#but also a dummy disaster :)

[izzysarchivedblogs]

REFUGE :  for one muse to shelter the other from enemies. / from liara to clint.

@torntruth -> mass effect au

It should have dawned on him a lot earlier than it had who the asari was. That would explain several things about the situation that he was now currently facing when bullets reined down upon the both of them. For a minute, he had thought that it was HIM who had brought this trouble. That wouldn't at all be surprising to Clint due to the fact that he's got enemies and people who genuinely don't like him and would love a shot at him. That isn't the counting people who have problems with him now that he's been made one of humanity's next spectres.

There's an apology ready on his lips, to go through the comms to the asari, because he doesn't actually know who could be after him today. ❝ Sorry ⸻ ❞ He does start, and Clint can't actually recall what it was as he's pulling the asari away with him, using his larger form to take a clip to the shoulder and get the both of them behind cover. It isn't until he's making note of the marksmen and their aim. Honestly, whoever hired these hit should get their credits back because they were shooting below a sixty percent; and since Clint never missed (made him the most deadly sniper) that wasn't enough for his standards.

All their shots were focused on the asari. So he looks over at her and studies her for a few more seconds that he had this entire job so far. There had been an inkling in the back of his mind that her face and name was familiar until it suddenly clicks when they both duck out of cover, and the hitmen fail to hit the blue-skinned alien. ❝ OH SHIT! ❞ Liara T'soni was familiar for several reasons; one he's pretty sure that he's had one of his crew use her brokage back on Illium, but that's not the only why she's significant.

❝ You're one of Shepard's crew. ❞ He says, and then comes the realization that they were definitely not shooting at Clint because he was Clint Barton, Ronin, or Hawkeye (okay and that one time he went by Goliath). All these bullets were for Doctor Liara T'soni. ❝ I take back my sorry ⸺ ERR, I mean so you're the reason we are getting shot at. ❞ He lines up a shot, and down the guy goes in one. Being the sharpest shot in the galaxy saved Clint on a lot of ammunitions purchases.

❝ See I was gonna apologize my burdens have been brought to you, but they definitely want you dead and not me, for once ⸻ any idea what or why? ❞ Looking in their direction, then the fact that Clint just nailed one head on? They probably weren't in a talking mood anymore. OOPS ⸺ this is why no on believes that Clint doesn't want to fight.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The reason you can’t buy a car is the same reason that your health insurer let hackers dox you

On July 14, I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! On July 20, I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

In 2017, Equifax suffered the worst data-breach in world history, leaking the deep, nonconsensual dossiers it had compiled on 148m Americans and 15m Britons, (and 19k Canadians) into the world, to form an immortal, undeletable reservoir of kompromat and premade identity-theft kits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach

Equifax knew the breach was coming. It wasn't just that their top execs liquidated their stock in Equifax before the announcement of the breach – it was also that they ignored years of increasingly urgent warnings from IT staff about the problems with their server security.

Things didn't improve after the breach. Indeed, the 2017 Equifax breach was the starting gun for a string of more breaches, because Equifax's servers didn't just have one fubared system – it was composed of pure, refined fubar. After one group of hackers breached the main Equifax system, other groups breached other Equifax systems, over and over, and over:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/equifax-password-username-admin-lawsuit-201118316.html

Doesn't this remind you of Boeing? It reminds me of Boeing. The spectacular 737 Max failures in 2018 weren't the end of the scandal. They weren't even the scandal's start – they were the tipping point, the moment in which a long history of lethally defective planes "breached" from the world of aviation wonks and into the wider public consciousness:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737

Just like with Equifax, the 737 Max disasters tipped Boeing into a string of increasingly grim catastrophes. Each fresh disaster landed with the grim inevitability of your general contractor texting you that he's just opened up your ceiling and discovered that all your joists had rotted out – and that he won't be able to deal with that until he deals with the termites he found last week, and that they'll have to wait until he gets to the cracks in the foundation slab from the week before, and that those will have to wait until he gets to the asbestos he just discovered in the walls.

Drip, drip, drip, as you realize that the most expensive thing you own – which is also the thing you had hoped to shelter for the rest of your life – isn't even a teardown, it's just a pure liability. Even if you razed the structure, you couldn't start over, because the soil is full of PCBs. It's not a toxic asset, because it's not an asset. It's just toxic.

Equifax isn't just a company: it's infrastructure. It started out as an engine for racial, political and sexual discrimination, paying snoops to collect gossip from nosy neighbors, which was assembled into vast warehouses full of binders that told bank officers which loan applicants should be denied for being queer, or leftists, or, you know, Black:

https://jacobin.com/2017/09/equifax-retail-credit-company-discrimination-loans

This witch-hunts-as-a-service morphed into an official part of the economy, the backbone of the credit industry, with a license to secretly destroy your life with haphazardly assembled "facts" about your life that you had the most minimal, grudging right to appeal (or even see). Turns out there are a lot of customers for this kind of service, and the capital markets showered Equifax with the cash needed to buy almost all of its rivals, in mergers that were waved through by a generation of Reaganomics-sedated antitrust regulators.

There's a direct line from that acquisition spree to the Equifax breach(es). First of all, companies like Equifax were early adopters of technology. They're a database company, so they were the crash-test dummies for ever generation of database. These bug-riddled, heavily patched systems were overlaid with subsequent layers of new tech, with new defects to be patched and then overlaid with the next generation.

These systems are intrinsically fragile, because things fall apart at the seams, and these systems are all seams. They are tech-debt personified. Now, every kind of enterprise will eventually reach this state if it keeps going long enough, but the early digitizers are the bow-wave of that coming infopocalypse, both because they got there first and because the bottom tiers of their systems are composed of layers of punchcards and COBOL, crumbling under the geological stresses of seventy years of subsequent technology.

The single best account of this phenomenon is the British Library's postmortem of their ransomware attack, which is also in the running for "best hard-eyed assessment of how fucked things are":

https://www.bl.uk/home/british-library-cyber-incident-review-8-march-2024.pdf

There's a reason libraries, cities, insurance companies, and other giant institutions keep getting breached: they started accumulating tech debt before anyone else, so they've got more asbestos in the walls, more sagging joists, more foundation cracks and more termites.

That was the starting point for Equifax – a company with a massive tech debt that it would struggle to pay down under the most ideal circumstances.

Then, Equifax deliberately made this situation infinitely worse through a series of mergers in which it bought dozens of other companies that all had their own version of this problem, and duct-taped their failing, fucked up IT systems to its own. The more seams an IT system has, the more brittle and insecure it is. Equifax deliberately added so many seams that you need to be able to visualized additional spatial dimensions to grasp them – they had fractal seams.

But wait, there's more! The reason to merge with your competitors is to create a monopoly position, and the value of a monopoly position is that it makes a company too big to fail, which makes it too big to jail, which makes it too big to care. Each Equifax acquisition took a piece off the game board, making it that much harder to replace Equifax if it fucked up. That, in turn, made it harder to punish Equifax if it fucked up. And that meant that Equifax didn't have to care if it fucked up.

Which is why the increasingly desperate pleas for more resources to shore up Equifax's crumbling IT and security infrastructure went unheeded. Top management could see that they were steaming directly into an iceberg, but they also knew that they had a guaranteed spot on the lifeboats, and that someone else would be responsible for fishing the dead passengers out of the sea. Why turn the wheel?

That's what happened to Boeing, too: the company acquired new layers of technical complexity by merging with rivals (principally McDonnell-Douglas), and then starved the departments that would have to deal with that complexity because it was being managed by execs whose driving passion was to run a company that was too big to care. Those execs then added more complexity by chasing lower costs by firing unionized, competent, senior staff and replacing them with untrained scabs in jurisdictions chosen for their lax labor and environmental enforcement regimes.

(The biggest difference was that Boeing once had a useful, high-quality product, whereas Equifax started off as an irredeemably terrible, if efficient, discrimination machine, and grew to become an equally terrible, but also ferociously incompetent, enterprise.)

This is the American story of the past four decades: accumulate tech debt, merge to monopoly, exponentially compound your tech debt by combining barely functional IT systems. Every corporate behemoth is locked in a race between the eventual discovery of its irreparable structural defects and its ability to become so enmeshed in our lives that we have to assume the costs of fixing those defects. It's a contest between "too rotten to stand" and "too big to care."

Remember last February, when we all discovered that there was a company called Change Healthcare, and that they were key to processing virtually every prescription filled in America? Remember how we discovered this? Change was hacked, went down, ransomed, and no one could fill a scrip in America for more than a week, until they paid the hackers $22m in Bitcoin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Change_Healthcare_ransomware_attack

How did we end up with Change Healthcare as the linchpin of the entire American prescription system? Well, first Unitedhealthcare became the largest health insurer in America by buying all its competitors in a series of mergers that comatose antitrust regulators failed to block. Then it combined all those other companies' IT systems into a cosmic-scale dog's breakfast that barely ran. Then it bought Change and used its monopoly power to ensure that every Rx ran through Change's servers, which were part of that asbestos-filled, termite-infested, crack-foundationed, sag-joisted teardown. Then, it got hacked.

United's execs are the kind of execs on a relentless quest to be too big to care, and so they don't care. Which is why their they had to subsequently announce that they had suffered a breach that turned the complete medical histories of one third of Americans into immortal Darknet kompromat that is – even now – being combined with breach data from Equifax and force-fed to the slaves in Cambodia and Laos's pig-butchering factories:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/01/politics/data-stolen-healthcare-hack/index.html

Those slaves are beaten, tortured, and punitively raped in compounds to force them to drain the life's savings of everyone in Canada, Australia, Singapore, the UK and Europe. Remember that they are downstream of the forseeable, inevitable IT failures of companies that set out to be too big to care that this was going to happen.

Failures like Ticketmaster's, which flushed 500 million users' personal information into the identity-theft mills just last month. Ticketmaster, you'll recall, grew to its current scale through (you guessed it), a series of mergers en route to "too big to care" status, that resulted in its IT systems being combined with those of Ticketron, Live Nation, and dozens of others:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/business/ticketmaster-hack-data-breach.html

But enough about that. Let's go car-shopping!

Good luck with that. There's a company you've never heard. It's called CDK Global. They provide "dealer management software." They are a monopolist. They got that way after being bought by a private equity fund called Brookfield. You can't complete a car purchase without their systems, and their systems have been hacked. No one can buy a car:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/business/cdk-global-cyber-attack-update/index.html

Writing for his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller tells the all-too-familiar story of how CDK Global filled the walls of the nation's auto-dealers with the IT equivalent of termites and asbestos, and lays the blame where it belongs: with a legal and economics establishment that wanted it this way:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/a-supreme-court-justice-is-why-you

The CDK story follows the Equifax/Boeing/Change Healthcare/Ticketmaster pattern, but with an important difference. As CDK was amassing its monopoly power, one of its execs, Dan McCray, told a competitor, Authenticom founder Steve Cottrell that if he didn't sell to CDK that he would "fucking destroy" Authenticom by illegally colluding with the number two dealer management company Reynolds.

Rather than selling out, Cottrell blew the whistle, using Cottrell's own words to convince a district court that CDK had violated antitrust law. The court agreed, and ordered CDK and Reynolds – who controlled 90% of the market – to continue to allow Authenticom to participate in the DMS market.

Dealers cheered this on: CDK/Reynolds had been steadily hiking prices, while ingesting dealer data and using it to gouge the dealers on additional services, while denying dealers access to their own data. The services that Authenticom provided for $35/month cost $735/month from CDK/Reynolds (they justified this price hike by saying they needed the additional funds to cover the costs of increased information security!).

CDK/Reynolds appealed the judgment to the 7th Circuit, where a panel of economists weighed in. As Stoller writes, this panel included monopoly's most notorious (and well-compensated) cheerleader, Frank Easterbrook, and the "legendary" Democrat Diane Wood. They argued for CDK/Reynolds, demanding that the court release them from their obligations to share the market with Authenticom:

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-7th-circuit/1879150.html

The 7th Circuit bought the argument, overturning the lower court and paving the way for the CDK/Reynolds monopoly, which is how we ended up with one company's objectively shitty IT systems interwoven into the sale of every car, which meant that when Russian hackers looked at that crosseyed, it split wide open, allowing them to halt auto sales nationwide. What happens next is a near-certainty: CDK will pay a multimillion dollar ransom, and the hackers will reward them by breaching the personal details of everyone who's ever bought a car, and the slaves in Cambodian pig-butchering compounds will get a fresh supply of kompromat.

But on the plus side, the need to pay these huge ransoms is key to ensuring liquidity in the cryptocurrency markets, because ransoms are now the only nondiscretionary liability that can only be settled in crypto:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

When the 7th Circuit set up every American car owner to be pig-butchered, they cited one of the most important cases in antitrust history: the 2004 unanimous Supreme Court decision in Verizon v Trinko:

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2003/02-682

Trinko was a case about whether antitrust law could force Verizon, a telcoms monopolist, to share its lines with competitors, something it had been ordered to do and then cheated on. The decision was written by Antonin Scalia, and without it, Big Tech would never have been able to form. Scalia and Trinko gave us the modern, too-big-to-care versions of Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft and the other tech baronies.

In his Trinko opinion, Scalia said that "possessing monopoly power" and "charging monopoly prices" was "not unlawful" – rather, it was "an important element of the free-market system." Scalia – writing on behalf of a unanimous court! – said that fighting monopolists "may lessen the incentive for the monopolist…to invest in those economically beneficial facilities."

In other words, in order to prevent monopolists from being too big to care, we have to let them have monopolies. No wonder Trinko is the Zelig of shitty antitrust rulings, from the decision to dismiss the antitrust case against Facebook and Apple's defense in its own ongoing case:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/073_2021.06.28_mtd_order_memo.pdf

Trinko is the origin node of too big to care. It's the reason that our whole economy is now composed of "infrastructure" that is made of splitting seams, asbestos, termites and dry rot. It's the reason that the entire automotive sector became dependent on companies like Reynolds, whose billionaire owner intentionally and illegally destroyed evidence of his company's crimes, before going on to commit the largest tax fraud in American history:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/billionaire-robert-brockman-accused-of-biggest-tax-fraud-in-u-s-history-dies-at-81-11660226505

Trinko begs companies to become too big to care. It ensures that they will exponentially increase their IT debt while becoming structurally important to whole swathes of the US economy. It guarantees that they will underinvest in IT security. It is the soil in which pig butchering grew.

It's why you can't buy a car.

Now, I am fond of quoting Stein's Law at moments like this: "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop." As Stoller writes, after two decades of unchallenged rule, Trinko is looking awfully shaky. It was substantially narrowed in 2023 by the 10th Circuit, which had been briefed by Biden's antitrust division:

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/22-1164/22-1164-2023-08-21.html

And the cases of 2024 have something going for them that Trinko lacked in 2004: evidence of what a fucking disaster Trinko is. The wrongness of Trinko is so increasingly undeniable that there's a chance it will be overturned.

But it won't go down easy. As Stoller writes, Trinko didn't emerge from a vacuum: the economic theories that underpinned it come from some of the heroes of orthodox economics, like Joseph Schumpeter, who is positively worshipped. Schumpeter was antitrust's OG hater, who wrote extensively that antitrust law didn't need to exist because any harmful monopoly would be overturned by an inevitable market process dictated by iron laws of economics.

Schumpeter wrote that monopolies could only be sustained by "alertness and energy" – that there would never be a monopoly so secure that its owner became too big to care. But he went further, insisting that the promise of attaining a monopoly was key to investment in great new things, because monopolists had the economic power that let them plan and execute great feats of innovation.

The idea that monopolies are benevolent dictators has pervaded our economic tale for decades. Even today, critics who deplore Facebook and Google do so on the basis that they do not wield their power wisely (say, to stamp out harassment or disinformation). When confronted with the possibility of breaking up these companies or replacing them with smaller platforms, those critics recoil, insisting that without Big Tech's scale, no one will ever have the power to accomplish their goals:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

But they misunderstand the relationship between corporate power and corporate conduct. The reason corporations accumulate power is so that they can be insulated from the consequences of the harms they wreak upon the rest of us. They don't inflict those harms out of sadism: rather, they do so in order to externalize the costs of running a good system, reaping the profits of scale while we pay its costs.

The only reason to accumulate corporate power is to grow too big to care. Any corporation that amasses enough power that it need not care about us will not care about it. You can't fix Facebook by replacing Zuck with a good unelected social media czar with total power over billions of peoples' lives. We need to abolish Zuck, not fix Zuck.

Zuck is not exceptional: there were a million sociopaths whom investors would have funded to monopolistic dominance if he had balked. A monopoly like Facebook has a Zuck-shaped hole at the top of its org chart, and only someone Zuck-shaped will ever fit through that hole.

Our whole economy is now composed of companies with sociopath-shaped holes at the tops of their org chart. The reason these companies can only be run by sociopaths is the same reason that they have become infrastructure that is crumbling due to sociopathic neglect. The reckless disregard for the risk of combining companies is the source of the market power these companies accumulated, and the market power let them neglect their systems to the point of collapse.

This is the system that Schumpeter, and Easterbrook, and Wood, and Scalia – and the entire Supreme Court of 2004 – set out to make. The fact that you can't buy a car is a feature, not a bug. The pig-butcherers, wallowing in an ocean of breach data, are a feature, not a bug. The point of the system was what it did: create unimaginable wealth for a tiny cohort of the worst people on Earth without regard to the collapse this would provoke, or the plight of those of us trapped and suffocating in the rubble.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/28/dealer-management-software/#antonin-scalia-stole-your-car

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[gemini-sensei]

Secret's Out | Miguel Diaz x Lawrence!Reader

Req: please do Miguel and cryptic pregnancy trope!!! like the process of her giving birth and can this be lawrencereader?? if not that’s okay :) CW: cryptic pregnancy, secret relationship, giving birth, Johnny being Johnny. (unedited)

It was no surprise Reader and Miguel fell for each other. Living in the same apartment complex just across from each other, seeing one another everyday, not to mention he was her father's karate student. It was a recipe for love.

It was also a recipe for disaster, as both Miguel and Reader knew that her father was going to have his head if he ever found out about them.

Johnny Lawrence was old school. He wouldn't like the idea of his star student getting together with his daughter. He didn't even like the idea of her dating even though she was 19 years old and perfectly capable of taking care of herself, thanks to yours truly of course. He'd taught her everything she needed to know about defending herself, not letting anyone sell her bullshit, and being so assertively herself that no one could argue with her about anything. He prided himself in at least raising a daughter who was headstrong, though that sometimes came back to bite him in the ass.

It wasn't one of those days, thankfully, and he was able to work in peace as she helped out around the dojo. She was mostly in charge of helping in demonstrations and setting up dummies as needed, but for the most part, things were going well. It was with LaRusso that Johnny had any problems with as they still butt heads from time to time on how to teach their students.

Reader was talking to Anthony and Devon about something when she felt a pain shoot up her back and through her stomach. She was a tough young lady, so she didn't let it show very much, but as her eyebrows scrunched up, the two students gave her weird looks.

"Are you okay, Reader?" Devon asked, looking her over carefully.

The pain lingered but she nodded. "Yeah, must be a muscle spasm or something."

She rubbed her back, thinking it would pass quietly. Though she'd never felt pain like that before, she wasn't all that concerned with it and she dragged Anthony with her to grab the bo staffs for the next and final lesson. It wouldn't be long before she got to go home.

Halfway through the lesson, though, the same pain surfaced and she felt like she was cramping. It threw her off her drills with the bo and she groaned, waving off the concerned looks of those around her. She didn't need them gawking at her and staring. She didn't finish the lesson with everyone and it pissed her off to no end, but she decided not to dwell on it. The last thing she needed was unnecessary stress on top of whatever it was bothering her.

She walked into the bathroom of Miyagi-Do while the students called it a day. Her father and Daniel cleaned up the yard and patio while she splashed some water on her face. She looked at herself in the mirror and felt her face with the back of her hand, but nothing felt off and she didn't look like she was sick. She just looked like she was in pain, which she was, but she quickly shook that look off and decided to finish the day's work. Going home would be fine.

However, she could barely sweep the interior of the house because she kept cradling her belly and groaning. The pain was consistent and happening more often. When her dad and Mr. LaRusso came in to close up, hardly anything was done and they had to question why.

"Reader, you're usually done and gone by now," Daniel said.

She waved him off with a huff. "Cut me some slack, old man. I feel like shit."

"Ah, it's that time of the month," Johnny said, seeing the way his daughter held herself and was slightly slouched over. "You always pull through, you'll be fine."

