, finally, he looked at me with gleaming eyes. “He certainly is your type.” He said in Irish.

“Good lord, not you too.”

Patrick threw an arm over my shoulder. “Lighten up! Tonight is going to be fun!”

Howard walked briskly toward us, trying to mask how his brows rose at the sight of my group. “You must be the Harrow party.”

Ozzy grinned. “That’s right. Nice place you’ve got here.”

Howard nodded, looking past Patrick to Peter. “It’s a pleasure to have our paths cross again, Peter. I’m glad to see you’re doing well.”

“Always a pleasure, Howard,” my brother said in a tense tone.

“Be nice,” I quickly signed to him.

“I’m always nice,” he signed back. Then, with a grunt, he pulled himself out of the wheelchair. Patrick’s hand on my arm was the only thing keeping me from rushing forward to help him. Peter struggled a bit but steadily himself, rising to meet Howard’s height. “Where are we dining tonight?”

With a tight smile, he gestured to the closest table. “Right this way.” Patrick discreetly helped Peter down the stairs as they headed toward the neatly made table. “Everything has been freshly placed, so it’s perfectly sterilized.”

“Thank you, Howard.” I shook my head. “I apologize for the disruption to your evening.”

He waved me off. “Nonsense. You’re Glovers, maybe not in name but in blood. Besides, this place is as much yours as it is mine at this point. So please, enjoy your night Lena.”

The table was right in front of the bar, front and center of the whole dining room. Howard pulled out my seat for me as Sasha stepped beside him, winking at me before showcasing his skills in service by presenting the wine he’d selected and filling each of our glasses while he talked about it. He poured Peter’s water and stroked his cheek with a smile. “Good to see you, little sick boy.”

“Good to see you too, exotic cheater,” Peter replied, taking a sip of his water.

“Do you know what you’d like to order this evening?” Sasha asked after giving us a minute to mull over the menu.

I gave him my selection, knowing full well the quality of the meat and Scott’s perfect technique. Ozzy ordered what sounded the fanciest, which turned out to be one of the more straightforward dishes on the menu, and then there was Patrick, who hummed some jaunty Irish tune as he mulled over his options. “It all sounds so… pretentious.”

Sasha nodded. “I recommend the Dukkah-crusted salmon with quinoa and arugula salad. It’s one of our less pretentious dishes.”

Patrick chuckled and tipped his glass to Sasha. “Sounds perfect.”

Peter ordered a relatively simple dish, one I knew would likely make him feel sicker after the fact. I waited until Sasha returned to the kitchen to quietly excuse myself and follow him. The doors swung open, and Sasha smirked at me. “I knew you’d be following, sneaky bitch.”

“I’ve gotta make sure he can handle the meal,” I answered him before turning to address Scott.

“Oooh,” Isaac cooed as he turned. “Somebody looks hot tonight!”

The cooks all joined in, of course. Finally, Scott rolled his eyes and shouted, “Everybody shut the fuck up! She knows she looks good. Spill it Red; what do you need?”

“Sorry to slow down service Chef,” I started. “I just wanted to hand deliver my brother’s order. He’s… He’s got some dietary stuff.”

“Better safe than sorry,” he replied, grabbing a piece of paper and a pen. “Give me the list of what he can’t have, and we’ll accommodate, won’t we?”

“Yes, Chef!”

I smiled, accepting the rare sight of Scott’s good side. “Okay, so all meat needs to be cooked through, nothing unpasteurized, no raw sprouts, and he’ll need toned-down spice. Ummm, also, any alcohol needs to be reduced and cooked down fully.”

Scott nodded, double-checking the paper before nodding. “Did everyone get that?”

“Heard, Chef!” The kitchen answered.

He nodded to the kitchen door and smiled, quick and thin. “Don’t sweat it, Red. We’re professionals back here.”

“Thanks, Scott, you’re the best!” I replied quietly, slipping out the kitchen door and making my way back to the table where Patrick was laughing as loud as possible, and Ozzy was struggling to grab hold of the small appetizer on his plate. Again, I giggled, sitting next to Peter. “Having trouble, Oz?”

“Why do they make these things so damn small?” He asked, holding his hands up. “Do these look like dainty baby fingers to you?”

“No,” we all answered.

“No!” He reaffirmed with a shake of his head as he grabbed his fork and stabbed into the small food item. “Fuck manners.”

Peter smiled at me. “Did you get the menu off your chest?”

With a nod, I sighed. “Sorry, I know I’m being extra about it all, but-”

“But you just want to make sure I get to enjoy this,” he finished. “I know, Lee, and I appreciate it. I appreciate all of you making tonight happen.”

“It’s the least we could give you,” Ozzy assured him. “Besides, I know how badly you’ve wanted to meet our girl’s work friends.”

Patrick lifted his wine to his lips. “Jake,” he muttered before tipping the glass back and sloppily sucking up the rich liquid.

I kicked his shin. “Shut up. And stop chugging the wine, you animal.”

While we waited for our food, Peter watched the dining room, the servers specifically. Though his eyes always seemed to follow one in particular. Simone smiled at us as she passed by, dropping off her plates of food and making polite small talk with her table, doing everything to earn those tips. Peter leaned over after she’d disappeared through the kitchen doors. “She’s the one that reminds you of mom?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “How’d you know?”

“She reminds me of her too.” Peter laughed. “It’s weird seeing another person like her just out and about.”

“We’ll keep our distance,” I assured him.

The food was terrific, though I’d expected no less from Scott. Peter cleared his plate, a sight I was glad to see after months of half-eaten food and hearing him vomit from the other room. He was really here, a bit pale and skinny but eating… But getting better. For a minute, all I could do was stare at him, thanking whatever gods or beings I could that my brother was still here.

Ozzy and Patrick blew through the wine, happily grumbling about how delicious the food was and how stuffed they were. Patrick unbuttoned his pants, “Feels like I just spent an hour with Nana.”

“Stop that!” I hissed, trying not to laugh.

“Sorry, sis, gotta make some room, or I’ll bust.”

Peter tapped my arm. “Hey, do me a favor?”

“No booze.”

“I know,” he insisted. “I just want to sniff it. Come on, Lee, let me live through you.”

“Fine,” I caved. “Which one?”

“Irish whiskey.”

“Of course,” I groaned, turning and making my way to the bar. Jake smiled, polishing a glass. “Got any Irish whiskey?”

He nodded. “Course. Didn’t take you for a whiskey, lady.”

“I’m not.” I nodded to Peter. “He loves it, though.”

My brother took his time, opting to listen to a story Ozzy started telling before meeting me at that bar. “So,” Jake started. “I knew you had a brother, but I didn’t know he was sick.”

I sloshed my drink around for a few seconds. “Yeah. He’ll pull through. Pete’s a fighter.”

“Why keep it a secret?”

“Didn’t want the pity.” I looked at him and chuckled. “Admit it, you pitied me a little when you realized he was sick.”

“Alright, fair point.”

“It just… Never sits well with me how everyone pities me and apologizes when I’m not sick.” I shook my head. “Peter is the one that has to live with it, that has to fight. He deserves respect and pity and everything in between.”

Peter sat down next to me, pulling the drink from my hand, lifting the glass to his nose, and inhaling deeply. “Ahh, that’s the good stuff.”

I put my hand on the glass when he pressed his lips to it. “No.”

“Just a little sip?” He begged.

“A tiny one,” I relented, loosening my hold on the glass only for him to tip it almost all the way back. “Peter!”

He chuckled, swallowing the rich liquid with a wince. “Sorry, sis, I couldn’t help myself.”

“Asshole,” I grumbled, pulling what remained in the glass away from him. Nicky chuckled. “Don’t encourage him!”

Patrick sat down on the opposite side of me and sighed. “Loosen up. One little drink won’t kill him.”

“No, but I might.”

“I’ve got to get back to the bar,” Ozzy said, pressing a kiss to my head and giving the boys a clap on the shoulder. “See you, kids, tomorrow! Try not to stay out too late. You make sure they rest, Lena.”

“When did she get put in charge?” Patrick complained.

“Since you chugged the wine!” Ozzy replied.

“Goodnight, Oz,” the three of us called after him.

With the last guests gone, everyone slowly began filtering down from the locker room. They all approached Peter with smiles and friendly handshakes. Sasha finally got to tell his story of meeting my sickly brother, and I introduced them all as best I could until I got to an unfamiliar face.

“And this is…” I looked more carefully at the girl standing in front of me. Dark hair, a round face, and a nervous smile. “I don’t actually know this one.”

“Olive,” she said with a giggle. “I just started.”

Smiling back, I offered her my hand. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Lena. I usually work in the kitchen.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said quietly. “You must be pretty good to be working in the kitchen.”

Laughing, I shrugged. “I don’t know about that, but I’m sure you’ll pick things up quickly.”

She looked around with awe in her eyes. “I hope so. This place is amazing.”

“That it is,” Simone said, smiling at Peter and holding her hand out. “It’s a pleasure to meet Lena’s family.” Her eyes trailed down his ill-fitting suit. “Though judging by the attire, it was last minute.”

Peter shook his head. “Not last minute. These idiots had their outfits picked out last week.”

Simone’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Oh, forgive me. I just assumed since it seems you hadn’t had the time to tailor the suit.”

Here we go, I thought to myself as Peter hid a smirk. “Oh, this used to fit me great. I lost quite a bit of weight recently. Leukemia is a bitch like that.”

Her face fell as she scrambled to apologize. I slapped his arm lightly and spoke to him in Irish, “Don’t make jokes like that.”

“It was funny,” He insisted. “Plus, she’s a bitch.”

I rolled my eyes. “No more cancer jokes, asshole.”

“Alright, alright,” he chuckled. “Sorry, my humor can be a bit… abrasive.” 

Simone cleared her throat and nodded. “It’s quite alright.” She caught Howard’s gaze and smiled. “Walk me home, Howard?”

The tall manager nodded. “Of course, goodnight changelings!”

“Now that the boring ones are gone,” Sasha began with a wide smirk. “Let’s give our guests a true party!”

Nicky rolled his eyes. “You hooligans forget I don’t have all night to sit around and clean up after you.”

I stood, downing the rest of my whisky, and headed around the bar. “Get outta here, Nicky, Jake, and I will clean up and close it all down.”

“Oh, will we?” Jake questioned with raised brows.

“Yep,” I answered sweetly as I kissed Nicky’s cheek. “Go on.”

Nicky looked over at Jake, who shook his head and shrugged. “You heard her. We got it.”

“Thanks,” he replied, giving me a pat on the shoulder. “Don’t break anything!”

I tied half my hair up to keep it out of my face and smiled over the bar at Sasha. “What do you want, prince Sasha?”

He beamed. “God, I love you!”

Jake and I worked side by side for a while, though he spent most of his time behind the bar answering the slew of questions the new girl asked him. She leaned over the side of the bar closest to the kitchen, showing off her cleavage and batting her eyes at him whenever he glanced her way. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the high-pitched praises she lamented to him, clearly looking to stroke more than his ego. Patrick wiggled his eyebrows at my slightly irritated face while Peter’s smile thinned into a straight line as he watched me from the other side of the bar.

Prue skipped through the front door before I could ask him what was wrong. She happily tracked Will down and pressed a kiss to his cheek before running to Peter and pulling him into her arms for a tight hug. Quinn smirked as she tossed something over the bar before giving my brother an equally loving hug. I caught the peach with relative ease. My brows furrowed. “No. Quinn, come on!”

“Yep!” Quinn said smugly, sitting down across from me. “I decree that The Peach Soiree will be held in one week’s time. Payback for not returning my calls when you left.”

Everyone looked at us like we were crazy, but Scott was the one to ask it outright, “What the hell is The Peach Soiree?”

I sighed, setting the peach down on the counter. “It’s a party kind of. We each get to be in charge of one every year.”

“Mine is The Peach Soiree,” Quinn said with glee winking at Ari. “I’m an ass girl.”

“Prue’s is The Melon Matinee,” I continued. “She throws hers at the beginning of the year because she’s impatient.”

Prue made a noise and quickly signed, “Fuck you.”

Quinn said, laughing, “And our lovely little Lena’s is The Cherry Gala.”

“Why cherry?” Jake asked, looking over at me with a sly grin. “Let me guess, the hair?”

“Nope,” I replied, making sure to pop the P.

“Wait, have they not seen what you can do with cherry stems?” Quinn asked with a shocked and delighted face.

I groaned and threw the peach at her. “You’re the worst! You know that, right?”

Jake turned with that devilish air of absolute curiosity that told me he wouldn’t let this go anytime soon. “Cherry stems, huh?”

“Yeah,” I answered, sliding Sasha his drink. “It’s not that impressive.”

“Let’s just say she’s good with her tongue,” Quinn teased. “She’d make a great lesbian.”

I pointed at her with a poorly concealed grin. “One more word, and I won’t offer to get your little soiree a reservation.”

Her mouth hung open, and her eyes shifted to large puppy dog eyes. “OH PLEASE!!! It would be so perfect, Lena! Pleasepleasepleaseplease!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it if you shut up!”

“My lips are sealed,” she answered, dragging her long, manicured nail over her lips.

Jake leaned on the bartop. “So when’s your party?”

“Next year.”

“She used hers a few months ago,” Quinn said before remembering her promise.

“Was it any fun?”

I rolled my eyes and shrugged. “I thought it was.”

He sighed, “Come on, princess. You gotta give me more than that.”

Quinn’s eyes grew wide at the nickname. I ignored her and Prue, looking at Jake with a smug smile. “I don’t, though.”

“That’s just cruel.” His eyes slid down to my lips. “You at least gonna show me that cherry trick?”

“It’s really not that impressive.”

Sasha rolled his eyes, reaching over the bar and clamoring around for the cherry jar. “Enough foreplay!” He set the jar in my hand and winked. “Show us what that talented tongue does, sassy Tiger!”

I shook my head, opening the jar and ignoring the hoops and hollers that filled the bar. I pulled two cherries free of the stems and showed them to everyone before popping them into my mouth. My tongue worked the top into a knot with ease before I turned it and did the same to the bottom, finishing the not-so-impressive heart shape by shoving my tongue between the two stems and bending the top with a tiny bit of pressure. Pulling it out of my mouth, I showed the group the little cherry stem heart and set it down on the bar top. “There. Like I said, not very impressive.”

Ari gave me a look as she fanned herself. “That was so hot.”

Quinn shot her a teasing look and laughed as Ari pinched her arm. Sasha clapped loudly. “Tiger Bitch you never fail!”

Jake picked the cherry stem heart up and looked at it for a minute before he turned to tease me. “That’s cute.”

“Shut up,” I groaned, trying to flick it out between his fingers. But instead, he moved it out of the way and laughed as I shoved him toward the kitchen. “Go get changed, loser.”

*

He squeezed past the busty, doe-eyed girl as she smiled, batting her eyelashes at him, and went upstairs to follow Lena’s advice and change. When he opened his locker to find the familiar sleek black leather of his jacket, Jake smiled. How the hell did she even get this up here? Her perfume was all over it, covering up the boozy musk he’d been so used to the old thing reeking of. God, he wanted to keep it to his nose and burn that smell into his sinuses.

After he changed into a simple T-shirt and jeans, he slid the jacket over his shoulders and put the cherry stem heart in his pocket, already thinking of how much fun he’d have pulling it out to randomly tease his little redhead. The doorway filled with the familiar copper-haired brute and the thinner bald man. Patrick and Peter looked around for a minute before they looked at each other. “You wanna start, or should I?

Peter scoffed, “I’m the oldest. I’ll start.”

“There a problem?” Jake asked calmly. If they’d wanted to kick his ass, Patrick certainly would have done it by now.

“Not yet,” Patrick replied, keeping his arm out as Peter took a step forward.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” the brother said with a grin. “Oz and Pat have been pretty good at keeping me in the loop regarding you and my little sister.”

Jake shook his head, leaning back against his locker. “There’s not much to tell. We’re friends.”

Patrick rolled his eyes, mumbling something in a different language that made Peter chuckle. “Friends is hardly the word I’d use to describe you two. But I don’t care what you call it so long as one thing stays the same. You respect her.”

“God knows she’s had enough of dumb little pretty boys taking advantage of her,” Patrick added, giving him a stern look, not unlike the ones he’d been giving him from the start. 

“Listen, Jake,” Peter continued. “I know, my sister. I know she comes off as this strong, indestructible force of nature that can kick anyone’s ass, and that doesn’t feel a damn thing.” He winced as he shifted, balancing himself on Patrick’s waiting arm. “Lena is strong… She is one of the strongest people I know, but she’s still human. It still hurts when people she cares about let her down.”

“And you think she cares about me?” He asked, trying to sound amused to cover up the way he genuinely wanted to know.

Patrick nodded, quietly making sure Peter wouldn’t fall. “She doesn’t bring just anyone to the old place, and she’s brought you more than enough times. Even talked about pops.”

“She also shared Cape Cod with you.” Peter nodded. “Yeah, I know about that. If she trusts you with that, then it means something. So, I’ll just cut to the chase to make a long conversation short. You hurt her, and I will kill you. Dom will be on board. He already isn’t too fond of you, so making it look like an accident or some bs will be a breeze.”

Jake looked at the thin, sickly man whose suit hung off him in a way that would typically be comedic. He could take Peter down with one light push if he wanted to. But, instead, he remembered how Lena spoke of him, of the big brother that loved to box and was kind and good. Peter may not have looked like a boxer now, but the rest remained true. So, Jake took his warning with a humble nod. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

A smile spread on his face as he nodded. “Good. Now let’s go before she realizes we’ve been sneaky.”

Patrick helped him back down the stairs sparing Jake a last look over his shoulder. It was a quick and simple look of gratitude as he nodded his head to Jake that made him feel weird. He’d never had someone like Patrick’s approval… never had someone’s big brother treat him with respect instead of just chasing him out of his one-night stands with cuss words and physical threats. Jake held back a minute to sit in the feeling before putting on his black beanie and going back downstairs.

*

“Where to now, big brother?” I asked when Peter and Patrick returned from the bathroom. “The night is yours.”

Peter shrugged for a minute. “The old arcade?”

Sasha clapped his hands together. “I’ve never been to an American arcade! Is it shit?”

Patrick laughed, “Absolutely!”

“Can we come?” The Russian pleaded, his studded sleeves catching in the light as he brought his hands together to beg. “Please, little sick boy!”

“Everyone is more than welcome to come,” Peter insisted. “The more, the merrier, I always say. Unless the more are doctors, then it’s not as fun.”

Jake strode out from the kitchen, wearing his leather jacket and a simple black beanie. It was stupid how happy seeing him back in the jacket I’d bribed Isaac into sneaking into his locker. I hadn’t noticed before how well it suited him… how good he really looked in it. His lips curled into a smile as he caught my blatant stare. “Arcade?” I blurted out. “You coming with?”

“Aren’t those for kids?” He asked.

“They’re fun,” I insisted. “You coming or not, grumpy?”

Sasha leaned over the counter and tugged on Jake’s hat. “Come on, grumpy Jake! Join us in being children tonight!”

“You’re a child every night, Sasha,” Jake retorted, fixing his hat.

“I have to stop by my place to change,” I told Peter and Patrick as they started heading toward the door. “Please, for the love of god, tell me you two are going to change too.”

They laughed but nodded. Patrick waved his hand at me. “Of course. I wouldn’t want to ruin my suit!”

“See you there?” Peter asked, checking his watch. “Ten minutes?”

“See you in ten.”

Quinn nodded toward Prue and Will. “I’m catching a ride with them.”

“Se you there. Don’t let them fuck in the back of the cab!”

“On it!” She yelled back before disappearing out the door after Will and Prue.

I pointed to the rest of the group. “I can help cover cab fare with anyone that needs it, but I’ve gotta run home first.”

Sasha and Ari quickly raised their hands. “We want to see your apartment!”

“Why?” I asked.

“We have a bit of a bet going,” Ari admitted.

Sasha nodded, smirking. “I think you live like I do, filthy with sex toys and lingerie everywhere!”

Ari rolled her eyes. “And I think you’re a neat freak with drawers dedicated to your dirty sexy little secrets.”

“You two are nuts,” I replied. “But come on.”

“Got room for one more?” Jake asked.

I smiled. “I thought you were above the arcade.”

“I never said that,” he answered. “Can I ride with you or not?”

“Sure, just try not to let us children get on your nerves too much.”

The cab ride was pretty short, and before I knew it, I was leading two loud, obviously, already kind of drunk individuals up my front steps. Jake followed behind them quietly, taking in the sights of my building’s newly painted hallway as I unlocked my front door. Sasha and Ari scurried inside like two hyperactive dogs, quickly looking around to confirm or deny their bets. Once Jake stepped over the thresh hold, I closed the door and flipped on the lights. “Tada. Is it everything you hoped it would be?”

Sasha pouted as he handed Ari a twenty-dollar bill. “I’m disappointed in you, Tiger Bitch. I thought you’d be more of a mess.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” I replied, patting his cheek as I passed. My apartment was nothing special. Most of my essential belongings were in my old bedroom above the gym, safely tucked away with two of the people I trusted most. Jake went straight for the bookshelf, leafing through my collection while Sasha and Ari opened drawers and cabinets randomly, trying to sniff out my secrets. “Make yourselves at home. I’ll just be a minute.”

I closed my bedroom door behind me, quickly fishing out my comfiest pair of jeans and a simple long-sleeved shirt from my drawers. Tossing them onto my bed, along with my comfortable shoes, I started trying to attempt the zipper on my dress. I could barely reach it, but no matter how much I pulled or wiggled the damn thing, it didn’t budge. Finally, with a frustrated sigh, I kicked off my shoes and opened my door.

“Hey,” I called out into the living room, turning my back to the now-open door. “Someone help me with this piece of shit zipper?”

I’d expected Ari or Sasha to come to my aid, but a familiarly rough hand settled on my back, and his smokey smell wafted around me. Jake’s fingers carefully brushed my hair over my shoulder, skimming the strip of exposed skin and causing a ripple of pleasure to shoot down my spine. I held in the unholy noise that threatened to make him even more smug and unbearable in his flirtatious pursuit. He pulled on the zipper a few times before it finally loosened, and the warm pads of his fingers glided down my spine, following the shape of the snake tattooed there until he stopped at the middle of my back. “Think you can get it the rest of the way from here?”

Swallowing the heated lump in my throat, I looked at him over my shoulder, smiling like a dumbass. “Yeah, I can get it. Thanks.”

Jake smirked, his eyes shamelessly drinking in the sight of my bare back. “No problem, princess.”

Damn him and that stupid nickname. I slid back behind the safety of my bedroom door, closing it with a quiet sigh. He’s just a friend. I reminded myself. Don’t be a dummy, you fucking dummy! I double-checked that the door was closed before sliding the dress off and shoving on my less-revealing clothes. I washed the makeup off my face and fixed a few puffed-up sections of my hair, securing the half updo and heading back to my living room.

Sasha and Ari were raccoons, sniffing through my kitchen and pulling my couch apart. Jake leaned against the wall by my door, reading one of the books he’d pulled off my shelf. “Sasha! Put my couch back together!”

“Where are the sex toys?” He whined. “I know they’re here!”

“Leave my sex toys alone, you Russian raccoon. Ari, don’t eat all my crackers.”

“Sorry,” she said with a mouthful of food. “I’m so high right now.”

Jake raised his brow. “What, no scolding for me?”

I shook my head. “I’m just as surprised as you.”

“Hemmingway?” He asked, lifting up the book. 

“It’s a classic.” I pulled it out of his hands and set it on the shelf. “Alright, let’s go. The arcade is just a little ways past Ozzy’s.”

Ari groaned. “We’re walking?”

“You walk everywhere,” I reminded her, practically shoving them all out my door and locking it behind me.

“I’m really high, though,” she laughed, leaning against Sasha.

He waved us on. “I’ve got her. Just lead the way.”

Jake and I took up the front, casually tagging one another at random and making small talk about the neighborhood and the arcade. It got easier to ignore the loud remarks Ari and Sasha made about Jake and Is “upcoming fucking" as they liked to call it. Though I could tell they made Jake tense up more each time.

The old arcade light shone brightly across the street, where the rest of our group huddled together, waiting. “There you are!” Heather rolled her eyes and slid beneath Sasha’s waiting arm. “These people are insane!”

“You can say that again,” the Russian agreed.

“Hey, Jake,” Olive chirped with an awkward wave.

His brows furrowed, but he waved back regardless as we made our way inside. It was shitty; old arcades usually were around here. You could practically taste the burnt pizza crust and cheap soda that was always just a little too watered down. Lights were on in every corner, flashing and dashing and everything in between. It was chaos. The chaos screamed with some of my few good memories from childhood.

I’d spent hours here on weeks when I was with my dad and the boys. We’d all spend the day running errands for Nana to earn enough change to buy some coins. Patrick rigged every game he touched, winning hundreds of tokens and ending up with the biggest prizes. Peter worshiped laser tag and got crazy good at it, while I just enjoyed the sounds and the freedom.

Breathing in the shitty air, I smiled. “God, this place is great.”

“It’s interesting,” Jake said quietly, analyzing the don’t room. “You spend a lot of time here?”

“When I was with my dad,” I admitted. “The three of us used to be quite the hit around here. Quinn too.

“I can imagine.”

Nudging him, I gestured to everything. “You ever get to waste time in a shit hole like this?”

He shook his head. “Not really. Simone hates these places, so she always found some excuse to keep me far away.”

The anger I felt toward Simone grew at that moment. Denying Jake so much of his childhood over something as minor as her own opinion was selfish. Though it wasn’t surprising considering the woman’s need for control. My brothers and Will stood by the door to the laser tag arena, their eyes lighting up as they caught mine, waving me over to get me to join their game. “So… You’ve never played laser tag before?”

“Nope,” he said.

They waved me over again, big eyes begging as they shouted please at me. “Come on then. You’re gonna lose your laser tag virginity.”

Jake rolled his eyes and chuckled. “Am I?”

“Come on,” I pleaded. “You’re being such a grump!”

“I’d be far less grumpy if I was drunk.”

“You gotta give this place a real shot. Come on!” I grinned. “I’ll let you be on my team.”

Finally, he gave in and nodded. “Fine, one game. But you owe me.”

I scoffed. “Resorting to extortion? That’s a new low.”

“Low but effective.”

“Alright, I’ll owe you. Now, let's go.”

Olive slipped into the group, evening out the teams. We all stood in the back room, getting fitted into our vests and assigned our guns. Olive, Jake, and I were on the blue team, while my brothers and Will were on the red team. The employees gave a very dull presentation on the game's safety and the rules while Patrick and I made faces at each other and silent threats with our hands.

“Don’t be fooled by Peter’s sickly appearance,” I warned, making sure my vest fit snuggly. “He’s an absolute powerhouse at laser tag.”

Jake smirked, overconfident. “Yeah?”

I slapped his arm. “Yeah, and he’s not gonna go easy on you, first time or not. Don’t even try to go up against Patrick. That asshole is insane, and he’s not afraid to throw a punch or two to win.”

“Sounds like you guys really hate losing.”

“We’re competitive,” I replied. “Especially when losers have to treat.”

“Competitive and cheap,” he said with a laugh. “You Harrows are somethin’ else.”

Rolling my eyes, I stepped forward, tightening one of his straps. Then, looking up at him through my lashes, I smiled, “Try to keep up grumpy.”

Olive cleared her throat and stepped up closer to us. “This is gonna be awesome, right?”

I stepped back and laughed. “Absolutely.”

Patrick narrowed his eyes at me, sticking his tongue out. Then, he shouted in Irish, “Your little boyfriend’s ass is mine, girly!”

“Not if I get your ass first!” I shouted back, flipping him off. “Pete, try not to overdo it!” Peter rolled his eyes, carefully following the employee back to their respective starts. 

The laser tag arena was two floors of walls, both large and short, with holes in various spots for aiming. The three of us stood on the far end, against the blue wall. From there, I could see the red wall peaking up over the second floor. The lights dimmed, and the neons glowed brighter, illuminating the shitty pattern on the carpet and casting all of us in a glow of ugly bright colors. Jake didn’t look ugly, though. As I turned to look up at him, I couldn’t ignore how the blue brought out his eyes and how the haze of greens, reds, and yellows made him look like he’d been carved from stone. 

He looked down at me with a smile, one of the rare ones that wasn’t some shit-eating smirk that followed his quips or the stiff ones I was convinced he smiled just because it was expected of him. “Better stay close, Red,” he said, tugging on a strand of my slightly luminous hair. I rolled my eyes and waited for the countdown and the vests' buzz, signaling the game's start. 

Peter would stay low. He had the energy to play, but that didn’t mean he had the energy to climb to the next level or down when the game ended. Patrick would go high, he always did to try to get some kind of advantage on the other team, and he liked jumping down and scaring people. And then there was Will. Will was the wildcard. I hadn’t played with him before, but he seemed like the type that would be surprisingly good at the game.

It began in earnest when the fog machines kicked in with that familiar hissing sound. We walked forward, and Olive practically curled into Jake’s side, not even bothering to keep her gun up. Peter’s vest peeked out from one of the barricades as he swiftly vanished in the fog. I stopped, quickly aiming and shooting the lit-up red vest just as Patrick jumped down, trying to catch us off-guard. He made a fuss for a moment before he grinned as Peter and Will emerged behind us.

Olive went down easy as Jake and I dodged to the side, squeezing into a little covered half circle. Chest to chest, I could smell his lightly spiced cologne and smoke as I looked up and smiled. “This close enough for you?”

Jake hummed, pressing himself even closer to me. “Not nearly close enough.”

“Peter’s the one to worry about.” I turned my head away from his intense gaze, looking at the little section I could see. “If Will’s smart, he’ll be going up top to try and get a better view.”

“I go high, you go low?” He asked.

“It’s a decent plan,” I answered.

He nodded to the dark foggy arena. “Let’s go then. I’d hate to owe your brothers a drink.”

I slipped out first, going right where Peter had been last. Glancing back at Jake, who headed left toward the upper level, I admired the bright smile on his face and the gleam of a childhood dream being fulfilled. My brother was moving slower than usual, which led us to our stalemate, him behind one of the erect barriers and me behind one of the kneeling ones. “Having fun, Pete?”

“I’m about to kick your ass at laser tag. Of course, I’m having fun!”

With a laugh I stood, aiming my gun at the barrier he should have been behind, only to have him jump out from a different one and hit square on the sensor. “Damn! You’re moving quicker than I thought!”

He shrugged. “I’ll admit I have had to resort to some of Patrick’s trickery.”

His vest flashed as a laser from up top hit the sensor. Jake smirked down at us. “Trickery aside, that was a good game.”

Peter nodded. “Looks like we owe you two a drink.”

