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telomeke-bbs · 2 years ago

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BAD BUDDY RERUN SEASON – EP.1 (NOTES ON THE REWATCH)

When GMMTV announced the rerun of BBS on channel GMM25 (every Sunday starting 4 Sept 2022, 8.30PM Bangkok time) I was initially blasé – surely every superfan's already rewatched it dozens of times (if not more), and we don't need an official rerun as an excuse to rewatch. 🤷‍♂️

Yeah, so as it turns out it's as good a reason as any to tune in again, and here I am once more obsessively rewatching. And as opposed to rewatching only my favorite bits over and over again, watching it in sequence does highlight things you missed before (because now we have so much more context), or that you noticed but then forgot because it's PatPran in the very next scene coming at you with more things to think about. 💖

So with the benefit of hindsight, this post is a list of (some of) these Ep.1 items, jotted down when they zapped electrically with meaning onscreen because our minds are now able to connect the circuits with other things elsewhere in the series. 😊

At Ep.1 [1I4] 2.33 we are told Pran has a special friendship with Wai – he's pretty nonchalant about Louis being beaten up (dismissing it with "He gets himself into a fight every day" at Ep.1 [1I4] 2.30), but when he hears that it's Wai who needs defending, Pran immediately changes his mind about getting involved.

(above) The light switch suddenly flicks on in Pran's eyes at Ep.1 [1I4] 2.33

This shows that Pran and Wai have a deeper connection that pre-dates the current time in their first year at university, and helps to explain why Pran was so persistent in trying to mend fences with Wai in Ep.9. The most likely explanation is that Wai was Pran's best friend (and likely protector too – see this analysis here) when Pran was exiled to boarding school – Pran sort of confirms this at Ep.1 [3I4] 7.21 when he tells Pat: "…Wai has been my close friend since before I transferred here." (If Pran and Wai were close friends before Pran was sent away, Pat would have known about it, so Pran must be referring to boarding school here.)

When Pran leaps to Wai's defense in the fight at Ep.1 [1I4] 3.56, his flying kick lands somewhere in the general vicinity of Pat's abdomen, and Pat falls clutching his ventral area in pain.

But then we are shown Pat clutching at an area to the left of his chest instead (Ep.1 [1I4] 4.00).

Pran re-entering his life is sending shockwaves right to Pat's heart. 💖 And we see him go from grimacing at the pain of the initial impact to a moment of strange calm, as though something has changed within him, before his fighting anger returns.

Their first unblinking looks at each other (after years apart) – are filled with recognition and perhaps incredulity, but not hatred or aggression (because they were never really enemies behind the scenes).

(above) Ep.1 [1I4] 4.14: Don't I know you?

When Pran and Pat conspire to dupe Wai into apologizing at Ep.1 [4/4] 1.04 and bring about peace between their friend groups, it is not something new – they were manufacturing their rivalry as kids (we know this because in Ep.12 we are shown that as kids they would come back home and then chat using their tin can phones, meaning their childhood enmity was all for show).

As Pat and Pran draw closer into each other's orbits in Ep.1 however, we see them bickering in their interactions but there is more prickliness on display from Pran than Pat. At Ep.1 [4/4] 3.28 he says "Things don't end well whenever I'm close to you" which Pat takes as a reference to Pran being sent away after their collaboration on the Christmas song contest – he mentions immediately "At least, no one gets transferred somewhere else this time." Pat possibly looks at Pran's constant pushing him away as fearfulness of being sent away again. But it goes deeper than that for Pran; we have to remember that throughout all of Ep.1, Pran is in love with Pat (and has been since high school). In every scene, now that he's back in contact with Pat, Pran is battling with himself not to let the slightest hint of that love show (so it's likely he's overcompensating, and coming across as standoffish and hostile).

Except for the flying kick at Ep.1 [1I4] 3.56, all physical contact between the two (totally non-sexual, so let's not get into issues of consent) is initiated by Pat, not by Pran. For example, he initiates the fist bump both times at Ep.1 [4/4] 1.38 and Ep.1 [4/4] 4.01.

Pat covers Pran's mouth when he goes to Pran's bedroom to negotiate calming the Archi-Engine enmity at Ep.1 [3I4] 6.01, and he puts his hand on Pran's mouth too when they hide from Korn, Mo and Chang (at Ep.1 [3I4] 1.13). These are about the only times when Pat initiates non-consensual contact, but both times it's to protect Pran, not for Pat's gratification or benefit in any way.

Pran also asks to be let out of the car after being rescued (at Ep.1 [3I4] 2.04). We see Pat open to closeness with Pran, but we see Pran retreating and avoiding.

There also are hints of what Ming and Dissaya had been doing to Pat and Pran since their childhood. When Pran says of Pat "Doesn't he look like a cheater like my mom said?" at Ep.1 [1I4] 5.24 we get a sense of the kind of drumming hysteria that Dissaya must have subjected Pran to every time Ming or his family were mentioned, so much so that "Ming the Cheater" (entirely justified) had somehow become conflated with "Pat the Cheater" (at odds with the overall portrayal of Pat, mostly devoid of malevolence even if he's capable of scheming behind the scenes – in cahoots with Pran most of the time, it should be said 😊).

When Pat confirms that he'd been voted Engine Class President, Ming says at Ep.1 [1I4] 12.26:

In this, we are given a glimpse of Ming's treatment of Pat – instead of congratulations or validation, his achievement is downplayed and another target is set, suggesting that Ming was always pushing Pat to do more, no matter what he'd managed to accomplish.

The flashback scene of Pa's near-drowning is significant because it shows us the moment that broke down barriers between Pat and Pran, and drew them into closeness behind the scenes. But there is also a heartwarming nugget of information about Pat and Pa as well, and it reveals the love that binds the chaotic Jindapat siblings. When Pat and Pa race to the lake on their bikes, Little Pat says "Who gets there first doesn't have to wash the dishes" (Ep.1 [3I4] 3.45) and Little Pa replies "I'm the only one who does it every day." This makes it clear that gender roles were fixed for them early on in Ming's traditional and patriarchal household. But there's more to the scene – we see that Pa is so far behind she has to call out to Pat to slow down (at Ep.1 [3I4] 3.43). And instead of racing ahead, Pat actually slows down and lets Pa win.

Little Pat isn't hung-up on the gender role thing (or at least he didn't start out that way), but out of sight of his father he is willing to wash the dishes this one time, willing to be beaten by a girl, just to make his baby sister happy. 💖

It's also interesting to see how Pat and Pran's childhood personalities contrast with what they grow into. In later episodes, we see that grown-up Pat is quite the man-of-action, always reaching out, showing initiative and pluck all the time (e.g., helping Pran with LogTech, pleading with Ajahn Pichai to let them participate in the Freshy Song contest, taking on the role of Riam in the Archi play, etc.). Pa's near-drowning was a key turning-point that galvanized their development, but interestingly their roles at the lake are the reverse of what we see later. When Little Pran rescues Pa from drowning at Ep.1 [3I4] 4.27, he gets shoved aside and Pat forgets to thank him.

This is paralleled in the scene where Pat rescues Pran from being beaten up by Korn, Mo and Chang, and Pran storms off without thanking Pat (Ep.1 [3I4] 2.26), which also highlights the reversal of their roles after childhood.

At the lake, it was Pran acting first, but with Pat frozen into inaction. In later episodes, it’s always Pat reaching out and acting first, with Pran hesitating and second-guessing himself. Something happened along the way to change them, and for Pran at least I think it was being sent away to boarding school. After Pa’s rescue at the lake, we see Pat’s energy directed outwards (possibly it always was, and at the lake he was just too stunned to react), but with Pran’s exile Pat’s energy to the world turned darker, as though he was raging to establish a connection with something or someone outside of himself to fill an emptiness within (e.g., when Korn refers to Pat’s uncontrollable anger at Ep.1 [1I4] 1.25, and when he whacks Mo upside the back of his head at Ep.1 [2/4] 5.05). Pran on the other hand directed his energies inward and closed in upon himself, putting up barriers to the outside world.

When Pran asks Pat to take his chat ID (Ep.1 [4/4] 6.52) – and due credit to Nanon's acting here – it's ostensibly so they can coordinate and keep their fighting friend groups apart. But remembering that even at this moment Pran is deeply in love with Pat and has been since high school – it's also clearly so that Pran can have a direct, private line of communication with Pat, whom he loves so much.

Pat is none the wiser, but for Pran this is a big thing, and is confirmed by his happy little micro-expressions starting from 8.41 as their theme of togetherness Our Song sparkles joyfully in the background (only we didn't know the significance of the music during the first time around watching this).

(above) Man quietly in love

Once Pran knows he's safely alone, the contrast with his previous demeanor is striking, as he smiles to himself while Pat walks away into the distance, and the smile doesn't leave his face.

This is telling, but what we also discover about their inner selves is surprising. If you were to ask who was the happier of the two throughout the series, almost everyone would say Pat. But we don't actually see many signs of happiness on display from Pat in Ep.1. And although Pran is mostly serious in this episode, when he's alone and thinks no one is watching, he allows little secret smiles of happiness to peek out – and it's his memories of Pat that trigger this.

For example, he smiles wistfully when he looks at the beat-up wristwatch Pat returned to him (Ep.1 [2/4] 4.38).

It's not a smile of great joy. It's a smile tinged with sadness that you allow yourself when something reminds you of happier times.

And Pran smiles the broadest after getting and saving Pat's chat ID in his phone. His heart is probably leaping here.

He also smiles at the end when he looks at the watch again at Ep.1 [4/4] 9.17, before he puts it on and smiles some more at 11.34, 11.44 and 12.01.

This is Pran in private: taking whatever little happiness he can get. It's not Pat fully in his life, it's not any kind of romantic relationship, but it's Pat back in his life after years of pining. And he allows himself the quiet happiness of enjoying just that.

When he's not alone, Pran does smile, but it often has a performative/communicative aspect:

He smiles to show Pat that their ploy to dupe their friends into ending the warfare seemed to be working (Ep.1 [4/4] 2.20);

He smiles at the dining table because it is in keeping with the atmosphere of gentility (Ep.1 [1I4] 11.48);

He smiles when walking with his friends at Ep.1 [2/4] 4.50, but this seemingly cheery moment is undercut with irony – Safe is pointing at Louis/Wai while saying "Are you making a serious face? Well it's not normal" (which is Google's translation of the Thai dialogue), and you can't help thinking that the opposite might just be true for Pran;

His smile takes on a derisive tone at the childishness of Pat's chat ID (Ep.1 [4/4] 8.04) and getting Pat to add him as a friend (Ep.1 [4/4] 8.23) – this is more of him tossing barbs at Pat, but the underlying reason for his smiles was probably his happiness at re-establishing contact with Pat.

The scene at the end of Ep.1, that shows Pat and Pran walking to their student apartments is a bit of an OMG reveal, saved up as a final flourish to end the episode. It's actually out of sequence – after Pat and Pran exchange their chat IDs outside the pharmacy, we see Pat leave to seek solace in a popsicle (a sign of his kid-at-heart nature, and also his need to look outside himself for validation/comfort). The scene then cuts to Pran in his student apartment, and we see him put on the watch that Pat returned to him in childhood (that is so precious to him he kept it stashed away for more than ten years and brought it with him when he moved out of the family home).

So at the end we see Pat walking down the corridor with his popsicle (Ep.1 [4/4] 12.07), and then after he disappears into his apartment, we see PRAN walking back (as he smiles to himself once more). This looks like them returning to their apartments after their pharmacy encounter – they're wearing the same clothes.

Maybe Pat took a long time to get that popsicle? And Pran went out again and what we're seeing is his second return to the apartment the same night? This is unlikely, because Pran is not wearing the watch.

So the final scene upsets the linear sequence, and is more a flashback meant to surprise us (emphasized by the peppy music) – by some strange twist of fate, they've ended up staying across from each other (after growing up in neighboring houses – that coincidence is analyzed here). It's been set up for revelatory impact – but it was already foreshadowed by Pa at Ep.1 [2/4] 2.33 when she said "Well, well. We better talk about you. You guys have been apart for three years but brought back to meet eventually. I call this 'soulmates.'"

This is also why I think there's a sense of the Red Thread of Fate entwining Pat and Pran. It's like they were meant to be together despite all the opposition swirling around them. 💖

[Afterpost Edit: for notes on the rewatch of other episodes, see these links here: Ep.2, Ep.3, Ep.4 and Ep.5. 😊]

#bad buddy #bad buddy analysis #patpran #telomeke #bad buddy episode 1

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 2 years ago

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Are we too worried about misinformation?

“Resist trying to make things better”: A conversation with internet security expert Alex Stamos.

I’m old enough to remember when the internet was going to be great news for everyone. Things have gotten more complex since then: We all still agree that there are lots of good things we can get from a broadband connection. But we’re also likely to blame the internet — and specifically the big tech companies that dominate it — for all kinds of problems.

And that blame-casting gets intense in the wake of major, calamitous news events, like the spectacle of the January 6 riot or its rerun in Brazil this month, both of which were seeded and organized, at least in part, on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Telegram. But how much culpability and power should we really assign to tech?

I think about this question all the time but am more interested in what people who actually study it think. So I called up Alex Stamos, who does this for a living: Stamos is the former head of security at Facebook who now heads up the Stanford Internet Observatory, which does deep dives into the ways people abuse the internet.

The last time I talked to Stamos, in 2019, we focused on the perils of political ads on platforms and the tricky calculus of regulating and restraining those ads. This time, we went broader, but also more nuanced: On the one hand, Stamos argues, we have overestimated the power that the likes of Russian hackers have to, say, influence elections in the US. On the other hand, he says, we’re likely overlooking the impact state actors have to influence our opinions on stuff we don’t know much about.

You can hear our entire conversation on the Recode Media podcast. The following are edited excerpts from our chat.

Peter Kafka: I want to ask you about two very different but related stories in the news: Last Sunday, people stormed government buildings in Brazil in what looked like their version of the January 6 riot. And there was an immediate discussion about what role internet platforms like Twitter and Telegram played in that incident. The next day, there was a study published in Nature that looked at the effect of Russian interference on the 2016 election, specifically on Twitter, which concluded that all the misinformation and disinformation the Russians tried to sow had essentially no impact on that election or on anyone’s views or actions. So are we collectively overestimating or underestimating the impact of misinformation and disinformation on the internet?

