#but that requires PATIENCE and I am ANNOYED about it

[bereft-of-frogs]

‘write the fic you want to see in the fandom’ becomes somewhat of a problem when the fic you want to see in the fandom is long, plot-heavy gen!fic because it takes FOREVER TO WRITE

I can’t believe I’ve done this to myself.

[byanyan]

struggling with the whole "actually writing" thing again ngl :/

[steakout-05]

ok as an artist i personally find traditional painting to be. really really annoying. like. i do not have the patience for it and i just find it to be really frustrating to set up and actually do and i end up not liking the results. i find that there's little room for mistakes and trying to fix them usually ends up with me making 50 other ones, paints can be so inconsistent and having to rely on availability and certain brands to continue making the paint is really inconvenient, not to mention expensive. spending a bunch of time trying to mix the right shade of paint, only for it to go down a completely different shade of colour and not being able to do anything about it is so frustrating as someone who likes consistency and having things just, y'know, not change colour as soon as it dries. plus, they all use different chemicals and can go off really easily or change textures and i am just not ok with having all my materials having an expiration date like food. lead and graphite pencils just don't do that and they can last for years, they're more reliable. every paint is drastically different and trying to find the right one is not only time consuming but, again, expensive, and i don't even see the point in experimenting when most of my materials end up not even getting used if i don't like using them. plus, i'm just.... really impatient. waiting for paint to dry sucks and is why i much prefer digital or just drawing something because i don't need to wait for anything, it just works. and then when i do want to take my time and work slowly for a better result, it dries too fast. it's kinda hellish trying to balance that time, especially considering how inconsistent paints are.

i like to use guidelines when doing art and i find painting straight onto a canvas to be really tricky because there's a lack of direction for me to actually paint. i'm at a complete loss at what to do when i pick up a brush because i can't map it out first without risking screwing up the paint. there's just so many things to keep track of and so much wet paint to avoid and i just do not have the mind for it. putting colours on a canvas and praying that it works just isn't it for me and requires a discipline that i just don't wanna involve myself with. painting is also just like... really exhausting and kinda painful. i got some pretty bad back issues and my arms tire and get sore easily and quickly when i'm standing in front of a canvas. it's a really physical activity for me and i just don't find something to be very fun to do at all when it's physically hurting me. i know drawing on a canvas has this issue too, which is why i prefer sketchbooks. sitting down and drawing something that doesn't break my entire spine every time i do it is much more preferrable than questioning if i should go to the doctor every time i make a brushstroke, lol

that's not to say that there's nothing i like about painting though! i can paint simple little things, and i like doing that. i like mixing colours with a palette knife and i find it fun and even a little relaxing. i painted some cute little chibi cardboard cutouts of the mario brothers one time and i found that to be really fun and i think i'd like to do that again! but apart from that, i just do not have the patience for it. i love the look of traditional paintings and i find many to be really beautiful, but i could never get into actually doing it myself because i hate the process. i'm content with just sketching and doing digital stuff because that's more fun to me and less stressful of a process to do. it's fun, it allows for more mistakes, it's easier to build up layers of shading and lines, not to mention using building up a figure with guidelines is super helpful with visualising what i want it to look like, and i can just erase something if i don't want it there or want to change something. it just makes sense to me.

tl;dr i dont like painting because it's inconsistent, expensive, time-consuming, directionless, frustrating and it makes my back hurt really bad. i'll just stick to drawing stuff :)

[chocosvt]

HER | part one.

✧✎ synopsis: wonwoo, a heartbroken and burnt out writer nearing the end of his math degree, wants nothing to do with the seemingly perfect, intimidating girl who has everyone under her thumb. you. unfortunately, his literary talent has got him shoved him between a rock and a hard place when you want to write a book and require his expertise. you two are the furthest from compatible. wonwoo can’t see this going well. at all.

pairing: wonwoo x fem!reader word count: 23.5k genres/tropes: writer!wonwoo, university!au, plug!vernon + boyfriend!mingyu as prominent side characters, SLOWBURN (i am not fucking around this is my slowest burn yet), relationship drama, soul searching, strong angst/hurt (i’m coming for the jugular), comfort, romance, smut, a smoothie of every emotion on earth.

(!) warnings: drug use (weed, coke, ecstasy), wonwoo has anxiety + anxiety attacks + fairly dark thoughts, prescribed medication, gambling, intense language, infidelity, throwing up.

✧✎ a/n: just some quick things i want to make apparent!

the fic is told from wonwoo’s pov, not the reader’s! 

all major timeline events are organized through chronological dates

potentially triggering scenes within the fic are NOT MARKED in advance

the content is already quite mature, so pls heed the warnings!

bolded and italicized text implies characters are conversing in korean, tho it doesn’t happen often!

the fic in its entirety is 140k, so it has been split into 6 parts

everyone's patience and understanding has been endlessly appreciated! you have no idea ;_; i give you all shining stars 🌟

⇢ part two | part three | part four | part five | part six ⇢ soundtrack for those curious! ⇢ read at ur own pace! :)

—MARCH 19TH.

“I have a relatively big favour to ask of you.”

 No. Wonwoo didn’t want anything to do with favours.

The fact that Seokmin had actively picked out his presence in the coffee shop like he was some shiny contortion of plastic had actually offended Wonwoo. He came here for two things: to not be bothered, which his friend knew, and to work on the book he was halfway through typing and had been halfway through typing for the past six months. Call it writer’s block, or an inspiration drought, or an absolutely depressing lack of drive—it had been hanging over the writer with an annoying persistence and it seemed that no number of lemony scones or cold coffees were going to make it vanish.

“Uh, Wonwoo?”

“Sorry… what?” He forced his gaze to shift from the blank page on his laptop to Seokmin’s apologetic, softly expressional face, slightly flushed from his time outdoors in the chilled March weather.

“I was just wondering if you’d be up for a favour—a pretty big one—and I know this is your special creativity spot, but she’s been like, breathing down my neck about it and I can’t put it off again.”

“Whose been breathing down your neck?”

At first, Seokmin didn’t say a word, or even make a sound. His lips twitched for a moment, but then he pressed them together and his chest visibly sucked in with a breath. God, Wonwoo hated the suspense and he hated Seokmin for interrupting him when he had been so stupidly close to putting a sentence down that he probably would have back-spaced in frustration a minute later.  

“Y’know…” he trailed off, “Her.”

Her.

No, not her, you.

But most people—if not everyone—referred to you by an alias that had seemed to stick so well the majority believed it actually was your name. When people said her they meant Her, and so in a confusing mess of finger-pointing they really meant you. Come to think of it, Wonwoo had no idea where the nickname even came from or who gave it to you or what it even meant.

And he was perfectly fine with never knowing.

“What?” Wonwoo deadpanned. “What on earth could she want to do with me? She doesn’t even know me.” He slid down in his chair, fingers pulling at his circle-lensed glasses so they tilted uncomfortably across his nose bridge. “Or, is this a joke?”

“Oh—no! Absolutely not!” His friend was insistent on proclaiming, vigorously shaking his head. “I’m being serious.”

“Why don’t I believe you then?”

“Okay, well, if you let me explain everything, it’ll all make sense. I said I know someone who writes really well—”

“Meaning me?”

“Yes, meaning you. And the only reason that was even brought up is because she wants to write a book.”

Wonwoo couldn’t help it. He laughed a very short disbelieving laugh that flashed a transient smile to his face as he readjusted his crooked glasses. You were the last person he would ever envision wanting to write a book. He then navigated the trackpad on his laptop, deciding to close the document simply titled, 01, that harboured the fleet of pages to his own current work in progress.

“Yeah,” Wonwoo disregarded, “sounds like bullshit.”

“I’m telling you the truth!” Seokmin exclaimed, gripping onto the metal back of the café chair like he was squeezing someone’s taunt shoulders. “She won’t tell me about what, okay? Just that she’s been thinking the idea for a while now. It’s not like I didn’t try to get details. But she refused—said the only person who can know is whoever’s going to help her. Look, y’have to understand, she was pestering me about it nonstop. And you’re my only writer friend!”

“Well, you’re about to have none.” He answered, reaching for his coffee cup but stopping it just short of his lips. “How serious is she about this, anyway?” Wonwoo sighed. “Do you know how much fucking time you need to dedicate to writing a book?”

He stomached a slow, somewhat grimacing sip as he tasted the coffee’s coldness, meanwhile Seokmin swallowed heavily, and at last pulled out the chair he’d been white-knuckling to take a seat.

“Yes, I’m aware it takes time. I know that. And she is serious or else I wouldn’t be here, bothering you. She takes everything seriously.” The boy began unbuttoning his sleek black jacket. “Really, who knows what’ll happen? Maybe you’ll meet her once and she’ll decide she can’t stand you, and then you’re off the hook for life.”

“Yeah, well have you ever considered what might happen if I can’t stand her? Are my feelings even being considered? Minutely?”

“Minutely, they are being considered.”

“Liar.”

It wasn’t that Wonwoo disliked you.

In actuality, you scared him more than anything. But to be associated with you was to be drawn into your life and caught like a firefly in a glass jelly jar. The proof was right in front of him—to Wonwoo’s eyes, Seokmin was basically your little mailman that scrambled around in hectic nature to do your bidding, because most tasks apparently weren’t worth the time or effort.

“I can’t believe you’re trying to rope me into this. You know I can hardly write my own shit, right?” Wonwoo said bitterly, wishing it was the opposite, “my mind is a desolate, blank canvas of fuck-all and if she thinks I’m writing it then she needs a reality check.”

“No, no—of course you won’t write it!” Seokmin reassured him with his big, opalescent smile. “Really, you’re just giving tips, maybe guiding her process, helping with the planning… you know, this could be facilitated so much easier if you spoke to Her yourself!”

“So, my nightmare?” Wonwoo huffed, shaking his leg.

In an instant, Seokmin had whipped out his phone, tapping around the screen quickly using his thin pointer finger.

“I’m just going to pull up her schedule. It’s always pretty packed, but more into the summer break, it thins out a little. “

Wonwoo exhaled, staring off into the warm, afternoon sunlight that hailed in through the windows, striking all the shimmering flecks and pieces of dust afloat in the café air. When he breathed in again, he could smell the luxurious coffees brewing in their rich and distinctive notes. It was such a beautiful day—still chilly as the snow outdoors began to thaw—but pleasant nonetheless.

“This is such a fucking waste.”

And Wonwoo spent it being miserable.

“No, it’ll be useful. Trust.” Seokmin chirped.

“You’re trying to dip me in your optimism gloss again.”

His friend smiled affectionately, tilting his head.

“This will be good. You’ve been a hermit since I’ve known you.”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo scoffed, “so you think it’s a good idea to shove me with the person I relate to least on the entire planet?”

“Really? The least? So, what you’re saying is, you relate more to serial killers? Or animal abusers? Or like, literal fasc—”

“Stop.”

“You want to do this. I can see it in your eyes. I’ll set you up.”

A part of Wonwoo knew there might be no wriggling out of the situation, especially with Seokmin sitting across from him, characteristically eager and brightly pushy as always, like a goddamn salesman. For now, it could be easier to let himself get cuffed.

“Can I at least have some time to think it over?”

“Uh… well… the thing is… the thing with that is—”

“You’ve cornered me?”

“I wouldn’t word it like that.”

“… Okay.” Wonwoo removed his glasses, shoved his knuckles tender but deep into his eye sockets, massaging through flashes of white as he came to accept a fate he didn’t know even existed in his astrology. “Just, I don’t know—fuck—schedule me in wherever.”

“Ha! It doesn’t exactly work like that.”

“I really don’t give a damn how it works, Seokmin.”

“Right,” his friend laughed nervously, “I promise that I’ll get back to you pronto. Sorry for the disturbance. And, uh, good luck.”

 “With what part?” Wonwoo grumbled, fixing his spectacles back on to clarify Seokmin’s sympathetic face, the light bouncing off his head of brassy hair like a disco ball. “My incapability to write a goddamn thing or the fact I have to help your perfectionist friend who’s probably going to chew me up and spit me out?”

 “Both parts.” Seokmin grinned. “It can only go up from here.”

Wonwoo had one very distinct memory of you: creative writing with Mr. T. It had been an elective class he took amongst all his compulsory maths, and at the time it was a much appreciated break when Wonwoo grew apathetically bored from looking at matrices and confidence intervals and equations that engulfed the length of his notebook. Professor T was late one day in the fall.

And that’s when Wonwoo remembered you walking in.

There was a sort of sharpness about your presence that pulled everyone’s spines straight. People tended to angle themselves away from you, though they did it subtly, feigning an adjustment in their seat or a plunge into their bookbag for something that wasn’t even there. Wonwoo lacked the words to describe you. To be honest, he most likely could if he put that infinitely expanding lexicon of his to work, but even then, he feared that everything would fall flat.

Some scruffy looking guy had made the mistake of sitting in your seat—someone who probably skipped most lectures and only happened to find himself near Gildan Hall purely by chance.

It was the seat squat in the middle of the small auditorium.

He remembered the hand propped on your hip as you sashayed up to him—you always sashayed places. Wonwoo found it funny, like there were paparazzi stuffed behind potted plants and vending machines waiting to spring out with their blinding flares, just to capture you picking up a half-empty bag of flavourless popcorn.

“Oh no. Oh no no no no no no no.”

“Hm?”

“Excuse me? Yes, hello. You—can you get up please?”

“Up...? Why?”

 “Who are you?”

  “I’m sorry… what’s this about?”

 “Are you a first-year or something? Never bothered going to class until now? All the moshing and beer pong and ending up in some random basement of a friend of a friend of a friend is done so you’re deciding to actually get your money’s worth? Well, let me tell you this—I’ve been showing up to class punctually, and this is my seat. I always sit here. It’s my unofficially-assigned-assigned seat, which seems to be a known fact to everyone in this room except for you. Everyone has one. Everyone knows you’re not supposed to sit in other people’s seats. I don't care who you are. You could be my own mother. You could be my best friend, even. President of the universe. That doesn't make it okay, 'cause it’s a respect thing. It's one of those assumed societal rules and you just fucking kicked dirt all over it.”

Whoever he was, he never came back to another lecture.

Since then, Wonwoo had dually made it his mission to never cross paths with you, look at you, or even so much as huff one single carbon-dioxide filled breath in your general direction, just in case that was some degree of unbeknownst personal law he might violate.

Seokmin had royally screwed it up for him.

What could you possibly want to write a book about, anyway?

—MARCH 26TH.

Wonwoo didn’t know how he was expected to find you in this gigantic mall. As he brushed through the streamlines of people, bumping their shoulders and mumbling the driest, most insincere apologies, he couldn’t stop looking at his phone. Seokmin had given him your number with the instruction that he could find you, here, on a busy Saturday afternoon. So far, Wonwoo had sent you four texts, none prompting a response or the grey-dotted bubble, even. Fuck, why did he agree to this? He couldn’t stop thinking it.

Why did he agree to help you, whom he was beginning to not even like, or want to be aquatinted with, write a book, when he’d been struggling to fill the same page of his own story for months?

Squeezing the phone tighter in his fingers, Wonwoo’s broad shoulder then smacked into someone else while he was busy steeping in his misfortune. It earned him a wildly disgusted look.

“Maybe watch where you’re going," the stranger grumbled, some man with an engrained scowl and big, bewildered eyes.

But Wonwoo ignored him.

He didn’t fucking care, and he was sick of wandering through this mall. It made him feel overstimulated, like his clothes were sticking to his skin differently, like the back of his head was swelling, and like all the smells in his nose were somehow making him warmer.

The stranger just stared at Wonwoo as he walked away.

Ding!

A text, but not from you—Seokmin, instead. Apparently, you were in some clothing store on the second floor. Wonwoo stepped onto the escalator, pressing himself into the barrier to make room for the especially speedy people who couldn’t simply stand and wait. He felt a random touch on the back of his head. Scrunching up the glasses on his nose and turning around, Wonwoo stared at the downward escalator, locking eyes with a pretty dark-haired girl he’d never seen before. She wiggled her fingers at him with a flirtatious smile, the scent of her perfume still lingering. Fresh roses, he thought.

He blinked at her once, twice, then turned back around.

Never in a million years.

It was funny, though.

Once Wonwoo stopped outside the clothing store you were supposedly inside, he felt the myriad of distractions and scents and noises dampen behind him. The irritability he couldn’t shake was slowly transforming into nerves. He’d never met you before, unless half-glances controlled by fear from across the small, basement auditorium that hosted creative writing counted.

Focusing on one breath, and then another, followed by a deep, self-soothing inhale, Wonwoo attempted to convince himself that he was in control, not the emotions quivering at his fingertips.

He cracked his neck and walked in.

After a minute or two of confused isle-pacing, Wonwoo rounded a corner, his eyes immediately fixating on a girl who was picking through a neatly assorted dress rack, her head tilted elegantly and her lipstick glimmering under the sterileness of the lights—you.

He gulped. Just suck it up.

She can’t be that bad. You can’t be that bad.

“Uh, sorry to bother you. I’m Wonwoo. I know we have a mutual friend in Seokmin. Lee Seokmin. He’s in one of your seminar classes or something, and, uh…. anyway. I believe I’m supposed to help you with a book you’re interested in writing… that’s what I was told, at the very least. And… I know we’ve never met but… um… I guess…” he trailed off upon noting your lack of acknowledgement.

Suddenly, he was taking a step back, letting you progress further along the clothing rack, your fingers hopping between each hanger and your eyes scanning their corresponding fabrics.

Wonwoo jerked on the inside with panic. He hated the situation already, though he somehow found the resounding courage, or perhaps, humility, to address you again, even if he’d rather die.

“So, I’m not sure if you—”

“Can you move, please? Over here or something? I want this dress.”

He kept his mouth shut in order to avoid spilling out any obtuse nonsense, instead watching with a nervous, analyzing gaze as you removed the hanger and shook out the purple, wine-coloured fabric, its sparkles rippling when you stroked your hand along it.

“Woah. This is too pretty.”

Wonwoo cleared his throat, unsure if you were speaking to him directly. You already had a bundle of dresses tossed over your arm. Why would you meet up with him when you were clearly busy?

“Hey, what did you say your name was?”

“Me?” He found himself echoing.

“No, the mannequin wearing that hideous plaid mini skirt. Of course I’m talking to you. Should I get you a q-tip or something?”

“No... I don't need a q-tip. It’s Wonwoo.”

“Wonwoo?” You exercised the name slowly on your tongue.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well, just so you’re aware, it’s 11:35. You were supposed to meet me outside the boutique at 11:30. I can see you’re not very punctual, so that’s noted…” for a moment, you stood back, and the searing line of your gaze judgmentally raked him from top to bottom. “Anyway… you’ll have to assist me with some things now, thanks to your big delay. I got all bored waiting for you, so I decided to do a little self-indulgent shopping."

It could have been wiser to continue biting his tongue, but even Wonwoo, who had practically vowed to avoid you for all eternity  due to his fear, felt compelled to challenge your unorthodox logic.

“Big delay? I don’t mean to be rude, but I did take the bus to get here, and their timing is never right. I feel like five minutes is a reasonable time to wait. Not that I’m saying you’re impatient.”

“Well, here’s the thing…” your back turned to him as you took a few slow steps down the clothing rack, probing between the different, pricy materials for anything exuberant you might have missed. “That is what you said, isn’t it? That I’m impatient? I mean—jeez—why bother dancing around it when you can just say it?”

He watched you face him again, except he was keeping perfectly silent, clutching his hand into an anxious, balled fist.

“Well, I suspect you lack urgency, making you apathetic, so therefore you have no sense of initiative. I’m sure you’re already aware, anyway. I can be slow, too, with certain things. Like, when I’m icing a cake. Or painting my nails. But I don’t walk slow, ever. That’s for unmotivated, pointless people who will probably go nowhere in life.”

“… Pardon?”

“Hold this, please.”

Suddenly, you draped the wine-coloured dress over Wonwoo’s shoulder. And he left it there for a second, still gobsmacked, chest shuddering from the pressure of his pumping heart, and wondered how you were even a real person. Once you began walking elsewhere in the store, Wonwoo questioned a very understandable escape toward the exit, though, for some reason, he snapped from his stupor and quickly paced after you, now folding the dress more straightly over his arm. He realized he was too afraid to surrender.

“I’m supposed to help you write a book,” he stated, feeling his lungs dig deep for air, “Seokmin said you needed help.”

“Okay, I’m tired of holding these two. Here—” you again blanketed the dresses into his arms, “—please keep this olive one in good shape, no crinkles. I have yet to find this colour anywhere else.”

Swinging back around, you began heading toward the change rooms, your uncomfortably tall looking heels clicking with each step. Wonwoo stuttered, and he couldn’t stop doing it—just, absolutely baffled by you and your consuming sense of worth. He didn’t know what to say, he could only follow, producing bits and pieces of sentences that you were either ignoring or genuinely hadn’t heard in comparison to the monologues in your own head.

“At what point will we discuss why I’m here?”

Finally, he spat out something coherent.

You paused, and for a fleeting moment, flicked your very intense eyes up and down in an examination of Wonwoo, who felt like he was being intrusively picked apart under a microscope.

 He swallowed tautly, “I’m just wondering… that’s all.”

You pressed your wallet against the top of his shoulder, guiding him to sit down on the white leather stool placed just outside the fitting rooms. He sat, too, fighting the urge to wipe his clammy palms on his jeans—even worse, the dresses you’d dumped on him.

“Let’s talk after I try these on, ‘kay?”

There was something different about your voice. It fell lower, sweeter, and he shivered with the thought that you had quite possibly just hypnotized him. He looked up at you, nodding his head.

“Good. Everyone calls me Her, by the way.”

“I know.”

He held his breath as you reached out to take a dress, the wine-coloured one, which was more like a dark, nightly amethyst now that Wonwoo was observing the fabric up close. So, what the hell was he supposed to do? Just sit there, twiddling his thumbs and shaking his knee while you busied yourself with fitting into all those wildly sumptuous dresses? There was a plethora of other things he’d rather be doing—too many to name, in fact. But he wasn’t going to bother slithering away now, chiefly because you petrified him too much and he wasn’t in the mood to be further guilt-tripped by Seokmin.  

Throwing his head back, he blew out a tired huff and looked at the ceiling. Why the fuck was he doing this? He just couldn’t stop thinking it. What on earth could he possibly gain from being terrorized by your weird authority.

“Hey, I’ve been there, for sure.”

Wonwoo noticed an older man waltzing past him, probably in his early thirties or so, who’d spoken in a sympathetic tone. He seemed very polished and clean-cut, made apparent by his sleek suit, and as a university student who was routinely on the verge of going broke after most rents, Wonwoo knew money when he saw it.

“Pardon?”

The man stopped and smiled.

“Waiting for your girlfriend, aren’t you?”

“Oh, no. I’m just—”

He was interrupted by the squeak of the change room door.

“Be honest. How does this look?”

You had stepped out to examine your silhouette in the large, full-body mirrors against the wall, taking advantage of the heavier lighting to scrutinize every divot and ruffle that textured the amethyst dress. Wonwoo wasn’t sure what to say in the moment, and the man he was explaining himself to had wandered off into another aisle to answer a phone call. He watched your fingers pick and pull at the material so it could be readjusted in certain places, your bottom lip pursed as you angled your hips and tensed a leg to make a pose.

There were at least three other dresses strewn in his lap, and you were most definitely going to make him sit there and judge each one. Now, he could be honest. The dress was glittery yet sophisticated, something like a gloaming, purple-stained sky and its first emergent stars encapsulated into fabric, though he wasn’t completely sold on it. But he also wanted to leave the mall as quick as time would allow, so rather than being verbose, he shaved it down.

“It’s pretty, not great. I don’t really know.”

“Hmm…” you mumbled, keeping your eyes fixated on the mirror, “not great? What’s not great about it? The frilly parts?”

“Yeah, the frilly parts.”

God, he wanted to go home so bad. Warm tea would be nice right now. There were crinkle-cut fries in his freezer.

“Ugh, but I love the colour. I’m getting conflicted. Maybe I’ll toss it aside and think about it again later. Yeah, I’ll do that... okay, let me get the white one next. It’s a little short but I can make it work.”

 Wonwoo carefully pulled out the white outfit from the bottom of the pile and handed it off to you. The skirt was notably cropped.

Again, you strode back into the change room and softly clicked the door shut behind you. Wonwoo pulled out his phone almost immediately, navigating to his texts with Seokmin. His thumbs blasted against the screen, tapping out literary warfare that expanded into a decent sized paragraph Seokmin would most likely respond to with an apologetic smiley face. It might take a day or two for Wonwoo to cool off, but he always forgave him. Mr. Sunshine.

When he heard the door rattle, Wonwoo quickly hid his phone back in his pants pocket; however, he severely regretted that decision because holy fuck—that vinyl white skirt was indeed short and tight and the winding, crossed straps of the top were just maintaining your cleavage. He needed something to help avert his eyes because Wonwoo felt them itch with the urge to stare at your body despite how uncomfortable he was. The floor tiles—count the floor tiles, or count the lights—something, anything to distract his brain.

“Okay, this is like—if I bend over, I’m flashing someone.”

He prayed you wouldn’t ask him his thoughts.

“But like—okay, I can make this work, right? This has potential. If I stand really straight, and proper, and, just… pull this down a bit here—okay, fuck, that was too much. Don’t look for a second… don’t look…. don’t look… m’kay, fixed it.”

Wonwoo wanted to cradle his head in his hands. And, right when he swore that the situation couldn’t sink much lower, the wealthy, black-suit man returned from his phone call. He paused the second he saw you in the mirror, watching intensely as you fiddled with the vinyl and attempted to adjust the x-shaped top a little higher over your cleavage. Except he wasn’t exactly modest about his gaze. It was drinking you in like some sort of insatiable alcohol.

“This is tough,” you huffed, pressing your hands against your chest, “the top is super sexy. I love how open the back is. But it’s such little fabric considering the price. It sucks that I look so hot in it.”

Horrendously, Wonwoo noticed a jewel bracelet slip off your wrist onto the tiled floor. Even more horrendously, he watched in the tensest position possible as you began to bend over and grab it.

No. No, no, no, no way.

The last two dresses spilled in a silk and cotton heap off his lap, nearly tripping him during his rush toward you. He managed to cover your backside in the most heart-hammering nick of time, his hands accidentally brushing in static sparks against yours to help you pull the tight fabric back down your hips. Knowing the man was still watching in the mirror, Wonwoo clasped onto your arm and dragged you back toward the fitting room, his cheeks turned to rubies.

“Fuck, you need to be more careful,” he rasped, “the skirt is too short for you to bending over like that, alright?”

“I’m not leaving a gifted two-hundred-dollar bracelet on the fucking ground. Should I have just kicked it into the change room?”