“Don’t worry about it tonight,” I said, patting my brother on the back. “We’ll demand payment in two or three business days.”

“How considerate of you.”

In the back room where we removed our gear, Olive chattered about how fun the game was and how amazing Jake did. A heavy pit began to form in my chest as I watched her hop on her feet, drawing Jake’s eyes to the low neckline of her top and the very obvious cleavage that practically spilled out of it. It was a decent move to get a man's attention, one I couldn’t fault her for taking advantage of, but something about it bothered me. I felt… disappointed… disappointed that he looked? No. I shook my head and smiled as Jake turned to look at me. “Good game. You’re now officially no longer a laser tag virgin.”

“It was pretty straightforward,” he answered. “But it was nice having a seasoned vet in my corner.”

The six of us returned to the main lobby, purchasing coins and slowly making our way through various games. Quinn pulled me onto the dance machine next to her the second I tried to slide past. “Dance with me!”

“You dance all night for a living,” I teased. “How can you have the energy for this?”

“I have godly stamina,” she replied, winking at Ari. “You know that, Lee.”

“Alright, bring it on, stamina goddess!”

Both of us bobbed to the music that played over the shitty surround system, barely even looking at the screens before we started moving our feet. Left. Left. Right. Back. Right. Front. It brought me back to when Quinn and I first started hanging out. The wild nights of her and I ripping up the arcade with Patrick and Peter until Dad and Ozzy eventually came to drag us home. 

She grabbed my hand, belting out the song's words and urging me to give in to the music. “Move your hips, Lena, just like I taught you!” Through the others gathered around cheering us on, I could feel Jake’s eyes. Unlike the many times before, this time, there was a rush to have captured his gaze. It made my face burn and my heartbeat quicken ever so slightly as I tried to focus on the moves, not him.

Quinn won. She always won; of course, when she did, she was unbearable about it. “HA!” She cheered, jumping up and down, shaking her ass at me. “And that is why stamina is important, kids!”

I slapped her hip and hopped down. Patrick took my place and grinned at her. “Let’s go, Quinny.”

Prue waved me to where she and Will stood next to Jake and Olive at the mini golf course. “Grab a putter and come with us!”

Jake clapped his hands together. “Quite the show you gave us, princess.”

I followed Prue’s instructions and smirked at him. “Never would have pegged you for a golf guy.”

“I’m not,” he admitted. “Prue’s convincing, though.”

“Yeah, she’s good at dragging people to do stuff.” I swung my putter around a little. “What’d she bribe you with?”

“Secrets,” Jake whispered, smacking my putter with his.

I rolled my eyes. “Liar. Prue’s an angel. No amount of golf could convince her to sell my secrets.”

Jake shrugged. “Maybe, but I can be convincing too.”

Prue and Will headed inside, leading the group in the shittiest and shortest mini-golf course. Jake was surprisingly shit at it, which made the whole thing much more fun. Olive was good, clearly coming from that family that always went mini golfing on vacations, but she purposefully stuck back. I bit my lip, watching her stand just a little too close to Jake as he lined up his shot. Prue rubbed my arm and quietly asked, “You good?”

I finished the final hole and smiled at her. “I’m good.”

The employee looked at my card and gave me a string of tickets as I exited and headed toward the ticket counter. I didn’t want to focus on how I felt seeing Olive glued to Jake’s side all night. I didn’t want to admit that maybe… just maybe, the little green monster had bitten my ass while I wasn’t looking. Even worse, I didn’t want to admit that the little green monster was only a symptom of a much larger and much more complicated feeling. So instead, I waited for them to count my tickets and give me whatever shitty prize I’d won. 

From the front, I could see everyone laughing with each other as they moved from one game to another. Sasha had his arms around Ari and Heather, pointing out how most game names could be dirty if you said them right. Peter sat in his wheelchair, tossing the small basketballs across the long game toward the hoop. He was good, but I could see the effort it took him now to keep getting the ball through the hoop. Patrick stood beside him, tossing balls, each one missing completely. 

Jake strolled out of the mini-golf section and put his gear away before making his way to my side. “Finally finished?”

Leaning against the counter, he replied, “I told you I’m not a golf guy.”

“Yeah, well, a little golf didn’t kill you,” I teased. “Got any tickets to cash in?”

“You actually keep those?” He questioned with a raised brow.

“Hell yeah!” I insisted, nodding to the wall of cheap toys. “I wouldn’t miss out on this goldmine.”

He chuckled, watching the man behind the counter finish counting and pull a little stuffed frog out from beneath the counter. “This is what I’ve got for thirty tickets.”

I giggled, looking at the tiny crooked crown, its angry face, and its too-long limbs. “It’s perfect, thank you.” Then, turning to present the stuffed animal to Jake, I grinned. “See? Who wouldn’t want this?”

He nodded along. “It’s quite the prize for all your hard work. You gonna name it too?”

Humming, I looked at the little angry frog face and laughed. “I think I’ll call him Jake.”

Jake laughed and shook his head. “How creative.”

“He even looks like you,” I replied, showing him the grumpy face and laughing harder.

“Jake!” Olive called out, hurrying from the golf cave with a handful of tickets. “You forgot your tickets.”

With a sigh, he took them from her hands and tossed them over the counter to the employee, who started counting them. “Thanks.”

She tucked her hair behind her ear and smiled at him. “This has been quite a night, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he answered, barely looking at her. “It’s been fun.”

“I thought arcades were too childish for your adult tastes,” I responded. “Is this you admitting that maybe I was right?”

He rolled his eyes. “It is childish, but I guess I liked it more than I thought I would.”

I nodded. “Soooo, I was right?”

Jake laughed and shook his head but relented all the same. “You were right.”

The employee finished counting the tickets and set another frog on the counter. “Here’s your prize.”

Jake looked at the frog with a wide grin before he turned it around to show it to me. His frog had a similar crown but had exaggerated red lips and long eyelashes with little stars in its eyes. “Aww, you got a cute one! You gonna name it?”

“I think I’ll call her Lena,” he replied with a shit-eating grin. “Even looks like you.”

“Oh ha ha,” I answered, swatting his cheek with my frog. “You’re hilarious.”

Olive stood close by us, awkwardly waiting for an opening to show off the simple eraser she’d gotten with her handful of tickets before she politely asked Jake to show her how a game worked. He stuffed his frog into his pocket and walked back into the game section of the arcade as I found a nearby place to sit to give my feet a break. Quinn slid into the seat across from mine, turning to glare at the dark-haired girl across the room. “Are we fucking this bitch up or not?”

“What are you on about?” I asked with a nervous laugh.

“Uhh, the new bitch that’s been glued to your man’s side all night, twirling her hair and touching up on him.” She elaborated as Prue sat beside me.

“That bitch needs to go down,” she signed. “Touching his chest. Putting her dirty hoe ass hands on YOUR jacket!”

I rolled my eyes and swallowed that annoying sense of possessive jealousy that had threatened to overtake me all night. The one I was NOT entitled to feel. “Jake isn’t my man, and the jacket is his. If he wants to flirt with her, he can. He should! We’re just friends.”

Quinn shook her head, pointing to my face. “Ohhh, you’re fuckin pissed!”

“I am not!”

Prue smoothed a finger down the tight crease in between my eyebrows. “Damn, she better back off before you send her to a morgue!”

I rolled my eyes at her and shoved Quinn’s finger down with a sigh. “Listen, Jake is a big boy. He is free to make his own decisions. We’re. Just. Friends.”

The two looked at one another before rolling their eyes. “Right, just friends, whatever you wanna call it, Lee.”

They leaned back, giving me a clear view of Olive giggling at whatever he’d said and tugging on the sleeve of his jacket, pulling him toward some game. This was dumb. Irrational even. Jake was my friend, a friend I liked because friends like each other. It didn’t mean I liked him or had any reason to be angry that someone else liked him too. On the contrary, Jake was fun to be around and fun to flirt with, and I was not the only one entitled to enjoy those things.

After my feet felt a bit less sore, I returned to the fun. Olive now stood with everyone else, watching Sasha and Patrick battle it out on the dance machine. Jake wasn’t with them. I tapped Olive’s shoulder, asking over the noise, “Where’d Jake go?”

She shrugged. “We were over there by the older arcade games. When I turned around to ask him which one he wanted to try, he was gone. I figured he was with you.”

I ignored the snark in her tone and followed her finger over to where she’d said they were when she lost track of him. The annoyingly jaunty tune from the old Swimmer arcade game echoed in my ear as I looked at the group of teenagers attempting to play it. The small figure of the man hit a log before slowly sinking into the water. Game over. Shit. I hurried toward the nearest bathroom, hoping Jake was as easy to predict as I was in moments of panic.

“Jake?” I knocked on the bathroom door before slowly pushing it open just enough that he could hear me. “Jake? It’s Lena.” All I could hear for a minute was the sound of the water running, but the longer I stood in the doorway, the more obvious the uneven sound of his breathing got. “I’m gonna come in… Okay?”

He didn’t speak as I opened the door and quickly shut it behind me. Jake sat on the floor, his face wet and his chest heaving with the effort each sharp breath he sucked in took. I knelt down in front of him, taking up the space between his legs. “Can you tell me what you need?”

Jake shook his head, eyes glossy with tears he refused to let fall. “That’s okay,” I assured him. “Let’s just focus on breathing.” I slowly took hold of his hand and pressed it to my chest, sliding closer to him. “Can you feel my heartbeat?”

He nodded.

“Can you feel my breaths?”

He nodded again.

“Good. Now just try and breathe with me, okay?” I took deep, slow breaths counting quietly out loud to give him some kind of audible distraction. After a few minutes, his breathing began to match my own. “There you go. Just focus on breathing.” Jake’s blue eyes watched me closely, a fear I was familiar with staring back at me. I hadn’t seen this side of him before, and I had no idea what he needed, so I just squeezed his hand and smiled at him, calm and gentle. “You’re here,” I told him, imagining all the times my dad had said the same to me. “You’re safe with me.”

That did something. The fear slowly shifted to a deep look of relief, and then just as quickly, his eyes tore away from me, and his face burned with embarrassment and frustration. I didn’t move, not even when he pulled his hand away from my chest, setting the still, slightly shaking limb on his knee as he flattened his legs out. After a moment of silence, he spoke, voice slightly off. “You can go now. I’m fine.”

“It’s okay not to be okay sometimes,” I said softly. The unspoken message was communicated as I retook hold of his hand. I’m here.

Jake chuckled breathlessly. “Not for me.”

“Why not?” I asked. He didn’t answer, just kept his eyes trained on the wall. For a minute, I just let him catch his breath before I squeezed his hand. “You’re human too, Jake. And after everything that’s happened… That biker asshole punching you and my shit in Cape Cod combined with your own Cape-related stuff. So understandably, you’d be feeling overwhelmed.”

Jake sighed. “It’s so fucking stupid. All this over a dumb arcade game.”

“It’s not stupid.” I stroked my thumb over the back of his hand. “It took me years to get over that shitty fake drowning animation. I still can’t go swimming. No matter how shallow the water is, I always feel like I’m going to sink.” His eyes held the understanding that his face refused to show as he looked at me for a second. “We don’t get to choose what affects us. We just have to do our best to get through it.”

A cold, empty look settled on his face as he retreated back into the safety of his shell with only a quiet mumbled, “Thank you.” 

“That’s what friends are for,” I answered, slowly withdrawing. “I’ll give you a few minutes to yourself.”

He didn’t answer, just nodded stiffly. 

Coming from a place of absolutely no experience with Jake after a panic attack, I couldn’t offer him much, and it was likely even he didn’t know what he needed. Some space was all I could really give him. And even that didn’t feel like enough. He was my friend, and though he’d opened up to me significantly over the past few months, Jake was still Jake. He was closed off and private about the serious stuff. Even after everything I’d shared with him, he’d given me the bare minimum about himself. That was okay. I was prepared to take the friendship at his pace, given his seemingly limited experience with this sort of thing outside Simone’s well-crafted role.

Jake thought he had to do it all alone, just like I did after moving away from my mother. I was determined to show him he didn’t, just like my dad and Oz and Peter and Patrick had shown me. I didn’t have to suffer alone, and neither did Jake. I kept the group busy while Jake took whatever time he needed, which evidently wasn’t much. It took him all of five minutes to slip out of the bathroom and silently make his way to the door, leaving without a word to anyone. I watched him go, quietly hoping he’d be okay. 

The night dragged on, and no one commented on Jake’s absence. He’d done this a lot, I’d gathered. Finally, when the arcade closed for the night, everyone parted ways. Peter was exhausted though he’d never openly admit it, and Patrick had efficiently worn him out too. I helped them get home, opting to stay the night in the old apartment just in case Peter needed anything. The three of us collapsed onto Peter’s old bed, now clean with fresh sheets. 

His room was still pretty bare, boxes holding most of his belongings, so none of it got lost while he was away, but the gentle green that painted the walls and the boxing paraphernalia that remained made him smile as he pushed his head into his pillow, fluffing it gently. “I forgot how good real beds feel.”

Patrick rolled onto our legs, trapping us to the bed as he used our limbs to stretch out his back. “Tomorrow, we can continue celebrating, but let’s all just enjoy the peace and quiet for tonight.”

“You enjoy the quiet?” I laughed, lifting my leg to dig my foot into the spot between his shoulders where I knew he held most of his tension. “That’s a good idea, Pat, one of your first!”

“Shut up.”

We laughed for a minute or two before letting the room grow quiet. Outside, the noises of the city were muffled against the sound of Peter’s ceiling fan whirling and the bumping of the old furnace kicking on randomly every few minutes. The sounds of home always helped me drift off, but as I curled into the blankets, Peter mumbled, already half asleep, “I like him.”

“Who?” I asked in a mostly teasing tone. “The arcade guy?”

Peter kicked me. “Jake, you idiot.”

Opening my eyes, I looked at his face, searching for the sarcastic quip that was no doubt coming. Peter was sincere, though, his calm face bathed in the moonlight from his window as he smiled. “You do?”

“He reminds me of you when you still lived with mom.” He shook his head, chuckling. “He seems polite too. Didn’t even laugh when my skinny ass threatened to kill him if he hurt you.”

“When did you do that?”

Patrick groaned from the bottom of the bed. “Did you really think we needed to go to the bathroom?”

I sighed. “You two are idiots. Nothing is happening with Jake and me, so your stupid little threat was pointless.”

Peter just smiled a little wider. “I know you better than anyone, sis. Nothing is going on right now, but you like him.”

“He’s conventionally attractive, but he’s-”

“Your type. Stop pretending you haven’t thought about it.”

“I haven’t,” I insisted. It was a lie, of course, but they didn’t need to hear that.

Patrick laughed, shaking the bed. “Was she always so bad at lying? Or has she just gotten worse over the last few months?”

Peter joined in. “Oh, she’s definitely gotten worse.”

“Fuck both of you,” I replied, trying to kick both of them.

The room grew quiet again, and Peter pulled me into his side, hugging me tightly. “I mean it, though; he seems like an okay guy.”

“Thanks, Pete.” I snuggled into his side, glad to finally have him home again. “Now shut the fuck up and go to sleep. Your sick little ass needs it.”

When my idiot brothers finally closed their eyes and started snoring, I flipped my phone open, scrolling to Jake’s contact and sending a simple message.

Goodnight, Jake.

I lay in bed, watching the hands of the clock until my phone lit up. Relief made the tension I’d been holding onto disappear as I melted into the bed, smiling at his equally simple response.

Goodnight, Lena.

[autisticempathydaemon]

Hi! Could I get a redacted matchup if they're still available?

-my current favorite song is optimism (as a radical life choice) by Spanish love songs. I love the lyrics "don't take me out back and shoot me, I know my wires are faulty, I've only ever been a kids, pointing out dead dogs in the road". IDK, the whole song is pretty relatable but those lyrics really stand out visually and emotionally. I'm also tired but still want a chance to be, ya know?

-my ennagram type is 6(w5 I think) my Myers Briggs is INFP(-t?) if it matters

- I LOVE YouTube video essays. I'll watch any, mostly on videogames stuff since I don't really like playing them but I love, like, lore and stuff. I really enjoyed the defunctland fast pass one too. The longer the video the better imo though

- I don't remember my childhood imaginary friend. I used to be super extroverted and had a lot of friends so I didn't really need one? I was also so chill playing by myself so I was okay without friends too. I miss that lol

- best way to fall asleep is fan on full blast, 1 giant comfy blanket, TONS of pillows and a stuffed animal

- I did change my name, picked it off a baby name list since that's what my parents did for the first name, not super special, does come with several easy nicknames though which is cool, but no one uses them :/

- I love any of guys videos, but I really like the failed sleep aid. He may not be super relaxing but at least he's trying!!! He's so funny and chill and I like that

- I don't really like David, Aaron, Damien's(just the x listener ones, I love him w/Huxley) audios. Not super into the Tsundere kinda stuff, I'm a little too insecure for that, I like open feelings and stuff

- I don't really have a book or movie I know all the words to, I don't like rewatching/reading things I already know for whatever reason, I will but it's less enjoyable

- I'm platonically attracted to Gavin and Huxley, they'd both be soo kind and supportive in their own ways, a little hype squad

- I ramble about people when I'm tired. Human interaction stresses me out so bad,, people are hard to understand and there's a whole lot of societal pressure to be a certain way and I just don't get it and I'm so tireddd

- I don't really stop at gas stations, but it'd probably be lemonade and chips of some kind

- my current favorite playlist is my 'cringe' playlist, all the edgy alt/emo/rock songs I was into in middle school, they're not great but they're so fun, they're also my guilty pleasure media. I know people hate them but they make me happy

- other stuff - I do have anxiety so social interactions stress me out but I'm trying to get better, I'm a lot more outgoing when I'm comfy with someone, I'm also super artistic and stuff, I enjoy painting and drawing and do that stuff regularly. I believe sharing your music taste with someone is v. Intimate and I hate putting on my music for others for fear of judgement lol

I'm sorry it's so long,, thanks!

-

Easy-peasy, perfect- I know just the guy. Let me work my magical, match-making powers and tell you why everything about you, especially temperaments and your music taste, make you and Asher Talbot a fantastic match.

There’s so many little, charming things that would make your everyday lives together so cute and fun. Asher’s favorite band is canonically Fall Out Boy, so we know y’all are bopping to the same playlist in the car. He’d be your biggest hype man, hanging your painting all over your apartment. Not to mention, dude could be a walking Halo video essay, you know? Come home after a long day doing adult things, and listen to him ramble about campaigns or whatever happens in those games I have no idea.

On a deeper level, you two work even better still. Not only is Asher wonderfully emotionally intelligent and available behind his goofy, silly demeanor, he is the social butterfly. That’s why he’s the Beta, the soft diplomacy to all David’s alpha-ness. Asher would be the perfect, like, emotional support golden retriever boyfriend for all social occasions: handsome, huggable, attentive to your needs, and a mood-making goofball.

Song:

The more I think/ The more I wish/ That we could lie here for hours/ And just reminisce/ On the good the bad the ugly/ The smiles the laughs the funny/ Or all the things/ We put each other through/ It's for you

This was a fun excuse for me to go through Lexi Moon and I’s emo playlists for a cute, throwback love song, so thank you for that~ I decided on NeverShoutNever because emo has always had random men with ukuleles, it seems, but goshdarnit, they sing fun songs, and I can see Asher knowing all the words to this one. He’s a big sap, and I can see him singing this when you’re feeling down or anxious, doing it silly and over the top just to make you smile.

Runner-Ups:

Lasko is a runner-up for you because two introverts together can be really cute, you know? Let’s be alone together, just the two of us, vibes. However, I like Guy better as a runner up because of how bubbly and social he is. I think he’d help bring you out of your shell and manage social situations, just not quite as tactfully as Asher.

note: you don’t have to apologize for it being long the more information you send the better 💕

Read this post and send me an ask if you’d like a match-up of your own! 💌

[mythicaldemigoddess-of-deltarune]

Crossover Ship-Shockwave x Pearl Plus Extra (2023)

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[Note: do NOT reblog without permission.] 

Credit for Transformers goes to Hasbro & Takara

Credit for Transformers Animated goes to Sam Register & Matt Youngberg

Credit for Steven Universe goes to Rebecca Sugar

Credit for Helluva Boss goes to Vivienne “Vivziepop” Medrano

Credit for Red Vs Blue Series goes to Burnie Burns

Credit for Halo Series goes to Bungie Studios

Credit for Tenchi Muyo Series goes to Masaki Kajishima & Hiroki Hayashi

Credit for Fallout Series goes to Bethesda Softworks

Credit for Mass Effect Series goes to BioWare

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Falere is a Ardat-Yakshi, a Ardat-Yakshi is a rare genetic condition that is in Asari...

one could view a "Ardat-Yakshi" as being kind of like a Succubus. it might be a weird idea, but what if in a Crossover between Fallout x Mass Effect, Ghouls are Immune to the deadly powers of a Ardat-Yakshi.

I mean even there could be some people who are Immune to Succubus's full powers, like how someone who could be part human, earth angel and succubus...

who wouldn't just be in danger from a full succubus or incubus but also humans as well.....which is why it is good to make sure to have gems to protect you when you sleep. I'm still not sure if that would work for everyone, but maybe it is still possible that it can work for others.

it be interesting if Falere and Hancock were ship together, it would be 100% Fanon and not 100% Canon.

my wanting to Crossover ship Shockwave and Pearl, had to do with being inspired by a drawing by Blitzy-Blitzwing, that I saw.

it was of the Hazformers version of Shockwave, and because what he says in the drawing, made me think of Pearl....

and well here we are, a Crossover ship between a Gem and Cybertronian.....which the drawing is in two, one where it's just them and in another drawing I did...

so in other words, I had copy the drawing I already did, and placed it into a separate form, and still worked on the other drawing as well...

it be interesting in a Crossover Timeline, The Gems are creations of Primus & Unicron's Little Sister....be funny if Unicron gets really scared if he hears that his and Primus's Little Sister is mad at them.

and the first Gems that their little sister had created would be White, Yellow, Blue and Pink Diamond.

also in my own weird way, I can't help but view the Autobots on Cybertron in the TFA Universe, as being like the Homeworld Gems...

while the Decepticons from TFA Universe, being like The Crystal Gems.... I mean come on, if Autobots are the ones who try to make something like the  "Project Omega" that is suppose to be a dangerous weapon of mass destruction....

ya can pretty much tell who the true bad guys are, because they made Project Omega to be a dangerous weapon, and it wasn't even made by Decepticons. so Megatron was being truthful about the Autobot Tyranny, sure Cybertron wouldn't be any better with Megatron ruling it, but besides making Project Omega...

Autobots have misused their own Planet's Sonic Canyon's own living metal to make protoforms, and those protoforms don't even get a chance to grow up and are made to age to probably to 16 Ano-Cycle Old.

plus Sari and Wheelie are possibly the only ones that have been born from Cybertronian Asexual Reproduction in their generation, with it being possible that Wheelie could be a One Ano-Cycle Older than Sari.

I still think that Megatron could be Sari's Cybertronian Father, and who was in the lab that Sari's baby self was found in, and since her Human DNA comes from her Human Dad Isaac Sumdac...

her CNA must come from her Cybertronian Parent, and that would 100% be Megatron, plus it couldn't be Optimus or anyone from his team, because they were under water and still in stasis.

I think the reason why the Autobots who live on Cybertron haven't went through the "budding stage" in so long, might have to do with their corrupted leaders who run Cybertron.

one of those corrupted leaders would of course be Ultra Magnus.

 Frag The Autobot Elite Guard! 

The Allspark is the cure for the Autobots being sterile!

a Protoform could have a spark given to them by either The Allspark or Vector Sigma, but for all we know, the TFA Universe's Vector Sigma may have been corrupted to cause sterilization.

Autobots off Cybertron on one of the Autobot Commonwealth Planets, could of still make new sparks for their future children, by not only the budding stage, but also having a piece of their spark placed into the new protoform.

plus all the planets that are part of the Autobot Commonwealth, are most likely the original homes of organic life, but the Autobots took them over and most likely got rid of all the organic life that originally lived there.

so yeah, Autobots from TFA Universe, are likely like how Homeworld Gems use to be, taking over organic worlds and making new gems.... and the Decepticons from TFA Universe, are like The Crystal Gems, but of course slightly different....

yeah I'm weird, viewing The Autobots on Cybertron as "Homeworld Gems" and The Decepticons as "The Crystal Gems" in the TFA Universe.... the Project Omega from TFA could be seen as a Counterpart of The Cluster from Steven Universe.

even both Omega and Cluster were made to be weapons by The Autobots of Cybertron & The Gems From Homeworld...

but that doesn't mean they have to be weapons, because Omega was able to form a type of Father & Son bond with Ratchet, with Ratchet being the "Dad" of course...and Steven formed a friendship with the Cluster.

Tucker from Red Vs Blue, should of kept that armor that originally belong to Maine, the idea of him adopting Ryo-Ohki as his daughter, just seem like a adorable idea.

even if it would be more of a Fanon Crossover Timeline, but it would mean that Tucker doesn't just a daughter, he also gets his own space ship. XD

and when Ryo-Ohki isn't being a space ship, she's on top of Tucker's head or on one of his shoulders, being all cute and adorable.

this would also make my first fan art of Chazwick, I gave him metal shark teeth and a eye-patch as well as a T-Shirt that says “Tuna-Himbo” in that drawing.

also gave him a Robot Earth Angel Girlfriend, who is possibly more of a one-shot type OC and I decided to name her Charleen.

Chazwick is also suppose to be drinking some kind of soda in that drawing as well.......if I had to say what Charleen’s Halo and Wings are made out of it, it would be Ethereal and Technology of The Feminine Energy.

and in theory the known Seven Rings or Circles that is ruled by like Lucifer, Asmodeous, Mammon and others...

use to belong to a type of Feminine Earth Angel Princesses, who if my theory is correct are the true rulers of those Rings that were part of the Earthly Mother’s Earth Kingdom, until those guys took it over when they fell and made half of it a part of what is known as “Hell.”........once again, you can’t leave Masculine Angels alone for a few minutes without them causing some kind of trouble....

I mean it is just a possibility, and it’s okay that not everyone takes that theory seriously....even if it could be possible.

also even if the drawings of this post isn’t really mature, but just in case I am placing “mature audiences only” and “not for kids” for the tags.

also I hope some like the idea of Chazwick with metal shark teeth and a Eye-Patch, some might understand why I gave him metal teeth.

even if Chaz is a bit of a perv, he is kind of a funny Tuna-Himbo.

and it’s okay if it is just me and maybe a few others who view him as a Tuna-Himbo.....once again, the nickname “Tuna-Himbo” make into my head when watching the episode that he appears in, it was of course my first time watching that episode when it came out on the day when I found out it was uploaded.

and of course when watching it, the word Tuna-Himbo came into mind.

and of course that episode is for mature audiences only, like 18+...

anyway I will sign back on here later, to check out some more fan art.

also I want to say that if I put “do not reblog without permission” and you see it, like it being both mentioned at the very top and even in the tags.

please do NOT ignore it, I can understand if it might of not been seen at first, and I can allow the reblog if it was a accident.

but if it was ignored on purpose or if I am being lied to about it not have been seen, just so they wont get in trouble, and I hope NO one does that, because I don’t think I can forgive if that were to happen....

just try to keep a eye out for the words that say “do not reblog without permission.” and anyway, hope some like these drawings that are being post together in this one post.

and it’s okay that not everyone ships Shockwave x Pearl.

my shipping those two was inspired by a Hazformers drawing with Shockwave’s demon form in it, and what he says in the drawing had reminded me of Pearl.

I’m weird and I’m weird shipping Shockwave x Pearl.                                  

[deepwaterdreams]

Dementors wake demons

Here's a snippet from Sebastian's point of view from my fic on ao3 ! Enjoy ;)

Summary : Dementors feed on happy memories until only the most horrible ones remains in someone's mind. Sebastian has to be careful with some of his precious memories, as those creatures tend to make him remember the biggest regrets in his life.

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     Icy cold air burnt his skin. It hurt like thousands of frozen needles sinking in his skin. The air was humid, the floor was wet, the sound of angry waves against the rocks, of the violent rain against the walls, echoed in a way that made his skull pound. Drip drop drip drop from the raindrops, tick tock tick tock the time had stopped. What time was it? It was always so dark in here. How long has he been here? How long before it ends? That would be nice to die. He did not want to kill himself; he did not want anything anyway. But dying was a welcoming thought, relaxing even. He was tired.

     No, no, no sleeping, sleep meant dreams and dreams meant memories, he did not want to draw the dementors. He was taught in Hogwarts that dementors fed on happy memories, until the only things left in someone’s head was the worst memories to remember. It was incomplete teaching. He remembered having those memories, but he could actually remember. It was like trying to remember a dream that was so foggy you just remember you felt a certain way, without remembering how it really felt. You can just vaguely recall it was enjoyable, scary, disturbing, but you can’t remember why. Everything was a blur and out of reach. That was the effect of dementors to him. And he did not want to lose even more than he already had. The fragments he still had, he cherished.

     Anne and her little slap behind his head when he said something stupid, again, to mess with her, again. Ominis and his exaggerated disapproving sighs when Sebastian had an idea, or when he just answered cockily to their teachers. Agnes and her bright smile every time she saw him and that she rushed to him, her long, messy hair framing her face like a halo.

     Sebastian, there you are!

     He could still hear her voice clearly in his head. He remembered he loved hearing his name on her lips. He could not remember how it felt though. How he wished he could hear it again, just once, just to feel it again, just to remember it really. Or just to hear that mischievous little giggle or hers, this one he loved he recalled. He smiled.

     Sebastian jumped and curled up in fear when he heard a rale and when the cold became even more unsufferable. No, no, no, stop remembering, stop thinking, focus. It was cold, icy cold air burnt his skin, like thousands of frozen needles sinking in his skin. The air was humid, the floor was wet, the sound of angry waves against the rocks, of the violent rain against the walls, his head was hurting, his skin was hurting, he was hurting, stop remembering, stop thinking.

     But the memory of Agnes, of her little adorable giggle was stuck in his mind, to vivid. A dementor came to the door of his cage. That thing just opened its mouth, and he collapsed on the floor completely.

     “Noctua references painful and arduous challenges, but also rewards”.

     He saw Agnes coming back towards them, her wand pointed to an old parchment with a lumos to read it. He leaned towards her to be able to read as well. The writing was delicate, noble in a way, but it was difficult to actually read it, the dampness of the place having degraded the paper with time passing.

     “Painful”, Ominis started, “that’s the part I’m wary of”.

     “All I heard was rewards”, he said, half-jokingly. “Keep going”.