Alex Stamos: I think what has happened is there was a massive overestimation of the capability of mis- and disinformation to change people’s minds — of its actual persuasive power. That doesn’t mean it’s not a problem, but we have to reframe how we look at it — as less of something that is done to us and more of a supply and demand problem. We live in a world where people can choose to seal themselves into an information environment that reinforces their preconceived notions, that reinforces the things they want to believe about themselves and about others. And in doing so, they can participate in their own radicalization. They can participate in fooling themselves, but that is not something that’s necessarily being done to them.

#brazil #politics #brazilian politics #democracy #fake news #january 8 #social media #mod nise da silveira #image description in alt

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someguynamedstevewrites · 5 years ago

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My Roommate is an Apparition: WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT TO HAVE A DAD - Part 2

Based on characters created by @reddpenn

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Oh man, am I late on posting this. So many things going on. Not to mention figuring out how to follow up the first part.

It seems people really like the first-person narration from “A-Pink-Ciation of Culture”, so I went with that again with this piece.

Almost DAILY, I get likes or re-blogs and the occasional follower despite not having posted anything since March. I’m very curious and would like to hear from you readers about what you like about my writing and what appeals to you. Eventually, I want to make a living off of writing, but until that time, I definitely could use any and all feedback.

Anyway, now that that’s out of the way, on with the story!

From the Diary of Lily, March 1st, 2020:

Okay, diary, I’m coming to you because I honestly have no idea where else to go to try and sort through the evening I just had with my Dad and Tulpa. I can’t put my finger on it, but something about tonight just... bothers me! It’s like I’m on pins and needles and can’t stop thinking about, well, a LOT of stuff. Just... hear me out and maybe it’ll make sense if I put this all down on paper (I.E. You). I just spent the last twenty minutes trying to talk things through out loud, but that got me nowhere so here goes nothing:

First off, my Dad came to visit a week earlier than what I had planned, and immediately sets up shop in my living room with his NES and copy of Castlevania III. Only problem was I hadn’t talked with Tulpa about his visit since I was expecting him until NEXT weekend. I kept thinking that the last thing I wanted was for anything weird to happen during his visit.

Which, looking back on it, was a really stupid thing to worry about.

I mean, Dad’s a pretty open-minded guy and he’s quite weird himself. He’s actually quite proud of his weirdness (embarrassing as it is sometimes). He tends to under-react to all kinds of things like it’s no big deal. I’ve even asked him why he doesn’t freak out about some of the stuff he comes across in real life or on TV, and he just tells me, “I’ve seen weirder.” (If some of the stories he’s told me are true, then he has. He really, REALLY has!)

For example: if Tulpa had come into the room holding a... I dunno, a plate or something, like would that really freak my Dad out? Pfft, No! He (maybe?) wouldn’t see her, all he’d see was a “flying saucer” (he deliberately would make that lame pun too), and then get back to his game. Then later, he’d try and tell me about the real flying saucers he saw years ago, or something.

Since I had assumed that Dad wouldn’t have been able to see her, it eventually clicked in my head that what I was actually worrying about was, “what would Tulpa think of my Dad?” He’s a huge Goofus that likes to make bad jokes, tell tall tales, and play video games! And even if he did weird her out, it’s not like she could go anywhere... right? I mean, she might avoid interacting with me because of him, but...

Oh...

Oh wow...

I just read what I just wrote and I can not believe I was being THAT irrational! ( Man, people are stupid sometimes; me included!)

Avoid me because of my DAD!? That’s gotta be the dumbest thing I’ve ever thought! It’s not like he LIVES here or anything! He’s not the one paying the rent; I am! And... I’ve gotten to know Tulpa pretty well these past few months, but... I guess I still have a lot more to learn about her. Case in point:

————————————-

So Tulpa tells me that she wants to meet my Dad, and after coming to my senses somewhat, I say she can sit in so long as she doesn’t touch anything (see flying saucer explanation above). A few minutes later, she walks in looking like the tall girl from Keep Your Hands off Eizouken (I had to look the name up; I couldn’t remember it for the life of me). By that I mean, she’s coming in as a tall, lanky, skinny, somewhat pale skinned girl looking to be about my age. She’s wearing some modest clothes and, if I’m being honest with myself, they looked kind of cute in that outfit they had on. It was a nice ensemble.

Then Dad says “Hi” to her.

...

Let me repeat that in case it hasn’t clicked with you yet.

My Dad GREETED her!

He! SAW! Her!

When I asked her about it later, she said to me that she thought that since he’s my Dad, then whatever it is that allows me to see her could be something my Dad has too. So far, her theory has been proven right, but... I’m not one-hundred percent sure, because Tulpa... well... she changed.

And I’m being literal here, too! She no longer had that transparency to her like usual. She had a nose! She had ears! She had five fingers! And she looked...

...well...

...good.

Tulpa said she had never tried doing this before, but figured that in the off-chance that her hunch was correct, she wanted to make a good impression on my Dad. (Why do I keep thinking about that old joke in movies and TV shows about the overprotective Dad that threatens the boy about to go on a date with their daughter?) She even went so far as to create her own “clothes”, saying she knew they’d be important. Considering that she doesn’t wear (or need) clothes any other time, I ask her how she came to that conclusion. I still have no idea what she meant when she suddenly bellowed out, “GOOD...! GRIEF...! HE’S...! NAKED!”

[Edit: It’s from Spongebob, because of course it was.]

So I’m not sure if Dad could see her because she purposely made herself opaque, or if he would have been able to see her if she wasn’t in her human “disguise” (and yes, I’m calling it a disguise and I’ll explain why a bit later, okay?). But either way, she walks in and my Dad just starts chatting away like so:

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“Hi there! You must be Lily’s roommate!” says Dad.

At this point, I’m kind of frozen solid on the couch, just watching and listening as everything unfolds in front of me like it’s being burned into my retinas. You know that saying about slow-motion train wrecks? Y’know, about how you can’t look away from them? This is probably why I remember the conversation so well.

“Heh...Hello,” she responds back nervously.

“I’m Lily’s Dad,” he says as if it wasn’t obvious, “Hope you don’t mind if we play some games out here.”

Tulpa shakes her head and stutters out, “No...N-not at all.”

“Great!” Dad responded with a smile that said, “Even if it was bothering you, I’m still going to take up the TV and play video games. So nyeh!” I’ve lived with him long enough to know that he’s not someone who would give up the TV without a fight.

(...gee... that kind of reminds me of someone now that I think about it...)

Tulpa then asks, “M-mind if... I watch?”

Dad gives her this big, goofy smile and responds with a, “Sure thing!” since despite him never admitting to it, he always liked having an audience around when he played games (or almost anything really) in hopes of “schooling” them. (Why he didn’t go into teaching, I will never understand.)

As soon as Dad turns back to his game and un-pauses it, Tulpa smiled, sat back, and looked content (Although it was a little weird seeing her smile with a nose to go along with it.) This snaps me out of my stupor long enough to scootch over to Tulpa and chat with her.

“You actually want to watch him play?” I ask her once more because the mere thought that she’d be interested in something outside of cartoons still hadn’t registered in my head, yet.

“Yeah...” she says as she starts to stare at the screen like she usually does during her cartoon time. “...sounded... familiar,” she said before looking up slightly while lost in thought, “...Simon... Belmont... Mega... Man... Kid... Icarus...” she said again as though that meant something. To me it just sounded almost like some kind of madness mantra, but...

“Oh! You mean Captain N: The Game Master!” my Dad chimed in out of seemingly nowhere.

“YES!” Tulpa said with excitement (worth noting that she doesn’t look excited very often, but when she does, she practically glows). “I remember...” she said before pausing to collect her thoughts and form the words she wanted to say. If I could have, I would have warned her about my Dad’s tendency to pounce on any hesitation in a conversation to take it over.

“Man, I haven’t seen Captain N in decades,” he said wistfully, “Surprised someone young as you remembers it. I was in High School when that show came on! When did you see it?”

“Ummm...” she hesitated, “...reruns... when I was... a kid.”

(As I’m writing this down now, I realize she was trying to hide her actual age from Dad. She looked to be in her early twenty’s like I was, but if she said she saw it when it came on the air originally, that’d make her over thirty years old at least.)

“Ahhhh! I see you have good taste in reruns!” Dad complimented.

“Th-thank you,” she stuttered back. As I listened to the awkward conversation of father-roommate bonding, I found my eyes constantly turning towards Tulpa. Not out of adoration or anything, but more like... studying her.

————————————-

On the one hand, she looked like the Tulpa that I had known ever since she became my roommate months ago. But on the other hand, they somehow weren’t. It’s kind of like when someone changes their looks a bit for maybe, I dunno, a night on the town, a job interview, a wedding, or something else along those lines. Only in her case, “dressing up” meant adding additional body parts she didn’t normally have.

(To be honest, I’m still not entirely sure what to think about that...)

I’ve always been a firm believer of people being themselves, and being allowed to be themselves. I can’t stand situations where people are unable to truly express themselves or feel comfortable. Way I see it, life is too short to be spent worrying over stupid stuff that makes people miserable just so they can come off as normal.

Sometimes it’s because of social norms and expectations; those unspoken rules of life that people are supposed to just magically “know”. Like if someone was going to a church or temple service, social norms say they need to wear their “Sunday Best” with stiff, itchy clothes that are dry clean only. If I was able to go to a sermon wearing a baggy college sweatshirt, sweatpants, and slippers, and NOT be judged like I’m some kind of crazy hobo, it would have definitely made something like that more appealing to me.

Now I have nothing against anyone that likes to dress up in fancy clothes and wear them out and about; I mean, everyone likes different things, right? The point is that if I’m going to do something that makes me uncomfortable, it should be because I wanted to do it for myself. I don’t think I should bend over backwards making myself feel bad (physically or mentally) for someone else’s sake. Sure, call me selfish if you must, but I just can’t advocate for doing something that makes you feel bad because you wanted someone else to feel good.

I’m just thankful no one in my family has ever tried to push anything on me. Sure, they’ve suggested things to me before, and of course made sure I didn’t do something stupid that would injure me or worse when I was too young to know better. But overall, my family has given me a lot of freedom to do what I want, dress how I want, and be who I want to be. Now that I think about it, I’m kind of lucky that way.

(I hope I’m making sense on this. Re-reading this, I’m not entirely sure if I do.)

————————————-

Anyway, I’m looking at Tulpa and watching them carefully, trying to figure out if they were comfortable looking like that or not. She’s just sitting there watching my Dad play Castlevania III, and he was now on the haunted pirate ship with Trevor and Sypha. He was breezing through at a pretty good pace and sharing an anecdote about how Warren Ellis figuratively gave him the “Turd Cape of Shame” on this old message board back when the Castlevania series on Netflix was just an idea back in 2007. (I still am not entirely sure if that story is true or not.)

“Hey Lily,” Dad asks suddenly out of the blue, “got anything to drink?” I offer him some lemonade, he accepts, and I go to the kitchen to pour him a glass. As I’m doing this, I hear Dad ask Tulpa, “By the way, I don’t think I caught your name. What was it again?”

“...Tulpa...” she says back to him.

My body freezes up for a moment as I realized that “Tulpa” is not an ordinary name. I mean the first time she told me her name, it sounded like some kind of Pokémon. Once again, that irrational fear of my Dad being weirded out or something enters my head, but is dispelled almost immediately.

“Tulpa?” my Dad says aloud to himself, “That’s a very interesting name.”

“T-Thank you...” she says back.

I walk in with a glass of pink lemonade and set it down on a little, folding TV dinner stand that was given to me when I first moved out for college. I slowly sit back down again as I keep an eye on Dad. His facial expression is the same as usual: relaxed. You could call it a poker face, but I’ve seen him play poker and he is BAD at poker.

“Anyone in your family Buddhist?” my Dad asks casually.

I step in, “Dad! What kind of a question is that!?” And I meant what I said too. Who even asks something like that!?

“I was just wondering,” he says before once again shutting up and focusing on his game.

This is one of the things about my Dad that bugs me to no end: he likes to be cagey sometimes. He’ll say something vague with the sole purpose of making the other person curious, confused, or both. It leaves, like, questions in the back of your head that just start gnawing at your brain and won’t stop chewing away at your gray matter until you finally ask him to explain what the heck he was talking about. He does this on purpose to “bait” people into asking him questions or to continue with what he’s saying. So annoying!

I sigh, “Why’s that, Dad?”

He gives a little smile and continues, “Oh it’s just that this isn’t the first time I’ve heard the name “Tulpa” before, that’s all.”

NOW he has my total undivided attention and Tulpa’s too as we both unconsciously lean forward. Practically in sync, we both say, “It’s not!?”

He’s still smiling as he says, “Nope. First time I heard that name was when I was doing some monster research for a Castlevania Wiki I had been working on a while back.”

Tulpa practically gulps, “M-M-Monster...?”

“Well not really a monster,” he says back, “more like... a supernaturally, artificially created person.”

(There are some times when my Dad can be down right spooky and creepy. This was one of those times.)

Full Metal Alchemist immediately pops into my head, and without even hesitating, I ask, “Like a Homunculus?”

“Nah, more like...” he says before pausing his game and turning to Tulpa and I, “...an imaginary friend.” Tulpa and I both tilt our heads in confusion. Dad picks up on this and by now, he is practically glowing at this opportunity to share some weird thing he just happens to know something about.

He explains, “So there’s this word in Tibetan called “Sprul-Pa” which means “Manifestation”, okay? And in early Buddhism, this is used as the explanation for how Gautama Buddha could travel to heavenly realms and come back again. You could say he created a clone of himself in the other realm and then transmitted his consciousness to it from his body on Earth. Kind of like a-”

By now, Tulpa and I were clearly on the same wavelength as she asks, “a Shadow Clone!?” at the exact same time I was thinking of it. Believe it!

Dad’s silent for a moment as he thinks to himself before finally going, “...uhhh... I guess... you could say that. I was thinking “Dream Body” but I suppose a shadow clone could work too.” My Dad used to watch Naruto with me on Toonami years ago, so he knew full well what a shadow clone was.