“Gosh…” Wonwoo rubbed along his neck with tire and lowered his voice. “Bending over in a skirt that short, especially when there’s a fucking weirdo watching you, is not the best procedure.”

“So, it’s my fault he’s a creep?”

“Okay—that wasn’t what I—um—”

“Do you even like this outfit?” You deadpanned.

Wonwoo chuckled in disbelief, “I’m not answering that.”

“This is useless." Your eyes agitatedly rolled. “I’m changing.”

“Great, whatever. Do that.”

He gently pushed you further into the change room and closed the door with a smooth, loud shutter. His heart was still racing.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t let my girlfriend wear that either.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.” Wonwoo didn’t care that his tone was snappish and clearly tired as he collapsed back onto the stool, making a point to ignore the perverted bastard until he left.

“Wonwoo!” You called his name after a few minutes of silence from the fitting room, “please bring me the green one!”

He wanted to utterly vanish, have the building collapse and crush him in a pile of dust plumes and rubble. Sliding the dress through the small gap in the changeroom door, Wonwoo found himself pausing.

“Why don’t I just hand all these to you?”

“Because, I’m using the hangers in here for my clothes.”

“Why can’t you just pu—”

“Thank you!”

Impatiently, you nabbed the dress and shut the door.

However, that dress was the last one you tried on, and Wonwoo couldn’t have been any more relieved. Talking to you seemed like it might give him heartburn or a hemorrhage.

He thought the shiny colour of olive green suited you best.

The dress was silken and long, slightly form-fitting, with a slit cut far up the right thigh and thin spaghetti straps at the shoulders.

You picked the first three dresses to take home, and left the last shimmery one on the rack.

“We’re leaving now?” Wonwoo asked, cracking his fingers.

“Yes, after I pay. Don’t seem so eager.”

“With all due respect, this place isn't really my scene.”

“Your attitude isn't really my scene.” You swiftly corrected him.

He stood next to you at the counter, observing as you zipped open your small black wallet to pull out a credit card. If you were shopping at a store like this, you must be making bank. But Wonwoo was somewhat nosey, and when you set the card on the countertop, he glanced at its embossed name. It definitely wasn’t your name.

Kim Mingyu.

It was your boyfriend’s.

[ Wonwoo | 1:15 pm ]: Goddammit Seokmin answer me

[ Wonwoo | 1:15 pm]: I’ve sent you at least ten texts

[ Wonwoo | 1:16 pm ]: Truly how do you do anything with this girl? I feel like she’s somewhat psychotic and you just fucking had to flash your sad mopey eyes at me in that café so I would break and help her write her book. I’m sitting here with dresses in my lap, pretty much acting as her unpaid personal assistant. Why the fuck is she asking me about dresses, anyway? Did you help her orchestrate this bullshit? I’m actually pissed at you. I want an entire paid lunch.

He wasn’t all that surprised you made him carry the matte silver shopping bag (with these twine handles that he absolutely hated because of how they suffocated around his fingers), and by a certain point, Wonwoo just didn’t give a damn any more. What little social battery he’d maintained since leaving his apartment had officially depleted, for he could feel it weighing in the plaza air around him like an imperceptible mist. Unfortunately, you weren’t lying about being a fast walker. He’d never seen someone stalk with such vigor.

It was nearly an endurance test to keep at your swaying hip, and the few times he fell behind, you would pause and beckon for him.

But Wonwoo discovered that even you needed to stop, to eat and drink like a normal human rather than the disguised cyborg he fleetingly speculated you were. Your touch was so abrupt—a hand had curled around his bicep and suddenly Wonwoo found himself being jerked into a café on the bottom floor of the mall. Of course, you had to pick the most expensive place to buy food in the entire fucking vicinity, and since Wonwoo was penny pinching at the moment, he opted to stand back and let you order.

But then he saw you flick open your wallet, waving Mingyu’s sleek yet flashy credit card between your fingers with blatant enticement.

“I can pay for you.”

He shook his head, muttering a careless, “no thanks.”

“Don't BS me. What do you want to eat?”

Wonwoo couldn’t stop staring at the credit card.

“What’s the limit on that thing?”

“Enough.”

“You haven’t burned through it already?”

“These openly snide comments you’re making aren’t appreciated, you know. Now, please give me an answer before I break off the temples to your glasses so I can use them to stir my drink.”

“… What?” Wonwoo mumbled, completely lost.

“Pick something!”

“Okay, fuck. I’ll just get a coffee, then.”

He took a step forward to examine the menu boards that the employees were wildly scuttling around underneath, browsing down their chalk-written cold brews until he picked one at random.

That was all Wonwoo asked for.

You bought a lemonade and some sandwich he didn’t catch the name of, toasted on panini bread. It felt amazing to sit down. Wonwoo let the silver bag slide completely off his arm and hit the floor, to which he could sense your gaze stinging over him in disapproval. He should have gotten a sandwich himself, but Wonwoo still wasn’t sure how he felt about using the money on your boyfriend’s credit card.

Wonwoo relaxed in his chair, angling a glance down at his phone that he kept below the table, checking for any Seokmin texts.

None. He was supposed to be Wonwoo’s stupid life preserver in this situation with you, and so far, he’d been left for dead. Taking a lengthy sip from his drink was the only way he could stomach it.

“You should put your phone on the table. Screen down.”

“For what reason?” Wonwoo responded in a dull tone, quickly checking his social media with impatient swipes of his thumb.

“So we can have a conversation.”

At that, he almost gagged, slapping down the coffee cup he’d just picked up.

“Now?” Wonwoo laughed, his deep voice reverberating louder than he intended around the café, “you want to talk now?”

“Uh, yes,” you answered, picking up one half of your sandwich and readying it before your mouth, “why is that shocking?”

“Because—you—ah, whatever.”

“You seem crabby. Is that your normal shtick or are you just hangry? Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?”

He was in a worse mood than usual, but that could be blamed entirely on the mall and how exhausted it made him feel—everything about its environment sucked out his soul. It was most likely the reason he was even daring to act so impatient. You took another bite as you waited for him to answer, and the delicious crackling sound of the toasted bread managed to fissure something inside him.

“Your eyes tell all. Here’s the other half.” You offered.

Finally, he’d experienced his first flares of contentment that day, though he wasn’t expecting it to be from a panini sandwich with what he could taste to be lettuce, mayonnaise, tomato, and different types of melted cheese.

“Thanks.”

“Well, I’ll at least give us time to finish eating.”

[ Seokmin | 2:30pm ]: I can do one paid lunch :)

[ Seokmin | 2:30 pm ]: Her’s not psychotic she’s just uhh

[ Seokmin | 2:31 pm ]: She probs did it to mess with you 

[ Wonwoo | 2:37 pm ]: She thinks being 5 mins late warrants putting me through one of the worst experiences in my life.

[ Seokmin | 2:37 pm ]: Awwww

[ Seokmin | 2:37 pm ]: Who doesn’t like a little shopping??

[ Wonwoo | 2:39 pm ]: It wasn’t shopping it was torture. You owe me so much more than a fucking lunch.

—MARCH 29TH.

Unfortunately, Wonwoo never got the opportunity to discuss your book that Saturday. In the middle of eating, your phone buzzed with a brief call that had interrupted your peculiarly passionate rant on the different cup sizes at the movie theatre (Wonwoo had listened without saying anything, mostly because he dreaded the circumstances that may come from peeping a word when you were so fixated on explaining that ‘the medium is too much but the small is too little and they’re both obnoxiously priced’).

He then watched cluelessly as you launched up from the table, collecting every little belonging between your fingers, babbling about some wax appointment that had escaped you.

It was just that simple—you were gone.

In the beginning moments of your absence, Wonwoo had sat there without much inclination of what to do next.

He’d worried it was another test, and that he was supposed to dutifully follow you to said wax appointment and continue bending to your every endeavour with no retaliation throughout the day. He had also found the silence across from him unsettling, in a way.

Nonetheless, if you weren’t there, then Wonwoo figured he didn’t need to be there either. So he left, taking the fifty-six back to his apartment, and you hadn’t contacted him since.

Wonwoo actually knew his landlord quite well.

Her building was comprised of four apartments, which sat above her pottery shop on the ground floor. She wasn’t a very bothersome landlord and it was fairly easy to connect with her whenever something broke or caused problems.

When he first moved in three years ago, Wonwoo had ardently adored living there, constantly studying the shelves of shiny glazed vases in addition to the beautiful water colour paintings that were created by his landlord or her students. It had been an inspiration supernova in terms of his personal literature, and he was able to start writing his book. Though, at the time, Wonwoo hadn’t been living alone in his apartment, and it was an inescapable fact that the only reason he began writing his book was with the hope of eventually presenting it to his old girlfriend-slash-roommate.

Now, it was just him.

And as Wonwoo pushed up from his grave of rumpled bedsheets, feeling lethargic and empty, he tried concerningly hard to pinch those thoughts from his mind. It was nearly lunch. He knew damn well he shouldn’t have allowed himself to rot that long in bed, but the other half of himself, the self-sabotaging kind, just couldn’t be bothered to fucking care. Wonwoo reached for his glasses that lay half-opened on the nightstand, raking them onto his face while brushing the hair from his eyes. The first thing he properly saw was his tall, skinny, orange bottle of venlafaxine. No. He was ignoring it.

Wonwoo had been ignoring it for the past few months.

Whenever he got particularly sick of staring at the bottle, he’d shove it in his drawer, making sure to bury it deep under old, amply-scribbled notepads and inkless pens that he’d worn to the bone. At last getting up from the bed, Wonwoo experienced his entire body sway and he caught the room spinning at the distant edges of his peripheral. But he walked through it without a care in the world, utterly too used to the feeling of imminent nausea even without his medication. He decided on a shower, then dressing himself, one Poptart, a swig of water from the kitchen tap, and almost walked out the apartment door with the minty toothbrush still in his mouth.

After walking three blocks down from his apartment, Wonwoo stepped across the dead, spiky grass and into the lacklustre parking lot behind the bowling alley that always smelled like stale pizza.

He knew the vanilla Camry well enough to identify it—stalled smack and centre amongst the emptiness—the licence plate being chiselled into his head like his old locker combination from high school (16-12-24, because Wonwoo for some reason liked fixating on prehistoric details that were glaringly useless in his present).

Early two-thousands R&B was blasting from inside the outdated-looking car, though it was thankfully turned down once Wonwoo threw the door open and shimmied inside.

The odor permeated Wonwoo’s lungs in a heartbeat.

“I thought you were getting this dry-cleaned,” he sighed to his friend, Vernon, who was busy rifling through a backpack.

“Uh, didn’t happen. Didn’t wanna pay all that. M’gonna find someone else to do it that’s not taxin’ my ass. Air fresheners are all dried n’shit so you’re gonna have to deal. My bad, Glasses.”

Glasses. That nickname had always made Wonwoo huff a little half-chuckle, and almost instinctively, he pushed the glasses a bit higher back up his nose. He was introduced to Vernon at a New Year’s Eve party he was forced to attend back in December, though it had been difficult to speak with him because he was blitzed out of his fucking mind—not to mention the choking pain of ignoring the girl who had been sliding her hands along the divots of his shoulders and chest from behind, kissing at his neck.

But Vernon was branded in tattoos, and had all kinds of metal in his face, and was blessed with concupiscent, honey-burnish eyes magnetized every woman in the vicinity straight to him.

Somehow, Vernon had become Wonwoo’s plug in the mix.

“Now, what are you gettin’, Glasses? The usual quarter ounce, right?” Vernon’s tongue poked between his blistered lips as he dug a heavily-inked hand further into the backpack seated in his lap.

“Yeah, quarter ounce.”

“Oh, fuck yeah. Found it. This one.” Vernon exchanged the plastic-bagged ounces of weed with Wonwoo’s cash. “Gimme, gimme. I know it’s all here, but let me check… “ he flaked out the tinted bills with a satisfied head nod. “Prettier than a princess. You’re golden.”

“Did you just say princess?”

“Yeah. That’s what I said… what?”

“I’ve never heard that.”

“It’s not princess?”

“It’s picture, isn’t it? Prettier than a picture.”

“Really? Oh. That’s not how I remember—why the fuck are we even talkin’ about this? Doesn’t fuckin’ matter. Now, that’s gonna last you if you’re cute,” he said, throwing his notorious bag into the seat behind him, then tapping at his busted radio with a thick strip of tape across it, the next song rasping through the speakers, “don’t go crazy on it with your meds and shit. Do you still got enough papers?”

Wonwoo scoffed dryly at Vernon’s assumption while he hid the plastic bag within an inside pouch on his navy-blue jacket. A second later and his phone buzzed with a text message.

“Fuck the meds, honestly,” Wonwoo grunted, shifting his hips up in the seat to remove the phone from his back pocket.

Vernon itched his dark eyebrow. “Alright. Just askin’.”

Wonwoo opted to say nothing as he checked the text message without much expectation, and he was thankful that Vernon was the type to drop a subject easily. Instead his friend transitioned into a different conversation, something about another tattoo that he’d been debating, but in the kindest way possible, Wonwoo wasn’t listening to a goddamn word. You had texted him. Finally. For the first time. After three days of radio silence. And Wonwoo didn’t know why he’d suddenly exploded into such a fidgety, heart-pounding mess. You wanted to meet up again in order to discuss the book’s details.

“Who the fuck is that? Jesus Christ?”

“No,” Wonwoo laughed, clasping his right hand into an anxious fist, “um, I dunno. Just—Seokmin’s got me doing this thing with a friend of his. She’s trying to write a book and he kinda threw me into helping her. We’re supposed to meet up and talk about it.”

“Oh,” Vernon answered, leaning his elbow against the window and sweeping a hand through his black tresses, “do I know the chick?”

“Maybe?”

“She got any social media? An Instagram?”

“Yeah.”

“Ou, let me see.”

Wonwoo wasn’t following you. Then again, he was hardly following anyone. His Instagram had remained completely empty since his girlfriend left him, which had prompted Wonwoo to archive every single picture and delete all the ones that contained her, even the ones that captured mere traces of her in beaded bracelets and hair ties and white socks left on the carpet.

Wonwoo used Seokmin’s account to find you. Honestly, he hadn’t ever looked at your Instagram before. Without gleaning a single photo, Wonwoo thrust his phone at Vernon.

“Oh, yeah, I do know this chick,” Vernon chuckled, thumbing through your profile with a growing smirk, “Her, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Mm, yeah. Know her. Tried to fuck her. Didn’t work at all.”

Snapping his head to look at Vernon, Wonwoo gaped, “what?”

“Yeah, I mean—” Vernon adjusted himself in his seat, pulling up his knee to rest a tattoo-coated arm across it, “—ran into the chick at a party that some rich dude at your university threw. Sweet-talked her for a bit until I realized she had a stupid boyfriend. She told me a million different ways to kill myself. Yeah, she’s somethin’, for sure.”

“You’re lying.”

“Ha—a little. She didn’t tell me to kill myself,  just scolded me for about ten minutes. God, she was wired as fuck though. Her boyfriend—fuckin’, Mingyu, or whatever—he gets her coke. I’ve seen her take a line like it’s pixie dust, man. This was like, over a year ago, though. Dunno if she’s still that loopy. I don’t care. She’s pretty hot.”

Vernon then flashed him a picture from your account, a full body picture of you sprawled across sparkling white sand in a bikini, meanwhile Wonwoo could only stare at it with the blankest possible expression as his brain splattered with computing Vernon’s story.

“Is she still with him?��� Vernon asked.

Wonwoo cleared his throat and sat with his spine rigid against the leather, nearly forgetting where he was and what he was doing.

“With who?”

“Lady Liberty. Mingyu.”

“Oh… yeah. They’re dating, still.”

“No fuckin’ way,” his friend lamented while he continuously plunged further into your pictures, thumb pressed to his chin, eyes glimmering, “you coulda flipped this book thing on its head and actually got some fuckin’ head, especially with that deep ass voice you got there. I know it’s gotta feel good. I mean, look at her lips—”

“You’re being gross as fuck,” Wonwoo groaned, swiping his phone back and stuffing it away, “get a girlfriend yourself, man.”

“I’m tryin’ to clean up my act a bit before I do that.”

“That’s definitely a work in progress, I’m assuming.”

“Asshole,” Vernon’s voice was gritty as he coughed into a fist, slipping his knee back under the steering wheel and proceeding to crank his stereo until the music was practically suffocating Wonwoo, “now get the fuck out. You’re not my only deal today. Sorry, Glasses.”

“Later.”

Wonwoo pushed open the door and stepped outside into the cold afternoon breeze. He sucked in a long, relieving breath. At times the fresh air disgusted him, especially when he cozied into one of his mental ruts and everything in the world seemed so grey it was soul-crushing, but Vernon’s car smelled like straight fucking cannabis.

Fresh air was heavenly.

“Don’t forget to text your girl!” Vernon laughed just before Wonwoo slammed the door shut to swallow up the melodic lyrics.

He wanted to make a snap comment before the boy drove off to his next endeavour, but he didn’t care enough to think of one.

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:35 pm ]: hey wonwoo, it’s her. I think we should finally settle a date to talk about this book thing. let me attach a pic of my schedule and you can pick any open slots

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:35 pm ]: 145_348.JPG

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:35 pm ]:  seokmin isn’t going to be our communicator anymore, so u can stop complaining to him about it

[ Wonwoo | 1:45 pm ]: Okay, thanks.

[ Wonwoo | 1:45 pm]: I’ll take a look soon.

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:45 pm ]: I’m excited to see you again

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:50 pm ]: no likewise?!

[ Wonwoo | 1:50 pm ]: Likewise.

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:50 pm ]: ugh. thx

—APRIL 1ST.

It was around six in the evening and Wonwoo was seated in the SRX building, the sky rolling with lambent, hazy-toned pastures of peach in the windows behind him. He had arrived about an hour ago, taking the staircase up to the third floor. It was much quieter there, making it easier for Wonwoo to endlessly stare with glazed, void eyes at his laptop screen and the cursed document he couldn’t finish. After tapping his fingernails in a bored, repetitious pattern against the shiny white table, he felt the urge to delete each and every paragraph as if he hadn’t poured months of earnest love into them.

You would be meeting him soon.

He could still remember looking at your schedule, pinching into the screen and examining all the different colour-coded blocks: dinner parties, SSA meetings, gym sessions, errands—how the fuck you managed to juggle those things and more left him marvelled yet terrified. You were pretty on point regarding your arrival time, to which Wonwoo could immediately identify you before even seeing your face due to the heel clicking and the sounds of tapping jewelry on your bag.

Emerging onto the floor with a very intense scowl and a notably crushing grip on your drink, you were to say the least, angry. Wonwoo gnawed slightly on his tongue as you sat down.

Your purse clunked like a cinderblock onto the table.

He watched you inhale a slow, shaky breath, raising your hand with the expansion of your chest in order to calm down.

 “I’m going to kill myself.”

Wonwoo leaned back in the chair, subtly trying to establish more distance between you. He flicked a glance at his laptop.

“Damn. Why is that?”

“Because of stupid, incompetent people.”

“Yeah?”

“I just—I don’t get it!” You laughed, though it wasn’t a particularly jovial sound and more than anything it seemed like you were going to start smashing glass. “I don’t get how people are unable to understand that we don’t do walk-ins unless one of the stylists are free—” you dug a hand into your purse, pulling out a straw, “—which in the salon’s case, is almost never! I tell them we can’t in my very sweet, established customer service voice: ‘I’m sorry, but the only way to receive a chair is to book online.'”

Wonwoo tilted his head, grinning a little.

“Blah, blah. I tell them the entire story in the kindest way I can, even though I want to grab them by their fucking neck and drag them over the counter to show them our website.” You slipped out your laptop next, accidentally dragging out a lanyard along with it that you agitatedly shoved back into the purse. “And then, they get all uptight and pissy when we can’t wriggle them in! Sorry, our makeup artists are busy! Working with people who made scheduled fucking appointments! The world doesn’t fucking revolve around you!”

You scraped the drink toward you, slamming the straw straight through the plastic film lid with such force that several people ended up turning their heads. After taking a long sip, you gulped and glared until they probably realized it was you and pretended not to care.

For a moment, Wonwoo didn’t know what to say, so he’d folded his arms instead. Considering that Wonwoo worked the late shift stocking shelves at the pharmacy department, your predicament sounded like an entirely new world to him.

“Ugh, I’m sorry to bring all this negativity with me,” you apologized, still exasperated, “I don’t need this fucking tea—I need straight vodka. I’m seriously frazzled.”

“Seriously frazzled?” Wonwoo repeated, finding your choice of words funny as he resumed leaning forward, arms still crossed.

“Very, seriously frazzled.”

“I’m sorry about your day.”

Again, you sighed deeply while removing your long, warm jacket to drape over the chair’s spine—it was a rather elegant reveal of the strapless pearl dress underneath, tinted by the evening light, peach-pink as it rained from the ceiling length windows and framed your body like you were some sort of resurrected angel. Tension at last started escaping your shoulders. Wonwoo quickly realized that he'd been staring, and his fingers curled into a nervous fist.

“You’re actually such a good listener.”

Wonwoo cleared his throat. “Um, thank you.”

“I like that you don’t interrupt me.”

Settling his elbows on the table and ruffling the back of his messy black locks, Wonwoo felt himself panic a little on the inside.

“Well,” he heaved in, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“I know," you chirped, posturing yourself confidently, “anyway, the book. We need to talk about it.”

“Table’s yours.”

Wonwoo’s knuckles pressed softly into his cheek while he waited for you to prepare your laptop. His own document was glowing at him, and he swore the emptiness of the page made the screen brighter (in the absolute worst, most mocking way).

“Okay, I’ve got my ideas and such pulled up.”

He expected you to continue and introduce the concept, but you had suddenly stopped, and Wonwoo thought you appeared almost smitten and somewhat timorous. It was strange, because from what he’d known and gauged so far, you were nothing akin to that.

“Well, promise that you won’t think it’s ridiculous.”

“I don’t even know what it is.”

“That’s why I want you to promise!”

Wonwoo pushed up his glasses and sighed, “I will need to be honest at some points you know, depending on what kind of help you want from me. Not that I’m going to be a straight-up dick.”

You scoured at him from over your laptop.

“Whatever.”

“I’ll promise if it makes you feel better.”

“Just—shut up." You wiggled your hand at him dismissively and proceeded to tug the laptop closer. “I don’t even care anymore.”

Once you spent a moment affirming the document to yourself, you looked up at him and smiled. “I’m going to write a book for Mingyu. Our fifth anniversary is coming up in the winter—it’s actually on Christmas Eve—the day he officially asked me to be his girlfriend. I just want to write him a little memoire thingy that tells our story. I want it to walk through the events of our lives, and how I remember them. First encounter, first date, first kiss, stuff like that. I’ve already collected some good memories to include. I have… somewhat of an outline? But my problem is the writing. I can spew nonsense from my mouth at a million miles an hour, but when I try to actually write? It’s crickets.”

You sat back, a hand poised thoughtfully at your cheek while one leg folded over the other. Wonwoo knew you were granting him the space to speak and at least offer a slice of his thoughts, yet, in that moment, he found himself to be drowning. He didn’t believe in fate or destiny or anything of the delusional like; however, hearing you explain the exact premise of a story that he had been successfully writing until a certain breakup—it had shaken him, and Wonwoo felt like the universe was smearing salt fresh into his unsewn wounds.

“So…” your head cocked to the side. “Can I at least an ‘okay’ or a head nod or some sign of life? Or are you just too disgusted?”

What could he say? What was he supposed to say?

Wonwoo was genuinely clueless on how to help you write a story that he’d been utterly failing at writing himself. And, sure, maybe Wonwoo should just give up completely. His ex-girlfriend had ripped out his heart without a single indication that it would happen, and then exited his life in the blink of an eye, disappearing so fucking abruptly that Wonwoo could have said she was a shadow that he imagined in pure lunacy. But he hadn’t dropped the story because there was this very stubborn, unwilling part of his being that could not move on from her—her, who had been his love, and breath, and bones.

He’d decided to finish the story as a manner of easing into closure. If that closure never came, then so be it.

“Are you seriously fucking ignoring me right now?”

His silence had promptly disturbed your peace, and now you were glaring at him with the beginning licks of fire and hell in your eyes.

“I don’t think I can help you.”

“What?” You pronounced sharply. “Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m sorry,” Wonwoo said while closing his laptop and sliding it back into his shoulder-sling bag, “I just—I’m not the right person to help you. I’m not, and you’ll have to take my word for it.”

“Seokmin told me you could write fucking anything. He made it out like you were some literature God with a golden quill. And—great, you’re just packing up fucking everything. Are you serious? Am I even allowed more of an explanation or are you gonna leave it at that? Wonwoo, you couldn’t have told me this at a worse time.”

“I didn’t plan for it to be like that.” He could hardly push the syllables up his diaphragm. “It can’t be me. I’m sorry.”

You didn’t lift a finger to stop him from leaving, though the wavelength of your incinerating stare was felt like a hot, melting scratch down his neck. This was terrible, he was terrible—Wonwoo already knew that about himself. He wanted to go home. He wanted to shut himself away in his room and sink straight through the sheets until he was swallowed. His anxiety was webbing around him. It was pulling him down into the soil and earth like he belonged there.

He truly hated this part of himself.

More than anything, he truly hated when other people saw it.

Especially people like you.

—APRIL 8TH.

Wonwoo didn’t think you would ever speak to him again, in person or over text message. In retrospect, he was fine with it. You were rather overwhelming and especially tiring for someone like Wonwoo who would be perfectly fine never seeing another human in his lifetime. Not to mention he was freed from helping you with your book, which he learned was a technical love letter to your boyfriend in addition to a romance he wanted a nonexistent part in. Going down that path once was already excruciating enough, and given his anxiety attack that saw him locked in a cold washroom stall last week, it was best you just forget about him. He assumed you already had, anyway.

After he stocked the last red bottle of sinus medicine onto the shelf, Wonwoo used his boxcutter to break down the cardboard package and fold it flat with the others he’d opened. It was time for his break, and then he would only have one more hour until the pharmacy section closed for the night. Once it hit ten o’clock, the store was automatically still and hardly anyone came in—minus the few student couples whom Wonwoo had to point in the direction of pregnancy tests or plan b. But it was a Tuesday night. He was at the bare minimum appeased he didn’t have to console a sobbing, snotty-nosed eighteen-year-old girl imploring for a First Response.

When he collapsed down at his favourite seat in the breakroom, Wonwoo pulled out his phone. He had sent Seokmin a text yesterday evening about going studying at the SRX building for their upcoming math midterm, though Seokmin had yet to respond and Wonwoo couldn’t evade wondering if you were pulling some strings behind the curtain.

He opened his bottle of juice and spent the remainder of his fifteen listening to music and jittering his knee.