"Fuck off," she said, knowing damn well he didn't understand a woman's period. She thought about slugging him in the gut and giving him a taste of what that felt like when the pain shot through her again, harder and worse than before. She cried out and almost fell to the floor, only barely leaning against the wall to save herself.

Tears pricked her eyes as the pain became unbearable. Her breathing quickened as it persisted for a moment, her father and Daniel on either side of her in an instant.

Daniel wiped her forehead of sweat she didn't even know about and looked at her father. "I think this is serious. You should take her to the hospital."

Johnny looked worried and fearful of what that could mean, but he didn't argue. "Yeah, yeah, okay. Reader, can you walk?"

"I don't know," she whined, head leaned back against the wall as she put her energy into not crying.

Keeping her eyes clothes, she felt her father pick her up and carry her outside. Daniel led the way, opening the doors in their way. She was placed in her father's van and he buckled her in. He held her face and said, "You're gonna be okay. Whatever this is, you'll get through it."

"Just get me outta here," she groaned.

He nodded and hurried to the other side of the car. He drove as fast and without a care, only thinking of his daughter as she screamed in pain with each shooting pain that came and went. In between those moments, she was moaning and groaning in misery.

Despite his speed, things weren't going fast enough for Reader. Things started to feel weird and hurt more as she sat there. She couldn't sit with her legs together, unable to close them for some reason. She couldn't think straight, her whole body sending signals to her brain about how much pain she was in, and it sucked. However, she began even more scared when she felt a rush of hot liquid gush from between her legs and she was too embarrassed to say anything to her father.

Then something inside of her moved and she didn't know what to make of it. She reached between her legs to feel something bulging from her cunt and she burst into tears, scaring her father.

It had been a long time since he'd seen her cry, especially out of fear or pain, so what the fuck was going on?

When they got to the hospital, Johnny rushed in with her in his arms and she was quickly taken away from the emergency room lobby, leaving both of them alone. No one had any idea of what they were getting into, getting rushed, half-informed explanations from Johnny and quick answers from Reader before she was screaming again. It all happened so fast, but to Johnny, it felt like forever. His mind conjured up the worst case scenarios and he didn't know what to do with himself.

Robby showed up not long after, having gotten word from Mr. LaRusso that his half-sister was rushed to the hospital. He immediately went to Johnny. "What happened?"

"I don't know. One minute, she was fine, and the next she's screaming and crying," he explained, shaking his head. The screams and cries of his only daughter are trapped in his head and it's shaken Johnny to his core. "That's the toughest girl I know. She doesn't cry easily, Robby."

Robby rubbed his father's back in an attempt to comfort him. "I know."

They sit there for an hour before someone can tell them anything.

Carmen Diaz comes out, being neighbors and knowing the family well, she wanted to be the one to give them the update on Reader. She thought Reader was such a nice, strong girl. She knew she and Miguel were close, but she didn't know just how close until about forty minutes ago when Reader made a shocking confession to her. Nevertheless, Carmen held Reader's hand as pushed through the pain.

"Johnny, Robby," she said softly as she approached. She offered a smile because while the situation was scary and unpredictable, it hadn't ended horribly. In fact, it was a joyous occasion. "Reader's going to be okay."

"Okay? You sure? She was screaming her head off all the way here," Johnny said, standing from his seat.

"Yes, I'm sure," she said. She took a deep breath. "She gave birth to a healthy little girl."

"Gave birth?" Robby repeated, a shockwave hitting him and his father. How was that possible?

"Like a real baby?" Johnny asked. "Where'd that come from? She wasn't pregnant. I would've known if she was pregnant."

Carmen nodded. "Well, it would appear that she didn't even know she was pregnant. It's called a cryptic or hidden pregnancy and, as the name suggests, it's like a secret. She showed little to no symptoms, got her period regularly, and didn't gain a noticeable amount of weight. It's not typical, but not unheard of."

Johnny and Robby had to sit with that for a minute, letting it sink in. Reader had just given birth to a secret baby that none of them, herself included, knew about. Johnny was still processing everything when Robby asked, "Can we see her?"

"She wants the baby's father to come in first."

"Who the Hell is the baby's father?" Johnny asked, getting protective and defensive. He just spent well over and hour worrying and pacing the hospital lobby only to get sidelined by some shmuck that wasn't there. From where he was standing, this guy better be good enough for his daughter to do something like that.

At that moment, Miguel came running into the lobby with pure panic rushing through his bloodstream and sweat pouring down his face.

"Where is she? Where's Reader?" he asked, looking between everyone there. At that moment, he didn't care about the fact that no one knew they were together. He only cared about her and the emergency that he had to be there for. He's gotten few details over the phone when his mom called, only knowing that he had to be there. "Is she okay? Was there some kind of accident?"

Robby stared at Miguel, fire in his eyes. "No, but I might cause one soon..."

Miguel looked at him weirdly, knowing that Robby was going to be protective of Reader, but now didn't seem like the time. He turned to his mom for answers.

"There wasn't an accident, Miggy, she's okay," she assured him, rubbing his arms to comfort him. "She's being moved to the maternity ward and once they've got her settled in a room over there, you can go see her."

"Maternity ward? Why would she need to be there?" Miguel asked.

He felt Johnny and Robby's eyes burning holes into his whole body as they stared him down. He looked at them questionably, as confused as they had been only minutes ago. Then it dawned on him. "She's pregnant?"

"Was," Johnny grunted, glaring at his star student. "She had the baby already."

"What? How? I mean- how is that possible?"

Carmen rubbed his back as she got a page on her beeper. She checked it before looking at him. "I'll explain it on the way over there. Why don't the three of you follow me?"

By the time they got to Reader's room, Miguel was up to date on the basics what cryptic pregnancies were and how they didn't show themselves. He also got an earful from Johnny about the situation, which sounded a lot like "I can't believe you would do this to me" and "that's my daughter, the one girl in the whole world you, my student, shouldn't have ever gotten with." Robby stayed quiet the whole way there.

Miguel walked right into the room to find an exhausted Reader sitting up on the bed with a baby blanket in her arms. She was just staring down at the little bundle, the smallest of smiles on her lips. When she heard him enter the room, thankfully alone because she wasn't ready to face her father (and she didn't even know Robby was there yet).

"Migs," she said, voice barely above a whisper.

He walked over to her slowly, feeling as though he was in some sort of false reality. How was this possible? How could they not know? Even though he knew the answers now, he was still turning those questions, and more, over in his head. What did this mean for them? He was in college, how was he going to help her raise a baby? Pay for a baby? They didn't even have anything for a baby. They were so unprepared, so there was a part of his mind that thought this was some kind of weird dream he was having.

However, when he was close enough to see the little face of the baby - their baby - peeking out from the blankets, he knew it was real.

Despite her small size, their baby girl had a mop full of dark curls on her head. She had the smallest nose and tiniest lips he'd ever seen. She was fast sleep in Reader's arms, unbothered by anything else around them.

"She looks like you," Reader said, looking up at him with a small smile.

Miguel let out a little laugh. "You think so?"

"Yeah," she told him and giggled. She yawned but tried not to let it show. He put a hand on her shoulder, making her look up at him, and he saw how tired she truly was. She barley had any energy let, using what was left to admire their tiny little surprise. "I almost gave birth to her in my dad's van."

He laughed and leaned down to kiss her head. "Glad you made it here in time." He felt so bad that she had to go through that alone. "I'm sorry I wasn't here."

"Don't be. Seriously, I swear, if you start apologizing for that every day, I'll punch you in the throat," she told him, her brash attitude shining through. He smiled despite her threat. "I'm just happy I'm not dead. Besides, your mom was here and she's great."

"Yeah, she's pretty awesome," he said. He looked back at the baby in Reader's arms and reached out to her, touching her soft hair. "Do you have a name for her?"

Reader shook her head. "I can hardly think right now. I was hoping you'd know something."

"I... I don't know," he said and chuckled. He sat on the edge of her bed and stared at her. "We'll think of something, though."

As they sat in silence, from outside, Johnny and Robby were watching from the door. They peered in but didn't enter, letting the couple have their moment with their new daughter. Johnny still didn't know what to make of it, but as he watched the way Miguel interacted with Reader and their baby, he had a pretty alright feeling about it.

Robby put it into the best words, though; "I guess if it's gonna be anyone, Miguel's good enough."

[strwberryblast]

𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐅𝐈𝐀𝐒𝐂𝐎 | Zuko x GN!Reader

•·•·•·•·•·•·•·•·•·•••·•·•·•·•·•·•·•·•·•••·•·•·•·•·•·•·•·•·••

You’d never imagined that a night of homemade cooking with Zuko could be so chaotic. When he insisted on preparing a meal himself, with his firebending skills as his secret ingredient, you were intrigued but also a little wary. Now, as you step into the kitchen, you’re greeted by a scene straight out of a disaster movie: flour dust clouds the air, smoke billows from the pan, and Zuko, looking both determined and slightly panicked, is attempting to juggle ingredients that seem more eager to escape than cooperate. His usual composed demeanor is replaced with a mix of frustration and sheepishness, and you can’t help but stifle a laugh as he throws another batch of flour into the air with an exasperated sigh.

“Zuko, you’re a mess,” you chuckle, a playful grin spreading across your face. He jumps, turning his body towards you with a startled look, his face flushing red. “Oh, hi [Name]...” he says sheepishly, shuffling his body so he’s awkwardly blocking the oven with his form.

You laugh again, finding his flustered reaction endearing. “You know, the mess is all over the walls and not just on the oven, you big dummy.”

His embarrassment only grows as he glances around at the flour-splattered kitchen and the streaks of smoke marking the walls. He looks back at you, a mix of exasperation and amusement in his eyes. “I guess I underestimated how tricky cooking could be,” he admits with a sheepish smile.

"I was trying to surprise you with dinner," he sighs, his body slumping over in defeat, you can't help but melt a little at your boyfriends words.

“I don’t know, your cooking skills seem to be on fire—literally,” you tease, stepping closer to him. As you peer around him, you see the pan on the stove, its contents reduced to a charred mess. You can’t help but chuckle at the sight.

“Here, let me help you,” you offer, giving him a sympathetic smile. Zuko, pouting like a scolded child, looks back at you with a mix of disappointment and frustration.

“But it was supposed to be a surprise for you,” he huffs, his cheeks still flushed from embarrassment. “I wanted it to be perfect.”

You stifle a laugh, touched by his effort and determination. “Well, I appreciate the thought, but it looks like you could use a hand. Let’s see if we can salvage this, alright?”

Zuko’s frown softens, and he nods, clearly relieved to have your support. “Thanks. I guess I got a bit carried away with the firebending.”

You walk over to the stove, carefully adjusting the heat and inspecting the pan. “Maybe just a little,” you say, with a playful look in your eye.

Zuko admires you as you begin to work. You pull out a few ingredients from the pantry, and with a practiced hand, you start to salvage what’s left of the meal. You quickly begin to scrape away the burnt bits and try to make sense of the charred remains.

“I’m going to need to add some fresh ingredients,” you say, glancing at Zuko. “Do you have any more vegetables or spices you were planning to use?”

He nods excitedly, as he goes to the fridge pulling out a couple of vegetables and herbs. "Can you cut them up for me, please?" You ask, glancing over at your boyfriend whose eagerly nodding, happy to help, causing you to smile.

With you help you guys finish up the meal, the kitchen still a disaster, but the food smelt better then before. You set the table, getting ready to eat.

You and Zuko sit across from each other, both eager to taste the meal you’ve managed to salvage. With a shared look of anticipation, you each take a bite of the food. As you chew, you notice Zuko’s face light up with pride, a smug grin spreading across his features as if he were the mastermind behind the meal.

You can’t help but tease him. “Get that smug look off your face, Zuko. I was the one who did most of the work!”

Zuko laughs, “oh, come on. I may have messed up the cooking, but I was still part of the team, right?” He takes another bite, savoring the taste. “Besides, I think I contributed a fair bit of help.”

"Yeah cutting the vegetables was a lot of help. Also you're doing the dishes," you say, a smirk on your face.

He leans forward over the table, his eyebrows furrowed a pout on his face "Seriously? I barely got the chance to enjoy the meal, and now I’m stuck with cleanup duty??" he huffs.

You laugh, "maybe we can switch, you can handle the kitchen disaster and I'll do the dishes!" You jokingly suggest, he leans back in his chair playful smile on his face as he shakes his head, "no you're right, the dishes are fine."

After finally finishing the cleanup, both of you plop down on the couch, exhausted. You lean your head on his shoulder, yawning. “Next time we cook, we’ll do something that doesn’t involve setting things on fire,” you say.

He laughs softly, wrapping his arms around you pulling you in. “Deal.”

•·•·•·•·•·•·•·•·•·•••·•·•·•·•·•·•·•·•·•••·•·•·•·•·•·•·•·•·••

@ikrivi

masterlist

request rules

[fahye]

hi freya! your work with the TLB series is phenomenal and truly a gift to my life! do you have any advice for first time book planning/outlining, specifically in the realm of historical fiction?

oh boy. I rely on two guidelines for my planning process, and they are absolutely NOT historical fiction specific, but you can have them anyway:

make the romance (if there's a central one) more or less follow the romancing the beat structure, which is both simple and very flexible.

a structure-for-dummies version of four act structure, which boils down to deciding early on three key landmarks:

at the 25 % mark, something happens which commits the characters fully to the story, whatever that is.

at the 50% mark, something major happens which twists the direction and shape of the story - new key information is revealed, the second body is found, first sex scene, whatever.

at the 75% mark, the story tips towards crisis/disaster/the lowest emotional point.

...then I try to sketch out a dot point list of a roughly equal number of scenes to take place on either side of each of these (these are the four acts). this is how I make pacing work as early as the first draft, when I have very little innate sense of pacing and I detest doing structural edits.

ALSO: start as late as possible in the story (have the main inciting incident take place within the first scene) and finish as early as possible (diana wynne jones is particularly excellent at this; I will sometimes bend this rule if an epilogue is expected, but my PERSONAL opinion is that for the most part You Don't Need That Epilogue).

this may be helpful for you, or it may be no help at all. most writers discover what balance of planning/not planning works for them via trial and error. good luck!

[evandsolo]

You've always been there | ft. Yunho

jeong yunho x reader genre : fluff, roomates to lovers words : 3,685. trigger warning : cursing, mention of narcism. plot : you've been to a lot of dates but each of them has been a complete disaster until your roomates had an idea. side note : it's actually my first try writing such things. It might not be perfect, please be gentle. thanks, love.

Why do you keep on going on those goddamn dates?  You think, on the way home. Assholes, pure narcissists, losers. They all are the same in the end. The same locations, the same boring conversations and they aren’t even offering to pay for the bill. What could you wait from people spending their day swiping on a shitty app? Were your expectations too high? or their standards too low? The ending scheme remains as always: you’re coming home, alone. This time you promise yourself; you’re deleting that puddle of nonsense from your phone. No more dates, ever.

You push the entrance door in a sigh of relief. Done with the dummies. Everything is quiet, as usual. We only hear the voices of the actors on TV. The usual drama Yunho loves to watch when you’re not home. As soon as he realized you were home, he turned out the TV, and his big brown eyes to you. “Spill the tea, Gorgeous.” He says his usual giant smile on the face.

You drop by his side on the couch in an umpteenth sigh. “I hate men so much.” And you mean it. They’re so disappointing, how could you not hate them? “All of them? Even me?” Of course not. Jeong Yun-ho was the best man you’ve ever known. A smile appears on your face before you cast an amused look at him. “Especially you!” You say, bumping your shoulder on his arm, making him laugh. “I’m just so mad they can’t even reach a little bit of respect to the people they have in front of them.” That dumb dude you met tonight, spent the entire time watching the match on TV. He barely even took a real look at you, or even was interested in what you were saying. You’ve never felt more alone or disrespected in your whole life. You take your time to explain everything to your best friend. Your voice is filled with anger and disappointment. Mostly, deep down your heart, you felt like there was no hope anymore.

It was so difficult to talk with someone that was interesting and interested. It was obvious that everything had gone wrong, and that you’ll never find somebody that will treat you the right way. “Their loss. They don’t know how amazing you are.” He says, trying to make you feel better, surrounding you with one arm. “That’s what you think.” You add, looking at his face. “I just wanted to have a cute date, something that was nice and simple. A moment that feels new and refreshing. But it was too much to ask.” You say, pouting your lips, leaning your head on his strong shoulder. “Can I do something to ease your mood?” nodding in a slight despair. “Please. I’d very much appreciate it.” 

You knew Yunho for a few years now. He first was your classmate and then, he became your roommate, in a much bigger apartment than your small student room. It was convenient for the both of you and living by his side was easy. He was nice, quiet, clean, funny, also very handsome, which, you can admit, was quite an advantage. But above all, he knew perfectly how to make you feel better. He leaves your side so fast you suddenly felt cold. Your sight follows his paths to the kitchen, curious about what he’ll do. “You should take a moment to take a shower, you’d feel much better after that.” He says, not even looking at you, but he surely felt your eyes on his back. “Look at you, fathering me.” You hear him laugh, while you were reaching the bathroom.

And he sure was right, the water was the perfect remedy to your bad mood, feeling the water running down your muscles made you feel very much at ease. You surround yourself with a delicious flowery perfume. You adore it. It was actually him that offered you that perfume a few years ago, for your birthday. Since then, it has become your favorite amongst all the others you already had. You feel even better after you sunk yourself in your favorite night gown. A delicious smell of sugar reaches your nose, as soon as you got out of the steamy room. God bless having such a good person in your life.  On the counter of the kitchen were waiting your favorite drink and those heated cookies you loved so much. Your heart suddenly burst in tender. How sweet of him. “And we can watch that show that you love, if it can helps.” He proposed, soon after he saw that you were back in the living room. “I just wanted a hug, Yunho.” You say, but oh how much you appreciated every little thing he made to make you feel the best. “Is it too much? We can just eat and…” “No. Of course, not. I’d love to watch that show with you.” You smile. Everything was just so on point, and you’ve never felt as understood ever before.

Both of your bodies now lay on the couch covered by a small throw that Yunho insisted on taking with you. The storm in your mind had cease to rage. It’s now pure joy and peace thank to that delicious chocolate and peanut butter cookies that you had devoured. The show that the TV was playing was your favorite. It portrayed the story of a strong woman crossing border to follow the love of her life. It makes you feel emotional every time, but oh how much you loved it. Your head is resting on Yunho’s lap as you’re focused on the screen, but you could feel his sight on your face. “What? Is there something on my face?” You did not even turn your eyes to him, you knew. “I’m waiting for the moment when you’ll shed a tear.” He replied in a pouty voice. You caught him red-handed. “Don’t you dare taking a picture and send it to the boys, or you’ll better sleep with one eye open.” Next time you’ll see Choi San, he’ll surely make a point about you crying on what he loves to call a boring show. And they’ll gently make fun of you. “You’re a wild one, y/n. I’m terrified.” He says, jokingly, putting a hand on your hair. You grant him with a dark sight, before focusing on the screen again. When the sad part comes, you can’t even hold back the tears. You sniff loudly, soaking Yunho’s thigh. It made him giggle, while rubbing your shoulder in comfort. His giggle doesn’t even feel judgmental. You knew you could cry freely; it just amused him to witness how emotional you could be.

The tv continued to run for a few more episodes, but you couldn’t see them all. You fell asleep without even realize it. “y/n ?” he whispered but you were so far already you didn’t even hear him. He spent a few minutes watching you sleep. You seemed so peaceful so comfortable on his legs. He wished he could stay here a little bit more so that he could admire you endlessly, but he knew how insane that would be. He picked you up in his big arms, to carry you to your room. It gently puts you on your bed and covers you with a light blanket so you could feel warm. “Goodnight, sweet.” He says lightly, before you answer in the mumble of your sleep “’night dear.”

You can’t even remember when and how you reach your bed, but you’re waking up in your sheets, alone, as usual. A sigh comes out your mouth as you’re leaving the sheets to grab your phone in the living room. Next to it, there’s a hand-written note. The usual curves of Yunho’s writing. It was simple, elegant, just as he was. He took some time to write it, instead of just a text. It warmed your heart. 

You left your phone in the kitchen yesterday, i didn't wanted to disturb your sleep by bringing it to your room. There's some fresh cutout fruits in the fridge if you’re hungry. I’m running errands, coming home asap. 

Also, I need you to be ready when I’m back, taking you out today. 

X, Yunho.  

You can’t even contain your smile. But you realized soon he must have been gone for a little while now, so he might be back home soon. Screw your breakfast, there’s no time to waste. You can’t help but be curious about what is on your friend's mind. 