He turns to face us as he continues talking, “The thing with a Tulpa is that it’s something made from nothing. A Homunculus, using your example, Lily, requires having the materials necessary to make an artificial being on hand before you can create them. But a Tulpa is willed into existence out of nothingness. It is created from the thoughts of the creator; known as a “Thoughtform” in some cases.”

(WHEN did my Dad even learn this stuff!?)

“The difference between a Tulpa and an imaginary friend,” my Dad continued to say, “is that while an imaginary friend is just that, someone that exists in your imagination, a Tulpa is made when someone’s thoughts are so strong that they will their imaginary friend into existence.”

I look over at Tulpa, and she is totally absorbed in what my Dad’s saying.

“Now from what I’ve read...” Oh my God, Dad! What have you even been reading!? “...it’s very difficult for one person alone to have enough psychic power to will a sentient being into creation. But if you had enough people thinking the same thing, and thinking about it hard enough, then, hypothetically, a Tulpa could be created.”

“So what you’re saying is if enough people think Bigfoot is real, then they can actually make it real just by believing in them?” I snark.

“Yeah, pretty much,” my Dad replies without detecting my snark at all.

“Or like...” Tulpa chimes in, “...how Tinkerbell is saved... by believing in fairies and... clapping hands?” I was a bit surprised Tulpa knew that since I couldn’t recall Disney’s Peter Pan having that scene in it.

Dad thinks about it for a moment, and then goes, “Hmmmmm... yeah! That too, I suppose.”

Right about then, Dad gets a notification on his phone. He pulls it out, looks at it, gets a somewhat serious look on his face, and then stands up and says, “Hey, I gotta make a phone call real quick. Mind if I...” he trails off.

“Yeah, sure thing, Dad,” I say back. He heads down the hallway to the guest bedroom and closes the door as he makes his call. It’s now just Tulpa and me in the living room, and we were both feeling super awkward. I turn to Tulpa and say, “So... did you know anything about all that?”

Tulpa shook her head, “N-n-no. First time I... I ever heard of... of it.” I could tell she was feeling nervous. She had started stuttering pretty badly.

All this time, I knew Tulpa was an apparition, but I never thought about what kind of apparition she was. It never really dawned on me that an apparition could have an origin story. With Tulpa, she was just... kind of there for me, and I never really questioned it. Her being her somehow felt, I dunno... “natural”, I guess.

I never thought I really needed to learn more about Tulpa, anyway. I mean, outside of the occasional mischief, Tulpa was perfectly harmless. Worst thing she ever did was the Pinkening (still don’t know how she did that), but that was partly on me because I was being a big dummy. Overall, she’s always been friendly, kind, and fun to be around, and that‘s always been good enough for me.

“You, uh...” I start to say, “...want to talk about it later?” Tulpa looks ahead of her kind of blankly, and I immediately add, “It’s okay if you don’t want to, Tulpa, I just-“

“Talk about what?” She asks, now looking at me kind of confused.

“About...” I trail off as I try to find the right words, “...about what my Dad just said and about... I dunno... where you came from?”

Tulpa clearly hadn’t thought about it before. She leaned back against the couch and audibly sighed (I think that was the first time I ever heard them sigh!), before saying, “I... don’t know... Lily...”

“Don’t know where you came from, or don’t know if you want to talk about it?” I asked her.

She thought for a moment before saying, “Both...”

I wanted to say something more to her, maybe give them some kind of reassurance, but I just couldn’t as long as my Dad was here! The frustration of wanting to talk about something with someone, but not being able to because of other people being around, is just AGONIZING! If only Dad would hurry up and leave, but when he says he’s going to beat a video game, he’s going to beat a video game. Problem was he hadn’t even made it to Dracula’s Castle yet, so who knew how much longer it would be?

Then Dad comes back in and says, “Hey, sorry about this, but I need to get going.”

HAAAAAALLEJUAH!!!

“Oh sweet merciful powers that be, THANK YOU! “ I thought to myself. I was worried things were going to get all cringy like a bad self-insert fanfic. “Aww, that’s too bad,” I fibbed out of politeness. I mean, he’s my Dad and I love him and all, but... y’know...

“Yeah, I got a call from work and they need me to help out with something. ‘Fraid I have to cut my visit short, Lily.” My Dad powered off the Nintendo system and began packing it up. But then he suddenly stopped, looked up, then looked back at me and said, “Hey, you want to borrow my NES for a bit!?”

Dad suddenly leaving to take care of something for work happens every now and then, so that was no big surprise. But Dad suddenly saying he has to leave to take care of something and leave his NES in MY care!? THAT scared the pants off me!

“Oh my God, Dad... you’re not dying are you!?” I ask with a half-serious tone.

“What!? No! What gave you that idea!?” He shoots back.

“Because that’s the NES you’ve had ever since you were a kid! You have NEVER let anyone else look after it! EVER!” I remind him because it is one-hundred percent true.

His lame-sauce excuse was: “Hey, both of your uncles used to look after it!”

And then I remind him, “That’s because you all lived in the same house with grandma and grandpa! Y’know, because you were all kids and everything!”

“They still took care of it,” he pouts.

“Only after they sneaked into your room, de-hooked it, and snuck it over to their room! You know I’ve heard the stories at the family gatherings!, right?” This is all completely true.

————————————-

My Dad is the oldest of three, and at family gatherings, like around Thanksgiving, he and my uncles used to tell as many embarrassing stories about each other as possible like they were trying to one-up each other. Like, “Hey, remember that time you stuck a LEGO tire up your nose and had to go to the Emergency Room?”

And my uncle’s all like, “I WAS FOUR!”

Good times....

...now where was I?

Oh right! Why leaving the Nintendo was a big deal!

————————————-

“C’mon, Dad,” I plead, “The only way I can see you willingly giving away your Nintendo, even if just for a little while, would be if you were on your death bed and filling out your last will and testament. So go on, spill it, what’s up with that?”

My Dad just had this look of offense on his face like I had seriously wounded him with my words. “I am NOT that overprotective of it!”

“Yes you are.”

“Okay, I am,” he admits way too quickly, “but I just thought that you having it might be a good idea in case you finally get some free time coming up. Best way to enjoy it is to play it, after all.”

I chuckle, “Dad, the only way work is going to give me enough time off to sit on my butt and play video games is if some horrible catastrophe caused the art store to shut down. Like, I dunno, a deadly virus or something.”

[EDIT, APRIL 12th, 2020: ME AND MY BIG FAT MOUTH!

AAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!]

Dad chuckles and say, “Yeah... you got a point there. Still, I think between you and your roommate, you’re both responsible adults now who can get some enjoyment out of it. I’m sure I can trust you two to take good care of it,” he says before raising an eyebrow, “or is there some reason I shouldn’t leave it here!?”

“Relax! We can look after it, Dad. Nothing’s going to happen to it,” I say as I whip my head back so fast it could have made a sonic boom. Just as I suspected, there was Tulpa sitting down in front of the Nintendo about ready to poke it with her finger. “Isn’t that right, Tulpa?” I say while looking straight at her.

“Y-yes...” she mutters.

Dad smiles at the two of us and then suddenly, out of the blue, he gives me this big ole bear hug and pats me on the back! It’s the same kind of hug he gave me on my first day at school, when I was leaving for summer camp, and when I moved into my freshman dorm for college. It was the kind of reassuring hug that says everything is going to be fine. “Ohhhhhhh, look at you growing up and being all responsible! I’m so proud of you, Lily!”

“Dad! Can’t breath, Dad!” I say before he finally lets go.

“Oh yeah, tomorrow, when you get a chance, make sure to pick up a couple packages of toilet paper,” he says casually, “your bathroom’s running low and now would be a good time to stock up.”

[EDIT April 12th, 2020: HE FREAKING KNEW!

HOW!?!?!?]

“Thanks for the tip, Dad,” I respond before saying the thing that led to my Dad saying the other thing that would make my brain do somersaults for the next few hours and ultimately come to you, dear diary, “What brought up that little nugget of wisdom? Dad-ly Intuition?” (Yes, that pun was intentional.)

“Well I’ve always considered myself to be a little psychic here and there,” he says about twenty-three seconds before the door closes and forty-five seconds before my face faults, “and you’ve always been a little psychic too, haven’t yah?”

“Sure Dad, I’ll catch you later,” I say waving goodbye.

“Take care, Lily! Keep in touch! Love you, sweetie!” he calls back as he’s walking into the hallway heading out,

“Love you too, Dad” I say as I close the door and lock the deadbolt. With that family obligation out of the way, I was feeling much better not having to worry about next weekend, not having to worry about Tulpa and Dad, and could just chill and relax and-

It was right about then that my eyes shot wide open as I stared ahead of me at nothing in particular. The gears in my head started turning faster and faster as the past few months living here started to tie together. Tulpa looks at me, slightly concerned. She’s still in her “disguise”, but looks genuinely concerned. She waves her hand it front of me and my mind is working at warp speed, so it doesn’t even register.

“Are you... okay... Lily?” she asks.

I slowly turn to look her in the eye, and then ask her flat out:

“Am I Psychic!?”

#my roommate is an apparition #reddpenn

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lilydalexf · 4 years ago

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Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Slippin’ Mickeys

Only 3 stories by Slippin’ Mickeys ended up at Gossamer, but she’s written many more stories than that. She’s also one of the few authors who posted numerous stories during the show’s original run and then again in the revival years. I’ve recced some of my favorites of her stories here, including Last Chance Falls and Currahee. Big thanks to Slippin’ Mickeys for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

I would say that it does and doesn't surprise me. It surprises me that anyone would want to read something I wrote all those years ago, (only in that I was an actual teenager at the time, and had no chops at all -- I've grown a lot as a writer, and honestly have trouble reading my old stuff because I would have made much different creative decisions now). But the fanfiction that came out of the original run of the show -- from almost day one -- was so rich and varied and a lot of it so well written that I am not the least bit surprised that people want to read it today. I go back and read old favorites often, and am always thrilled to find something that's new-to-me, even if it's 27 years old.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

The first thing I think about when I think about my fandom experience are the friends I made along the way. The X-Files came up with the internet, and there was a whole new way of connecting with people that liked the things that you liked. To this day, I am good friends with many people that I met through the show back in 1997-98. When the revival came about, I dove back in, and made new, more recent friendships that are just as rich. I love the show, but I also love the people I met along the way.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

I first got into the show's online community on some random message board that I think I probably found through a Yahoo search one day in a computer lab on my university's campus. I connected with one woman from Greece named Fay that day, who invited me to join a group of women that chatted about the show after it aired on Monday nights. After the first time I hooked up with them, we talked almost daily via ICQ. Later, in the early aughts, I found the forums on Mighty Big TV/Television Without Pity, where some of the most intelligent discussion was going on. The forums were heavily moderated, and so they were always on topic, and it was just a smart, funny, great place to be.

Eventually, I started working for TWoP as both a writer and moderator (surprise! A lot of people don't know this because TWoP protected the identities of their mods so well, but I was the X-Files board mod after Jessica left!). It was my first paid writing gig and opened doors for me both professionally and personally. Two TWoP recappers were in my wedding!

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

Fanfiction opened my eyes to storytelling as a medium. I'd obviously gone to school and read books, but it opened my eyes to words to could do and be. It was a heady time. There were stories of every stripe. Short, long, canon-compliant, AU, experimental, you name it. We had such gifted writers, too. To this day, I'd almost rather read a piece of well written fanfic than a good book. Fanfic made me want to be a storyteller myself.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

It was the 'ship. God bless the ship. My first episode was Never Again, but I didn't watch again until I was sitting with my college roommate freshman year and she was like "sorry, but I have to watch The X-Files on Sunday nights." That first episode was Redux. The next week was Redux II, and by then it was all over for me. The lengths Mulder and Scully would go to for each other? And the relationship wasn't even sexual? Here were two people who loved each other. Really loved each other. Selflessly. I was SO IN.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

At first, I started reading it. This was back when you could only watch the show in reruns or on those VHS tapes that were sold in three packs that had two eps on each tape (I still have the trading cards that came with them), so after I burned through the VHS options (of which there were few), and set my VCR to tape the weekly reruns on FX, I needed MORE. I found fanfic. And in fanfic, Mulder and Scully actually like, kissed and maybe even had sex! I read everything I could get my hands on. Pretty soon, I wanted to write it myself.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

Things are tough these days. It's a hard world to live in, and politics aside, it just feels like everything is falling apart around us. When I first found the show, my life was in a bit of upheaval and I dove into the fandom to distract myself. I'm doing the same thing these days. When the show ended, I left the fandom and lived without it for about 15 years. But when the revival came (and really only after finishing season 11 -- season 10 didn't do much for me), I dove back in. I have quite a few more responsibilities these days, but when I can't watch the news anymore, I log on to XF Twitter (I use my fandom account far more than my IRL account) or Tumblr and get lost for a while. And most nights find me reading or writing fanfic before bed. When the world gets better (I'm cautiously optimistic) and the show has been off the air for years and years, will I leave again? Maybe. But for now, it's once again my happy place.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Nothing hardcore. The X-Files is my ride or die.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

I do an occasional episode or movie rewatch. Not too often, but when I'm jonesing and have 45 free minutes, I'll put one on. But I'm writing fanfic again, and I get hit with inspiration at random and odd intervals, so it's safe to say I find myself thinking about Mulder and Scully probably more than is healthy.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

All the time. The old stuff, the new stuff, the good stuff. If I have five minutes and my kid is entertaining himself? I'll happy pull out an old favorite.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

I'm reluctantly abstaining from this question, as I'm still active in the fandom and I know that naming favorites will hurt some feelings.

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Of The Eight Winds is probably my favorite. I've had a lot of fun writing AU's lately. It's a nice creative outlet, taking our favorite agents and plunking them in a totally different world.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

Do I! I have a whole ass queue. It's frankly irresponsible.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I was writing professionally before I had a baby, and I took years off to be a stay at home mom. Once my kiddo was finally in school full time, I started writing again. With the pandemic, that's for the most part on hold, as I just don't have the bandwidth to dedicate to professional work. Fanfic is easier to play with when you only have five minutes here or there, and it's also great exercise when it comes to plotting and prose, so I'm sticking with fic for now. When the kiddos are all back in school, maybe I can start getting paid again.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

I get a lot of prompts that I just adore. And honestly, a lot of times, I'll post a stupid picture or ridiculous prompt of my own on Twitter and get dared to write it. If the idea gets stuck in my craw, I generally have to exorcise the demon.