Wonwoo took his earbuds with him back onto the floor, sneaking the wires under his shirt to pull out his collar. There were only a few boxes left on his cart that required stocking, and whatever didn’t fit would have to be scanned into storage. That shouldn't take long. Wonwoo could almost taste the crisp atmosphere of the night air and feel the gentle chilliness soon to ghost against his face.

However, halfway into shelving the cough drops there had been a polite tap on his shoulder, and Wonwoo wanted to wither up and lose his head right there on the tiles like a sundried rose.

He didn’t know who to expect when he turned around, pulling out a single earbud while the other continued to blast his music.  

“Oh, shit—I didn’t know you worked here.”

Fuck. He wanted to kill himself.

“Yeah, started a couple months ago, actually.”

Mingyu.

It’s not that Wonwoo didn’t like speaking with him, because they had definitely exchanged cordial conversations in the past, particularly when they both took that Probability Poker elective last semester and Wonwoo learned that Mingyu was a pretty decent bluffer. Unfortunately, Mingyu’s belief that he was a great bluffer was actually the one indication that he was indeed bluffing. It showed in his overly confident eyes before a twitch of the lips or a subtly shifted foot, meanwhile Wonwoo was able to sit there the entire time like he was an Easter Island statue incarnate.

Put simply, Wonwoo had always preferred to avoid Mingyu because he was your boyfriend, and per routine, he attempted to slip around most people that were associated with you.

“Cool.” Mingyu smiled and the flashes of his pointed teeth caught the light. “Stuff’s got switched around in here again.”

“New mods came out last week,” Wonwoo answered, placing the last cough drop box onto the shelf and facing it straight.

“Well, don’t know what the fuck that means,” his tone was brassy as he laughed, “I just came to ask where the plan b is now.”

 “Two aisles down, check the endcap.”

“Appreciate it, thanks—oh, condoms?”

“Next aisle.”

“Got it.”

“Just come get me when you’re done,” Wonwoo said, grabbing his boxcutter and running the blade along the taped seam of the cardboard to satisfyingly slice it open, “I’m the only one in pharmacy right now, so I have to ring you up.”

As soon as Mingyu disappeared around the corner, Wonwoo tossed the flattened cardboard onto his cart with the loudest, most life-draining sigh that could be harboured. He wasn’t the kind of person to cultivate those racing, panicky thoughts that consumed his brain like a merciless hurricane, rather it was typically one single thought that was an eternal black space to swallow him. But Wonwoo had to admit that seeing Mingyu had triggered something of the latter, and now he was feeling sick with the fact you possibly told Mingyu about his episode at the SRX building last week. To Wonwoo it had been the shackles of his anxiety, though it probably came across as a very ill-mannered, abrupt rejection from your perspective.

Mingyu didn’t take long picking out his items. It was clearly a run of the mill routine for him at this point—a mere grab and go.

At the register, Wonwoo mentally questioned why Mingyu had grabbed such a plethora of condoms. He didn’t mean to be vulgar in his thinking, but how often were you getting fucking railed?

Either that, or Mingyu preferred being well stocked.

Vernon would be bruising his knuckles on his steering wheel right now, considering how devotedly he attempted to seduce you.

As payment, Mingyu pulled out that godforsaken credit card that you had borrowed during the dress shopping. Wonwoo felt nauseous just looking at the damn thing. He swiped all of the items into a small plastic bag which he then handed to Mingyu with a notable impatience, wanting to whisk the boy out as quick as possible.

“G’night, man. Thanks for the help.”

“Night,” he answered in a deep, tired sigh, watching Mingyu’s head of thick and bouncy black hair disappear toward the aglow exit.

Well, clearly you weren’t wasting anytime thinking about him despite the dramatics pertaining to the situation last week, not even in the most marginal fraction. Mingyu must rail it out of you every night—not that Wonwoo would be surprised to learn such a thing considering the tall boy’s physique and your openly lascivious nature.

Well, good luck to you both, he supposed.

At least it was closing time.

Wonwoo had always suspected there was something ever so slightly off kilter about his body, especially in the way it reacted to certain situations and emotions. He knew it probably wasn’t the most mundane, ordinary act—locking himself in his aunt’s washroom the day of his sixteenth birthday, sliding down onto the cold, hard tiles, feeling his heart jolt, punch, and thump again his chest like a battering ram. There had been a pattern of rubber ducks on her eggshell blue shower curtain, and Wonwoo remembered counting them row by row, over and over, until his breath managed to steady.

Twenty-four ducks. He could still recall the number.

A doctor’s visit about three weeks later had granted him the diagnosis and a scribbled venlafaxine prescription. Wonwoo was already collecting his sweater off the tissue sheet bed, ready to leave.

In the beginning, he was strict about his medication. He organized them into pill cartridges and set alarms and always ate them with cooked, warm meals. Understandably, his habits dwindled every now and again, however, Wonwoo was quite pious to the routine for a good couple years. But then he met his most recent girlfriend in university. She was shy and reserved. All about the books.

Cute as buttons.

He fell in love.

And it was all such a rush of rose petals and sweet symphonies that Wonwoo became distracted from his healthy habits.

Of course, everything crashed and burned once she abandoned him. He capitulated in an instant, and the sight of the orange bottle made him paler than winter moonlight. It’s not like he wanted to suffer, or despise the way his body put him through a neural hell beyond his own control. The fact of the matter was that Wonwoo just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take those stupid pills.

It was a mountain. Every. Single. Time.

And for the third time that week, Wonwoo found himself awake at an ungodly hour, rifling through the black lunchbox he kept in his closet with his glasses about to slip off the fine point of his nose.

He pulled out the baggie filled with the quarter-ounce, his silver grinder, and his rolling papers. Moving to his desk, Wonwoo clicked on the small overhead lamp to illuminate his space, in which he tapped some of the weed into his grinder and began twisting the lid until he was satisfied. He liked preparing joints to smoke on the roof. It wasn’t particularly hard to access, anyway. Right outside his bedroom window was a balcony with a short ladder attached to the brick, and once Wonwoo had discovered it, he made a habit of climbing up to spark his joints so that their pungent aroma could be carried away by the fresh winds usually stirred up at gloaming.

Honestly, it was the only thing he enjoyed.

Just before he slipped out the window, Wonwoo grabbed a pair of black jeans he’d worn earlier in the week, discovering the lighter he’d accidentally left in the back pocket.

The ladder shuddered slightly when Wonwoo gripped it, though if he were being candour, he didn’t care whatsoever if all the bolts suddenly loosened and he were to splatter against the sidewalk like an uncooked pancake. In fact, the fall probably wasn’t enough to kill him. Maybe a few broken bones and scrapes, some blood staining the street akin to little patterns of rain, bruises that signatured violets into his skin, but Wonwoo would still be painfully, vividly alive, enough to see the stars if the glasses didn’t snap off his face.

It was a colder night, so Wonwoo made sure to tuck on his beanie and huddle into his thicker-sized coat. He sat with one leg dangling over the building’s edge, feeling the wind whiplash against his back and crawl in these chilly, indecipherable whispers from his shoulders to his neck, almost tickling him, like it had missed him.

An orange flicker popped to life from the butane of his lighter, which he used to lightly singe the joint perched at his lips. Wonwoo then tilted his head back, blowing the cloud and its loose, airy curls straight into the sky’s deepest purples.

He loved being alone.

Even when his ex-girlfriend had moved in with him all those months ago, there was an unyielding part of him that hadn’t been ready to forfeit all his space and privacy.

But, over time, his love surmounted the sacrifice.

He would wake up to her sleeping face, and with thoughtful nudges, clear the hairs off her cheeks. He would spend an hour working on his homework or writing his story while waiting for her to stir so messily in the sheets that it became graceful. He would tease her with his cold hands as she boiled up tea in the kitchen, pinching at her hips with the utmost softness and giggling huskily into her neck when she would twist in the arms that bracketed her body against his chest. He would trap her between the counter, sunshine striking the room aglow in these nearly blinding seas of light, mouthing at her throat and tugging at her shorts and hitching his fingers so deep into her heat because all Wonwoo wanted to do was make her feel good.

Opening his eyes again, Wonwoo saw the stars rather than her face. The high was disseminating past his lungs and mingling with the pain that festered in his heart, concocting something that hurt so wonderfully, in all the right places, in all the right spots.

He was a fucking mess.

It wasn’t sustainable. But he didn’t care enough to fix himself.

 —APRIL 15TH.

Why did Wonwoo keep coming back to that café? The number of times he’d sat down with conviction that today would be fruitful—today, the eloquence would flow from his fingertips like perfectly pitched music notes and the symphony would read as beautiful and mellifluous as it sounded in his mind. Today, he was going to write.

Except, he accomplished nothing of the sort.

Repeatedly tapping his index finger against the space bar, he waited for the right adjective or phrase to leap out—to grasp him in a headlock even—whatever it took, Wonwoo was willing to sit there all afternoon until one fucking word conjured in the infinite blankness that was his imagination. He reached for his drink, only to take a sip of dry air that smelled like his earlier cocoa. Wonwoo realized the cup was empty. Had he wasted this much time already?

It pricked similarly to a bee sting. His passions felt impossible. A sigh upheaved from his chest and fingers curled into his hair, musing up the already disarrayed strands and slowly warping himself to look more and more like a mad scientist. Wonwoo removed his glasses and slumped back in the chair, rubbing at the reddish prints left on his nose. Writing had soaked itself in agony and he was going to remain in the storm of it until the bitter, ungratifying end.

‘Till death do us part.

 And then, something struck.

Though it wasn’t what Wonwoo had hoped for.

Literally—it was your hand hitting the glass of the café window, which had jerked Wonwoo out from his self-pitying.

He scrambled to fix his glasses back on, your face clarifying in an instant. You smiled at him with your glossed lips, and he didn’t like the nuance of your countenance one bit. Watching you enter the café was jarring and uncomfortable and his fist immediately clenched, his index nail picking at the ruined cuticle of his thumb. Two weeks ago—that was the last time you had spoken. At the SRX building.

“Hey!” You sounded friendly. “Can I sit here?”

“Well, uh—”

“Great, thank you.”

You pulled out the chair across from him, then set your bag delicately on the windowsill. Wonwoo watched with nervous, fluttering eyes as you smoothed out your cropped skirt before sitting down, ensuring it was tucked under yourself appropriately.

“How are you?”

Gulp.

“Fine.”

“Good. That’s really good. I’m glad.” Your nails drummed once against the table. “I actually didn’t plan on coming here, but I saw you as I was crossing the street, and I thought, ‘I should stop by and check in on him’ because, y’know, we haven’t been talking.”

Wonwoo furrowed his brow. “Do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

“Slap your hand against windows to get people’s attention.”

You swept something off the table with your palm, and this sunshine-like laugh turned your entire face to sweetness, but it wasn’t entirely earnest, and Wonwoo bit into his lip because you fucking terrified him. He caught your sparkling eye and wanted to melt.

“Did I scare you? I’m so sorry.”

“No, you’re good.”

“What are you working on?”

“A paper.”

Obviously, he was going to lie. Whether or not you could pick up on his lie was beyond Wonwoo’s control at that point. He didn’t know what you wanted, or why you were interrupting the flow of your very organized scheduling system to seemingly toy with him.

You didn’t respond to his paper comment. There was a thick silence between you despite the distant clattering of dishes, bubbling coffee machines, and conversations that coalesced into one big buzz.

Wonwoo bit the bullet.

“Something you want from me, yeah?”

“Not… exactly… I mean, after you left me at the SRX building, I wanted to get very angry about the whole situation. My day was terrible, and you responding to my idea with that sickly look on your face didn’t help. But I thought about it. You said no. I can’t ask anything more of you, y’know? I have to respect what you said.”

“Oh.” Wonwoo unclenched his fist, stretched out his long legs a bit more. “Yeah, sure. I get it. Thanks for understanding.”

“I just didn’t think my idea was that bad.”

“Well… no. It’s not bad. It’s not bad at all.”

A twitch to your lip suggested you didn’t believe him. Wanting to clear the air a bit, Wonwoo stopped slouching. He sat straighter and lowered the lid of his laptop, inviting the space between you.

His mouth opened, and then closed.

Fuck, just breathe you idiot—he cursed at himself.

You did that little head tilt thing, half-smiling at him, looking radiant underneath the café sunlight and so oddly patient with his tied-tongue that Wonwoo was miraculously able to find his words.

“There is nothing wrong with your idea. I made it seem like there was. I’m sorry. I just don’t want to help you write a romance story, for personal reasons that would be useless explaining. But you seem very confident in everything you do. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“Hm, well, thank you for believing in me. Romance can be a touchy subject—I didn’t think of that, and I get it… I guess I felt more insecure about your reaction because writing is the one thing I can’t ace. I do need help with my story, even if I don’t want it. Well, it’s just the truth, isn’t it? There are some things I can’t do!”

You chuckled at yourself, and Wonwoo thought it to be actually endearing. All your hard edges softened in that moment.

“So, I haven’t made any progress in my story, which sucks because I’m operating by deadline—” reaching into your bag, you unveiled a small, compact mirror, using it to remove something invisible from your eyelash, “—do you have any writer friends that would help me?”

Wonwoo scratched his nose.

“Uh, with the book?”

“Yes.”

“None.”

“What?” The mirror snapped shut as you gagged at him. “How do you have no writer friends? Isn’t that your major? Literature? Do you even have friends that aren’t Seokmin?”

“I’m a math major for fucks sake.”

“You’re fucking joking, Wonwoo. Please, tell me it’s a joke.”

He leaned back, folding his arms and propping an ankle onto his knee. You were still gaping at him, and he wanted to smirk.

“What’s wrong with math?”

“Nothing. Math is… math,” you gritted, shoving the mirror back into your expensive-looking, gold-buckled bag, “but why math? Why straight math? I thought you wanted to be a writer.”

“Man, Seokmin really didn’t tell you fucking anything, did he?” Wonwoo chuckled. Or, maybe you had only heard the things you wanted to hear, which was what Wonwoo assumed.

“Like I have space in my brain to remember the multiverse of information that constantly comes out of his mouth.”

“So what is there space for then?”

“You're toeing a dangerous line.”

“Well, I like math and writing.”

"And what kind of papers would you be required to work on as a math major? Did you stumble across some quintessential theorem that nobody else really cares about except for you and all the other pocket-protector wearers out there? Or is this a Good Will Hunting scenario? Even better—are you waiting for someone to walk by behind you and see all that really complicated mumbo-jumbo on your screen and think to themselves, 'woah, this guy is really smart. He's working on a paper with numbers, and I only work on papers with words. Where did I go wrong in my life?' so you can develop some sort of alternative complex that writing just isn't giving you?"

Wonwoo cocked his head at you, perplexed.

“What the absolute fuck are you talking about?” He felt a laugh in his chest, but he pushed it down. Wonwoo had never met anyone like you before. “You made up everything you just said.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“I go on tangents. It’s just something I do.”

“Damn. I can tell.” Wonwoo rubbed at the corner of his eye and slipped the ankle off his knee, further spreading his legs. “You like hearing the sound of your own voice, yeah?”

He always hated when people bothered him at the café, especially when he was trying to write. Today, it was different.

“Well, that’s true.” You beamed at him so matter-of-factly, like it was obvious. “The most beautiful sound in the world, isn’t it?”

“Mm.”

“Thought so. Ugh, I just can’t believe you have no writer friends to hook me up with.” He watched you slouch forward, slapping your arms across the table. “I’ll have to go wait outside Gildan Hall and start ambushing all the smart-looking literature majors.”

Wonwoo found himself examining your perfect nail polish.

“Good luck with that.”

“Can you at least try to sound more sympathetic?”

“You don’t seem like a person who appreciates sympathy.”

“Pft. According to who? I like being comforted when the time is right, and you’re not being very comforting.” You groaned into the table.

“You like being comforted?” He scoffed.

Your head popped up, and you were pouting. “At certain times, yes. Most times, no. It’s a complicated system. No one’s really cared enough to learn it except for Mingyu, and that was by force, and I think even he hates it. But I’m not asking for the moon. Just a reasonably sized chunk of it. I have to be worth something, right?”

“What’s life without someone catering to your every whim at the drop of a hat, huh?” He couldn’t help but mutter with sarcasm.

“Yes, exactly! See—you read my mind.”

Wonwoo bit his tongue.

“Ugh, now where’s my stupid phone?”

It was in your purse. Immediately, your eyes lit up.

“Jesus Christ. I’m gonna be late to my electrolysis!”

Like a burst of lightning, you shot up from your seat and quickly fixed the cream-white purse back over your shoulder. It reminded him of that time at the mall. One second you were engrained into a tangent, and the next you were scrambling about, attempting to recover the lost time in your meticulous schedule.

“If you think of anyone, please text me!”

Wonwoo nodded his head.

Now, there was a vacant seat before him, left slightly tugged from the table due to your hectic departure. For a moment, he just sighed, feeling the breath emerge from somewhere so deep in his chest that it ached. That was the thing about you—in a confusing turmoil, you managed to fill him up when he felt empty, but then empty him once he felt full.

He didn’t know what kind of person you were.

But there was an odd thrill to it that Wonwoo couldn’t articulate.

—APRIL 18TH.

Sat with Seokmin at the boy’s dining room table, Wonwoo popped a purple grape into his mouth while flipping a pencil between his fingers. The two had been staring plainly at their last problem from the math homework, but the question was horribly long, and his handwriting had morphed from legible penmanship to the most slurred hieroglyphics. Wonwoo wanted to dump a ramen packet into some boiling water and call it a night. He’d devoured a whole stem of grapes. His head was pounding and his stomach growled for a meal.

“Oh! You see—this is what gets me every time!” Seokmin exclaimed, leaned over his scattered papers, shoulders hunched with strain, “I mess up one multiplication in a matrix, and it screws me all up! Now I have to go over—uh! My fucking pencil just snapped.”

“Good,” Wonwoo mumbled, pressing a hand along the groove of his stiff neck, cracking it, “take it as a sign to give up.”

“We’re so close.”

Scooting the chair back to stretch his legs, Wonwoo then snatched his phone off the table. It was nearly ten at night.

“I’m hungry, and I don’t care anymore.”

Seokmin sighed, “are you going to eat now?”

“Yeah. Any ramen left?”

“It’s in the box sitting on top of the fridge. Soup broth is in the cupboard beside the microwave. I think there’s some eggs, too.”

Wonwoo easily grabbed the noodle packet off the fridge. He asked his friend if he wanted a bowl as well, and Seokmin agreed, abandoning their math homework after his defeating pencil-snapping incident. While they waited for the water to start bubbling over the stovetop, Seokmin had joined Wonwoo in the kitchen, though he leaned against the counter, holding his phone six inches or so from his face. Wonwoo had never seen anyone text that fast.

Gosh—he didn’t even need to ask who it was.

Noticing a few smudges on his glasses, Wonwoo lowered them down to the hem of shirt, beginning to massage the marks away.

“Our math final is the twenty-eighth, right?” Seokmin asked.

“Should be, yeah.”

“Thanks. If it’s on the twenty-eighth then I can definitely go.”

Wonwoo slid the glasses back onto his nose.

“Go to what?

Taptaptaptap—Seokmin’s fingers were practically electric.

“Uh, this thing that Her is having… at her parents’ house… like… a big dinner party… I’m helping her plan it… just need to make sure… I’m free those days… there! Okay, all settled.”

At last, Seokmin had clicked off his phone and slid the device back into the pocket on his sweatpants. Wonwoo folded his arms, staring at his friend with a deeply furrowed yet confused brow.

He sucked in a helpless breath.

“I don’t get you, Seokmin.”

“What—why?”

A few hot droplets of water had leapt from the pot, slightly scalding Wonwoo’s arm. He promptly ripped open the ramen packet and submerged the noodle brick, poking at it with chopsticks.

Wonwoo cleared his throat, “are you obsessed with her?”

Seokmin laughed, sounding astounded.

“No, I’m not obsessed. I’m just helping. We’re friends.”

“Right.”

“You don’t believe me?”

Setting the chopsticks beside the stove, Wonwoo turned around again, habitually crossing his arms low along the chest.

“I guess I don’t understand what you get out of that relationship.” He admitted. “Why can’t she do shit herself?”

“Ha!—That’s an interesting question.”

“You don’t want to talk about it?”

“No, it’s not that.” Seokmin lifted himself onto the kitchen counter, his head thumping back against the wooden cupboard. “I just wasn’t expecting you to ask that. And—I meant it’s interesting to see your interpretation of it. Like, my friendship with Her.”

Wonwoo nodded. He wasn’t going to coax anything out of his friend that he wasn’t already willing to say. In fact, Wonwoo had only begun talking to Seokmin back in the early, rainy days of September, since they ended up in the same discrete mathematics course and happened to choose seats right next to each other. Their bond had formed fairly quick, but they never really conversed about topics more intimate than school work and their own interests.

“I’m sorry,” Wonwoo said, “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, don’t apologize. I mean, I totally get why you’re curious.”

Seokmin glanced down at his knees, scratched his chin.

“Uh—well, what did you say, anyway? Why can’t her do shit herself? I mean, her life is super busy. Her mom’s a writer and editor for that popular fashion and beauty magazine you always see at all those glamour stores—Stunning Monthly—something like that. Her’s dad is this business tycoon guy. He works with my dad, actually. I’ve known Her since high school. Our families are close, so naturally we’ve spent a lot of time together. Her family picked up all their stuff and moved into Hillcrest on account of her dad needing to relocate for work.”

Wonwoo remained silent at the revelation, even though he was urged by curiosity to badger Seokmin with questions.

“But, uh—without all my non-essential rambling—the relationship with her parents is tumultuous. Who doesn't have a shaky relationship with their parents, though? A few lucky souls, probably. But they've set things up for her quite well, in my opinion. Her mom got her a job at the Milestone—that fancy beauty place down Bank Street? She has a makeup chair from time to time and works reception. She’s definitely gonna graduate Cum Laude with some big fancy scholarship. Not to mention the little power couple thing she’s got going on with Mingyu. She just tends to be…” Seokmin winced, massaging his shoulder, “she’s just a bit unpredictable. It would be way too easy for things to start falling all over the place. She’s a busy girl so I figure it’s nice to help her out. Keep things organized.”

Wonwoo bobbed his head, thinking.

“I guess I’m curious about the book thing. I mean, if everything is so perfectly laid out for her, and she’s so busy all the time…. why write a book? That takes months, extreme dedication, planning out the ass… it’s loving everything you’ve written and then hating it so atrociously… I don’t know,” he sighed, shrugging with confusion, “if I were her, writing a book would be the last thing on my mind.”

Folding his arms, Seokmin leaned back against the cupboards and agreed. “I know. But sometimes she just lurches onto random things out of nowhere. One year she practically turned her entire living room into a freakin’ art studio and I slipped on an open tube of paint on the floor—nearly popped out my tail bone. To be fair, her passion projects never last long. She never has the time, as you said… I know you’re not helping her anymore. She’ll probably drop it without help.”

“Really? Just like that?”

“Yeah,” Seokmin answered, smiling, “just like that.”

For some reason, Wonwoo gritted his teeth. He would hate for you to discard the feat so readily, just because he couldn’t pitch in as initially planned. Yes, writing was not always a fruitful cherry blossom tree and sometimes chalking down one sentence was equivalent to a month of effort and squeezing out all the creative fibres in one’s brain, but there was so much worth and occulted beauty to it at the same time. It was the art of expression.

Wonwoo thought it was quite cruel to deprive oneself of the ability to express and articulate things as they coursed through the fragile skin and the warm veins, and chiefly, the heart.

“Anyway, maybe I didn’t really answer your question,” Seokmin laughed, “but, y’know, don’t worry too much about turning down the book. You’re right. She’s got more important things to focus on, as I was telling her over and over, and—oh! Fuck, the ramen’s bubbling!”

Wonwoo quickly twisted around as the water began spilling over the edge and sizzling like fried meat. He lifted the pot off the piping hot, orange element, to which Seokmin joined him, twisting the stove dial to a much lower heat. Blowing at the white froth, Wonwoo waited a precautionary minute before returning the pot.

Once dinner was ready, they gathered back at the dining table, entwining the noodles with their chopsticks and hardly allowing a second for the ramen to cool before they were shovelling in burning mouthful after mouthful. The bite in Wonwoo’s stomach was gradually appeased. He soon felt warm, and full, and less tempered.

“Seokmin.”

“Hm?” His friend glanced up from his phone.

“So…” Wonwoo leaned back in the chair, his fist clenched. “I guess what—from what I understand—if I don’t help Her, or if she doesn’t find someone who can, then the book just won’t happen ”

At his observation, Seokmin nodded, seeming unbothered.

“Uh, yeah. Pretty much.”

“That’s sad.”

“Hey, you two just aren’t destined for each other,” he replied, slurping his noodles, “you were right back at the café.”

Picking up the white and blue patterned bowl, Wonwoo prepared to drink the broth, feeling the delicious heat fan back against his face. Once he finished eating and helping Seokmin with the dishes, he planned to catch a late-night bus back to his apartment above the quaint pottery shop. He didn’t know if he would sleep or not.

Maybe, however, that would give him time to rethink some choices, even if he shouldn’t trust the musings his brain happened to curate past nine at night. Especially any musings concerning you.

[ Wonwoo | 11:45 pm ]: Sorry to message you this late.

[ Wonwoo | 11:45 pm ]: I’ll keep it brief: I’ve given your book idea some thought, and if the offer still stands, I’d like to help you write it. Though, I understand if you want someone else’s help.

[ Wonwoo | 11:50 pm ]: Goodnight.

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:35 am ]: AHHHHHHHHHHH

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:35 am ]: good morninggg

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:35 am ]: no that’s so perfect

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:37 am ]: okay. OMG. there’s just so much we have to sort out. I’m trying not to overwhelm myself lol

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:37 am ]: thank u for giving it more thought. I’m excited to plan everything and see u again ofc :)

[ Wonwoo | 12:55 pm ]: Likewise.

—APRIL 24TH.

Since last November, Wonwoo hadn’t invited many guests to his apartment—not even his older brother, who had never stepped foot into the building after Wonwoo originally signed the lease. Seokmin visited once or twice, but everything was curt, and while there had been one time that Vernon slept overnight on the couch, it was hardly notable.

Knowing that you were going to be at his apartment in a few hours was a very daunting thought. Consequently, Wonwoo had done something he hadn’t properly completed in months: clean.

It wasn’t like he just threw out the garbage and wiped down the kitchen counter either. He legitimately cleaned, picking over his apartment with a fine-tooth comb, not allowing one coffee cup or coaster to seem even vaguely incongruous. He fluffed out the couch pillows and vacuumed the floors. He went through his entire room, tidying up piles of clothes on the floor and aligning every book on his shelf. For the first time in months, Wonwoo threw open his heavy curtains, pure sunlight engulfing the space in such a bright glare that his eyes stung and he hardly recognized his own bedroom. Most importantly, he remembered to hide the pill bottle in his nightstand.