You came out of your room fully ready at the very same moment when you heard the click of the keys on the door. Yunho comes in and your heart flutters immediately. “Hi, slept well ?” He asks, the biggest smile on his face. “ Perfectly. Who are these beautiful roses for ?” You couldn't hold back the question, pointing at the bouquet he was holding in his hand. “ For the neighbor, obviously!” He started, you could feel his smile in his voice. “ It's actually the first step of our day. White roses, as you like them.” He hands down the bouquet to you and your heart skips a beat. “ You didn't have to do all of this, Yunho. That's adorable.” You're surrounded with the perfect smell of the roses and a cloud of tenderness. “ You felt so bad yesterday, I thought it was a good idea to show you how you are supposed to be treated. To make you feel better.” He has always been all about acts of service, but this. It felt extra special. “ So I'm taking you on a day of dates.” You're suddenly completely speechless. “ Yunho…” You whispered, tears flooding your eyes. “ That's the best thing nobody has ever done to me.” Your heart was racing, “ You deserve it, Y/N” 

Fuck, how could he be that nice ? 

Right after the flowers were put in some water, you followed Yunho outside, still so curious about today's program. “Where are you taking me ?” You ask while buckling your seatbelt. “I'd rather keep it a secret. And you better not overthink everything. Let me guide you.” Not overthink? How could you even do that ? “ Don't look at me like that. You'll enjoy it, I promise.” But you wanted to know, and not even the usual GPS was indicating your destination. How frustrating. You hate not being in control and this was way out of your comfort zone. But you knew you could trust him with your guts. You’ve always been safe by his side. 

12:02 - 

“ I hope you’re hungry.”  Yunho’s holding the door for you. You know that place. A fancy restaurant you’ve spotted on social media, a few weeks ago. How did he knew? Your eyes are sparkling and your heart feels so warm. You are installed near a window that enables you to have a pretty view of the city. The lights, the music, everything made it perfect. Nobody had ever taken you somewhere that fancy before. “Are you okay ?” He asked, softly, a warm smile on his face. You can’t help but feel the warm coming in your cheeks. “Y-yeah ! That’s so… amazing.” you whisper, looking around you. “That is a lot.” You add, in a little smile. The flowers, now this. You’ve never felt so cared about before. “As long as you are happy, it’s nothing.” Hi Google, how to not melt in front of someone ? You order some food, your stomach is raging just by reading the menu.

Fortunately the food came by really fast, and it looked just like in your dreams. You and Yunho shared a pretty animated conversation about a lot of subjects, but the only thing you were focused on, was his smile, the way he looked so happy. The soft curve of his lips, the sun in his honey-like voice, the spark in his eyes. You feel something was shifting slowly. “ What’s on your mind ?” You hear, tearing you apart from your daydream. “Huh ? Oh, nothing. I was thinking about how good this is !” You smile, pointing at your plate. “Oh really ? Can I ?” “You’ll love it !” You hand him your fork so he could try your dish. “Oh damn, yours is so much better than mine !” He says, his eyes wide open. Without asking permission, you exchange dishes, so he can have the other half. You always used to do that, sharing was so obvious. “How did you know this place ?” You finally ask, curious. “I saw that you shared it on your page, I kept the name, so i could take you there one day…” He admits, lowering his gaze on his plate. Your heart skips a beat. Take me there... ? Oh Yunho... Your hand lightly reaches his to grab it. “That’s really so nice of you.” He has always been so thoughtful. Every little attention was heartwarming, like a summer sun. You trace circles on the back of his hand, making a smile appear on his face. “ I really like to see you smile. Seeing you happy really is important to me, you know.” You nod, so deeply touched by his words. 

This day was so overwhelming already. It sounded so much like real dates. Going back to reality will be so hard. 

4:17 pm 

Next location, the beach.

The sun was shining brightly. You’ve never seen such a bright day in so long. It looked like every setting was made to make your day even better. It really was everything you’ve ever asked for on a date. It was simple but so nice. It looks like you, like what you loved. You’re walking side by side, in the sun, admiring the waves crashing on the sand and the rocks. The sound of it was quite relaxing. In the sun, you could admire every angle of Yunho’s beautiful features. Something in his beauty catches you, you couldn’t stop to observe him. He was so singularly handsome. 

A funfair was taking place on the pier and you were walking straight to it. The little girl inside your head was screaming in joy. Funfair always had been something you enjoyed to do. It makes you feel like there’s only happiness in the world. The smells, the sounds of it, makes your heart so warm and recharged. You grab Yunho’s hand, intertwining your fingers. You needed no words, to tell him how happy you feel at the moment. “Can we go to the claw machine ?” You asked with excitement, making him laugh. He nods and leads you there. He let you take a look at every machine. “Have you seen that panda ? Isn’t he so cute ?!” Your voice rose slightly to the trebles while you were pointing at the stuffed panda in the very rear of the machine. “Okay, let’s try to catch it !” He lets you go first. He steps behind your back and rests a hand on your shoulder as you're trying to focus on your goal. His contact makes you shiver and you experience the difficulty of not concentrating on the heat that it releases through the layers of tissues covering your skin. 

First try. Fail. Second try, fail.

You're whining with frustration. The third attempt remains a failure. You can’t help the frustrating sigh to get out your throat. “Lemme try!” He says behind your back.He advances his hand to grab the game handle. The music starts again, and he tries twice without catching it. “I’m gonna try again, there’s no way we’re coming home without it.” He adds determination in his voice as he pulls another coin in the machine. The claw closes itself around the panda’s arm, and you’ve never prayed that much. You put your hand on Yunho’s while you take a look at the plushie. Then finally, you both exult with joy when the animal falls into the right area. Your smile is so wide, as you’re turning to hug tight the man behind you. “You did it !” You say close to his ear. He relishes his embrace and he leans to catch the plushie. He hands it to you with the biggest and proudest smile on his face. “You better hug it tight when I'm away from you.” He says, making your heart race again. “I’d rather hug you, forever. You’re softer and warmer.” you add, locking his sight in yours. “ But that will do if you're not home. It'll be a little bit of you.” you smile.

There was something in the air that made you feel like that was where you belonged. Everything was perfect, as you always imagined it to be, except you’ve never ever thought that Yunho would be the best date of your life. Turns out, he is absolutely perfect. “What about some candy floss and a big cola ?” he asks, grabbing your hand. “I’d love that. We should take a giant one so we can share.” He nods. You rush to the candy station and soon you have a giant pink fluff ball between your hands. In less than a second a big part is already in your mouth, making you laugh, as sugar remains on the corner of your lips. “Wait, lemme help you.” He says before gently passing his thumb on your skin. The touch of his skin makes you gently shiver and for a second you forget how to breathe.

You continue to walk around the fair together. You’ve never laughed that much before. He even took some pictures of you, watching the carnival rides or the sun that was already starting to set. Time was flying, and you enjoyed every part of that amazing day. 

If only this day could be endless. 

8.24 pm

“The view is amazing.” You’re completely astonished. Yunho took you on a hill, to eat dinner outside while admiring the view of the entire city and the ocean at the same time. The sunset gives its greatest colors to the sky. A gradient of warm colors you loved so much.

Before coming here, you passed by a small shop to grab some fried chicken and some tanghulus for dessert even though you had so much sugar already, he knew you loved them. “So, what did you think about today ?” he asks, drawing you away from your contemplation. “ Are you really asking ?” Is he on a sugar high ? “Y-yeah ?” You’re falling closer to him, looking straight to his eyes. “That was the most amazing, perfect, day of my life, Yunho.” You admit. Your heart was fuller than ever. “You made all my wishes come true. You perfectly knew how to make me the happiest, and I can't thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me.” His eyes started to shine as his cheeks took a slight pink color. He looks at the grass for a few seconds before coming back to your eyes. “There would be a way to thank me, actually.” He said, kindling a curious flame in your chest. “Oh yeah ?” “You could maybe uh… gimme a kiss ?” At the end of his proposal, his voice softens, as if he suddenly became a little more shy. Yet you can’t stop the surprise from coming on your face. A kiss ? “Only if you agree, of course. If you don’t, that’s okay.. I mean I wo-...” You stop his mumbling by pressing your lips against his. You’re not so sure if it was what he was asking for, but you wanted it so bad. It did not take long before he came pressing his hand on your cheek, smiling against your lips. 

It was the best kiss you’ve ever shared. 

You part a few seconds later, both giggling as teenagers. The feeling rushing into your body was nothing more than pure felicity. “I waited for this for so long.” Wait what ? He catches your intrigued look and smiles softly before glancing at the horizon, perfectly avoiding your gaze. “You’ve been on my mind for so long, y/n…” He starts. You knew this would lead somewhere you’ll never come back from. “This… I wanted to show you how much you meant to me. You deserve the absolute world.” Your heart melts instantly. “ It made me so mad that no one could see how amazing you are. But I was a bit jealous, watching you goin out with douches I knew would not suit you.” Your head leans on his shoulder, inviting him to continue. “I wanted to take you on a date for so long. I just didn’t know how to do it.” He was so open right now, confessing his feelings towards you. Only for you to realize how reciprocal it was. “ I just.. I love you, y/n.” Your heart explodes in your chest. Slowly, you find the way to his lips. The slight pressure he puts into it, shows how much he wanted it to happen. A hand lands on your neck, the other on your back for a few seconds.You feel all surrounded by him, warmed, loved.

The slight notes of his fruity and warm perfume, made you feel a little dizzy. Or was it the feeling of his lips, staying right after you parted your lips ? “ I was so blind…” You admit, resting your forehead against his. “I should have seen sooner.” If you stopped convincing yourself it was just friendship, you would have saved yourself many catastrophic moments and memories that you would gladly have done without. “The reason nobody has suited me before, it’s only because you are the one made for me.” You whisper, heart fully open. “I love you too, Yunho.” 

This was the best closure you could ever imagine. You promised yourself to never kiss on the first date, but it did feel like you were already dating for so long. It was him. It has always been him. As you’re coming home, that night, everything has changed, in the best way. You fall asleep in your boyfriend’s arms, the panda he won for you pressed between your bodies. 

No more shitty dating apps. Only good and lovable dates.

I really hope you appreciated it, do not hesitate to reblog or to leave a note i'd love to read all about your thoughts. ✿

[mischiefandlies]

A lesson in culinary disasters...

Loki x Reader

Masterlist

Notes: Thor is the embodiment of the phrase "thirty going on three". Also, I really had to work to find things that could go wrong with making spaghetti. Luckily, I work with children, so know how sevearly idiotic people can be.

Warnings: nilt

Enjoy!

“There's spaghetti on my ceiling.”

Both Loki and Thor looked away sheepishly.

“WHY IN FUCKS NAME IS THERE SPAGHETTI ON MY CEILING?”

“… well, m’Lady-”

“Darling, I didn’t-”

“I left you two alone for ONE DAY!”

They each share a glance.

“What?” you say dryly.

Thor sighs and turns away, while Loki comes over to you. “My love, me and Thor will deal with this shenanigan. I promised I’d make you dinner, and I'll make you dinner. Just go and relax and I’ll come and get you when the time is right. Perhaps watch another one of those comedic films with Lang, the two of you seem to enjoy those.”

“Thought you got jealous when I watched movies with him?” you said.

“Angel, Lang couldn’t find a single hostage in training yesterday. If he is unable to locate a human sized test dummy, I don’t hold out much hope of him finding a clitoris. Besides,” he continues “I'm sure his penis is just as small as the rest of him.”

You just roll your eyes as he ushers you out the door. “And don’t burn my pans! And so help me God if you break my stove, I’m going to shove that blender straight up your-”

The front door slammed shut behind you. “Loki, I don’t think she is happy with us,” Thor stated. “I see very little chance of you being able to seduce her if you continue to act so childishly.”

“Remind me again who threw pasta at the ceiling?” Loki said through gritted teeth.

“Well, me, but Jane said it is important to use the pan to flip what you are cooking.”

“What Jane failed to mention, you ignorant buffoon, is that is for cooking pancakes.”

“Loki, pancakes are eggs and flour. Pasta, according to this detailed list on the packaging, is eggs and flour. I see no reason why the rules would change.”

Loki put his head in his hands. “Thor, how about I handle the cooking from now on?”

“And what are we making?”

“Spaghetti.”

“And balls of meat?”

“No Thor, just spaghetti.” Loki says, “Let’s not walk before we can run.”

Thor gasped. “But where are the balls of meat? Jane always makes balls of meat to go with spaghetti.”

“Thor, we have no meat.”

The blond just smirked. “I can assure you brother, I have plenty of meat. It is not my fault you are of such scrawny, runt-like nature. Why, do you not remember in our youth when we would play, and you would always…”

Loki left him to his prattling, and used his magic to clean the kitchen, remove the strands of spaghetti from the ceiling, and refill the kettle. He had wanted to make you something homemade, and so had asked his brother to assist, thinking Jane would have taught him something. Unfortunately, Thor was even less equipped to be sue-chef than him. Since you had left them to their own devices, they had made your kettle explode, set off the fire alarm, and Thor had cut his hand. They had since given up on making a tomato sauce and had lowered their standards enough to consider plain spaghetti a meal.

“Thor, snap the spaghetti in half and put it in the pot.”

Thor picked up a handful of spaghetti and instead of holding it in the middle, he took it by the ends, snapping it in front of him and spraying the kitchen in broken spaghetti pieces. His brother just looked on, muttering insults in their mother tongue. He took a pot down and filled it with the water out the kettle while Thor scuttled around on all fours picking up shards of pasta.

“Thor, for the love of all things holy, just put the spaghetti in the pan.”

Thor turns to the pot on the stove, and sticks his fist full of spaghetti into the boiling water, completely submerging his hand.

“AAAAH LOKI MAKE IT STOP”

“Take your hand out the pan Thor.”

Thor flings his arm up, spilling the boiling water all down himself.

“LOKI IT BURNS!!!!”

“Of course it does, its boiling water.”

“FIX IT.”

“No.”

“LOKI I AM KING OF ASGARD. YOU ARE UNDER OBLIGATION TO HELP ME. YOU WILL FIX THIS THIS INSTANT.”

“Thor, as the prince of Asgard, I am not obligated to do shit. Perhaps do as the Midgardians do when they are burnt. Run it under cold water.”

Loki turned away to magic up the complete shambles his brother had managed to achieve (again), and –for the fifth time today- boiled the kettle to make pasta. Thor had clearly misinterpreted his instruction, because he was running the pan under the tap.

“Loki, I fail to see how this is helping, I am still in a great deal of pain-”

The dark-haired god swiped the pan back. “Your arm, you utter cretin. Run the cold tap and hold your ARM under the water.”

Having distracted his brother enough to successfully put spaghetti on to boil, he began to grate some cheese.

“LOKI, I WANTED TO DO THAT.”

“You’d get blood in the cheese.”

“I won’t. I promise. Pleeeeeeaseee?”

“Fine.”

Thor enthusiastically leaps over to grate the cheese, while Loki stirs, drains and dishes out the pasta. In this time, not only has Thor zested the cheese instead of grating it, he has also zested a whole block of cheese and the top layer of skin on his fingers. The cheese was completely sodden with blood.

"Thor, what did I just say?"

"Pretend it's tomato sauce brother? She will never know!"

When you finally return from Langs, you find Loki, Thor, Strange, and Stranges medical kit all sat on your sofa. Thor's entire arm is bandaged, and Wanda and Steve are chatting away in your kitchen, making something that smells delicious.

“Fucksake Loki.”

“I’m sorry darling.” he says, “I tried, I really tried, but it just never worked, and I-”

“I know, love,” you cut him off. “Just tell me if you need cooking lessons, yeah? I can’t say I’m fond of coming home to find my kitchen in a disaster. I’ve just had a long day. I shouldn't've snapped. I’m sorry.”

He wraps you up in his arms. “Me too love.”

“Lo?”

“Yes sweetheart?”

“Have you ever heard of take away?”

[phantombanquet]

Main Story: Diasomnia Book Chapter 8 Episode 7-117: Preparation for Departure! (Translation)

Episode 7-117

⚠️ Major Diasomnia spoilers! Proceed with caution.

translation by: phantombanquet

Idia: MALLEUS-SHI, HUH~~~~! 

THIS GRUDGE… SHOULD I LEAVE IT UNSETTLED~~!! ¹

If that happens, that pretentious inexpressive² guy, who usually keeps up his strong chara moves up in his sleeves…..

I can't help but feel sorry for myself if I don't see his pathetic figure sobbing with a runny nose and begging for forgiveness!

Now, what should I do…… Heh… Ehehehehehe!

Ortho: W-What a malicious scheming face…

This… May have angered someone who shouldn't be angered~

Idia: Heheh…… I'll show you. The ultimate power of a lone wolf³ trained in the gloomy “underworld.”

Just you wait, Malleus Draconia……

I'LL GET REVENGE BY SEIZING YOUR SPECIAL WEAKNESS!!!

Ortho: ……That's all.

From the magical disaster caused by Malleus Draconia until the awakening of Idia Shroud. This concludes the progress report.

Grim: Oohh~~! While we were fightin’ over in Lilia's dream, that's what happened to you guys.

Silver: I see. So Idia-senpai and Ortho are outside of the magical realm. It means that there is support coming from the real world. 

Idia: Y-Yeah, t-that sort of thing…… Well, for now, we'll be playing a dummy video on the surveillance camera for a short while……

I can only do this much.

Sebek: So, even if you have woken up, Malleus-sama will fail to notice and the “darkness” will not attack you.

Ortho: Yes.. And like I said earlier, Malleus-san is currently……

Focused on putting Lilia Vanrouge-san to sleep. 

So, I expect that he has not traced down the whereabouts of Silver-san and the others.

Sebek: Hm. I honestly want to praise your skills, but it is quite complicated when you are outsmarting Malleus-sama……

Idia: Well, that other guy is a battleship-like⁴ cheater so… We're still far off from completely capturing him.

Silver: However… I had no idea that Malleus-sama continued to expand his magical realm beyond the island……

Sebek: Furthermore, if the area is forcibly destroyed from the  outside, there is a possibility that the trapped person's psyche could also become destroyed!?

Grim: Somehow it's a real mess for real.

[Choice 1] Yuu: Can we do something about this?

[Choice 2] Yuu: (If this continues on, Tsunotarou will become the enemy of mankind.) 

Ortho: Yes. That's why we need your power!

Silver: Our… Power?

Ortho: Currently, the S.T.Y.X. staff is working together to assign ID numbers to the dreams of those trapped in the magical realm. 

During that time, we captured your magical reaction as you “moved around on your own” in the dream.

Silver: Could it be that it was my “Meet in a Dream?”

It's my unique magic that allows me to cross between dreams……

Ortho: Yes! That one, that one!

When traces of someone moving from one human dream to another were discovered, the engineers at S.T.Y.X. were in a commotion.

So that was Silver-san's unique magic, after all. Magic is a really mysterious power, huh.

Silver: However, my magic is to reliably travel to the dream of the person I'm targeting after, like you guys. I can't call someone into my dream.

I don’t know what else to say; it's hard to explain… It's a very intuitive kind of magic……

That’s why I was really surprised when Ortho appeared in the Dream Corridor and led us here. 

Ortho: What are you saying?

S.T.Y.X. prides themselves on their super computers and experts in magical engineering and magical analysis. 

They tried their best to analyze magic and they finally found a way to travel from dream to dream. 

Moreover, it is difficult to say that the current method is 100% reproducible so they said: “it's still a beta version.”

The mere fact that you can do it intuitively is astonishing.

Sebek: Hm. So the “power” that you need is Silver's unique magic?

Ortho: That's a part of it, too, but…

Sebek Zigvolt-san, Grim-san, and Yuu-san, your cooperation is essential.

Grim: Hmph! You're just trying to make us do the messy work, aren't ya!

Ortho: Wow♡ Grim-san, you talk too fast. 

[Choice 1] Yuu: This pattern is similar to the headmage……

[Choice 2] Yuu: I don't see any other reason to  be called out……

Sebek: Hmph, I don't like this sluggishness. Get to the point!!

Idia: S-So, uhhh……. While you guys were chattering in Lilia-shi's dream..

I-I was trying to think of a way to escape from my dream world……

Or rather, I've been trying to come up with a strategy to deal with Malleus-shi.

[Choice 1] Yuu: Is your strategy to get him to cry and beg for forgiveness while his nose is runny?

[Choice 2] Yuu: Is it a strategy to take revenge by capturing their special weakness?