What's the story behind your pen name?

Bad Blood had just aired and I was obsessed with it. I wanted to pay homage to it, so took Mulder's "who slipped him the mickey?" quote and ran with it. Do I regret that? Sometimes.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

My husband knows and is supportive. He's a working writer, so he supports my endeavors, though I know he wishes I were doing something I could monetize. But it makes me happy, and ultimately: happy wife, happy life and all that jazz.

The friends of mine that I've made through the fandom all know and are super supportive.

As for the rest, well... I have a nom de plume on purpose!

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

All my newest work is on AO3. My old stuff can be found on various archives. Like the truth... it's out there.

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

I'd leave it with: we're a blessed fandom. The show we stan (even with the real stinkers, there's always something to love) keeps giving, the fellow fans are all some of the smartest, sweetest, and most dedicated people out there... we've been blessed for 25 years, and I don't see that stopping any time soon.

(Posted by Lilydale on August 11, 2020)

#new post #old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #slippinmickeys #xf fanfic author interviews

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senorarelojes · 4 years ago

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Fic: But Not Tonight (3/?)

Summary: Dave asks his best friend Alan to go to the prom with him. Pairing: Dave/Alan Notes: One of the silly little things I wrote for @pinksyndication @what-could-have-been @songsofgayanddevotion @rvphinas-blog!

Part 1: here. Part 2: here.

During the walk home, Dave finds himself floating on cloud nine - as well as being terrified beyond belief. He can’t believe his gamble paid off, and that Alan actually said yes to going to the prom with him. He still doesn’t know what he’s going to wear, what Alan is going to wear, how he’s going to pick Alan up and get them both to the dance, what they’re going to do after.

After. Dave doesn’t let himself think that far ahead. If he does, his head might explode with one too many secret fantasies.

No one can blame him. For the past two years, Dave has had plenty of time to stock up on fantasies. He remembers The Moment as though it were yesterday; they were only fifteen then, hanging out with Martin and Fletch in the Wilders’ back garden on a Sunday summer afternoon, all of them baking in the heat in their shorts and little else, drinking iced tea and listening to Lana Del Rey on someone’s bluetooth speakers, flicking ice cubes at one another and laughing. Then Alan turned towards Dave with a lovely, intimate smile, the one with all his teeth shyly peeking out, his extraordinarily long lashes almost golden in the sun.

Alan proceeded to tell him some daft joke, but Dave remembers looking at him in that moment like his heart is exploding in his chest and thinking, Oh no.

Since then, Dave has spent endless nights wrestling with his notions about his own sexuality. He’s gone out with plenty of girls in the hopes that he might forget he is secretly in love with his best friend. It has never worked. People are still talking about that horrific showdown in the school canteen a few months ago where Joanne Fox publicly dumped him with extreme and deserving prejudice; she’d been convinced that Dave was in love with another girl. He hadn’t bothered to correct her.

He’s since spent the last few months working up the nerve to ask Alan to the prom. It was quite a feat, given that he spends almost every day with Alan. The only exceptions are when Alan has to work with Flood on their projects for the AV Club; Dave spends those Alan-less days either plotting how to get Alan to the prom, or being so jealous of Flood that his teeth hurt.

When he gets home, Sue is face-masking on the sofa with her feet up and watching some Family Guy rerun. She perks up when she spots him, turning the TV volume down. “How did it go?” she asks him eagerly. “What did he say?”

Dave is tempted to draw out the suspense a bit, but he suspects it might be impossible: he can’t stop himself from smiling like an utter twat. “He said yes,” Dave told her with a laugh as Sue punches the air in triumph. “Well-- technically he didn’t say the word ‘yes’ but he said ‘pick me up at eight’. So that counts, right?”

“Of course it counts.” Sue is smiling so widely that her face mask is cracking. “Everything counts!”

They talk for a bit about what Dave is going to wear before Sue goes to wash her face, so Dave goes up to his room and flops down onto his bed. He texts the group chat, asking Mart and Fletch if they want to share a car to the prom. They both reply in the affirmative, except for Alan who just sends a mysterious smiling emoji and says nothing else. Dave sends one right back, grinning like a lunatic when Fletch asks if they’re both on drugs.

Putting aside his phone, Dave touches his lips in wonder, replaying the memory of Alan’s kiss over and over again. Oh, Dave is going to be prepared for the next kiss and not just stare at Alan like some slack-jawed yokel. Next time, he’s going to tilt his head and capture Alan’s mouth proper, slide his tongue in and really taste him, weave his hands into Alan’s longish hair and make him gasp.

Dave shuts his eyes with a happy sigh. He has five days to prepare for prom, and he’s going to make them count.

#dalan #fanfiction #but not tonight

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moonstruckbucky · 5 years ago

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Come Over (3/7)

Summary: You’re new to New York City. Fresh out of post-grad and wanting a change of pace, and this change comes in more ways than one.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x fem!Reader. Neighbor AU.

Warnings for Series: Fluff, angst, pining, the ush! Also, swearing, because nobody ever washed my mouth out with soap.

Notes: So I’ve daydreamed about a neighbor AU for an embarrassing amount of time, and I need something to get my creative juices flowing again. So, ta-da.

Series Masterlist // Main Masterlist

A month into your new life in New York, you feel more settled in. Your apartment doesn’t look like a warehouse piled high with boxes, and you’ve even spent some of your signing bonus on artwork to hang on the walls and a few plants to bring some life to the space. You’re even considering getting a cat.

At work, you frequently eat your lunch with not only Wanda and Vis, but the three other women on your floor. Maria, Charlotte, and Sarah are all mothers, so they don’t usually attend the girls’ night out you and Wanda plan every week, but they’re still pleasant to sit and chat with regardless. It’s made you feel even more at home at Stark Industries.

Speaking of, Tony is a riot, you’ve learned. You’ve come out of your shell a little more with each day you work for him, and it’s mostly in thanks to Tony’s easy-going personality. Though he’s clearly a workaholic on top of being addicted to caffeine (for anyone else this might’ve been a destructive combination but Tony seems to wield both extremely well), he feels more like a weird brother/father figure than a boss. He keeps most projects secret from you, but occasionally he’ll show you a new update or ask for your opinion as a consumer. You’re honest with him without kissing his ass too much about it.

Since he lives closer, Sam comes over a couple times a week to hang out with you and catch up on your favorite shows. He tries to bring Clint with him most times, but being neck-deep in a new case makes it hard for him to get away to visit. You settle for FaceTiming him during the week even though it isn’t the same.

It’s one of your weekly nights with Sam, who reclines in your new armchair with his feet up and an open beer in his fist. You’re catching up on Mindhunter with him, relaxed on the couch under a big fluffy blanket with your own beer. In between episodes Sam has been telling you all about the girl he’s been seeing, to which you demand you meet her for approval.

He rolls his eyes and asks, “Isn’t that my job?”

You scoff. “You’re my best friend, Sam, and as my best friend, I’ve got to make you’re taken care of just as much as you’re taking care of her.”

He grumbles under his breath but you can see a slight pinkness to his dark skin that makes you smirk in victory. A few moments of silence and then:

“So what about you and Neighbor Boy then? What’s going on there?” While your smirk drops, his widens. You take a long pull from your beer.

“Absolutely nothing, Sam.”

He snorts and gestures with his beer. “You have coffee dates almost every week!”

“He helps me put furniture together! There’s absolutely nothing but friendship there, I assure you.”

A doubtful look characterized by lowering of his eyebrows and pursed lips. A responding eye roll and scrunched up face, a silent don’t give me that look.

“Want another?” you ask, needing to busy yourself in order to keep your unusually attractive neighbor out of your head. Throwing the blanket off your lap, you stand up and accept the empty bottle Sam holds out to you.

If he notices that you take a little longer to fetch two more beers, he doesn’t say anything when you get back to the couch. He presses ‘play’ on the remote and the topic of your neighbor is dropped.

For an hour.

“So, you’re coming next Sunday for our football party right?” Sam asks.

Once a month during football season, Sam and Clint co-host a party at your brother’s apartment. You make your five-layer chip dip and Sam brings a massive amount of wings while Clint provides endless beer and a giant wrap-around couch that seats eight. (You’re still not sure how he fit the damn thing in his apartment.) To antagonize Clint and to make the day a little more fun, you and Sam always show up in your matching Patriots jerseys representing the McCourty twins.

“Of course I’ll be there! I never miss it!” you reply with an incredulous look. Sam holds up his hands.

“Hey, just wanted to make sure you didn’t have any new furniture that needed assembling that day.” He chortles when you chuck the throw pillow under your hip at him and nail him in the chest. “I’m kidding. Mostly. But, uh, I was gonna say, if you wanted to invite him, you could. Not as a date, don’t you throw that bottle! Jesus. Crazy. Just, Clint and I think he’s cool and it’d be cool to have another dude around.”

You watch him for a few moments, see no trace of his earlier teasing, and sigh and relax back into the couch. “I’ll think about it, okay?”

“All I ask.”

Sam, bless him, leaves you be about Bucky for the remainder of your evening together. When he’s gone, your mind can’t rest just yet, so you open up a new beer and put on a rerun of CSI. You’ll regret staying up so late in the morning, but for now, you let your mind get sucked into the emotional episode of Warrick’s funeral.

Regret is a bitter bitch, and the next morning it comes in the form of a prominent headache paired with under-eye bags your makeup barely hides. A three-hour binge of CSI definitely wasn’t your smartest move considering you’ve a fairly important meeting with Tony in about two hours. Hair tied back in a ponytail and makeup...done but slightly unsatisfactory, you slip into a black pencil skirt with a mustard blouse tucked in. Your feet slide into a pair of black pumps and you throw on a jacket to combat the cool October morning.

You know your face shows your exhaustion as you give yourself a final once over, but there’s not much you can do short of downing copious amounts of coffee. Tote bag slung over your shoulder, you head out of your apartment with a sigh. As you’re locking your door, the one next to yours opens, and Bucky steps out looking ten kinds of delicious in his running gear, tattoos on full display thanks to his tight tank top.

You grunt when he tells you good morning, chuckles good-naturedly until he sees your eyes. Then he’s frowning in concern and you’re almost desperate to do anything to wipe it off. Such a man should not be frowning.

“Did you get any sleep last night?” he asks, falling into step with you towards the elevator. You resist the urge to rub your eyes in order to preserve your makeup.

“Not really. Sam stayed till about ten and then I stayed up a little while longer. Guess I just couldn’t fall asleep.” To punctuate your sentence, a long yawn escapes. Bucky stands next to you in the elevator, close enough you can feel the heat radiating from him and it’s wholly distracting. “And I have a meeting in a couple hours and I’m not really sure how I’m going to get through it without dozing a few hundred times. Know anyone who can hook me up with a caffeine IV?”

He laughs, the sound echoing in the small space, and despite the warmth and your jacket you still suppress a shiver.

“I’m afraid not. Hey, do you have a few minutes? We can go get a cup now, if you want,” he offers, blue eyes boring into yours, and you nod before you can really think about it. His smile brightens up the entire elevator, and then he’s leading you with a hand on your back out into the lobby and finally out onto the street.

He takes you to a place between your apartment building and the subway, stands with his hands in his pockets as you both wait in line. Sam’s invite bounces around in your head, your nerves expressing themselves in the form of tapping your fingers on your arms, which are crossed over your chest.

Bucky and you order your respective drinks and he reaches into his pocket for his wallet. Your hand on his arm stops him, has him looking down at you with those depthless blue eyes.

“I’ve got it,” you say softly with a small smile. He opens his mouth, no doubt to protest, but you merely hand over some cash to the cashier. “You’ve helped me a ton this past month. Let me at least start paying you back with coffee.”

The blush that overtakes his face has your insides fluttering with giddiness. You have to bite your lip to keep back your grin, your entire body warming over the fact you’ve made this beautiful giant of a man blush. As the two of you stand off to the side and wait for your orders, you feel a small boost in confidence.

“Hey Bucky, I was wondering—” You’re cut off by the shrill ringing of his phone. He sighs and pulls the device from his pocket, and if you hadn’t been eyeing him so closely, you’d miss the slight downward twitch of his mouth.

“Excuse me just one sec okay?” he says apologetically. When he looks up at you, you know he means it and you nod. He smiles tightly and walks off down the small hallway that leads to the bathrooms, accepting the call with a hushed “Hi”.

You wait patiently until the barista calls your name and Bucky’s, and you grab both cups and sip lightly from yours while Bucky’s on his call. You can see him in the hall, shoulders hunched and free hand swinging about as he gestures. That pinched look is on his face again and you feel a faint tug in your gut that has you wondering if you’re close enough friends to ask.

Before you can decide one way or another, he’s pulling his phone from his ear and shoving it back in his pocket.

“Sorry about that,” he sighs, accepting the coffee you hand to him with a close-lipped smile. He takes a long drink from it, wincing a little at the burn, and licks his top lip. It’s horribly distracting for a minute. “What were you going to ask me?”

“Oh, um, I was just wondering if you maybe—oh shit.” A quick glance down at your watch shows you’re going to be late if you wait any longer. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to get going otherwise Tony’s going to kill me with his newest project. Um, I’ll see you later?”

Bucky’s blue eyes are slightly widened in surprise at your sudden departure. “Y-Yeah, definitely. Maybe you can tell me about this new project.” It’s said with a wink that tickles your insides.

“Maybe. If I’m not sworn to secrecy. Bye, Bucky!”

“Have a good day at work. And thanks for the coffee!” he calls out as you fly out of the cafe.