     As if he was going to let an old piece of ripped diary getting on his way of finding information that could be crucial to Anne! He would not let anything scare him, he would face anything for his twin.

     The air was heavy, charged with a kind of magic that send a chill to his very bones. Unfortunately, magic was not the only thing that had this effect. Sebastian could still feel disapproval and anger from Ominis. He did not understand why, of all people, his best friend was not on his side. He knew Ominis loved Anne, they had known each other forever, why was he not ready to fight a little to save her? Sebastian eyes went to the Ravenclaw girl leading the way, focused on her task in a rather academic and strategic way. Why was she ready to fight when she just arrived this year? This girl was amazing.

     “Another gate”, she sighed when they came across yet another closed one, near another riddle with an enchanted menacing snake.

     “Seems Slytherin liked to play games …”, Ominis grumbled. 

     “Must run in the family”, Sebastian could not help but tease.

     “Look in a mirror, Sebastian”.

     Agnes watched the symbols and started to spin them. She hesitated for a second and suddenly, the snake pounce on her. She took a step back with a small cry as the snake lied down again on the top of the spinning riddle.

     “What happen?”, Ominis asked.

     “Nothing, I was just startled, that is all”, she answered, holding her own hand.

     Without saying a word, Sebastian took her hand, pointing his own wand towards it to be able to see clearly the damages inflicted by the damn snake. Two little bloody wholes were on the back of her hand. The snake bit her. Agnes took away her hand and made a shushing gesture, making him understand she did not want to tell Ominis. Sebastian nodded and watched as she tried to solve the riddle again, worry all over his face. A loud click was heard, and the gate finally opened.

     “That sounded promising”, Ominis said, relieve evident in his tone.

     “Another dial solved”, Agnes proudly stated.

     “Impressive. Nice work”.

     She had a large smile on her face. She really was beautiful when she smiled like that, but she did not need to be that happy about Ominis’s compliment. She knew she was brilliant, did she not? Sebastian saw her bend and take another page of the diary. She seemed to read it quickly, before turning to face his best friend.

     “Ominis”, she exclaimed. “Your aunt wanted to change your family’s traditions”. 

     “Yes, that’s the reason why I loved her”.

     She opened another door, that one seemed different from the others though, Sebastian could feel they were about to find something, but he could not help but have an eerie feeling about this.

     “Excellent work”, he said. “We’re another step closer to the scriptorium”.

     Whatever that feeling was, he did not need to lose focus on why he came here: they came for Anne. He had no choice. But he took a closer look then.

     “I spotted something ahead. Looks troubling”, he said.

     “This whole place is troubling”, Ominis answered. “But, for my aunt, I cannot stop now”.

     On the other side of the corridor, something was gleaming on the floor, like ember in a hearth. They still continued to walk towards it, but a loud noise was heard, and when he turned around, Sebastian felt his heart stopped and his blood froze.

     “The gate! I think we’re locked in. Again”, he said.

     “Then Salazar Slytherin is not yet finished with us”, Ominis concluded.

     Agnes approached the source of the gleaming light, and he went with her. In the wall, Sebastian could see a black door with tortured faces engraved. They seemed in pain, in so much pain. He could not turn his eyes away though, as if they called to him, desperately. He felt like he could hear their screams, in the distance, but coming closer and closer, little by little, like an echo. Was he really just imagining?

     “Ominis”, Agnes said, unsure. “A skeleton. And Noctua’s last journal entry”.

     Sebastian snaped back to reality and looked at the girl on his right. She was leaning over a skeleton and was reading the page. On the ground, he finally was able to read what was engraved in the ground and that was gleaming, almost burning. One word, clear, simple: Crucio. Now he knew why those faces seemed to endure so much suffering.

     “She mentions being trapped here, blocked by an Unforgivable Curse”, Agnes explained.

     “This … is where she died. This is where we’ll die. I shouldn’t have listened to either of you!”. Panic was obvious in his voice now; it was unusual to see his friend lose his composure.

     “Ominis, I’m truly sorry about your aunt”, Sebastian started. “But I know what to do. It’s going to be difficult”.

     Agnes carefully folded the page of the journal and put it in one of her robe pockets, with the other ones. She looked at Ominis, worried, but turned back to him. He could see she was afraid, but they had to keep going.

     “What should we do then?”, she asked in an almost whispering tone.

     “Tortured face on the door and Crucio is etched into the stone. My guess is if we cast the Cruciatus Curse, the door will open”, he explained. “That’s why Noctua died. She had no one to cast the curse on. Ominis has the most experience with this. He should cast it”.

     He watched her as she opened her eyes wide at his suggestion. He knew what it sounded like. But it was not as if they truly had the choice, the alternative was death. He’d rather be in pain than dead; the choice was easy enough. However, when he looked at his friend, on the other side of the corridor, he was not sure the choice was simple enough for everyone. And it was not as if Ominis was not shouting at him time and time again these days … He turned back to Agnes, who looked completely lost. It was strange to see her like this, she always seemed to know what to do, she always seemed to be able to face anything. He sighed.

     “You seem to be in Ominis’s favour”, he admitted. “Will you ask him about this?”

     “He does seem a bit cross with you …”, she agreed. “I’ll speak with him”.

     “Good, work your “magic”, so to speak”.

     She smiled a little. Good, he was still capable of making her smile with his jokes, even in a moment like this. As long as it gave her the strength to go on … She inhaled sharply and went to his best friend, pacing around in a small circle. She talked to him quietly, trying to be comforting, her voice full of her characteristic empathy. From where he stood, he could only hear fragments of their discussion, especially from Ominis, furious, scared, resigned.

     “I won’t do it”, Ominis insisted. “The Cruciatus Curse is pure torture, I would know”.

     Did Ominis really think he would force him to do this if it was not a life-or-death situation? What kind of friend would he be then? And it was not as if he would ask Ominis to endure it, he would never ask that. Besides, the only time Ominis casted it, he did not have a choice! How many times did he tell his friend that already? Yet again, they did not have a choice.   

     “Unforgivable Curses won’t work unless you really mean them’, Ominis said to answered something Agnes said, echoing what Sebastian was thinking. “I had to want to cause pain and for that I shall never forgive myself”.

     Agnes’s posture changed, Sebastian saw her shoulders going down a bit, before locking eyes with him. 

     “That spell is the reason why I have no family left. You and Sebastian will need to sort out another solution”, Ominis concluded. “If you cast Crucio, you will regret it forever”. 

     Agnes came back to him piteously. He could see her thoughts racing in her mind, trying to find another solution, when he knew there was none. How could Ominis be so blinkered and selfish? They were all going to die if nobody casted the bloody spell.

     “What do we do now?”, she asked as if he had all the answers. He would be lying if he said her did not enjoyed this, to see her counting on him that much, even though it was not the time for this. “Ominis is not going to cast the Cruciatus Curse again”.

     “Ridiculous”, he grumbled. “As if dying in here is a better option than casting a damn spell”.

     There was not an alternative. Ominis told him, again and again that there was always the choice when he talked about what he had to live as a child. He disagreed. He was not questioning the trauma caused by this experience, but there were things you simply could not choose. You could choose to be a coward and give up though. And Sebastian knew when not to stop.

     “It’s up to us”, he sighed. “I can teach you Crucio or I can cast it on you”.

     “Wait … you didn’t say you knew how to cast Crucio”.

     Again, he saw fear in her eyes. He did not like when she looked at him this way, he felt as if he was the bad guy, the villain of the story, when he was trying to save them all.

     “Because I’m not sure I do”, he tried to be honest, and maybe she would stop looking at him this way if he was. “Ominis knows that, yet he’s left us no choice. I don’t yearn to follow in Noctua Gaunt’s footsteps. I think I can cast it, if I have to”.

     Agnes looked down for a moment. He could have sworn she was shaking. She then stared at the door with the tortured faces. Could she hear them the way he did? She closed her eyes and put her hands on her face. He almost thought she was crying and was about to ask if she was alright when she just inhaled sharply again and locked her eyes back on him. She seemed determined.

     “I don’t want to learn the curse, but I can handle the pain. It’s fine. Cast it on me”.

     Sebastian blinked several times in disbelieve. He was not prepared to that. First, he thought Ominis would cast it on him. Then he thought Agnes would. He said he thought he could cast it if he had to, but not on her!

     “Are you sure?”, he asked weakly.

     Change your mind, he shouted in his mind. Ominis’s word echoed in his head, as if they had a new meaning now, or as if they finally had one entirely. Unforgivable Curses won’t work unless you really mean them. I had to want to cause pain and for that I shall never forgive myself. How would he be able o forgive himself after that?

     “I am. Cast it”, she said, and it felt like torture already.

     “Oh, Merlin”, he heard Ominis swear.

     Unforgivable Curses won’t work unless you really mean them. He had to mean to hurt her, to make her suffer. Torture her. How would he look in a mirror and not hate himself then? How would he not think about it every time he laid eyes on her, how would he be able to forget?

     “Fine. I shan’t forget this”, his words were filled with double meaning: gratitude towards her because he was sure she wanted to protect him, hatred toward himself for what he was about to do. “Ready?”

     She nodded and they both took steps back. He felt like he was looking at his reflection looking at her. He saw fear, uncertainty, apprehension of the pain that would soon strike her. Why in hell did he see trust? Why would she look at him like that? He had to hate her, he had to focus on what was truly important. Nothing was more important than his twin sister Anne. Agnes did not have the right to come in his life, during fifth year and take that much importance in his life, in his heart. She did not have the right to distract him from his mission to find a cure, to save Anne. Who was she, after all, to occupy all his thoughts? Again, in his mind, an echo: if you cast Crucio, you will regret it forever.

     “Crucio!”

     A red lightning bolt came out of his wand and stroke directly the poor Agnes. He saw her face contorted, heard her groaned, but it was extremely far from the tormented expressions engraved on the door. He had to mean it, he had to really mean it. He really meant it.

     “Crucio!”

     Another bolt stroke Agnes and she fell on her knees. It was more difficult than expected to stand still, not to rush to her to help, to comfort her, to tell her it would be over soon. The door stayed closed, and pain was already leaving the face of the girl in front of him. Harder.

     “CRUCIO!”

     A harrowing scream came out of her. He was doing this to her. He had to mean it. She fell on her side, writhing in pain. He had to mean it a little bit longer. She curled up completely, shouting at the top of her voice, tears on her cheeks. A red light illuminated the tortured-face door for a brief moment and, finally, it opened. He stopped the curse. Agnes stopped screaming, but she did not move.

     “You casted it threetimes, are you out of your mind?”, Ominis shouted.

     “I had to!”, he defended himself.

     “Try telling yourself that. I never could”.

     If you cast Crucio, you will regret it forever. Ominis was right after all. There is always a choice, and a choice he made. Agnes was barely conscious on the ground. What had he done?

     He fell back from his contortioned body on the ground of his cell and curled up. The dementor, full and content, finally left him alone. He felt nothing else than the strong vertigo and the menacing dark that always lingered after a dementor’s visit. But he could not think of something else than Agnes’s scream of pain. He remembered he loved her laughter, her giggles, he remembered thinking that. Why could he not remember the sound of it then, but only the sound of her screams when he tortured her, again and again?

[zamjd]

HI HI!! I’ve been reading the ask you sent me the other day and I want to keep it in my inbox forever SO IM REPLYING VIA ASK INSTEAD AAA. It was such a pleasant surprise to see it! And the fact that you reread it multiple times?? 🥺🤧💕 I’m glad it’s had such an impact on you!!

BY ALL MEANS!! Take your time on the drawings, I know life can get busy and I hope you prioritize your self care basics first and foremost above all else!!

Thank you for the good wishes as well. I’ve been sick this past week but your message uplifted my spirit and I appreciate that! I hope YOU are having a greater time this year and that even when you’re feeling down that you know you are cared for. Remember that you always have people you can turn to!

Side note. I did not forget abt the moon halo! I just currently have 12k photos in my gallery atm ☠️ ALSO ALSO. I’ve a question. What are your favorite DCA fanfic tropes? Or what’re your favorite themes that you like in writing?? Asking for a friend >:3

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA OMG WAAAAAAT

I AM MELTING IN JOY, CURRENTLY SMILING LIKE AN IDIOT WHILE TYPING THIS- AND YOU PLAN TO KEEP IT FOREEVER AAAAAAAAA AWSDAWFSA NO THAT'S SO MUCH 😭💕💕

YOU WRITE SO WELL!!! AND THE STORY IS SO SO SO SO!!! (sorry for all the caps I'm not normal ^^)

I am going to be absolutely honest- I'm not that knowledgeable about tropes or themes nor take time to acknowledge them (and I have only read a little few DCA fanfics), I'd like to apologize ;-; not biased about them, It really depends on the way the writer writes! Or how interesting the idea is (for example there was one goose au where dear reader is a goose- or that one au where reader is a staffbot) <- but ideas that are already used but re-introduced in a new way is also cool(an example would be head-in-the-clouds royal jesters au where it took the medieval au but with a jester twist!(<- haven't read it yet but planning to DWASFG ;-;))!

Again thank you!! ♥

[girl-next-door-writes]

Broken Hearts

Characters: George Weasley x reader

Summary: George Weasley has been in love with you for four years, not that he could tell you that because he is fairly sure you’re in love with Charlie. Sometimes the world forces truths to be told for fear of losing them forever, and some truths should have been spoken sooner.

Word Count: 2333 words

A/N: The wonderful @imaginemyfavoritefics was one of my reblog draw winners and as their prize requested some fluffy George Weasley, so here you are. I am so sorry it has taken me so long, but I hope you enjoy.

At the tender age of sixteen, George Weasley fell in love. Totally, completely, heart and soul in love. Not that he knew what this feeling was when it first hit him, no, that would take him a while to figure out, although he was never certain that what he felt that first time he saw you was love, because surely love is deep and that needs more than simply seeing you, right? Although, and this theory came much later from his little sister, maybe kindred spirits recognize each other immediately and that is where the deeper connection lay.

It was a bright day despite the slight chill in the air, the beginning of the Easter holidays looked promising with talk of a little quidditch as those gathered at The Burrow chatted over breakfast. The sound of the front door opening and a familiar voice calling ‘hello’, had Molly jumping to her feet, hands clapping as she rushed to greet her second eldest.

“Charlie! I wasn’t expecting you until- oh my goodness! Hello dear, it is so lovely to finally meet you!”

His mother’s words piqued George’s interest and he exchanged a look with Fred before they both snuck to take a look. That’s when it happened, when George’s life went from a world before seeing you to a world in which he was painfully aware of your existence.

As you pulled back from his mother’s tight hug, a shaft of sunlight from the window fell upon your hair, creating a halo effect. He could have sworn his heart stopped entirely for a moment when you smiled, your face lighting up with such joy that he felt a pang of jealousy at not being the reason for it. George wanted you to smile at him like that, though he had no idea why, and then his mother had turned, guiding you towards the kitchen, towards him.

“Fred, George, why are you two always under my feet?” Molly asked in exasperation, causing you to giggle. Your eyes met George’s and he felt his cheeks heat in the warmth of your attention. He was so flustered that he didn’t even manage to say hello before you were ushered past him and seated at the kitchen table.

“Hope you two have been keeping out of trouble.” Charlie grinned at his younger brothers, and suddenly George realised something bloody obvious; you were here with Charlie.

Over the next few years, you were a frequent visitor to The Burrow, Charlie’s plus one to many events, although it was never entirely clear to people what that really meant. You had an apprenticeship working closely with the older Weasley, a great honor most people would kill for, and the two of you were clearly close. Molly already had the pair of you married off in her head, although Arthur felt the relationship was more like siblings, no romance.

George found himself looking forward to the holidays more and more, each one giving him the chance to spend some time with you. When you had given him your address and told him to write, he could have burst with excitement. Of course, you then extended the same offer to Fred which took the shine off it a little, but you had given it him first, and that was what he clung to.

It was a cold November evening at the end of Half Term that George’s fragile hopes were well and truly crushed. He had found himself sitting with you on a blanket as you watched the firework display, he and Fred had put together. A certain amount of fire whiskey had been consumed, which is possibly why he was able to speak in full sentences despite your arm touching his.

“You Weasley boys are so clever.” You hummed, eyes watching the bursts of colour in the sky above.

“Maybe you should tell some of my professors that.” He joked, stealing a glance at you as he preened at your compliment.

“Ah, don’t pay any attention to them. You and Fred will be just fine out in the big bad world. So, Fred and Angelina? He seems to be very happy, but what about you? When are we gonna hear about you asking someone out?”

George froze up a little at that. How could he possibly say that there was only one person he wanted in that way, and that you were that person, but he didn’t have to say anything as you continued on.

“You know, you shouldn’t wait for too long. That’s how you get stuck in this weird limbo where you end up with the object of your affection calling you ‘mate’ and not seeing you as a romantic option in the slightest.” Your eyes had now fallen on Charlie who was laughing and joking with Bill. As if sensing your gaze, he looked over and waved.

“Get over here, mate! You’ve gotta hear this!” Charlie called and you nodded, slowly getting to your feet and giving George a soft, sad smile.

“Whoever they are, they will be damned lucky to have you, just remember that.”

As he watched you walk over to Charlie, watched his big brother lazily wrap an arm around your shoulder and pull you against his side, George felt his heart completely shatter. Here he was pining for someone who was clearly in love with his big brother, life just was not fair.

Tugging at the bandage around his head once more, George put on a brave smile to hide just how self-conscious he felt. He busied himself with helping put up the marquee, following orders issued by his mother, avoiding actually socializing with people. He was happy for Bill, and they definitely needed a party to focus on in these dark times, but he wasn’t ready for the sympathetic looks he would be getting all day, especially not from you.

“There you are Georgie-boy.” Charlie grinned as he wandered over and patted his brother on the shoulder. “Mum told me to come give you a hand with glasses or something. Not sure what that woman is thinking giving you and me this job, may as well ask Ron while she’s at it.”

“Yeah.” George smiled, not that it quite reached his eyes. “We’d best not break too many of them.”

“You know who would be great at this?”

“Charlie Weasley, I can’t believe you have been volunteering my services!” Your voice cut through the air, the underlying amusement in your tone not lost on your best friend. As you came into sight, George felt his heart pick up speed, his tongue seeming to expand in his mouth while also drying out. You looked gorgeous, and he didn’t have the words to do you justice.

“I was just talking about you, mate! Come on, give us a hand.”

“Or maybe you could show me and George how it’s done, since you are ‘so good’ at all this.” You teased, moving to stand in front of George. Your hands came up and he swallowed thickly as your fingers adjusted his tie. “There you go. So handsome. Hey, Charlie, why can’t you look as good in a suit as you little brother?” You smirked, barely dodging Charlie’s attempt to swat your arm.

“I knew I should have brought Madeline to this.”

“You do realise I would have been attending this wedding anyway, right? Your mum would have sent me my own invite, or I could have been George’s plus one.”

“So, I’m basically saving my little brother from having to spend the entire day with you, I deserve something for that sacrifice.”

“I’ll make you a badge or something.”

“Who’s Madeline?” George finally managed to speak, he got out two whole words without his voice cracking.

“Oh, she’s the unfortunate soul who has agreed to date your brother. I mean, someone had to take that bullet.” You shrugged, a teasing smile on your face and not a hint of sadness or jealousy.

“Right, that’s it, no more plus one’s for you.” Charlie playfully scowled, heading into the tent to get to the actual task of sorting out the glass wear.

“I’ll just be George’s plus one then,” you called after him as you headed inside too, “at least until he gets himself fixed up, then I’ll just get your mum to adopt me.”

Shoving his hands in his pockets, George trailed after you, smiling to himself at the thought of you being his plus one indefinitely.

The world had got so dark, everything felt heavy, and any joy had been sucked from life. George stood in the kitchen of the safehouse, staring into his mug, trying not to think about what the morning would bring. Hogwarts had always been a safe place for him, for so many people, and knowing they were on the precipice of the most important battle was terrifying. Not that he could admit that, he had to be brave, right? He couldn’t show weakness.

“Sorry we’re late.” He heard Charlie’s voice and his head shot up, even as Bill was quietly reassuring him that it was okay, he was here now.

“I’ll go put the kettle on, can’t see anyone getting much sleep tonight.” You said before walking into the kitchen, a warm smile lighting up your face as you saw George. “Hey there, handsome. You want a brew or you good?”

“I could do with a top up, this one’s a bit cold.” He admitted, feeling guilty at how happy your presence made him. He should have been praying you weren’t coming, that you wouldn’t be put in danger, but right now he realised he needed to see you, needed a reminder of what it was they were all fighting for.

“How you holding up?” You asked softly, not intending for your conversation to be overheard.

“I’m okay.”

“Liar.” You smirked, and George found himself chuckling.

“I’m shitting myself. You?”

“Yeah, pretty much trying not to think about it because I think it scares the crap outta me. We’ll be okay though. We’ve got each others backs, and we can do this.” Your hand ran over his bicep, and he felt his breath stutter.

“You’re bloody brilliant, you know that.”

“Well, my tea making skills are legendary.” You joked.

“No. I mean it. I need you to know that I think you’re amazing. You’re so smart and brave and funny and gorgeous. You make everything feel better, just by being there. I should have told you years ago, should have been telling you every time I saw you, but there’s a very real possibility that I’m not gonna get the chance after tomorrow, so, I need you to know.”

You opened your mouth to say something, but Charlie and Bill bustled into the room and whatever your response would have been was lost in the chatter. More and more people crowded into the kitchen and even though George never had a chance to steal a moment away with you, he was happy knowing he had finally told you how he felt.

Dust from all the rubble hung in the air, making it thick and clawing with each breath. George had made his way to the Great Hall, relieved to see so many of his friends and family still standing. He pulled Fred into a hug, silently thanking every god he could think of that they had made it through. His relief was short lived though as his eyes scanned the assembled crowd and he failed to find you.

Breaking away from his brother, he frantically began searching, not wanting to look at the fallen, laid out on one side of the hall, he did not want to see you in that number. Charlie stumbled into the room, a lazy half smile on his lips as he wiped away some blood from his face. Once his mother had finally released him from her embrace, George had asked where you were, and Charlie had to admit he didn’t know, he’d lost track of you somewhere near the astronomy tower.

George’s heart was beating so loud that it was all he could hear, throbbing in his ear as he tried his best to keep calm. His hands shook as a myriad of emotions crossed his face, he was about to enlist Fred’s help to go search for you when he saw Charlie’s face light up. Turning to follow his brothers gaze, he saw you helping some Hogwarts pupils into the room, clearly in need of a little medical attention.

You looked up and smiled as soon as you saw Charlie, your eyes then searching for his little brother. Once your eyes locked with George’s, you began to walk towards him, your steps getting quicker until they were a full on run. Heading straight past Charlie, you threw your arms around George and held him so tight he thought he might pass out.

“Hey, love, you’re gonna have to let go a little so I can breathe.” He joked softly, smiling as you pulled back a little and looked up at him.

“It’s not my fault, I love you. You are the one who started it.”

George felt his knees give way. Had you just said that you love him? His hands came up to cup your face, his eyes searching yours for any indication that he had misheard. When he found none, he closed the gap between the two of you and kissed you like his life depended on it.

“Finally!” Fred declared, “All it took was a war and possible imminent death.”

“He got there eventually.” Charlie smirked, placing his arm around Fred’s shoulder and pulling him away.

“Four years! I’ve had four years of him going on and on and on…”

Fred’s grumblings went on unheeded by the two of you. George was just so happy that his broken heart was now whole, and he had every intention on making sure you would be his plus one for the rest of his life.

[bardicfrustration]

Your Ink Is Mine

Summary: Eddie asks you to design his next tattoo.

Word Count: ~2k (1.9 but lemme have it yeah?)

He’s watching you again.

You can tell because the pencil scratches of him writing campaign notes have stopped longer than it usually takes him to think of his next step. 

You’re both in your room, just working on your own thing in the soft ambiance of whatever vinyl Eddie deemed worthy. 

You had set up some of your books and knick knacks as an impromptu still life. He said he wanted to flesh out the next few battles the club would be fighting. 

But at some point a while ago he stopped writing and you can feel his gaze burning into the back of your neck.

It’s fine. It’s not awkward at all for your best friend who you also have a secret crush on to watch you draw. The pressure is not at all suddenly overwhelming and you don’t smudge your line the wrong way and curse just a little too loud. 

Except you do, and Eddie asks so sweetly, “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing.” You sigh. “Drawing with ink is just a pain.” You try to blot out the ink with a paper towel you have for this reason, but it’s too late. It’s already ruined. You sigh and put your pen down.

You turn in your chair to look back at him. He’s sitting on the floor with his back against the end of your bed, papers and books spread around him in a messy semi circle. You admire how hard he works on the campaign. Just so that the club has fun.

“I wanted to ask you something, actually.” He says, picking at the rug under him.

He’s acting weirdly nervous. You almost get your hopes up. Maybe today will be the day he bursts out with his sudden declaration of love for you, so you don’t have to. You nod, cautiously pushing down the butterflies trying to flutter in your chest. 

“I, uh. Would you-” He clears his throat. “Could I commission you?” 

You’re taken slightly aback. “For what?” 

“A tattoo?”

A tattoo.

You’ve never drawn a tattoo. It wouldn’t be much different than the ink drawings you were just working on. Just a drawing in ink.

Just something permanent. On his body. Forever. 

You want to melt and laugh and cry. 

You can’t really look him in those dark chocolate eyes, so you stare at his hands. “Uh. Of what?” 

“Huh?” Eddie looks up.

“Like, what am I drawing?”

He holds up a finger while flipping through the composition notebook he keeps all his important notes in (one time you called it his journal and he got all defensive) before landing on a page. You recognize the page. 

“Something like this, if you can?” He stands up and holds out the pages to you, even though you remember the doodles like you drew them yesterday. 

Well, no. Not like that. You can’t remember what you drew yesterday unless you go back into your sketchbook. But you can remember these doodles like they were etched behind your eyelids. 

The two of you were sitting and passing notes in his journal (sorry, notebook) while whichever teacher you had was droning on. Eventually the notes turned into doodles you made of each other. Yours was a little cartoon of Eddie with bat wings and razor teeth. His was of you with an angel’s halo and a feathered wings. 

Of course, right now, Eddie wasn’t pointing to your old bat drawing. He was pointing to his drawing. Of you.

“Me?” You had to clarify that your eyes were seeing right.

“Yeah.” He scratches the back of his neck and flicks his eyes around the room. Looking for something, maybe his marbles, you don’t know. “I just- I really liked yours. I think it’s cute. I wanted to do you justice before I make it permanent, you know?” 

You. He wanted to do you justice. Sometimes this guy drove you crazy. 

And sometimes you think he’s just too good to be true. 

You take a deep breath and nod as you reach out for the notebook. 

“You’ll do it?” He asks as if you aren’t already opening your sketchbook to sketch out ideas. 

“Yeah. Of course. Give me a few days?”

He nods eagerly. You copy down as much detail from the notebook drawing as you can before giving it back to him. The sun was setting and the room was bathed in blue shadows and orange highlights.

Both of you take a much needed break to eat dinner. You order a pizza and eat it off the counter while trying to out burp each other with sips of soda. No matter how much Eddie could rattle your brain with his pretty hands and prettier eyes, he was your best friend first.

When you show up to his trailer a few days later with his finished commission you feel like your soul is going to slither out of your skin.

He’s not going to like it.

You know that if he doesn’t like it he will tell you. He won’t lie. He certainly won’t spend the money to get a bad tattoo. He’s told you horror stories about some of the worst he’s seen.

He’s going to laugh at you and tell you it was all a joke and you fell for-

He opens the door looking like he just woke up, still in a pair of sleep pants and a cropped band shirt. He looks so comfy and enticing. Almost like your bed after a long day you just want to snuggle into him and never let go. 

He lets out a huge yawn and rubs at his eyes, “You’re here early for movie night.”

You open your mouth but nothing can come out. You hand him the paper, slightly bent on the edge where you put it in your sketchbook, but otherwise pristine. 

He takes it gingerly as if he’s reading from God’s own bible. 

“Do…do you like it?”

He looks up with wide eyes, shocked you could even ask, “I love it. It’s perfect.” 

He insists on bringing you along to get the tattoo.

“You could get one too.” He nudges you while you wander around the parlor and he’s sitting in the chair. 

“No, I'm a huge baby about needles.” You smile awkwardly.

“What? You were so brave in Bio when we had to dissect that frog!” 

“That was a dead frog, Eddie. Not a needle punching into my living skin.” You gesture the motion of the needle.

“See, that just makes it even more metal, sweetheart.” He’s smiling like an idiot and you wish you were worthy of it.

The tattoo is small, only a few inches tall on the side of his arm. You wince when he winces at the pain, but he tells you, “It’s just like a cat scratch,” as you hop back in his van and head home. 

You don’t tell him when you snatch the number for the tattoo parlor.

A week later and his tat mostly healed. The lines are crisp and he’s been habitually rubbing lotion and sunscreen on it. You know from experience he took care of his tattoos but it still felt… intimate knowing that was your art on his skin.

He shows it off to his club and proudly tells them how you designed it just for him. You tell him to knock it off while blushing.

He grins and wears short sleeves as often as he can. He says, “It’s a crime for the world to be forbidden a peek at real art.” You push him off the bed for that one.

Another week goes by. You have been giving extremely lame excuses for the week as to why you keep wearing sweaters at his trailer even though it’s been boiling hot.

When he offers per usual to use his trailer to watch a shitty movie and make popcorn on the weekend, you ask if you can watch it at your house instead. He agrees easily. You lead him up to your room under the guise of grabbing blankets and pillows for the couch.

“Hey, I got a surprise.” You tell him as soon as he walks through your bedroom door.

His eyes light up. “Is it a puppy? Is it dice? Is it a first edition copy of The Two Towers? Is it-” He’s inching closer to you with glee.

You interrupt him with a hush while you shed your jacket. He watches patiently. 

Instead of facing him head on, you line up yourself up next to him so your arm is touching his where his new tattoo rests. So that your matching tattoos are standing next to each other, just like the two of you are. 

He looks down confused until he sees your previously unmarked skin, now inked just like his. 

He looks up at you with glassy eyes. “You-?”

“I went back about a week ago. It was just a cat scratch, like you said.” You look down, embarrassed to keep looking him in the eye. He’s looking at you like you just told him what Christmas was for the first time.

You watch his feet step in front of yours. He uses a gentle touch to your chin to pick your head up. He looks so serious you’re almost afraid.

“You are.... the

best

person. I have ever known.” He looks down at your lips, leaning down but stopping a hair’s breadth away, giving you the choice. 

You take it.

You push your lips against his and hope all the love you’ve been holding inside gushes in. 