Idia: Y-Yeah. That… Hih, hihi.

Anyhow, I made a video to explain that strategy…… W-Would you like to watch it?

Grim, Silver, Sebek: Video?

Idia: Waah~♪ Only good things have been happening lately~ It's so fun every day~ It's just like a dream~♬ Well. It was, in fact, really just a dream. Welcome, all you carefree people who live in the world of empty dreams. I am Idia Shroud. So for today, a cheat trick to create a dream world using magic — — was used by The Most Evil☆Final Boss Mage. Let me explain the strategy used by Malleus-shi. The magical realm that Malleus-shi created is kinda like a server running a huge MMORPG. And each dream of someone sleeping is managed individually. Malleus-shi is using himself and his alter ego to keep an eye on this server. To give you an idea, Malleus-shi is a server admin. And his alter ego is cracking down on users to commit violations in the online game — like a gamemaster. Malleus-shi, with the authority to operate and manage over the entire server, is currently in the state of a demon king who has the world right under his thumb.

Under Malleus-shi's control, we have NO chance of succeeding…… BUT! Because of the super geek hacker group S.T.Y.X. and Ortho's attack, all of the server's source code (construction formulas of the magical realm) has been analyzed and is now completely visible!

So — I'm going to use that data from my dream to develop and build a cheat tool. And then get rid of that damned invulnerable status! It seems like a perfect strategy at first glance, but in fact, there’s actually a flaw in this cheat strategy……. If Malleus-shi (the server admin) discovers this during development— IT'S GAME OVER IN AN INSTANT. But hold your horses! Despite that his alter ego uses autonomous magic, with the total population of Sage Island, monitoring and managing the dreams of about 20,000 people is not an easy task — even for Malleus-shi. If a problem happens here and there in your dream, there's a high chance that you'll have to deal with it by yourself! Therefore — I’ll be developing a cheat tool. I want you guys to catch Malleus-shi's eye and gather party members so we can subdue the demon king.

When everyone wakes up, we'll hand out invite codes that will allow them to travel to my dream.

Then, when all the preparations are ready, Malleus-shi will be lured to my dream and that's when the cheat tool that I developed turns on!! As planned, Malleus-shi's invulnerability will be canceled. And by using the invite codes that were diligently handed out, everyone will gather in my dream! We're going to beat him up with our sheer numbers of forces!

If things go as expected, Malleus-shi will also lift the spell and free us—! How was it!? “A lone wolf magician engineering guy explains how to capture the demon king in three minutes video.” If you think this video was good, leave a like! And this was Idia Shroud.

Grim, Silver, Sebek: ............

Idia: Ummm, e-everyone… Thank you for your attention. ⁵

Th-that’s why……

I ask you guys to go on a journey to gather “the strongest party members who will take on the challenge of defeating the demon king!”

Grim, Silver, Sebek: EHHHHH~~~!?

TO BE CONTINUED...

translator notes:

¹ - 「この怨はらさでおくべきか」 is an old Kansai (Osaka) dialect phrase. This phrase, although it seems like one will forever hold a grudge, actually means something along the lines of: “Shall I leave this grudge unresolved? (No, I actually have to solve this),” due to how the phrase is structured (which would be too deep to delve into but it’s mainly because of the か and べき/べし in the phrase).

² - 「スカしま」 is a Japanese slang usually used as an insult

³ - 「陰キャ」 is yet another Japanese slang used to describe someone with a gloomy or reserved personality or introverts. I used a known English slang instead of translating literally to preserve the meaning of the word.

⁴ - 「弩級 (どきゅう)」 is the Japanese translation of “Dreadnought,” which is a type of battleship in the early 20th century. Idia was just being a nerd again by using game-like terms so I decided to stick with using “battleship” instead of the literal translation.

⁵ - I wanted to note that Idia addressed them as 「皆様」which is a polite way of addressing others due to the inclusion of 様 (sama). Also, the “thank you for your attention” line was written as 「ご清聴アリガトウゴザイマシタ」 in the text instead of the usual 「ご清聴ありがとうございました」 which I think it's just to note Idia's personality www.

personal notes: this wasn't jp proofread so there might be inaccuracies;;; additionally aniplex jp actually posted the "how to subjugate the demon king" video but it's only available in japan.. you can still access it by using a vpn though~

[sgiandubh]

Good grief, those antis (whoever it is that you've blacked out) really cannot stand (hate?) Sam. It's like they cannot believe that he is anything more than more than a dummy with no contacts or that people would want to work with him, all evidence to the contrary. It'd be sad if it wasn't so pathetic.

Dear Good Grief Anon,

Names do not matter. What matters is the nerve with which people suddenly seem to express themselves, without taking a split second to put things into a broader perspective, allow for healthy doubt or even consider all the possibilities.

It was pretty clear that brief 'chance encounter' in Beverly Hills was about a photoshoot. Sure, they could have had a nice chit-chat over cocktails or coffee, but the selfie had an unmistakable BTS flair to it. There was no need to belittle S in the process of mentioning the moment. And I have to say I really was over the moon when I read what the only legitimate person to comment (i.e, the photographer) had to say about the experience.

S is a 44 year-old man with a fairly solid experience and an interesting, challenging past. I also happen to think he is neither an idiot, nor a crook. But maybe many of those very angry women simply have no concrete experience of or real exposure to the business world. And no (sorry to sound condescending), running a lemonade stand at the school's football game does not count as experience or exposure. If anyone imagines money grows on those Beverly Hills jacaranda trees and is liberally disposed of by TPTB to lucky amateurs, well... there is nothing I can do for them. If S was such an acting disaster, he'd never have gotten anything else, nor gotten promoted to Executive Producer or even survived Lethal Season 4. Surely, he is no A lister, yet: this is plain to see and the mommies' blind adoration does not help.

But unlike all these crows on a wire, I know that he can become one, with the help of the proper script and the proper director.

Anyways, at this point in time and on second thoughts, all of this is neither sad, nor pathetic. It is ridiculous. They are ridiculous.

[heartfiliaccc]

Fairy Tail 100 Years Quest episode 8: thoughts + opinions

what a banger way to start a new episode lmao

Gray: ''Like, do fairies have...nails?''

Natsu x2 in any way, shape or form is just a disaster waiting to happen, let's be honest

N: ''Yeah, I wanna' meet my twin!'' L: ''That's a case of double trouble waiting to happen.''

HOLY CRAP FAIRY NAIL NALU (Nakku and Lusha) // I LOVE THEM AND THEIR DYNAMIC ALREADY!

HOW THE HELL IS EVERY OTHER VERSION OF NALU CANON, EXCEPT FOR FAIRY TAIL'S NALU? 😭😭😭

I'm totally not surprised that Gray's Fairy Nail counterpart (Gren) is a stripper too, albeit a professional one

JUVINA! 🫶🏻

''I'M JUST A DUMB FURBALL?'' LMAO HAPPY

look at these two dummies ❤️

yeah okay, Cara may or may not be selling out her footsies (idk why they changed it from ''foot model'' to ''leg model'' in the dub) and Rocky's a pornstar, we get it

and yes, Nakku and Lusha are essentially fucking in the guild even though it seems like he's a total ass towards her, but she isn't exactly opposed to it (notice how she's making a heart symbol with her hands)

AHHHH GRUVIA! 🥹💙🩵

do I need to say anything else?

Juvina is soooo pretty

''So, you don't deny that she's your beloved?'' // YES, GET HIM JUVINA

even though Nalu is my absolute favorite Fairy Tail ship, I also love Gruvia a crap ton too, so I'm happy to finally see the development in their relationship🫶🏻

''I want to give Juvia what she needs, but I can't. Not with the man I am now.''

''I'm doing everything to better myself. She deserves it: a man who's strong enough to protect her. And when I'm that man, I'll make her mine.''

NOT NATSU BURNING ALL OF LUCY'S CLOTHES BECAUSE SOME GUYS WERE HITTING ON HER + ALSO THIS MOMENT!

YAY JUVIA!

I love how everyone in Drasil is just super chill whilst Aldoron's just doing things

LOOK EVERYONE, THE WHOLE GUILD'S HERE TO HAVE SOME FUN

I MOSTLY LOVED ALL THE GRUVIA AND NALU MOMENTS IN THIS EPISODE, BUT I'M ALSO HYPED FOR THE NEXT EPISODES AND TEAM NATSU VS. WHITEOUT FAIRY TAIL MEMBERS!

[agi-ppangx]

broken promises (lee minho x gn!reader)

tags: post-apocalypse!au, angst, hurt without comfort

warnings: mentions of death, blood and wounds

A/N: this is something ive never done before so please bear with me😶‍🌫️ also eunji is a made up character solely for this fic and she isnt based on anyone in particular ^^ i hope you'll enjoy my little experiment and please remember that feedback and reblogs are highly appreciated🫶🏽

the cold wind lazily made its way though your hair, bringing you back to reality. you looked around at the disaster in front of you. the city was destroyed and almost deserted, only a little people left to fight. the rest of them went south - it was told the life there would be better, but you didn’t really believe it. nowhere was life any better now. you noticed a woman with a little girl walking down the street. she made eye contant with you - her face was covered in burn scars and a few fresh wounds. she threw you a sad smile, seeing you weren’t doing any better. the girl waved at you, her arm covered in blood as well. you tried to wave back, but it came out a bit wobbly and you sighed, defeated. suddenly you felt a gentle tap on your arm. you abruptly threw your head up only to see eunji standing in the doorway. she took a step forward, sitting next to you. you took her hand in yours and rubbed it with your thumb. “how are you feeling?” you asked her softly. “i’m okay, don’t worry.” you hummed at her words and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

it was truly a miracle that she was alive. you had met eunji a few months before, she was wanderng around a small town nearby without anything to eat or drink. she slept where she could and was constantly running away, scared that someone will eventually kill her. you didn’t have heart to leave her alone and decided to help and protect her. she was unsure at the beginning, but you weren’t surprised. you took your time to earn her trust, letting he know with your actions that you wanted only to make her safe. your heart ached, looking at her, so scared and vulnerable, yet wise and independent. you thought to yourself that no twelve-year-old shouldn’t be so mature for their age. she was a kid, she should be playing around with her friends and not worrying about a thing. after a few weeks though, she finally opened herself up in front of you, letting you sooth her aching soul and create a shelter for her. she told you about her past and about her mother, whom she lost contact with at the very beginning of the apocalypse. you started treating her like your little sister and made a promise to yourself to stay with her to help her find her mum and make sure she grows up in a safe place, away from hunger, poverty and death.

“what are you thinking about?” eunji asked you suddenly, seeing your worried gaze. you shook your head and smiled faintly. “future. i want us to finally be happy,” you whispered, holding back tears that were starting to pool in your eyes. she hugged you tightly, burying her head in your chest. “as long as you’re with me then i’m happy,” she said simply and you giggled, sniffing. how could a kid be so wise? “oh, also,” eunji sat straight again and looked you in the eyes. “minho woke up.”

you ran through the corridors of the building, trying to get to minho’s room as quickly as possible. on your way you bumped into jisung and he grabbed your arms, steadying you so you wouldn’t fall. “whoa, careful. are you going to see minho?” you nodded fratically, panting. he smiled at you. “alright, go. he’s waiting for you.”

you quietly entered the room, not wanting to startle minho. you closed the door and heard him grumble in pain. “is that my guardian angel? am i in heaven?” he uttered when he finally noticed you and you giggled at that. “yah, don’t you dare talking about dying. i did everything i could to save you, dummy,” you sat at the edge of his bed, runing your fingers through his hair. he leaned into your touch, closing his eyes and humming in content. “i missed you,” he whispered. “can you give me a kiss?” you cooed at him and leaned over to place a gentle peck on his dry, cracked lips, savouring the moment that you missed so much. “alright lover boy, we have to change your bandages,” you said when you broke the kiss, caressing his cheek. you got up to gather all the stuff and came back to the bed, placing everything on the bedside table and turning to face minho again. “can you sit up?” he nodded and using his hands, tried to get up a bit. you helped him and soon he was sitting with his back pressed to the wall. you lifted up his shirt, ripping out the old bandage from his tummy and gently disinfecting his wound with the last bottle of iodine left after the treatments you had performed on the survivors in your camp. minho hissed at the feeling and you whispered a small “i’m sorry”, trying to be as gentle as possible. “how is everyone doing?” he asked you and you shrugged your shoulders. “well, it depends. some of us still haven’t recovered and we lost a few people as well…” you mumbled, tears welling in your eyes. minho took your hand in his, stopping your actions, and carefully brought you to his chest, bringing you comfort. “it’s okay, at least we have each other, hm?” he responded in this soft voice of his and you wiped your eyes, nodding. you came back to changing his bandages soon after, trying to calm down. minho intently analized your face, seeing all the worry and sorrow in your eyes. he hated to see you like this. he felt really protective over you and wanted nothing but the best for you. minho always made sure to guide you safely through the tough times and provide you with food and clean clothes. the only things he wanted for you was to be safe and sound, just like you wanted for eunji. “when we finally go south, i’ll build you a house there and we’ll settle down.” you stopped in your tracks when you heard his dreamy voice. “when we go south?” you muttered and minho’s eyes widened, looking at your furrowed brows. “yeah, you know, when i recover we can pack our stuff and leave the city. it’s destroyed anyway, so why even stay here,” he reasoned, confused by your reaction. “i told you so many times i’m gonna stay here, i have to take care of eunji,” you responded, feeling as the tears started to make their way down your face. you didn’t dare to look him in the eyes, scared that if you do, your heart will shatter into million of pieces. your hands started shaking, so you rushed youself and messily placed the new bangade over minho’s wound. you started gathering your stuff, wanting nothing but to leave the room and let yourself calm down.

minho always suggested the two of you going south, he wanted to do it even before the apocalypse was over, but every time you told him you had to stay in the city, to help the survivos and take care of eunji. you couldn’t just leave her here and taking her with you would mean she would mean she wouldn’t be able to find her mum. you also wanted to just simply stay where you were born, not having the heart to leave behind the place you grew up in. was is selfish? perhaps, but in times like these you had to consider yourself first in some cases. “yn, come on, i thought we talked this though,” minho started, his firm tone sending a shiver down your spine. “‘talked this through?’ minho, what the fuck? do you even listen to me?” you hissed through gritted teeth, feeling your cheeks grow warmer from the anger builidng inside you. “i told you i’m not gonna leave this place, not now, not in a month, never! i simply wanna stay here and help to rebuild the city,” you continued, your voice started breaking in the middle of each word and your vision was getting more and more blurry. “i have to take care of eunji as well.” it was minho’s time to scoff. “really? you’re still talking about eunji? there’s so many people here that could take care of her, it’s not like you’re the only one who could help her,” he responded angrily, his face scrunching at the pain from his wounds. “but i promised her! i told her i’ll help her and she trusted me!” you cried, screaming at the top of your lungs. “she should learn that people sometimes break the promises, that’s how life works!” you looked at him in disbelief, shocked that these words left his mouth. you looked at him and you swore everyone in the world could hear your heart sink. you couldn’t believe he said that, but you finally saw his true self. “people break the promises, huh?” you whispered, fidgeting with the ring on your finger. after a moment of hesitation you took it off and threw it at minho. “then i’m gonna break one too,” you stated, heading towards the door. “yn, wait! i didn’t mean it like that!” you heard minho scream, pleading, but you ignored him, shutting the door behind you and heading to find eunji. at least one promise won’t be broken.

taglist !

@lynlyndoll @iyenbread @flooo71 @skz-streamer @inniescandy-01 @hannahhbahng @prettymiye0n @ggsez31 @laylasbunbunny @like-a-diamondinthesky @axel-skz @kittymaryam-skz @l3visbby

[ruhorih4ra]

Hey! What do you mean it's not monday? ಠಿ⁠_⁠ಠ heheh I'm sowy but in my defense this part it's longer.

I also noticed that I don't have a clear format (What can I say? I'm a pathetic disaster) (okay I'll fix it later).

This part it's mostly a conversation with grandma, yessss it's angsty. Takes place after part 7

Get out of my way 🌈

“Hello, I'm Lilith!”

The kitchen sank into silence, it felt more like you were being buried in the graveyard rather than sitting beside the warm oven. The four Little D.'s looked at each other, their eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Ooh, Mc! Why are you so terrified?” “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!” your scared and doubtful gaze left Lilith and turned to the Little D.'s “Y-you don't see her?” “Who?” the tiny black shadow showed incredible bewilderment. “Oh, come on! They're just trying to deceive you!! Of course they can see me!”

One thing was certain, she looked like an angel, her hair was so long it nearly touched the floor and her skin seemed smooth as silk. Although her voice was exasperated and there was a grimace on her face, she was beautiful.

“You're losing your mind, Mc.” The Little D. of wrath shook his head, wiping away a nonexistent tear. “Oh, you... You dummies!” Lilith took each cheek of the Little D. face and stretched it to comical limits. “SEE? I'M REAL!!”

“Heheh” “H-help!!” “The fridge is empty!” “Hey! Let him go!” The Little D.'s charged towards Lilith to no avail, she pushed them away with nothing more than a wave of her hand. “Mc, you don't have to be afraid anymore.”

“Mc?”

You had taken advantage of the ruckus to run towards your room as fast as your legs let you. “I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy, I'm sane. My brain is well and...” “Mc!!” You turned your face to see Lilith chasing you followed by four small black clouds. “Why are you running?!” “I may be crazy, I may be insane.”

As soon as you opened the door of your room you closed it again. You remained facing the wooden door, trying to calm your heart and the trembling of your hands. “You know I can walk through walls, right?” You heard Lilith's voice from behind.

“Aaaahhhh!!!” You turned around and for a moment she reminded you of Lucifer, hands on hip and a slight frown on her immaculate face. “You really are Lilith.” “Yes.” she simply replied.

“Hey you! Their soul is ours! You can't take it!!” “That's right! If you want it you'll have to fight!” That being said, the Little D. of wrath took the shape of Satan. His fangs grew to at least twice their normal size and his face contorted into a macabre smile. His eyes grew too long, giving the impression of slits tearing through the skin.

The Little D. of gluttony changed into Beelzebub's form, his eyes morphed to resemble those of a fly. His back hunched and his jaw hung open unbelievably wide, revealing multiple teeth arranged in a circle, as if he had several mouths hidden one after another.

The Little D. of envy took Leviathan's form, snakes came out of his mouth and eyes, while his whole body gained scales, some of them looking as sharp as a sword.

The tiny demon with blue horns changed to impersonate Lucifer, nothing too creepy, though his eyes were red, redder than you’d ever seen them before.

“W-wait!” You fell backwards, a single drop of Beelzebub's saliva met the floor and the wood screeched as it disintegrated. “Now, let's get started.” Lilith rolled her eyes, straightened up, and extended an arm. “Bring it on.”

Two hours later, you were looking at the “fight” with skeptical eyes.

“You were such an ugly kid. When you played in the sandbox the cat kept covering you up!” “Oooohh!!!” “HAHAHA!!” The Little D.s high-fived each other, they had maintained their monstrous appearance but their attitude completely ruined their facade.

“Well! You're so ugly, you've to sneak up on the mirror!” Lilith said while sticking out her tongue. “Hahah nice!” “Not cool.”

“You're so ugly your father wanted to erase you from existence!” “Dude.” “Oooooohhhhh!!!” “Too soon” The gasp of indignation that Lilith blurted out was loud enough to take you out of your meditations. “Hey! Back me up!” “Why? They started this ‘fight’ so you wouldn’t kick their ass in a real one.”

The Little D. of envy tried to put a hand on your mouth but you had already spilled the beans. “Jeez, Mc. You can be a real pain in the aaaaahhhhh” Lilith took them from the hat one by one until she had them all. “If you’ll excuse us, we need a private talk.”

She threw them out the window as far as she could, very surprisingly. “You have the arm of your brother.” “Thank you!” The room was filled with silence, neither Lilith nor you knew how to start and you were too tired to think correctly.

“Mc.” You looked at Lilith, she was struggling to find the right words. “They miss you.” You said in an attempt to avoid awkward silences. “I miss them too.” She replied. “Is that why you are here?” The lilac eyes of Lilith widened in surprise, if you squinted you could see a certain level of offense too. “Of course not! I'm here for you!”

“Ha! You say that but go on, tell me what you want me to do!” Lilith felt caged, your normal kind personality was gone and even if she could see a smile on your face, it was sardonic and fake. “No? You won't ask me to help them this time? That's a relief, last time I did I found a pair of hands around my neck and certainly not in a pleasant way.”