Your exhaustion only worsens as the day goes on. The meeting you’d sat in on was nothing short of boring—even Tony dozed off a few times, but only you’d taken notice because you were seated beside him and heard the tiny little snores. Your planner had been filled with new doodles of suns, clouds, flowers, and a tiny little witch in the margins. You’re still unsure why you’d been required to attend this meeting; you have a pile of things on your desk that could have been done in the two hours you sat uncomfortably in your chair, listening to the other tech geniuses go back and forth on new design ideas.

By the time it’s time for you to leave, you feel dead on your feet, which are cramping in your shoes. Your neck, shoulders, and back are also killing you due to sitting in your chair and hunching over the screen built into your desk. The subway ride home has you almost falling asleep, lulled by the gentle swaying of the car and the four hours’ sleep you got the night before.

It’s a slow climb to your apartment, and as you pass Bucky’s door you hesitate. You never did get to ask him this morning and so, because you’re too damn tired to be shy, you turn and knock three times on his door. From behind the wood you can make out a scuffle, and then the door is yanked open and your mouth runs dry.

Bucky stands before you, shirtless and gleaming with sweat. He’s breathless, that broad chest heaving up and down. There’s a smattering of dark hair across his chest and beneath his navel that disappears into the band of his shorts. The hair on his head is mussed, as if he’d been sleeping or hand run his hands through it.

“Y/N,” he gasps. Crimson creeps up his neck and across his chest, stains his cheeks as well as he avoids looking at your eyes. He glances over his shoulder briefly before turning back to you, eyes cast down at the neckline of your blouse. “Wha-What are you, um, doing here?”

“I, uh, wanted to ask you if you wanted to come to my brother’s with me for the football game on Sunday?” you ask in an equally breathless rush.

Bucky seems surprised by the question and is about to answer when a second, female voice calls from behind him, “James?”

A blonde head appears over his shoulder and the slender woman tucks herself under Bucky’s arm, looking equally as disheveled. You feel the color drain from your face even though it warms under the implication that you've...interrupted. There’s no question of what they’d been, or had about to have been, doing because the blonde’s hair is ruffled just like Bucky’s, her full lips red and kiss-bitten. Her blouse is untucked and unbuttoned.

You can’t take your eyes off her, nor she you as she lays a manicured hand on Bucky’s chest, a universal female power move that says he’s mine.

Bucky looks as awkward as you feel, shifting from bare foot to bare foot even as his hand rests on the woman’s shoulder. He clears his throat and gestures with his free hand to the woman, whose eyes have not left your form and are currently on their third sweep of your entire figure.

“Uh, Y/N, this is Sharon.”

“His girlfriend,” Sharon interjects. A sideways tilt of her lips that you know means no good. She reaches out with that manicured hand for yours and you shake it quickly, dropping it as if it’s burned you.

In a way, it has. It’s burned you so badly on the inside that you want nothing more than to duck into your apartment with your tail between your legs. You can feel the flames licking at your gut, sliding up your esophagus to singe your throat. It’s bitter, the burn, and it puts a pressure in your throat and behind your eyes.

“Sharon, this is Y/N, our new neighbor I was telling you about.” He won’t look at you, focusing instead on the blank wall just over your shoulder.

His sudden refusal to look at you pairs badly with your embarrassment, from both interrupting and for ever thinking you might have a chance, and you wish the floor would open up and swallow you whole.

Chapter Four

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky x you #bucky x reader #bucky barnes angst #bucky barnes au #neighbor au #neighbor!bucky #bucky barnes neighbor au

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scoundrels-in-love · 5 years ago

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Did you slip in through open doors and sit down, just to look at me like that (every day)

Brienne doesn't mean to lie to her father. She just wants him to stop trying to set her up with men who aren't Jaime Lannister, whom she's secretly in love with. Unfortunately, that's exactly who eagerly inserts himself in the narrative as her fake boyfriend. And her father is coming to King's Landing in two weeks.

Truly, what could go wrong?

Also on AO3. Part of @jbmonthlymadness Mutual Pining challenge.

It starts like most lies and life changing avalanches - quite innocently.

Brienne is sitting on a couch in the living room, a sports game playing on the screen mutely while she chats with her father over a videocall. Jaime is puttering around in the kitchen, preparing snacks for the movie they’re planning to watch after the game ends and all things considered, it’s a lot like most of her Sunday nights.

Except her dad had left the matter of dating alone for a few good months and she definitely isn’t overjoyed by the theme's revival. “Brienne, he really likes your work and I think there’d be no harm meeting him for a coffee after the convention.”

“Dad, no. Thank you, but no.” She shifts uncomfortably, considers calling Jaime over because the movie is ‘starting’, so she can end the call early.

“I know you think you don’t need relationships and maybe you don’t need them, but I just think you deserve to have someone who loves and respects you, admires you and what you do,” her dad says and she can feel the well-intended love warming her all the way from Tarth. She longs for a huge beach umbrella to hide under. “And that’s exactly what my friends do,” she says, firmly, and the knowledge it’s true fills her chest. She cannot entirely blame her father’s worry - the girl that had left Tarth would not have been able to imagine or believe the group of people that surround her nowadays, either. The warmth, support and sometimes the absolute nonsense she has found with them still feels almost unreal at times.

Her dad sighs, brows furrowing with soft concern in a way that makes her feel guilty somehow. “You know what I mean, Starlight. You don’t have to keep seeing him, but won’t you consider at least one meeting?”

And this is when the most horrible, most escapist idea bounces off her tongue, bypassing her brain entirely. “It wouldn’t be fair to the man, because I just started seeing someone, dad.”

The silence following is no longer than a blink, but she feels as if it has turned into the time stretch she is going to need to hurriedly pack her bags, go to the airport and leave for Pentos, never to return again. She has lied to her father only a handful of times, and though he only found out once (when she had lied about why she had broken Connigton’s nose), this one is ancient parchment thin because she has no followup whatsoever.

“Really? Who is it?” Selwyn leans closer to the phone, an exact mix of disbelief and excitement such a statement would call for. Her stomach is both knotted up and rolling around, as if looking for an escape route.

“Yes,” she responds, turning to call for Jaime for some chips in a horrible attempt to bargain for time to use lost Asshai magics to summon a person who doesn’t exist.

Except her roommate is already standing behind the couch, plate of snacks in his hand and grin on his face. He swoops down, propping his chin on her shoulder and she can feel the heat radiating from his brilliant smile as he says: “It’s me.”

Her stomach finds a trap door and falls straight into the abyss.

Her dad’s eyebrows shoot up and this time, he leans back, as if to inspect the picture they both paint, squished in the tiny frame of her camera. She can feel he finds it unconvincing. So she does the only reasonable thing: turns her head and presses a brief kiss to the corner of Jaime’s mouth.

“Yes,” Brienne says for the second time that night and it feels just as condemning. Her lips are still burning.

“I finally gathered my courage and confessed to her recently, but I am still in the process of convincing her of the endless depth of my devotion, hence her hesitancy to mention it immediately, Mr. Tarth.”

He sounds so perfectly boy-next-door, sweet and respectful, all the things she knows he is not (at least the respectful part), but Jaime’s always liked her father and been an excellent actor. It’s rare when he uses the skill to look like anything else than an utter asshole, though, so in any other situation she’d marvel at the sight. But she can’t, her mind exists only to force her lips into, hopefully, a natural smile and a nod in the direction of her father.

“Well, that’s great news! I was wondering if you’d ever get to it,” her dad grins and she almost asks him to repeat it, because it makes no sense , but he isn’t done talking yet. “I will see you two after the convention, then? I look forward to your lecture, Starlight. And the whole story of how the two of you got together.”

She nods dumbly, exchanges good night wishes with her dad (accompanied by “Good night, Mr. Tarth!” in sing-song voice) and then ends the call. The relief doesn’t set in, like Brienne had hoped.

Jaime plops down next to her, looking completely unbothered as he turns the volume back up. The movie is about to start, but she has about a million questions, for herself and more importantly - for Jaime.

“Why did you do that?”

“Well, I couldn’t let your lie fall apart the minute you said it. That’s not what friends do.” He stresses the word strangely, with almost a brittle edge, but Brienne is not equipped to decipher it right now.

“But now we will have to pretend to be dating and if we fake a breakup, how will we explain you still live with me?”

“You haven’t been dating me for a month and already think about breaking up? I will do a better job now that I am aware of it,” he grins, easy and bright, like he has just discovered their favorite childhood cartoon Blue Knight is having a rerun on Saturday mornings, instead of making light of a new and nerve wrecking variable of their lives.

Instead of processing any of it, Brienne punches his shoulder slightly, at which he groans in an exaggerated manner. “I never agreed to being manhandled outside the bedroom.”

Her brain, thoroughly deep fried by the events of tonight, pulls itself together in that moment to create a vivid image of Jaime being manhandled in the bedroom. Briene inhales sharply, but somehow manages to turn exhale into something else than an eager noise.

Before her brain decides to cope by making the image into a clip, she focuses on the real matter at hand. “Jaime, this is serious . We just lied to my father and now we will have to pretend to be dating indefinitely, unless we have a faux amicable breakup, because I don’t want to pretend you’re not my friend for the rest of my life.” Somewhere in the abyss, her stomach convulses at the thought.

At this, he turns to face her, more serious, but with last remnants of playful grin gilding his words. “So, it was a little spontaneous, but you were about to invent a man who’d always be away on business trips and ask Sansa photoshop fake couple photos, weren’t you?” Brienne bristles, but can’t say no , when it had been one of the panicked thoughts running headfirst in the side of her skull.

He leans in, arm that has been resting on the back of couch coming to wrap around her shoulder and pull her closer and last vestiges of lighthearted grin turn into something she doesn’t quite have the words for, as his teeth sink in his bottom lip just so and his eyes look darker and wilder than any forest she’s ever known. “Believe me, I will be way more convincing .”

Brienne has to bite the inside of her cheek to not blurt out that’s one of the things I’m afraid of . How is she supposed to walk through this unscatched when his well-meant game and her own yearnings will cut her into like fine silver wire?

He seems to take her silence as agreement and backs off a little, giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “We will figure it out, B. War council tomorrow. But for now, let’s just watch the movie, okay?”

His gaze is warm now, like a lovely summer day in shade, and she is comforted by it enough to agree. But not enough to actually be able to focus on the movie instead of replaying tonight’s events in her mind, asking herself again and again why she had lied. Jaime chastises her for it a few times and seems to gradually grow tenser, too, until they call it a night earlier than they normally would.

“Don’t worry about it too much and just sleep,” he tells her for good night and his concern drops a ladder in the bottomless pit where her stomach still resides, while his smile sheds some light in it.

And when Brienne curls up in her bed a little later, she knows she lied because she does feel taken, if only in her heart. She’s in love with Jaime, has been for a long time now. It’s never been something to really think about, just a fact that sometimes fills her with glow and pinpricks of yearning when she wonders just how the lines of their friendship would blur into something more if it were possible.

Except now she will have to walk the line between pretense and her secret fantasy without revealing it.

She is so, so fucked.

#braime #Jaime x Brienne #braime ff #rainy writes stuff #my fic #Oh No #this is multichapter obviously #we're all worried me included #but I have lot of free time in April SO HOPEFULLY this bodes well

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minyoongijjangjjangmanboongboong · 6 years ago

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Sweet Dreams Chapter One

Lucid dreaming: The process of being aware that one is dreaming. Some researchers believe that in lucid dreaming, the individual may be able to change the outcome of the dream or control their degree of participation in the imaginary (dream) environment.

Description: Lee Eunbyul has been plagued with hellish nightmares since she was a child. Not the sort of nightmares you may be familiar with. There are no monsters to evade, no serial killers to outrun, no auditoriums of classmates in front of whom to stand naked. Instead there is just...darkness. Endless darkness. With professional help, the dreams come less frequently. But after moving away from home to live with her sister, Eunbyul’s nightmare returns, only this time it’s different. This time...she’s not alone.

What would you do if you had the chance to change the outcome of not only your dreams, but your life?

Genre: Romance, Drama, Fluff, Angst, Slow Burn

Pairing: Namjoon x (f) OC

Word Count: 8.0k

Tags: Non-Idol!Au, Producer!Namjoon, Bookstore Clerk!Seokjin, Potter!Jimin, Producer!Yoongi, Dancer!Hoseok

Warnings: Frequent mentions of mental illness, infrequent swearing and mentions of alcohol

A/N: Hey guys! Here we are at the start of a new series! Ahhhh I can’t believe it. I’m so so excited about this one, so I really hope you guys like it. I hope I can continue it with your support! I tried uploading yesterday, but it didn’t get much traction, so I’m trying again today! Hopefully this time it works out. Regardless, I’m really enthusiastic about this plot so I’m excited to hear your thoughts! Please don’t be shy and send feedback, critique, questions, theories, and comments my way. I’ll be sure to respond to all asks I receive within a day of receiving them! Links will be added later, so for now check my masterlist to find previous chapters!

And again, if you want to follow my Twitter, my username is @/plzpunchmebts. I’m super active over there and hopefully in the future I’ll do some livestreams/chats with you all!

- Mercury

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Masterlist

Weekly updates: Sunday, 1PM (PST)

Eunbyul

Some people say dreams don’t mean anything. That we assign a story to them when we wake up to make sense of all those disjointed electrical impulses, to glean meaning from the random energy. I always kinda liked that theory. Something about it is a little charming: finding the reason in the chaos. I read somewhere that dreams might serve as a form of psychotherapy, letting us deal with difficult issues without bringing them into waking life. I don’t like this theory as much. I also read somewhere that Sigmund Freud thought dreams give us an insight into our unconscious.

I really don’t like that one.

The air was quiet, half-dead after most of the customers had taken their leave, and smelled of instant coffee and old books. Rows of bookshelves lined the scuffed wood floor, endless greenery swaying in hanging baskets or draping over the tops of shelves. Distantly, I heard the sound of the old coffeemaker straining. Sunset rapidly approached on the horizon, encroaching on the city like a curtain. With a sigh, I let my eyes slide from the tabletop beneath my fingers to the window beside me, overlooking the broken outline of stout buildings, green hillsides, and ocean beyond. My eyes ached a little from straining them for hours and I took a moment to give them a rub with my palms, jimmying my glasses up my nose so they pressed into my forehead.

“Need some coffee?”