He breathes in while leaning into the kiss and letting his hand move to softly cup your jaw. His lips are plush and slightly chapped and perfect. He tilts his head just enough to kiss you deeper and your head wants to be anxious about if you’re kissing him well but it just feels too good to care. Your brain is turning into a puddle as his palm moves to hold the side of your face and his fingers graze your hairline.

Your hands raise cautiously but he quickly places one with his free hand onto his side. You’re pulling him impossibly closer by his vest while reaching up to his neck to dig your fingers in his hair.

He groans and you pull and he groans harder.

It should be impossible how soft his hair is when you know he uses a 3 in 1 shampoo. You still relish in his hair fitting between your fingers as you grasp and pull. He moans into your mouth and you can feel the vibrations in your teeth.

He pulls you in by the neck and you would let him carry your head away into the sunset to do whatever he pleased if you got to stay in this headspace forever.

Unfortunately you have to pull away to breathe. You’re panting against his lips and his eyes find yours glossy and searching. He smiles that breathtaking smile and you can’t help but smile back.

“Can I take you on a real date?” He whispers in fear of breaking the air around you.

“Yes please.” You pull him in for another kiss and forget about whatever movie you were planning to watch.

At the next club meeting, you show off your new tattoo. Some groan, some clap, but most importantly is Eddie, who makes sure to line up your tattoos together. Standing together just as you always have. Just as you always will.

[marklilies]

# nct dream as your deskie

pairings: nct dream x gn!reader || wc: 3.5k || warnings: light swearing, mentions of food, dying (humour) and physical hurt (humour)

── MARK :

“what’s that?” you peer over mark’s shoulder.

mark bends down lower over his notebook to conceal his writing from your sharp eyes. “nothing, just some ideas for songs.”

you gasp. “you’re writing new song lyrics?!” he nods. “lemme see.”

“no!” mark snatches the notebook away from your grasp and looks at you, affronted. you draw back, a little stunned by his reaction. usually, mark lets you see all of his lyric scribbles. it’s part of your relationship as seat partners.

your brows crease and you sit back down in your seat, staring at the open textbook in front of you. your geography teacher is going on and on about tectonic plates and whatnot, but you can’t be bothered to listen. why won’t mark let you see his lyrics this time? you glare at the words on the pages, trying to figure out reasons why he wouldn’t let you see them. you just know this is going to bother you for the rest of the day.

mark sees you pouting and feels terrible about the way he snapped. it’s not that he has anything against you, it’s just… these lyrics are really personal. too personal. he writes you a note and slides it towards you, meeting your eyes apologetically for just a second before turning back to his notebook.

you read what he’s written.

“sorry y/n, i just can’t let you see my lyrics yet. they’re… about somebody.”

you chuckle and shake your head, doubt dissipating by the second. turning back to mark, you ask, “can i know who it’s about?”

mark hesitates. he doesn’t want to keep too much information from you, so he says, “someone in our class.”

this piques your interest, and you wiggle your eyebrows at him. “oooh, who is it? is it mina? you had the hots for her last year, didn’t you? or is it donghyuck, hmm? tell me tell me tell mee-”

mark smacks his hand over your mouth because you’ve begun talking a little too loud and the people around you have started staring. you freeze and remain like that for the next minute as mark looks around warily, trying to make sure no one else has heard you, especially not the teacher.

when he takes his hand away, he’s already a blushing mess. you cock your head, expectant, but mark puts his hands on his neck, evidently embarrassed, so you’re about to tell him it’s fine when he speaks up.

“i-it’s about the person sitting next to me…”

more under the cut!

── RENJUN :

renjun hands his sketchbook over to you to inspect. inside, the pages are full of beautiful drawings of all your classmates - hyunjin as a centaur, lia as a water sprite, karina as a doe, sunwoo as a vampire… the list goes on.

you hold the pages reverently in your hands, flipping through the book like it’s the only thing that can save the world.

then the teacher walks in, and all of a sudden it’s gone from your hands. renjun’s taken it back to occupy himself during class. “i wasn’t done with it,” you huff, propping your head up on your elbows as you watch him begin a drawing on a fresh page.

after lasting about three minutes with your intense gaze on him, renjun puts his pencil down and roughly pushes your face away from him to face the front of the classroom. “pay attention to the teacher.”

“speak for yourself, jun.” your voice comes out muffled because of his palm against your mouth. you grab onto his wrist and bring it down.

“the difference between us is that you actually have to pay attention during class or you’ll fail your exams. i, on the other hand, can pass them just fine on my own.”

you clutch your chest, pretending to be offended, but renjun gives you a smirk and his eyes are telling you to prove him wrong, so you turn back to the teacher in defeat.

“y’know,” you smack your lips and draw out your syllables, “if you tutored me, i wouldn’t have to-”

you catch sight of your features under a ring of gold, the halo held up by two devil horns sticking out the top of your head. “is that me?!”

“it’s not done.” renjun pushes his hair out of his eyes as he says this. “but yeah.”

“why do i have both an angel’s halo and devil horns? i mean, i understand the halo part, but the horns?” you tilt your head in confusion. “i’m a complete angel.”

renjun looks at you like you’ve gone bananas, then presses his lips into a straight line, trying to suppress the laughter that’s fighting to burst forth. “a-angel?” little giggles and short breaths leak through the dam, and you slug his arm.

“shut up. i’m not talking to you anymore.”

------------ time skip ------------

when you get back from lunch, you see that there’s a little note sticking out of your pencil case, folded neatly. you open it up, and the note is the drawing of you as an angelic devil. at the bottom, in small, messy script, renjun has written a few sentences.

“here’s your stupid portrait, dumbass. you’re a devil dressed as an angel. happy early birthday, idiot.

p.s. if you tell me to add your name onto my blank space, i will knock you out.”

── JENO :

you spread your various sticks of gum out under the table, in the shape of a fan. jeno does the same next to you. the two of you are in your seats, torsos twisted to face each other.

“i’ll give you strawberry for grape.”

“okay. i am so giving this to jaemin.”

you exchange gum flavours, you quietly celebrating at the acquisition of grape-flavoured gum, the one you’ve been addicted to for the past two days.

your math teacher drones on about vectors, and his words go in one ear and out the other. none of you are paying attention to him, because he’s the worst teacher ever and doesn’t actually help with anything, much less inspire you to like the subject.

“play a game with me.” jeno nudges you, desperate for mental stimulation. you nod, almost bored to tears by the lesson material.

“loser pays for the other’s karaoke.”

“deal.”

you decide to play apple on a stick. besides, jeno’s phone battery is already on the verge of going dead, so there’s no hope of playing pubg. “apple on a stick, making me sick, making my heart go 2-4-6…”

as you slap each other’s hands and clap as softly as possible to avoid drawing unwanted attention from the teacher, the rhythm gets faster and faster, until your hands are just a blur and you can feel the adrenaline rushing through your veins, trying to keep your mind completely focused on the game.

just as you feel you’re losing your rhythm, jeno breaks the pattern, accidentally snapping his fingers when he’s supposed to clap your hands. you squeal in excitement at the moment he loses, and he collapses onto his desk, head in his hands, but a smile peeks out from behind his palms.

“and that was it for the practice round. now for the real-” jeno laughs as you smack his shoulder indignantly.

“i won! i won fair and square, so now you have to pay for my karaoke.”

“you don’t even have anyone to go to karaoke with though?” this earns him another good punch in the side.

“hey! i have friends!” you stick your tongue out at jeno and he grins at your childish antics. “i can just invite yangyang or something.”

jeno’s face falls just slightly at the mention of yangyang’s name, but he quickly covers it up and teases you, “why? you like him or something?”

“he’s just my friend, dummy.” jeno visibly brightens at this revelation. you smirk at him, “why? do you like me or something?”

“pshhh, in your dreams, y/n,” he chuckles nervously. “fine. i’ll pay for your karaoke. but i have one condition.”

“what is it?”

“you invite me to karaoke with you.”

── HAECHAN :

haechan takes a marker and draws a line across your table, closer to you than him.

“this is the line that separates our desks. whatever crosses this line is mine.”

you frown at him. “but you have more space than i do.”

“yeah, because i’m me, and you’re you,” he replies with a cheeky shrug of his shoulders, causing you to roll your eyes. you readjust your things to make sure none of it crosses the line, because you know in your heart that haechan means what he says, and will not hesitate to take your things if they do make their way across the boundary.

putting his feet up on his desk, haechan tips his chair back, rocking it on its two back legs. you glance at him and do a double-take. “dude, get your feet off the table! you’re gonna fall down.”

“no i won’t. just watch me-” as he says this, his cocky demeanor disappears in an instant when he accidentally loses control and slips, tilting his chair back a little too much. reacting out of instinct, haechan grabs onto the back of your chair to stabilise himself. however, just as he’s pulling himself up, your chair tilts backwards with the force he’s exerting on it, and you almost fall with it. you scream and shut your eyes, but you never do hit the floor. opening just one eye cautiously, you see that haechan has caught your chair in time, righting it with a triumphant grin.

the teacher raises her eyebrows at the both of you, asking authoritatively, “is everything alright there?” haechan gives her a reassuring smile, but this only makes the teacher even more worried. haechan isn’t exactly known for his stellar behaviour.

“don’t worry, ma’am, i was just helping y/n up.” then he turns to you and pretends to chide you, “hey, don’t tilt your chair back, you could fall.” you stare at him, a mix of disbelief and annoyance pooling in your gut. the teacher sighs and mutters something that sounds suspiciously similar to “kids these days”, before turning back to the whiteboard to write on it.

ten minutes later, haechan is already asleep on the desk, his mouth hanging open and his head resting on his hands. you notice that his elbow has crossed the barrier, and a devilish grin creeps its way up your face. payback time, you think.

taking the marker haechan used earlier, you carefully uncap it and start colouring in his elbow, turning it a wonderful bright purple. amazingly, haechan never once stirs at the strange sensation, continuing to sleep like a log.

when you’re done, you throw the marker at his head and hit his forehead. “wakey wakey, sleepyhead.”

haechan blinks confusedly, and it takes about twenty seconds for his eyes to acclimatise to the bright classroom, noticing the purple patch that has formed on his elbow. he snaps his head up to glare at you, his tongue in his cheek, but then he gives you a fake laugh and grits his teeth behind his smile. “good one. haha. very funny, y/n.”

then he snatches your pen in retaliation, putting it all the way on the other side of his desk, far away from you. trying to get it back from him, you reach across, stretching your entire upper body over to get it.

your entire body freezes up when haechan puts his arm around your waist and brings his face to your cheek. “what are you-”

haechan’s lips ghost over the skin of your cheekbone, and you feel your heart pounding in your chest, red blooming across your face. then he moves his lips to your ear, whispering, “hmm, you crossed the line. guess you’re mine now.”

── JAEMIN :

na jaemin. everybody’s favourite classmate. the second he walks into class, the girls are swooning and the boys are watching enviously. in their eyes, he even walks in slow-motion.

he walks up to his seat next to you and drops a pack of your favourite snack onto your desk, along with some chocolate milk. without saying anything about it, he sits down nonchalantly, proceeding to unpack his stuff. you catch his eye, looking at him gratefully, and he smiles back at you, his face radiant.

oh. so this must be why everybody loves him.

“did you finish your work yesterday? i remember you saying you had way too much to finish in one night,” jaemin says conversationally. you grin at him.

“yep. i tried really hard and actually got my stuff done for once!” you slam your stack of finished assignments onto your desk, the feeling of accomplishment already welling up in your heart.

jaemin narrows his eyes at you, “you slept late though, didn’t you?” you purse your lips and nod sheepishly, then smack him playfully.

“way to step on my moment, nana,” you reply jokingly. jaemin makes a funny face at you in response, and you laugh.

when class starts, both of you listen attentively to the teacher. unfortunately, your late night and lost hours of sleep choose to catch up to you now, and your eyelids start drooping. the teacher’s words turn into a string of meaningless noises, merely background noise to the fight between your body and mind. stay awake, stay awake, stayawakestayawakestayawake-

the world is shut out and you doze off on your desk.

------------ time skip ------------

your eyes flutter open, and for a second you just take a moment to listen to the sounds of the classroom. students chatting, chairs scraping, fans whirring. no teacher talking? ...wait a second.

you jolt upright and something slides off your table at the action, the impact startling the two other students in class. your eyes find the clock hanging on the wall. it’s already lunchtime.

“crap,” you say under your breath. “crap, i didn’t take notes and mrs. watson might have talked about the exams coming up, what happens if i missed it all? oh no, oh no, oh no-”

looking around in a frenzy, your gaze lands on the sandwich and your notebook on your desk. your notebook is open, its pages filled with all the lesson’s notes in jaemin’s handwriting. at the bottom corner of the final page, jaemin has written, “here’s a sandwich for lunch! i took notes for you, i hope you don’t mind. >~<”

the notes are colour-coded and superbly neat. you exhale sharply, nodding subconsciously as you attempt to wrap your head around the fact that jaemin is this nice. the corner of your lips turn up and you start unwrapping the sandwich. it is then that you realise that draped around your shoulders is jaemin’s jacket, and you pull the collar closer to your face, inhaling his scent.

“...stupid, dreamy jaemin.”

── CHENLE :

“what’s up, y/n?” chenle dumps the bag of snacks he brings to school everyday onto your desk. the snack bag is literally bigger than his actual school bag, and it is filled to the brim with a myriad of snacks. candy, crisps, chocolate - you name it, he’s got it. it’s the goldmine.

of course, one of the benefits of being chenle’s deskie is sharing these treats. even when the lesson starts, the two of you are munching your way through the bag, hiding the packets under the table. there’s even a make-shift bin tied to the leg of your table; a plastic bag to hold the discarded wrappers.

however, one of the drawbacks of eating during class is that there is a constant need to hide the fact that you are eating. chewing without seeming like your mouth is moving, never letting the teacher see the food enter your mouth, and the hardest of all - chewing quietly.

chenle passes you a bag of potato crisps, and you gladly accept, opening it with a practised motion. the crinkle of the plastic packaging is barely heard by the class because of the thick woollen jacket chenle has draped over it, creating some sort of soundproofing material. perfect for drowning out louder sounds.

he takes one chip and stuffs it in his mouth, so lightning quick that no one would ever see the crisp in his hand. then comes the hard part - he chews so slowly that the chip is crushed softly. somehow. “pfft, i could do better,” you smirk, hands already reaching for a chip yourself.

the moment it’s placed into your mouth, you make eye contact with chenle and hold his gaze. the two of you chew like sloths, each trying to outdo the other at chewing softly. soon the giggles start trickling out of his lips, and your eyes curve into little crescents, trying not to follow suit. but holding in your laughter is a lot harder when you’re staring at someone who is also trying not to laugh, so the two of you burst out laughing, howls and guffaws piercing the heavy air of the classroom.

when the teacher turns her ferocious gaze on you, you know that you’re in for a ride.

------------ time skip ------------

“hey, what are we supposed to do? i wasn’t paying attention while she was lecturing us,” chenle asks softly, his elbow touching yours as you both stare at the piece of blank paper in front of you.

“she asked us to write ‘i will not eat during class, nor disturb my classmates during lesson time’ a hundred times.” your voice is flat and emotionless, evidence of your boredom.

“ew.”

“i know.”

you start on your lines, writing until your palm is sweaty and your wrist is sore. chenle does too, but gets distracted by the snack bag, which was miraculously not confiscated. thank chenle’s honey tongue for that.

“hey, your favourite snack!” chenle waves the packet in front of you, and the bright colouring effectively attracts your attention.

making grabby hands at the bag, you look at the snack with hearts in your eyes, saying, “oooh, gimme gimme!”

he holds it high above him, teasing, “nope. you can’t have this unless you promise me something.”

“that’s bribery,” you frown, but your want for the snack outweighs your pride. “...what do you want?”

chenle smiles sweetly at you. “come with me to prom at the end of the year?”

── JISUNG :

jisung slides into the seat next to yours, his almost empty canvas bag swinging from one shoulder and his hoodie hanging loosely off his body. he looks at you and smiles bashfully, “hey, can i borrow a pencil? i forgot to bring my pencil case.”

you roll your eyes in amusement and chuckle, “it’s the third time this week, sung.”

“i know, i know, i’m sorry. i promise i’ll make it up to you,” he says hopefully, looking at you with puppy eyes. you stifle your giggles and hand him a pencil, at which he beams at you.

sentence after sentence comes tumbling out of the teacher’s mouth, explanations about the phenomena of cell division and how it happens echoing around the room. jisung’s hood is up, covering his messy hair, and his hand is constantly in motion, pencil flicking across the paper with incredible speed.

“you’re actually paying attention for once?” you ask, incredulous. you can’t believe jisung is listening to the teacher, let alone taking notes so diligently. when he doesn’t respond to your quip, however, you realise he’s not taking notes at all.

you stare at the pages of his notebook. they are filled with jisung’s terrible handwriting, the words he has scribbled basically illegible. you can make out one or two words, but they don’t make any sense, nor are they related to the lesson at all. words like “waffles”, “chicken”, “games” and “boring” are highlighted, showing just how far jisung’s mind is from here. tiny doodles of stick men wearing funny outfits adorn the borders of each page, some of them even with funky hair.

you smile unconsciously, thinking about how very jisung it is of him to do that. then you turn your head back to the front and let all thoughts leave your mind, staring blankly at the whiteboard, words nothing but white noise to you.

“psst, y/n. y/n. y/n?”

“huh?” shaken out of your reverie, you blink at jisung, bemused.

he sighs and says, “sorry, thought you were dead there for a second.” you smile half-heartedly.

“well, maybe i am. on the inside.”

jisung snickers and he reaches up to his ears, which are also hidden by his hood. when his hand comes back down, it is holding a single earpod. jisung motions for you to take it.

“you’ve been listening to music all this time?!” jisung gives you a small nod as you place the earbud in your ear. “without me?!?”

jisung puts a finger on your lips, which shuts you up immediately. “just listen.”

you listen to music together for the rest of the day. (his music is good.)

© marklilies, 2021. all rights reserved.

taglist: @jensrose, @neocuddlytechnology

[wri0thesley]

Could I get some Gojo face sitting please 👉🏻👈🏻🥺 Maybe with a chubby reader?

fool for love - gojo x reader (2.25k)

gojo asks you to try something, and you can never say no to him. 

(warnings: nsfw, afab reader, fem pronouns (pet names). explicitly chubby reader, mentions of worries about weight/body. cunnilingus/facesitting)

Sometimes you think it’s a good job that you and Satoru Gojo are a couple; you’re absolutely certain that nobody but you would put up with him. You’re totally convinced that you’re the only fool in the world who sees his arrogant smirk and the thrust of his chin and the cocky set of his shoulders, listens to him go on and on about himself and about his work and about his strength, and wants to kiss him instead of kill him.

You do kiss him, coincidentally. A lot. Partly because when he’s kissing you, he’s not running his mouth – partly because the taste of his lips on yours and the feel of his hands on your waist, pulling you in, is addictive. You can’t get enough of him – and luckily, it seems that he can’t get enough of you either.

So when Gojo had thrown out this suggestion, casually, as if he was asking you what you two were going to order for dinner that night (you’ve never seen Gojo make anything more complicated than a ramen cup), it had not taken you long to agree.

Faced with it, though – Gojo situated on the bed, arm stretched over his head, grin on his face – you begin to wonder if maybe it’s such a good idea.

“Don’t back out on me now,” he says, the cocky grin not leaving his face. “I’ve been dying to taste you for hours.”

You shift uncomfortably on the other side of the bed, suddenly horribly aware of the curves of your body. No matter how Gojo’s words send a thrill through you – you know from experience he’s good with his tongue – you can’t deny that you’re a little afraid.

It’s easy to forget the difference between the two of you when he’s got you pressed underneath him on the mattress, cock plunging in and out, mouth hungrily kissing every patch of skin he can get at. When Gojo looks at you with his hair falling in his face and his eyes like starlit galaxies, you feel beautiful – but you’re not sure if you’ll feel quite the same way straddling his face.

He sees the way you bite your lip, the anxiety beginning to show in your gaze – and Gojo softens. You see him like this rarely (he’s proud more than he’s caring), but he’s shown this side of him to you every so often, when something has made you draw in on yourself. One of his hands wraps around your bare shoulders, pulling you to face him.

“Hey, doll,” he says, pressing his nose against yours affectionately. “What’s got you pouting, huh?”

“I . . .” You swallow. You feel so embarrassed admitting it! Gojo has never said anything about your body beyond how much he loves having your hips to hold onto, how he loves your thighs wrapped around his waist, how soft and warm you are tangled up beside him in bed – but your insecurities always seem to flash back up at the most inopportune of moments. “I’m just . . .” You blink, biting your lip. Your voice comes out in a soft breath. “I’m worried I’ll be too heavy.”

Gojo’s eyebrows draw in. You must have seen him without anything shading his eyes a hundred times now, when the two of you are in the bedroom, but you are still knocked back by just how pretty he is – the constellations in his irises, the fan of his white eyelashes against perfect skin. The expression makes his mouth jut out, so kissable that it takes your breath away.

“You’re not going to hurt me,” he says, as if the very idea is laughable. “I could lift you over my head right now--”

He reaches for you as if he’s going to do it, arms locking about your waist – the tension breaks as he effortlessly pulls you back, your body landing on top his. He doesn’t so much as let out a ‘whumph’ of air at the sensation of your body hitting his.

“I’m the strongest, remember?” There’s more than a note of swagger in his voice; he is so very proud of that accomplishment. You suppose he has every right to be.

“I guess,” you breathe, and he makes a soft harrumphing sound before his fingers twist into your hair, pulling you close to him to kiss you.

“You guess?” He sounds mock offended against your lips. “I guess that means I’ll have to show you exactly what I mean, huh?”

A nip at your lower lip; his hands roaming your bare back, stroking the curve of your ass and hips. Everywhere Gojo’s long fingers touch leaves a trail of fire behind, like he’s branding you with the pressure of his fingertips. You imagine them leaving glowing trails behind the colour of his eyes – but the coil of heat that they’re helping stoke, low in your belly, is more red than anything else.

“How’re you gonna do that?” You breathe against the softness of his mouth. He tastes like sugar; he always does. You can’t get enough of him, dizzy and breathless. You would gorge yourself on him if you could.

“Take a seat on your throne, princess,” he grins, letting his head hit the pillows hard. His pale hair spreads out all around him like a halo as he moves a hand from your hip to tap his mouth with his fingers. “And find out.”

You guess it would shut him up. Gojo’s mouth can’t keep moving if he’s got you occupying it. And you also can’t deny that the thought of it – riding his face – is more than half of the reason your inner thighs are slick with your arousal. Still . . . what if you really are too heavy for him?

Gojo murmurs your name softly – you meet his eyes again, and you see softness and tenderness reflected in them, despite the fact that his mouth is still shaped into a cocky smirk. You know if you say no, he probably won’t push you. But . . . you don’t want to say no. You push yourself up from his chest.

He’s still wearing his underwear, and you wonder if he can sense how damp you are where you briefly straddle him – because you can certainly feel how stiff he is, the outline of his cock pressing against silken boxer shorts (yeah, of course he’s a silk underwear kind of man – you’ve seen them countless times, but just how Gojo that particular detail of him is never fails to make you smile).

“Okay,” you breathe. “I hope you’re comfy.”

Gojo’s face splits into a grin as you move yourself, your knees suddenly either side of his face, his cheeks pressing against the softness of your thighs.

“Babe,” he starts to say, “I’m absolutely the com—mmppf--”

His gloating is cut off by you sitting on his face. The whisper of his breath across your heated folds as he’d spoken had been too tempting, your sex feeling like it was pulsing in time with your heartbeat – and so, you’d given in. Using your hands as leverage on the headboard of the bed, you’d sunk fully onto your knees and muffled Gojo’s words.

Oh, God.

Your mind blanks out at first, as Gojo’s tongue goes at you hungrily. For his first hungry licks at your core, he’s voracious – he seems to want to drink you up like fine wine. Gojo does not drink – you know this very well – but if he could get drunk on your slick, you think he’d already be unable to stand up. One of the hands on the headboard goes to tangle in the fluffy strands of his pale hair instead, and he looks up at you for a moment, pausing with the flat of his tongue pressed against the throbbing bud of your clit.

The sight of his eyes between your thighs almost pushes you over the edge there and then – looking down at him feels like tumbling down a rabbit hole, like you’ll never be able to pull yourself out of their lovely depths. He makes a soft noise against your folds that has you practically vibrating, your toes curling – and you realise it’s a question.

Maybe he’s asking you what’s wrong, maybe he’s asking you if you want to stop, but your mind is all hazy from the feeling of his mouth on you. So all you do is tug at his hair and gasp, your hips rolling forward against him to try and coax his tongue into flickering across your clit like you’re longing for it to do.

“Satoru,” you whimper, voice all thin and reedy like a prayer, and Gojo does not need any more encouragement than that to return to his work.

Gojo’s hands rest on your hips and even you feel small for a second, the length of his fingers and size of his palm almost overwhelming. There’s so much power in the way he holds you – so much strength behind the casual clench of his fingers into your plush. He keeps you anchored there as he uses the flat swathe of his tongue to lap at you all at once, briefly teasing your entrance before he twirls his tongue around your clit like someone licking whipped cream off of a fancy dessert--

He’s caught you watching him do exactly that out of the corner of your eye many times before, and grinned at you widely with a hungry murmur that he’ll devour you in exactly the same way if you want him too.

Does he not need to breathe?

You lose track of how long you’ve been sat on his face for. You can’t think of anything else with the warm, wet muscle of Gojo’s tongue teasing you. He thrusts it in and out of your entrance, making your entire body jerk and your walls try and cling to him, constrict around him. He flicks his tongue so fast over the bud of your clit that you can’t understand how he does it, it can’t be human to move that fast--

All through it, the tension tight in your stomach is getting hotter and tighter and needier, like a instrument's string being tuned to its breaking point.

You can barely breathe. There’s nothing but Gojo’s insistent lapping at your core, the thrust of his tongue in and out of your channel (has Gojo’s tongue always been so long? It feels just as good inside of you as his fingers always do, but different--). Your hips are rocking and grinding against his face against your will, your fingers twisting into his hair. You’ve lost your senses completely in the chase of your release, hovering tantalisingly close--

Gojo gives your clit one final, soft lap, the barest hint of his teeth against the hood and you burst into bloom for him like a flower. The string snaps and heat floods your body, Gojo’s name escaping you in a wail. Fireworks burst into being behind your eyelids.

Gojo’s tongue follows through, coaxing you through the soft, gentle aftershocks of your orgasm even as your thighs are trembling and your grip on the headboard is beginning to loosen. If it weren’t for his hands on your hips, you would probably fall forward and hit your head on the wall, passing out – but Gojo’s assessment of his strength wasn’t for naught, and your spent body is being pulled down so your heated cheeks are pressed against Gojo’s firm chest. You blink up at him in your exhausted, pleasure-drunk state--

The entire lower half of his mouth is dripping wet, glinting with your arousal and his own drool from how hungrily his tongue was going at you. But his eyes are as sharp as ever, drinking you in like you’re the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen – as if he can’t believe that you’d ever doubt yourself.

Nobody would believe you if you told them how Gojo gets, sometimes – if you told them about the smile-softened eyes and the softer words, the way he holds you like a precious treasure that might break at any moment. He leans down and strokes some hair from your eyes, almost lazy.

“I told you I was the strongest,” he says, and even though it’s a boast, his voice and manner is so soft that you barely register it. You’re smiling up at him like a fool. Maybe it’s foolish to love him as much as you do – but if it is, you don’t want to be clever. You don’t want to be anything but his, here, in his bed, sprawled out across him, lazy and sated.

You kiss the bit of his chest directly beneath your lips lazily, needing to express your affection for this arrogant, gorgeous, irrepressible (perfect) man.

He sighs at the contact, shifting – and you’re reminded of what’s currently lying beneath his own underwear, hot and needy and thick. It’s a testament to Gojo’s willpower he hasn’t mentioned it yet.

You smile at him. One more minute of relaxing on his chest – of having your hair played with, of getting to look at him . . . and then, you’ll see to that.

Gojo’s eyes are just as gorgeous when you’re knelt between his thighs as they are when he’s trapped between yours, after all.

[gukyi]

into the wilderness | pjm

summary: alright, so last summer’s camp was... disastrous. from the murky green showers to the wasps nests, it was all-around a bad time. but none of those things could be quite as catastrophic as the end-of-camp counselor campfire, when you told park jimin that you were in love with him. and if telling him was terrible, then seeing him again this summer, one year after your fruitless confession, just might be the death of you.

{camp counselor!au, unrequited love!au, friends to lovers!au}

pairing: park jimin x female reader genre: angst, fluff, comedy word count: 27k warnings: unrequited love, camp shenanigans, awkwardness, secondhand embarrassment/hurt, ot7 cameos a/n: hello and welcome to the one thing that guyi has wanted to write for literal years now but never go around to! finally i can cross camp counselor au off my list. anyway, it’s been over a year since i wrote for jimin so i hope that this monster 27k fic can make up for that !!! i swear the ending is happy. i swear. i promise.

Something about last summer sucked. 

Maybe it was the record six wasps’ nests you found around the cabin, leaving you with more bee stings than mosquito bites by the end of camp. Maybe it was that weird murky green color of the water in the showers and the sinks that didn’t go away until three weeks in, when you were already positive you had contracted some sort of pond disease from brushing your teeth. Maybe it was the lack of Namjoon, who had an internship and couldn’t come, therefore removing all sense of order and leaving you and the rest of the counselors in a state of chaos.

Or maybe it was the fact that, on the very last night, at the very last counselor campfire, you told Jimin that you loved him. 

Truth be told, you weren’t sure how badly it would go. But telling him was so much easier than keeping it hidden, than letting it drag on and on, this boulder sitting on your chest for the rest of time. You had spent the whole eight weeks of camp rationalizing it to yourself, so much so that by the time the last counselor campfire rolled around, you were convinced that it wouldn’t be that disastrous. 

There was no part of you that thought Jimin would reciprocate your feelings. No part of you that secretly hoped that maybe he felt the same, and that you could end the summer with more money in your bank account and a boyfriend on your arm. You knew he didn’t. Jimin was sweet, and thoughtful, and gentle, which is exactly why you fell in love with him, but he was like that to everyone. You didn’t think that telling him would suddenly make him fall in love with you.

You told him because people like Jimin deserve to know that somebody loves them. 

You told him because you thought that nothing would change. 

What you didn’t really expect to happen was this:

Your marshmallow is burnt beyond recognition, poking off of the edge of a stick like a sad piece of coal rather than a sweet treat. At this point, it’s even darker than the chocolate sitting on the graham cracker in your lap, waiting to be smushed together into the sugar-fest known as a s’more, so eloquently named because you will apparently always want some more. 