Lilith —who was wearing a simple and loose white dress, more fitting for a spring day than Devildom weather— seemed taken aback by your words. Her pale skin only made the blush more noticeable. “Oh come on grandma, I'm living proof that you're not as innocent as you seem.”

“Okay, first of all, don't call me grandma. Second, I came here for you. I came to help you.” The frown on your face didn't budge. Lilith sighed before speaking again. “Why are you so suspicious?”

“Oh, I don't know, maybe I’ve been attacked by little demons that want to eat my soul. Perhaps I'm on the verge of insanity and I'm only imagining the ghost of my ancestor. Who knows?” Before Lilith could reply, you spoke again, louder.

“Maybe I was replaced and betrayed by the people I love and trust the most.” Lilith's gaze followed the single tear that escaped from your eye, with her eyes still glued on it she replied. “They did not replace you.” “Of course not! They just forgot about me and found someone else to do the things we used to do!” You spit harshly.

“I-I know you're mad, but please, don't take it out on me.” Lilith sounded so sad and vulnerable that the regret was instant. “I- Sorry, Lilith.” She took a deep breath and mentally prepared to put her thoughts into words.

“I know they're stupid. But they love you, I know them and I know that-” You laughed, Lilith was relieved to find out that this time it was a genuine laugh, genuine and tired.

“Yes they are stupid. Listen Lilith... with all due respect, you knew the angels. I know the demons.” Lilith knew that she had lost the fight, she was speechless. Although she could have argued, it seemed pointless.

You slid to the floor again, you seemed resigned. When she thought the room would fall silent again, you surprised her.

“I know what you're trying to tell me, okay? I get it. They love me, they-” Lilith sat across from you, she did not comment nothing about how you didn't seem the least bit convinced of what you just said. “However, I will do this on my own. I'll find a way to exterminate this plague of Little D.'s”.

“But Mc!” “I don't need your brothers’ help, I don't need them and I won't go crying for their assistance.” You looked at your hands. “I don't need Lucifer's soft smiles to cheer me up. I don't need Mammon holding my hand through the halls of Rad.”

Lilith moved closer to you until she was within her arm’s reach. “I don't need Leviathan's chest to fall asleep after playing video games all day and I definitely don't need Satan's fingers brushing away my hair when I fall asleep in the library.”

You wiped away your tears before Lilith could try, choking back a sob. “I don't need Asmodeus to chit-chat while I fix the garden. I don't need Beelzebub to tickle me every time I’m sad. I don't need Belphegor to chase away my nightmares.”

“I-I don't need them!!” Lilith could only watch as you sob silently hugging your knees. “I'll get rid of the Little D.'s and then everything can go back to the way it was.”

“Mc, dear. You may not need my brothers but, I'm afraid they need you more than anything you could think of.”

You scoffed once more, looking at Lilith in disbelief. “Listen, I just want to prove to myself that I’m not Tinker Bell and that I won’t die from lack of attention.” You laughed by your own joke and Lilith’s confused face. “Then I’ll be fine, next time they won’t break my heart.”

“Mc...” “No! You don't understand! There are so many humans out there, so many exchange students that could take my place! And I love your brothers, and I love them so much! You can't understand how lost I feel when I think of them brushing me aside!”

Lilith bit her tongue, she wanted to tell you about the two bottles of demonus that Lucifer had emptied trying to resist the urges to kneel and ask your forgiveness. She couldn’t stop thinking about Beelzebub’s soft sobs and how Belphie couldn’t comfort his twin since he was trying to contain his own tears.

She saw Mammon’s swollen eyes and the chaos of Satan’s room. Lilith tried to caress the face of Asmodeus, to brush the frown he usually avoids and now seems permanent. She wanted to tell you about Leviathan’s violent shaking, how his brother had bitten all of his nails out of anxiety.

You thought they were sleeping, but not even Sc had managed to close her eyes. Lilith wanted to assure you that nobody could take your place, but this probably wasn’t the right time. “I understand.” You thanked her with a gentle squeeze. “But please, promise me you will ask for help if this gets too dangerous.”

You got up and took a deep breath. “Don’t worry that won’t be necessary. I’m the one who forged seven pacts, remember?”

Part. 10 ಠ⁠◡⁠ಠ

Thanks for reading!! 🩷

Taglist: @yuumaofc @kodasstar @asmolover1234 @gallantys @prefesro @urminebutidontwantyou @dearangels

[decks-writing-blog]

Gordon Swap Chapter Three: Mirrored

First Chapter

Previous Chapter

~

Time was of the essence. There was little of it to spare when every minute that passed was another that the current disaster was allowed to continue, undoubtedly resulting in more death. At the same time though, preparedness was the thing that had reduced Gordon’s death count the most. So he moved fast, checking every room and breaking any boxes that looked like they might have something useful in them.

Blessedly only a few rooms after having settled back into this pattern of movement they walked into the aftermath of a battle. Who won didn’t matter because it meant the room was littered with dead aliens and more importantly, dead military. Guns of various sorts, ammo, grenades, and ooh, more trip mines and C4, Gordon gathered it all. He was armed and armored again at last.

Halfway through he was brought to a pause by a melodic tone, not immediately recognizable as any instrument he knew of. Straightening from the corpse he’d just finished looting, he looked for its source. … His guard companion was looking down at the bodies that been been brutalized particularly badly. A string of colourful light came from his mouth as did the sound. Seemingly anyway, it wasn’t the kind of sound a human should be able to make but the colorful lights orbs also shouldn’t be of human origin.

As the note ended, the light ceased flowing – confirming both were from him – and he looked up at Gordon. Did he expect a response? Gordon would’ve loved to ask him what that was and how he’d done it but had no easy way to communicate with him. It was cool though, whatever it was, so Gordon lifted a hand to give him a quick thumbs up before turning his attention to back to looting.

A beat of silence before the guard spoke. “You lost you’re voice, huh? From screaming too loud. Real dumb thing to do. Shouldn’t have screamed so loud, dummy.” Poor guy was still delusional. Though maybe that was for the best if it kept him from going catatonic instead. “Bet you regret that. Not being able to talk must suck real hard.”

It didn’t suck at all actually. Inconvenient at times, sure, but mostly it was a fine way of being. But if there was any way to help the poor guy, Gordon didn’t know how. So he didn’t even bother to look up as he continued his resource gathering.

Once he had everything he could carry of all that was available, he exited, trusting his companion to follow as he’d been doing. This time he fell in step with Gordon. “How long this no voice thing going to last?”

Even if Gordon’s hands weren’t clinging to his newly acquired shotgun, he wouldn’t have bothered with an answer. He didn’t have time to try to figure out how to convey to this guy that he was having a stress-induced delusion of some sort.

“I mean, your hand grew back real fast so why isn’t your voice healing fast too? Doesn’t make sense.”

Gordon kept walking. They had to be near the end of this lab soon. Perhaps he should leave this guy here. It seemed fairly safe.

“You not being able to talk is boring.”

The company was nice though. Gordon had been alone for most of this journey so far with only the occasional companion guided to a hopefully safe spot. So he’d let this guy follow him for a little while longer. He could reset if he had to so he didn’t have to stress too much about preventing anything.

“You’re not even making faces at me anymore. It’s like talking to a wall. … We should go back and find the others. All the way back to the beginning, sounds fun, huh?”

Ah, he had other friends. Or had, they might be dead too. For his sake, hopefully not, Gordon wasn’t going to hold his breath though. He could reset to try to save them but had no idea where or when they might’ve died.

The guard stayed silent for a while, clearly waiting for some kind of response. When he didn’t get one, he dropped back to resume trailing along at his own inconsistent speed once more.

If only Gordon could reset to before the Resonance Cascade. That would save everyone, the only way to do so. He’d already tried though, twice. Presumably it was the cause of his power and thus he couldn’t go back to before it. So with nothing else to do, he just kept going forward.

Up ahead around the next bend the familiar crackle of portals opening was followed by shouts and gunfire. More of the military. Gordon slowed as he reached that corner. Popping the helmet up, he pressed himself to the wall and peeked around.

Ah, the tram platform. The opposite side was where many of the aliens had teleported in. On this side, were the military. They were firing at each other, bullets and lightening streaks ripping across the divide. Good. They’d kill each other and then Gordon would…

The guard had slowed with him but now started around the bend as if unconcerned about the possibility of death. Or maybe his delusion extended into not recognizing this situation as dangerous. Which it was didn’t matter, Gordon grabbed his elbow and pulled him back.

He let out a small sound of surprise. “Hey man, what the…”

Pressing him against the wall, Gordon pressed his other hand over his mouth, cutting him off. Instead of struggling as would’ve been expected, he stuck his tongue out, slipping it between Gordon’s fingers. It looked almost purple in the dim light of hall and was certainly quite long to snake all the way across his palm and between his fingers like that. If it was meant to gross Gordon out into removing his hand, it failed; he couldn’t feel it through the HEV suit’s glove.

He held him there for the few seconds it took for the sounds of violence around the bend to cease. Letting go, Gordon lifted a finger to his lips – the one not covered in the guard’s spit – in a request for silence.

“Why we being sneaky all of the sudden?” He at least had the decency to whisper.

Ignoring him, Gordon peeked back around the corner. … The military side had won, leaving a handful of their number still alive. Pulling back, he crouched down to sit up a trip wire, placed so it shouldn’t be visible until rounding the corner at which point it should be too late to stop running to avoid it. Careful of it, he drew his revolver and leaned back around the corner.

One of the military goons was turned his way and seemed to be heading to guard this direction. He opened his mouth but before he could get a word out, Gordon shot him in the head. Yes! Bullseye! His aim was getting better.

Not waiting for the body to finish dropping to the floor, Gordon jerked back. Hooking his companion by the elbow – he no longer entirely trusted the guy to be keep himself safe – Gordon quickly backpedaled away from the trip mine, angling himself so that he was in front of the guard. They were just barely clear of its blast radius when the military squad rounded the corner and ran right into it, setting it off with a deafening explosion. One goon round the corner a bit late, skidding to a hall at the sight and sound of his companions’ death. Still ready with the revolver, Gordon shot him in the head. He crumpled to the floor, dead.

Other than the ringing in Gordon’s ears silence settled on the gory scene. He stood waiting to see if anyone else would arrive around the corner. … Seemingly his trap had got all of them though.

“Wow,” his companion said, seemingly unbothered by how close he’d just been to an explosion. “You got good at killing stuff.”

It was either get good at killing the military goons or continue to die to them over and over again until he lost whatever was left of his sanity. Even if he’d had a way to convey that thought, he probably wouldn’t have as who could possibly believe that time reset when he died? It sounded like utter nonsense. So he only shrugged his shoulders before unhooking his arm from his companion – perhaps he should try to get his name – before walking forward to look for anything useful among the goons’ remains.

More ammo which was nice. Around the bend, they had had some med-kits that allowed him to top off the suit’s reserve medical gel. He handed one to his companion as well as he’d might’ve been inflicted with hearing damage from the explosion. And maybe it might help with his shock or whatever it was making him act strange.

Not accepting it, he stared at Gordon. “You steal that?” Clearly whatever was wrong with him was affecting his priorities.

Gordon didn’t have time to deal with it, not that he even knew how to. So instead he pressed the med-kit against the guard’s vest and let go, expecting him to catch it. He didn’t, instead letting it fall to the floor in front of him. Whatever. If he didn’t think he needed it, Gordon wasn’t going to make him.

He turned away and started for the tram’s computer system. Even if taking it wasn’t an option, he should be able to figure out where he was and more important where to go to get to the Lambda Lab.

“Off to steal more stuff, huh? Can’t um, can’t let you do that.” The guard followed. He tried to step in front of Gordon before he could reach the tram’s office. A quick left-right juke got Gordon past though.

Inside, the computer was already on, depicting the map of the tram system, spanning almost the whole facility. It was wrong. … Or no, not wrong but mirrored. Not the writing but everything else was. What an odd glitch. Perhaps it was a prank that someone had been trying to pull before hell broke loose. Whatever. It still told Gordon where he was and thus where he had to go in order to reach the Lambda Lab.

As he turned to exit, the guard was blocking his way again. “You’re not supposed to be in here without your passport.” Wow, poor guy must be really going through it to have lost his place in reality so thoroughly.

Gordon patted him tenderly on the shoulder before pushing past him with as little force as he could.

“Hey man, you can’t do that. At least say something, huh? Your voice has got be better by now, right? What the hell man?”

Gordon would have to find somewhere safe to leave this befuddled fellow sometime soon probably. As nice as more permanent company would be it just wasn’t safe with him. The military wanted him specifically after all, and maybe it was just his imagination but the aliens had been appearing right next to him more and more until recently. Whether or not that pattern would resume, if it was even real, remained to be seen. But regardless he wasn’t running away from the danger but instead towards trying to fix it. Having to watch out for his pal who barely even knew what was happening as well as keeping himself alive was a tall order even with his reset ability. For now though, as long as the guy wanted to keep following, Gordon would let him.

***

Barney moved fast. Which made sense, perfectly logical in fact. The faster they moved the sooner they could get out or at least not be so out in the open. But being knocked unconscious didn’t count as sleep, it kind of felt like the opposite actually. Gordon was weary in mind and body, going fast was the last thing he wanted to do.

He wasn’t going to complain… yet. Eventually he would but if he made too much of nuisance of himself Barney might abandon him too. He’d be justified in doing so, wouldn’t he? Gordon would be little to no help in keeping either of them alive. In fact he’d be an active burden. And he’d already been betrayed and abandoned once so what if…

“Yo, clone-Gordon,” Barney said as he stepped into one of the lab. “Looks like some military guys died in here.”

Gordon of course followed him into the room if for no other reason than to stop walking for a little bit. “And that’s relevant to me, why?”

“Guns. Specifically handguns because you only have the one hand.” Barney took one such gun off the nearest corpse. A small pistol but when it came to firearms, size didn’t really matter that much.

“It’s my left though and I’m not left-handed so not exactly helpful. I wouldn’t be able to hit anything.” He’d once had the thought of training himself to be ambidextrous but had only practiced writing with his left hand a grand total of twice before giving up. If only he’d kept with it.

Holding the pistol by the barrel, Barney offered it to him anyway. “Better than just a crowbar though. And if you’re up against a human, all you might need to do is point it and pretend like you can use it and they might back off.”

With a sigh, Gordon took it. It felt weird and wrong in his hand. Though really it was odd that a gun had ever felt natural hold.

“Practice with it a bit, there’s plenty of ammo in this room.”

Gordon couldn’t exactly pretend that arming himself was a bad idea even if it was much harder now. Especially since he’d just been thinking about how much dead weight he was to Barney. So as Barney moved aside, he awkwardly popped up the HEV suit’s helmet to act as ear protection before aiming at the alien corpse in the corner.

He took his time on the shot, lining it up with the head. It was close enough that he would’ve trusted himself to hit if it were his right hand. Before he could hesitate too long he pulled the trigger. … The head didn’t explode – not that they actually did that when shot by normal pistols anyway, movies lied. Instead the bullet went way to the left and too far up. Worse than the first time he’d ever shot a gun.

“You were kinda close… maybe,” Barney said. “I don’t really know what you were aiming for though.”

“The head.”

“Ooh, yeah, uh… I’ve seen worse. Keep trying while I loot the rest of them.” He lightly patted Gordon on the shoulder before moving on to do so.

With nothing else to do, Gordon obeyed. By the time the clip was empty his hand hurt from the recoil but he had hit the corpse in the chest. It would take a lot longer to really get the hang of aiming with his left hand but it was possible. A new problem presented itself though… “I can’t reload it.”

Barney returned to his side to take it from him and reload it for him. “Lucky you got me then. Hopefully you won’t need to use it too often anyway. It’s mostly a just in case thing, you know? Anyway, I’m done here so let’s go.” He handed the gun back. “We should be nearing the end of the lab and then we can get a read on where we are and should go next.”

“Do you think we could walk a bit slower? I’m uh…” He gestured vaguely with his stump. A valid excuse to be exhausted, right?

“Oh uh, yeah, of course.” True to his word, he went a bit slower as he lead the way back out into the hall. Which allowed Gordon to easily fall into pace with him. Which he apparently took as an invitation to chat. “So… you sure you don’t know anything about my buddy Gordon?

“I’m sure.”

Barney nodded as if he’d expected that answer. “I’m sure he’s probably all right. Maybe we’ll even run into him eventually and then we can ask him if he knows he’s been cloned.”

Gordon still didn’t want to believe that but he also still couldn’t come up with anything that would prove even to just himself he wasn’t a clone. But if they were talking about people they knew though… “You know a guy name Benrey? He’s a security guard in the uh… lab I work in. Or at least, he pretends to be one.” The other guard present hadn’t been bothered by Benrey’s presence but maybe he’d been in on the prank.

“Uh, nope. Odd name though. It short for something?”

“Maybe, I don’t know, didn’t ask him.” He’d been a bit too distracted by how annoyed he’d been with Benrey most of the time he’d been around for to even think to ask such a question. “What about Dr. Bubby, you know him?”

“Is there really someone named Dr. … Bubby? No problem if that’s really the guy’s name or whatever, lots of folk got weird names but… Bubby, really?”

“That’s what he said his name was when I asked. What about Tommy uh… actually I don’t think I know his last name.”

“My pal Gordon used to have a cat name Tommie but don’t think I ever knew a person called that.”

Gordon really shouldn’t have expected anything different. Big facility and all. But it would’ve been nice if Barney knew them to make it easier to complain to him about how weird his prior companions were. Though Gordon might fit in with their weirdness more than he’d thought since he was apparently maybe a clone. Speaking of clones though… “What about a Dr. Coomer?”

“Ah! Him I do know. Or I guess ‘know’ isn’t the right word. I heard of him. He’s one of the guys who were involved in that other cloning thing I told you about earlier. I remember ‘cause he’s got a funny name. Some of the uh… other guards used to make some not polite jokes about it. Not me of course. I would never.”

As far as Gordon could tell Barney was telling the truth but what the hell did he knew about reading people? There were more important things to worry about right now anyway. “You mean the clone thing that you said failed?”

“Yep.”

“Well uh… it didn’t fail then. I was traveling with him before this happened,” he indicated his stump, “and we kept running into his clones. He had to kill them because… actually I don’t know why, he just said he had to kill them so I figured he probably had a good reason.” And if clones had a good reason to be killed then their betrayal definitely made sense. Maybe they hadn’t suspected he was one at first so they stuck with him for a while and then felt too bad to kill him themselves once they found out so tried to get the military to do it. But joke’s on them, Gordon was still alive and mostly intact.

Barney shrugged. “Maybe, I don’t know. They were certainly supposed to be dangerous so killing them if they got out makes sense. I’d heard the guy died to his clones though and after that they got violent towards everyone and had to be put down. But, you know, like most of what anyone hears about what goes on ‘round here, that’s just a rumor. Who knows how much if any of it is actually true, huh?”

“Yeah.” Gordon had certainly heard some weird rumors about stuff that went on around other parts of the facility before. Very little of it was actually allowed to be talked about and thus only of rumors and hearsay went around whenever something big happened. In hindsight maybe he should’ve paid more attention and gotten out of here before such a disaster could occur. It had basically been inevitable with how much fucked up shit supposedly happened in the building, right?

They walked in silence for a while after that. Blessed, sweet silence of people who knew how to shut the fuck up because things were serious. … Except it didn’t feel particularity blessed. After so much chatter for so long, it felt wrong. The weight of the facility seemed to hang heavier over Gordon’s head without the distraction of his prior companions’ antics. He wasn’t going to be the one who talked endlessly though. Doing so would not only make him a hypocrite but also a nuisance.

Eventually, finally, noise came from up ahead, around a bend. Gunfire and shouting. Damn it. More military just what they needed.

By the time they reached it, silence had returned. Clutching his shotgun, Barney peeked around the corner. He pulled back after a few seconds. “Aliens killed a squad of military guys. You stay here, I’ll take them out.”

“Uh… yeah, good idea,” Gordon whispered back even though Barney was already moving again. He sounded like he knew what he was doing though so Gordon was more than happy to stay here and not try to help. Losing a hand, especially one’s dominant hand, was a perfectly valid excuse to do so, right? He’d just get in the way if he tried. No need to feel bad or like a coward or whatever.

More gunfire came from around the corner as well as some alien lightening sounds. Soon after it had that stopped, Barney poked his head back around the corner. “Got ‘em. And we found our way to a tram station. Obviously they don’t work but their computer should have a map of the facility so we can maybe find a way out of here.”

“Uh… great. Let’s go.” He followed Barney around the bend, quickly finding himself in what was indeed a tram station littered with corpses.