I jumped, my glasses clattering onto the old table, and I squinted up toward the voice. Chagrined, my cheeks flamed and I scrambled to grab my glasses once more, placing them carefully on the bridge of my nose so I could see him properly. There he stood, terribly handsome with wide eyes and full lips half-parted, brows raised as he looked down at me like a peculiar creature to study. Kim Seokjin.

When I took a moment to really look at him, there wasn’t a single thing I didn’t like. From the caramel top of his head to the bits of smooth forehead that showed through his hair to his playful round eyes to his lopsided half-smile.

“You okay?” he asked, leaning down at the waist to examine me.

My back went rigid and I coughed a little, slamming my book shut and standing to my feet. “I…I was about to leave,” I said without looking directly at him. If I did, I might embarrass myself again.

He chuckled and watched me shove my things into my satchel haphazardly, edges of paper sticking out at odd angles and several book corners straining against the canvas fabric. With a bow, I walked past him in the narrow aisle, careful not to touch him.

“Take care!” he called, whistling as he wandered back toward the register in the corner. He greeted the customer waiting there with a smile.

I watched from the doorway for a moment, scanning him in profile. Even his shapeless maroon bookstore smock looked handsome on him. He nodded gently as the customer made idle conversation, the two of them chatting easily. He placed her books into a paper bag and slid them across the counter, resting his chin in his hand and raising his eyes to offer his full attention. The customer, a young girl maybe a few years my senior, flushed just a little and a nervous smile spread across her face, eyes flitting around as she avoided his gaze.

I sighed and pushed the front door open, exiting to the sound of the overhead bell.

“You smell like bad coffee,” remarked Gaeul as I fell onto the plush living room couch.

She sat in front of the TV on the floor, criss-crossed, nursing a can of lukewarm beer as reruns of Produce 48 droned on. “Went to the bookstore,” I mumbled into a pillow, laying face-down on my stomach with my legs bent against the arm of the couch.

She reached back and gave my arm a smack before returning her attention to the screen. “Stupid,” she said.

I sighed and nodded, reaching out my fingers toward her. Without saying a word, she handed me her can and I took a greedy sip, wincing as the stuff slid down my throat. I bumped the can against her shoulder once I was finished and silently she retrieved it. I let my arm dangle, fingers brushing the plastic-covered floor, and shut my eyes.

“Did you talk to him?”

“Mhm.”

“What’d you say?” she asked.

I opened one eye. “Something dumb.”

She nodded, gaze glued to the television. “Predictable,” she said.

I inhaled slowly, glancing toward the new mural she was working on. A nature scene, the wall behind the TV was now dedicated to a half-finished paint project Gaeul had started the week after I moved in. Green pine trees were poking through grayish fog that ended abruptly where the unpainted white wall began. She’d been following a Bob Ross tutorial after seeing a video of someone else doing it online, but lacked the followthrough to see it to completion. The floor was still covered in plastic tarps from the living room to the kitchen, and each step crinkled, but it made cleaning easier. Consider cleaning your rent, Gaeul had said when she agreed to take me in, At least until you get a job.

“Wanna order in?” she asked, eyes affixed to the television.

We’d ordered in more times in the last few weeks here than we ever had at our parents’ house, mostly because of me. Chinese food containers formed skyscrapers in the recycling bin and not one of Gaeul’s nice ceramic plates had seen use since I moved in.

I sighed, shutting my eyes once more, and gave a defeated nod. “Yeah,” I said.

I washed my hands in the quiet restroom at Hyejin’s Books, trying not to look too long at my gaunt reflection in the mirror. Since moving, my skin had gone lackluster from lack of time outside and my once-long hair was now chopped short, curling from the beach town humidity, sticking up around my shoulders. Why’d you cut it? Gaeul had asked upon my arrival at her apartment. I hadn’t answered, only shrugged. After all, how was I supposed to explain to my sister that cutting it off felt like the only thing I could do? The only thing that made me feel like I was moving forward, even a little?

I adjusted my round rims on my nose bridge and patted my flushed cheeks, nodding once as I turned on my heel toward the exit. But as my fingers clasped around the doorknob, I heard a distinctive sniffle coming from the farthest stall. My back stiffened. Was someone crying? I swallowed hard, body like firm glass, and waited with bated breath for the sound to come again. Had I been preening in that bathroom while this stranger cried? All along?

I peeked over my shoulder, just a little, and bent enough to see the ground beneath the stalls. Indeed, a pair of sneakered feet rested on the polished linoleum, and a person sitting on the ground attached to them. I swallowed hard and lingered in the doorway, awaiting another sniffle, another sign of distress.

But none came. Just silence.

And despite my misgivings, I simply exhaled and absolved myself of guilt. Whoever they were, they didn’t want to be bothered or they’d be making themselves known. I didn’t want to risk upsetting them further, or earning someone’s anger. I pushed the door open and made my way out into the narrow hallway, my mind hanging back in that bathroom.

Gently, I repositioned my meager belongings — wallet, glasses case, memo pad — back into my bag with a sigh. Seokjin wasn’t working, and while he wasn’t the only reason to come to a lazy bookstore and kill time, a place where I knew I wouldn’t be in anybody’s way, he was a big part of why I braved the two-block walk along a busy main street nearly every day. How pathetic. I stared down at the tan skin of my hands, still poised to shove a book or two in my bag, and sighed. What use were hands if they were idle?

I shook my head. A flash of that endless darkness crossed my mind. If I thought too much about my disappointments I’d have the bad dream.

But as I turned on my heel and stepped into the walkway, I heard the sound of footsteps rapidly approaching. Perhaps if I’d have been more alert, the sound would have made me pause, but my mind still lingered on that sniffle. I was making something out of nothing, right? It wasn’t even my business, really. If they wanted to cry in a bookstore, they had that right, didn’t they? Who was I to pry anyway? And what if asking if they were okay made them mad at me?

My body collided with someone else’s. Someone solid, with more flesh and height than I had.

“Ah!” exclaimed a voice from in front of me, too loud for the mellow bookstore.

Another bookstore employee, the girl was holding a beautiful potted plant in her gentle hands, and as if in slow motion, she was swaying back on her heels from the force of our collision. With long, pin-straight black hair and a crooked smile, she was the goofy sort of pretty that made you feel at ease. Or at least, it should make you feel at ease. Unfortunately, looking at her now as she peered down at me with wide, chestnut eyes and lips forming a surprised ‘O’ I felt nothing short of panicked. She swung her hand out, seeking purchase, and clasped hard onto the strap of my satchel.

“Ah, sor-,” I began, voice weak, but before I could continue I heard the distinctive rrrriiiiip of fabric tearing apart.

Too late.

I didn’t even have time to mourn the torn-open satchel because with her pulling so hard in one direction and me still walking in the other, when the tether between us snapped she ended up yanking me down with her. Arms flailing as they scrambled to cushion my fall, my knuckles brushed something hard and another upsetting noise ripped through the quiet store, like someone had thrust open the emergency exit on a plane.

Crash!

I sat on my hands and knees, eyes wide and watering and focused on the ground in front of me to avoid looking at the ground beside me where I knew the carnage lie. Out of my peripheral, however, I saw the unmistakable array of broken pottery, mingling with moist soil and prematurely torn leaves. It seems my momentum had been strong enough to cause a casualty, and I’d grabbed the beautiful potted plant she’d been trying to protect on the way down.

“Oh no!” she cried, horror etched into her gentle features.

The two of us lie in a heap, limbs tangled, belongings strewn about in all directions. My heart was racing, face hot. I eyed the broken pot as it lay splayed out on the ground beside my fingertips. The shock and embarrassment had rendered me immobile, sitting slack-jawed on all fours, eyes wide. Why had I done that? Why hadn’t I contained my fall? Why couldn’t I keep from being in somebody’s way?

“Shoot…,” she mumbled as she scrambled toward the wreckage on her knees. She began collecting the jagged clay pieces, but before she could handle too many I jumped and clasped her hands to stop her. “Huh?” she asked, eyes round as she turned to me.

“You’ll cut yourself,” I said, eyes on the pieces.

I pursed my lips and turned the remains of my satchel upside down, wrapping my hands in the canvas as my belongings rolled around the floor, adding to the mess. I collected the pieces in my covered palm, holding the bigger chunks between my index finger and thumb.

“Thanks,” said the girl, her voice low as she used her smock to help. “I’m sorry for grabbing you on the way down.”

I shook my head, letting my mind focus on the pieces instead of the palpitations of my heart, the sweat gathering in my palms. Doctor Kim said when I felt it coming, I could circumvent it with enough focus. Just…focus on something else. So I did, watching with an almost catatonic gaze as my hands worked on their own accord, independent of my will.

“This thing was kinda expensive…,” she mumbled, sighing as I deposited the pieces I’d collected into the hamper she’d made of her smock. “I bet they’ll take it outta my pay.”

I swallowed hard and nodded, struggling to track her words as they left her mouth. Folks around the shop were staring now, spectating. It was hard to find something else to focus on when all I could think of was disappearing right then and there.

“Anyway, thanks for helping,” she said with a soft smile.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, nodding and pushing to my feet.

“I really am sorry,” she said, helping gather my things from around the floor.

I swallowed hard. “It’s okay.” I kept my eyes on the ground, eager to disappear from that book store and find a new place to spend my endless days.

I collected my things and carried them awkwardly in front of my stomach. I glanced around and found that every patron had paused their individual activities to watch the show. My throat constricted and my breaths became slightly more shallow. Before I could think too hard, I rushed out the door and down the stairs.

I sat by myself on a swing, all alone in a big, sprawling park. I’d only just turned seven, and the world seemed all at once too big and too small for me. Gaeul told me to wait for her there, wait until she was done with soccer practice so we could walk home together. But as sunset began to bleed across the sky in red and purple, the shadows started to look too long, the trees rustling too loud in the breeze. Picking at the skin around my fingernails, I slouched over my knees, eyes on the sand below that my toes couldn’t quite reach. My throat felt a little tight, and swallowing didn’t fix it any.

“Byul!” called Gaeul as she ran down the sidewalk toward me, waving her arms above her head with a gummy grin.

Upon seeing her, I smiled and slid off the swing. I ran to meet her halfway. “How was practice?” I asked, slurring a little with my missing front tooth.

She whistled and rested both hands on her hips with the smile of a champion, cleats tied and slung over her shoulder, kneepads slid down to her ankles. She was skinny, like a waif, knobby knees emerging from beneath too-big gym shorts. But to me, she looked like a superhero with the sun silhouetting her. My big sister, here to save me.

I hadn’t learned yet that there were things even she couldn’t save me from.

“Nevermind that,” she said, waving a hand with a loud laugh that crashed and echoed against the trees. “Jaehyun’s mom gave me some money for helping out with her lawn. Let’s go get some snacks at Auntie’s!”

My eyes went wide at the mention of food and I beamed up at her. Her round face was flushed, hair a mess, eyes nearly invisible with the force of her smile. And I knew that, if I had her around, I’d be okay.

“Let’s go through the woods!” said Gaeul, sliding past me on the playground path and pointing with one spindly arm towards the line of trees ringing the west side.

I stared into the rapidly darkening forest, squinting into its depths. It seemed the longer I looked, the deeper the woods became, and despite having played in those woods enough to know them like the back of my hand, something about it felt a little ominous that day.

I should’ve listened to my instincts.

“Let’s go!” called Gaeul as she jogged toward the tree line, leaving me to toddle cautiously in her wake.

I awoke with a start and stared at the analog clock on my wall. Squinting against the barely breaking morning outside my window, I saw the time. 4:03. My fingers found the empty bridge of my nose and squeezed. I grabbed for my glasses and slid them on, rubbing my jaw. There was no hope of falling asleep again, not after a dream like that.

At least it wasn’t the bad dream.

I stretched in bed and gave my fleshy thighs a squeeze, massaging the tension out of them with my fingers. My body had a tendency to seize up during dreams. Doctor Kim said it was because of my fitful sleeping habits, and that seemed to make enough sense. But it had certainly been a while since I’d felt these cramps.

I sighed, pushing myself out of bed and padding in my socks toward my yet unpacked luggage. I rifled through the clothes I’d been cycling for weeks, some of them washed and some not, and settled on an old Nirvana shirt Dad gave me before I left and a pair of shorts that allowed the warm air to unknot the cramps in my legs. Tiptoeing out onto the tarp-covered living room floor, I made my way to the front door and slipped on a pair of tennis shoes, not bothering to tie them, and slid a baseball cap on my head.

With a glance over my shoulder at the still, quiet apartment, I stepped out into the hallway and made my way to the stairwell.

Walking helped the muscles loosen up, and after thirty minutes of wandering the dawn-drenched alleyways and sidewalks around Gaeul’s apartment, my body felt relaxed again. Dawn was a nice time of day. Nobody was out yet, the businesspeople still tucked in bed, the late night wanderers making their ways home. It was just me, the lilac morning, the sleeping city, and the ground beneath my untied shoes.

Well, and the sound of jazzy lofi.

As I rounded the corner toward the arts district, about a block from Hyejin’s, I heard the muffled sound of music bumping quietly from an open window on the first floor of a narrow shop, nestled between two tall, windowed buildings. The storefront looked a little out of place in such a modern area. In fact, it probably suited the beachfront more with its brown shutters and faded turquoise paint. I approached it slowly, rubbing my bleary eyes to get a proper look at it. Who was up and working at this hour?

Park’s Pottery.

The sign was old, weathered, propped out over the sidewalk to attract attention from passers by. Well, it certainly attracted my attention. I wandered closer to the open window and peeked inside. I scanned the dim shop with a squint. It was small, but crammed with vases and teapots and bowls. Floor to ceiling were metal racks housing all manner of trinkets. The walls were adorned with tapestries, paintings, and posters from all over the place, and the floor was home to several elegant rugs, all splattered with dried clay. To the right of the front window was a cash register and to the left was an alcove with a bright, yellow warehouse light. That was the source of the music.