“Uh, hello? Earth to Y/N?”

Taehyung’s hand waves furiously in front of your face as he leans forward to make eye contact with you.

“Huh?” You ask, shaking yourself out of your thoughts. Your mind has been awfully cloudy these days, overcast like the weather around here. It’s a wonder you’re able to make your way through. 

“Are you alright?” He asks, an eyebrow raised. “Your marshmallow looks like what happens when I try to make scrambled eggs.”

“Your scrambled eggs look like that?” Seokjin interrupts, pointing accusingly at your charred marshmallow. You’ve seen Taehyung in the kitchen. It’s not that bad, is it? “Next year you should sign up for some of Yoongi’s cooking classes. The six-year-olds can cook better than you.”

“You’d have to pay me way more than the shit they’re giving us to get me to teach Taehyung how to cook,” grumbles Yoongi. 

“I’m fine,” you promise Taehyung as Yoongi and Seokjin launch into a tirade about raising minimum wage. “I just—” You glance at your marshmallow. You don’t even think the fish monster at the bottom of the pond would eat it. And he apparently eats people whose hearts have turned to stone. Like Seokjin, who swears that it had eaten the tip of his pinky finger. “—like my marshmallows really cooked.”

Taehyung looks skeptical but drops the subject nonetheless, turning back around so he can find a different conversation to barge his way into. You’re willing to put money on him finding some way to annoy Jungkook. 

Insecure about your apparent lack of marshmallow-roasting skills, you pull your stick away from the campfire, blowing on it until you decide that you’re willing to risk burning the tips of your fingers. You pluck the marshmallow from the skewer, hissing to yourself as you quickly plop it onto the graham cracker, squishing the whole thing together. 

The marshmallow is so burnt that it barely gives underneath the press of your fingers, bouncing back up like rubber. You frown at your s’more, which clearly should be renamed to something else because nothing about the thing in your hands makes you want some more. 

Next to you, Jimin laughs at your pitiful attempt at a classic campfire treat. 

“You want mine?” He asks with a smile, holding out a flawless s’more, the kind that they make in movies to perpetuate the illusion of perfection. You look up at him and in the light of the fire he glows, like a spark from the flames had created him right then and there, like he had been born with light in his eyes, a halo surrounding his body. 

You wonder if Jimin knows how beautiful he is. How beautiful he has always been, radiating kindness and joy and laughter. He must know, right? It must be impossible for him to notice how everyone falls in love with him. You certainly aren’t an exception. 

He holds out the s’more in his hands, laughing as he looks at you because there must be something endearing about being a shitty s’more maker, and you think, what’s the worst that can happen?

“I’m in love with you.”

The s’more drops to the ground, hitting the grass with a thud. 

Jimin’s eyes meet yours, and for once, they are unreadable. This tragic sort of confusion, like he can’t believe the words you’re saying to him. Like his mind refuses to accept them as true. 

He opens his mouth, but you answer for him. 

“It’s okay,” you assure quickly, reaching a hand out to rest on his own. The touch makes him look away, like your fingers are the flames of the campfire, burning him where they touch his skin. “I—I know you don’t feel the same.”

It’s not a secret. Not to him, and not to you. Jimin purses his lips because he feels guilty for not loving you back. Because he is so good, so kind, that he feels as though he has wronged you because he doesn’t love you the way you love him. Like it’s his fault. 

“Y/N—” He starts, but he does not finish. 

“You…” you interrupt, looking down at your feet. You can’t look at Jimin because looking at him hurts, and you can’t look anywhere else because Jimin is all you think about. All you ever think about. “You don’t have to say anything.”

He speaks, and it’s as if the words don’t belong to him. Don’t belong to anyone. 

“What are we supposed to do?” He asks. 

You shrug, resigning yourself to this. You knew that he wouldn’t feel the same. You didn’t know how terrible he would feel because of it. “Nothing,” you tell him. “I just thought you should know.

He nods, because he knows, and he nods, because he can’t do anything else. 

The fire crackles beside you, s’mores forgotten on the ground as your friends laugh and cheer, distant sounds that echo in your head like white noise. Jimin is all you can think of and right now you’re thinking about what happens next.

“I’m sorry.”

Maybe telling him wasn’t such a good idea after all. 

“Me too.”

Your busted-up sedan revs angrily as you rally up the mountain, shaking your head in an attempt to rid the memories of the campfire from your mind. Unfortunately, the nasty thing about memories is that the more you try to forget them, the more you seem to remember.

You sigh. Something about last summer sucked. 

Nothing about this summer makes you feel like it’ll suck any less.

The good thing about being thirty minutes late is that you’re still thirty minutes earlier than Taehyung, who does not have a single punctual bone in his body. You can count on one hand the amount of instances where he’s actually been on time, all of which are because you and the other counselors conspire to tell him that events are an hour earlier than they actually are just to make sure he doesn’t stroll in an hour late and improperly dressed. 

The bad thing about being thirty minutes late is that everyone besides Taehyung is already here, waiting for you. 

Your sedan crawls to the clearing at the top of the mountain, fighting against gravity and itself as it chugs up the last few feet, coming to a rough stop in the dirt, sunken in from countless tires tracking across it. 

Through your windshield, you can make out two figures with two clipboards, only one of which has something genuinely useful on it. 

“Y/N!” Hoseok cries out excitedly, splaying his arms out as if to hug the entire front of your car only to reveal the near-blank clipboard in his hand. All that’s on it is a neon green Post-it note with a caricature drawing of who you assume to be Yoongi, if the grouchy expression and chef’s hat are anything to go by. There’s no signature or name, but Hoseok’s art skills are on par with those of the campers you work with and Jungkook has a fun and quirky habit of vandalizing all drawable surfaces with pencil sketches of the counselors, so you take a wild guess as to who the artist is. 

You pop the door of your car open and step out into the sticky weather, warm and muggy despite the clouds above. It’s the same as when you step into your bathroom after your two roommates have showered, using up all the hot water and leaving a layer of fog on the mirrors for you to all play hangman on. Only, this steam never goes away. 

“Hoseok!” You cheer, letting the man wrap you up in a sweltering hug, your hands gently patting the top of his back so as not to come in contact with the dampness soaking through his thin cotton t-shirt. You haven’t seen each other for nearly a year, though, so you give in more than you usually would and relax into his hold. “You look good, I like the hair,” you compliment, two fingers coming up to twirl at his bright red locks, deep and vibrant like the cherries you pick. 

“Dyed it just so I could tell the kids I’m a superhero!” Hoseok grins. He’s already heading over to the back of your car to pop the trunk and pull out your duffel bags so that he can park your car in the garage at the other end of the campsite.

“Then who’s the villain?” You call, tossing him your keys.

“I guess that would be me.”

You whip around to find a platinum-blonde Namjoon standing happily before you, looking at least a little bit resigned as he grins at you. His hair is longer this year, like growing it out would somehow compensate for frying it with layer after layer of bleach. And with his silver-white hair and the fact that he is the only counselor any of the kids are genuinely afraid of disobeying, you suppose he would be the antagonist after all. 

“Namjoon, nice to see you again.” You go in for a hug even though Namjoon clearly had no plans on instigating one himself, because someone as hardworking and patient as Namjoon deserves a little platonic affection every one in a while. What, with everyone else constantly conspiring with the campers to oust him every summer. 

The truth is that all of you know that without Namjoon, this camp would be nothing but chaos in its purest form, with the counselors unable to wrangle the kids and the kids using that knowledge to their fullest advantage. Take last year, where everything seemed to go wrong because Namjoon had his stupid internship with a business firm and spent the entire summer drilling finances into his head instead of losing brain cells watching kids eat sand.  

If you had any dignity left you’d blame your rotten confession to Jimin on Namjoon’s absence as well. 

“Nice to see you, too, Y/N,” Namjoon says when you part, checking your name off of the list on his clipboard. “I feel like it’s been ages since I was here.” You can see red marks all over the page, blank only where the name Taehyung is written. 

Some things never change, you suppose. 

“Well, we definitely missed you last year,” You say with a chuckle, trying not to immediately associate your personal misjudgements with the lack of Namjoon, who you can hopefully keep from ever finding out what happened at last year’s end-of-camp counselor campfire. The problem is that Namjoon picks up on social cues and body language like a sociologist, so your only hope is pretending that the campfire never even happened. “Camp was pretty much a mess without you.” In more ways than one.

“Namjoon!” Someone calls. You and him both jerk around to the source of the sound when you see a figure barreling towards the both of you, face obscured in shadow. 

You almost don’t recognize him, with his pitch black hair and thick voice, like he has somehow become a new person in the nine months you’ve gone without seeing him. But the moment he comes into view, you know, and you can’t even pretend to not know, not with the way your heart freezes in place, mid-beat, like the sight of him has turned you to stone. Not with the way that Namjoon is right beside you, and how you don’t think you can bear explaining to him why you and Jimin aren’t as close as you used to be. Not with the way that Jimin looks as beautiful as he always has and always will be, no matter how many summers pass, this timeless portrait, this piece of art that’s come to life. 

There’s a part of you that’s shocked still at seeing him, like you had almost thought that after last summer at least one of you would bail on this shitty summer job, filled with mosquitoes and mud and wifi that only works in the room that doubles as the gymnasium and the mess hall. It’s the same part of you that wants to go back to pretending that nothing ever happened last summer. 

But Jimin is here, in front of you, eyes wide and out of breath and gorgeous, and pretending that last summer never happened is the same as pretending that you never fell in love with him at all.

“The water in the boys’ cabins sinks is green,” he says with a tense smile, making Namjoon nearly smack his clipboard into his forehead. 

“Ugh, seriously?” He asks, and you can’t tell if you’re thankful or hurt that Jimin’s failed to acknowledge you. “Fine,” he scribbles something down on the clipboard, this handwriting scrawl that only he can read, “I’ll figure out what to do with that later. In the meantime, just don’t drink it.”

“Seokjin’s already made lemonade with it, though—”

“Great,” Namjoon says, exasperated as he takes off towards the main cabin, where Seokjin is sitting on the balcony with his feet up on the railing with a glass of suspiciously murky lemonade in his hand, one that he’s offering up to Yoongi with a devilish grin on his face. 

His disappearance leaves only you and Jimin left standing at the entrance, rocking back and forth on the balls of your feet in the hopes that one of you will either leave or spare the other the torture of a conversation. 

“Hey,” Jimin says quietly, trying to meet your eyes. 

You look away, pretending to smack an imaginary mosquito on your arm while an actual one bites your leg. “Hey, yourself.”

“It’s been a while.” The last time we saw each other you told me you loved me. 

“Yeah, it has.” I know.

“How are you doing?” Do you still love me, or was the distance and time enough?

“I’m alright. Same old, same old.” I never stopped. “How are you?” What about you? Did you stop seeing us as just friends?

“Doing well, thanks.” No. You’ll always be just a friend to me. Jimin sighs, looking up at the overcast sky with his hands shoved into the pockets of his shorts, taking in the scenery before him. He exhales, long and heavy, before turning to you with a soft little smile, the kind of grin that almost makes you feel like forgetting might not be the best thing to do after all. “I just feel like this summer is a fresh start, you know? Like, I feel like there’s something different about being here this year.”

Maybe this summer, you can learn to move on from me, too. Because something’s gotta give. 

“I hope you’re right about that,” you tell him, because being around him hurts and being away from him makes you replay that night over and over, wondering what would have happened if you had just kept your stupid mouth shut. You open your mouth to say something, anything else, anything to break the ice that didn’t used to be there before, cut between the tension that has settled between the two of you, but your tongue is dry and your heart is sore just looking at him. 

Defeated, you walk over to where Hoseok’s left your duffel bags, hiking them onto your shoulders and heading towards the girls’ cabins, ready to end this conversation before it tears you in two. 

Jimin seems to flounder, standing awkwardly for a few moments as he watches you walk towards the cabins, skirting around him a few feet away because brushing by his side seemed too close for comfort. But then he says, “Hey, Y/N?” 

And it makes you stop dead in your tracks, unable to deny him an answer. 

You turn around to look at him, and he offers you a grin. 

“Are we good?”

Your love for me, will it affect our friendship?

You swallow.

It already has. It always has. From the very beginning, loving you was part of our friendship. I don’t know how to be friends with you without it. Even when you didn’t know it, I loved you. In a way, it was easier back then. Telling you was the one thing I shouldn’t have done. 

“Yeah, Jimin,” you tell him. “We’re good.”

The trek to your cabin from the main buildings of the camp is nothing if not familiar. Familiar in the way that the ground curves beneath your feet, leading you up to the top of a small hill where the building sits, looking out over the rest of the clearing. Familiar in how the scent of the woods that surround you fills up your senses, this fresh, airy feeling, like the very oxygen is smothering you. Familiar in how this place reeks of the memories of summers gone by, summers spent beneath the stars and by the campfire. 

Summer memories that make your heart burst with fondness and summer memories that… don’t. 

The fact is that it has always started and ended here. 

When you kick open the door to the cabin, there is only one other occupied bed. It belongs to Hazel, a counselor in her sophomore year in college who joined the crew last year and assumed that the Namjoon-less pandemonium that was camp last summer was just the norm. Hopefully she can take a much-needed break this year now that Namjoon’s back and she’s not the only one fruitlessly trying to cajole the campers into behaving. 

You beeline towards the bunk bed that has been your summer home for the past three years, the one shoved right up against the back right corner, giving you a perfect view of the entire cabin. The downside is that it’s the same corner that spiders seem to prefer as their location of choice for their webs, but better you, a stone-cold college student, than a terrified six-year-old. 

Plopping your duffel bags on top of the mattress, you let out another sigh. You wonder what it is about this summer that is so damn tiring, so exhausting that you can’t help but outwardly exhale every ten seconds, like merely being here is wearing you out, bit by bit. 

You’re looking forward to when the campers arrive tomorrow. Sleeping alone (well, nearly alone) in a cabin feels uncomfortably empty. Plus, you’re hoping that they’ll provide you with some sort of distraction so you don’t have any free time left to spend dwelling on the what-ifs and the should-have-dones. When there’s only a dozen of you, it’s much easier to run into him. 

The moment you collapse on your bed, a messy brown head of hair comes bounding out from the shared bathrooms in the center of the cabin. 

“Y/N!” Hazel cries out, launching herself across the room and into your arms for the tightest hug you’ve had in a long while. 

“Hey, Haze,” you greet in return, offering her a squeeze back. You didn’t often mix in your camp activities, with Hazel in charge of the nature walks and animal conservation activities while you hide in your air-conditioned arts and crafts room, but living together brought upon you a closeness you otherwise don’t share with anyone else. Plus, Hazel keeps a family-sized pack of Oreos and a gigantic jar of smooth peanut butter by her bunk at all times for emergencies. 

“I feel like it’s been so long!” She laments when she finally releases you, looking positively thrilled to be here right now. 

Not long enough, you think to yourself, though you don’t suppose any more time apart from Jimin would make seeing him again any easier. “Yeah, but the year goes by so quickly,” you agree half-heartedly. Too quickly. 

“I’m so excited for this year.” Hazel grins, clapping her hands together. “I have so much planned for all the nature walks and everything. I spent all of last week reading up on edible plants and berries found in this part of the country. I’m gonna teach all of the kids what they can eat in case they get stranded in the forest!”

“Fun,” you say with a hesitant nod. It’s not that you don’t trust Hazel to have done her research, it’s more that, knowing the campers and knowing the counselors, someone’s going to try and get lost in the woods around the camp, eating everything they can. Not to mention the fact that Hazel’s so innocent she’d probably reveal to someone like Seokjin or Jungkook which plants were poisonous without even realizing it. 

Camp last year was a mess, but at least nobody died. 

“Hey, aren’t you excited, too?” She asks, a hand on your shoulder as she notices your reluctance. “Apparently Namjoon’s a great leader so this year isn’t going to be as bad as last year.”

“Last year wasn’t bad just because Namjoon wasn’t here,” you comment vaguely. Hazel doesn’t need to know about all of the drama that goes down between the counselors. Hopefully she can get out of here without being dragged into something by one of you. 

“Well, this year is supposed to be better!” She cheers you on, determined to get you to feel as enthusiastic as she is. “No matter what did or did not happen last summer. Plus, you know that if anything bad happens I always have my secret stash, counselors only.” She winks. 

“Thanks, Haze,” you say, sighing again like it’s your job to be worn out by life. “I think I just need a bit of time to get back into the swing of things.”

“That’s the spirit!” She rallies. “I’m gonna head back to the main camp and see if there’s anything good to drink. I’m thirsty.”

“Stick to soda,” you advise, eyes wide at the thought of her downing anything that Seokjin’s had a sneaky hand in making. 

She doesn’t seem to notice your worry, already bounding towards the door, light on her feet. “I was feeling a Fanta anyway. See you at the camp counselor meeting if I don’t see you around beforehand!” She pulls open the heavy wooden door, half outside when she stops to turn back at you, wagging a finger in the air. “Remember, Y/N, leaves of three, let them be!” 

The door slams shut behind her, creating a cloud of dust in its wake. You watch helplessly as the particles dissipate into the air, as the silence that was once so comforting begins to terrorize you once more. 

You collapse back onto your bunk. If only last summer’s murky green water had poisoned you. Then maybe you’d finally have a good enough excuse for your utter lapse in judgement, and you wouldn’t be sighing so much.

There were no camp counselor meetings last year. There were only haphazard caucuses, irregular get-togethers where no one knew quite what was going on and there were no real announcements to be said, no real orders to be given. You had almost forgotten what it was like to have someone with genuine leadership skills working here. 

The problem last year was not getting everyone into the same room for thirty minutes. It was keeping everyone focused in that same room for thirty minutes, which was essentially impossible because, at your age, submitting to someone of authority is the very last thing you want to do. Especially when the consequences pretty much only amount to having to drink Seokjin’s murky green lemonade.

But like with everything else, Namjoon has, somehow, made the impossible possible. 

“Guys, guys, can we stop drawing on the board, please? I need that,” Namjoon begs as he walks into the room to find Jungkook and Taehyung with chalk in their hands and a chalkboard at their disposal. What they’ve accomplished so far is an expert drawing of Spongebob and Patrick with their faces missing, waiting to be filled in by one of the unlucky people in this room. 

“Okay, so who’s Patrick?” Taehyung asks the audience. 

“Hoseok!” shouts Seokjin.

“You!” shouts Hoseok. 

“Seokjin!” shouts Hazel, too, just because she likes being involved in things. 

Jungkook lets out a cackle at that. “Are you kidding?” He asks. “If anything…” He does a quick sketch on the board, hand flying across it so quickly you’re actually a little bit impressed, “Seokjin would be Plankton.” 

He steps away from the board to reveal a scarily-realistic drawing of Seokjin’s angry face on Plankton’s tiny, antennaed body, making everyone—even Namjoon, who usually tries to keep the roasting between counselors to a minimum—laugh. 

Seokjin scowls, and normally you would feel bad for him always being the butt of Jungkook’s endless jokes, but you can see a half-empty glass of green lemonade by Jungkook’s side, and you decide that he can hold his own just fine. 

“I think you guys would be Spongebob and Patrick,” Jimin pipes up from the back. You freeze, turning your head slightly just to see him sitting on the table pushed up against the wall. You hadn’t even noticed him. Or maybe you had, and your brain just decided to pretend that you hadn’t. 

Nevertheless, hearing his voice doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“Jimin’s right,” Jungkook agrees, already beginning to fill in the blank space where Spongebob’s face would normally go with a caricature of his own. “I’d be Spongebob because I have a wider face than you, Tae.”

Taehyung doesn’t object, instead moving his hand to an empty spot on the board. “Yeah. Oh, and Namjoon’s Mr. Krabs, obviously,” Taehyung says, adding his own drawing of Mr. Krabs with Namjoon’s camp get-up on—cargo shorts, a short-sleeved flannel shirt, a baseball cap, and high-tops.

“I would not be—hey, give me that!” Namjoon shouts, indignant, before ripping the chalk from Jungkook’s hands as he cackles wickedly, clearly pleased with himself. Namjoon shoos the both of them away from the board before wiping it with the eraser, which has very obviously not been cleaned since last year, leaving a trail of pale yellow dust in its wake wherever Namjoon drags it across the chalkboard. “Chalkboard for official matters only.” He glares at Jungkook and Taehyung, who high-five each other. 

The chatter soon subsides as Namjoon writes down the meeting to-do list on the board in his same old scratchy handwriting. Namjoon’s one of those people that writes exclusively in capital letters, simply enlarging any letters that actually need to be capitalized. You’re almost one-hundred percent positive it’s to establish written dominance over the rest of the counselors. 

“Okay, first order of business,” Namjoon begins after coughing to get everyone’s attention. “It’s come to my attention that the entire cabin water system is green.”

“Hasn’t it always been—?” Hazel asks, innocent eyes wide in confusion. 

“I called the utilities people and they’re coming tomorrow to fix it, so in the meantime, do not drink the water. Showering and using the bathroom is fine. I would use water bottles for brushing your teeth, though,” Namjoon says, crossing off something on his clipboard as the rest of the counselors murmur in approval. 

“See, this is what happens when Namjoon’s here,” deadpans Yoongi, motioning up to him where he stands at the front of the room. “Shit gets done.”

“Okay, secondly, no swearing in front of the kids,” Namjoon says, adding that onto the board as a final reminder. “The fact that I have to tell you guys this multiple times every year is ridiculous.”

“Fuck you, I can do what I want!” Taehyung shouts, earning a chorus of fuck yeah’s. 

“You guys do know that I have the power to fire you, right?” Namjoon says pointedly, making Taehyung shut his trap. “Okay, moving on. Everyone’s been assigned to the same things that they were assigned to do last year, and if you weren’t here last year, then the year before that.” Namjoon receives some cheers and some groans in response to this, the former mostly from people who work indoors, and the latter mostly from people who don’t. 

“Seriously?” Seokjin whines. “I don’t think Yoongi has stepped foot out of the kitchens in literal years.”

“And I would like to keep it that way, thank you very much!” Yoongi counters. 

“Oh, shut up, at least you get to spend some time indoors teaching all of the kids how to play Hot Cross Buns on their guitars,” Taehyung counters. “I got more mosquito bites than freckles last summer.”

“My students have long advanced from Hot Cross Buns,” Seokjin says proudly and a little bit devilishly. “We’re working on something more technical now.”

“Like what?” Jungkook challenges.

“Okay, continuing…” Namjoon says loudly, eyeing Seokjin suspiciously. “If you’re new, you should have already received notification as to what activities you’re in charge of, but if you’re not sure, come and talk to me.”

“Oh, so Jimin’s still on first aid, then?” Taehyung asks, wiggling his eyebrows. “What do you think Y/N’s gonna do to get herself sent down to his tent? Glue her fingers together? Burn herself with a glue gun?”

“Shut up,” You mumble tensely, embarrassed that somehow you and Jimin’s relationship has turned into a counselor affair. 

Last summer, you had accidentally given yourself a palm full of splinters from the birdhouses that you had the campers paint to bring home with them, and the first aid tent is the only place that has bandages. Jimin was there, as he always is, and the two of you spent the evening plucking out all of the pieces of wood from your hand and patching it up with Band-aids that had Spiderman and Moana on them. Contrary to apparently popular belief, it was not on purpose, even though the hour of hand-holding was rather nice. 

“Or Jimin can just find some excuse to visit Y/N in the arts and crafts room,” Seokjin tacks on unhelpfully. “You know, last summer I don’t think I saw them eat lunch in the counselor room at all. They were always finding secret places in the woods.”

“Maybe we were just busy during lunch?” Jimin suggests, clearly equally uncomfortable. 

“Busy fucking, probably,” Taehyung mutters. 

“It’s none of your business,” you snap, because the last thing you want to be talking about right now is how wonderful your relationship with Jimin used to be, when all that’s left this summer are the burned remnants of it, the ashes of something that could have been. You don’t need a reminder of why you thought that you and Jimin would be alright, of why you thought that telling him wouldn’t be that bad. It was terrible, and now all you can do is pick up the pieces, patch together a friendship whose thread has come loose. 

“Alright, let’s keep going,” Namjoon says, picking up the weirdly tense atmosphere and doing his best to bring the attention back to him and the meeting at hand. “You guys should know that this year, Hoseok is thinking of adding in a counselor dance to the end-of-camp show…”

You look over at Jimin, who immediately turns away when he spots your gaze, making to pick at the rips in his jeans, doing anything and everything he can to avoid eye contact with you, and your shoulders sink. 

Jimin had asked you, “Are we good?”

And you had responded, “Yeah, Jimin, we are.”

And the two of you must have both known that was a lie. 

You turn back to face the front, focusing on how Hazel is rubbing your forearm and not asking questions, and you try to feel a little bit better. 

After the meeting, you and Hazel decide to spend the night holed up in your cabin eating from her Oreo stash instead of eating dinner with everyone else, half because it’s only the first day and already being around all of the other counselors is tiring, and half because you don’t think you can handle seeing Jimin any more today, but not before Namjoon stops you on the way out of the door. 

“Y/N,” he says, making you pause in your tracks. “Can we talk?”

“What about?” You ask, hoping to God that it’s not about everyone thinking you purposely injure yourself just so you can see Jimin at the first aid tent. 

“Just quickly, you and me,” Namjoon says casually, pulling you to the corner of the room, away from any windows so no one can see you two talking. “Did today’s meeting make you uncomfortable?”

“No,” you lie like a liar. “What are you talking about?”

Namjoon’s too observant for his own good, you decide, when he frowns at you, clearly not buying whatever it is you’re trying to sell him. “You don’t have to tell me everything,” he says quietly. “But I know that something happened between you and Jimin.”

You open your mouth to object and tell him that you and Jimin are fine, but Namjoon raises his eyebrows at you, like he’s challenging you to tell him another lie. 

“Well…” you begin, resigning yourself to the truth. “Yeah. Last summer.”

Namjoon purses his lips, nodding in understanding. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“You’re not my mom, Namjoon,” you say with a smile, even though maybe telling someone about it might not be a half-bad idea after all. Plus, Namjoon’s your friend and the only one around here who’s any good at keeping secrets, so getting the words off of your chest could be good.

“You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to,” he reminds you, because he’s wonderful like that. 

“No, it’s alright…” you sigh. “I guess someone else has to know.” You close your eyes, willing the words to come up from your throat, willing them to not hurt you as they leave your lips. “Last summer at the campfire I told Jimin that I loved him.”

Namjoon doesn’t say a word. 

“And he doesn’t love me back, which is not the problem because he shouldn’t change how he feels about me just to make me feel better. It’s not his fault, and I’m not angry at him or anything. I knew that he didn’t love me back when I told him,” the words come up like bile, slowly and carefully before spilling out in front of you. “But I was an idiot, and I thought telling him would make me feel better, or something. And it didn’t, because now Jimin and I don’t know how to act around each other anymore, and everything sucks.”

Namjoon offers you a careful, hesitant smile. 

“So yeah. That’s what happened.”

“Sounds like you and Jimin should talk about it,” Namjoon suggests, and maybe he’s smart, and a good leader, and attends a prestigious college along the coast, and studies business and sociology, but that is the worst idea he has ever had. 

“No,” you immediately say, shaking your head. “It’s no big deal. Jimin and I are still friends.”

“Are you, though?” Namjoon asks. 

You sigh, reaching up to rub at your forehead. “Yeah, we are,” you insist, perhaps more to yourself than to Namjoon. He looks skeptical, but doesn’t ask any questions. “It doesn’t even matter. I made a mistake and now I’m gonna deal with the consequences.”

“I can try to get the rest of the boys to stop teasing you and Jimin. I know it must be weird for you both right now,” Namjoon offers, always wanting to help. You scoff. Weird would be the biggest understatement of the century. 

“Jimin and I can handle it,” you say, not wanting to disrupt the rest of the counselor dynamic just because you and Jimin are dealing with things right now. Besides, the teasing has always been in good fun, and you know the boys well enough to know that they aren’t doing it out of malicious intent. “But I appreciate your concern.”

“Just doing my job,” Namjoon says proudly. You stand there in silence for a few more seconds until he coughs awkwardly to fill up the space. “You can go now, by the way, Y/N. I just wanted to make sure you were doing alright.”

“I’m fine,” you promise, silently hoping that one day, when you talk to Namjoon, you won’t have to lie to him anymore. “Thanks for checking in.”

“I’ll always be here for you,” he says in that comforting way, that warm way that wraps around you like a mug of hot cocoa on a cold winter night. 

You crack open the door to find Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook tossing around a frisbee on the open lawn as Seokjin and Yoongi watch from a picnic bench, soda cans sitting next to them. Someone must have mentioned the green lemonade. Jungkook purposely tosses the frisbee too high for Jimin to reach, making him jump wildly in a fruitless attempt to grab it. He falls backwards onto the soft grass, laughing alongside Taehyung and Jungkook as Taehyung pulls him back up to his feet. 

You smile to yourself, the longing and the pain and the love settling deep within your heart, finding a home amongst the wishes and the dreams. Seeing him there, the widest smile on his face as he tosses around a frisbee with some of his best friends, letting the rays from the setting sun fill him up with joy, it reminds you why you fell in love with him. It reminds you why you’re still in love with him.

Something seizes up at your heart, clenching it between its fingers. That used to be you, the thing whispers. You used to make him laugh like that. 

You did. From the moment you met him, you let his laughter fill your senses, burned the sound of it into your brain. You used to be so close. You used to think that maybe, just maybe, Jimin might love you back. 

You should have never told him, it murmurs, grip growing tighter. Look at where it got you.

If I could turn back time and redo that night, I would, you fight back. 

But you can’t.

The wicked thing releases your heart, lets it drop to the floor. You don’t pick it up. 

Every year, you and the other counselors keep a scorecard on the chalkboard in the meeting room to see how quickly someone gets sent to the first aid tent, whether it be from stumbling over a twig or contracting poison ivy or drinking the green water. Last year, it took two hours and thirteen minutes. 

This summer, it happens barely an hour after all of the campers have arrived. 

You make a mental note to write down the time on the scorecard as you run over to help the poor boy off of the ground after slamming into a spruce tree while playing an early game of tag with his friends. The side of his cheek is imprinted with the texture of the tree bark, and he has some scrapes on his hands and knees from the fall. 

“Whoa, hey, you alright?” You ask, leaning down to help him up. “You gotta watch where you’re looking, okay? Don’t want you to get hurt.” 

The beauty about young children is that very little actually causes them great pain. If it weren’t for all of the overprotective counselors, the kids would probably run themselves into the cabin walls and trees for the entire duration of camp.