The office was on the other side so they had to lower the bridge over the gap, using a lever. Its gears ground against against each other and whirred loudly the whole way down but if anything or anyone heard they didn’t come to investigate. The silence had an ominous vibe after it finally settled but Gordon ignored it as he followed Barney across.

In the office, the computer was already on. Barney stepped to one side of the monitor so Gordon could see it too. On screen was a map of the tram system, spanning almost the entire facility. It was wrong though. … Or no, not wrong. … “It’s mirrored.”

Barney looked up at him. “Huh?”

“The map. It’s mirrored. Like, not the words but everything else is.”

“Uh… the stress must be getting to you pal ‘cause nothing’s odd about the map. Don’t worry, it’s quite the situation we got here so it makes sense, to be a bit out of it.”

“I swear to god if you’re pulling some shit to mess with me I’m gonna… I don’t know. Nothing, I’m gonna do nothing because I can’t do anything. They cut off my fucking hand so I’m useless now. It’s mirrored. The map is mirrored. Don’t lie and say it’s not.”

Barney stared at him in shocked silence for several seconds before turning his attention back on the computer. “Whatever you say pal. The map’s mirrored. I know where we are though. Not too, too far from the old lab with that machine I told you about. It malfunctioned once but it seemed to work just fine for everyone else who used it. So it might be worth it to head down that way and see if we can’t try again. I know you’re a clone but you’re still a scientist, right? So do you thing you might be able to figure out how it works? Enough to operate it anyway.”

Snapping at him had been a mistake. He’d been the most normal person Gordon had interacted with since arriving at work – which, coupled with everything else he’d gone through was why he’d been so ready to snap but that didn’t make it okay. Assuming he’d actually arrived at all. Maybe he thought the map was flipped because he was a clone with nothing but implanted memories and that one had gotten flipped somehow. Or maybe he was just going crazy. Heck, maybe he was dead and this was hell or perhaps purgatory. Before figuring any of that nonsense out though came not dying so…

“Yeah, I’m a scientist. I could probably figure it out.” He put more confidence in his voice than he actually felt. It would depend a lot on what kind of machine it was. But to make up for being rude, he should make himself useful. Plus if it could indeed get them the hell out of here, it’d be worth it to at least try. Let the others continue the journey to the Lambda Lab to fix this, not that he trusted them to be able to. Or heck, didn’t Barney say that that was what the Gordon Freeman he knew intended to do? So it wasn’t something Gordon had to concern himself with anymore… even if it did feel cowardly to just run away especially after he’s the one who caused it. What else could he do though? They’d cut off his hand!

“Great. Let’s go.” Transgression apparently forgotten for now, Barney turned and marched out. Gordon followed. He was apparently the annoying sometimes rude follower now.

~

Next Chapter

[amethystina]

I am intrigued by all the wips honestly. Anything you give us will be amazing, I have no doubt.

I will ask about Thou Shalt Not Covet tho because it is completed.

And I LOVE the How To Build a Family for Dummies title lmao. If you feel that it fits the story, you don't have to change it imo 😆

Also, I have to ask about your health. I hope you're doing well these days and that you're getting better. If not, don't push yourself too hard. Take care of yourself either way 💜

No pressure x'D

Jokes aside: thank you 💜 I'm very flattered that a lot of you have such faith in me and my writing.

Thou Shalt Not Covet was something I wrote in a feverish haze about a week ago because I was high-key panicking over not having been able to draw or write in what felt like forever and my brain just latched on to that story. Which wasn't at all what I had planned but, apparently, what I needed at the time, so I try not to hold it against myself.

It's basically a fic about Ga On being a raging ball of jealousy for 10k straight.

... or gay, I guess?

So the title is a bit misleading since there is actually A LOT of coveting going on. Coveting of Yo Han, to be more specific.

Ga On you little sinner you.

And it's 10k before editing, I should say. Because since I wrote it with a fever, I'll probably have to add a bit as I edit. Understandably, I tend to miss a lot of details when I'm too feverish. The fic is set just before Kim Choong Sik's first trial, so around episode 10. Which means I'm going to have to add a couple of warnings because Yo Han does not play fair. Whenever I write Yo Han as he was during the drama I'm reminded of how far he's come in Who Holds the Devil because dear LORD is he a manipulative asshole in this one x'D

So yeah. Jealous!Ga On and a Yo Han who doesn't pull his punches. A recipe for disaster, in other words. But they work it out eventually.

Here's a snippet from the beginning of the story (though unedited so there might be changes before it's posted)

---

Ga On had never understood how utterly devastating jealousy could be until he felt it — truly felt it — for the first time.

If asked, he would have said he wasn't a jealous person. He may have felt a burst of it once or twice as he and Soo Hyun had grown up — whenever another boy had shown an interest in her — but it had faded just as quickly as it had flared up. Perhaps because, deep down, Ga On had known that Soo Hyun only had eyes for him.

There was no need for him to feel jealous since the odds of him losing Soo Hyun to another were slim.

And, in hindsight, that must have lulled Ga On into a false sense of security, giving him the impression that he wasn't the jealous type. That he was calm and rational enough not to get upset, and knew how to handle the surge of emotions that might occur. Not realizing that what he'd felt at the time wasn't jealousy — or at least not the true depth of what he was actually capable of feeling.

Ga On had underestimated his own possessiveness.

And it wasn't until he met Kang Yo Han that Ga On knew true jealousy.

His first clue that he'd misjudged himself should have been his inexplicable desire to remain within Yo Han's orbit despite having numerous reasons to stay away. All Ga On wanted was to keep pushing closer, to keep proving himself, to keep asking for that intoxicating attention that crackled like electricity down his spine. He may not want to name what he was experiencing — instinctively shying away from a revelation he knew would change his life beyond what he was ready to deal with, finding comfort in denial — but he still craved the rush it gave him. He couldn't help wanting more.

His second clue should have been his own reaction as he'd watched Jung Sun Ah fuss with Yo Han's tie during their photo shoot.

The anger Ga On had felt in that moment — curling black and vicious inside his chest — had been an overreaction of the kind that should have given him pause. But, somehow, it hadn't. Somehow, Ga On hadn't even registered it as something out of the ordinary. Some part of him had even felt justified in his anger.

As if he had a right to feel that possessive over his chief.

But the rational part of Ga On knew that he didn't. He may be sleeping in Yo Han's house and helping him with his mission to upend the world as they knew it, but they were still nothing more than coworkers.

Yo Han had never promised him anything.

---

Expect jealousy, anger, and a bit of angst. Because Ga On has abandonment issues and it actually hits pretty hard when he starts suspecting that he's not so special to Yo Han after all...

As for How to Build a Family For Dummies, the title doesn't fit the vibe AT ALL which is why I'm calling it a working title for now. It just sounds way too cute and cheerful for the actual theme and content of the story x'D But more about that in another reply since I got a specific ask about it!

Aaaaand when it comes to my health, things are really bad, unfortunately. The kind of bad I haven't had since January, with daily exhaustion fevers and lack of focus. And it's probably not going to get better anytime soon since the main cause is related to something outside of my control that will most likely take months to fix. So it's really just a matter of me trying to hold on as long as I can and, if I'm lucky, I won't break completely before I reach the other side. I guess we'll see?

Anyhow! Thank you so much for the concern and the lovely ask. You take care of yourself too 💜

WIP Tag Game

[btsgotjams27]

this is us ~ jjk | 18

you're dreading the meeting in LA, but it's a big city. you're not gonna bump into jungkook, are you?

✨ title: this is us | (sequel to all grown up) ✨ pairing: jungkook x f!reader | ✨ rating: m/18+ | minors dni ✨ genre/au: drama, romance, angst, fluff, smut | est!relationship, age gap, best friend's brother ✨ playlist | ✨ if you haven't read the prequel to this, please do so here! :) ✨ a/n: naurrrr--this means the series will be ending soon, but yesss---jk and oc will finally come face to face after a year apart! how will it go down? what's gonna happen? 👀 ✨ a/n 2: thank you to those who have sent in words for the little game. those words will be in bold throughout the rest of the chapters. we still have a podcast episode to celebrate the end of this story and you'll be able to send in questions and comments (a form link will be up when i post the last chapter :')) i'll also have a survey for y'all too :) as always, please leave a like, reblog, send an ask. i'd love to hear your thoughts.

[ SERIES MASTERLIST ] | next ✨ drabble ~ dream bigger, darling

chapter eighteen ~ you're seeing things, aren't you? | wc: 10.9k warnings: there will be a lot of talking, mild language, oc’s friends being loveable dummies, light insecurity, heart flutters, language, drinking, sleazy slimeballs, some touching, a slap to the face, unresolved feelings, insecure jk & oc, bamie is hereeee, love confessions, our babies are growing up and taking things slow, they both get on their knees (you'll understand why when u read), delicate first kiss that turns into a heated one, they're both h*rny but remember they're taking thing slow, smol erection bc hello they're together again, jk is tame and controls himself?? (WHUTTTT) but oc needs a lil bit more from him, bittersweet goodbyes (for now)

The impending meeting was coming up at the end of the week. Your agent, Jae, wouldn't take no for an answer and immediately responded to the Netflix executive, saying you’d take the meeting. If the meeting was anywhere else in the world, you wouldn’t hesitate, but the fact that you had to fly out to LA for this made you feel reluctant.

And when everyone heard you’d be in LA, the only topic of conversation was if you were planning to see he-who-must-not-be-named.

"Will you tell Jungkook you're in town?" Hyunie asked as she cut through her French toast covered in Nutella and strawberries. Taehyung leaned over to take a bite from her fork, but she refused to let him have any.

Yoongi sat, wavering his fingers together. “Oh—the plot thickens. Dun, dun, dun.”

He’d become too comfortable knowing your business and complained that he knew too much for his own good. He was cool with you, but his lifestyle was too chill to mesh with everyone else’s dramatics, including yours. Though he works in the movie business, that didn’t mean he wanted his life to be like a goddamn drama.

“Wouldn’t that be weird? To meet up with an ex?” you asked with reluctance as you searched your friend’s faces for any words of advice.

It’d be nice to catch up, you thought, but what if old feelings resurface? Then what? You’d be screwed and have to start from square one again. You had gotten too far to return to the sad, pathetic person you once were.

Hyunie interjects, “Of course not! You’re friends too.”

You deadpanned. “I haven’t spoken to him in over a year–and I’d hardly call us friends.”

Honestly, could you even go back to being just friends? How were you supposed to be friends with your ex-slash-best-friends-little-brother? How can anyone return to being just friends after being with someone like Jeon Jungkook? You could hardly keep your friends now and then to add an ex as a friend? It sounded like a recipe for disaster.

With a mouth full of strawberries, Tae threw in his two cents. “Just go see him. What’s the worst that can happen? You gonna sleep with him?” He smirked and grabbed another bright red strawberry. This conversation amused him for days, making smart comments and occasionally alluding to what the two of you used to have.

“Really, Tae?” You rolled your eyes, sipping your coffee. You’d like to think you had some kind of self-control.

“What? I’m just being realistic here. The two of you probably have all that pent-up sexual frustration, and who knows—you might not be able to contain yourselves if you’re in the same room.” Taehyung wiggled his eyebrows and then bit down his bottom lip, thrusting and slapping the air while in his seat. Hyunie elbowed him in his rib, causing him to groan at the pain. She whispered something indistinct to him, and the two bickered quietly.

You turned to Yoongi. He was always wise and had the right answers. “What should I do?”

You interrupted him just as he was about to sip his coffee. His lips thinned, and he stared blankly at you. “Why are you asking me?”

“Because you’re the most unbiased person here, and you don’t know Jungkook like we do.”

Yoongi shrugged. “I don’t know. Do whatever you want. If you want to see him, go see him. If you don’t, then don’t. It’s as simple as that.”

Everyone turned their attention to you, wondering how you’d respond. It wasn't as simple as Yoongi had said. The weight of your previous relationship with Jungkook wasn’t one where you could simply put it behind you and pretend like you could be friends again. There was too much history, too much hurt—just too much of everything. You tried to convince yourself for months that there were no more feelings.

And you had made so much progress, minus being upset when you heard he was in town—but regardless, you had moved on, and seeing Jungkook again could set you back a few steps.

Yoongi set down his knife and fork and turned to you. “You’re a big girl, and you’ve worked through a lot of things, and if you don’t think you can handle seeing him again, then don’t put yourself in that situation. I'm sure he’d understand.”

“Or—or—you could just fuc—”

Hyunie covered Taehyung’s mouth, muffling the rest of his sentence. “Don’t listen to my crazy husband. Do what you think is best for you, okay?”

After brunch with the crazy lovebirds, you sat in Yoongi’s car, staring aimlessly out the window, and said nothing the entire car ride.

As he pulled up to your apartment complex, you needed to ask him again. “Tell me the truth. What would you do in my position?”

He sighed, and his shoulders slumped. He knew you needed reassurance, but honestly, there was no right answer for this situation.

“Well, considering that I’ve gotten to know you over this past year, I'd say that it’s gonna eat at you day and night if you don’t reach out to him. You’ll wonder, ‘what could’ve been’ or ‘what if I did X, Y, and Z?’ You’re good at compartmentalizing, but I have a feeling ten years down the line, you’re gonna be upset at yourself. So, I don’t know, as I said earlier if you want to see him, go see him. If you don’t, then don’t. Whatever you choose will be the right decision.”

But what was the right decision? You thought of all the possible scenarios that could play out. What if you call to meet up, and he doesn’t want to? Or what if you meet up and it’s awkward? Or what if you meet up and old feelings resurface?

You were thankful for Yoongi and glad he could always be honest with you. With his advice in consideration, along with everyone else’s minus Kim Taehyung’s, you pondered your next move as you tossed and turned in bed.

Should you try and meet up with Jungkook? But you were doing so well. You had deleted his number, photos, and texts, and if you wanted his new number, you’d have to ask Yuna, and you wouldn’t hear the end of it from her if you did.

Maybe it’d be easier to just not try to see him. You were sure he was doing well, living in LA, doing whatever he was doing, seeing whomever he wanted. You just didn’t want to return to feeling insecure and vulnerable, and you had worked so hard to be where you are today. Maybe it’d be better if you didn’t tell him you were in town.

A non-stop flight from Seoul to LA was close to eleven hours, but you wished it was longer. The lower the flight time, the higher your anxiety rises. Los Angeles was a big city, and there was no way you’d bump into Jungkook, right? That’s a ridiculous thought to have. You’d have a higher chance of bumping into a celebrity than your ex. You were just psyching yourself out at this point, and there was no need to because you decided not to tell him you’d be in town.

After eleven hours on a flight and only six hours of sleep, you hoped you’d bump into no one. Your swollen ankles and puffy eyes were horrendous for anyone to see. But here you were—in Los Angeles, where many dreams came to fruition or never saw the light of day, and you were hoping for the latter, whatever that dream may be. You were curious about what Netflix had to offer and if it would require you to move here. Though, you didn’t want to get ahead of yourself, thinking about the what-ifs because nothing was set in stone.

Being a huge corporation, Netflix paid for everything—the flight, hotel, and transportation. Not too shabby, especially since they were trying to woo you into whatever job this was. They booked a corner suite at the Conrad Los Angeles, overlooking the city's skyline. The hustle and bustle of city life were similar but different from Seoul and could possibly be a place where you’d have to get used to.

The luxe Mercedes Benz E-Class you were sitting in pulled up behind the slew of cars from other hotel guests. This felt too fancy from anything you were used to, but you weren’t complaining.

You bid your driver farewell and thanked them as he pulled your luggage from the trunk and set it beside you. Just as you grabbed the handle, a driver behind you honked, gesturing for you to move out of the way. You jumped back, your heart racing as the loud horn continued in short outbursts until you stepped onto the hotel’s sidewalk.

God, this city sucks already, you thought, and you hadn’t even been here for that long, either. Brushing off the awful interaction, you breathed a big breath, ready to take on whatever this trip had in store for you.

“Miss? I’ll need a form of ID and a credit card to put on file.”

You handed what the front desk receptionist needed from you. Now, you understood all the buzz and why this was the hot spot. The hotel was gorgeous and a great place to hang out, even if you weren’t a guest.

As the receptionist input your information, your eyes scanned the lobby, taking everything in. A rowdy group of men exited one of the hotel restaurants, entering the lobby. You noticed a man in a monochromatic cream-colored outfit. You appreciate a man who was put together.

After catching a glimpse of him, you could’ve sworn your eyes were deceiving you. No, it wasn’t him. You were seeing things, weren’t you?

This city was far too big for you to end up at the same hotel as your ex-boyfriend, right? Destiny was definitely being a prude and playing tricks on you.

“Here’s your ID and card back. You’re located on the 16th floor, room 1613.”

“Thank you.”

When you grabbed your ID, card, and luggage, you turned around to ensure you were imagining things. The group of men had disappeared and was nowhere to be found. But you shouldn’t be looking for Jungkook anyway. You decided not to tell him you were in town. Wouldn’t you look pathetic going back on your word?

But instead of going directly to your room, you might have ‘taken the long route,’ cruising through the hotel—just to see what they had to offer. Though, who were you kidding? That person definitely looked like Jungkook! Except he had longer hair, and you hadn’t seen any recent photos of Jungkook, so you had no idea if he had shaved his head or had long, glorious hair like Rapunzel.

You would’ve lurked longer, but now you felt super creepy and stalker-ish, and your large rollaway luggage wasn’t helping either. Maybe it was time to give up; you had been looking longer than you should’ve.

If there was one thing that could possibly make up for the shitty interaction from the furious man honking away like there was no tomorrow—it was the view. The city skyline and clear blue skies with only a few scattered marshmallow-type clouds floating around.

The room was too big for just one person, and you weren’t sure what to do with yourself to kill time before your big meeting. So, you quickly freshen up to roam around the five-star hotel. You had nothing better to do, save for the fact that you needed to find that guy again, just to make sure it wasn’t Jungkook.

And as you expected, this hotel was packed with people. The restaurant's decor and view were stunning, to say the least. You didn’t want to keep going back and forth between the various choices of restaurants, so you stuck with the first place you saw, Agua Viva.

A small commotion turned your head; your eyes focused on it for a split second before returning your attention to the host. You cleared your throat, “I’m sorry. Yes, a seat at the bar is great. Thank you.”

You scanned the drink menu, pondering the various choices before you. Alcohol or no alcohol—such a hard decision. Well, considering you were going to an important meeting, it was probably best not to be tipsy, or it could calm your nerves.

“Hello, miss. What’ll you have?”

It was a toss-up between the Tornup Tiki Punch or Flamingo Shuttle. What silly names they were.

“I’ll have a Flamingo Shuttle, please.”

Non-alcoholic it is.

“One Flamingo Shuttle coming right up.”

You tapped on the square napkin before you, swiveling your chair back and forth, taking in the surroundings of light laughter and chatter, before returning your attention to the bartender making your drink.

In a city of 3.8 million people, it was stupid to think you had seen Jungkook. Maybe you just wanted it to be him and desperately tried to speak it into existence. You probably had a better chance of bumping into a Kardashian than Jeon Jungkook.

“Is this seat taken?”

You closed your eyes and took a deep breath before turning around to confirm your suspicions about the familiar voice.

It’s like time stood still; everything and everyone quieted down, and it was only you and him. He was like a stranger from a different lifetime staring back at you, but everything you felt while with him came rushing back like a flood.

“Jungkook.” His name rolled off your lips in a familiar way you couldn’t explain. It had such a hold on you, pulling you right back like a lovesick puppy.

“Noona,” he said with his big brown, doe eyes crinkling in the corner, along with a bunny smile.

The one word made you clench around nothing, but it’s just a word–what’s wrong with you? Honestly, woman.

“Is this seat taken?” He repeated, making you come back to reality.

“No, it’s yours if you’d like.”

You watched his every move. His hand held your stool, and his thumb lightly brushed against your back as he sat down. Immediately, you straighten your posture in case of any other accidental touches.

Jungkook crossed his arms on the counter, turning to you. The both of you smiled awkwardly, waiting for someone to say something.

“I thought I saw you,” the both of you said in unison and chuckled after.

“It’s me,” you scrunch your nose, flashing a smile.

Jungkook shook his head, copying your smile. “I thought I was going crazy for a split second. Wha–” he paused to let his mind catch up with his words. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here for a meeting.”

He nodded. “Oh. It must be an important meeting if you flew all the way out here.”

You hummed. “Yeah, it’s pretty important.”