I crept a little closer, placing my hands on the windowpane, and craned my neck to see better. In that alcove was a spinning table and, with his back hunched over it, a young man with a bandana holding his hair off his shiny forehead. I raised my brows as I got a better look at him in profile. Dark hair and focused, serious eyes, he had cherubic cheeks and pouty lips as he worked his hands over the clay, smoothing it as it spun in rapid circles. His fingers looked capable, certain as they molded the material, occasionally dipping into a bowl of sludgy water and returning with biceps straining. It was almost like a dance. The hypnotic motions had me in a trance. He seemed so sure of himself, so confident. In control.

I didn’t even notice when the music stopped.

But he did.

He turned his head sharply toward the desk behind him and stared at his cell phone with a sigh. He sure was pretty. But before I could admire the stranger properly, his smart, dark eyes were upon me, sweeping naturally from his phone back to his clay. I stiffened in the windowsill and, as he opened his mouth and widened his eyes, I jumped and ran down the sidewalk, pumping my arms.

What was I, a criminal?

I sprinted quickly, squeezing my eyes shut as embarrassment turned my skin into hot leather. Great, I thought, another place I have to avoid.

“Wait!” called a high, gentle voice from behind me.

I turned to glance at the stranger as he exited the building, leaving the front door swinging behind him. He took off in a jog after me, fists clenched and still dripping with wet clay. I flushed and ran faster, desperate to avoid this awkward confrontation. My throat was closing, and not from the running. Each time I glanced over my shoulder, the stranger was right there, just a few paces behind me.

As I forced myself to run faster, I felt something tug at my ankle and before I could react, the untied lace from my right shoe was trapped beneath my left foot and I went sailing through the air. I flew for a foot or two before skidding to a stop on my bare knees, crying out in pain as my palms collided with the rough concrete. Wincing, I examined my hands and let out a strangled yelp as I found the skin had begun to peel away, revealing a layer of blood.

“Shit! You okay?” asked the same voice from behind me.

Heart hammering, I kept my head low, face obscured by my baseball cap, and nodded my head. “Mhm.”

I felt him approaching as he squatted beside me, glancing over my shoulder. “Ah,” he exhaled with a sigh. “Come back with me. I’ve got a first aid kit.”

I made no move to leave my spot, sitting on my skinned knees. But the young man was persistent and, upon seeing my reluctance, huffed and grabbed me by the crook of my elbow, leaving fingerprints of clay on my skin. Without a word, he led the way back to his pottery shop and I followed like a scolded child.

Well, at least the city was still asleep.

The young man kept his serious dark eyes trained on my hands as he applied several large bandages to them. He’d already taken care of my knees, and had demanded I sit in front of the pottery wheel while he took his time dressing my wounds. After what felt like an eternity in that dark shop, he finally spoke.

“Why’d you run away?” he asked.

I stiffened. Why had I? “I…,” I began, then shook my head. My heart rate had slowly returned to normal with the passage of time, and despite this man being a stranger I felt at ease around him. Probably because he hadn’t properly looked me in the eye. “I got nervous.”

He chuckled and patted my palm, glancing toward his half-finished work on the wheel behind me. “Nervous?” he asked.

“I was watching you through your window,” I said with a sigh. “Kinda creepy.”

He glanced at me for only a moment before shutting his eyes and offering a shrug and an easy smile. “I like having an audience,” he said.

I eyed him, his soft face, his slim shoulders and the dirty smock he had draped over them. He didn’t look like a potter. “Are you an employee?” I asked.

He opened his eyes and raised his brows. “Me?” he asked, then laughed and waved his freshly cleaned hands. “No, I own this place.”

I felt my eyes go wide, but tried to manage my expression. “You’re…you’re pretty young to own a pottery shop.”

He smiled. “Twenty-four,” he said with a nod. “It’s a family business, but my dad retired and handed the place down to me.”

I hummed as I glanced around. It sure was rustic. But charming nonetheless. Like a relic lost to time. “Your pieces are pretty,” I remarked as I scanned the racks.

He hummed, patting his thighs with a nod. “Well, after so long learning I’d sure hope my wares are good.”

“You get a lot of customers?” I asked, peeking at him out the corner of my eye. This was the longest conversation I’d had with anyone since moving out here, and for some reason I was reluctant to cut it short.

He chuckled and rubbed his jaw. “Mhm,” he said. “Why else would I be out here so early?”

“You work all day?”

“Nearly.”

“Every day?”

He smiled and met my eyes. “Nearly.”

“Wow,” I mumbled as I took in the shop from this new angle. I sighed. “Must be nice.”

“Hm?”

“Having something to do.”

I felt his eyes on me as my own eyes wandered, catching on little details all throughout the shop. A painting of Venus beside the door, a bare lightbulb, unlit, dangling from the ceiling beside the checkout counter, the frayed edge of a red and purple rug. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking, wasn’t even sure what I was thinking, but wordlessly I felt him shift as he sat on a crate in front of me.

“You wanna take something with you?” he asked quietly, lilting voice barely above a whisper in the silent shop.

I raised my brows. “Can you do that?”

He shrugged. “My shop.”

I chuckled and nodded. “I guess that’s true,” I said, sighing as I pushed myself to my feet. The young man joined me and gestured with one swooping hand toward the racks.

“Choose whatever you want,” he said, walking beside me as he weaved his way through the aisles. My gaze landed on a particularly beautiful flower pot sitting at eye level, just beside the throwing table. “Teapots are over here. Bowls are over there. Got a few-,”

“I want this,” I said, reaching for the pot with two careful hands.

He blinked a few times and met my eyes from the other side of the rack. “Oh,” he said, then nodded. “Alright.”

I ran my fingers over the flower pot. It had been intricately carved with swirling roses and twisting vines, leaves floating everywhere. It was definitely prettier than the one I broke, that much was certain. It looked about the right size. Hopefully they hadn’t already bought a new one.

Well, if they did I could just keep the thing for myself.

I offered the young man a tight-lipped smile and bowed my head, excusing myself to the exit. He followed beside me, eyeing the pot in my hands with a curious expression. Once in the doorway, I turned to him and gave one more bow.

“I’m sorry for spying on you,” I said, meeting his eyes carefully.

He smiled and, lucky for me, his eyes nearly disappeared. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Stop by again sometime. Maybe you can buy something.”

I nodded and smiled at the flower pot. “I will.”

“I’m Jimin, by the way. Park Jimin,” he said, holding out a hand for me to shake.

I hoisted the flower pot up on my hip and took his warm hand, shaking twice. “Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Lee Eunbyul.”

He smiled again. “Pleasure,” he said, waving as I slipped out the front door. “Hope to see you again soon, Eunbyul.”

I slipped through the front door of Hyejin’s Bookstore, still holding the flower pot close. I’d waited an hour for the shop to open and, allowing the morning staff a ten minute grace period to set up shop, was the first patron to enter. The shop housed two stories of books and, navigating the stacks expertly like a covert agent, I maneuvered my way to the second floor unbeknownst to the two opening employees. I hadn’t had the time to figure out which ones they were, but from the broad back and chestnut hair of the man standing at the coffee maker I was pretty sure I could guess at least one.

God, of course. During my most important stealth mission, my Kryptonite shows up.

Nonetheless, I tiptoed toward the register and, using the sides of my fingers as cushions, set the flower pot down beside the register with a wince. By then, several other patrons had begun filing in, braving the steep stairs to the second floor and lining up beside the ancient coffee machine. I kept an eye on everyone, but mostly Seokjin as he restocked the paper cups and coffee stirrers. Once I was certain the pot was placed perfectly, I took a half-step back and glanced over my shoulder at Seokjin, still unaware of my presence.

His hair was quaffed out of his face today, styled to reveal his forehead, and his skin was practically glowing. I wasn’t sure if I was more jealous or in love with the guy. Sighing, I wandered lazily toward my favorite spot by the window, resting my hands palms-down on the tabletop. A few moments passed in silence before I heard someone speak.

“Oh…,” breathed a voice from the register.

To my dismay, there stood the same girl from the day before, eyes wide as she stared at the intricate, detailed flower pot with wonder-filled eyes. She turned it around a few times, appraising it, before smiling softly and scoffing once. She swept her gaze around the bookstore and I let my head fall downwards, heart racing. If she spotted me, I was cooked. She’d know for certain who had left it there.

“Jin!” she called with a disbelieving laugh.

Seokjin jogged over toward his coworker at the register and, rolling up the cuffs of his white button-down, glanced down toward the pot. “Whoa!” he exclaimed, grinning. “Someone left it here?”

“Seems like it,” replied the girl, smiling stupefied at the gift. “I was just about to buy a new one after work.”

I had to admit to a little swell of pride at that expression. It felt good to do good, that’s what Dad always said. And even though the pot was just repayment for the broken one, I felt a little piece inside me slip back into place. Like cogs in a clock.

“Huh,” said Seokjin, and without warning his eyes found me.

I stiffened, ready to make a run for it, but was stunned into stillness as our gazes locked and his handsome face broke into a small, knowing smile. “Seems like someone’s looking out for you,” he said gently, still smiling my way.

I cleared my throat and glanced out the window at the pastel morning sky, resting my burning cheek in my hand and allowing my mind to wander to the faraway clouds that ringed the horizon.

I’m dreaming, I thought to myself as I examined my hands, the fuzzy edges where my brain tried and failed to remember the finer details. Last thing I remembered was falling asleep in bed. What had Doctor Kim said? If you know it’s a dream, you can wake yourself up if you try hard enough. I tried hard to feel my body, the mattress beneath it, the covers I’d kicked off of it in the middle of the night. I tried to reason myself back into a physical space, out of this dark, cold, colorless void. But the more I struggled, the more suffocating the darkness felt. I squeezed my eyes shut, but like when I was young I could find no solace in the pitch-dark backs of my eyelids.

“Alright, alright,” I said aloud with a nod, shaking out my hands. I glanced around the void for a moment, eyes scanning the depths. “Detail, detail,” I said. I managed my breathing. “Doctor Kim said to find a detail.”

I scanned the darkness, searching for something, anything, that stood out. Something that clued me in to this being a dream. Something I could use to shake my brain out of sleep. I took a tentative step forward, or rather what might have been a step, and felt the same cool air I always felt in this void. My throat was constricting the longer I spent in here.

“Detail,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut. I begged for it. I longed for it so hard I wondered if I could simply will it into existence. “A tear,” I began. “Or a fray.” I scoffed as determined tears marched down my cheeks. “A fucking shoelace!” I shouted into the nothing.

Frustrated, I fell backwards onto my bottom and submitted to the sobs that began wracking my frame. The chill bit my exposed skin and raised goosebumps on my arms. “Jesus,” I said aloud, rubbing them down through tears. “For a dream, this shit is too realistic.”

I sniffled and stared around me at the darkness. When I was young, I used to search for the end of it. I walked for what felt like miles in one direction each night, wandering endlessly until eventually I woke up.

I never did find the end.

“Because there is no end,” I mumbled to myself, kicking my toe into the nothing beneath my cold bare feet.

“Yes there is.”

I screamed and jumped upright, scrambling backwards away from the voice behind me. Gasping for breath with my heart hammering, I peeled my eyes open and saw to my horror and immense relief…

A young man.

Standing about six feet tall with kind, dark brown eyes and a dimpled smile, the man seemed…inexplicably gentle. He stood dressed in plaid pajama pants and an old t-shirt, no shoes like me, honey-blonde hair sitting like a mop atop his head, standing in all directions. He yawned and scratched his jaw, eyes half-shut. Had my brain conjured another person to keep me company?

For the first time, I wasn’t alone in here…

I adjusted my posture, staring at him for what felt like a long, desperate moment. And, without meaning to, I rushed toward him and wrapped trembling fingers around his arm. Despite my expectations, he was real. Tangible. My fingers clamped down on actual flesh. They didn’t pass through. A fresh wave of emotion swept me up and carried me away and wordlessly, hot tears rolled like raindrops down my cheeks. Still holding on to his arm, I dipped my head, leaning it against his firm chest, and sobbed.

Startled, he tried to step away from me, but I was putting too much weight on him. He coughed a little before, almost reluctantly, he raised a hand and patted my shoulder.

“Ah…um…it’s okay…?” he said, trailing off.

I sniffled. “I can’t believe it.”

“Hm?”

“Detail,” I mumbled, wiping my messy eyes on his white shirt.

“Ah!” he shouted as I leaned away and he saw the wet spots. “Oh shoot.” He freed his arm from my grasp so he could pat the stains with the pads of his fingers.

I sniffled and stared up at him, juxtaposed against the unfathomable darkness, eyes downturned to focus on his shirt. “You’re not real, are you?” I asked slowly, edging away. My brain wasn’t tidy enough to worry about a stained shirt…

So whatever he was, he couldn’t be from me.

His eyes flashed back toward me, sweet, heavy-lidded, pupils huge in the dark. “I…yes? Are you?” he asked, then squinted at me with those sweet eyes. “Have you been crying for a while? You’re very red.”

I blinked at him and took a half-step back, not trusting myself to speak again. I glanced down at my bare legs, covered only by frumpy panties and a big shirt, and tried to subtly guide the hemline down the skin of my thighs.

“You…you’re really a real person? Really?” I asked.

He chuckled. “Really really.”

I furrowed my brow and examined him from where I stood several inches shorter. His cheeks went pink under my scrutiny, but it was incomprehensible to me. “I’ve been having these dreams since I was seven and I’ve never seen another person,” I said.

He raised his brows. “Seven?” he asked. “Huh.” He peered down at me. “How old are you now?”

“Does that matter?”

“I’m just trying to make sense of it too,” he said, watching me carefully.

I sighed. “Twenty-two,” I said.

“I’m twenty-four…,” he said with a hum, rubbing his jaw with his right hand. Something about him was oddly intellectual, like he had answers to any question I could conjure. But my heart was still racing, my palms still slick with sweat. No matter how forthcoming he was, he was still a stranger in my dream. “Guess it doesn’t have to do with age. Maybe time?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, frustrated.

He glanced at me before squinting into the darkness. “Well I started having these dreams at age nine,” he began, eyeing me. “Same time you did. I was just two years older.”

“So?”

“Maybe it’s connected?” he asked with a shrug.

“Doctor Kim said-,” I began, then stopped myself short, clamping my mouth shut. I crossed my arms and sighed. “It’s trauma-based. This whole thing.”

“Is it?”

I glanced at him. “Isn’t it?”