“I’m not hurt,” the young boy says, standing up proudly. “I’m fine. My mom says I have thick skin.”

“What’s your name?”

“Eli,” the boy tells you matter-of-factly. “That’s my cabin.” He points to the one to the west of the camp that Taehyung and Jungkook are in charge of. Why Namjoon continuously assigns them to the same cabin year after year is beyond you. Once, they convinced everybody in their cabin that Seokjin and Yoongi’s cabin was haunted, and the only solution was to out-scare the ghosts by yelling and screaming right outside. 

“Is this your first year at camp?”

“Yup,” Eli says, rocking back and forth on his feet. He is not at all fazed by the blood and broken skin on his hands and knees, nor the pieces of wood and bark sticking out of the side of his face. 

“Alright, Eli, even though you have thick skin, I have to take you to the first aid tent. Really quickly, okay? Just to make sure you aren’t gonna get an infection. Then you can go and tell all of your friends how thick your skin,” you say, already beginning to usher Eli towards the first aid tent.  

“I think I have the thickest skin out of everyone here,” Eli says, as if goading you on. 

“You know what? I have to agree with you,” you say. “I get hurt really easily. My mom always says that I need to be extra careful here.”

“I’m sick of listening to my mom,” Eli pouts, stomping on the ground as you lead him towards the first-aid tent. 

“Me too,” you agree. No point in telling him that he needs to yield to his parents when he probably won’t even remember this conversation by the time he wakes up tomorrow. Besides, it’s never too early to begin teaching kids about rebelling against authority figures. “But you won’t have to listen to everything I say, okay? We’re just gonna be really good friends.”

“Like with my babysitter,” Eli says. 

“Exactly,” you say, stopping right outside of the first-aid tent. You’re not even positive that anyone’s inside, especially since it’s barely been an hour since camp officially started. Hopefully, Jimin’s somewhere else so you can just patch Eli up yourself. 

The first aid tent is not so much a tent as it is a shed with a fabric entrance, two curtains attached to a rod above the entryway to provide some semblance of privacy since nobody in the camp is handy enough to actually install a working door. But calling it the first aid tent is better than calling it the first aid shack, which, in the wise words of Yoongi, makes it sound like “a hospital where people go to die.”

When you push open the curtain, the first thing you notice is Jungkook and Seokjin in the far left corner, each with ice packs and suspiciously identical markings on them. They’re both making desperate attempts to patch each other up, fighting with the gauze and bandages that are laid out on the table beside them, as if in a competition to see who can better take care of the other. 

Besides that, Jimin is lounging along the wall, leaning back against it as he gazes into nothing, deeply lost in thought. His eyes trace the lines of the shed, foot tapping to an imaginary beat, brows furrowed. You wonder what the hell it is that Jimin could possibly be thinking about so intently, what it is that is making him not even pay attention to the two overgrown children in the corner of his tent, attacking each other with first-aid materials. 

Watching him, you almost don’t want to disturb him. Almost want to grab one of the kits on the shelf by the doorway and pull Eli outside, partly because you don’t think Jimin absolutely needs to be present for you to clean Eli’s wounds and give him some Spiderman Band-aids, and partly because you don’t think you can bear having to say hello to him. 

Eventually, and only because Eli would start thinking it was weird you weren’t talking to each other (and not because a part of you just wants to hear his voice again), you take another step forward, coughing. 

“Wha— oh, hi,” Jimin says, the sound of your arrival breaking him out of his trance. He rubs at the nape of his neck, clearly trying to brush off any awkwardness. “How can I help you guys?” His voice is unrecognizable. 

“Eli here crashed into a tree while playing tag,” you say tensely, doing your best to look around the room, anywhere else, literally anywhere else, just so you don’t have to look at him. “I just brought him here to make sure he’s alright.”

“I’m fine,” Eli insists. 

“Well, Eli, we just have to double check that,” Jimin says comfortingly, reaching down to bring Eli over to one of the benches. He sits him down and kneels so that he can be at eye-level with him, and says, “Sometimes our bodies say that they’re alright even when they really aren’t.” Out of the corner of his eye, Jimin meets your gaze, looking at you like there’s nothing left that you can do, looking at you like there is so much that he wants to say but no way to tell you. 

You open your mouth, willing for the words to come out, but your throat is dry and your heart is pounding in your ears, a painful thud with every breath that you take. He must have known that what you said was a lie. He must have known what you were going to say when he asked, but he asked anyway, not to get the truth but to see where your relationship stands. 

As it seems, your relationship doesn’t seem to be standing at all. 

It lies in front of you, shattered into a million pieces like a broken mirror, cursed but still doing its job, still showing you this fragmented reflection of yourself. Mixed together like this, you can’t see where your friendship ends and your love began. Mixed together like this, it is impossible to repair. 

“Y/N—” Jimin begins. 

“I should go,” you say at the same time, making the two of you stop in your tracks once again. “Thanks for, uh, patching Eli up. Just make sure he gets to the mess hall in time for dinner.”

“I will,” Jimin says with a nod. There is so much that he wants to say but you don’t think you can bear listening to another word come out of his mouth, to another apology for not loving you back when it wasn’t even his fault to begin with. 

You ruined your friendship but Jimin seems to think that he is the one to blame. 

“I’ll see you at dinner?” Jimin asks. 

You look back at him, wanting so desperately to say yes, to pretend that everything is back to normal, to act like this is the beginning of last summer instead of this one, where you loved him and he didn’t know and everything was alright. But you can’t, because it’s not last summer. It’s this one, and you still love him but he knows now. He fucking knows and just thinking about it makes your heart shake in its cage, holding itself together but unable to stop itself from cracking from within.

Jimin must have known you wouldn’t have agreed. Why did he ask?

“Wait, Y/N, hold up!” 

You’re already halfway out of the makeshift door when you turn around to see Jungkook barrelling after you, leaving Seokjin in the dust as he joins you outside, pulling you away from the entrance instinctively. No one has ever been particularly good at keeping secrets here. 

“Can I help you, Jungkook?” You ask, blinking at him, trying to act as normal as possible. 

“Are you alright?” He leans in close, looking into your eyes, concern washed over his features. 

“Everybody seems to be asking me this,” you say, acting like you don’t know why. “I’m fine.”

Jungkook, for all of his wide-eyed innocence, for the way that he views the world as perfectly imperfect, doesn’t buy it. “You don’t have to tell me anything,” he says. “I don’t know what went down between you and Jimin.”

“Nothing happened,” you say, forcing a laugh just so you don’t sound miserable. 

“Whatever it is, I just want you to know that it doesn’t always have to be like this,” he says, reaching out to take your hand in his own, his calloused thumb rubbing soothingly against your skin. “But you should be honest with your feelings, don’t you think?”

“You and Namjoon both think that I don’t have a handle on this, when I do.” You don’t. And being honest with your feelings is what got you into this mess in the first place. 

“Come on, Y/N, you don’t think we haven’t noticed, have you?” He asks, soft and sad and desperate to get through to you. 

“It’s no big deal,” you insist. “Jimin and I are alright. We’ve always been alright.”

“If you say so…” says Jungkook, no less skeptical than he was when he initiated this conversation. 

“Are we done here?” You ask, already pulling your hand from his grasp so you can go back to your cabin and pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t exist. 

“Yeah,” Jungkook says, resigned as he lets you go. “But you know I’ll always be here for you, right?”

“I know, Jungkook,” you promise, because he always has and he always will be. “Thanks for looking out for me.” You begin to scurry away from the first aid tent, praying that Jimin didn’t hear you and Jungkook and wishing that everything was the way that it used to be.

“Be honest!” Jungkook shouts when you’re a hundred feet away, rushing back towards your cabin. 

Jungkook wants you to be honest?

Telling Jimin that you love him ruined your life. It ruined camp, it ruined your friendship, and it ruined your future. Seeing him now makes your heart ache and your brain dizzy. Every night you replay that conversation in your head, over and over, wondering if there was something that you could have done differently, something that you could have changed so you wouldn’t have ended up like this. Jimin wants to be friends again but you don’t know how to do that without him feeling guilty for not loving you back. 

You want to be honest?

Jimin makes you feel like there is a fire beneath your skin that you can’t extinguish, the flames creeping towards your heart. 

The only solution, it seems, is to smother them. 

The worst part about being in love with Jimin is that he’s impossible to avoid. 

You peer into the mess hall to see if lunch that day is any good and you see him laughing at a table surrounded by elementary schoolers munching on hot dogs and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You go hunting in the storage shed for some extra packs of popsicle sticks and find him cleaning out the old flower pots to use in the greenhouse. You lead your group of campers from the arts room to the lake and see him and Taehyung setting up the net for some friendly water polo, laughing as they try to tie each other up in the rope. 

It feels like you’re watching a movie unfold in real time, one where he is the star and you are nothing but a background character, the desperate loser who confessed to him in the beginning of the film just to develop his character arc, make him seem personable and relatable, then forgotten about until the end when you spot each other on the street and nod silently to each other, as if to say you’ve both inexplicably reached a peace between the two of you. 

Is that what the future holds for you? A wordless camp, an empty conversation? Will you simply go the rest of the summer without speaking, then nod to each other right before you leave? Will this be the last time you ever see each other?

The worst part about being in love with Jimin is knowing that just because you want things to be different doesn’t mean they will be. Just because you want Jimin to love you back doesn’t mean he will. Just because you want everything to go back to normal doesn’t mean they will. 

As it turns out, love confessions don’t always end in fireworks.

Park Jimin is impossible to avoid not only because he’s everywhere but also because he is everybody’s best friend, the campers’ favorite counselor and the counselors’ favorite companion. He is kind and thoughtful and electric. He is magnetic. He makes others laugh without even trying, he names the plants in the greenhouse after the people he loves, he stays behind after activities to clean up when no one else will. 

Falling in love with Jimin wasn’t you picking out your favorite traits of his, wasn’t you seeing him do one selfless thing and deciding that he could do no wrong. It was submerging yourself in the lake, little by little before you dive in headfirst. It was catching glimpses of his goodness until you were consumed by it. It was knowing that you prefer yourself when you’re around him.

Falling in love with Jimin was like the heat in summer—endless. 

If only falling out of love with him would be just as easy. 

The weather has been unusually nice today. There isn’t a cloud in the sky as the sun beats down on you, rays peeking through the tall branches and leaves of the spruce and oak trees that surround you, casting hazy shadows on the grass beneath your feet. It isn’t too muggy, isn’t too sticky and sweaty, this perfect medium between warm and hot, between dry and humid. It’s the sort of day that you romanticize every day of summer being, only to realize that summer actually consists of sweating through three different t-shirts and needing to eat your ice cream in ten seconds before it melts into a puddle on the concrete. 

Nonetheless, camp policy has always been that when it’s a beautiful day, the campers are going to spend every hour they’re awake outside, going on nature walks and playing capture the flag and eating watermelon on the splinter-y picnic benches. It’s nice, because it gives you a break from having to tell the kids not to touch the tips of the glue guns, but it also stinks, because it forces you to leave your sweet, air-conditioned paradise in favor of a mosquito-infested summer hell. 

Luckily, the kids have been washing off the summer heat in the cool water of the lake with the counselors that actually prefer being outside, playing volleyball in the shallows or canoeing out where it’s deeper. Sometimes, you wonder why Namjoon will let so few counselors supervise so many campers, and sometimes, you decide that it’s better them than you. 

You take a seat on the picnic bench by Yoongi, who is drinking notably clearer lemonade than in days past, so you assume that Namjoon got the water problem fixed like he promised. The two of you have never been outdoorsy people. Why you’ve been working at a summer camp for the last three years escapes you both. You and him lean back against the edge of the built-in table. From here, you have a perfect view of the lake, clear and blue and filled to the brim with rambunctious children, keeping at least somewhat of a watch over them so that Namjoon can’t shout at either of you for slacking off. 

“You know that Seokjin gave you murky water lemonade earlier, right?” You ask, just to make conversation. 

“I know,” Yoongi says, wholly unfazed. He takes another sip and sighs, feeling refreshed. Without batting an eyelash, he deadpans, “You know that you and Jimin aren’t going to get any better if you don’t talk to each other, right?”

“What are you talking about?” You scoff, playing dumb. 

“Just because all of those other idiots didn’t hear what went down between you and Jimin last summer doesn’t mean I didn’t,” Yoongi mutters monotonously. 

You jerk up, stick straight at his words, eyes wide as you glare at him. He heard you?

Yoongi laughs at your reaction, reclining back impossibly farther. “Relax, I haven’t told anyone. You know it’s none of my business.”

“Well,” you sputter out, “if it’s none of your business then why are you talking to me about it?”

Yoongi frowns. “Because you’re my friend, Y/N. And I hate seeing you like this,” he says, that soft lilt to his voice peeking through the rigid words spilling from his lips. “I feel like I don’t even know who you are anymore. A lot of the other counselors do.”

You purse your lips together, guilty. 

“Especially Jimin.”

“I just need time,” you say, trying to be honest for once in your life. Loving Jimin was never going to go away without a fight. 

“You need to talk to each other,” corrects Yoongi. 

“Talking is what got us into this mess,” you huff out, dejected. Yoongi heard it himself—your confession sent you and Jimin’s relationship down the garbage chute. 

“And talking is what’s going to get you out of it,” Yoongi tells you pointedly, truthfully, in that horrible way where you know that he’s right but refuse to accept it. “Promise me you’ll try?” He reaches out to place a hand atop yours, looking into your eyes with hopeful promise. “We want you back.”

“I’ll try,” you sigh out, because it’s never been worth fighting with Yoongi. Not when he cares so deeply. 

“Try what?”

You and Yoongi whip your heads around to find Jimin standing on the opposite side of the picnic bench, helping himself to a piece of sliced watermelon. 

“Try enjoying the outdoors more,” Yoongi covers for you instantly, making you breathe out a little sigh of relief. “We both hate when Namjoon makes it an outside day.”

“It’s not that bad,” Jimin says with a smile. The only reason Jimin doesn’t mind it is because he gets the best of both worlds—half the day spent inside the first-aid tent, the other spent inside the greenhouse by the woods. “There’s beauty in everything.”

Yoongi scrunches up his nose. “Like that?”

In the distance, you spot three things: Jungkook and Taehyung, laughing evilly as they run down along the rocky beach. The clothes clutched in their hands, crumpled up in their grasps while they hoot and holler. And Seokjin, hair sopping wet and half-naked, with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist and ugly lime green water shoes on, chasing after them. 

“I’m out,” Yoongi says without missing a beat, grabbing his lemonade and dashing off to safety. Yoongi’s exit leaves you and Jimin standing there, stranded, frozen in place, as Jungkook and Taehyung rush by you, each grabbing a piece of watermelon on their way. Something falls from Jungkook’s hold as they pass you, and Jimin reaches down to pick it up. It’s one of Seokjin’s socks. 

“Give that back, Park Jimin!” Seokjin’s banshee screech rings in your ears. 

“Run,” Jimin says, and you don’t get another say in the matter before Jimin is grabbing your wrist and pulling you along with him, Seokjin’s angry caws echoing throughout the clearing. 

Even though Jimin didn’t even actually steal his clothes from the locker room by the lake, Seokjin has determined that anyone who runs from him is automatically guilty, thus lumping both you and him into a wild goose chase alongside Jungkook and Taehyung, who are almost always the guilty parties when it comes to practical jokes like this. For a few moments, it’s the four of you running across the open field with Seokjin hot on all of your heels, desperate to catch up to at least one of you despite being severely out-matched, both in athletic ability and footwear, and then suddenly Jimin is pulling you behind the shed as Jungkook and Taehyung make a sharp right, headed in the opposite direction. 

Crouched behind the shed, you and Jimin stop for a minute to catch your breath, chests heaving after doing more exercise in the last thirty seconds than you have in the last week alone. You’re pressed up against the back siding, and only after your heart rates finally slow down do you become faintly aware of Jimin’s hand still gripping your wrist, like he’s simply forgotten to let go. 

“You think we lost them?” He asks with a wicked grin, and it’s impossible to avoid his gaze when he’s so close like this, when there’s barely a foot of space between your bodies, when his fingertips still press against your skin. 

“I think so,” you heave out in response. 

“Better stay here for a bit longer just in case,” Jimin says, and it’s the flirty sort of thing that he would say if it were last year, the flirty sort of thing that he would say if you two were friends like you used to be, but you aren’t anymore, and now it feels like Jimin is trying too hard and you aren’t trying hard enough. 

“I… I mean,” you say, pulling your wrist out of his grasp, rubbing at where your skin sizzles from his touch. “We’re probably fine.”

“Are we?” He asks, and this is exactly why you shouldn’t try to talk to him, exactly why talking won’t erase the tension that has settled between you two, repair the cracks in what you are. You’re not fine, because everything changed when you told Jimin that you loved him, and you’ve never been good at adjusting. You’re not fine, because for the first time in your years-long relationship, loving him is getting in the way. 

“I hope we are,” you admit, more to yourself than anyone else. Oh, how you so desperately wish that things were back to normal. Oh, how it would be so easy if only things were just a little bit different. 

“Me too,” Jimin says, and he smiles and, oh, how it makes you feel real and true and whole. He stands back up and reaches an arm out to help you do the same. For once, it doesn’t feel like a Band-aid on top of a stab wound. It feels like a lifeline. 

You let Jimin help you back to your feet, and for some reason your heart feels just a little bit lighter. 

“You think we’re alright?” Jimin asks. 

“Yeah,” You respond with a nod. “I think we will be.”

One thing that Namjoon is big on is interdisciplinary recreation. This is half due to the fact that he attends a private liberal arts school on the east coast and half due to the fact that he doesn’t always trust some of the counselors when it comes to chaperoning a whole group of kids on their own. You aren’t going to name names, but they’re the same people that steal clothes for fun. 

He’s got a list up on one of those massive sheets of lined paper filled with suggestions for all sorts of things that combine two or more of the basic activities the camp offers, ranging from making handmade bird seed treats in the kitchen to put out on nature walks to dodgeball in canoes. Some of Namjoon’s ideas are a lot more feasible than others. 

Namjoon’s never been a pushy person. He’s repeatedly said that he purposely avoids telling people what to do within their activity sectors because he doesn’t want the counselors to think that he’s stepping all over them or doesn’t trust them to come up with their own entertainment. The list in the counselor meeting room is titled: ACTIVITY SUGGESTIONS, bolded and circled, just so everyone knows that he isn’t forcing you to do anything (if you’re being honest, the emphasis on suggestions somewhat works against his whole niche). But sometimes, especially for someone whose greatest fear is stripping away others’ creative freedom, he can be rather insistent. 

Take, for example, the two stacks of plain flower pots left anonymously inside the arts and crafts room when you walk in to set up the activity for the day. You were originally going to have the younger kids color in their own guitars to hang up in the music room—an activity that was not on the activity suggestions list—and give the older ones some clay and let them go to town, but you suppose that decorating flower pots will be just as entertaining. At least you didn’t have to go hunting for the materials. 

The only problem with decorating flower pots is that, once the campers have painted streaks and polka dots and glued charms all over them, the flower pots have a rather specific place to go. A place that is part of a notable Park Jimin’s domain. 

A sneaky little feeling beneath your skin suspects that someone may have let it slip to Namjoon that you and Jimin could do with a bit of relationship repair. And Namjoon and Yoongi have been bunking in the same cabin for as long as you can remember. 

Sighing to yourself as you begin to set up the flowerpots on old newspapers spread out on the wooden tables, you decide that spending an hour with Jimin in the greenhouse (maybe even less if you can find an excuse to get yourself out of there!) couldn’t be any worse than being crouched down behind that cobwebbed old shed with his hand on your wrist and his eyes gazing into yours. At least you’ll have thirty campers to maintain the distance between the two of you. 

You suppose that you do have the easier of the two jobs. Arts and crafts is a rather simple activity to oversee, barring the occasional papercut or glue gun burn. Luckily, painting flower pots means that you will really only have to worry about the campers mod-podging their fingers together, and even then, the bathroom is just down the hall. Jimin, with his having to wrangle the kids to garden neatly and not hit each other with the trowels, is going to have it much harder. 

There’s a part of you that knows you’ll stick around. Not just to lessen the load of campers for him, but just so you can spend a little more time in the same room, breathing the same air, pretending that things are the way that they used to be. 

When you leave the arts and crafts room to hike the ten minutes to the greenhouse, followed by all of the campers dutifully carrying their brand new flowerpots in their hands, you feel like a young bird leaving the nest. Taught to fly little by little, but one day forced to face the real world and exist without the safety net you’ve called home for so long. The arts and crafts room hasn’t always been your favorite place in the camp, but this year it’s felt like you’ve been holding on particularly tight.

Jimin is already waiting happily in the greenhouse for your arrival, this stupid old gardening apron tied around his waist with a faded picture of a cartoon cactus on the front that says free hugs. He watches fondly as all of the kids shuffle into the greenhouse, the whole room just barely big enough to fit all of you, wide eyes peeking out from behind seed packets and green leaves. 

You stay in the back corner as Jimin gets to work, having all of the campers place their pots on the tables in front of them, bright plastic buckets of soil at the ends of their tables, flower seeds waiting to be planted. 

As much as Jimin is fantastic at patching kids up inside the first aid tent, the greenhouse is where he really belongs. The harsh rays of the sun are softened by the glass walls as they beam down on him, surrounding him with this warm yellow halo, painting him into the scenery behind him. Here, amongst the lush vegetables and flowers and ferns, Jimin doesn’t look like an underpaid camp counselor carrying the weight of thirty children on his back. He looks like this fairy in the woods, this forest sprite that has grown up amongst the trees and the moss and the wildflowers, who has learned to tend to the world’s greatest garden. He looks like someone whose mere presence makes the plants smile a little wider. 

Jimin’s like that with everyone. It should come as no surprise to you that the plants feel better when they’re around him, too. 

Jimin has always been so good with kids. More so than any of the other counselors, really, though they all try their best to be fun and friendly and gentle and stern all at once. But there’s something in Jimin’s nature that just makes him the best at it, something about the way he cares for them so deeply, something about the soft lines of his face that earns him their trust the fastest. He’s good with everything that camp throws at him, from frisbees to murky water to lake monsters, but nothing has ever seemed quite as right for him as his connection with the campers. 

The children don’t know how lucky they are to know someone like Jimin. Someone who believes wholeheartedly in the goodness of others, someone who will stop at nothing to fix what has been broken. 

You think about how lucky you are to love someone like Jimin every day of your life.

“Mr. Jimin?” A squeaky little voice pipes up. It’s a young girl named Zoe, whose flower pot is decorated with a painting of her entire family, a group of four stick figures with red shirts and purple dresses holding hands together, loopy smiles drawn onto their faces. 

“Just Jimin, alright?” Jimin corrects. 

“Are you sure these seeds are going to turn into flowers?” Zoe asks, looking skeptically at the packets in front of her. 

Jimin laughs, and it is as warm as the rays of the sun that stream through the glass walls. “I can’t promise that they will, Zoe.”

“Then why are we doing this?” She pouts. 

“Because,” Jimin says, pointing to the packets in front of the campers, “the only way that I can promise that these seeds will turn into flowers is if you guys can promise to love them. Because no matter how much sun they get, no matter how much you water them, they will only bloom if you really, really love them.”

“How do they know?” Another girl pipes up. 

“Flowers are just like us,” Jimin tells her gently. “They can feel when they’re loved, and they love us back by blooming for us.” He shuffles around the back of the greenhouse where he stands, fishing through the shelves lining the walls until he emerges with a rather large pot in his hands, placing it down on the table beside him with a thud. “Take this hydrangea, for example.”

Your breath catches in your throat, the blue flowers flashing before your eyes. 

You planted those together. Last summer. You and Jimin snuck out to the greenhouse while everyone else was eating potato salad for lunch and spent the hour listening to pop songs from the eighties and planting a baby hydrangea. 

They will bloom every year, Jimin said. 

So they’ll always remind us of us, you responded. 

It’s the first time that you and Jimin have looked at each other since you entered the greenhouse. He catches you off-guard, eyes wide as you stare back at him, suddenly feeling this gut-wrenching ache from deep within your belly. And Jimin—

God, Jimin looks like he’s tried everything under the sun and moon to keep that damn hydrangea from wilting. 

“They were planted early last summer. And they bloomed, right? But they look so sad,” Jimin explains, rallying himself and turning his gaze away from you. “And I gave them new soil and watered them regularly, but I’m still missing something.”

“Love!” Zoe shouts. 

“Right,” Jimin says with a tense nod, eyes flickering to yours once more. Your shoulders slump. “But I have a lot of love to give, so hopefully they’ll be alright soon. You guys just have to remember that love is the most important thing that you can give to your flowers. Just like you and me, the flowers need to know that there is someone who loves them.”

But you do know, you want to shout out to him. You’ve known this whole summer and you knew back at the campfire and you probably knew even before that. You’ve known for so long and still the flowers that we planted together are fucking wilting. Like they can’t even bear that this is what we’ve come to. What do you mean, they need to know that there is someone who loves them? You do. And I love you. You must know that, don’t you?

You feel the vines of a thorny rose wrap around your heart, clenching it tight. It’s been in bloom for a year now, thick red petals filling up the empty spaces between your bones, nectar swimming within your veins. And when you picked it, cut it off at its stem to place in Jimin’s hand, it grew only stronger, bloomed only harder.

Oh, if only that hydrangea knew how much you loved him. 

Afterwards, you stay back to help clean up. There’s soil all over the floor, buckets knocked over in the campers’ frenzy to go play games in the gym with Jungkook, discarded paper seed packets and trowels left littered across the tables. 

Jimin doesn’t put on any eighties music. Instead, you stand there in silence, brushing the leftover soil into dust pans and buckets, placing the gardening tools on the rack by the entrance. 

Even though you know flowers don’t wilt that fast, it feels like with every second that passes, the hydrangea is a moment closer to death. The color seems to fade every time you look at them, going from its vibrant pale blue to a sallow green, no longer able to tolerate being in the same room as the two of you. 

Your love doesn’t seem like it’s going to fix it this time. 

“I didn’t know that it was doing so badly,” you say, and the words don’t even feel like they belong to you when you hear them back, making Jimin stop dead where he stands. 

“What?” He asks. 

“The hydrangea.”

Jimin looks over at the pot on the table, and he sighs, helpless. “I’ve tried everything. It just doesn’t seem to be working with me this year.”

It’s no secret to the both of you why. 

“Hopefully you can figure something out,” you offer alongside a half smile. “I would hate to see them die after only a year in bloom.”

“Me too,” Jimin sighs. 

“How have you been?” You ask him, because you never really did get a real answer when you asked him that very first day. And because no matter what you do, you’ll always be curious about him. 

“Alright,” Jimin says, and it’s not a lie. “I’m looking forward to graduating next year.”

“Yeah, me too,” you say, even though you’re only looking forward to the not-being-in-college part of graduating. Not so much the being-chucked-into-the-real-world part. “How’s the major coming along?”

“Well, physics never gets any easier,” Jimin jokes, and even though it’s a little bit forced it makes the two of you both laugh, desperate to get back to the way that things used to be, step by step. “What about you? Still going for English?”

“With a side of business so that I don’t end up a broke poet,” you remind him. “But yeah.”

“Maybe you can write me into one of your stories,” Jimin suggests. 

Oh, but doesn’t he know already? He’s the main character in every single one. All of your poems are about him. He is your inspiration and your muse. He fills up each blank page all on his own. Doesn’t he know? 

“Maybe,” you agree, even though there has never been a ‘maybe’ when it comes to him.

You nearly drop the plastic bucket of soil on your toe when you hear his next question. 

“Have you, uh, been seeing anyone lately?” Jimin scratches at the nape of his neck, clearly nervous. Your heart sinks. Out of all of the possible questions he could ask you to keep this relatively casual conversation going, he chooses that one? 

You look up at him, wondering why on earth he’s asking you this when your love has already been laid out bare in front of him, every corner unfolded so he can read across the lines like a map, memorize the splotches of color. You look up at him and you are helpless, desperate for him to realize that even with thousands of miles and hundreds of days between you, for you, it has always been him.

You wonder if the only reason he’s asking is to see if you were starting to move on. 

“No,” you mutter lifelessly. “I haven’t.” And then, like a devilish whisper in your ear, “Have you?”

You almost expect him to say yes. You almost expect to hear him recount all of the fantastic dates he’s been on, all of the loving relationships he’s been in, but instead, he says, “Me neither.”

And that? That makes your heart stop dead in its tracks. 

“I tried to, you know,” Jimin says, and each word is a puncture wound inside of you. “But I just couldn’t. Nothing really stuck.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” you tell him, because you are. Because Jimin deserves to love someone who will love him back. Someone that isn’t you, someone who hasn’t been hopelessly pining after him for a year. 

“No, it’s alright.” Jimin shrugs. “I’m kind of glad that nothing stuck.”

And if hearing the words “me neither,” leave his lips made your heart freeze up, then hearing these words set it aflame. You don’t respond, instead choosing to let the words etch themselves into your memory, carve themselves into your heart, give you hope, if only a droplet of it. Any is enough to have your heart beating a little faster.

“I miss this,” Jimin breathes out, and if you closed your eyes and pretended that you were somewhere else it would almost sound like a confession. You glance up at him, and he is so empty, clinging hopelessly onto the remnants of things past just like you, and you realize that being honest is really the only option you have left. “I miss doing stuff like this.” 

The with you goes unspoken, but it rings loud and clear in your ears anyway. 

“I miss it too,” you say, because Jimin must know already, doesn’t he? How if you could choose to go on loving him without him ever knowing, then you would do it in an instant? How loving him silently was painful but loving him like this, unbearable. “I feel like it’s been a long time.”

A long time since you both really spoke to each other. A long time since you were friends the way you used to be. A long time since you first began to love him.

“Can’t we go back?” Jimin asks, a foolish question. He should know better than to ask for something he already knows he can’t get. 

“You know we can’t,” you tell him. You’ve already tried.

“Then can we begin again?” He proposes, the two of you meeting in the middle of the greenhouse, right in front of the hydrangea. You hadn’t even realized you were barely three feet away from him until you were already there. “Please? I miss us, Y/N. Don’t you miss us, too?”

Gazing at Jimin, you feel your heart tremble. One thing that hasn’t changed is how weak you are to his touch, to his eyes, to the way that they make every part of you feel like jelly, feel like you’ll collapse without him to hold you up. You’ve never been able to say no to him. It’s one of the things you don’t think you’ll ever outgrow. 

“We can try,” you say, because being honest may be hard, and talking even harder, but now you would rather try to piece yourselves back together than spend the rest of the summer wondering what to do with the shattered remains on the floor, stepping around them instead of cleaning them up, repairing what has been broken. 