After all the anxiety-driven cleaning was done, Wonwoo collapsed onto the couch and stared plainly at the ceiling, the reality of what he just accomplished beginning to sink into his pores.

What the fuck?

He doubted you would care even microscopically if his apartment wasn’t perfectly swept and polished and artistic like a photo from an interior design catalogue. But at the same time, it would have been impossible for him to leave it alone. The burst of productivity undoubtedly left Wonwoo rather hot and sweaty, so he opted to take a shower before you arrived. Standing beneath the cool water and taking slow, languid breaths helped ease his nerves.

And, for the first time in what he imaged to be—months, Wonwoo dried himself off with this feeling that everything was okay.

Not good. Definitely not great. But okay.

While he buttoned up a pair of blue jeans, Wonwoo heard his phone ding from his desk. Reaching over, he tapped the screen.

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:05 pm ]: hi, I’m almost there

His chest fucking lurched.

Roughly jerking open his drawer, Wonwoo pulled out the first shirt he saw, tugging the white long-sleeve over his head before he wiggled his feet into a fresh pair of socks. Once Wonwoo found his glasses, he sat on the edge of his bed with his phone.

[ Wonwoo | 12:08 pm ]: Okay.

[ Wonwoo | 12:08 pm ]: Would you like me to come down?

God—he felt like his stomach was going to collapse.

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:08 pm ]: no that’s okay :)

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:09 pm ]: it’s really pretty down here

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:12 pm]: sorry I was looking at some of the pottery / painting stuff. it’s the staircase down the hall, right?

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:12 pm ]: unit 102?

[ Wonwoo | 12:12 pm ]: Yes.

He reminded himself to breathe. Calm and slow and lifting the pressure that dug so bluntly into his lungs. The webs began to burn away. It had been a narrow escape, but it was successful.

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:13 pm ]: heyy, I’m outside

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Wonwoo walked to the front door. His fingers brushed the knob in a flash of doubt, though his mind had already committed and now the door was pulled open and you were there, just as you said.

“Well, hello.”

He nodded at you, and then gestured for you to enter.

“Where should I take off my shoes?”

“There’s good,” Wonwoo answered, pointing to a textured mat in the corner that you proceeded to leave your simplistic heels on.

How absurd was this? Never in his life would Wonwoo imagine you at his apartment of all places—the one girl whom he adamantly tried to avoid because you were his gleaming opposite, and everything that you were, certain and in control, scared him. You were gazing around with your hands politely clasped together, ignited in the fulgurant sunlight, a small smile on your mouth.

“Wow, you’re very clean.”

Wonwoo stepped after you, maintaining a shy distance.

“It doesn’t normally look this neat,” he admitted, watching you readjust the strap of your tote bag, “I did clean for you.”

You turned to face him, and your laughter filled the space with a refreshing, long lost tone that made everything brighter. His fist clenched up anxiously and he knew his cheeks were pinkening.

“Um, cleaned or power-washed?”

He merely stared at you. Why couldn’t he fucking speak?

“Jeez, don’t look so afraid. I’m joking. And I obviously appreciate the effort.” You spun back around, continuing to walk past the coffee table and toward the kitchen. “It’s a lovely place, and it’s definitely got your personal touch. Oh—this is a cute mug.”

He breathed out, unfurling his hand and stretching his fingers until the air in his knuckles popped. You began wandering in the natural direction of the bedroom, and so Wonwoo followed, his eyes drifting up the jeans that hugged your legs and your sashaying hips, to back of your delicious-smelling hair. What was that scent, anyway?

Manuka honey?

But it was just a trivial glance, really.

Nothing meaningful.

“Is this your room?” You asked, stopping at the doorframe.

“It is.”

Biting your lip, you peaked inside and started to grin.

“Do you care if I go in?”

 “No.”

He tried not to crumble right there on the floor. Wonwoo’s room was his sanctuary, a fortress, something that barred out everyone but himself and granted him the freedom to do whatever he pleased (whether it was self-detrimental or not). The thought of others in his room was a gash in that perfect sanctuary, in which he could see the walls bleed out all their comfort and familiarity. His ex was the last person to be in his room, typically sprawled across the bed with a good novel in her hand.

It was a sour, sour reminder.

“Oh, and there’s the bookshelf,” you pointed out, “how fitting.” That penetrating gaze of yours roamed his desk and his bed and all his knickknacks in between. “Hey, why’s there a balcony outside?” You then asked, settling your hands onto the window frame and leaning out, the wind fluttering minimally through the layered curtains.

“Just a remodelling error,” Wonwoo explained, “it was supposed to be removed, I think. Never happened.”

Allured by curiosity, you leaned further out, examining the ladder that led up to the building’s roof. He looked at you again, specifically the arch in your back and the way your arms were planted so firm at the windowsill. He looked at the sunlight rippling on your cheek and your lips that appeared to sparkle, like you had kissed glitter.

“You definitely go up there, right?”

“Yeah.”

Half-shutting the window as to keep the breeze flowing, you chuckled. “I figured… so, I guess we should stop dawdling and get to the meat and potatoes. Is here a good spot? Or do you want to go back to the living room?”

“We’re in my room anyways,” Wonwoo commented, pulling out his desk chair and promptly sitting down, “so, why not.”

“Cool. Let me get my laptop.”

You slipped the tote bag off your arm and sat on the edge of his freshly made bed, being careful not to rumple the sheets.

“Okay!” Your hands echoed a series of soft claps. “I’m all ready now. I’ll try my best not to ramble—oh, and please, please don’t interrupt me until I’m done. I’m going to be very pissed if I lose my train of thought and I’d like this meeting to remain pleasant.”

Wonwoo nodded. “I know.”

You flashed him a brief smile.

“So, as you know, Mingyu and I’s fifth year anniversary is coming up in December. My gift to him is this so far nonexistent book. We’ve been through a lot as a couple, and as individuals, and I want the book to fully capture this journey we’ve been on and how much I… appreciate him. Also, I’m going to introduce a second, special element—” a hand plunged into your tote bag and suddenly a video camera was revealed, “—I want to record some of our brain sessions, and, like, our voyage of figuring this shit out. I like mementos. I hope that’s okay.”

“… Do I answer?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Then, yeah. I’m okay with it.”

“Secondlyyy—” you lilted while scrolling a little ways down the notepad on your laptop, the video camera stuffed back into your flower-and-honeybee-patterned tote, “—there are a few places we’ll need to visit—not the actual places that Mingyu and I went to since we grew up nowhere near here—but places that more so have a strong resemblance to the ones in my memory. I feel like it will help me with visual aspects of the writing. I’m a very visual person. Y’know, setting up the scene and technical things like that. I like touching and feeling and seeing and breathing everything in. I want all my senses on fire, basically. Like… the way your lips feel after eating insanely hot noodles.”

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

Wonwoo didn’t really care. He just agreed.

“Lastly, I want to make a schedule for us. So, I’m kindly asking you to set up a schedule of your own—work shifts, doctor’s appointments, tests—the like, so I can incorporate them into my own hectic life and make us one colourful, super writing schedule.”

And then, with a big, winded sigh, you shut your laptop.

“That’s it. Done. Thoughts?”

Honestly, the entire premise didn’t sound all that terrible. He had braced himself for the worst, but you were unsurprisingly organized and had pinpointed all your desires quite clearly. Of course, he knew it was going to be sheer hell—flames up to his knees and desert sun beating on his skin like a hot skillet frying butter. You were structured and dedicated and Wonwoo was none of those things.

No doubt, Wonwoo would have to learn to deal with you.

You would either be his trigger or his pulse.

But, even worse, you would have to learn to deal with him.

“I’m just following your lead on this,” Wonwoo announced, lacklustre of much interest, resting his hands against his stomach while he rotated back and forth in the swivel chair, “whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. How soon do you want the schedule thing?”

“Like, as soon as possible.”

“Okay.”

“Do you really have no questions?”

Wonwoo scratched the side of his head.

“Uh, have you got anything written down yet?”

“Yes,” you propped open your laptop again, “an intro.”

“Oh, really?”

“Don’t question me. It was already difficult enough to write it, and I agonized over it for hours.” You pouted, slumping slightly.

He shifted up straighter in the desk chair.

“I’m sorry. I was just wondering. It’s good you started.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

Wonwoo tilted his head at you. “Do I get to read it?”

Your feet crossed and twirled together. He didn’t think you had any nervous ticks, but that was something easy to pick up on.

“Um, not yet. Not until we officially start.”

“Okay.” He answered with a gentle voice, noticing your swaying feet still again and a bit of rigidity dissipate from your body.

Well, he didn’t really know what to do at this point. Wonwoo suspected you were constrained by more tasks for today and your time with him was limited. It’s not that you were sitting in an awkward, stifling silence, but he would rather occupy himself with something rather than nothing, because nothing left his heart to race.

“Are you hungry?” He asked.

Glancing up from the laptop, you shook your head. “I ate before I came here.”

“Are you going to be leaving soon?”

At that, your face crinkled with laughter. “Sick of me already?”

Wonwoo crossed his arms. “No. Just asking.”

“Well, I have a wax appointment soon. I’ll be leaving in ten minutes or so.” Finally, you looked up, and your eyes clicked with his in a way that made the fine hairs along his neck prickle coolly. “Does that answer your question?” A subtle grin pulled at your soft lips.

“It does, yes.”

“You don’t like having people in your room, do you?”

He huffed at the observation and delved a hand through his black hair, feeling the dampness slide against his fingers. “Not particularly.”

“You should have just said that.” Rising off his bed, you closed the laptop and shoved it back into the tote bag.

Wonwoo’s entire chest jerked. It felt like a ten-story drop.

“Are you leaving?”

“Mm, I don’t want to intrude.”

“You’re not intruding.”

Why did his throat close up just then? Why did his vocal cords abruptly feel so coarse and tight? Why was his heart hammering? He didn’t mean to project the wrong impression. He didn’t hate you in his room. It just felt misplaced, and new. Like picking up a puzzle piece from the box and attempting to jam it into a different puzzle.

“It’s fine. Seriously. I should be early, anyway.”

Wonwoo stood up, realizing he needed to breathe. “Um… would you like me to walk you down?”

You stopped on your way out, faced him with a pretty smile.

“That’s okay.”

But then you did something rather strange; your hand sank into his firm upper arm and suddenly you were leaning into him, so carelessly close that he could feel the fanning, light warmth of your breath against his neck. Wonwoo’s head started to spin, and he thought a cloud had enveloped the room because his vision fuzzed.

“Sorry,” you took a step back, removing your hand, “you just smell really good. Like an ocean or something. It reminds me of this beach in Puta Cana. But your hair’s all damp and fluffy so that’s probably why. That was weird. I’m sorry.” Again, you laughed.

Why the fuck did you do that? He was almost angry. But not at you. At himself. For reacting in such a giddy, stupid way. Your touch and breath had burned him and there was this sharp, cutting flare inside Wonwoo that didn’t want to let you leave.

“All good…” he mumbled, sounding groggy and slow.

“I’ll see myself out then. Bye!”

And with a final chirp, you left, the front door closing in the distance while he could only stand there, shuddering and strangely hot and beyond confused. Wonwoo moved to swing the heavy curtains shut, the entire room succumbing into its usual shadiness. He sat on the edge of his very neat bed, removed his glasses, and buckled over while rubbing his veiny, pale hands through his hair.

The feeling was so lost and suppressed to his memory.

Wonwoo didn’t even know what it was.

He was relieved you were gone, but he also wished that you were still there, leaning out his open window with the wind and sunshine in your face. It was a sight so sweet and equally intimate.

Who are you?

What are you doing in his meaningless life?

—APRIL 28TH.

Wonwoo had finished his math final with half an hour to generously spare, and now, he was sitting, bored, sketching his pencil against the last page of the thick packet. The professor wouldn’t care.

Hopefully.

On one hand, Wonwoo knew he  should really just stand up and hand the damn thing in, but on the other hand, he hated—no, abhorred being the first person to return a test, especially an exam at that. Wonwoo was pretty smart. He knew that about himself and he never bothered to maintain the guise he wasn’t. Still, Wonwoo wasn’t pretentious. If he had to wait until the final fucking minute to hand the packet in, solely to avoid being the first student up, then so be it.

Besides, there wasn’t anything too pressing that required his immediate attention—minus the pertinent schedule he was supposed to make and have sent to you approximately three days ago. You had called him last night, to which the phone crackled with a loud, static bark of his name as you admonished him for his lateness.

“I told you three days ago I wanted the schedule! Three days! I can’t believe this. What’s so hard about making a schedule? Beep boop, you press some buttons on your laptop and it’s done. It would take ten minutes tops! Ugh, I’m so done with you, Wonwoo. In fact, don’t call me back—don’t even text me until you have the schedule!”

And then the line had collapsed, leaving Wonwoo to stare rather expressionlessly at his phone screen, the boy huffing out a breath of tendrilled smoke while he relaxed on the apartment roof. That had been his first experience sat on the receiving end of your seasoned quips, and it left him with this very profound emptiness, like his insides had been scooped out and the shell of his body was nothing but a wooden nesting doll. It had been such a long time since he genuinely cared about disappointing someone. Wonwoo had grown far too complacent with the feeling of disappointing himself.

That would never motivate him to do anything.

But you were different. In the sense that Wonwoo mostly remained proactive out of fear you might bite his head off.

From somewhere near the back of the room, Wonwoo heard chair legs scraping, and he eagerly flexed his fingers while observing a girl with the slickest ponytail he’d ever seen march past him to the professor’s desk. She set her packet down. He thanked her. She left.

Jesus Christ. Finally.

“All finished, Wonwoo?” His professor mumbled in a tone that hardly escaped his own lips, glancing up at the boy expectantly.

Pushing up his glasses, Wonwoo nodded.

“I suppose it’s harder for you to sit there and wait than it is to write the actual exam, isn’t it?” The professor noted with an almost undetectable smirk as he slid the test packet inside a tan-coloured folder, to which Wonwoo turned January cold.

“I don’t know.” Wonwoo shrugged, pretending to feel unbothered when in reality his skin was slithering like a snake pit at the thought of being even marginally perceived. “Maybe.”

“You have a good summer, alright?”

“Thanks. You too.”

Wonwoo swept a quick glance over the classroom right before he left, noticing that Seokmin was sat beside the wall, one hand tangled tight into his black, ruffled tresses as his pencil scribbled all over the paper like he was writing pure nonsense. He probably was.

And Wonwoo meant that in a nice-this isn’t really your sweet spot, but you’ll manage nonetheless-way. After leaving the classroom, Wonwoo thought he might go home and plunge head first into his oasis of bedsheets and flat, foam pillows that he loved so much, and permit himself to decay until it was physically impossible to lie down any longer. But he decided against it at the last minute, turning up at the café instead with his shoulder-strung book bag and the timely urge for a scone. He then sat down at his favourite table.

Pulled out his laptop.

Opened the document he was at incessant war with.

The last scene he’d written was breakfast.

“Uh, okay. Orange juice… or orange juice?”

“Did you say orange juice?”

“I did.”

“So… chocolate milk?”

“Ha! Funny... is there any sort of correlation between being a complete nerd and making such well-woven jokes?”

“Not sure. But I’ll get back to you when I find out… thanks. Your tea is sitting on the island, by the way.”

“Thank you, Won. Oh—you even put it in my Woodstock mug!”

“Yes, why are you so surprised that I remember?”

“Because it’s always hidden at the back of our cupboard, behind ten other mugs that we certainly don’t need and all our plates. I mean, I guess it’s my fault. Half of them are from my mom.”

“It’s sweet.”

“It takes up too much space. But I can’t tell her no.”

“That, you’ve got to work on.”

“The Christmas thing isn’t happening anymore, if that helps. I think the thought of having to cram all my family into our living room for a night was what motivated me the most. My mom said she’ll send us poinsettias instead. I think that’s way easier.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. Believe it or not, I can assert myself. Sometimes.”

“No, no. I do believe you. I’m proud. Okay—bottoms up.”

“How’s the combination of venlafaxine and orange juice?”

“I don’t know. Juicy?”

“Better juicy than anxious?”

“You could say that.”

Right, back when Wonwoo actually had the willpower to make himself breakfast rather than slapping a mixed berry Poptart into the toaster or worse, nothing at all. Back when he could wake up before noon without feeling nauseous enough to curl into a ball and drape the sheets over his aching head. Back when he actually took his medicine. Her face beaming at him from across their table had always been like a glass of sunlight and citrus. She had been his own vitamin.

Wonwoo knew he wasn’t going to write. He was just going to stare and mope and ensnare himself in the pinwheel of memories that blew over him whenever he had the gall to reread his past literature.

The Woodstock mug. She’d taken that with her.  

He decided it was strange and sometimes irritating how love, broken or not, could suture itself into even the most mundane things. Orange juice was just that—juice—the carton he used to pick up and impetuously drop into his grocery cart every so often. Now, it wasn’t juice at all, but slow mornings, steaming tea kettles, and reading together on the couch with legs all tangled up until lunch time.

Now, Wonwoo couldn’t drink it at all.

Breaking the lemon raspberry scone in half, Wonwoo dropped a flaky piece into his mouth before it got too cold, and then proceeded to close the document. There was no way in hell he would write, and while he loved drowning in his own misery in order to snuff any glimpse of productivity more than the average individual, he thought it might be worthwhile to finally start that schedule.

[ Wonwoo | 8:20 pm ]: schedule.pdf

[ Her | 8:56 pm ]: thanks

[ Her | 8:56 pm ]: don’t piss me off again

—APRIL 30TH.

For an April morning, it was surprisingly bright. The sun was out in full and glistering warmth by the time Wonwoo stepped onto the sidewalk and began pacing down to the park, practically needing to squint the entire way. He almost hated it. Early mornings were not his friend, nor were the blades of light cutting across his glasses. But today was his first writing session with you and Wonwoo knew it was more than crucial that he was the furthest thing from tardy—it would be akin to willingly setting his hands inside a burning fire if not.

You agreed to meet at the park since it was roughly equal distance between Wonwoo’s apartment and some breakfast place you wanted to stop at. He thought it was uncharacteristically thoughtful of you to shoot him a text asking if he wanted anything, though Wonwoo declined nonetheless. It was damn near impossible for him to eat a bite of food until lunch time, hence his expression softening in confusion when he at last climbed into the passenger seat of your sleek silver car and was greeted by you passing him a cold tea.

“Am I… holding this for you?” He wondered, sitting still.

You shook your head. “No. It’s yours.”

“I didn’t ask for anything.”

“Yes, I realize that. I can read, thank you.”

Wonwoo wasn’t going to argue. He simply shut his mouth, clicked on his seatbelt, and set the tea into the cup holder. He then began looking around at your car’s interior. Everything was exceptionally clean and smelled sugary, like iced gingerbread.

The thing was, Wonwoo still wasn’t very sure how to talk to you, and most often there was the stiffest frog in his throat whenever he sat around you in silence for too long. Your thumbs were tapping against your phone at light speed. It reminded him of how Seokmin was texting you back at the boy’s apartment when they were studying for finals. Wonwoo couldn’t help but wonder if Seokmin was naturally more inclined to respond to you out of friendship or fear. Maybe even a pinch of both if that was possible. Another quiet minute passed by.

“Okay, fuck, sorry,” you suddenly spluttered at random, quickly slotting your phone into the GPS holder, “just some shit with my mom. Um, okay. Yeah. We can get going.”

“All good," Wonwoo answered.

“You know where we’re off to?”

“Vaguely. The track by Caldwell High School.”

He watched you flit him a smile. “That’s the place. I’ll explain more once we get there. And, by the way, I am expecting you to drink that tea. It’s not anything crazy. It’s oolong. Only a bit of caffeine.”

“I drink coffee, you know.”

“Yes, and it probably makes you jittery and insufferable.”

Wonwoo preferred not to comment.

The car ride wasn’t too long. Actually, Wonwoo did love a good car ride. He remembered the long trips he used to take with his family to the water park when he was a child, the sensation of the breeze blowing into his face and how different shades of green would scatter in through the windows as the sun hit the tree leaves like emeralds. There was something so limerent and sadly distant about the memory that Wonwoo felt his chest hurt. Even if he were to take that same road, and smell the same breeze, and see his skin glow with the same hues of the forest, he doubted it would feel the same.

His mouth had gone awfully dry. Wonwoo then reached for the cold tea sitting in the cup holder and took a sip, suddenly very appreciative that you had thought to get him something, anyway.

And while he couldn’t be too certain, Wonwoo wanted to think that maybe this would be a good memory, too.

After the half-hour long car ride, Wonwoo made sure to stretch when he stepped out into the empty parking lot. It was cloudier now, a bit more of a breeze to help counteract the warmth that remained in the air. You came around to join him, twisting out a cramp in your leg while adjusting the purse over your shoulder.

The walk to the track field wasn’t long, no more than a few minutes, and Wonwoo obediently trailed at your side until he witnessed the bleachers slowly coming into view. It resurfaced memories from his own high school days in PE, which Wonwoo had actually been quite successful at despite his distaste for sports and their atmosphere in general. He remembered liking kickball the best.

You sighed in a wistful tone while staring across the marked asphalt and fresh April grass. “All high school tracks look the same, don’t they?” Then, you carefully set your purse onto the bleachers.

Wonwoo rolled his shoulders, taking a more observant look around. It wasn’t strikingly different from the track at his high school.

“Sure. I guess.”

“I mean, there are some differences. We had ditches by our track. Come to think of it, I honestly believe they put them there for kids to hurl in from heat stroke or over-exertion… that’s what I did, anyway. It was right before I had to do triple jump. I hated it because you had to really build up speed. I didn’t want to run. So, even if I hadn’t thrown up from heat stroke, I probably would’ve made myself throw up some other way. Straight to the nurse. She gave me a popsicle.”

He glanced at you sideways. “Seriously?”

“Mmhm.”

“You’d rather throw up than hop, like, three times?”

“I said it was the running part I didn’t like.”

Wonwoo couldn’t imagine purposefully making himself upchuck in order to get out of something. If his anxiety was terrible enough, then he wouldn’t even have to worry about it, really.

That was its own mechanism of disaster.

“Running is eighty-percent of Activity Days," Wonwoo said.

You clicked your tongue at him. “Exactly. And I’d do anything to never run. I tried to sit in one time with the seventh graders. They were in their art block and they were doing painting under the trees; birdhouses or something. But their teacher kicked me out. And she didn’t even let me take the fucking birdhouse that I was painting.”

“The nerve,” Wonwoo answered, scratching his temple.

He proceeded to take a seat on the metal bench, rubbing his hands together. He still didn’t know how Mingyu fit into everything.

“So… what’s your plan, here?”

You sat next to him, folding one leg over your thigh and proceeding to reveal a journal that you had stuffed inside your expensive bag. The tips of your fingers skimmed through a few fluttering pages, until you stopped on one in particular that was ink-abused with cursive scribbles. Wonwoo assumed you did most of your planning on a laptop, hence his surprise to learn that you actually used a journal. He had a journal himself, though it hadn’t been touched in months. It mostly contained small poetic excerpts.

Next, you pulled out a pen.

“This is how I first ran into Mingyu. At my school’s track field. He was new and good at all the activities. I swear, his name spread like wildfire. Anyways, I haven’t figured out all the bits and bobs. I want to really soak in the feeling of—oh!” Suddenly, you grasped the journal back onto your lap, the pen hitting the paper in a cursive ribbon that Wonwoo could hardly read. “I just thought of a great line. His eyes, I wanted to soak in them, like an oasis.”

You stabbed the paper again to make a period.

“Not bad,” Wonwoo commented.

“Okay, here it is!” A black case was pulled from your purse, and once you unzipped it, Wonwoo realized it was the video camera that you had initially shown him at his apartment. “Okay, I want you to film some stuff. The field, obviously. I need it from different perspectives. It will help me with setting the scene later on.”

“Why do I have to film it?”

“Because, Seokmin told me you’re quite handy with film equipment stuff, and I don’t want to drop it. So just do it, please?”

Accepting the video camera from your hand, Wonwoo sighed in agreement. Flipping open the side-screen of the camera, Wonwoo began clicking some buttons and adjusting the focus. Luckily, he was familiar with the particular camcorder thanks to a film education course he’d taken outside of school.

While you busied yourself at the bleachers with starting up your laptop, Wonwoo began collecting footage, slowly panning the camera across the vast length of the gravel track and the grassy soccer fields situated beyond. He kept a concentrated eye on the side-screen to ensure the lighting wouldn’t change too drastically. A wind had picked up from over the forest, and he could see how the clouds were consequently being pushed along like herded sheep in the sky.

Once he brushed back the floppy, black hair that kept tickling his face, Wonwoo lowered the camera and turned to you.

“So, where else should I film?”

You were typing something, and didn’t bother looking up.

“Go across the field. Film from the other side.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“I have to go all the way over there?”

“Yes. Walk, crawl. Skip, hop. I don’t care. Just do it, please.”

“Jesus Christ,” he huffed out, feeling tired and yearning to go home, “I hate how seriously you’re taking this, y’know that?”

Your fingers continued blitzing against the keyboard.

“Nobody likes a complainer.”

Ironic, he thought, but obviously kept to himself.

There wasn’t a point in expecting any sympathy from you—that, he already knew—which engendered Wonwoo’s long, trudging walk from one side of the track to the other, the wind irritably blowing his grown-out locks over his glasses every time he attempted sweeping them back. Hoisting the camera back up, Wonwoo adjusted the side-screen and began his same ritual of steadily panning the camera along the landscape.

You appeared in the view, still sat on the bleachers, though nothing about your face or figure was too discernible. It felt like you were a background character in a painting, just a little glob of acrylic.

“All done?”

Finally, you had glanced up at him with a smile.

Wonwoo nodded. “Unless you need anything else filmed?”

“No, that should be enough. The track is most important.”

“Right.”

He tried giving back the camera.

“Actually, do you mind keeping it?”

“Um, okay. But how will you look at the footage?

“Dropbox. We’ll share one. Upload the clips there.”

Wonwoo plopped himself back down on the bench, fitting the camcorder into its black case. He pulled the zipper along the seam.

“How much longer do we need to be here?”

“Not that much. Just let me finish this paragraph.”

There was a dull pain throbbing at the front of his skull, edging down to his temples—across his nose bridge where his glasses pressed in more tightly than usual. He closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled a deep breath, trying to escape the feeling, the nausea, the chills that were beginning to seep up his neck as the wind blew turbulently against him. It would be embarrassing if this happened here, right in front of you. The hard lump had suddenly lurched forward in Wonwoo’s throat but he leaned his head down last minute and swallowed it despite the roughness. No, everything was okay.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

Wonwoo opened his eyes, staring down at the trembling hands buried in his lap. Subtly, he pulled the sleeves of his cardigan over them. He assumed his face was reflecting a sheer, sickly opacity.