Should you spare more details? Or just leave it at the bare minimum? You didn’t want him to conjure up any ideas as you had been for the last few weeks.

“Your Flamingo Shuttle, miss. Would you like to bill it to your room?”

“Yes, please.” If Netflix was paying, you were drinking.

You lightly groaned after taking a sip, not realizing you’d been thirsty after flying all day, or was it Jungkook’s presence making you feel suddenly parched?

“Anything for you, sir?” The bartender asked Jungkook, to which he shook his head no.

“It’s good to see you,” Jungkook said as the bartender left to attend to another guest.

Your crossed leg unintentionally touched his pant leg when you turned toward him. You took your time letting your eyes gaze over this new Jeon Jungkook. His permed hair had grown longer, and a fringe was swept softly across his left eye. The piercing that adorned his eyebrow had disappeared, and the only thing decorating that pretty face was a lip piercing.

“It’s really good to see you too. You look great, by the way. I love the long hair. It really suits you.” You couldn’t help but wonder how his hair would feel entangled between your fingers.

He proceeded to touch the ends. “Thanks. You–you always look great,” he chuckled lightly.

Your heart skipped a beat at the compliment as you suppressed a smile. “Thanks. I–um, do you have time to catch up? If you’re not busy, that is, but if you are, then please feel free to go. I don’t–I don’t want to keep you from anything.”

“I have some time,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes and his tiny dimple on display.

Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as you made it in your head. You were overanalyzing nothing. Jungkook seemed happy to see you, even though you thought he’d be running in the other direction, considering he had left on a whim.

“Um, do you work around here?”

“Yeah, I was just getting some early drinks with my colleagues.”

Your mind immediately went to Alex, which you fucking hated, but you couldn’t help it. Obviously, she wasn’t with the group of him and rowdy men, but you assumed they still worked together, and who knew in what kind of capacity–or maybe she had him eating in the palm of her hands again.

You stopped the ongoing conversation in your head. It wasn’t good for anyone if this continued.

“This is a great place. I can see why you’d come here.” He hummed in agreement. “How–how are you? How’s everything?”

Jungkook cleared his throat, interlocking his hands together, light tapping his thumb on the other. “It’s good. I’m—good. Work has been going well. I, uh—I’ve taken up running along with boxing, but Bam–he’s a handful.”

“Bam?”

“Yeah! My dog.”

“You have a dog?”

“He’s still a pup, but he’s getting so big already.” Jungkook pulled his phone from his back pocket, scrolling to find a photo of Bam. “See.” He set his phone on the counter, pushing it to you.

“Oh, my god. He’s precious! He has big doe eyes like his dad,” your mouth curved into a smile. “He’s perfect for you.”

Jungkook cleared his throat, pressing the off button on his phone. “How are you? What’s new?”

His question was so broad you weren’t sure where to start. He obviously knew about your meeting but didn’t know what it was for. But how much information would you feel comfortable divulging?

“I’m good.” You let out a nervous chuckle. “I just got back from a solo trip, and then this whole LA thing happened, and now I’m here.”

“Ah–right. Yuna told me about your trip. How was it? Did you enjoy yourself?”

You nodded. “It was great. I practically laid out on the beach most of the time, got some sun in,” you smiled and shrugged. “And what about you? I heard you were back in Seoul for a little bit.”

He hummed. “Yeah, for my mom’s birthday dinner, and I finally got to meet Indie.”

“Ugh, I love that little booger,” you chimed in.

“She’s amazing, and she’s growing up so fast.”

“Right? She grew up in a blink of an eye.”

Then you realized Jungkook had missed most, if not the entirety, of Indie's first year. Time had passed, and you had also grown and blossomed without your awareness in the midst of it all.

Jungkook beamed a soft smile.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything to drink?” you asked again, searching for the bartender.

He shook his head. “I’m good, thanks.”

“Positive?” You gave him a look.

He nodded. “Still trying to take care of me?”

“Well–I am older than you.”

Jungkook chuckled and turned away for a moment. “I, uh, already had some earlier, remember? So, I shouldn’t have anymore.”

“What? You can’t hold your liquor anymore, old man?” you teased.

He scoffed at your lame joke. “Are you taunting me?”

It almost felt like old times when you were just friends, ragging on each other.

You sipped your drink before answering, “Yes.”

He flashed a close-lipped smile. “Can I take a rain check?”

You hummed lightly. “You got it.”

Jungkook rubbed the back of his neck and swiveled in his chair, lightly brushing his knee against yours. “Do you have my new number?”

You bit the inside of your cheek. No, because you recently deleted all his contact, texts, and photos. You shook your head.

He held out his hand, wavering his fingers for your phone. You gave it over without hesitation and watched as he saved his number. “Call me if you need anything or want to get that drink before you leave.”

He handed it back, his fingers softly touching yours. “I should go. I left Bam too long by himself.”

Your heart almost leaped out of your chest and onto the counter, your stomach fluttering with a swarm of butterflies and the bead of sweat on the nape of your neck finally caressing your skin when he touched you. “Yeah, sure, of course.” You nervously scratched your temple. “I, uh, I should get going too. I have my meeting soon.”

Jungkook smiled and stood, and you followed suit. He stepped back, straightening his cream-colored jacket and smoothing down his pants. “I’ll talk to you soon?”

You weren’t sure if he really meant it or if it was just an expression. Either way, you didn’t want to put more meaning into it than needed. You smiled and hummed.

He stepped away, waving his hand before walking off into the sea of people who just entered the restaurant.

You half expected him to look back, but he didn’t. He was calm, cool, and collected as he confidently walked away, making you think he was over you.

Jungkook sat in his Uber, pinching himself to ensure he wasn’t dreaming–that he really saw you and had a conversation, and it wasn’t as awkward as he thought it would be. Unless it was awkward, and he invented a fictitious scenario in his head, misunderstood your body language, and misinterpreted your words.

“Sir?”

“Oh, uh, sorry. Yes, you can drop me off right here.” Jungkook’s mind raced back and forth, replaying the conversation.

He closed the car’s door, shuffling to the apartment complex’s gate. He punched in the code, rushing to his place to let Bam out.

The 50-pound puppy popped his head up, panting and wagging his tail as he saw his owner. Bam sprung to his feet and dashed over to Jungkook, smelling and licking his palm more than normal.

“I know, Bamie. I know.”

Jungkook smelled different. He must’ve had the faintest smell of you on him.

“Come on, boy. You’ve been waiting for me for too long.”

Bam whined when Jungkook’s mind was on something else and did not notice him. He was scratching Bam’s belly, staring off into space with nothing but you on his mind. It’s like you had completely taken over him like you were his paradise, and even if he tried to resist, it was probably useless now. He could never escape you.

Should he go back to the hotel? Would that seem too needy? He thought he was trying to get over you, but here you were, right in front of him, practically within reach—no ocean between the two of you. If now wasn’t the time, then when?

Was he prepared to fight for you? To be with you again? Was he ready for you to reject him if he wanted more, but you didn’t?

He sighed, fighting with himself for his next move. Whatever his decision, he wanted to ensure it was the right one. The real question was—did he want to be with you again after all this time?

The answer was yes—it has always been yes. You’re it. You’ve ruined him—it will always be you.

He was so close to getting in his car and driving back. Every cell in his body was urging him to go and confess his undying love—that is, until he remembered he ran away, that he hurt you.

What if you had moved on but didn't want him to know? He had no right to delve into your business anymore. What if you had moved on with that Yoongi guy? He'd heard that guy's name too many times from Yuna and Taehyung for him not to suspect anything was up with the two of you. You looked so happy with Yoongi that one time he saw you. Maybe he was the cause of your euphoria, the person you spent all your time with, the person you dreamed with, shared your hopes with—maybe you had fully closed the chapter that Jungkook was a part of, and Yoongi was the ‘take two’ of your story.

But could Jungkook just be a foolish dreamer? Thinking he still had a chance with you?

He'd given you his phone number, and the ball was now in your court. If you wanted to, then you’d contact him. Otherwise, perhaps it's best that he's not constantly chasing you. If you still wanted him, then you needed to let him know, and if you didn’t, then maybe he could finally try to let you go.

You checked yourself one last time, smoothing out your tailored skirt and matching blazer. You wished you had chosen another pair of heels, but your nude slingbacks were the only things you packed, so it’d have to suffice. With a swipe of your raspberry lip tint, you were now ready to charm whoever this executive was.

The hostess led you through the restaurant to a private dining lounge. A few guests were scattered far and wide while light jazz music and laughter filled your ears. Were all Netflix meetings always this fancy? You had looked up the menu beforehand, and the prices were somewhat reasonable for dinner, but you’d be fine with instant ramen from the convenience store. You could probably order the whole menu if you wanted since you weren't paying.

“Mr. Wells will be here shortly,” the hostess smiled, leaving you at the table as you mindlessly fiddled with your thumbs.

You wondered how your name even landed on the desk or email of someone across the ocean. Or could Jae just be a great writing agent, and he just had his connections? Maybe you’d find out during this dinner.

A waitress stopped by the table, bringing glasses of water and a bottle of Champagne.

“Oh–I didn’t order this.”

“Mr. Wells did. He wanted to apologize in advance for his lateness. He’s held up in traffic at the moment.” The waitress poured the champagne into two tall flutes.

Fifteen minutes went by as you sat waiting for this Netflix exec. He was already leaving a bad taste in your mouth because of his lateness, but it’s not like you had any other plans.

You scanned the room, watching others converse and eat before pulling out your phone. You went to your contacts and scrolled down to Jungkook’s name. It was like deja vu all over again–staring aimlessly at his name, whether or not to delete it or keep it. Only this time, he would hopefully pick up the call.

You were tempted to text him to see what he was up to. Considering it was a Friday night, he was probably out with friends, maybe Jimin or a girlfriend. You’d heard from Taehyung that they hung out fairly often. At least he had a friendly face in this city.

A low, husky voice said your name, making you look up from your phone. The man standing before you was not someone you pictured. If you had all the confidence in the world, you’d whistle and holler at this Park Seo Joon look alike.

“I’m Zachary Wells, but just call me Zach.” He grinned as he quickly scanned your face and held out his hand. You stood to shake it.

“It’s nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you and your work,” Zach said, gesturing for the both of you to sit.

“You have?”

“Whenever Kenji is in town, you’re all he ever talks about.”

Ah, Kenji. You should’ve known. Well, you supposed one of your exes was good for something.

Zach grabbed the attention of the waitress. “Should we order dinner? I’m starving.”

The two of you had a lot in common. Zach was fairly easy to talk to and was a chatterbox. But just like Kenji, Zach was avoiding why he had wanted to meet you in the first place.

The conversation had finally winded down after an hour, and the champagne and water washed down the last of your dinner. And now, only one thing remains.

“So, you’re probably wondering why I wanted to meet with you.” You hummed. "Well, as you know, we've been expanding Netflix into South Korea, and we're picking up a lot of Korean dramas as demand grows here in the States. As I was talking with Kenji, we thought you’d be perfect for the role of director for creative marketing. I understand you've been a writer for a long time, but I believe you have the potential to help us thrive even more with your market knowledge and insight.”

“Would that mean I wouldn’t have to move out here? That I could stay in Seoul?” It was the first thought on your mind.

“We’d onboard you here in LA for a few months and then get you settled back in Seoul.”

Zach’s offer was too good to be true and to pass up. You didn’t have anything else going for you right now. No show and only a half-finished script.

“So? What do you think?” Zach leaned back in his seat, draping his arm behind you, scanning you from head to toe. He finished the last of his champagne, gesturing for the waitress to bring another one.

It’s not like you could give him an answer right here, right now–coming to live in LA, leaving your life and friends behind. It was a big ask and not a decision you’d take lightly.

Your silence encouraged him to move closer, and his knee knocked into yours. “What do I have to do to convince you?” he said, his finger lightly brushing against your knee.

Immediately, you pulled back, pushing his hand away. “Is this how you get everyone to come to work for you?” You scowled, disgusted by his action.

“This is an opportunity of a lifetime, babe. Don’t waste it.” Zach raised his brows, waiting for you to change your mind. He tried to touch you again, but a loud smack echoed throughout the room, making others around you stop and look at the commotion.

“You’re feisty. I like that.” Zach licked his lips, massaging his cheek.

“You’re a disgusting pig.”

He scoffed. “Oh, am I? I’m here trying to give you a job, and here you are, being a fucking bitch. I hear you have nothing else lined up for you, right? And I can easily tell everyone in this industry to never give you another job again.” He threatened and then proceeded to move in again.

“If you touch me again. I’ll fucking scream,” you seethed, your face warm to the touch, smoke fuming from your ears.

Zach rolled his eyes and threw his hands in defeat. “Fine–have it your way. Good luck getting a job in this industry ever again,” he spat out before leaving.

Everyone in the restaurant was looking at you. You cowered, unsure of where to go or what to do. You weren’t expecting this turn of events. It was just too good to be true.

This whole trip felt like a bust. You came here expecting to return to Seoul with a job but instead had a creepy interaction with a high-level executive, and they paid for everything, including your flight and hotel. You shivered at the thought of him knowing exactly where you were staying. You were alone in a big city, and the only person you knew was your ex-boyfriend.

You illuminated your phone to check the time, debating whether to call Jungkook. Would it be weird? Would you look desperate if you called? It’s not like you had any dignity left anyway.

Unlocking your phone, you clicked on Jungkook’s contact; your thumb hovered over the call button. Fuck it, you thought and pressed call.

It rang a few times before Jungkook’s familiar voice was on the other end—it felt like old times.

Hello?

“Hey, it’s me.”

Hey. I was hoping you’d call. Are you done with your meeting already?

“Yeah, um, would you mind picking me up at the restaurant?”

Yeah! Of course. Text me the address. I’m coming right now.

Jungkook zipped through the city, and thankfully, there wasn’t any heavy traffic to slow him down. He got to the restaurant in less than 20 minutes. He pulled up and saw you waiting on the sidewalk with your arms crossed, trying to keep yourself warm. Parking the car, he ran over to you.

“Hey—are you okay?” he asked with concerned eyes, scanning you from head to toe, ensuring you weren’t hurt.

“Yeah, can we go?” Your body language was telling Jungkook otherwise.

He opened the door for you, and you quickly got in, fastening your seat belt and breathing a sigh of relief once you lay against the headrest. Jungkook looked over, biting his cheek as he could tell you weren’t okay—your eyes were glassy, and he could see how your mascara smudged. He began to input the address for the hotel, but you stopped him.

“Can—can we go back to your place?” Jungkook perked up. “I don’t want to be alone, if that’s okay.”

He certainly wasn’t going to deny you. “Yeah, of course. That’s fine with me.”

“Are you sure?”

It probably wasn’t fair of you to do this to him.

“Yeah, of course. Anything for you.”

“Jungkook, you can totally say no—”

He gently placed his hand on top of yours. “Hey—it’s okay. We’ll go to my place.”

You waited a good distance behind Jungkook as he unlocked the door. He took a step but then stepped back and turned to you.

“Bam gets excited when new people come over. So, I apologize if he’s a bit wild.”

You smiled, assuring him you’d be okay. You were nervous but psyched to meet him, actually—you hoped he would like you. Considering Jungkook was his owner, Bam would probably be the sweetest pup.

As soon as Jungkook opened the door, the brown-coated Doberman greeted him. He knelt down, rubbing his floppy ears. “I told you I wouldn’t be gone long, right, Bamie?”

Jungkook looked at you, beaming a wide smile before returning to his puppy. Bam’s tongue hung out as he panted, looking in your direction–he really did have big, doe eyes like Jungkook. Maybe they were drawn to each other through lingering starry eyes.

He let go of him, and immediately Bam came to sniff your hand, giving a few licks before looking up at you. “I think he likes you.”

“Whew—I passed Bam’s vibe check,” you joked as you crouched down to cup his face, in which Bam licked your chin. “Oh–” You scrunch your eyes closed and giggle at the pup. He really was so sweet.

“Bam—house,” Jungkook commanded. Bam whined quietly before following his owner’s order. He pouted the entire stroll to his crate. As he lay down, he took his turtle chew toy into his mouth, making it squeak.

You slipped off your shoes and set down your bag, looking around Jungkook’s apartment. As you expected, it was squeaky clean, with a few photo frames of his mom, Yuna, and Indie. Then you noticed the ‘Rising Star’ award he had displayed on a shelf next to a few other awards he must’ve gotten at his new job. The stark white walls and flooring contrasted against the black and brown hue furniture. You chuckled to yourself when you saw the workout equipment in the corner—of course; it’s right in his living room.

“If you’re tired, you can take my bed. I’ll take the couch.”

“Oh–” It wasn’t your intention to sleep here. You didn’t want to be alone after that icky interaction with Zach. “I’m okay. Do you just want to hang out and talk for a little bit?”

Jungkook took a big gulp and cleared his throat. He figured this was the moment of truth. He didn’t know what to expect anymore–it could be good or bad.

“Yeah,” he smiled, making his way to the couch, gesturing for you to do the same. “Make yourself at home.”

That was easier said than done. You felt intrusive and feared that you crossed a boundary you shouldn’t have.

He watched you sit on the opposite end. And never in a million years did he think you’d be here, sitting with him. Is it possible that you have found some way to forgive him?

Your eyes found his, and the two of you nervously chuckled.

“Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee? Tea?”

You shook your head. You didn’t mind just sitting here and being in his presence. It felt so comforting after such a long day of traveling and a shitty meeting.

“How was your meeting? Did it go well?”

You sighed, positioning your body toward him as you leaned against the couch. You purse your lips before answering him. “The guy was a bit of a douche. The job sounded like a great opportunity, but I refuse to work with someone who thinks I’ll sleep with them for a job.”

Jungkook’s eyes widened, and he shifted in his seat. “I’m sorry, what?”

You could see Jungkook clenching his fist, but honestly, he had nothing to worry about. You hoped the slap Zach got was more than enough to scare him off.

You held your hands up to calm him down. “I can take care of myself, Jungkook,” you assured him. “He got a nice slap from me,” you beamed.

He breathed a sigh, relaxing his body into the couch cushion. “I’m sorry the meeting wasn’t everything you had hoped for.”

You shrugged. “It’s whatever. I’m sure something better will come along.”

“I’m sure it will.”

“So, what were you doing on a Friday night? I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything.” You scanned the room, and there was nothing indicating he had company over.

Jungkook pouted, shaking his head. “Just hanging out with Bam.”

“No girlfriend or anything?”

Jungkook suppressed a smile, but he couldn’t help it. Maybe this was your subtle way of asking if he was seeing anyone. “No. No girlfriend. LA girls aren’t really my type.” Because you were, he thought. As hard as he tried to let you go, he just couldn’t.

You hummed and then wanted to kick yourself because that question came out of nowhere, but it was the question lingering on your mind ever since he had left. Someone who looked like him would’ve surely had women lined out the door, ready and willing to date him and bear his children.

“What about you? Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked, avoiding your gaze.

“No. No boyfriend.”

“So, you’re not seeing that Yoongi guy?”

You licked your lips, the corners of your mouth curving into a smile. “I’m guessing you heard that name from Yuna or Taehyung?” He nodded. “He’s just a friend and a pain in my ass.”

“Ah–got it.”

“And what about Alex? Is she still around?” You couldn’t not ask. It was like a giant elephant hanging out in the room with you.

Jungkook figured her name would come up sooner or later. “Alex’s not working for the company anymore. She moved out of the country.”

“Good,” you huffed; if she wasn't near Jungkook, that made you happy.

“You really hate her, huh?”

“Yeah, kind of.”

Jungkook softly chuckled, letting a beat pass. “I’m sorry, by the way.”

“Sorry for what?”

“Everything that happened with us.”

“I’m sorry too.” Your lips thinned, your fingers unconsciously picking at your hand.

“Why are you sorry?”

You appreciated that he didn't point out your flaws, but he wasn’t the only one at fault. Neither one of you was perfect. “Jungkook, you’re not the only one to blame. I should have communicated my feelings better when we were together.”

He nodded in agreement. “Do you think you could ever forgive me?”

Initially, it was hard to even think about forgiving Jungkook, but as time passed, the pain and hurt subsided. “Mm. I forgive you. Do you forgive me?”

“Yes,” he chimed in. You chuckled at how fast he answered. “What?” He raised his eyebrow.

You shook your head. “Nothing–”

“Just say it.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because—I just—shouldn’t.” You wanted to say you found him cute and endearing and that he forgave others too quickly.

“Fine,” he pouted, shifting his leg onto the couch.