It’s like the words are music to Jimin’s ears, the way he lights up, grinning wide and real and true. He inhales and it feels like a breath of fresh air, like a brand new season has come to rest upon the two of you. It feels like relief. It feels like hope. It feels like new.

You hadn’t realized it before, but you’ve been dying to make him smile. 

Next to you, the hydrangea seems just a little bit brighter. 

It’s getting easier. 

No longer are you turning in the opposite direction whenever you see him hanging around the center of camp, praying that he hasn’t spotted you from where you stand. Nor are you making excuses about having to go help Namjoon with something or run back to your cabin whenever he shows up to spend time with you and the other counselors. 

And even though it’s still a little tense when you accidentally look up at the same time and meet eyes, even though it still feels like you two aren’t quite the same, it’s getting easier. 

You’ve even begun to eat lunch together again. 

It’s not exactly like it was before, not like when you would scurry off to the greenhouse or the shed or some other hidden place, spread out a picnic blanket and bask in each other’s company, laughing about anything and everything, but it’s better. It’s better than how it used to be, when you would always bring your lunch back to your cabin to eat in silence, drown yourself in your comforter and your thoughts, letting them pile on top of you, one by one. It’s better than how you used to pretend that you didn’t even know each other. 

Slowly, step by step, things have almost started to feel normal again. 

“You guys seem happier lately,” Taehyung commends mindlessly as he sits down across from you and Jimin, three pieces of meat lover’s pizza on the paper plate he sets on the tabletop. 

You and Jimin smile at each other. You suppose that you have been.

“Three, Tae?” The moment gone too soon, Jimin’s focus is immediately redirected to the behemoth meal in front of Taehyung. “Seriously? Aren’t you lactose intolerant?”

“The meat balances it out,” Taehyung says matter-of-factly, even though it definitely doesn’t. He takes an enormous bite out of one of the slices, eating nearly half the pizza in a single chomp. “But seriously, I mean it. You guys look a lot happier. Yoongi!”

Yoongi freezes in his tracks from where he’s walking by your table, spilling his open soda can all over his plate of pizza at Taehyung’s shout of his name. 

“Don’t you think that Jimin and Y/N seem happier?” Taehyung asks, motioning to the both of you. 

“I don’t know,” Yoongi says with a shrug, aloof as always. You chuckle to yourself, knowing fully well that it was him who got Namjoon to leave two stacks of flower pots in the arts and crafts room to give you an extra push towards talking with Jimin. Taehyung huffs, disappointed but not surprised that Yoongi contributed so little to the conversation, but he doesn’t notice how Yoongi gives you a smile and a thumbs up as he heads over to where Namjoon and Hoseok are sitting. 

“Well, I think you guys do,” Taehyung says pointedly. 

“Did we seem… unhappy to you?” Jimin asks, an eyebrow raised. 

“No,” says Taehyung. “I don’t know, you guys just seemed different. You know, I was talking with Jin and he and I were convinced that the two of you were dating last year and then broke up sometime before this summer because you guys were acting so weird earlier.”

“Really?” You ask, cracking an awkward smile just to keep the mood light because god, Taehyung really is a lot more observant than you give him credit for. “That’s so funny, honestly.” It’s not. “You know that we’re just friends, Tae.”

Next to you, Jimin is staring down his lunch like it’s insulted his family. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch as he opens his mouth to say something, anything, goddamnit, anything that will make you feel like you’re not the only one who wants you two to be friends again. Anything that will remind you that being friends is all you have left because he will never love you back. 

“You could have fooled me,” Taehyung acknowledges. “Seokjin was pretty convinced, too. We even had a bet going to see which one of you would admit it first.”

“You guys bet on us?” Jimin asks, a little horrified and a lot of something else, something that you can’t quite place. 

“Not with money!” Taehyung defends. “Marshmallows for the end-of-camp counselor campfire. But neither of you ever said anything so we ended up just dropping it and ate as many marshmallows as we wanted.”

Oh, if only Taehyung knew. Oh, if only he had heard you that night, heard you pour your heart out in front of that fire. Oh, if only he had noticed, noticed the warm yellow glow that made Jimin look like he had been bathed in candlelight, noticed those roasted marshmallows over the heat, noticed the words that replay in your head like a broken record. 

There’s a part of you that wants to know who Taehyung was betting on. A part of you that is wondering why on earth would either of them ever assume that Jimin would be the one to confess first when he has only ever seen you as a friend and you have always seen him as something more. Seen him as this dream come to life, seen him as the answer to all of your prayers. 

Jimin never would have confessed first. That hasn’t changed. 

“Thinking back, it was kind of stupid of us to bet on you guys when you hadn’t even confirmed anything,” Taehyung says with a sigh, pursing his lips together tightly. “I don’t know. I guess that Seokjin and I both really, really wanted you guys to get together.” He chuckles, but it isn’t funny anymore.

Believe me, Tae, you think to yourself. You guys weren’t the only ones.

“Eh,” Taehyung hums, shrugging to himself. He clearly isn’t as caught up about it as you and Jimin, who wonder every day how different things would be if you had just kept your damn mouth shut that night, if you had never loved him in the first place. “I guess I’m just glad to see you both smiling again.”

“Thanks, Tae,” you say, because even if Taehyung doesn’t know the whole story he’s still hit the nail on the head, and even if he can’t pick up the way that Jimin’s body has tensed up beside you, even if he doesn’t notice how normal feels like the furthest thing to describe the two of you right now, he has always wanted the both of you to be content.

“Makes me kinda sad to know you guys are just friends, even though I’m obviously not going to force you into anything.” Taehyung takes another bite of his pizza, the words just conversational to him even if they clearly aren’t to either of you.

Slowly, Jimin looks back up from his lunch, like he’s finally made up his mind. You meet Jimin’s eyes when he does, and for once you don’t dare jump into the swirling sea of his irises, for once you can hardly tell if the waves are calm or rough. For once, it feels like Jimin is looking at you the way you look at him—helplessly.

Taehyung smiles, looking fondly at the both of you. “You guys would have been cute together,” he says it because he means it. “You make each other so happy.”

He means that part, too.

The end-of-camp show is a longstanding tradition where all of the kids, divided by age group, celebrate the best part about summer and going to a sleepaway camp: being away from their parents. There are dance performances choreographed by the counselors (namely Hoseok, who has the most free time because his other job mainly consists of making sure Namjoon doesn’t lose his head), a guitar performance organized by Seokjin (who has promised not to rickroll everyone this year), and an art show setup by you to display all of the treasures that the campers have created. But your favorite part of the show is how, no matter how much time time is spent practicing and rehearsing, the performance will always end in chaos. The only predictable thing about it is its unpredictability. 

This year, as suggested by Hoseok and immediately implemented by Namjoon, the counselors are being roped into a performance of their own, one that is bound to be even more disastrous because even though you can all listen to directions, you are all also just as capable of purposely disobeying them. 

Part of you suspects that the only reason Hoseok even recommended that you all do this is because he enjoys watching the camp counselor collective crash and burn. Like there’s something cathartic about watching you go up in flames.

Nevertheless, you do it, because if not for yourselves then for Hoseok, and if not for him then for Namjoon, both of whom tirelessly to make sure that camp is a place where you and the other counselors can do the dumbest things without repercussions. If it weren’t for the two of them, camp would be a lot less fun.

Hoseok also just absolutely relishes in being in charge of something, something that involves dancing and singing and performing, which are his favorite things to do, and it would be cruel of all of you to deny Hoseok this opportunity, if only for a silly little camp performance. 

Hoseok manages to wrangle a time and space for rehearsal thanks to one of those magic scientists that perform cool things with chemicals, one that Namjoon has arranged to visit camp to give you and the other counselors a much-needed break from the endless excitement of children. 

And so, you all trickle into the empty counselor meeting room at three in the afternoon exactly, waiting to see what the hell Hoseok has come up with now. 

All of the tables, chairs, and other miscellaneous furniture has been pushed up against the walls, leaving just enough room for all of you to fit relatively comfortably, with Hoseok standing smack in the middle of the room, looking proud. 

“I’m scared,” Hazel admits to you as you pass by Hoseok to stand where the rest of the counselors have gathered. You sneak a peek at the clipboard in Hoseok’s hand, which isn’t empty this time, and is instead filled with sheets of paper that look like they belong in the hands of a sports coach, X’s and O’s and arrows littering the pages. 

“Don’t be,” you say, though the tremble of your voice is probably doing very little to calm her nerves. You end up grouped together with Jimin and Yoongi, who are both standing in silence, waiting for something to pull them out of their thoughts. “Hey,” you say softly, giving Jimin a nudge. 

“Hey,” Jimin responds, face lifting a little when he sees you. From behind him, Yoongi is eyeing the both of you, but he doesn’t seem very worried. Jimin laughs tensely. “I’m nervous about what Hoseok has in mind for us.”

You glance over to Hoseok as he talks animatedly with Namjoon, who looks a little bit in over his head. Namjoon must have known that Hoseok would spare no expense when it came to a counselor performance. 

“I’m sure it won’t be that bad,” you assure him with a squeeze to his wrist, making him smile weakly at you. 

“First Namjoon makes us sit outside, and then he makes us do exercise?” Yoongi huffs. “When will it end?”

“High time he got you out of the damn kitchens,” Jungkook mutters to himself, making all of the other counselors within earshot laugh. Yoongi turns around to give Jungkook half of a noogie before Hoseok claps to get everyone’s attention. 

“Alright, hi everyone!” Hoseok cheers. “Glad you all could make it.”

“Did we have a choice?” Seokjin asks. 

“Nope!” Hoseok grins. “Anyway, as you know, this year Namjoon and I have been thinking of doing a counselor performance at the end-of-camp show to show unity and entertain the kids, since they’re the ones who have been doing all of the work thus far to make the camp show a reality. And I, as your assistant head counselor and dance choreographer, get to set it up!”

“Oh, God,” Taehyung says. 

“It’s not going to be a super serious thing because this is camp and we’re literally performing for prepubescent children, so don’t worry!” He says, doing nothing to ease people’s worries. He turns around to face the chalkboard, and begins to magnet the pieces of paper from his clipboard onto it, page by page, as the rest of you stare on in horror. “But I have come up with a bit of a dance for us to perform…”

“Oh, God,” Seokjin repeats dramatically. 

“Anyway,” Hoseok says, clapping his hands together once more to redirect everyone’s attention from the mess on the board back to him. “It’ll be a bit of a partner dance for the first half, and then everyone gets about five seconds worth of a solo in the middle where you can do whatever you want—” when Hoseok spots Jungkook, Taehyung, and Seokjin already beginning to scheme, wicked smiles widening, he quickly adds, “—within reason, and then a big old group thing to finish it up. Does that sound good?”

“Whoop,” Yoongi deadpans.

“Great!” Hoseok says, fumbling for another piece of paper in the stack that he still has left on his clipboard. 

“God, a partner dance?” You ask awkwardly, feeling noticeably more worried than before. It’s not that you’re dreading having to dance, or even having to perform in front of a bunch of kids, it’s the idea of having to dance with someone else, a specific someone else in particular, that has your stomach doing flips. “Why did Hobi think that was a good idea?”

“It might be fun, don’t you think?” Jimin says, trying to keep the mood light. It’s clear he has no worries about the potential for being paired up with you, which might have been able to fly last year but this summer, you’re not so sure. You and Jimin just managed to start eating lunch together again without wanting to curl into a ball and hide. What’s going to happen if you have to dance with each other?

“I’m not a very good dancer,” you admit, a weak excuse for your real fear. 

“Then I’ll teach you,” Jimin says, and the words are hopeful and filled with light as he works so desperately to remind you that not all has been lost. That you can begin again. 

“Okay, partners,” Hoseok says, looking at his list. “Namjoon and Yoongi, Jungkook and Seokjin, Taehyung and Hazel, Maria and Ruby, Jia-yi and Quinn, and Jimin and Y/N.”

Shit. 

Yoongi, noticing your alarm, immediately interrupts, “Uh, is it possible for us to switch partners?”

“Why?” Hoseok asks innocently. 

And in that split second, that moment of pause, you look from the wide-eyed Yoongi to Jimin, who is gazing back at you like he’s finally got it right, like he’s finally been given an opportunity to fix what you had broken, to repair your relationship, brick by brick, if only for a stupid counselor performance. Jimin, who is smiling and smiling and smiling because you are finally eating lunch together and you are finally watering that damn hydrangea and you finally get to dance together, and everything in the world is slowly beginning to feel right, the dust is beginning to settle after a month’s worth of storms. 

You inhale, then you exhale, and you say, “I’m fine with my partner. I don’t think we need to switch, do we?”

And you swear, your heart feels lighter already. 

Jimin pops into the arts and crafts room more often these days. Sometimes he actually does it because he needs to drop something off, because a camper left something in the greenhouse or because Namjoon is making him, but most times, he does it just to say hi, just to charm all of the campers as they make collages out of old magazines or glue together fabric for no-sew pillows. 

And every time he does it, every time there is that familiar knock on the door, you nearly tumble over yourself from excitement. The best part about it is how normal it’s all beginning to feel, how familiar it is. You are almost back to where you used to be. 

Almost back to when you loved him, and he didn’t know, and everything was alright. 

Today, the kids are making cards for you to mail back home before the summer is done, before camp comes to a close and they return to their lives and you return to yours. Normally, you’d automatically send the letters back to the parents, but this time, you offer up an alternative. 

“These cards are going to be mailed back home to the people that you love,” you say, holding up your own as an example. It’s a basic one, yellow cardstock with daisies made out of construction paper glued onto it, but it serves as a good guideline for whatever the campers want to do with their own. “You just need to provide their address so that we can make sure it gets to the right person.”

“It doesn’t have to be our parents?” One boy asks.

“Nope,” you say with a smile, shaking your head. “You can send it to anyone you love. It’s just to let them know how you are, and that you miss them.”

“Who are you sending yours to?” A different girl, Rose, asks. 

“I’m not sure yet,” you say, because you don’t really need to let your parents know how you are when you text each other constantly, and all of your friends from back home can see all of the shenanigans you get up to on your social media, but a letter is no fun if only one person ever gets to read it. 

“You should send it to Jimin,” Rose suggests matter-of-factly, making you sputter out the water you were taking a sip of all over the table in front of you. 

“Jimin?” You repeat, forcing a smile. “I see Jimin all the time.”

“But you really like him, don’t you?” She asks, even though she obviously already knows the answer. Goddamn, kids pick up on everything. “I can tell.”

“Is that so?” You return, eyebrows raised. 

“Yeah, me too!” The boy chirps up. “You always look so nervous whenever he comes to say hello. Like you don’t know what to say. That’s what my mom looks like whenever she comes home from a new date with a boy she really likes.”

You do? That is news to you. 

“It’s okay, though,” Rose interrupts. “I think that he really likes you too. Otherwise he wouldn’t just be popping in every other day to say hello!”

“Maybe he really likes seeing you guys, instead!” You offer, feeling your cheeks heating up at the thought that you and Jimin have laid yourselves out bare like a board book for everyone to read. 

“I don’t think so. He looks too happy when he sees you.” The girl shakes her head. “You should send your card to him, so he knows that you love him.”

Oh, he knows, that’s for sure, you think to yourself. There’s no way that Jimin hasn’t already realized that you still love him. That you have always loved him. Even the campers have it figured out, and they’re still in elementary school. But you think that the worst part of this, the worst part of all of these freakishly observant children verbally beating you up with reminders of your relationship with Jimin, is how they seem to think that Jimin likes you back. That Jimin sees you as something more. 

Because he didn’t, last year. And he didn’t, earlier this summer. And there is no way things have changed that much. 

“You guys should keep working on your cards,” you say, desperate for the subject to drop, desperate to talk about anything, literally anything, besides Jimin. “We want to send them by the end of the week so that the people you love will get them before camp’s over.”

“So you do like him!” The boy exclaims. 

“Cards, Oliver!” You reprimand him, earning a chorus of giggles, though there is no mistaking the way your body has tensed, the way your words are shaking. No mistaking how your heart trembles at the thought of Jimin, sweet, wonderful, beautiful Jimin, actually liking you back. 

It can’t be. 

You and Jimin have always just been friends. That’s all you’ll ever be. You swear. 

You swear.

“The hydrangea looks better,” you comment as you enter the greenhouse, eyes immediately darting towards the pot on the table at the front. In it, the hydrangea has blossomed fully, its petals a vibrant sky blue, basking in the faint glow of the sun as it streams into the greenhouse, peeking between the misty gray clouds, painting everything with a hazy yellow warmth. 

“It does, doesn’t it?” Jimin asks from where he’s wrestling with an enormous packet of soil, pausing his battle to turn and look at the blossom, smiling to himself. “I think we must have worked some sort of magic.”

“Or maybe it’s just your expert gardening skills,” you tease, hauling in some plants by the door that Jimin has been meaning to bring inside the greenhouse for days now. “I’m not in here enough to make any sort of noticeable difference.”

Jimin scoffs disbelievingly. “You’re in here almost as much as I am nowadays.”

“Just to help out,” you defend weakly, pouting to yourself. It’s not like you’ve completely abandoned your air-conditioned arts and crafts room to fool around in the balmy greenhouse, soil underneath your fingernails and seeds stuck to your clothes. You just prefer to spend your free time here. Nothing criminal about that.

Plus, Jimin sure doesn’t seem to mind. 

“And for that, I thank you,” says Jimin with a grin, the bag of soil finally beginning to cooperate with him. He hauls it over his shoulder to bring into the back room, where he keeps all of the bigger tools and plants that are too advanced for the campers, and you pretend not to ogle the way his biceps bulge as he carries the soil away, the bag easily fifty pounds or more. 

What? You didn’t fall in love with Jimin just because of his electric personality. 

“Besides, you come into the arts room so often that all the kids are starting to think you work there instead of here,” you remind him pointedly. He laughs, and the sound bounces off of the glass walls, filling up the room. 

Jimin comes out of the back room, a little bit of soil smudged onto his cheek from his gloves, and he’s smiling. “Maybe I just like seeing you.”

“Next time we do a craft I’ll make sure to prepare an extra one so you can do it with us,” you joke, ignoring the way his words warm you from the inside out, convincing yourself that this is what it was like last year, too, so Jimin doesn’t mean anything by it. 

Convincing yourself that Jimin has never loved you the way that you love him. 

“Am I going to be allowed to sit next to you?” He asks as he walks up to where you’re working, that same flirty lilt to his voice, that teasing tone that he always used to use on you, especially whenever it came down to spending time together. 

“Only if you’re good,” you chide in response, leaning over to pick up a flower pot just so you don’t have to see his damn face, so you don’t have to see the way his eyes glint in the sun as he toys with you, as he presses all of your buttons with ease.

Obviously, you had seriously miscalculated how far away he was, because by the time you’re standing up straight he’s right behind you, playfully pinching at your waist, the sensation sending an electric jolt through your veins. You jump and gasp at the feeling, nearly dropping the goddamn flower pot, body suddenly turning to jelly. Behind you, Jimin is in stitches. 

“I could have dropped this!” You scold him as he doubles over in laughter, giggling and giggling and giggling, so much so that you can’t even pretend to be angry at him, too endeared by his happiness, by his pure joy, to shout at him any more. 

“You’ve always been so ticklish, Y/N,” Jimin says between puffs of air, trying to catch his breath.

“I am not! You just surprised me!” You defend, even though Jimin’s right and he knows it. Your outrage leaves him in hysterics still, amused by the way you so easily fall right into his trap.

“Whatever you say,” he singsongs, helping you haul in the last of the flowerpots. “I think that’s the last of them.”

“Next time I show up, a whole different part of the greenhouse will need work,” you say with a sigh, because no matter how much you do, no matter how much you clean and reorganize, there will always be something left. 

“The work is never done,” Jimin says with a smile, having already resigned himself to this fate. “But I think it looks pretty good.”

And looking at the greenhouse, looking at the vibrant hues that fill the room, from the rich golden marigolds to the bright pink lilies, from the rich green leaves to the soft blue hydrangea, you have to agree. It’s no wonder why Jimin loves this place so much, spends so much time in it despite its severe lack of circulation and the absence of reliable shade. It’s because everything in here he has had a hand in making. Everything in here is here because of him. 

This place will never not remind you of him. 

“It’s getting late,” Jimin says, checking his watch. “You think they have dinner ready for us?”

“God, I hope so,” you say with a sigh. “I’m starving.”

“Then shall we feast?” He asks, holding his arm out for you to take. 

You wrap your arm around his own, and you grin. “We shall.”

Then the thunder cracks, and the sky begins to sob. 

You’re barely three feet out the door before you feel the wet splotches on your shoulders, cold drops on your skin, made thicker by the leaves above your head, forcing you to retreat back into the greenhouse. Thanks to the glass, the raindrops that hit the rooftop ring like mallets on a drum, booming and loud, echoing throughout the room. 

“Damn,” Jimin says, staring out at the once sunny clearing, now shrouded in a grey haze. “It was sunny two minutes ago.”

“It’s just a summer storm,” you assure, arm still wrapped up tight in his own. “They never last long.”

“Think we should wait it out?” He asks. 

“Whatever you want to do.”

Jimin grins, squeezing you tight. “How about this? Five minutes, and if it doesn’t stop, we make a run for it?”

You nod. “Five minutes.”

Five minutes pass and the rain has no intention of letting up, seemingly getting heavier as you count down the seconds, the light grey fog that has blanketed the clearing turning to an angry deep blue, thick and endless. The alarm on Jimin’s watch goes off, signifying your wait’s end, and you open your mouth to suggest that maybe you should wait here a little longer, but barely get the first letter out before Jimin is flinging open the door to the greenhouse and pulling you out into the rain. 

You shriek as the drops hit you, little pellets of water striking you like beads, soaking your clothes and your skin everything in between. Jimin looks back from where he’s running in front of you, one hand still wrapped around your wrist, and his hair is in strands and his shirt is sticking to his torso, and you don’t think that, in your three years of knowing him, you’ve ever seen him happier. He pulls you out into the rain and he looks like a shot from a movie scene, looks like the hero in a coming-of-age film, letting the rain wash away his worries and his insecurities, letting himself be reborn beneath the crying sky. 

And he stops, and you stop, and you stand there in the pouring rain just looking at each other, picturesque frames, moments in time, letting the water soak into your skin, letting it trickle down your cheeks, decorating your eyelashes. You feel his hand sink down to your own, feel your fingers intertwine. And he is smiling, God, he is smiling so fucking wide, smiling at you like there is no place he would rather be, smiling at you like you smile at him when you think he isn’t looking, like you are the reason he is filled with light. Jimin stands there in the rain with his hand on your wrist and droplets of rain dotting his skin, and he is brand new. And you watch him, watch the way it rains down upon him, and you wonder what the hell he is thinking. 

You wonder what on earth he sees when he looks at you. 

(Is it the same as what you see when you look at him?)

“Aren’t you cold?” You ask him, feeling like your voice is a distant melody, feeling like it’s coming from somewhere else. 

He shakes his head, and you can see the rain spraying from the ends of his hair, soaked strands framing his face. “Isn’t this wonderful?” He asks up to the sky, tilting his head up to let it rain down upon him, let the droplets drizzle down his cheeks. “Don’t you love it?”

“It’s nice,” you admit, because there’s something refreshing about being here, about being caught in the midst of a summer storm, washing away the dirt and sweat and worries. 

“It’s perfect,” Jimin corrects, voice trampled by the rain, thick and heavy. “I feel like this is just what I needed.”

“Needed for what?”

He looks back at you, looks at the way your bodies are still connected, at the way you’re standing barely a foot apart in the pouring rain, and he grins and says, “Just what I needed to know.”

You don’t have time to ask him what he needs to know, what he has been so desperate to learn, before he’s pulling you back into him and up onto the deck, wet footsteps on the wooden porch as you heave yourselves out of the rain and into the counselor meeting room, drenched from head to toe. 

“Oh my God, what the hell happened to you guys?” Seokjin asks, shocked when he spots the two of you, still holding hands. 

“Got caught in the rain,” you say sheepishly, still feeling out of breath. 

“In the rain?” Taehyung asks. “For how long?”

“Long enough,” Jimin answers this time, finally letting you go to run towards the back of the room. You watch helplessly as he does, your hand clenching around nothing, missing his touch. When he returns, he’s got a dry windbreaker in his hand, crumpled up from being in his backpack for so long. “Here, use this,” he says, placing it over your shoulders, pulling the collar tight at your front. 

“Thanks,” you say breathlessly, wondering what the hell Jimin is going to use to dry himself off, clothing so soaked not even a day in the sun could dry it. 

“That was fun,” Jimin says, fixing the windbreaker over your shoulders to make sure it’s covering as much of you as possible. “Who knew, right?”

“Right,” your voice trails off, too focused on the way his brows are furrowed as he tries to dry you off with a jacket made of fabric meant to repel water rather than absorb it, mouth pressed into a pout as he shuffles it around, drying off whatever he can. 

“Maybe we can do it again sometime,” he says when he’s satisfied, gazing into your eyes, trying to get you to gaze back into his own. When you falter, he chuckles, this little huff of air dispelled from his lungs. “I’m gonna go bother Hoseok for something dry. Don’t stay in those clothes too long, or you’ll catch something.”

With that, he disappears into the other room, soggy footsteps leaving prints in his wake. You’re so busy watching his back disappear from view that you don’t even notice Namjoon coming up to you, a sage expression written all over his face. 

“What?” You challenge, not liking the way he looks so suspicious. 

“Nothing,” he says with a laugh and a shake of his head. “I just… don’t know if you really do have anything to worry about when it comes to him.” He nods his head in the direction of Jimin before vanishing, called over by Seokjin and Jungkook to complain to him about something, leaving you floundering in the doorway to the counselor’s room. 

Does Namjoon know something you don’t?

Are you missing something here?

Because as far as you’re concerned, you and Jimin are finally getting back to where you used to be. As far as you’re concerned, you and Jimin did these same things last year, worked in the greenhouse together, planted flowers together, ate lunch together (okay, maybe you didn’t stand in the pouring rain together), and you are positive Jimin didn’t love you back then. As far as you’re concerned, this isn’t different. This is normal. 

Outside, the rain has stopped, a rainbow hidden behind the trees the only reminder that it was ever there in the first place. 

Despite the fact that you will literally only be performing for a bunch of children, Jimin is insistent on teaching you how to dance. 

At least, that’s it looks like, when he asks you to meet him in the counselor’s room one day half an hour before the mandated practice that Hoseok’s arranged for the whole group of you while the all the campers are off on a nature hike with some of the local rangers from the reserve nearby. You don’t know why this couldn’t wait until during practice, when Hoseok puts on some upbeat dance music and lets everybody do what they want, which usually ends up in someone getting twirled (usually Seokjin), but you don’t really mind. Your other option was to lie around in your cabin waiting for the next social event. 

Jimin’s already inside by the time you arrive, this smooth, soft jazz playing from the little speaker that he brought with him, set up on a table at the front of the room. The furniture hasn’t been moved back to their original spots since the first practice, so anytime Namjoon calls a meeting everyone ends up sitting on the floor like a kindergarten class, but at least it makes dance practice easier. 

Even though he’s not really dancing, his body is still moving, absorbed in the music as it echoes around the room, hips swaying and head bobbing. He loses himself in the melody so easily, letting each and every note pluck along to the strings of his heart, this deep, mellow sound that fills him up like a wine glass, dulcet and sweet. 

“Hey,” you say softly from where you stand, watching him from the doorframe. 

Jimin jumps a little bit at the sound of your voice, almost embarrassed that he hadn’t spotted you sooner. “Hey,” he says in return, coming to a halt. “I didn’t, uh, see you there.”

“That was kind of the point,” you joke, walking into the room and joining him where he stands in the center. “Why did you want me down here?”

“You mean I need a reason to see you now?” Jimin teases in return, a little smirk playing along his lips. You frown, narrowing your eyes at him, unimpressed. He gives. “Alright, you got me. I promised you a dance lesson, didn’t I?”

“This isn’t the kind of music that Hoseok puts on, though,” you point out, even as Jimin intertwines his hand in your own and pulls you in close to him, the two of you stepping in time to the beat, not too slow but not too fast, either, this even, steady swing, the sort of thing an old bar would play during the evening rush. Jimin doesn’t pay your comment any attention, instead focusing on his hand on your side, your fingers laced together between your bodies. 

You have, admittedly, never been much of a musical person. You never go out to clubs because sweaty, drunk people just aren’t your style, you don’t ever dance, and you can barely keep a beat when you sing in the shower. Your body has always been stiff as stone despite your (and your friends’) best attempts to achieve otherwise, and as such, you had long resigned yourself to the fact that you do better with your mouth than with your feet. 

But still, Jimin rallies on, because you’re here, goddamnit, and even if you never dance again after this, at least you can say that you have. He moves you around the room in time with the honeyed melody, even daring to pull some advanced tactics like spinning you beneath his touch, hand held above your head as you twirl in place. And you try to let loose, try to lose yourself in the music like he does, but it’s hard when you have always been more of a wordsmith than a dancer.

What’s also not helping is how every bone in your body always seems to freeze up at his touch. 

“Relax, alright?” He says, guiding you across the old wooden floor, boards creaking beneath your feet. “It’s just me.”

That’s the problem, your brain supplies unhelpfully. 

“I told you that I wasn’t a very good dancer,” you say bashfully, unable to look Jimin in the eye when he is so close, when his body is practically pressed up against yours, when his fingertips leave burn marks where they press against his skin, sparks flying. 

It’s different than when it was raining, because when it was raining, even though you were close, there were other things for Jimin to look at besides you. He gazed up at the sky and thanked it for its tears, gazed around the clearing and surrounded himself in the navy blue haze, closed his eyes and felt the drops on his skin, felt them wash away his nightmares and replace them with dreams. 

It’s different now, because there is nothing impressive about the counselor room. Because the janky old tables and dirty windows aren’t something to be gazed at. Because Jimin’s focus is on you and only you, and it makes you feel like he’s staring right through you, like he’s gawking at your heart where it sits in its cage, trembling beneath his eyes. Jimin makes you want to board yourself up, wall yourself in, and reveal yourself bare all at once, like there is so much that he already knows but so much more that he could, if only things were just a little bit different. 

“You’re doing just fine,” Jimin promises, voice as soft as his steps, padding on the hardwood. You’ve lost track of the number of times you’ve circled the room, Jimin guiding you without reason or rhyme, just rhythm. He makes sure you’re always looking at him, reaches a hand out to tilt your chin back up if you dare glance away, keeping his steely gaze trained on you, determined to have you do the same. “Isn’t this nice?” He murmurs. 