“Nothing.”

“Uh, sure. Now look me in the eyes and say that.”

Again, Wonwoo swallowed, but he managed nonetheless.

“Nothing’s wrong. I get headaches sometimes. That’s all.”

“… Oh. Well, I’m basically done here. I was gonna ask if you wanted to walk a lap around the track with me, but maybe we should just go home. I mean, how bad is it? Your headache?”

Yes, yes. Home. Wonwoo wanted to go home. He had only been away from his apartment for a solid two hours, and yet all his mind and body’s energy had completely drained. He felt dried out, withered, fragile as tempered glass. Going home sounded cosmic. 

“It’s getting better. I wouldn’t mind walking with you.”

“Oh! Cool. If it gets really bad, just tell me.” You then spent a minute collecting your belongings back into the cream purse.

Wonwoo immediately looked the other way, dragging a frustrated hand through his hair, mouthing a string of guttural curse words directed at his discombobulated head. Because what the hell was he doing? All his relief and peace had just suckled itself down an invisible drain. Why on earth did he agree? Why?

“I think this will help me, too," you said, having left the shiny bleachers behind, instead kicking the pebbles at your feet, “if we walk the entire track, then it’s like we did the four-hundred meter.”

“You’re supposed to run the four-hundred meter.”

“Well, I know that.”

“I’m surprised you hate running. I mean, you walk so fucking quickly sometimes.”

He heard you snort, clearly amused by his observation.

“It’s because I’ve mastered the art of sashaying. To have a perfect sashay, you can’t walk too slow, but you also can’t walk too fast. It’s like a strut. You need to have confidence while you do it. It lets people know that you’re serious and professional. I’m not dragging my feet, but I’m also not in a rush. It’s the perfect pace.”

Wonwoo sniffled and scrunched the glasses up his nose, continuing alongside you at a pace that was rather aimless.

“I didn’t realize there was a science behind sashaying.”

“Now you know,” you declared.

Wonwoo’s  upper lip quirked slightly, and a small grin appeared on his face, which was starting to dapple with colour.

“I don’t sashay, do I?”

At that, you laughed, “no, you amble.”

“Yeah, I’m an ambler… which basically means I’m an unmotivated, pointless person who will probably go nowhere in life.”

For a moment, you stopped walking, and you merely furrowed your brow at him while your forehead creased with thought. Wonwoo stopped as well. He raked back his fluttering, windswept hair and smirked, flashing his teeth. The behaviour was uncharacteristically snide and a bit of a dig at your bluntness, but he couldn’t help it.

“Don’t remember, huh?”

“No… but it sounds familiar.”

“You told me that, the day I met you—that people who walk slowly are unmotivated and pointless. Their life is a waste, basically.”

He noticed your eyes shift up toward the right, as though you were pulling the memory forward from the intricate files of your brain. And then you started to smile, and it made Wonwoo smile, too.

“Oh, I do believe I said that.” You started walking again, and he followed. “Ha! Wow, you’re right. I said that. I’m so funny. I mean, I was right. You only walk slow when you have nowhere to be.”

“I did have somewhere to be. I was going to meet you.”

“Well, then you just didn’t care.” He felt your elbow press shallowly into his rib. “See what I mean? Unmotivated and pointless. And, honestly, I would have taken your apathy as more of an insult if it wasn’t for the fact that you seem to treat most things like that.”

“So, I’m just supposed to accept that you’re calling me a loser? How do people normally react when you say things like that?”

“Things like what? They’re just my observations about the world. You are a person in this world. I was making an observation about you. Albeit, it came across strongly. But I don’t know. No one ever cared about being gentle or sugar-coating with me. Gives you tough skin, y’know? Metaphorically, of course! I always moisturize.”

 Wonwoo scoffed, smiling at your nonchalance. “The way you word things is honestly fascinating.”

“Psh. How do you even remember that?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t seem that hard to remember. It was a pretty memorable, somewhat awful experience, to be fair.”

“Awful?” You retaliated in unprecedented disbelief, pushing into his arm until he allowed his tall frame to stumble. “Try again.”

“Interesting?” Wonwoo substituted, his heart thumping. 

Your eyes were narrowed at him, glimmering with a sharpness that made his fingers clench into anxious fists.

“… That’s a little better.”

He exhaled a soft breath of relief.

As you began nearing the full circle, Wonwoo realized his head had eased from its horrible aching and the chills dampening down his neck were gone. Everything didn’t feel as awful compared to before. He was still tired, and his energy was sputtering in tiny, dying sparks, but at least his desire to crawl under the earth and degrade to his bare bones had subsided into something less morose.

“I heard you were having a get together next week,” Wonwoo decided to ask, rounding the last bend in the track.

“Oh, the dinner party?”

“Yeah. Seokmin’s helping you plan it, right?”

“He is. Which I appreciate. My mom is usually the one in charge of everything, and she loathes it. But, I mean, when we try to help her, she just ends up fretting even more—says we’re basically getting in the way and ruining it. I don’t know. She’s such a snappy perfectionist. Seokmin can have fun dealing with that.”

Wonwoo almost made a thoughtless comment in response to your story—he’s probably had eons of practice with you—though the pieces connected just in time and his mouth sealed shut.

“Your dad can’t help either?” He questioned instead.

“Ha! No way. My dad helping is a recipe for fucking disaster if I’ve ever seen it. He’s painfully bad at decorating, can hardly be trusted to cook or invite anyone from the guest list. The most my mom allows him to do is set the table.” You then scoffed, shooting a pebble forward with the tip of your shoe. “I swear, he knows exactly how to push my mom’s buttons. The faster he does it, the quicker she kicks him out and he’s absolved of all chores. What a cheat, huh?”

“Hm, yeah… is Mingyu going?”

“Of course.” You smiled. “He always goes.”

At that point, you had circled back to the bleachers. Adjusting the bag strewn over your shoulder, you heaved out a longing sigh.

“Well, that’s four-hundred meters in the books.”

“Is it everything you hoped and dreamed it would be?”

You cackled, “not even close. I think I was right to avoid it.”

—MAY 3RD.

Wonwoo slid his pharmacy badge through the time-machine until he heard the beep. After an eight-hour shift, he was hungry and tired, but Wonwoo also knew the second that he got home, his urge to eat and desire to sleep would be gone. Instead, he would spend his midnight staring up at the ceiling, thinking. About anything and everything, and nothing at all. When the first cracks of dawn light would spill in from under his curtain, then he would close his eyes.

It was all very typical.

He stood outside the store, phone in hand, waiting for Vernon to pick him up because Wonwoo hadn’t felt like walking home despite the softness of the nighttime wind and the alabaster moon’s shining ambiance. The mirage was pretty and he enjoyed it, but his feet were too sore to inch him another step. Luckily, Vernon didn’t take long.

Luckily, he was the only one of Wonwoo’s few friends with a sleep schedule just as horridly fucked up as his. It was eleven at night, but on a weekday? The dead, empty street testified for him.

“Heyy, Glasses,” Vernon sang in his throaty voice as Wonwoo climbed into the passenger seat, “you look like a prostitute standin’ there, waitin’ for me to come get your ass. But a sophisticated one.”

The interior didn’t smell heavily of weed, he noted. Thank fucking god, Vernon had finally paid someone to dry clean it. Either that, or he took the initiative into his own hands.

“I highly doubt you have ever seen a prostitute in your entire life. And the fact you think they’d be standing outside a pharmacy at one of the quietest parts on this block attests to that.”

“God, I hate when you get all technical n’ shit. Such a stiff.”

“I’m tired.”

“Yeah, well. You’re always tired. N’ for the record, I have seen a prostitute, outside Room 319. It was a week before Christmas; she had this huge coat on, walkin’ up to people in her pink heels and this crazy eyeshadow that made her eyes pop. I bet she’s a nice girl.”

“Mhm. I bet she was.”

“Oh, you’re a cunt, yeah? You don’t believe me.”

“Does it matter?”

“I’ll take you one day. Room 319’s got a table with your name on it. They’ve got this one shot, the Stabilizer— it’ll put you down like a fuckin’ sick dog but it gets you the best drunk of your life. Maybe we’ll even run into Pink Heels lady. She’s our Halley’s Comet.”

“Halley’s Comet only comes once every seventy-five years. “

“You know what the fuck I meant.”

“Not interested.”

Vernon blinked at him for a moment in the dull light, and then he sighed, forfeiting. He placed the tip of the key in the ignition, but he quickly removed it as though he remembered something.

“Wait, I’ve gotta ask—how’s it going with Her?”

Biting down on the inside of his cheek, Wonwoo reached for the seatbelt and pulled it slowly across his chest, debating how intelligent of an idea it would be to entertain Vernon’s curiosity. But he could also understand the allure. You were like this enigmatic myth that people craved to know about, even if it frightened them.

Wonwoo’s head collapsed back against the seat.

“It’s going well.”

Vernon spat out a boisterous laugh, a hand slapping down on his knee. “Jesus Christ. You’re so dry, man. That’s it?”

“I mean, it’s true. We’ve started the book. Or, she has.”

“Okay, and?” Vernon attempted to engage him further.

“And, what?”

“What’s she like, obviously? Is she actually a fuckin’ psychopath? Is she normal? Can she walk on her hands? I dunno!”

Wonwoo rubbed underneath his glasses. He didn’t really want to talk about you when you weren’t there. It felt like a Bloody Mary situation, where you’d magically conjure in the backseat to sinch your cold hands around his neck and wrangle him limp and lifeless. But then there were Vernon’s shimmeringly prying eyes that just wouldn’t stop burning Wonwoo no matter how hard he bit his tongue.

“I have nothing to say. She’s cool.”

“Oh my fuckin’ God.” Vernon slacked back into his seat, clutching at his steering wheel. “You just don’t wanna talk about it… oh! Shit. I just remembered. She’s having a dinner party tonight, isn’t she? In Hill Crest. Or as I like to call it, Rich People Neighbourhood.”

“Yeah, that’s where her parents live… how do you know that?”

“Shit!” Vernon immediately shuffled up in his seat and delivered a hard smack into Wonwoo’s shoulder. “We should drive down and check it out! Right fuckin’ now!” He was lit up with excitement, even though Wonwoo considered it a terrible idea.

“No. Absolutely not. And answer my question.”

“Was sittin’ behind Seokmin at Solar Pop, he talks really loud, happened to overhear some things—doesn’t matter. I think we should go! C’mon, allow some spontaneity into your life! Why not?”

“What the fuck do you mean, why? It’s a family party. With some close friends, which—in case you haven’t noticed—neither of us are. You can’t fucking crash a family dinner party. Who does that? Not to mention the fact that it's eleven at night. They're probably washing up. Sending people home. By the time we get there, it's lights out."

“Aren’t you her friend?”

“No. I’m just someone who’s doing her a favour.”

“Favours are from friends.”

“We’re. Not. Friends.”

“Okay—fuck, Glasses. Fine. We won’t crash the stupid dinner party. But don’t you wanna go for a drive or something? I’m tellin’ you, the houses are insane. Last time I went down there, it was for a big fuckin’ party some dude at your university threw. I think I ran this by you already, when I talked about tryin’ to chat up Her. I stopped by with my old friend—y’know, Dots, the guy that died from the overdose and everything. That party was crazy. It was in a mansion.”

“Vernon,” Wonwoo had just finished massaging the throbs at his warm temples, “we are not going to Hill Crest.”

His friend swung his head in disapproval, making a tsking sound with his teeth. “Such a fuckin’ stiff.” He started the car. “It’s the fact I know you have jack shit to do tonight, or tomorrow.”

“I’m not gonna do some stalker drive-by on her house.”

“You don’t wanna do Room 319. You don’t wanna judge a bunch of richies sittin’ up in their ivory towers. I mean, it’s not like we’re eggin’ them or spray painting fuckin’ curse words on their eight-door garages. What do you wanna do?”

Wonwoo rolled down the window and leaned his face toward the moonlight, to which he could feel the wind brush up against his skin in feathery strokes, as though it were caressing him. He knew that Vernon meant in a general sense rather than in the heat of the moment. But in a general sense, Wonwoo would rather not be anywhere at all. He would rather do nothing, or even exist.

“Can you just take me home? Please?”

Vernon exhaled a defeated gust of breath and began to angle his tires away from the curb, the pharmacy lights pulled behind them.

“Yeah, ‘course. Mr. Boring.”

—01:49

Wonwoo hadn’t been able to fall asleep since Vernon dropped him off a couple hours ago. He’d anticipated that. Usually, Wonwoo wouldn’t do anything. He wouldn’t toss or turn, or pace circles around his bedroom, or count down from one-hundred, because even if he did, none of it would work. His mind would still be wide awake.

Hence Wonwoo’s decision to grab his phone. Staring at a lurid screen definitely wasn’t going to help, though he wasn’t trying to sleep, anyway. That conversation with Vernon was repeating in his head like a chattering bird, pushing him, pushing him, pushing him to find your Instagram and dig into your pictures because now Wonwoo was thinking of your dinner party and how vehemently you seemed to hate it. He saw that you had posted something quite recently, around the same time Wonwoo had left the pharmacy.

For a moment, his thumb hovered over the post.

He didn’t want to press it because he didn’t care.

Or, maybe he did.

There were multiple pictures in the set, and Wonwoo flicked through all of them. Some were of food, close-ups of your jewelry—you even included a picture with Seokmin. But then Wonwoo had settled on the last photo and something in his stomach convulsed.

He recognized the dress like a flash of light—the sapphire one with the glimmering detail that you had modelled for him at the expensive boutique in the mall. Of course, that arm hanging cheekily low around your hip belonged to your boyfriend, Mingyu. He had a champagne glass pressed to his lips, fitted in his black suit with his hair neatly combed and styled into place. The smugness in his face was stifling. Wonwoo rolled onto his stomach, his eyes refusing to drift from the picture for even an instant. He just kept staring.

Staring and thinking. Staring and thinking.

One minute spent staring at your smile.

The next minute at the low placement of Mingyu’s hand.

Another minute staring at your sparkling dress.

The next minute at Mingyu’s brutally cocky expression.

He would switch back and forth.

But Wonwoo didn’t really care. He was just bored.

And alone with his thoughts.

—END OF PART PART ONE.

NOTE! while i truly cherish & adore all comments, pls refrain from remarks such as "pls post part x" "i need part x" "when are you posting part x" while i do understand the sentiment, i find these comments very dismissive & kinda disrespectful! i don't prefer to post series fics and so i don't receive these often, but pls note that if you comment this i will delete the comment!

the fic itself is completely done, so all i have to do is get the parts ready for posting. however, bc this is the first part, i don't have a set posting schedule just yet. i think it will depend on roughly how long those who read the fic take to finish it! but i will be sure to make a post about it or include the schedule in part two once i figure it out!

again, thank u so much your ur patience :3

much luv!! 💕

[7s3ven]

KIWIFRUIT. human! miles quaritch

IN WHICH… quaritch replays his old memories of you but starts to (jokingly) regret his decisions when seeing the way you eat kiwifruit.

Notes: age gap (quaritch - 51, y/n - 33), jake sully’s sister! reader, not following plot, details may vary from canon timeline, scientist! reader, reader is lowkey embarrassing/clumsy, dirty thoughts, pet names (from Quaritch), implication of sex

—

Fruit transported from Earth was a rare privilege in Pandora. You were delighted when you found out that boxes of fresh fruit, including kiwifruit, were being transported. Of course, it was a secret procedure but you had your ways of milking out information from no other than Colonel Miles Quaritch.

He was a tough man with scars decorating his body, which gave him a sense of pride, and large biceps (which were his defining feature in your opinion). He was not bribed easily but all you had to do was bat your eyes at him and gaze through your lashes up at him. He loved your big doe eyes; they seemed to make him do anything.

Quaritch knew you had two brothers. Had. Tom was gone. Jake, his twin, and your rather annoying younger brother, was his replacement. You had arrived at Pandora when you were barely twenty-five, freshly graduated from university. Quaritch knew of your hard-working personality; before he had officially met you, he had heard stories from the scientists at how difficult it was to distract you from your work. You were almost a working machine.

Quaritch could still remember when and how he first met you. It was all a blurred haze in his mind during the day but at night, when you would occasionally sneak into his room, he recalled everything.

“As head of security, it is my job to keep you all alive.” Quaritch announced as he clasped his hands behind his back, walking down the aisle between the new recruits. His heavy boots clicked against the steel floor. “I will not succeed.” For years now, he had been sticking to the same script, not bothered to write another speech on how dangerous Pandora was.

The door suddenly creaked and you hurried in, breathing heavily. All eyes turned to face you, and you frowned at the sudden spotlight. “My apologies, colonel.” You muttered, slowly sitting down in a free seat almost right next to the man. He paused, staring down at you with a harsh glare.

“As I was saying,” He continued on, “Before this young lady interrupted me,” He watched as your cheeks flushed in slight embarrassment. There was a small wave of snickers. “Pandora is not a playground. If you step out of line, you will be killed. Whether it is by the Na’vi or my own gun, you can decide. There will be no foolish behaviour here.” Quaritch was going to stop there but a mischievous smirk pulled at his lips as he glanced at you again. “And anybody late or anybody who tests my patience,” He made sure to lock eyes with you as he spoke, “Is required to give me twenty push-ups.”

Quaritch liked the way you stared at him in disbelief. “Dismissed.” He said to everybody else, “Except you.” He pointed straight at you, not hesitating to name and shame. Someone you didn’t know, a boy about your age with a buzz cut, patted you on the back.

“Good luck.” He whispered to you, most likely as a means to merely scare you. Everybody filed out the door, which banged heavily against the walls as it finally shut after the last person had slipped past.

“Name?” Quaritch questioned, folding his arms over his chest.

“Y/N Sully, sir.” You immediately replied, quickly standing up. Your formality amused Quaritch.

“Well, you know what to do. Get down on your knees.” He arched an eyebrow as you blinked in confusion, your mind wandering to something else. Quaritch almost laughed, immediately knowing where your mind went based on your flushed cheeks. “Push-ups, recruit. Get down on your knees and give me twenty push-ups.”

Flustered, you quickly dropped. “I am a scientist, sir. Do not judge my form.” Quaritch assumed your arms would be shaking after one push-up, but you were doing surprisingly well. You were in a tank top and loose-fitting cargo pants provided by the RDA. Quaritch, peeking out of pure curiosity, saw the tense muscles in your arms. Usually, the scientists that worked here had arms as thin as twigs. You did not.

“At ease, recruit.” Quaritch said after you had completed only twelve push-ups. “Find your station. Don’t be late to any other meetings otherwise I’ll make you do more than push-ups.” He slapped you on the back, his hand dangerously close to your ass. You jumped in slight shock, causing him to boyishly grin.

That was years ago. You were now thirty-three yet still resembled the same starry-eyed woman in her mid-twenties. Quaritch liked that about you, how you were able to remain consistent even under pressure. He liked things staying the same, which was probably why you had caught his attention after your first clumsy interaction.

“Miles?” He heard your soft voice as you entered the room. You had a gun strapped to your hip, courtesy of Quaritch himself. Pandora was a dangerous place, he was not taking any chances. Thus, he made you carry out a weapon of any sorts. He knew you had a knife hiding somewhere under that bulky white coat of yours.

Quaritch heard the faint sound of Lyle Wainfleet chuckling. It was no secret that the head of security was hopelessly attached to you. Quaritch’s team made fun of him every chance they got.

“I need some more samples. Do you think you could get someone to collect them when they accompany Grace’s avatar? I would do it myself but I’m busy with making plans for the new recruits.” You gently trailed a hand up Quaritch’s bicep, squeezing it lightly. At that point, he was putty in your hands.

“Wish I had that much power over the Colonel.” Lyle whispered to a friend, “I could stop him from making me train overtime.” Lyle’s teasing comment did not go unnoticed by Quaritch.

“Wainfleet, drop and give me thirty.” Quaritch uttered without taking his eyes off Y/N, which earned a groan from Lyle. “What plants do you need, sweetheart?” He questioned, handing you a stray piece of paper and a pen for you to scribble on.

You leaned over the desk, too busy writing down various flowers to notice how Quaritch’s gaze was looking you up and down. “I only need at least two.” You said, handing him the paper.

“Yeah? M’kay. I’ll do my best. Nice seeing ya, baby.” He shamelessly slapped your ass, an action he did quite often now. You had gotten used to it but you still rolled an eyes at his antics.

“Nice seeing you too, sir.” You mocked him, kicking the back of his knees. Quaritch’s legs almost buckled and he listened as you speed-walked off, snickering.

You had not been so confident when he first met you. At least, you didn’t show it. He always knew you had a feisty side that the environment of Pandora only encouraged but you had kept it hidden for your first few months on the new planet. Quaritch held a fondness for you but he still knew how much of a brat you could be, and not in a good way.

“Sully.” Quaritch called out your last name as you rushed past him, arms full of documents. You paused, almost stumbling forward. You glanced over your shoulder, watching as Quaritch beckoned you towards him with a single flick of his finger.

“Yes, sir?” You muttered, refusing to meet his gaze.

“Where’s the report I asked for last week?” Quaritch knew that despite your intelligent mind, your memory was that of a goldfish. Not even that. Your memory was sometimes worse than Dory from Finding Nemo.

“I’m sorry, sir. I must have forgotten. I can get it to you by tonight.” You babbled, embarrassed for forgetting such a thing. You were always flustered in front of him, not quite knowing what to say. You were tall for a woman, you always had been, but Quaritch towered over you.

“By tonight, recruit.” He called you like he always did. You were a fully fledged scientist by this point but Quaritch still looked down on you, figuratively speaking.

“Yes, sir!” You saluted, or tried to. You had forgotten about the papers in your hands and half of the them dropped to the floor. Quaritch’s eyes dropped to stare at the fallen documents before meeting your eyes. You remained still, thinking if you didn’t move then Quaritch would ignore it. He did not.

In fact, he laughed. He actually laughed. It was not a sound you were accustomed to. Nobody was. Miles Quaritch was all bite and no bark. He kept to his harsh words without hesitation. But here he was, laughing at you.

Quaritch crouched down, picking up the papers. You gazed at him; all you could see was the three signature scars dragging through his shortly cropped hair. And when he lifted his head slightly to make eye contact- oh gosh. You stopped your mind from wandering to such places.

Quaritch took his time in standing up. His fingertips even brushed against your thigh, which you knew was not a mistake.

“Take care, sweetheart. I want the report on by desk at 10 pm sharp.”

You were late, which was not surprising to Quaritch considering you were always rushing around. He waited impatiently at his desk, drumming his fingers against the flat surface. He was almost falling asleep before his door slammed open and you came crashing in.

“I have the report, sir!” You exclaimed at such a volume that Quaritch had to tell you to pipe down. He checked his watch. You were five minutes late. Quaritch brushed it off; he would let you off this one time.

You placed the documents on his desk, flipping through pages and explaining certain points as you read the words upside down. Though, Quaritch wasn’t really listening. He could hear you ranting but his mind never registered your words. He was intensely focused on, as you leaned over to point at the paper in front of him, your cleavage. That damn tank top of yours was driving him crazy.

“Sir, are you listening?” You snapped him back to reality, “I was just saying how you should focus on this passage in particular.” You pointed a finger at a paragraph of text.

“Got it.” He drawled, leaning back in his chair. He had one arm propped on the arm rest while the other held a cup of cold water. His legs were spread, which was his usual way of sitting, but he did not miss the way your eyes darted down for a split second.

After practically forcing Wainfleet to gather the flowers you listed an hour ago, Quaritch went in search of you. He found you talking with a man in a wheelchair and a flame of jealousy flared up before he noticed the uncanny resemblance between the man and you.

He fit the pieces together. That must be Jake, your little brother. Quaritch saw Jake hand a letter to you and you briefly licked your lips, something you always did to distract yourself from too intense emotions. Jake also handed you a necklace but Quaritch knew you already hand another chained around your neck.

Hiding under the lab coat he hated so much was a dog tag necklace. Engraved in the metal was MQ, standing for Miles Quaritch.

Quaritch left you to catch up with your brother, deciding he would seek you out at a later hour.

Quaritch was always searching the base for you, his teammates compared him to a lovesick puppy. They even drew a picture to go along with their mocking comments. Quaritch let them have their fun, always too tired to shut them up.

The first time Quaritch showed any actual romantic interest in you was during this time. You had just returned from a week long trip, which deprived Quaritch of your sweet voice and clumsy actions. He found you in the lab as you always were, carefully snipping samples from a flower.

You were so concentrated that you didn’t even notice it was Quaritch behind you. “How many samples did you say you wanted, Grace?” You asked. When you got no reply, you looked over your shoulder.

“Sorry to burst your bubble, angel. I’m not Grace.” He stated. You blinked once, then twice. Lately his pet names had started to feel more personal.

“Sir, is there something you need?” You asked. Your shy personality had improved; you were no longer jumpy around him and you didn’t humiliate yourself as much in front of the Colonel. Or maybe this side of you existed all along but you decided to keep to yourself.

Quaritch turned your chair around, placing his hands on the arm rest and trapping you. You looked at him, a little unimpressed for being interrupted.

“Sir?” You spoke again but all Quaritch could focus on was your top. That damn tank top that almost jeered at him. You were always wearing it, day or night. It’s like you knew he was beginning to resent it for how it frustrated him.

“You got a boyfriend, sweetheart?” Quaritch questioned. He really should have asked ages ago before becoming infatuated. Slowly, you shook your head. “You’re a charming little lady, how come you don’t have one?”

“I was never that much interested in boys.” You admitted. Quaritch’s stomach dropped. Oh gosh, were you a lesbian? “I wanted to focus on studying. And even now…” You fidgeted with your hands, “I have my eye on someone who is almost unattainable.” Your eyes said it all for you as you peered through your lashes.

“Unattainable?” Quaritch played along despite your doe eyes practically begging for him to make another move.

“I like… older men, sir.”

Any doubt Quaritch had about your feelings towards him disappeared. That was all the confirmation he needed. You shifted in the chair, growing uneasy with the sudden silence. You were tired of waiting and frustrated with the Colonel’s mixed signals.

“Sir, I apologise for what I am about to do.” You wrapped your arms around Quaritch’s neck and that was all you really needed to do to break him. You kissed him, your flower samples behind you instantly forgotten.

Quaritch forced you to stand up, dragging you by your blouse collar towards his room. The halls were empty and even as you heard Grace calling your name from the lab, not knowing you had disappeared, you did not look back.

Quaritch was lifting a heavy set of weights when Jake Sully approached him. Your brother had a more rugged appearance compared to you but he could still see the similarities in Jake’s eyes.