Your mouth opens involuntarily, exhaling a yawn from exhaustion. The time difference really fucked you up. Quickly, you covered it with both hands and excused yourself.

“Am I boring you?” Jungkook teased.

“Yes, actually. I hadn’t realized you’d become so dull,” you quipped, covering another yawn. “See—so boring that you’re making me sleepy.” You leaned on your arm against the back cushion.

“Or maybe you’re just becoming an old lady.”

You scoffed. “I’m an old lady? You’re the one who’s staying in on a Friday night! Old man.”

“Yeah, I had to stay in, just in case an old lady needed me.” Jungkook giggled and looked away before returning to meet your eyes. “I’ve missed this.”

“What?”

“Us.”

It was this specific moment when you moved into flight mode. You gave a half-smile and shifted your position so your feet touched the ground. You checked your phone for the time. “I should get an Uber and go back to my hotel.”

“I can take you.”

“Jungkook, you’ve done so much for me already. I don’t want you to have to drive back and forth.”

“I don’t mind—honestly.”

You stood up. “I know you don’t—but I do. It’s okay—really.” You unlocked your phone and pulled up the app, determined to call for a car. All of this was becoming too much for you, for your heart. His presence, the giggles, the familiarity of what the two of you used to be.

Jungkook stood and walked over to you, gently pushing away your phone. “What’s going on? Tell me the truth.” He could always tell when your mind was working overload—racing with thought after thought.

Should you tell him why you needed to leave after the two of you had a nice, civil conversation without screaming or yelling? Your therapist did tell you that no one would know how you feel unless you told them—and you just told Jungkook that you should communicate better.

Ugh, goddamnit. 

Speak now or forever, hold your peace.

You didn’t want to revert back to your old ways—being anxious, self-conscious, unsure of what you wanted. You sighed. “The truth?” Jungkook nodded. “The truth is—I probably shouldn’t have called you.”

“Why?” he asked as his starry eyes gazed deeply into your soul.

“Because—I was—I am scared.”

Jungkook raised his eyebrow, unsure of why you’d be scared. “Scared of what?”

“I was scared that if I called you and we talked—old feelings would resurface, and I don’t want to make the same mistakes again.”

“You still have feelings for me?”

“I think so? I’m—I’m not sure,” you stammered. “That’s why I didn’t call you in the first place when I knew I was coming to LA, and then when I happened to bump into you—well, I guess what I’m trying to say is that yes, I still have feelings for you.”

His eyes fell to the floor, and he sucked in his lips, trying not to smile, before looking back at you. “Am I the mistake?”

You shook your head. “You were never a mistake.”

“Then what mistakes are you referring to?”

You hung your head and sat back down, and Jungkook followed suit. You nibbled on the inside of your cheek, and he looked at you, waiting for an answer.

“I don’t know. Me—falling too fast, building fantasies inside my head, knowing it’ll never be real, not saying how I feel, pushing away people who love me. Should I keep going?”

“So, you didn’t want to call me and come here because you were scared all that’s gonna happen if you talked to me? Is that right?”

It sounded ridiculous, but he hit the nail on the head.

You hummed.

There was the slimmest chance of you bumping into Jungkook while in the same city, but you hadn’t fully prepared yourself if you did bump into him. You weren’t ready for the unresolved feelings and the smallest flutters of butterflies, your body to warm up to the simplest of accidental touches and soft giggles.

You could’ve just sucked it up, called an Uber, returned to your hotel, and tried to brush off the slimy interaction with the Netflix exec, but instead, you called the one person you knew would bring you comfort—Jungkook.

Should you just be completely honest and bare your soul? You were halfway there. Maybe it was time to grow up and just say what the fuck you wanted.

Jungkook was silent and waited to see if you had anything else.

You cleared your throat, thinking it was now or never.

“Our breakup,” you paused to recollect yourself and to stop your lips from quivering so much. You started again, “Our breakup—it really fucked me up. You left without saying goodbye, and after that, I kind of spiraled—drinking every day, showing up late to set, and ditching our friends. Hell—I almost let some random guy fuck me in a bathroom.”

You sighed. “I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad, but I needed to go through all those things to be where I am today. I’ve done a lot of work on myself and had a lot of healing through therapy, a solo trip, and some new friends–okay, just one new friend, but that's beside the point–I just don’t want to go back to the same person I was before.”

Jungkook opened his mouth to speak, but you stopped him.

“I’m not saying that being here with you again will make me become the person I was before—I just want to make better decisions being the new person I am now.”

Finally, hearing how you felt after all this time relieved him. He had waited so long for you to finally share yourself with him.

Jungkook’s mouth moved from side to side, nibbling on his bottom lip before he spoke, “I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye. The weekend in Jeju really fucked me up. So much was happening with Taehyung and Hyunie’s wedding, and then we were on the brink of breaking up while pretending to be happy. My heart and my mind were all over the place. Then I saw you with Yoongi, and that really sent me over the edge because that’s when I knew I had lost you and could never get you back—no matter how hard I tried, I don’t think anything would’ve worked. So—I left.”

Your jaw tightened, trying to hold back tears as Jungkook recounted his side of the story. You didn’t know he saw you with Yoongi; it must’ve been shortly after you returned from Jeju. And as much as you were hurting, so was he.

Well, since both of you were in apology mode.

“I’m sorry too,” you said. “Growing up, it was only me. I had to do everything myself because my parents weren’t really there for me, and so I always felt like I didn’t want to bother others with my burdens. I know it’s not an excuse, but I’m slowly learning that I don’t have to do everything alone—that it’s okay to ask for help. So, I’m sorry I never communicated well and kept things from you.”

He licked his lips, thinking about how new this was all for him—you baring your feelings. “No, that makes sense. I get it.”

“You do?”

“I mean—I’m not perfect either. We both made mistakes, but you’re wrong about one thing.”

You raised your eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“You had me and Yuna, and you know my mom loves you like you’re her own. She might love you more than she loves me,” he said. “And you know you can always tell me what’s going on. I’ll always be here for you—no matter what happens between us.”

You grinned because he was right. You had overlooked the huge part that their family played in your life. You couldn’t discount that.

“If there’s one thing I truly regret from all of this—it’s cutting ramen out of my diet since I’ve moved here,” he joked to lighten the mood.

You dramatically gasped, covering your mouth. “You cut ramen from your diet? It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.”

The two of you giggled.

“I guess we’ve both done some growing up, huh?” Jungkook knocked his knee into yours.

“Yeah, looks like it.”

“So, what now?”

You shrugged, unsure of Jungkook’s feelings, but you wanted to express yours. “I don’t want to wake up one day and regret not trying again. I want you. I want all of you, but I'm scared—scared that I'll get hurt and go back to my old ways. I’ve had a lot of healing, and I'm in a good place, but seeing you again, being near you, makes me want to forget everything that has happened and jump in your arms and tear off your clothes.”

Jungkook covered his mouth as he silently chuckled at your confession.

“Are you basking in my misery?” you sneered.

His lips turned into a pout as he shook his head. “No, I just—this is what I wanted all along while we were dating.”

“What? Me acting like a fool?”

“No—you telling me how you feel, tell me how much you want me, to claim me as yours.”

You opened your mouth and made a face. “You want me to grovel? Get on my knees?”

Jungkook bit his tongue when you got down on your knees in front of him. He had to tell himself and his dick to calm the fuck down because it was not the time and place to be thinking of such naughty things.

You gazed up at him; seeing him squirm was fun. “You like me on my knees?” you asked, sitting back on your legs.

He cleared his throat, adjusting his sweats as he shifted back on the couch. He thought back to the very first time you sucked him off after having dinner with Yuna and your mom. “I’m sorry. I think you were confessing your love for me. Go on. I’m all ears.”

You smacked his thigh. “I’m—you’re ruining this moment!”

“I’m ruining it? You’re the one who got down on your knees! You know how much I love that,” he mumbled the last of his words.

You turned and cupped your ear toward him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that.”

“Just—go on. You were saying?” He cocked his head to the side, waiting for you.

You huffed, tilting your head back before landing on his sparkly doe eyes and cute little dimple peeking through. “I am stupidly in love with you, Jeon Jungkook, and I’ll do whatever it takes to be with you again.”

Jungkook felt a sense of relief when he heard those words, but there was still a small sliver of fear. “What if we’re just fooling ourselves into thinking this will work?”

“Then I guess we can be fools together.”

After baring your soul to Jungkook, you wanted nothing more than to jump into his lap and ride him like an endless merry-go-round, but you’ve changed and didn’t want to regret anything going forward with him. The two of you needed to take things slow and steady because you wanted to win the race.

The two of you stayed up late—talking, drinking beer, and catching each other up on life until the sun came up. It was like no time had passed, and you picked up right where you left off.

Bam had taken a liking to you, staying by your side, following you whenever you got up and moved around. He wouldn’t let you out of his sight. He definitely took after Jungkook.

The size of your bladder warranted another trip to the bathroom, and when you returned to where Jungkook and Bam were, you noticed Jungkook in a compromising position.

“Why are you on one knee? Are you taking a page out of my book?” you teased, not wanting to jump to any conclusions because you both agreed on taking it slow.

Without an answer, he took out something he was hiding behind his back. He held a blue velvet box in the palm of his hand.

Your eyes widened, and your heart raced rapidly because you knew exactly where that box was from. You and Yuna had looked at engagement rings for hours on end when the two of you thought Namjoon was getting ready to propose. You had mentioned it too many times to Jungkook while the two of you were dating. There’s no way he’d be proposing, right?

This whole thing with Jungkook was new—well, not really new, but you’d have to turn him down if he were to ask your hand in marriage. You were definitely not ready because the two of you had just agreed to try this relationship again.

“What the fuck is that? It better be a ring pop,” you implored. He slowly shook his head, beaming a smile from ear to ear. You repeated ‘no’ under your breath, shaking your head.

“You don’t even know what it is.”

“Oh—I know what it is!”

Jungkook leaned over on his knee toward you. “Okay, so tell me.”

“It’s—it’s the ring that I couldn’t stop talking about. Why do you have it?”

He giggled at how cute and flustered you had become. “For once, you’re wrong.”

“I’m never wrong,” you huffed.

He stood, making his way to you, lifting your chin with his index finger. He stared deeply into your eyes. “You are completely and utterly wrong.”

You pouted and crossed your arms. “Prove it.”

Jungkook sighed at how stubborn you were. He opened the blue velvet box, and it was not the ring you had envisioned. “It’s a promise ring.” Because it was the ring that complimented the engagement set.

You visibly gulped, and there was a sense of relief. “A promise ring?”

He nodded. “You are everything I could ever want and more. It’s always been you, and there’s gonna be no one else for me. You are worth walking through hell and back, and considering we’ve done that already—I’d do it again if I had to, but please, please—I don’t want to do it again,” he pleaded, making you smile. “If you’ll let me, I want to love you and show you I’m worthy of your love every day for the rest of my life.”

You found yourself grinning from ear to ear, loving his little declaration of love. You moved closer to him, looking at the ring and then at him. “I want to make this right—us. I was wrong for not fighting for you—for us, and I don’t want to make that mistake again.”

He pulled the ring from the box, grabbed your left hand, and placed the piece of jewelry on your finger. “We’re in this together—you and me.”

You glanced at the ring, smiling at how pretty it looked on your finger. “You and me.”

A lot has happened in the last 24 hours—you flew to LA, had your meeting, and rekindled your relationship with Jungkook. The last thing wasn’t anything you expected, but it became the silver lining to this short trip you were dreading in the first place.

The pair of you couldn’t stop smiling and giggling in the elevator up to your hotel room–mind you, you’d kept your distance from him the entire night, but it was becoming pure and complete utter torture.

Your time in LA was already coming to an end, and everything in you wanted to just leave your life behind and stay, but you had to resist; you had to fight it—at least for now.

“So,” you trailed off, unsure what to say to him.

“So,” he repeated, leaning next to your door.

You both smiled and laughed at the tension filling the hallway.

“Do you,” you paused to think through your words, “want to come in until I have to leave?” This was a good boundary, you thought–just until you had to leave for the airport.

Jungkook licked his lips, flipping his lip ring back and forth with his tongue. His eyes explored your face before landing on your lips. “I’d love to, but we know if I do, then you won't get anything packed, and you’ll for sure miss your flight.”

You scoffed, rolling your eyes, and playfully smacked his chest. “I have no idea what you’re alluding to, mister.”

But you fucking knew and wanted it too.

He eliminated the distance between you, slowly caging you against the door. You closed your eyes when he gently caressed your cheek with the pad of his thumb. You had forgotten how much you had missed his touch—your body was glowing inside, illuminated from the top of your head to the tip of your toes. You wanted nothing but to savor this moment—a moment you thought ceased to exist, a moment you thought only existed in your reveries.

The tiny hairs on your skin, tingling, standing on their end in anticipation of an expected kiss. All this tension was killing you softly.

His other hand snaked around the nape of your neck, pulling you even closer. Your eyes fluttered open, watching his lips part, his breaths slowing down, and you were trying to remember if they were still soft and had the faintest taste of strawberry. And you wanted to gently tug on that silver piece of jewelry and hear him whine because of it. 

Your stomach somersaults like there’s a gymnast going for the gold for the floor exercise when his body brushes against yours. The twitch in his black sweats is what really makes you melt and clench around nothing. It's been far too long since you've been touched, and he was the only one that could bring you pleasure.

“Can I kiss you?” His eyes are desperately darting back and forth between yours, waiting for your okay.

“Please,” you pleaded, almost inaudible if he wasn't so close.

He doesn’t go right in like you expected. He took his time, both hands cupping your face and your hands gripping his tiny waist like nothing had ever stopped between the two of you. The tip of his nose nudged yours, his lips lightly feathering across the top of your lips—not going in just yet. His warm hot breath fans the ever-growing desire within you. It was thrilling for him to rediscover everything he loved about you.

You closed your eyes in excitement, scrunching the bottom of his shirt in your hands. You slightly tugged on it, wanting him to hurry and just fucking kiss you already. You had never known him to be so careful, so gentle.

He giggled at your frustration. “I thought we were taking things slow.”

You deadpanned. “It’s too slow,” you whined, trying to reach for his lips, but he pulled back. “I thought you wanted to kiss me?”

Jungkook flashed a soft smile, his dimple on display. “I do.”

“Then shut up and do it already,” you pouted. You couldn't handle the teasing between you anymore. You wanted to make up for everything lost within the last year. If you had all the time in the world, you’d want him to do anything and everything to you, but that day would have to wait.

He tilted his head and leaned in; his nose nuzzled into the side of your face, and the deep yearning you’d hidden inside was released as his lips finally found yours. Lips on lips delicately caressing and wandering like the two of you were in a drought, in desperate search of food and water.

You gently nipped on his bottom lip, lightly pulling on his ring before kissing the side of his mouth. He grinned, thinking he’d get you back for that, not today but soon. Your hands traced the curves of his body, causing him to press himself further into you. The evident erection in his sweats tells you how much he was enjoying this too.

The kiss became heated and fervent, like an all-consuming fire taking everything in its path. Your hands are placed on his toned chest, holding on for dear life as he presses you against the door, breathing life back into you like your life depends on it.

You pulled back, gasping for air, but he leaned in, wanting just a bit more. You’re intoxicating, and he’s greedy. He’s a man starved from your touch and kisses. There’s no way he’ll ever let you go again. He’d fight for you until his very last breath.

Your arms drape around his neck, your fingers twirling and tugging at the ends of his long hair. You deepen the kiss, your warm tongue nipping at his mouth, begging for more access to him. Kissing isn't enough anymore. You needed him—all of him. To rediscover his deepest desires, wants, and needs was the only job you wanted right now.

Jungkook withdrew from your kiss. “You have to pack.”

You took a moment to catch your breath. “Or you can come inside and help me pack.” You moved in again for another kiss, but he resisted.

“I would love that, but…” he trailed off, letting the desire within subside.

Your lips thinned. “But then we wouldn’t be taking it slow, would we?” He nods. “I should pack.”

He leaned in to quickly give you a peck on the lips. “Mm, you should.”

Your shoulders slump, and you tilt your head against the door. “But I don’t want to.”

“But you have to.” You groaned and stomped your feet like baby Indie. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Not soon enough.”

bonus (jk pov - hotel)

“Sorry, I got here early, but some lady was taking forever to get her luggage,” the driver said as Jungkook’s colleague opened the door.

"You coming?" His colleague asked from inside the car.

"...uh, you go on without me. I left my phone inside. I'll catch an Uber."

His colleague shrugged and shut the door behind him before the car took off. Jungkook stood before the hotel's entrance, unsure whether to enter or just leave.

He thought he saw you while waiting outside the restaurant, but he figured it was just his eyes playing tricks on him. Even if it was really you, he wasn't sure he was ready to face you, let alone know what to say. He abruptly left without explaining his actions. He didn't think when he did it, which was a stupid, rash decision he later regretted. He couldn't bear the heartache of being so close to you.

The plan was to get as far away as possible so he could forget, but the problem was that he couldn't. You were the love of his life (yes, even at the tender age of 25). He had no desire for anyone else. Even when gorgeous women were flinging themselves at him in this new city. He wasn't concerned with them because they weren't you.

Everything made him think of you. From peonies to hot tubs and even bowling. He'd go back and say goodbye if he could. He despised the way things ended.

Before he knew it, his foot had stepped past the sliding glass door, heading in, unsure of where even to begin. He began his search as he walked through the lobby, peering at the reception desk. 

He noticed a woman standing at the counter. Maybe your hair had grown out. Approaching the woman, he tapped them on the shoulder. "Noona..."

When the woman turned around, Jungkook quickly apologized before returning and going on the hunt for you. You may have already gone to your room, but he wasn't about to give up so easily. He'd be sorry if he missed you by a millisecond. Could his eyes be deceiving him? Maybe he didn't see you just standing there. Maybe he missed you so much that he imagined everything.

He told himself he'd look for ten minutes before giving up and going home. He walked around the lobby, past the reception desk, down the hallway, and even took the elevator up a few floors before returning down.

He was sure the workers thought he was creeping around and wouldn't be surprised if they had called security. He only had a few minutes before calling it quits and heading home. He walked past the restaurant he was just at, then took a few steps back.

What if you had gone to get a drink?

It didn't take long for him to notice you sitting alone at the bar, waving the bartender down to order. His eyes were not deceiving him; he was not insane.

It was you. 

You were absolutely stunning, he thought. Even after a year apart, you’d become more beautiful than ever. He needed a moment to take you all in because he didn’t think he’d ever see you again—here in LA.

Every heartbeat was like a metronome, keeping in sync with every step he took toward you. He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes as he stood behind you, his mind racing with the right words—what would he say after a year?

“Is this seat taken?”

Fuck—if he could, he’d punch himself. He could’ve come up with something better.

✨ next ~ drabble ~ dream bigger, darling

[mikeluciraphgabe]

Mostly random 911 thoughts about S7

Buddie won’t go canon this season but hinted at in closing episodes (like last 2)

^ (there’s only 4 eps left this season and Eddie needs his own ‘oh shit I’m gay’ arch) (also other reasons that will take up too much space)

Perhaps Maddie gets pregnant again

No I don’t have any idea where I got that from but it just feels right now I said it (maybe even next season if not now)

Bobby/Athena/maybe both start to think of retirement

Athena might go to desk job/less field activities

^ Bobby similarly but I mainly think he would flat out retire

Hen and Eddie have a moment together

Dumbass Buck, Eddie, Chim, Hen, Ravi moments through episode and Bobby just sighs and looks at neighboring Captain and goes “sorry I forgot to give the kids enrichment time earlier” (LET THEM BE THE DUMMIES WE KNOW THE 118 TO BE)

Chimney and Maddie get into a nasty ass fight but then turn out ok after a few episodes (maybe less - but they definitely fight)

May comes to see Bobby for x reason and Ravi is smitten (plz I think they would be cute)

Christopher runs away again and Buck freaks out this time

(This would cause many tears for everyone)

(Funny if Chris didn’t actually run away - just forgot to tell everyone he was hanging out with a friend)

Major natural disaster

Another car accident but off duty - they don’t find 118 member and only realize when they remember that’s the road said member takes to get home and they haven’t gotten home yet (bonus points if it’s Hen)

One of the main *stares at someone whose name rhymes with tuck* gets evicted and needs to move out of their overly expensive California home

Albert

Just Albert strutting in frame, shirt off, sweaty, huffin and puffin- I mean

Jee-Yun starting elementary school/preK and maddiechim SOBBING as Jee has the time of her LIFE (Uncle Buck picks her up bc the two are such messes and forgot to)