“It is,” you agree. You don’t even have to think about your response, letting the words fall off your tongue, because even if you do feel tense, even if your bones are stiff, there is something about this that sets you at ease. 

And you stay like that, wrapped up in each other, swaying to the beat of this song, a beat that is strikingly similar to the drums of your hearts, and the moment feels as though it’s freezing. Feels as though the rest of the world is fading away, leaving only the two of you and the warm, rich tune that floats through the air, slowing down as time seems to come to a halt. 

“Do you still miss us?” You breathe, and you can see the words as they leave your lips, see them written out in puffs of smoke between you before they fade into nothingness. 

“No,” Jimin responds, equally as speechless. The word disappears quickly in front of you, replaced by his next ones, “because this is what I had been waiting for.”

The words stare down at you angrily, your eyes raking over them, line by line, letter by letter, hoping to imprint them into your skin and your brain and your heart, hoping to keep them locked up besides your love for you to replay, over and over, one of many memories that keep you up at night, that you flicker back to watch like an old film, reminiscing of who you used to be, what you used to do. 

They disappear far too quickly, and suddenly time begins again, and you get dizzy just from how much the rest of the world needs to catch up, whizzing by you in fast forward. Or maybe you’re just dizzy because Jimin has always made you feel this way, always left you gasping for air, weak in the knees, heart pounding. 

God, he makes your heart pound. He makes it drum in your ears like the Nutcracker, like thunder during a summer storm. 

“Don’t you want…” he asks, trailing off, eyes hazy and deep, absolutely unreadable. 

“Want what?” You respond, and you swear you aren’t doing it on purpose but you feel yourself leaning forward, closing the gap between you, inch by inch—

“Want to see me lift Seokjin up in the air?” Jungkook’s voice rings out into the room. “I can, you know, he weighs like two pou—whoa, alright.”

A hoard of people stop behind Jungkook as he stands in the doorway like a floundering fish, blinking at you and Jimin. His arrival does not give you enough time to part without things looking suspicious, without all of the damn counselors already making their assumptions, leaving the two of you separating awkwardly, smiling tensely. 

“What were you guys doing?” Taehyung asks, breaking the silence that has blanketed the room. 

“Practicing,” you say quickly, looking as far away from Jimin as possible. Not even you are buying into your excuse. 

“Sure thing,” Taehyung responds, eyebrows raised in understanding, already having formulated his own, likely more realistic answer. 

“Alright,” Hoseok says, appearing from behind the crowd with a clap of his hands. “I guess that means that Y/N and Jimin don’t need to be joining us today, off you guys go.” He gestures for the two of you to leave, but the only exit doubles as the entrance, which means the two of you are left to shuffle past a crowd of counselors, all of whom are staring at you as you pass them by. Jimin doesn’t reach out his hand, and you don’t make any attempts at changing that. 

You nearly suffocate on the way out, overwhelmed by the tension that has filled the atmosphere, leaving everyone helpless to it. 

Jimin goes in one direction and you go in the other, the both of you clearly too stupefied to say anything meaningful to each other, determined to spend the rest of the night apart in an effort to dispel the dozen rumors that you know have already begun to circle the camp. 

On your way back to your cabin, alone and lost in thought, you finish your conversation. 

“Do you want…” Jimin asks, voice trailing off. 

“Yes,” you say. “I want it all. I want you.”

You wonder if Jimin feels the same. 

There is something eerie about the camp late at night, when the only lights that shine are the dim yellow wall sconces outside of the cabin doors, when everyone is sound asleep in their bunks, when there is only the moon and its stars to keep you company, watch over you from their place in the universe. There’s something eerie about the quiet, not because you have a reason to feel unsettled but because you’re so used to camp being this lively, bustling place, filled with things to do and people to see. 

When you see it like this, empty and silent, it almost makes you think you aren’t even in the same place anymore. 

The one and only place that you go when you cannot sleep is the pier, extending out over the lake, the cool, clear lake, looking out into the midnight horizon, a perfect view of the stars and their reflections, cast over the water, twinkling endlessly. You take a seat on the edge, legs dangling over the water, and you stare out into the world, a cool breeze tickling your skin. 

You wonder what it is that’s keeping you awake tonight. What it is that is holding sleep just out of your grasp, your dreams suspended above your head. Camp ends in three days and for once you finally feel satisfied, feel as though you have done what you wanted and accomplished what you had hoped. The last few days of this summer are a far cry from those of last summer, where you were wearing yourself thin thinking about your confession, thinking about what you would say and when you would say it, and what you would do based on the fifteen thousand different things that Jimin could say in response, so hung up on telling him that you barely focused on anything else. 

But this summer, you and Jimin are finally starting to be alright again. And even though you don’t think you will ever move on from loving him, you have moved on from the fact that he will probably never love you back, moved on from your failed confession, and you are learning to be okay with what you have, even if it’s not what you want. 

The truth is that you and Jimin have never felt closer. Driven by your mutual desperation to be friends again, to return to the way that things were when you were together, when you were inseparable, you have been pulled together like moths to each other’s flames, like the thunder and the lightning. You can’t think of anything from this summer that you have wanted more than to be by his side again. But things are different from last summer, different because you and Jimin are not only friends but friends who have had to reckon with love, with its disastrous effects. 

So maybe that’s why you’re awake tonight. Because this summer feels inexplicably stranger than last summer, and you feel like you’re missing something. 

“I thought I’d be the only one still awake.”

You whip your head around at the voice to find Jimin standing at the other end of the pier, ink black hair hanging over his eyes, stars swimming in his irises. You can barely make out his face this late at night, when there is nothing to cast upon him a glow besides the moon and its lonely companions, but you will never mistake his soft, honeyed voice, never mistake the way his eyes sparkle and shine. He is grinning at you, warm and kind, as he slowly makes his way towards you, footsteps tapping along the worn wooden planks, until he sits down next to you, feet hovering above the water. 

“You and me both, I guess,” you feel yourself whisper, not daring to speak a decibel louder. 

“Lots on your mind?” He asks, looking out into the horizon. You sigh, too tired to respond. He understands anyway, just like he always does. “Mine too.”

You let the silence wash over you like a wave that bathes the shoreline, gazing out into a world that carries on no matter the time of day, no matter who watches over it. Like this, you and Jimin don’t need to explain yourselves to each other. Don’t need to force a conversation just for the sake of filling up the quiet night. Like this, your presence is enough, the knowledge that he is here beside you, staring out into the same sky, into the same moon and stars, is all that you need. 

Something has long gone unspoken between the two of you. Something that you can’t quite place. Jimin has had something to say for a long time but he lets his body do the talking, lets you fill in the gaps. But this time, it feels like the more you try to read between the lines the less you understand, and goddamnit you wish that he would just tell you, would just say it so you don’t have to keep wondering and wondering and wondering—

“I never did tell you,” Jimin says, breaking you out of your reverie.

“Tell me what?”

“Tell you what I was thinking, that night.”

He doesn’t need to elaborate any further for you to know what night he’s talking about. You stare down at the lake, at the way it seems to move into itself even though there is nothing to disturb it. 

“I guess I was just so shocked that you, you know, liked me like that, that I didn’t really focus on anything else. Didn’t think about why, or how, or when, or what to do. It existed separately from all of that,” he admits, breaths heavy. 

“You didn’t need to focus on that stuff,” you assure him softly. “It was my burden to hold. I was the one who chose to tell you. It wasn’t your fault.”

Does he know? Does he know that you never hated him for not loving you back? That you didn’t expect him to do anything about it? 

“I just felt so bad,” he says, and you hear the way the words prick at his tongue, leave burn marks along his lips. “Because I didn’t know what to do after that. I wanted to love you back so badly but I just couldn’t.”

And even though you already knew this, even though you were already well aware that Jimin has always only seen you as a friend, for some reason hearing him say it aloud still hurts, still pierces your heart, wounds that your love for him alone cannot fix. 

“It’s not your fault,” you promise him, because throughout all of this, no matter what, you have never, ever blamed him for not loving you back. “I didn’t expect anything. At all. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“Don’t I, though?” Jimin asks, and God, he sounds so helpless, sounds like he’s tried everything under the sun to figure things out and still, nothing has felt right. “We had always been so close. I wondered why I couldn’t fall in love with you and the things that we did together when you could. I thought that I was doing something wrong. You deserved someone who would love you back, and I so desperately wanted to be that person.”

“You owed me nothing,” you declare. “You still don’t owe me a damn thing. All I wanted was for you to know.” And look where that got you.

“Knowing didn’t feel like enough,” Jimin divulges. “I wanted to do more for you than just acknowledge it. I replayed that night in my head, over and over, wondering what more I could have said to you.” He sighs, deep and slow and filled with weight, filled with a year’s worth of thoughts he never told anyone else. “You told me you loved me and it was all I could think about. Then and now.”

“You still think about it?” You wonder aloud, sad because Jimin doesn’t deserve to have this weight on his conscience when you are the one at fault, and hopeful because maybe, just maybe, your confession meant just as much to him as it did to you. 

“I can’t stop,” he confesses. And then he turns to you, turns to you in the glow of the moon, his eyes drowning in starlight, and he says, “Every time I look at you I think about how you love me.”

You don’t know what to say. You are too absorbed in the swirling sea of his irises, letting the warmth wash over you in waves, filling you up before emptying out again, shocks of cold before the heat races through you. Jimin is right there, right here, and he is gazing at you and you wonder. 

You wonder, what if. 

You wonder, what if he loved me back?

“Even when I was away from you I thought about it,” he chuckles to himself, amused at his own obsession. “I thought about you, that night, at the campfire. You were wearing this neon pink camp t-shirt and your marshmallow looked like coal and you had this warm orange glow on you, and I swear to God, that image is imprinted in my brain. I see it every time I close my eyes.”

You didn’t know that. 

“When I went on dates, I saw you instead. I would be sitting in a booth with some girl and she would be trying to talk to me about the menu and all I would see is you.” Jimin exhales, filling the pauses that he leaves between his sentences, eyes raking you up and down as if he’s trying to commit this scene to memory, as if this night on the pier is something worth remembering. “They knew, too. All of them told me that I should get over my ex before going on a brand new date.” 

Get over you? What about you was there to get over? Your love has always been one-sided. You have never known a world where it hasn’t.

“And I wouldn’t even try to explain to them that I didn’t have an ex to get over, and that you were the one who confessed to me, and that I didn’t love you like that,” he forces another laugh, like he doesn’t even believe the words he’s saying himself. “Then this summer rolled around, and I saw you arrive and I just can’t tell you in words how happy I was to see you. How looking at you just lifted my spirits.”

“I hardly recognized you at first,” you admit shyly. 

“I dyed my hair,” Jimin reminds you. That’s right. He had brown hair last summer. “And I wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t know how to without bringing up all the shit that happened last year, and things were awkward between us, and I guess…” he trails off, thinking for a moment. “I guess I just really, really wanted us to get back to the way things were, but I didn’t know how to. And I didn’t know what had changed.”

“Nothing changed,” you say, even though everything did. But loving Jimin has always been a constant in your life, a truth, and this summer was no different. “I wanted to go back to being friends with you, too.”

“I thought I wanted that, too.”

This time, you are the one who turns to look at him. What could he possibly mean by that? 

(Can it be?)

“At first, that’s all I wanted,” Jimin begins. “I wanted us to go back to being friends, I wanted us to eat lunch together and have it not be weird, I wanted us to spend time in the greenhouse and the arts and crafts room together, I wanted us to hang around the rest of the counselors without them noticing how different we were. But then I noticed that the hydrangea was wilting no matter what the fuck I did to keep it alive, and I realized that wanting our friendship back wasn’t enough for me anymore.”

You are frozen in place. You are locked into his gaze, body turning to stone, unable to even utter a single word. To breathe a single breath. And you look into his eyes, Jimin’s beautiful, ocean eyes, Jimin’s sparkling, ink eyes, and you pray. 

“And then Hobi partnered us up for the stupid camp counselor performance, and we got caught in the rain, and then we danced in the counselor meeting room and I just—” His chest heaves, words flounder. As if he has so much to say, as if the words are practically spilling off of his tongue, and yet they are still not enough. He closes his eyes. Pauses. Catches his breath. And then he asks, “If I asked you if you still loved me, would you say yes?”

“Yes,” you breathe out. 

“If I asked you if you wanted me to love you back, would you say yes?”

“Yes,” you whisper again. 

Jimin blinks.

“If I asked you if you wanted me to kiss you, would you say yes?”

You barely get out the first letter before Jimin is pulling you into him and pressing his fiery lips upon yours. His hand cradles your cheek, the other one splayed out on the wooden pier to keep his balance, dragging you into a messy, desperate kiss, one that sends sparks ricocheting throughout your body, turning your blood into liquid flames, that fills you up from the inside out. The feeling of his lips pressed upon yours makes your heart shake so wildly in its cage that it frees itself, growing a thousand times wider. The rose inside of you vanishes, finds itself replaced by a blooming, bright blue hydrangea, one that settles deeply within your soul. 

Your legs dangle off the pier as your arms wrap around Jimin’s body, curling around his torso in a futile effort to bring him closer than he already is, to feel the warmth of him press against you, sending jolts down your spine, into your bones. You feel yourself getting dizzy just at the feeling alone, kiss drunk, the rest of the world spinning like a goddamn teacup ride, but you cling onto him and you know that he will always be there to catch you if you fall. You know that he will always be there to steady you when you feel the world slipping out from beneath your feet. 

You have him, you have him, you have him. You have him, and he is right here, and he loves you like the sun loves the moon, and you love him like the waves love the shore.

When you part, you almost lose your balance and fall right off the damn pier. Jimin reaches out to grab you just in time, saving you from a watery grave (or just major embarrassment), and the two of you laugh, letting your voices fill the moonlit air, heads light, bodies blissed out. 

“Honestly, I was a little nervous you were going to say no,” he admits with a laugh. 

“Impossible,” you chide. “You know I’ve always loved you.”

No matter what, that will never change. 

“And now,” he says, pressing another kiss to your forehead, this one gentle and plush, “you know that I will always love you, too.”

It doesn’t feel like something long overdue. It doesn’t feel like something that you have been waiting and waiting and waiting for, something you have expected from the moment you told him. 

No. This feels like something new. 

This feels like your heart is in bloom. 

The end-of-camp show, no matter how much time and effort Namjoon puts into making it go smoothly, is a train wreck. But it is a train wreck in that wonderful way, in that way where you would be suspicious if things actually went according to plan, in that way where chaos and disarray reign supreme. Quite frankly, when it comes to the end-of-camp show, you never expect anything less. 

The truth is that the majority of the end-of-camp show performances are just for the counselor’s entertainment, an afternoon of fun to wrap up the end of camp, topped off by a fun meal (usually pizza) and a night around a bonfire, letting the heat warm your bodies from the inside out. Unless Jungkook and Taehyung pull some extremely ridiculous prank, the last official day of camp is usually everyone’s favorite, filled with snacks and music and laughter.

The performances by the campers go about as well as any performance by a bunch of elementary schoolers can go—that is to say, the kids remember the first five seconds of the choreography before they devolve into pandemonium, dancing as many weird, trendy dances as they can, and some you don’t even think have been invented yet. Nonetheless, Hoseok is proud, and beams at all of the campers as they scurry away from the center of the gymnasium once their dance is done, grabbing little snacks on the tables by the windows before settling in to watch the next stage. Hoseok does a good job of keeping the music current and upbeat so that nobody falls asleep, and gives the campers enough creative liberty so that it doesn’t feel too practiced. 

Lightly rehearsed, Hoseok likes to say. 

Absolute madness, Yoongi usually corrects.

After the dances, Seokjin and his hoard of campers with guitars the size of an overgrown ukelele make their way to center stage, and you and the other counselors bet on what stupid song he’s taught them all. He starts it off with everyone’s favorite and the most timeless of all tunes—Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star—before the musical highlight. 

(“It’s gonna be Fireflies,” Taehyung insists, so confident in his choice that he even wagers two of the homemade Rice Krispie Treats that Yoongi got all of the campers to make for today’s celebration. 

“It’s been too long since he rickrolled us,” Jungkook says, eyes narrowing suspiciously to Seokjin at the front of the room. “I’m just waiting for it.”

“Wonderwall, obviously,” Hoseok contributes, even though Seokjin got all of the campers from last year to play that. 

You and Jimin are both almost positive Seokjin has chosen to perform Let it Go, a song that will never truly escape you, but you keep your comments to yourselves. 

“I’m thinking Photograph,” Namjoon comments mindlessly, late to the conversation.

“The Nickelback song?” Yoongi says with a scoff. “Dude, we’re the only ones old enough to even know that song. No no, I think it’ll be Despacito.”

“If I have to hear Despacito one more time, I’m going to jump out of the f—” Taehyung stumbles on the syllable as Namjoon turns to glare at him, making Taehyung sputter for a replacement. “F… -reaking window. Watch me.”)

In the end, none of you guess correctly, because Seokjin has chosen to teach all of the campers how to play Country Road, Take Me Home, and honestly, none of you can even be mad about it because by the thirty second mark, you’re all singing along. There’s just something about that song that forces you to belt out the lyrics, something magical and irresistible. 

Afterwards, it is finally time for the counselor’s performance, which, if the camper’s excited screams are anything to go by, is apparently the peak of the afternoon. Hoseok puts on the same upbeat dance music and all of you go to town, following his choreography without any hitches before jumping into the solo section. Namjoon and Yoongi both attempt a trendy Internet dance and fail miserably, Taehyung and Hazel do a little tango that involves no accidents, and then it’s you and Jimin’s turn. 

The music isn’t really appropriate for the slow dance that Jimin taught you in the counselor meeting room, but he makes it work and you follow along, tracing his footsteps and laughing at the prickly sensation his hand on your waist sends shooting through you. You really have always been ticklish there. Hoseok only gives everyone thirty seconds before they’re booted off to the sideline, but thirty seconds is just enough time for Jimin to spin you once before pulling you into a kiss in front of dozens of campers and all of the counselors, whose hollers and hoots fill the gymnasium, bouncing off of the walls and ricocheting into your ears, when they watch you. It has your cheeks heating up something fierce, all embarrassed by Jimin’s big reveal, but the great big smile on his face makes it all worth it. He looks so happy to be here with you. He looks so goddamn happy to have you. 

It makes you feel like you can do anything. 

Ultimately, Jungkook and Seokjin get the greatest applause, because Jungkook lifts Seokjin into the air figure-skating style before Seokjin comes crashing down on him, and they land in a puddle on the gymnasium floor to the screams of all of the campers and counselors, who have never seen anything quite as artistically dramatic in their lives. 

Afterwards, you and Jimin retire to the snack tables alongside the rest of the counselors as the campers are free to roam the building, check out the art on display and eat as many ants on a log and homemade Rice Krispie Treats as they can get their grubby hands on. 

“Congrats, you guys,” Namjoon says, raising his dixie cup filled with lemonade. “It worked out after all.”

“I’m proud of you,” Yoongi murmurs to you, a soft smile gracing his features. 

“Love always prevails,” Jungkook declares, sighing happily, always a hopeless romantic at heart. You sure hope that one day, Jungkook will fall in love with someone who loves him back unconditionally, because he deserves it. 

“Which one of you confessed first?” Seokjin says, Taehyung nodding furiously behind you. You see that the bet is still on. 

“Me,” you say. 

“Me,” Jimin says. 

You both look at each other, eyebrows furrowed, clearly on separate wavelengths. 

Seokjin narrows his eyes. “Alright… which one of you said ‘I love you’ first?”

“That would be me,” you admit sheepishly, having a year’s headstart on Jimin when it comes to love confession. 

“I fucking knew it,” Seokjin says, palm out. Taehyung begrudgingly smacks five dollars into Seokjin’s hand, muttering to himself about how he was convinced that Jimin would tell you first. It makes you wonder, just a little bit, how long Jimin had known.

You open your mouth to defend yourself and your weak, weak heart, when you feel a tap on your side. Behind you is the same girl from the day that you were making cards to send back home to people you love, the one who absolutely grilled you about your feelings for Jimin. 

“Yes, Rose?” You ask happily. 

“So did you send it to him?” She questions. 

“Send what?”

“Your card. Did you send it to Mr. Jimin?” She elaborates, eyes wide in curiosity. You make a mental note to remind her to never stop being inquisitive. It will take her far. 

“No, I didn’t,” you say with a laugh, shaking your head. You look back at Jimin, where he’s laughing with Seokjin and Taehyung about their stupid bet on you, and you grin. He is so beautiful. It’s still hard to believe he’s yours. “Jimin doesn’t need a card to know that I love him.”

Not when he’s right here, and not when you know he loves you back. 

The counselor campfire is held on the day very last night that you spend together, after all of the campers have left the mountain, returning home, and you finally have the place to yourselves. Namjoon and Yoongi light it because everyone else has been banned from doing so after the Great Flame Incident two years ago, and then you all sit on the logs around the fire pit, reminiscing of the summer gone by, musing aloud about what the future holds. 

You and Jimin snuggle up together, and this night faintly reminds you of the one from last year in the way that Jimin still glows, warm and yellow, in the light of the fire, in the way he seems to make perfect s’mores no matter what, in the way that he laughs at everything that you say. But even with all of the similarities, nothing, literally nothing, could top how you feel right now, dancing on cloud nine with Jimin by your side. 

Never in your wildest dreams did you imagine you’d have him. Never in your wildest dreams did you think your confession would amount to anything more.

“You’re burning your marshmallow again,” Taehyung points out crudely, the side of your marshmallow already turning an ashy coal color. 

“Ah, fuck,” you mutter to yourself, yanking it away from the fire as you blow on it. 

“You’re never gonna learn, are you?” Jimin teases. He plucks his off of his stick, perfectly toasted, and holds it out for you. “Here, have mine.” You open wide and he pops it onto your tongue, the crisp, sweet flavor melting in your mouth as all of the other counselors groan, clearly wishing that they were somewhere other than here. Jimin’s fingers reach up to your chin, tilting your face towards him, before a thumb comes out to wipe away at the smudge on the side of your lip, a sticky white crumb that he pops into his mouth, earning another round of whines.

“Gross,” Seokjin says, nose scrunched up. “Just because you guys are in love now doesn’t mean you have to keep showing us. We get it.”

“Oh, just leave them alone,” Yoongi chides. “They’ve been pining after each other for so long, let them have this.”

“Thanks,” you murmur to Yoongi. You have a lot to thank him for. He has always been on your side, even when you weren’t. 

“Anytime,” he promises. 

“If they’re gonna be like this next year, then I don’t know how long I’m going to last,” Taehyung admits with a fond sigh, because no matter how much he pretends to be annoyed, you know that he’s happy for you. 

Namjoon sucks in a breath. “Uh, yeah, about next year…” he says, wringing his hands together. “I’m not going to be coming back.” You fall into silence, the only sounds the crackle of the fire, the rustle of the wildlife in the woods. “I have another internship at a firm, and then I’m going to be going into the job market, so I don’t, uh, I don’t really see myself coming back here.”

“Me too,” Yoongi chirps up, earning a surprised look from everyone else. “I’ve just been given an offer to produce music for this small record company, but they’re located across the country, so I’ll be moving soon. I guess—well, I guess now’s as good a time as any to tell you all.”

“Congrats,” you tell him, sad to hear he won’t be back but thrilled to know he’ll be doing something he truly loves instead. “Seriously, Yoongi. That’s amazing.”

“Yeah, man, that’s sick,” Jungkook pipes up. “When you’ve won your Grammy you have to remember to mention us.”

Yoongi chuckles to himself, small and quiet, but even in this orange light you can see the way his cheeks are turning cherry red, relishing in the praise. “I’ll miss you all,” he says. 

And slowly, one by one, you all begin to admit that even though you love it here, being a camp counselor had always been temporary, and it just wouldn’t be the same without everyone else here with you too. You and Jimin will be graduating this coming school year. So will Taehyung. Seokjin has a Master’s degree in acting that he wants to pursue. Even Jungkook, who is younger than all of you besides Hazel, has said that he plans to travel with his college lacrosse team next summer. 

“Damn,” Taehyung says when everyone is finished, as you all begin to count how many of you there will be left for next summer. “Who’s gonna do Namjoon’s job?”

“I already asked,” Namjoon says with a proud grin, “and Hazel said she is happy to take on the responsibility.”

“Oh, fuck yeah!” Seokjin shouts, giving Hazel a massive hug, nearly crushing her in two. “Hell yeah, Haze! You are going to be kick ass at that. I’m proud of you!”

The rest of the counselors soon follow suit, congratulating Hazel and cheering for her future. It almost makes you want to come back, but you know that Hazel will be fine without you. As long as she still has her secret stash. 

“Nice work, Haze,” you tell her, earning a shy smile from her in response. “You’ve always been a leader.”

“I’m just nervous I won’t be as good as Namjoon,” she admits timidly, clearly a little overwhelmed at such an enthusiastic response. 

“You have nothing to worry about,” Namjoon assures her. “I know you’ll be fine. Plus, you won’t have all of these losers to worry about, so your workload will be much lighter.”

“Hey!” Seokjin, Taehyung, and Jungkook all shout at once. 

“Don’t get me started on the two of you,” Namjoon chides, eyes narrowed. “You’ve caused me more stress than my senior thesis.”

“Out of love,” Seokjin swears, Jungkook and Taehyung nodding enthusiastically next to him. Namjoon rolls his eyes, even though you know that he secretly loves the extra work that they give him. It keeps him young, in that old-timey kind of way. 

“Then I guess this is it, isn’t it?” Hazel asks, standing up and holding out a finished s’more, already taking on her newly-bestowed head counselor duties. “I suppose I’ll do the honors. Congrats to Y/N and Jimin for finally figuring their relationship out, congrats to Yoongi for getting into that record company, congrats to Namjoon for getting his internship, and congrats to everyone else for doing what they love, and for not letting their dreams be dreams. This summer feels sort of like the end of an era, in a way, don’t you think? I mean, lots of us are moving on to bigger and better things, celebrating the past and aspiring to become people that we hope will be admired in the future. And I guess that I just want you all to know that no matter who you become, no matter what you do, I’ll always be someone who admires you.”

If you were a little drunk or just a little more sentimental, Hazel’s words would almost bring tears to your eyes, but instead you just join everyone in cheers, standing up and clinking your s’mores together.

And in a way, it really does feel like the end of an era. No more summers on the mountain, no more late-night camp pranks, no more hydrangeas in the greenhouse. You’re moving on, not only from this part of your life but from your almost-fruitless quest for love, from the place that led you to fall so deeply for Jimin, the place that has housed every memory you have ever saved of him. You’re moving on to a world where Jimin is with you every step of the way, where you know that he will always be there for you, where you no longer have to fight yourself to keep from loving him, where you have to do everything you can to preserve an already-fragile friendship. 

No. Now, you can take your first step forward with Jimin by your side. 

“Cheers!” Everyone shouts. 

“Cheers,” Jimin says to you, pulling you in for a quick little kiss, and no matter how hot the campfire burns Jimin’s lips upon yours will always be what warms you from within. “Cheers to us.”

You grin against his lips, pressing back because you can never get enough, and you murmur, “Cheers to us.”

“Hey! Jungkook!” Seokjin shouts right as Jungkook hops into his car. “When we text you in the group chat you better fucking respond!”

“I will, I will!” Jungkook screams back, voice so loud you can hear it despite the fact that all of his windows are rolled up. 

“No, he won’t,” Yoongi deadpans as he passes you by, duffel bags hanging from his shoulders. “You know he won’t.”

“He never does,” you agree. Getting a text from him is almost as impossible as winning the lottery. “I’ll call you, alright? I know you don’t really like texting, either.”

“Talking is just easier,” he says with a nod. “I’m looking forward to it. Call me whenever you need me.”

“I will,” you promise, watching as Yoongi bids you one final goodbye before heading to his own ride. He plops his bags into the trunk of Namjoon’s car before getting into the passenger seat. Namjoon pushes his head out of the window to wave, smiling wildly at you as he starts the car. You grin, waving back, and watch him, Yoongi, and Jungkook, disappear down the mountain. 

“You’re next, right?” 

You whip around to find Jimin standing behind you, a frisbee in one hand and a suitcase in the other. He won’t be leaving for another couple of hours, when Taehyung’s finally ready to go. They live close to each other so they figured they’d save money by splitting an Uber, which will be waiting for them at the bottom of the mountain.

“Yeah, gotta get back before college starts,” you say, dropping your bags at your feet. “But we’ll see each other before then, right?”

Jimin and you attend universities on opposite sides of the country. Loving each other is the easy part. Staying in love is what will challenge you. 

“Of course,” he promises. “I’ll visit whenever I can. And I’ll come see you on all my breaks during the semester, too. You and Jungkook.”

“Good, you better,” you say, and you pull him in for a bruising hug because you know that this will be the last time for a while. Not a long while, but a while, and even if you have committed every slope of his figure, every inch of his face to memory, you still have to remember how warm he is when you hold him, how soft his lips are when they touch yours. Those things… those are new. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll see you soon,” he assures you. “But I’ll miss you too.”

Several feet away, Hoseok honks the horn of your car to let you know that you’re all ready to go.

“I’ll call you when I’m home, okay?” You promise, pulling him in for another hug, one last time, feeling this strange desperation rush through you, like you won’t see him for weeks and this is all you’ll have left. “Isn’t it weird? You’re right here and I miss you already.”

“We’ll see each other again before you know it,” he says, pressing his lips to yours in a sweet, quick kiss. No matter how many times he does it still sends sparks shooting through your veins, but you suppose that that’s just another thing you’ll have to remember. When you part, he notices your worry, eyes softening at the sight. “Hey,” he says, lifting your chin up so you look at him. “I love you.”

You crack a smile. “I love you, too.” 

It’s not a goodbye.��

It’s an until I see you again.

You grab your duffel bags and hike them over your shoulder, footsteps heavy and weighted as you slowly make your way towards your car. Every four steps or so, you turn back just to make sure that Jimin’s still there, and sure enough, he’s watching you, this lopsided, love-drunk smile lacing his features. 

You place your bags in the backseat of your car before heading to the driver’s side, hand on the handle as you look up one final time. 

There Jimin stands in the middle of the clearing, the warm afternoon sun bathing him in a halo. There he stands, beautiful, and kind, and lovely, and in love. And you are so in love. You wave. He waves back.

And you know that you two will be alright. 

You jump into your car and tug the door shut behind you, keys in the ignition, engine revving, and you sigh, content and feeling confident in life. You peer into the rearview mirror to see Taehyung running up to Jimin, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and waving goodbye to you. You lift your hand up in response, watch as they bid you farewell as you creep towards the slope down the mountain. 

As you drive down the mountain, you take a deep breath, inhaling the fresh summer air, and you smile. 

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