“Jake Sully, correct?” Quaritch sat up, dusting off his hands.

“Yes, Colonel. You must know my sister, Y/N.”

Quaritch pretended to think for a moment. ‘You mean the Y/N whose back I blow out almost every night?’ was what he wanted to say but he held his tongue. “The scientist.” Quaritch said, “Yes, I know her.”

“She told me of your… relationship. And I just wanted to say to treat her well. She is all I have left. If you hurt her, I’ll ask God to return my ability to walk and I will throw my wheelchair at you.”

Quaritch let out an amused chuckle. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

Jake turned around to wheel himself away but he suddenly paused. “There’s one more thing… I know the way she eats kiwifruit is strange but don’t judge her.”

Quaritch raised an eyebrow at the statement. He had never seen you eat kiwifruit but with an order of fruit being transported into Pandora, Quaritch could see what Jake meant.

He knew kiwifruit was your favourite, especially the sweet golden ones. So as soon as the order arrived, Quaritch called first dibs.

“Hey, angel, look what I got.” Quaritch said as he walked into his room where you were lounging on his bed, taking advantage of your rights as the Colonel’s favourite.

“Kiwifruit? Yum.” You stood up, grasping one of the brown fruits. Quaritch was expecting you to walk over to the small kitchen inside his room and cut the fruit using a knife. But no, you bit right into it with no hesitation. Quaritch could see what Jake meant now.

“Want some?” You waved the half-bitten fruit in Quaritch’s face. You pouted. “I know why you’re looking at me. Eating kiwifruit like this isn’t a crime, you know.”

Quaritch snickered. “I don’t know, baby, seems like a serious offence to me.” He cut a kiwifruit in half and grabbed a spoon, sitting beside you on his soft mattress.

“You should try it like this at least once.” You attempted but Quaritch firmly shook his head.

“I’m good, baby.” He muttered, “Careful, don’t make a mess. I just got these sheets cleaned yesterday.” He warned, watching as the fruit juices dribbled down your chin.

“Be honest, are you judging me?” Y/N piped up.

“Nah. It’s a little weird but I ain’t judging. You do you.” Quaritch shrugged. He had seen much worse; his girl eating kiwifruit with the skin was the least of his concerns.

[sassycheesecake]

MEET AND GREET DAY 6:

#4, Captain and Middle Blocker Shūgo Meian of the MSBY Black Jackals

Meian can't remember the last time he had some peace and quiet

A crazy team to keep under control honestly requires a medal for patience

But lately, his mother is getting on his nerves as well

Telling her son to find a girlfriend, a boyfriend, a partner to finally settle down with

She calls him almost every day and whenever she would bring up his love situation, he automatically rolls his eyes at her annoyed tone

Meian is currently tying his shoes in the locker room, ready for the upcoming match against the Tachibana Red Falcons, when his mother called again

"Son, I have found you a compatible match! They're--"

"Mum, I have a game in a little bit, can we do this later?"

"Just promise me, you will go out with them tomorrow! They are very nice and I am not getting any younger here and neither are your reproduction tools!"

Meian is now at his limit, his mother mentioning his private parts is just getting too much for him

"Okay fine! If I go out with this person tomorrow, will you PLEASE stop bothering me about it?"

"Yes. Have a good game my son!" She hangs up and Meian is relieved, now he can focus on the game

"Miya! Stop using my deodorant! Buy your own!" "Give me my shoes back!" "WOOOO! GAME TIME!" "MEIAN! TELL THAT ASSHOLE TO GIVE ME MY SHOES BACK!"

Aaaaand off we go to the next problem

Luckily enough, the Jackals won by 5-4, so Meian is in a good mood the next day

As he waits for you by Komeda's Coffee around noon, according to the details his mother has texted him early in the morning

Honestly, Meian just wants to go back home and sleep, maybe if he's lucky enough, his blind date has both a terrible personality and terrible looks and he can just leave and go back to bed and finish the third season of Bridgerton

As he waits in front of the café, scrolling through Instagram, he hears the sweetest voice his ears have ever encountered

"Are you Meian?"

As he turns to look at you, his eyes widen at the sight of you

Like wow

The way your body moves, the way eyes your shine, the way your skin glows in the sun

When you are close enough to him, he gets an intoxicating scent from you, like gosh he wishes he could just hug you and inhale your fragrance for days

He internally slaps himself for thinking such intrusive thoughts on your first date

You keep talking, Meian guesses how happy you are to meet him because his heart is doing somersaults and his brain feels like it's constantly restarting

"You okay? You look distracted."

"No, no, I am fine I promise. I just have never seen such a gorgeous person before."

And now it's your turn with the somersaults

You both go inside the café, him holding the door open for you, pulling the chair before you sit down (sigh, a true gentleman)

Honestly, when your mother told you you would be going on a blind date with a professional athlete who plays volleyball, you honestly expected an arrogant ass who only talks about how great he is and how this sport is the greatest in the world

Meian is not what you expected

Sure, he is very good looking: tall, muscular, broad mouth-watering shoulders, a body that looked like it was carved by Myron himself

His personality is sweet, a bit inexperienced sure but he solely focuses on you and gives you compliment after compliment

He tells you about his profession, about his team and invites you to his next game in a week

Meian's teammates of course notice the constant smiling looking at his phone and the small nod of his head into the VIP section

Yet the ravenette doesn't care, already planning on marrying you in the future

[motherofthechickensandwich]

✰ enemy!yord fandar x enemy!jedi!reader ✰ 18+ ONLY!!! minors pls dni! content warnings: smut, unprotected sex, not edited lol, enemies to lovers(?), pre-The Acolyte (2024), star wars cussing™ that turns into regular cussing, incorrect star wars lore, i literally haven't seen the newest two episodes so don't come for me notes: new fic format!!! cuz i'm tired of titling and formatting my fics like my old format was so fugly! also i posted a new masterlist that i will be updating as these fics come out. i have a couple of them cooking up in the notes app so be on the lookout guys! also rip yord and jecki i am still heartbroken. as always, if you have any thoughts or criticism (pls be nice), please slide me an ask! enjoy!

summary: too lazy to come up with a good summary ermmmmm ok so you're a jedi alongside yord but you two hate each other but oops now you're hate-fucking! also you get a purple lightsaber cuz i said so

You would be the first to admit that you were not the greatest Jedi in the Order. While you are pretty well-attuned to the Force, decent with a lightsaber, and can practically recite the Jedi Code backwards, in a handstand, while balancing the most fragile of relics from the library on your feet, you still had yet to learn how to manage your emotions.

You are one to feel strongly. You have always been, ever since you were a youngling. Your oftentimes intense feelings clashed with one of the biggest Jedi teachings of mastering one’s own emotions. Unlike most (maybe even all) Jedi, you are quick to become irritated and have a distinct lack of patience that is typically required for a life in the Jedi Order. Your master had often admonished you during your Padawanship for your “passionate” nature. You aren’t sure passionate is the correct word to describe the common source of your irritability: Yord Fandar.

Growing up, you and Yord were close, proximity-wise, but never emotionally. At best, you both tolerated each other’s presence, but you were never friends. Your masters were good friends, sure, but you two certainly were not. You always preferred the company of Osha, a mutual friend with Yord who often played the reluctant peacekeeper between the two of you, but she had left the Order a long time ago. Shortly after her departure, the small sense of peace between you and Yord had all but disappeared. You both found yourself more and more annoyed with each other. To you, Yord Fandar was a stickler, overachiever, and, quite frankly, a boot-kisser. You couldn’t even begin to count the amount of times you’ve rolled your eyes at the way he practically worshiped the ground Master Sol walked on. Everything he did made your blood boil, and you were not afraid to make it abundantly clear.

Yord had also made it abundantly clear that he didn’t like you, except that he did it in the most Jedi way possible, which made you hate dislike him even more. He would chastise you like a child (as if you two weren’t the same damn age), give you sharp looks whenever you did anything he didn’t like (which was most things), and would oftentimes ignore you in conversation or group settings. That is, until you eventually got on each other’s nerves so much that you would start bickering, which would cause even the most patient Jedi Master to roll their eyes.

Yord drove you crazy in a way that no one else did. You did just the same to him; he had told you as such during one of your spats. It had become so much of an issue that the Council had to have an intervention. After hours of bickering and snarking, Grand Master Yoda’s solution was for you to just avoid each other as much as possible. But the Jedi Temple was only so big.

You’re practicing your lightsaber forms in one of the older, smaller training rooms tucked deep within the Temple. Very few Jedi ever come there besides you. There’s a rumor that the younglings spread around about the room being haunted. But really, no one comes there because the room is subpar compared to other training rooms.

You’re facing yourself in the large mirror, watching as your body clunkily switches from form to form, occasionally striking at an invisible enemy. The door to the room suddenly slides open with a hiss, breaking your concentration. You look through the mirror toward the intruder, and feel your face and mood sour when you realize that it's Yord kriffing Fandar.

You instantly break your form and turn to glare at him. Before you can open your mouth to snap at him, he speaks.

“Your lightsaber is still on.”

You glance down at your hand to see it gripping the hilt of your definitely-still-on lightsaber. You stare at the purple blade before quickly deactivating it.

“Also, you shouldn’t be pointing it at the ground,” he adds. “That’s how you end up injuring yourself or others.”

Yord walks over to a bench, which sits at the other side of the room across from the mirror. You scowl at his back.

“I know that, Yord. It’s almost as if we trained together.”

“Then do better,” he replied smoothly, removing his robes, folding them, and placing them on the bench.

You can feel your blood boiling. You just hate the way he condescends you, as if you’re still a Padawan! You try to think of an insult to hurl, something that’ll really get under his skin, but your thoughts halt as you realize Yord is stripping himself of his shirt. You watch with wide eyes as he removes the beige fabric, revealing his skin. You stare at his muscled back and shoulders, watching them flex as he removes the shirt completely and folds it, placing it on the bench next to his robes. He turns around to see you staring and raises an eyebrow. Your face begins to feel hot, both at being caught and at remembering that you’re only in a bra and tight athletic pants. You quickly turn around to continue your forms.

As you begin practicing again, you ask, “Why are you here, anyway?”

Yord walks up next to you, trying to leave space, but it’s difficult in this small of a room. He ignites his yellow saber and closes his eyes, inhaling deeply.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” he says, opening his eyes and exhaling. “But I’m practicing my forms, not that I need it.”

You roll your eyes at his “subtle” gloating.

“Just don’t distract me,” you say, moving into Form I.

Yord glances at you in the mirror before moving into Form I as well.

“You seemed pretty distracted just a moment ago without my help.”

Your face feels even hotter and you want to scream. But instead you mutter a quiet “whatever” and move into Form II. Yord does the same. The both of you move in sync, but Yord, as much as you hate to admit it, is far better than you. You’re not used to all the forms, having specialized in Form V, but Yord seems to have mastered each step of every one. He quickly goes from I to II, II to III, III to IV, and so on. You, however, are still struggling with Form III. Occasionally you can see Yord look at you in the mirror, and though his expression remains neutral, you know the bastard is feeling smug inside.

Frustration builds as you attempt to go through the forms once more, only to stop at III when you realize you messed up yet again. Yord continues on, gracefully moving like it's nothing. The final straw is when you realize he’s not even breaking a sweat when you most definitely are. You let out a frustrated groan, deactivate your lightsaber, and walk to the bench to put your robes and shoes on so you can go back to your quarters and sulk at being bested by Yord, again!

As you sit on the bench, resting for a minute, you find your gaze drifting back to Yord. He’s staring at himself in the mirror, clearly concentrated, so you’re not worried about him catching you looking this time.

You stare at him unabashedly as his body contorts into the various forms, switching between them like it was nothing. He’s fast and smooth, much like a rolling river. And, like everything he does, it pisses you off.

The words blurt out of your mouth before you can stop them.

“Let’s duel.”

Yord stops and lowers his blade, looking back at you in the mirror. His chest quickly rises and falls. He nods, and you know you’re going to regret this.

You hop up from the bench and the two of you take your places across from each other. Yord bows and activates his lightsaber, entering the beginning stance for Form VI. You don’t bow back. Instead you activate your saber and enter Form V. You both stare at each other. The room is completely silent other than the sounds of your sabers humming. Normally, duels between Jedi are meant for practice. Often, they’re all in good fun. But you want to destroy Yord. You can tell he wants to do the same, no matter how much Jedi restraint he has.

You strike first, which surprises the both of you. Form V is a defense-and-counter form, not one meant for striking first. But you do anyway, and Yord blocks your saber with his own. You continue slashing at him, letting your rage flow with each swipe of your blade. Yord looks almost afraid as you continue your assault, pushing him closer and closer to the wall behind you. You raise your lightsaber over your head, ready to knock him into the wall, when you feel the Force pushing you away. You struggle to find your footing, but when you do, you glare at Yord. He’s standing there with his hand out, saber deactivated, breathing heavily, and glaring right back.

“That wasn’t proper dueling procedure,” he fumes. “You were out of line.”

“I’m out of line?” you almost shout, deactivating your saber. “You’re out of line! You interrupted my practice with your stupid presence.”

“It’s a public training room!”

“So?”

“So, I have every right to be here. Though, given your performance just now, you should be questioning your right to be here.”

You pause.

“What are you saying?” you ask slowly.

Yord huffs. “You are undisciplined, disobedient, bad-tempered, foul-mouthed, and if I’m being honest, completely unfit to be a Jedi.”

His words echo violently through your head, almost feeling like a physical knocking in your skull. You feel your eyes burning. Your whole body tingles. You can’t even think. Yord’s words ring through your head, the only thing you can focus on. Your mind screams at you to say something, do anything!

So you attack.

You lunge at Yord with a feral snarl. His eyes widen as you grab his shoulder and dig your nails into his bare flesh. Yord grabs your waist in an attempt to shove you away from him, but the two of you begin toppling over before he can. You land on your back. Yord attempts to pin you down, but you lock your legs around his waist and flip the both of you over. The two of you roll around the training room in a violent ball of limbs until you finally use all of your strength to slam Yord’s shoulders into the ground while you straddle his waist with your knees on his hands, keeping him pinned beneath you. 

He thrashes beneath you violently. He bucks his hips up in an attempt to throw you off of him, but you slam your hips down to keep him trapped beneath you. Yord lets out a loud moan. You both pause. His cheeks burn a darker shade as you both stare at each other.

“Did-did you just-”

“Shut up!” Yord snaps. “Get off of me, right now, or I’ll-”

You roll your hips experimentally. Yord lets out a groan as his head falls back to the floor. The sound sends a flash of heat right to your groin. On top of that, you can feel Yord’s dick harden beneath you. You roll your hips again a few times, relishing in Yord’s sweet sounds and the delicious friction between your clothed sexes until you realize what you’re doing.

“Shit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you apologize over and over again as you stop and begin to get up. “I don’t know what I was thinking, I-”

Yord grabs your waist before you can get up and grinds you down against his cock. You let out a tiny whimper as a shock of pleasure runs through your body.

“Don’t stop,” he begs. “Please.”

You take a second to look into his eyes, trying to see if this is something he really wants. For a minute, you’re not even sure if you really want this. Sexual relationships between Jedi are forbidden. If you’re caught, there will be punishment. Ideally, you should get off of him right now and leave, never to speak of this again. But all that rationality goes out the window when he grinds against you again.

You continue dry humping each other, a chorus of groans and moans and whimpers flooding the room. At some point you find your lips on Yord’s chest, biting and sucking at the sensitive flesh. Yord mewls enthusiastically as you mark him. You move up to his collarbone, then neck and then you pull away. You want to kiss him. But it’s almost too intimate, even despite the context of what you were doing. So you dive back into the other side of his neck before he can do anything, drawing out those sweet, sweet sounds.

“Fuck me,” he moans. “Please. I need it. I need you.”

His begging is so fucking good that you can’t help but give in. As you stand, you realize there’s a wet patch on your pants and his, exposing how turned on you truly are. You shimmy out of your pants and bra, leaving you completely bare. On the ground, Yord does the same, sliding his pants down to the middle of his thighs. His tan cock slaps against his toned stomach, hard and throbbing and pretty. The sight makes your mouth water. In any other scenario, you would take it into your mouth and give him the best head of his life, but you’re too desperate. You really want to hate to admit it, but you need Yord inside of you.

You hover above Yord, spitting into your hand and jerking him off. He bucks his hips up into your fist, biting his lip. His hands claw at the ground, desperate to hold onto something. He looks so fucking good beneath you. You angle yourself and his cock so that the tip goes inside of you. You both hiss at the tightness of your cunt as you slowly lower yourself down onto him. The stretch initially burns, but then turns into pleasure. You’re both sweating and desperate. You just want to fuck him already.

Once he bottoms out inside you, you sigh at the feeling of fullness. His cock feels too good within you. You’ve missed this feeling. If you could, you would just sit here forever, full of cock. But you don’t have forever, so you press your hands onto his large pectorals and slowly lift your hips before bringing them down. Yord’s eyes roll to the back of his head and he moans loudly. You repeat the motion until you're fully riding him. The room begins to get hot and humid, with the smell of arousal permeating the air. The sounds of your breathy whines, Yord’s deep moans, and the wet slapping and squelching sounds of your hips meeting fill the room.

You look up and catch your own gaze in the mirror. You watch as you lift your hips up and down, your tits bouncing. You see Yord writing in ecstasy below you, his strong hands digging into your waist.

You look mesmerizing.

Yord’s fingers pinching your nipple brings you back to him. You let out a short squeal as he repeats the motion to your other nipple, alternating between the two. After a minute, his hand finds its way back to your waist in a bruising grip while the other begins kneading the fat of your ass. His eyes squeeze shut as you move your lips back to the junction between his jaw and neck.

“I’m so fucking close,” he sobs. Then he begs for something you don’t expect.

“Kiss me, please.”

You sense an opportunity here. You grin mischievously into his skin before pulling back.

“How badly do you want it, huh? Are you gonna apologize for being so fucking mean earlier? Huh?”

Yord opens his eyes, and you see he’s struggling to hold back tears.

“Yes! I’m-I’m sorry, shit, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things. I’m sorryI’msorry, please, please, I’m so close, just kiss me-”

You can’t find it in yourself to deny him any longer. His pleading is too fucking pretty. You slam your lips onto his in an attempt to steal his words for yourself. Your eyes shut, not caring to see if his eyes aren’t. His lips feel cool and smooth against your own slightly dry ones. Your lips quickly overlap and you begin sucking his bottom lip, gently nipping as your hips begin to speed up. You break the kiss and he chases your lip, but you give him what he wants and kiss him again. It’s wet and sloppy and hot. It’s everything you want, everything you need.

You pull apart once more, a string of saliva connecting you both before it breaks and drops onto both of your chins.

“Shitttttt,” Yord curses. “I’m gonna cum. Please can I cum? Please, please I need to cum inside of you.”

Fuck. Again, you can’t deny him.

You kiss him again, softer and more intimate than before. Something about the softness does something to Yord, and then he’s there. His body tenses, then he shivers, and you can feel him explode inside of you as he moans into your mouth. Tears of pleasure run down his face as his hot cum paints the walls of your cunt. You continue riding him through his orgasm, chasing your own release. You’re close, but you need something to really send you over the edge. Your thinking ceases as Yord’s hand moves between your legs, finding your clit and rubbing tight circles into it.

“Yes, yes, yes, right there!” you chant as your orgasm creeps closer and closer.

When it finally happens, it’s like a star collapsing. You choke on your moans. Your vision nearly goes white as your gummy walls squeeze Yord’s cock, causing both of you to moan. You rock your hips as he continues playing with your clit, guiding you through your orgasm until your hips stop spasming. 

You collapse on top of him, your tits pressing against his chest. Your face rests between his collar and jaw. Yord’s arms go to wrap around you, one around your waist and the other around your back and mid-arms. You both breathe heavily, letting each other come down from the intense throes of pleasure. It feels good to be held in his strong arms.

After a while your senses come back to you. You should go. But Yord’s grip around you is unwavering. He seems to be in no rush. So you relax in his hold and close your eyes. A voice in the back of your mind asks how you’ll deal with this change event that has undoubtedly changed you and Yord’s relationship forever, but you push your thoughts to the side and wrap your own arms around him in return. When the time comes, you’ll deal with it. But for now, you just want to rest in Yord’s arms.

[kevinsdsy]

“sometimes riko let kevin stay with him afterward.”

kevin’s gaze moved over jean in a slow sweep, taking stock of his injuries. jean knew better than to look for anger in his stare; the best kevin could manage was bottomless guilt. kevin had seen worse than this before. sometimes riko let kevin stay with him afterward.

jean could barely breathe. every short breath he took required so much effort that he didn't know how he normally did it with such ease. he felt like he was dying, but that was such a familiar feeling that he worried he must wake up tomorrow anyway. kevin’s green eyes were as distracting as they were alarming. if kevin was allowed to stay, jean must be looking like hell right now. he counted his breaths just to make sure he was actually breathing, and when he finally convinced himself he wasn’t going to take his last breath, he tried to get up.

he barely managed it, but with kevin’s help he was able to get himself up into a sitting position. kevin’s expression was as familiar as it was sickening. he had seen the bottomless guilt many times before.

i am jean moreau. i belong to the moriyamas. i will endure. jean knew his place. jean knew he would endure as much as riko needed him to. so why was kevin looking at him like that? how did kevin dare look at him with so much sympathy and guilt on his face that jean wondered if he deserved to be in this position. i am jean moreau. i belong to the moriyamas. i will endure. jean immediately cursed himself out for even letting the thought slip.

“jean…” jean huffed—it was the only response he could manage right now. “can you get up?” kevin silently asked in french. non. jean knew the answer already, but he still tried to get up. it was a desperate attempt, but kevin didn’t comment on it. “let’s get you to the wall. it’s just gonna be a few steps.” kevin assured him. the few steps felt like a mile, but with kevin’s help jean managed to place his back to the wall which gave him some kind of balance. kevin sat next to jean and jean turned his face to kevin. kevin took this as his chance to softly take jean’s face in his hands and place his fingers on jean’s bottom lip. jean hadn’t even realised the familiar bitter taste on his lip was his own blood until he saw kevin’s hand. he sighed at the sight, turning his face away from kevin again to force his face out of his hands. “i don’t need your pity.” jean weakly demanded.

“so, what is it you need?” kevin asked. jean huffed; both kevin and jean knew it didn’t matter what he needed. it was an unfair question to ask, since it’d be impossible to consider his needs in the first place. jean wouldn’t even know what he needed; he had never given it much thought anyways.

jean placed his head on kevin’s shoulder. for a second he was thankful that the amount of pain he was in made it impossible for him to cry without increasing the pain in his lungs, so he didn't move and he didn't let any tears slip.

“how long?” jean asked after a long minute. kevin didn’t have to ask what he meant. it wasn’t the first time they were sitting like this, calculating how much time riko would allow them before losing his patience and temper again. “fifteen minutes, maybe, then he’ll start getting restless and annoyed about my soft behaviour towards you.”

“give me ten,” jean offered. that should give kevin enough time to get back to riko before riko would start itching for pain again.

“i’ll give you twenty,” kevin told him. "you need it."

jean knew he should ignore the peace offering so he could make check how bad his injuries actually were. instead he closed his eyes and let kevin softly nudge him awake when he was finally drifting away too far.

[keystonepublishing]

Psychological Warfare of the Malayan Emergency by Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.)

Have you ever been taught a version of history at school that seems weirdly simplistic? And then years later, you find more evidence that shows the whole affair was a giant, complicated mess?

Guess what I learned over the past few months about the Malayan Emergency.

For context, the Malayan Emergency was a conflict that raged in the British colony of Malaya from 1948 until the 1960s between communist forces and the British government, later continued by the independent Malayan government. The government forces won, but any school teachings of the conflict was presented in a manner that simplified the complex (and often, grey) nature of the Emergency.

I knew since then that a lot of truths were hidden away, but I didn't realize that there was a psychological aspect to the Emergency until I stumbled upon this webpage by a retired military officer about it. Given the length of the information provided and that it's the only one of it's kind — and therefore at risk of information loss if deleted, I sought to bookbind it. Pictures and all.

Given the amount of information contained and the sheer number of images, this project took about a month!

I had to divide the continuous stream of information in the webpage into readable chapters.

Then, I had to layout the images with the text, which was actually harder than expected — the size of the image could shift relevant text into the following pages, so it was a process of balancing image size to textual placement.

In-between that was the regular work of typesetting, but also of formatting quotes and examples, of which there were a lot.

And then there were pages that required special attention. For example, these pages:

The pages on the right was relatively simple — a double-sided leaflet that could be showcased in a double-page spread, with contextual information in the following pages.

On the left however, to create the list of dead / living people, I had to finagle a table in Microsoft Word and constantly adjust the cell size to make the long names and positions fit. The whole endeavor was an exercise in patience.

Leafing through the pages, there are some parts I am annoyed with, such as pictures on the right page with their annotated message in the following left page. But as it is, I'm just glad this is done.

Special thanks to SGM Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.) for compiling this information that astonished me to create this bookbind.

[moonlitstoriess]

The Shadows in the Sunlight- A Helion series

Summary: Helion, the High Lord of the Day Court, is known for his charm, power, and control over light. However, when a mysterious female from a forgotten, shadowy court—a court thought to be destroyed long ago—emerges, everything he thought he knew is challenged.

A/n: Well my cookies, we meet again! This time, I am here with a Helion series that I have been thinking of for a while. I think that he is such an interesting character of whom I would love to see more of and since there are barely any posts about him, I asked myself “why not?” And just went ahead with the idea. Anyways I won’t annoy you for any longer, I hope you enjoy the story and please do leave comments if you wish to let me know of your thoughts✨

Helion loved parties, gatherings, balls and whatever else that required him to dress up, dance, drink, flirt and make stupid jokes. Attending them as a guest or the host didn't matter as long as they were fun. But most of all, he loved them because they allowed him to be free of any burdens, worries or ugly thoughts just for a day. For a couple of hours.

"High Lord, which sash would you like? The golden one or the white one with gold details?"

Helion turned his head towards his servant and looked down to the two different colored sashes.

"Gold"

Today was The Unity Ball. It was actually Kallias' idea to create this tradition after the war against Hybern. Every year, one of the courts would host The Unity Ball, bringing together all the other courts and their people in hopes of strengthening ties and improving alliances. It has been three years since the end of the war and so far, three courts have hosted this ball. Winter was first, since it was Kallias' idea after all. Then it was Dawn and just last year, it was Autumn, which honestly was more like a celebration of Beron's death and Eris' ascent to High Lordship.

Now this year, is the Day Court's turn and Helion could only hope that nothing mad ends up happening tonight as it usually does with his parties. With a final few touches to his appearance, Helion took the golden crown and put it on his head, heading out the door with his second-in-command, Maximus, right behind him.

"Who is here so far?"

"All except Spring but that isn't anything new."

Helion chuckled as they went down the grand stairs, "It surely isn't. Tamlin hasn't attended any of our gatherings. Why did we even send an invitation to him?"

Maximus sighed. "Good appearance on our side?"

Helion put his arm on his friends shoulder and laughed as they finally entered the large room filled with all kinds of guests. The moment he entered the room, all eyes turned to Helion as he smiled and headed straight for his throne. Once he got on the dais, he smiled brightly at his guests, and the other high lords with their families, and said,

"This year, I have the honor of hosting The Unity Ball which is why I welcome you all to the Day Court! Where as our saying goes, "Light Everlasting, Truth Unyielding" I hope that tonight, our everlasting light brings you joy as we join one another in friendship and company. To my dear friends, the High Lords, I am very grateful for your attendance in my ball and thank you all for taking the time off your duties to come here. I wish you well and hope you all enjoy the rest of this evening!"

Everyone clapped as Helion gestured for the musicians to begin playing and the servants to begin serving. He sat down on his throne knowing full well that he would get up in two minutes because his patience with just sitting and watching wasn't the best. He needed to interact, dance, drink, and laugh.

See, this was the difference between such formal events and his own unusual parties. There he could go absolutely wild but here, he had to stay formal because...well because he is the high lord of course. And it's not like Helion hates all of these High Lord duties and is some kind of an incompetent ruler. Definitely not. In fact, that is far from the truths. He clearly knows how to rule better than his father ever did because his people are very happy and satisfied. He knows when to be serious and when to let go.

But for some reason, these past few weeks, his past has been getting to him more and more. The monsters that he buried deep somehow managed to slip away and come haunt him. He hasn't been slacking in his job at all, in fact, Helion had buried himself in his duties to distract himself while still keeping the image of a jokester, flirty, and overall a happy male. And at night when he would hold his parties, it was this mask that led to him waking up in a bed with another female or male....or both.

He needed to distract himself more and more. The need to run away from his monsters was getting to him. He had to constantly work, lead a whole nation, party, fuck and stay far away from being alone. If he wasn't alone and instead doing something, keeping his hands and mind at work, his brain would be too busy to overthink anything.

"Uh, Helion? You feeling well?"

Helion was dragged out of his trance by Maximus' voice as he turned his head sideways and looked at his friend, giving him a smile. "Of course I am, Max. Why wouldn't I be?"

His friend just shrugged while looking at him suspiciously. "You have been silently staring at the ground for the past....five minutes. Usually you'd be up and talking with guests in two."

Helion realized his mistake and quickly got up, rolling his shoulders before going down the steps of the dais, saying over his shoulder, "Stop saying nonsense, horseface and go socialize."

His silly words clearly had an affect on Max because he just rolled his eyes with a small smile before heading in the direction of a group of officials.

Helion began chatting, first with Kallias and Thesan, then with Tarquin and Eris, and finally, his favorite, Rhysand. When he approached the high lord, his mate and their court, Helion smiled warmly as he greeted them.

"Ah, my best friend and his beautiful wife."

Rhysand smiled slightly as Feyre giggled while Helion kissed her hand before lightly patting Rhys on the shoulder. "I don't remember us ever being that close, Helion."

Helion just shrugged him off as he greeted Cassian and Nesta, "Oh, we will one day, Rhysie."

Everyone laughed at that, causing Rhysand to shake his head with a sigh. Once he greeted Azriel too, Helion looked at the one guest he had hoped to see the most tonight.....Mor.

She seems to get more and more beautiful and attractive with each time he sees her and the red revealing dress she was wearing tonight clearly wasn't helping. He must have gone silent because Mor chuckled and told him, "Close your mouth or a fly might get in, Heli."

"I am just admiring my beloved."

Azriel scoffed at that as Nesta said, "You two never fail to disgust me when you get together."

Mor just rolled her eyes at the female before smirking. "Well, Helion the idiot is always the one to start so..."

Rhys intercepted before any of them could talk more. "As fun as it is to watch you two strip each other naked with your eyes, I think we should talk of other things, no?"

Helion turned to him, smirked and sling his arm over Rhysand's shoulder before leading him outside, followed by his family. "Of course we can, Rhysie. Didn't know you missed me that much."

Feyre laughed as she said. "You have no idea."

They sat down on one of the large, white seating areas with just as white, sheer curtains hanging above. Helion ordered his servants to bring appetizers and drinks before turning to look at the Inner Circle.

"Well, friends, anything new?"

Cassian laid back on the couch, causing Nesta also to lay back due to his hold on her waist. "If you call me and Nesta creating our own training academy something new then yes."

Nesta playfully hit him on the chest. "We were supposed to tell that together, you idiot."

Everyone chuckled as Helion smiled and clapped his hands. "Well that is some news! Very well done."

But then a thought reached his mind, Helion furrowed his brows and turned to Rhys. "Where is Amren? My tiny little firecraker?"

"You know, if she heard you say that, she would probably slit your throat right on the spot, Helion." Azriel muttered as he took his drink from the table.

Helion smirked. "I would love to see her try, I love feisty ones."

Feyre chuckled "Varian wouldn't be too happy about that either."

Helion's eyes widened in realization. "Is that why he isn't here either? I did think how strange it was that he wasn't stuck to Tarquin's side like he usually was. Wait- are they together? Is that why they both aren't here?"

"Someone had to stay back and guard Velaris. Since for the past three years Mor didn't have time to attend the balls but Amren did, this year she decided to stand back because Mor said she could make it to the ball. As for Varian...well he turned out to be more obsessed with her than he lets us in on. Wherever Amren is, Varian is there too. Right beside her." Feyre said as she leaned into her mates side, putting her head on his shoulder.

Helion nodded his head before looking at Mor beside him, "I see my charm is so irresistible that you just couldn't skip my ball huh?"

Mor rolled her eyes but her lips did twitch upwards as she teased. "Don't get ahead of yourself, Heli. I came here because I had nothing else to do."

Helion smirked. "Sure you didn't, sweetheart." Then he raised his hand with his drink and said, "Now let's drink for...well for me hosting this absolutely fantastic ball!"

He heard Rhys chuckle as they drank a few more times. "Can't believe I will have to see your face and stand your antics next year in my ball."

Helion smiled brightly as he looked at everyone. "Oh yes! Next year is your turn! Oh, high lord, you best believe I will be creating chaos!"

As the night progressed, Helion spent some more time with the Night Court before moving on to socialize with others, trying his best to give everyone attention. After a couple of hours, when the ball was still very much going on, he felt Mor come up beside him near one of the large and tall columns.

"How's it going, high lord?"

He sighed. "Why did no one tell me how hard it would be to have the entire faerie realms in your court? Minus Spring of course because Tamlin is acting like an insolent child."

Mor chuckled and took a sip of her drink as they both eyed the room. "Actually, last I heard, Tamlin was slowly regaining his court back. Apparently he is building better homes for his people and doing something else to bring his own court back. Whatever it is, it seems to be working."

Helion nodded. "Good. He is finally waking up. I should pay him a small visit at some point."

Mor put her hand on his arm, causing him to turn his head sideways to look at her. She smirked back at him saying, "Well, I don't know about the spring court but...we could pay a small visit to a bedroom."

Helion's smirk widened as his eyes hungrily took her in. "You know, I had been waiting to hear that from you all night."

Mor put her drink on a nearby table and grabbed his arm. "Lead the way, high lord."

As they both began weaving their way through the crowds, something caught Helion's eyes from the corner. A small, dark shadow.

It's probably Azriel's. His mind kept telling this to him but something wasn't right. Azriels' shadows were more of a dark black in color but this little thing....it was more of a purple-like. Atleast that's what he saw before it disappeared just as quickly.

As they began climbing up the stairs, Helion suddenly paused. No, his mind was too busy with overthinking that shadow to focus on Mor right now.

"What happened?" Her question made him turn back at her to see a confused face looking back at him.

Helion looked back down the stairs towards where the shadow was and then looked back at Mor. No, he had to know. What is going on? He was too intrigued now.

"I will be back." was all he said before he quickly went down the stairs without waiting for a reply, his mind too busy with finding that little shadow.

Ignoring the guests who tried coming towards him, Helion made his way through the crowds as he followed his inner voice and headed straight towards the garden at the other side of the palace.

The Day court's gardens were far more different than any other gardens. They are suspended on multiple levels, with each terrace floating gracefully in the clouds, connected by shimmering bridges made of sunlight and gold-veined crystal. The terraces themselves are made of pale, luminous stone that seems to glow softly in the daylight, reflecting the sun's rays.

The entire garden is bathed in a warm, golden light that filters through the clouds, casting everything in a soft, almost otherwordly glow. The flora are like any other. They are larger and more vibrant, with petals that shimmer like gold foil. The trees are tall and slender, their leaves a mixture of deep green and gold, sparkling as if dusted with stardust. There are waters within fountains that glow softly with their sheen light and statues made of crystal that captures the light and refracts it in dazzling patterns.

Overall, this place is Helion's pride and joy as he was the one who designed it and brought in all the flora. This is the calmest location in the entire palace and possibly Helion's most favorite for that very reason.

But this time, he was not alone. A mysterious cloaked figure was standing near a fountain, their back turned to him. Helion didn't want to call the guards because he knew that whoever this was, he could deal with them himself. Even a tiny part of him was telling him that he shouldn't attack whoever this is.

As if sensing his presence, the cloaked figure shifted slightly but didn't turn around. Helion took slow steps towards them, keeping his eyes focused on the figure, making sure he or she doesn't pull any tricks on him.

Once he reached them, he tried looking into their face but the hood made it impossible for him to even see their side profile."Do I know you?"

No answer.

Helion warily looked between them and the water before asking, "Uhh, you do not seem like someone I have met-"

"Tell Azriel that they are all dead."

So this mysterious impostor was a she. Her cool, icy and yet smooth tone made Helion feel both drawn and slightly unnerved by her. But it was that sentence that made him pause.

"What? I don't understand. Who is dead? Who are you?"

That is when he saw that small shadow from earlier reappear once again as the female said while suddenly turning and walking away, "I have to find who was behind it. I have to stop it. I will kill them all."

Helion was completely dumbfounded now which is something that he never was. He was always a step ahead of everyone, always aware of everything, always having answers to anything and everything. But this...this was new.

He quickly followed after her as she went deeper into the gardens saying, "What are you talking about? What is happening? Do you need help? Who are you trying to stop?!"

"I don't need any help. I simply came here to lure you in so that you could deliver my message to Azriel."

"Why can't you tell him yourself? Why aren't you in the ball? Where are you even from-"

"You talk too much, high lord. I must go, just let Azriel know of the news."

"Go where?!" and then, as if his mouth moved of its own accord, Helion said the words he wasn't even planning on offering aloud, "I can help you! Whatever it is, do you need help?"

She stopped, her back still turned to him and Helion wanted nothing more than to just rip that dark cloak away so that he could see her face. He could only imagine what she looks like if her voice was this beautiful.

"I don't need any help."

Helion scoffed before taking her shoulder, intending to turn her around but once he did that, the cloak fell down, and there was no one but dark purple shadows under it. The shadows too, soon disappeared, leaving Helion in shock as to what just happened.

************

"Helion! Where were you? It's not really a good look when you leave your own ball for a prolonged time. Couldn't you wait some more before fucking someone in some corner of the palace?!" Maximus hissed at him the second helion entered the large ballroom.

Helion ignored his friend, heading straight for the inner circle. "Not now, Max. We will talk later."

"What-" but Helion just passed by Max, not giving him the time to answer. The moment he saw Rhysand, he quickened his steps as he reached the sitting area where Rhys and his court were. Mor was there, and got up immediately when she saw him.

"Where were you? What happened? Did something go wrong?"

But Helion ignored her words and just glared at Azriel, his clearly serious expression evident on his face because Rhysand immediately got up, asking, "What is it?"

"I saw a shadow earlier."

Helion saw the clear confusion written over everyone's faces, causing him to sigh and cross his arms. "At first, I thought it was one of Azriel's but then something in me told me to follow that shadow. So I found it, in the gardens...and I also found who it belonged to. Shocking information but....it wasn't Azriel."

That caused the shadowsinger to furrow his brows as Feyre quickly asked, "What? Then who was it?"

Helion tore his gaze apart from the winged male and looked at everyone. "Well, I couldn't tell, really. The figure was completely clothed in a black cloak and it's hood was covering her face but she was a female. Could tell by the voice. Anyways, I asked her who is she, what is she doing here and all those things but she didn't answer them. Instead, guess what she said,"

Helion didn't give anyone the time to respond as his eyes collided with Azriel's while saying the words, "Tell Azriel that they are all dead."

For the first time in his life, Helion saw the shadow singers stony expression change as his eyes widened, shock overtaking his features.

"Wait, wait- what?!" Cassian's voice too, was full of disbelief as he got up from the couch, staring at Helion.

Mor quickly looked back at Azriel. "What does that mean, exactly?"

Azriel also got up as his expression turned calculating. "I have no idea. Who- what- I don't understand. Who is dead?!"

They all turned to look back at Helion but he just shrugged, saying, "Well, I don't know either. She said that and then began walking away, saying over and over again that she would find who did this, stop them or kill them. I tried asking more, even offered help but the second I even touched her, the cloak fell down and there was nothing but air under it. How does one even disappear like that?"

Cassian whistled, chuckling. "Now that, is impressive."

"So a shadowy, cloaked, female appears in your garden, tells you to tell Azriel that everyone is dead, then proceeds to mutter to herself about murder and whatever else and then disappears just as mysteriously? I would love to meet her for sure." Nesta said with a small smirk overtaking her face.

Rhysand looked back at Helion, "Do we know how to find her? Where she may be? Whoever she is, whatever she is doing, it seems quite...important. Is she connected to Azriel in some way?"

Azriel shook his head. "We need to go, now. We need to get to work and whoever this is, I need to know what she means."

Feyre voiced her agreement as Rhys nodded and then looked back at Helion. "Let's inform one another if there are any leads on the matter. Get your best researchers on the job."

Helion nodded as he watched them winnow away, wondering all about the mysterious figure.

Who was she? Where was she coming from? What did she even mean?

And most importantly, why did Helion feel so intrigued by her?

Well, it's not often (actually, never) that he gets this interested and intrigued by someone but now, he was definitely curious.

And Helion was for sure not about to let go of whoever she is anytime soon.

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

[avatarmerida]

So on twitter the other day, @rebeccaartsy mentioned she was thinking about how different things would be if Hunter was there from the beginning and it really got my mind moving.

So like my totally self indulgent headcanon or whatever,is that Hunter in season one is spending his time hunting wild witches and no one really takes him seriously so the whole time he’s trying to prove himself by trying to capture the most famous wild witch, Eda. But I like to think he doesn’t have a very strong artificial staff at this point and isn’t seen as much of a threat. He’s also either not the Golden Guard yet or just wears normal scout stuff to draw less attention. So he is always setting traps and stuff and Luz meets him and his vibe is like an annoying neighbor kid. He just gets roped into the occasional adventure because he’s there and just when he's starting to question life in the coven he gets promoted to coven head and he works even harder to be taken seriously.

Because I love how Hunter and Willow meet so much where they see the true version of each other right away in a way no one else has, I imagine their first meeting is still outside Luz and everything. Like, Hunter is messing with something plant related (maybe making a trap or liking for a rare plant to help Belos, idk) and gets tangled in some aggressive vines and Willow finds him and helps him. But the vines are from like a really complicated plant that requires extreme patience and talent and he’s like even Terra would have trouble with it and while his spitting facts Willow just untangles him effortlessly. She’s just like “boop! You’re good :)” and at first he’s worried she’s gonna tell someone or blackmail him but she’s just “no prob yo.” But she’s also very impressed that he found the plant that he did, cause they're super elusive and he’s like uhhh thanks.

So he offers to walk her to where she’s going and they start talking and he’s info dumping things on plant magic and they’re vibing and he realizes no one has ever let him talk so much before. And she likes talking to him. Then he realizes exactly where they are and before he can make an excuse to leave, Luz comes out to greet Willow and when she sees Hunter she groans. And they dive into their sibling banter slinging shots back and forth and Willow just stands there thinking like “huh, this is the guy who’s always annoying her? He’s not that bad.”

And so it’s just like a little bit where he’s always like “ugh you guys are the worst! But not you Willow, you’re great obvi.” Like he has no idea anyone would ever think she’s weak because he still met her in her element and she just thinks he’s a dork. But the crushing doesn't really start until Understanding Willow because I love that episode and I say so:

“Gus, listen,” said Hunter, as he walked through the open door of the Owl House. “Obviously, there is much I can’t divulge but upon consideration I am willing to grant you an interview for your class. The Emperor’s Coven values education, and so I could definitely offer you information on our selection process which I’m sure your teachers will find impressive and- why is Willow upside down?”

“Oh, Amity set Willow’s mind on fire and now she’s losing all her memories,” said Luz with a nervous chuckle. “But uh, what’s up with you?”

“What?” He said running over to her side and helping her sit correctly on the couch. “Is she okay?”

“Don’t worry blondie, we’re gonna get these knuckleheads in there to set things right,” said Eda. “Or at least less wrong.”

“You’re gonna entrust Willow’s mind in the hands of… them?” Said Hunter in disdain as he glared at Luz and Amity who honestly couldn’t argue with him. “They were the ones who put her in this situation in the first place! Not to mention, this location isn’t zoned for a spell of that caliber and as a member of the Emperor’s Coven I could-.”

“Listen, do you want it done soon or do you want it done legally?” Asked Eda. “Cause by the time we get the permits to do it your way Goldie, there won’t be any of Willow’s memories left to save.”

“Very well then,” said Hunter, pretending as though it was a hard decision. “I’ll allow it. Just… be careful with her.”

“Alright then,” said Eda. “Lemme whip up something to put her to sleep. She’s not gonna wanna be awake for this.”

“Oh look, the prince is here,” giggled Willow, leaning on Hunter’s shoulder for support as she noticed his presence for the first time. “Helloooo, your highness.”

“Uh, hi,” he said, not expecting her to be this close to him. “A-re you oka-.”

“Shhh,” she said, putting her finger to his lips, whispering as though it was the most serious thing on earth. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“What?” he said despite his lips being smushed, hanging on to her words with concern.

She took a deep breath. “You have beautiful eyes.” She whispered with intensity.

His face turned bright crimson as he tried to laugh, assuming it must be a joke of some sort. But Willow’s voice didn’t carry the disdain most jokes at Hunter’s expense carried. She wasn’t in her right mind, but maybe that didn’t mean she wasn’t serious.

“Oh uh… thank you?” He said, clearing his throat. “So uh so do you?”

“Hmmm,” she giggled then hiccuped, squinting at him and then leaning in closer as though she couldn’t quite see something. “Do they make you wear that mask because you're so handsome all the time?”

“What?”

“Woo, you could cut something with that jaw ouch,” she said, her voice low and playful before erupting into another sea of giggles.

“I uh, I don’t think that’s-.”

“Nap time!” Said Eda, and Willow instantly fell asleep, leaning forward onto Hunter’s shoulder. He was unprepared to say the least, but tentatively put an arm around her to keep her steady, his eyes wide as his movements were careful.

“Alright coven boy, you keep Princess Planter comfy while I tell these two how to keep things from getting worse,” instructed Eda, pointing to Luz and Amity.

“Yeah sure okay,” replied Hunter, barely listening. Eda was telling Luz and Amity something but all Hunter could hear was the gentle sound of Willow snoring, her breathing slow and deep and peaceful. He has never been so close to her, he could see every delicate freckle that decorated her face. Her glasses were askew so he carefully removed them, because it just seemed like the thing to do. Her mind was on fire, the least he could do was make her more comfortable.

—

He watched as her eyes shifted behind her eyelids as she… dreamed? Would she think this was all a dream? She would mumble things occasionally, hopefully that meant something good? She just looked so-

“Hey Hunter, you want in on this?” Asked Gus.

“Huh?” He looked up quickly as though he was being accused of something. He hadn’t been listening. Hadn’t he been tasked with monitoring her? Is that what Eda said or had he just done it naturally? “Sorry, what?”

“King and Eda are competing to be the subject of my interview,” repeated Gus. “You want in?”

Hunter had forgotten all about being the subject of Gus’ report as he became engrossed in watching Willow sleep. Was that creepy? He didn’t mean it to be. He just felt… protective. He felt responsible. He could never fall asleep like this with anyone unless he trusted them completely. He had never fallen asleep around anyone. And he knew Willow did not have a choice in the matter but he wanted to be worthy of her trust anyway.

“Uh, no thanks maybe next time,” he said, uncharacteristically soft. “Someone should keep an eye on Willow.”

“Eh, she’s not going anywhere goldie,” said Eda as a twinkle entered her eye. “Buuuut when she does wake up, she’s probably gonna be hungry. Having the essence of your inner being threatened really takes alot out of you.”

“Oh yeah, sure,” said Hunter, looking at her in wonder. She seemed to be doing fine, but no doubt there would be brutal side effects. “Should I-.”

“Snacks! Snacks! Snacks!” chanted King.

“Oh yeah, uh I guess I could… do that,” he said softly. He wasn’t sure why he was being quiet, no one else was. But his usual tone didn’t seem fitting now. Normally, he would not take orders (or even suggestions) from civilians but if it was for Willow then it didn’t feel like succumbing to rank. It felt like helping. It felt purposeful. He carefully removed himself from Willow’s presence, mourning the loss of warmth for only a moment, and placed her comfortably on the couch. As he made his way to the kitchen, his eyes were glued to her until it was impossible to continue. Eda,King, and Gus were too occupied in their debate to notice.

---

Willow was going to be fine, she had to be. Everyone would be acting more worried if she wasn’t, right? She had always been strong and capable, he knew her mind couldn’t be much different. He turned his focus from concern into purpose. He wouldn’t admit it to the others, but he was thankful for the distraction. He felt foolish just sitting there not being able to do anything for her. He had never actually made something before, but how hard could it be? He had studied under the head of the Potions coven, how different was baking from that?

As he looked through Eda’s cupboards, Willow’s words echoed in his ears. Well, not all of them. There was one in particular, occupied by the way the ends of her mouth turned up as she said it that made his stomach flip.

Handsome.

No one had ever called him that before, not even ironically. Did she really think that? Why did he care so much if she did? Why, suddenly, did he want so much for her to?

Was it really suddenly though?

Ugh! Why hadn’t he said something cooler? He wasn’t sure she’d even remember saying it, but if she did he didn’t want his surprised reaction to prevent her from possibly repeating herself! He had never had issue thinking of clever retorts (though, to be fair he did do a fair deal of practicing in his bedroom mirror each night) and they often fell into a comfortable conversation. But sometimes she would say something a certain way or look at him too long and it would throw him off. Not in a bad way, no nothing at all like that, just… unexpected. She laughed at the jokes people would roll their eyes at or ask him to continue where normally he was cut off and all the little things just kept adding and piling up until Hunter didn’t know how he was supposed to carry them. She was so many little things, like the way she tilted her head when she asked him a silly question or how her glasses would slide off her edge of her knows when she got excited or the way she would stand close to him and sometimes their hands would brush like she didn’t care if they-

Focus! He thought, taking ingredients from the cabinets. There wasn’t much and what there was seemed to have no organizational system but he could resolve that after he figured out what to whip up. Something simple, something to show Willow he wanted to help. He didn’t know her well enough to enter her mind with Luz and Amity, but secretly he hoped he was getting there.

---

He managed to make something that resembled cookies, the smell filled the kitchen and it surprisingly wasn't an awful smell?. He remembered Willow mentioned once she was eager to get home as her father had made some and they were waiting for her. Truthfully, Hunter had never tasted a cookie but he had seen them when he walked by the bakery in town and knew the basics of their structure. Surely if he had taken a wrong turn the smell would reflect that, right? He imagined the look on Willow’s face when she saw his creation, and maybe even liked it. The flipped feeling returned to his stomach and spread through his whole chest like a wild fire when the potential look of delight on her face graced his mind.

In his efforts, he had made quite the mess. But he couldn’t help but feel pride as he quickly plated his creation, eager to return to Willow’s side. He didn’t think too much into this, he was always excited to see Willow. He tried not to think too much into that, chalking it up to the fact that she was interesting and a good listener and funny and smart and pretty and-

The point was she didn’t find him totally annoying, so why shouldn’t he enjoy her company?

And if she happened to think he was a little handsome then, well, that wasn’t the worst thing.

As he set the cookies to cool, he heard a sudden commotion from the next room. He quickly ran to see the cause, hoping it was a good sign. There was a bright flash and then he heard Luz and Amity. He stood back a moment, trying to deduce their tone before he heard Willow speak. Her voice was horse and soft, but he could tell she was back to normal. Good, he thought, feeling as though he could finally breathe again. She’s okay, she’s okay.

He went to greet her but before he could leave the kitchen, he was stopped by Luz. Before he could offer a snarky question as to what exactly she thought she was doing, she looked at him with wide, concerned eyes.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, furrowing his brow. He tried to looked past her to see what was going on. “Is she okay? Did something happen to-?”

“Willow’s fine.” she assured him, putting her arm up to stop him. “There was just some… complications.”

“What complications? Was she hurt? Does she need-?”

“No no, nothing like that but um there were some memories… we couldn’t save,” said Luz carefully.

“Like what? Did she forget something for a test she has? Because I can always-.”

“No, no uh there were more… recent memories,” Luz tried to figure out the nicest way to say this. ”Hunter, I’m sorry but we were still figuring out how things worked and it all happened so fast but… Willow doesn’t remember you.”

“What?” He felt something shatter.

“I’m so sorry, but hey, it’s an easy fix! Right? We can just introduce you now!”

“Yeah, uh I guess…” he said, looking at his current state. He had thrown on an old apron and was covered in flour, his hair a mess. This night was already so chaotic, it hardly seemed like a time Willow would want to meet someone new.

And then it dawned on Hunter: he had a second chance at a first impression.

Their first meeting had been… interesting. If you count hanging upside down by your ankle until a girl who took a wrong turn stumbles upon you helps untangle you interesting. Hunter did. But he had been so grumpy and flustered, and he wouldn’t have been had he only known who exactly had come to his rescue. She didn’t seem to care or be bothered by it, but he had come to value her opinion and he’d like to start again on the best foot possible. He had a chance for her to see him exactly as he wanted to be seen from the beginning and it felt like a chance he needed to seize.

His mind made up, he looked around for a way out before the human could return with Willow. Quickly, he climbed out the window and landed in a bush, He ducked beneath the window and pressed his back againythe wall as he heard Willow and Luz enter the kitchen,

“Huh, where did he go?” he heard Luz wonder.

“Who was this again?” Willow asked, her voice still raspy as though she was utterly exhausted.

“Uh, it’s kinda hard to explain,” Luz admitted. “But, he’ll be around again. I know he really wants to meet you!”

“Okay,” said Willow, uncertain. “If you say so.”

He couldn't help but think about the chill that went up his spine when she looked into his eyes. He didn’t understand exactly what it was but he knew it wasn’t nothing. He wanted Willow to know a better version of him. He cared what she thought. When she met him this time, he wanted it to be a meeting worth remembering.

—-

And so for the rest of the series up until ASIAS he’s trying to work up the nerve to meet Willow again as Hunter. Just when he’s ready, he gets promoted to coven bead and that’s when I’m also promoting him to Golden Guard or maybe like Golden Guard full time. So now he has more on his plate and he gets a more advanced staff and now he’s a real threat. But of course because he’s a loser and can’t stay away from her so they do interact when he’s the Golden Guard and he has that masked confidence. He’s still getting to know her so he’ll like run into her in the market or something and flirt but didn’t realize it’s flirting and he’s planning the perfect way to “re-meet.” The whole time Willow is like bugging because there’s something so familiar about him but she doesn’t know what and the others don’t tell her because they’re like still figuring out his deal. So when he does come to Hexside during ASIAS it’s much more thought through and intentional and feelings have already been caught.

Anyway sorry for a long pointless post but that’s just been on my mind k thanks bye.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 4/2/2024

in which i try to clean two different boxes with varying success

new people: hello! the tuesdaypost is a weekly roundup of stuff i've been listening, reading, watching, playing, and making. it is NOT a recommendation series, although i sometimes dabble in critique. when im firing on all cylinders i ask "what is the core concept of this? does it succeed in what i think it's trying to do and what it says it's doing?is it well-made but i dislike it/beautiful but not for me? why? what parts Really Work?"

if you are into purity culture, yelling at other people about the problematic media they consume, or are under 18 i am going to have very little patience for you.

listening

now that i live in houston i am legally obliged to loop the new beyonce album 24/7. there is absolutely truly nobody fucking doing it like her. every song is a multimedia art piece. goddamn do i miss the album as a tool to convey a specific concept/listening order/flow. sometimes (chappell roan most recently comes to mind, although it does feel unfair to compare anyone to beyonce) every individual song is pretty good but the listening experience if you sit down and listen all the way through the album is unpleasant and choppy. not so here. NEVER here.

my favorite like Dance Number is YA YA (it samples nancy sinatra's boots! and the beach boys' good vibrations! wildly different tones despite coming out a year apart!)

the one that goes on four different character/tone playlists is BODYGUARD.

great early roundup of influences, samples, and collaborators. delighted to see five fingers for marseilles listed, a rocky but underrated south african neo-western free on tubi rn for americans

-

reading

also very texas-relevant with the recent pornhub lawsuits! pornhub and sex tech (among other things) have been samantha cole's beat for almost ten years. i trust her to report sensitively and not for like. shock clicks

this site has a free paywall (sign up with your email for a link to the full article) so bots have a harder time scraping articles: this is a journalist-founded site with only the four founders running it and writing articles. while annoying i do think this is a reasonable measure

The platform still has problems, but after years of critical reporting and a litany of legal and reputational consequences, Pornhub is now more heavily moderated than any other porn platform, and most major social media platforms, for that matter. A growing list of age verification laws has put Pornhub in a position where it is compelled to block access to its site in seven states and counting. In theory, these laws are designed to prevent children from being able to access pornography online. In reality, what is going to happen is that children are going to end up on pornographic sites that don’t care what the law says, and where some of the most harmful content that exists online is actively promoted to them.

she's also got a new limited series podcast with CBC about the rise and fall of pornhub, which was fascinating and kept me company during an extremely early morning drive

-

watching

i'm lukewarm about this one but i spend a lot of time getting there, much like this movie

ive been watching a lot of frankly dogshit thrillers, which has made me wonder: what's the deal with supervillans? where did they come from? and thence arrived at the prototypical film Dr Mabuse the Gambler (1922, dir. Lang). the four and a half hour cut on Kanopy is two normal-length movies superglued together, which makes sense as a streaming product but it is sort of a terrifying runtime and took me three days to get through.

sometimes, as we know, i get a real bee in my bonnet about visiting the early versions of things. dr mabuse is the blueprint for every james bond and mission impossible villain, or really any shadowy supervillain with power over [INDUSTRY] or [THE MARKET]. it is a four and a half hour long cat and mouse game through lavish, eccentric sets between mabuse and prosecutor wenk. it has some trouble sustaining itself bc it is four and a half hours long but does deliver on the cat and mouse aspects. this letterboxed review has interesting things to say about the political climate of 1922 germany and how lang subverts the formula of the pulp serial.

really the film opens with mabuse yelling at his cocaine-addicted assistant, but the film properly gets going with mabuse's henchmen stealing a trade agreement (nothing really carbon dates a movie more than a missing trade agreement. vanishingly few post-early-30s movies have missing trade agreements as plot points) and then he crashes the stock market. for fun and profit.

however. i think every time you see an evil man who is a banker or stockbroker or generally uses money as power you have to interrogate whether it's antisemitic. the answer here is "maybe" but i'm not sure if intent matters when contemporary nazi critics were eager to hold mabuse up as "this is the typical jewish criminal". (sorry about the link directly to wikipedia, it's been touch finding online sources for this section). mabuse is not specifically jewish, but there are certainly elements of stereotype. i am still not good at being presented with "this movie has a shadowy behind the scenes figure manipulating the government and all the money ever" and going "hey wait a minute".

after that tremendous glaring caveat, for which i read more contemporary reviews and reviews in general than i ever read for movies in these posts, is it good? eh. a contemporary VARIETY review remarked (and i largely agree)

The direction of Fritz Lang has moments – but Lang somewhat negates his good technical effects by twenty forty-word captions of a ludicrous unconciseness.

the night scenes are particularly well done, and imo are better than many modern night scenes--other contemporary reviews remarked

In this film the techniques of the film camera (Carl Hoffmann’s brilliant photography) are brought to perfection. The problem of how to film lit-up streets at night has been solved for the first time. It is unbelievably impressive to see the glaring lights of speeding cars flash through the night or the rapid passing of an elevated train of the initially blurred, then gradually focussed glimpse through a pair of opera glasses on to the variety stage, the nuances of light and shade—these things alone prove the value of film documentary.

look at this shit! filmed from within the cars! in 1922!!!

this film asks you to believe hypnotism is real and really effective, so i don't think it's that big of a leap when it asks you to believe in ghosts. i don't understand that quibble from contemporary viewers. there are several on screen suicides with like. specific methods. which is not currently regarded as good filmmaking practice. im curious to know what contemporary audiences thought but couldn't immediately turn anything up, and wading through masters’ theses on cinematic suicide is a little beyond my current mental health.

if i were a more content-minded woman this would turn into a clickbait video essay about the antisemitic origins of every supervillan. however i am unqualified and untalented at video editing and i'm sure there are forty theses on this already. this movie is a hard sell to anyone jewish or employed. it is also a stunning example of cutting-edge film technology and part of the genesis of the modern supervillan. Fritz Lang films tend to fall in the category of “movies i am happy to see once and feel no need to revisit”.

-

playing

playing what is effectively the same game three times back to back (breath of the wild, tears of the kingdom, genshin impact) has sort of burned me out on open world games with a focus on battle skill progression and stumbling across little puzzles in the overworld. i have to get itch.io up and running on this pc and find the most linear jankiest possible one-sitting indie thing. or several of them. i might try the solo ttrpg Gentleman Bandit i seem to have acquired in one of the giant charity bundles

brief breath of the wild update bc i don't want to pull screenshots off my switch: i have gotten to the boss fight for the gerudo and goron regions, have not completed them bc my focus in this game is NOT hearts, and am in the middle of the zora temple. despite the quality of life improvements and new regions in totk i think i prefer botw: progression is a bit easier, there are fewer mmo-style hub quests and repeatable quests. things like the stable photos are cute but very repetitive, so are the sign bracing puzzles, and the sky crystal quests for sky shrines feel VERY samey. also dislike how the CLEAR OUT: [REGION] quests with the monster suppression squads reset at the blood moon.

anyway! to genshin! there was an exceptionally fun little event with a surprisingly involved management sim tacked onto the game??? you make and sell potions fulfilling different requirements, and can eventually stock travelling merchants all over the continent. the actual act of making the potions was this block-filling 1010! style thing (screenshot from polygon)

the new region, a port town and tea-growing area called Chenyu Vale, is maybe the prettiest one in the game so far? it's the one that feels the most picturesque and Designed, like this is one huge mansion garden studded with follies. they also added background chatter and noise in the cities and towns, which really startled me and makes them feels much more lived in! this is a fun trick to avoid putting in a thousand NPCs and making everyone's framerate crash. the less stuff in your game, the less shit can go wrong.

also pulled for and got chiyori, a geo-aligned seamstress (and sometime spy???) swordswoman who has what i can only call domme voice

-

making

ok now we'll talk about boxes. i was rearranging my kitchen, as unemployed women are known to do, and noticed this recipe box i picked up back in mass was disgusting. the finish is starting to fail but it was genuinely grody and last summer i packed my kitchen in a blind panic inside an hour and did not have time to address it. i have never seen a recipe box at an estate sale before or since and it made me desperately sad.

it was full of a lot of stuff.

i went at it with a somewhat inadvisable combination of things: wood soap didn't budge it, so i dampened a paper towel in vinegar and wiped it down in the vain hope it would do something. the thing that worked, and would be inadvisable for anything veneered or less densely textured, was baking soda paste and the scrubby side of a sponge. it still smells Very musty even after 48h of loose baking soda inside with several changes, but that might be partly the recipe cards' fault. i would like to refinish this at some point but i don't have polyurethane on hand and the fun little project budget is empty until further notice/i get a job.

the hinge did rust a bit despite my best efforts but that has since been lightly steel wooled and oiled. a well loved object! it's possible the lady who died just fucking sucked and that's why literally her entire estate including many other things families usually keep was on sale, but i would like to think perhaps she simply had no other family? a well loved/used object even if all the recipes are for semi-horrifying fifties new england recipes.

the other box, pre-acids but post-washing: this topp trading card box with seven episode one packets of cards was intact with the original seal. i have verified it was not worth much more than the $5 i paid for it with the trading card obsessed man in my best friend's husband's friendgroup. i bought this three months ago but the man was unavailable to open it until uhhh last week. some sort of liquid got inside it at some point and it was super corroded. i was going to store embroidery floss in here but even with all my powers (barkeepers friend. brasso.) i cannot completely remove the corrosion. it's not corroded Through but it looks bad and feels rough. so it goes. it'll probably hold the tiedown straps in my car bc that plastic bucket is rapidly failing

[skywalking-through-life]

what ship do you hate most?

LOL, oh my anonymous friend, I wondered if anyone was going to ask me this. I'm going to try to answer without opening a can of worms about my opinions that I don't know if I'm brave enough to crack open, but we'll see where this goes. This answer - even more than usual - is probably going to be long.

Okay.

I don't hate any ships.

I know that some folks may not believe me, but I genuinely, 100%, I do not. And will not!

Are there ships I don't understand, or don't find appealing, or find disturbing? Yes, very much so! I personally am usually squicked out by ships that are incestuous, ships between an adult and a child, ships where there is a clear and dangerous lack of consent, and ships that are shipped because the person doing the shipping wants to 'punish' or bash one of the characters, so they ship them with whoever will give them the worst time. I have very little patience for stories where the people in the ships cheat on or betray one another in some way as a feature of the relationship, and tend to roll my eyes when I see people use them to vent their feelings about other people's ships. I don't like ships that feel one-dimensional, and I don't tend to like ships absent passion.

But while all of that might annoy or baffle me, dislike of certain pairings or tropes isn't hate, and is small potatoes compared to what I see as a MUCH larger issue.

And that - what I DO hate - isn't any particular ship, but the culture of extreme, sometimes violent, often thoughtless and self-centered emotionalism that (unfortunately) has always been a part of shipping. Ship wars, pro vs anti ship discourse, and the idea that our feelings about the fictional characters we love and hate should somehow translate to how we - REAL HUMAN BEINGS - treat each other; all of this worries me deeply because in this I see the REAL evils of the REAL world bleeding into fictional ones. Hate is a powerful emotion, and to see it applied to real people because of fictional interests? I abhor that - and all it has historically led to - in my very soul.

Whenever I hear about people getting death threats in their inbox for liking/not liking/not having the correct opinions about a ship, whether 'problematic' or otherwise, I genuinely feel sick to my stomach. I understand loving something so much you want to defend it against any perceived attack; I understand thinking something is so evil that it needs to be spoken up against. But I do not, and never have, understood how and why so many folks apply that deep seated anger to FICTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS. Our world is a beautiful and terrible place, and is so wide and complex - wider than the margins of any book, or the frames of any film. Surely we can better spend our passions out there, on the thousands of issues that deserve our attention, our care, and our hearts, rather than in here, on each other, over things that do NOT matter at the end of all things?

And so the end - the ultimate, the core - of this issue for me is this: hating a ship, or participating in ship discourse of some kind, would require me to let fictional worlds have access to my anger, no, to my real, roaring RAGE; to the messy parts of myself and my complicated relationship to the real world that I come into fictional worlds to write myself free of. And I just don't believe there is a place for that kind of vitriol in spaces that are, for me, meant to be joyful and liberative.

[firstkanaphans]

How about M for SandRay? I feel like we need a car makeout with a different ending and some fluff to save us from all the SandRay angst!

Hiii! You are absolutely right. I decided to set this at the very beginning of episode 5, right after Sand saves Ray from that guy at the bar, and it is, um, a bit explicit. Because apparently that’s just who I am as a person. Hope you enjoy! Word Count: 1100

[M]aking out in a car

Ray was already hard as he dragged Sand to his car. He had been seconds away from getting a bottle smashed over his head and yet Sand had saved him. Again. His adrenaline was pumping, his heart was racing, and he needed to fuck something. Now.

“Are you drunk?” Sand asked. “Do I need to drive?” 

The question would have annoyed Ray coming from anyone else, but there was no judgment in Sand’s voice. No long-suffering exasperation. It was just a question, plain and simple. Ray didn’t bother to answer him. Who would drive wasn’t relevant. He had other plans.

“Back seat,” he said, yanking the back door open and gesturing for Sand to get inside.

“What in the world are you—?”

Ray didn’t have the patience for answering juvenile questions. He shoved Sand into the car and climbed in after him.

“Ray,” Sand warned as if he already knew what was coming. Ray didn’t bother to keep him waiting. He lunged forward and kissed him.

Sand let out a surprised yelp against his lips, but within seconds, he had melted into the kiss. He opened his mouth, kissing Ray deeper, and then tangled his fingers in Ray’s hair and pulled. Goosebumps erupted over Ray’s body and when he broke the kiss, he was pleased to see that Sand’s eyes were on fire.

“What was that for?” he asked, breathless. 

“You saved me,” Ray said simply. “It was so fucking hot.”

“That wasn’t—”

Before he could argue, Ray kissed him again. 

If Ray was being honest, he didn’t much enjoy having sex in cars. It would do in a pinch, but it required him to put in more effort than he was used to and often left him paranoid like he was coming off of a bad high. Tonight, however, he couldn’t wait. He was pretty sure he had never wanted someone so desperately in all his life.

So he kissed Sand, hoping that might sate the hunger inside of him, but it wasn’t enough. He needed to be closer. He crawled into his lap.

“Ray,” Sand scolded as Ray’s elbow just narrowly missed hitting him in the face. “This car isn’t big enough for this.”

“I’m small. I’ll fit,” Ray said. And somehow, he did. As soon as he settled himself across Sand’s lap, one knee thrown over each side of him, he sat back and he preened. “See?”

Sand shook his head in exasperation, but he looked so hopelessly fond that Ray just stopped and admired him for a second. He was pretty sure no one had ever looked at him like that before—like his eccentricities were something to celebrate, not something that needed to be fixed. So he kissed him again, slower this time, rolling his hips over Sand’s and relishing the moan it elicited from him.   

He reached between them, pawing the front of Sand’s pants, and found that he was hard too. He unbuckled his belt and pushed his pants down just enough for his dick to spring free.

“You don’t have to,” Sand said, breaking the kiss, but he didn’t actually make any moves to stop him. His eyes were glazed over, his cheeks flushed a beautiful red, and Ray wanted to see that color spread over his entire body. 

“You saved my life,” he said. “Let me thank you.” Then he licked his palm and took Sand in hand. This time, Sand didn’t stop him.

“Fuck,” he cursed, throwing his head back against the seat behind him. Immediately, Ray latched onto his neck, licking and biting and sucking the delicate skin of his throat, but it wasn’t enough. He needed more. So he led Sand back to his lips.

Sand had told him once that sometimes the act of singing in front of crowd physically aroused him—something about the ecstacy of the music vibrating through his body combined with the feel of a roomful of eyes on him—so Ray wasn’t sure whether he was still riding an adrenaline high from his set or if he was just that into him, but soon he was bucking up into Ray’s hand, breathing so hard that he could no longer maintain their kiss.

“Does that feel good?” Ray teased, still close enough that their lips brushed against each other when he spoke. Sand nodded, but it wasn’t enough for Ray. “I want to hear you say it.”

“Feels good,” Sand slurred, his voice barely more than a whisper. He looked so blissed out Ray wasn’t sure he even knew what he was saying. It felt more likely that he was just parroting Ray’s own words back at him.

Ray sped up his strokes, pulling out all of his tricks, and when Sand finally came, Ray muffled his cry with a kiss. Then he sat back and watched as Sand came down from his high. He was smiling as if he’d had fun and something inside of Ray sang. Sex had never been particularly fun for him. Instead, it was more of an itch he needed to scratch. But with Sand, it was different.

Ray kissed him on the lips one last time and then moved to climb off of his lap only to realize his hand was covered in come. Without thinking, he wiped it off on the closest available surface, which just so happened to be Sand’s jeans. He only realized what he had done when Sand let out a squawk of protest.

“Oops,” he said with a wince, crawling off of him. “Sorry?”

But Sand’s annoyance seemed to only be for show. He pulled his pants back up and buckled them. “Do you want me to…?” he asked, trailing off suggestively as his fingers danced a path up Ray’s thigh towards his crotch. Ray grabbed his hand to stop him.

“Not yet. I can wait until we get to your place. You’re going to need a full range of motion for what I have in mind.”

Sand smirked and then opened the car door and climbed out. “I assume I’m driving?” he said.

“Yes, please,” Ray agreed, following him out. And then, to Ray’s surprise, Sand held the front door open for him like an actual gentleman. It was a kindness he wasn’t used to. “Thank you.”

Sand rolled his eyes. “You going to give me a handjob for that too?”

“I might.”

As they drove to Sand’s apartment that night, Ray was surprised by just how at home he felt—in Sand’s car, in Sand’s home, in Sand’s life. He liked it. It felt like he had finally found somewhere he belonged.

For the Fluff Prompt ABCs

[dameronology]

hcs for arguing and making up w the star wars boys?

we loved resolved angst

din djarin

din rarely argues; he rarely talks so he rarely argues but when he does, his sentences are short, curt and biting. sure, he's a quiet guy but the things he does say often hold a lot of value.

he doesn't ever want to say anything that will hurt you but underneath all that beskar, and despite his best attempts, he is a human being. he ends up saying things in the heat of the moment that are hurtful and mean and obviously he doesn't mean it, just as much as he knows that you don't mean the things that you're throwing at him either.

the good thing about din is that he will stop the argument before it gets too bad, or goes past the point of no return. nine times out of ten, he is the one who presses pause and makes you both take a minute to calm down.

then, you can talk it out and properly communicate when your anger has passed. he wants nothing more than for both of you to just be happy together, so your arguments are always short.

poe dameron

poe can argue for DAYS. he is stubborn and fierce and fiery and he will literally not crack in an argument.

he hates doing it with you though

especially during times of high tension during the war, he cannot stand to go more than a day before he makes up with you

it kind of gets the better of him sometimes. in the heat of the moment, he'll puff up his chest and act all tough, as though it's not bothering him but the second the argument is over and you've walked away? he's already wanting to run after you and beg for forgiveness - even if you're the one in the wrong

so there's not a lot of time between you and poe arguing and you and poe making up. he always gives you enough space to simmer but as soon as the timing is right, he's willing to talk it out

even if your arguments can get bad, they are a very rare occurrence simply because you're so in sync with each other

finn

finn does not argue. i know these are meant to be argument headcanons but i'm SORRY. finn will simply not argue with his s.o

of course, he will bicker and have heated conversations but he will never, ever let it get past the point where it's an argument

if he feels like things are getting heated, he'll immediately calm them down. sort of similar to din, but he won't even let it become a fight in the first place.

if you don't want to calm down, finn will remove himself from the situation and give you the necessary time to calm down

then he makes a point of having a conversation where you communicate on what went wrong and how you can avoid it happening again

he understands that sometimes, arguments just happen and there's not always something that can stop them happening in future, so if it's just a thing where you agree to disagree? he's cool with that too

han solo

han solo will argue with his own reflection

but he hates arguing with you, mostly because you're the one person in the world he loves most and he doesn't like when you're mad at him

with that said, han is han. he runs his mouth and he's a sarcastic little shit so sometimes, you do get into fights.

i'd say 'despite his best efforts' but they're very mediocre efforts because biting back at people is his form of self-defense; it's how he protects himself from a world that he knows can be bad and sometimes, he does it you

he doesn't mean to and you know that, but it doesn't make it any less annoying

sometimes it's as simple as him making a shitty comment then immediately going wide eyed and going "i am so sorry, i love you, i didn't mean that," yada yada yada

other times, he gets all sulky and walks off but it's literally never more than five minutes before he apologises to you

and the longer you're together, the more infrequent those arguments become

it's just a learning curve that requires a little patience

luke skywalker

luke hates arguing with you and will very rarely do it, but he's also very prideful and quite stubborn

that means you do sometimes have disagreements - sometimes they're small and sometimes they're a bit deeper

he doesn't sweat the small ones too much because he knows that everyone argues and sometimes, it's unavoidable. you're both mature enough to apologise and move on, but when things get more heated, he can be a little childish

it's more in the sense that at first, he refuses to hear you out and insists that he's right, but once you shake a little sense into him, he's always willing to talk

and he'll try his best to make it up to you; flowers, dinner, hugs, doing whatever he knows your love language is to show that he loves you and cares for you

obi-wan kenobi

trying to argue with obi-wan is hard because he's so witty and quick that he manages to make you question your side of the argument

he doesn't mean to. it's just like arguing with a prosecution lawyer who manages to make the defendant question even their own guilt. he's very talented like that.

so the initial arguing stage is always a little heated, especially in matters concerning your well-being or safety because obi will literally not compromise on that and sometimes, you just have to take the L

with other things, once he argues it out and gets it out his system, he calms down and his first port of call is to always talk it out and listen to what you have to say

arguments are very rare with obi-wan anyway

he's a very hard person to argue with, simply because he normally doesn't let them happen

he's always so apologetic afterwards, though - especially if he's realised he's been a bit of a dick

the good thing is you never argue about the same thing twice because he always listens

[midnight-oily]

attoye omegaverse | 2/3 | 19.5k words | ao3

“What do you mean he’s not going to provide me with his scent?”

Okoye taps her fingers impatiently against the warden’s desk. With her heat hormones simmering under her skin, her patience for delays has grown thin. Omega and Alpha biology does not care for bureaucracy—it follows the laws of nature, not of man. She needs her husband’s scent immediately, rules be damned! The warden swallows nervously at the bristling ex-Dora Milaje in front of him.

“W’Kabi has rejected your request, Okoye.”

“I’m his Omega!” She snaps, her nerves reaching a boiling point, “He has a duty to me as my Alpha!” She points to her bite mark on her irritated neck scent glands.

All of society knows it is the duty of a mated Alpha to provide for their Omega. Once bitten by an Alpha, Omegas are mated for life—Only their Alphas can soothe their heats with their knot and scent. Unfortunately for Okoye, this means W’Kabi is the only one who can tame the burning biological inferno within her. Yet regardless of crime, exceptions are made for bonded pairs when it comes to justice and punishment. Mates are allowed to tend to each other’s needs when necessary. Emphasis on allowed, not required.

“W’Kabi has rights,” The warden explains as calmly as possible, “We cannot force him to give you his scent.”

Okoye scowls, throwing a foul glare at her bag of scented sheets on the floor. She spent an hour this morning rubbing fabric through her scent glands until her skin became puffy and sore. It was annoying but necessary for the arrangement she had with W’Kabi. She will provide him with her scent to help soothe his ruts and in return, he will provide her with his own scent to help her heats. It is the compromise she has agreed to. No more, no less.

The warden squirms in his chair at Okoye’s dark expression, “I’m sorry, Okoye—”

“Do not say you are sorry!” Okoye snarls, “I am beyond overdue for a heat. Does he not realize he’s killing me?”

Another side effect of mating. While heats become much more manageable, it is only that way because the Omega’s Alpha is the only one who can start their heat. A biological quirk that anthropologists hypothesize was to make sure that mated pairs only procreated when the conditions were optimal for the both of them. That doesn’t stop an Omega’s biology from craving a heat. Like a pressure cooker, the biological imperative to breed will build slowly over time until the Omega is bursting with desire for a pup. At that point, Alphas will instinctually scent their mates and jumpstart their heat, releasing all that pressure. It was just simple biology.

For an Alpha like W’Kabi to refuse to provide for his mate–letting your Omega languish in heat pain out of all things!–it is considered the most shameful behavior for an Alpha.

Going a year without a heat is agony for a mated Omega. It has been fifteen months since Okoye had a proper heat and she was about to lose her mind. The mating mark on her neck burns, constantly itching and aching for her Alpha’s scent.

The only other solutions for mated Omegas without Alphas was to either cut their glands out— a painful, traumatic process— or find another Alpha. But rarely were there any Alphas who were willing to bite down on a living Alpha’s claim. It simply wasn’t done. Not that Okoye was looking for a new Alpha anytime soon.

The warden tugs at his collar, trying his best to be diplomatic, “Okoye, we do allow conjugal visits for mates—”

“No.”

Her Omega bristles. Not at her, but at the warden’s offer. W’Kabi’s not her Alpha—biology be damned. As long as she breathes, she will never submit to W’Kabi ever. Her nails rake into the table.

“Absolutely not. I know what he’s playing at,” Okoye hisses at the warden and grabs him by the collar, “Give him a message for me, you pathetic excuse of an Alpha!” The warden trembles under her fury.

“Tell him he is a fool to think that he can force me to present to him! Tell him to fulfill his duty as my Alpha or—,” Okoye drags the man closer to her face, “I will tear his knot from his cock and feed it to the crocodiles!”

continue reading on ao3 (18+ mind the tags!)