He smiled. “I’m not so sure,” he said, then sighed and took a step forward. “Why’s it so dark here?”

“You’ve been having these dreams since you were nine and you don’t know it’s gonna be dark?” I asked, cocking a brow as I sat down on the nothing beneath me.

He blinked at me. “Wait, it’s always like this for you?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Is there anything else it could be?”

He scoffed and crossed his arms, disbelief etched into his features. “Well,” he began, glancing around. “It can be anything, really.”

“Huh?”

Before I could interrogate him further, the blackness around began to give way to something else. Like spilling paint across a canvas, vibrant colors began to bleed from behind the stranger’s back, extending forward toward me. A frightened cry escaped me and I leapt to my feet, scuttling away from the colors as they spread like a drink tipped over. At first, the colors seemed shapeless but as they grew the image began to clear up, revealing soft edges and patterns and before I knew it I was standing on a beach, golden sand between my bare toes, purplish ocean rising and falling behind the man’s back as an invisible tide drew waves against the shore.

Tears pricked my eyes as I stumbled back once again, only this time I felt the warm sand beneath me, cushioning my fall. Gaping, I sat with my legs bent awkwardly on the shoreline’s slope, staring at the endless ocean and the cliffside forming a ring around the beach.

“W-w-what the hell is this?!” I screamed, and my voice didn’t echo, it just seeped through the landscape, swallowed by the sound of the waves. My tears returned, trailing hot down my face.

The stranger approached and crouched beside me, eyes wide. “Shit, I didn’t mean to scare you or anything! It’s just-,”

“Wh-what the fuck are you?” I asked, hands trembling violently. “I-I-I’ve never s-seen it do that.”

He blinked at me, genuine worry in his soft eyes, and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I thought you could do it too.”

“Do what?”

“Control it.”

“Control what?”

“The dream.”

I swiped a hand across my face, wiping my tears, and glanced around the beach. The longer I looked, the more beautiful it was. Like a snapshot in time. The sky was drenched in shades of lilac and amber and the sun seemed to live perpetually against the horizon line, never dipping below. A never-ending sunset. When I inhaled, I could even smell the salty seawater and fresh summertime air.

“What’s your name?” asked the stranger, coming to an uneasy crouch beside me.

I turned my wild eyes toward him and blinked. “Eunbyul,” I said weekly. “Lee Eunbyul.”

He smiled gently and held out his hands for me to shake. I was struck by the memory of Jimin from earlier that morning. Was this perhaps all he was? A manifestation of my memories of the day? “Kim Namjoon,” he said as he clasped his hand around my bandaged palm. “This is a first for me too, you know,” he said as he fell onto his bottom by my thigh.

I glanced at him. “What?”

“Having someone else here,” he said with a chuckle. “Not that I think you’re real.”

“I’m not real?” I asked, eyes wide, as I pointed a finger toward my chest.

He raised his brows. “Well how could you be? It’s not like this is a different dimension. It’s just my dream, right?”

“It’s my dream,” I said. “Listen, you’re really freaking me out.”

He turned to me with a furrowed brow. “Then you’re real? Are you sure?” He then rolled his eyes and rested his chin in his hand. “Stupid question. If you’re something I made up then of course you’re gonna say you’re real.”

“I’m a real person, Namjoon,” I said seriously, meeting his eyes. “I have a sister named Gaeul and a mom named Iseul and a dad named Doyeon. I’m from Sangdo-dong-,”

“You’re from Sangdo-dong?” he asked, eyes wide.

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said, timid pinned underneath his incriminating gaze.

He furrowed his brow and crossed his arms. “Huh.”

“Do you believe me?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can I prove it?” I asked.

He eyed me. “I don’t know.”

I swallowed hard. “Do I really seem like just character you dreamed up?” I asked, rubbing my eyes. “Do you really think your brain is that powerful?”

At this he chuckled and a little bit of the tension I’d been holding in my gut dissolved. I glanced at him, bathed in gentle dying sunlight, and found my proof. There was no way my mind could conjure someone like him. Something magnificent like this scene. I wasn’t equipped like he was.

“How did you do it?” I asked quietly, still scanning his fine features, his honeyed skin.

He raised his brows. “I don’t know how to explain it. I just kind of…do it,” he said with a nod.

I blinked. “That’s super unhelpful.”

He laughed. “Well…I guess the best I can do is say…think of a vivid memory, something really sensory, and try to put yourself there.”

“So you’ve been here before?” I asked, glancing around.

He smiled. “It’s a beach in the town where I live,” he said softly. “I came here when I graduated high school. All alone. And I just watched the waves until night came.”

“And what if I want to go to…I don’t know, Barbados?” I asked.

He laughed, a vibrant, bellowing sound, and his eyes squeezed shut. He hooked his elbows around his knees and grinned at the skyline. “Then I’d say study up.”

“Have you ever done it? Created a place you’ve never been to?” I asked, my curiosity forcing my inhibitions to rest.

He hummed. “Once or twice, but it’s harder. Gotta know what you want to see like the back of your hand for it to work.”

“And you do this every time?”

“Mhm,” he said with an easy smile. “A lucid dream is defined as a dream during which dreamers, while dreaming, are aware they are dreaming,” he said, sounding like an encyclopedia. Like he had it memorized. “That’s what specialists say.”

“So this is just a lucid dream to you?”

“Is it not a lucid dream to you?” he asked, raising his brows.

I blinked, mouth agape, and returned my eyes to the sea. “I never thought of it that way,” I said quietly, picking at the skin around my nails. “I guess since I couldn’t control them…”

He smiled. “But you can,” he said. “It’s your dream after all.”

I turned to him, brows furrowed, and exhaled slowly. “It’s my dream…,” I repeated with a nod. I turned to glance at the ocean. “I think I figured out a way to prove I’m real.”

“Mm?”

“If I can show you something you’ve never seen…that would be enough, right?” I asked, watching the waves lapping the shore.

He smiled. “I suppose.”

I nodded and squeezed my eyes shut. I focused on all my senses. The scent of old wood, pancakes cooking in the kitchen, far away. The feeling of Mom’s quilt beneath my fingertips, the cool air-conditioning blowing strands of hair around my face. The sound of muffled conversation through the walls, footsteps falling through the wood-floored hallways. The way my bed looked, tucked in a corner beside the window, white sheer curtains blowing with the breeze that Mom scolded me for letting in, the dresser in the corner, the narrow door, my box of toys half-open by the bed. I saw and felt it all so vividly I was certain that when I opened my eyes-

There it was.

I blinked at the dark wood paneling of my childhood bedroom, the beams criss-crossing overhead, the shiny floor. A few scoffing breaths escaped my lips in uneasy puffs, but before I could say a single thing, a voice retrieved me from my reverie.

“Wow,” said Namjoon from beside me.

And with that, the illusion crumbled and my bedroom faded away like sand through my fingertips. The image slipped in the blink of an eye, leaving behind only the black emptiness of nothing, all around us. I swallowed the lump in my throat and stared at the blackness for a few tense seconds. It had been there. My room had really, truly been there right before my eyes. I could feel it, smell it, touch it. Like I was right there.

I glanced at Namjoon and found him smirking at me. “Well,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ve certainly never seen that before.”

Before I could reply, I felt a vague tugging sensation in my chest, like I was being yanked from the inside. “Oh,” I breathed.

He glanced down at his own chest and nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

“W-wait!” I called, resisting the pull and reaching my desperate, clinging hands out to him once more. I grabbed his forearm in my hands and stared up at him, pleading. “I…I don’t wanna go yet,” I said, shaking my head. “I have so much to ask you.”

He smiled gently and gave my hand a pat. “It was nice to meet you, Eunbyul,” he said, taking a step away from me and breaking the tether of my grip. My hands fell to my sides and the pull became too strong to fight.

“Namjoon!” I called, but my voice was fading and so was he. “I’ll come back! I swear!”

“Maybe we’ll see each other again,” he said with an echoing laugh. “Maybe even in real life.”

I felt like I might cry again. So much had happened in one night. The fear I’d always harbored for this dark nightmare was all but gone. In its wake, anticipation so great it threatened to sweep me away like the inescapable force of a tide.

I awoke panting, sweat beading along my hairline. I swallowed hard past the dryness in my throat and reached for my water bottle, removing my glasses from the bridge of my nose and slipping them onto the table. I usually didn’t sleep with those things on. I drank greedily, shutting my eyes, and ran a hand through my hair before collapsing once more against the cushion of my bed. 4:03.

I huffed and set the bottle aside, lying still on my back and staring at the fuzzy outline of the ceiling, unable to see it properly with my glasses.

Again, I was awake before the sun.

Only this time, I couldn’t remember what sort of dream had woken me up.

#namjoon fanfic #namjoon fanfiction #namjoon fluff #namjoon angst #namjoon au #bts series #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts imagines #bts reactions #bts imagine #bts reaction #bts fluff #bts angst #namjoon x oc #bts x oc #bts au fanfic #bts au

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lavenderbones22 · 6 years ago

Text

She Is Golden (Nikki Sixx) Chapter Three

Chapter Summary: Marina and Bonnie debrief from the night that was.

A/N No actual Nikki in this chapter guys, sorry! But plenty of mention of him. Just trying to set it all out nice and slowly and don’t want to rush anything. I’ll get chapter four out tomorrow to make up for it :) Enjoy xo

Word Count: 2237

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She didn't get much sleep that night after coming home from the club. Meandering in at around two thirty, hanging around a little longer than needed, chatting with another guy from Vince's friendship group-Mick. He was nice, he had black hair much like the cute guy she had been speaking with, seemed a little older than the rest too. He was monotonous in the way that he spoke and Marina liked it. Mick had said something about Vince leaving to meet his girlfriend at a bar, but that wasn't before he had tried it on with Marina again.

"Is he always like this?" She'd asked Mick, to which he just nodded.

"Nikki is usually the one to tame him though, speaking of, where is Sixx?" Marina furrowed her brows.

"Sixx?"

Mick chuckled. "Yeah, Nikki Sixx, the black haired dude you were speaking with before."

Oh...Nikki.

"Uh, he went to get a lap dance from my friend...about ten minutes ago."

Mick immediately picked up on Marina's disappointment, but had decided against commenting on it. He knew though that she could get anybody that she wanted, she had nothing to worry about. He also knew that Nikki wouldn't know a good thing if it punched him in the face.

Loud bangs early in the morning woke Marina-Bonnie was home. It was a Sunday morning and she never liked to be up before ten on a Sunday morning. Screeches of frustrated 'fucks' and 'bloody hells' couldn't escape her ears. Fighting against her will to stay where she was in her warm, queen sized bed, Marina reluctantly got up to investigate.

"What the fuck is going on?" Eyes on Bonnie as she was fumbling around the kitchen, cupboards open, containers and tonnes of shit out on the bench.

Bonnie-frazzled, looking up at a sleepy Marina. "Have you seen the waffle maker?"

Half an hour later both girls were sat at their small 'dining' table, eating the waffles that Marina had to take over and make while Bonnie was in charge of coffee.

Her platinum blonde friend hadn't stopped talking about Nikki. Turns out he'd had a bag, well several actually, of coke in his pocket that he'd brought out during his dance with Bonnie. The two had shared it and ended up going back to his place and fucking until two hours ago.

"I swear, I don't actually think I'm going to be able to walk properly for like, two weeks." She was high on more than drugs. And Marina, Marina was jealous.

Of course she was stupid to think that Nikki wouldn't have ended up fucking her friend or any of the other girls. You could take one look at him and know he would never be short of women to score with. She was just really fucking jealous-that was it. And maybe she thought that he wouldn't have sex with a stripper. Not that Bonnie was just a stripper, she was much more than that. A great painter, she was a professionally trained swimmer and of course, one of Marina's best friends.

"You should have gone home with that guy you gave a dance to, Vin or something was it?"

"Vince," Marina's tone was short and more irritated than she intended it to come across.

"Woah, you alright?" Bonnie shoved the last of her waffle into her mouth, studying Marina suspiciously. Something was off, she could sense it.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just tired." She stood up. "I'm gonna go back to bed I think."

The shrill ringing of the phone through their apartment, it woke Marina from her deep mid-morning sleep. "Fuck," she groaned rubbing her eyes and trying to ignore the heaving pounding of her head that had seeped it's way into her conscious mind.

"Knock, knock," Bonnie's voice sounded the same time as her knuckles against the door, opening it slowly to see her friend struggling to wake up. "It's a call for you," she said.

"What?"

"It's a call for you," she repeated.

"Y-yeah I heard you." Marina sat up. "Who is it?"

"I think it's that guy from last night," busying herself with her friends lipsticks on her drawer, Marina glared at her friend.

"Well why didn't you ask?" She huffed, throwing her legs over the side of the bed and climbing out.

"I didn't think to, sorry!" Bonnie called out as Marina walked down the hall in a temper.

"Hello?"

"Uh hi, Marina?" It was Vince from last night, she recognised his voice.

"Yeah." She really wasn't in the mood.

"It's Vince...from the club last night."

"Yeah...hey." She honestly didn't care if she came across as rude, like, why the fuck was this guy calling her!? Besides, Mick said he had a girlfriend anyway so why wasn't he pestering her?

"How'd you pull up this morning?"

Marina sighed inwardly, fucking hell.

"Alright Vince, bit of a head ache but just working through it."

"Nice," a silent pause. "So um, I was just ringing to see if you and your friend wanted to come out with the guys and me tonight?"

Marina thought for a minute. Clearly Nikki had told Vince about his night with Bonnie and this just made her jealousy bubble again. She wanted to spend time with Nikki and the fact that Bonnie was the one who he spent the night with last night, and this morning, erupted these feelings she hadn't felt before; or well for at least a long time. Marina wasn't a jealous person, she was incredibly chilled out, but the idea of Bonnie and Nikki literally made her skin crawl and she had no idea how to handle these sudden new feelings.

She had known this guy for not even twenty four hours, why was she acting like this?

These thoughts led her to responding to Vince.

"Sure. Where are you guys heading?" She asked.

"Some new joint on the strip, don't remember what it's called." She could hear Vince fumbling around. "Fuck, can't find the name of it. I'll ask Nikki and call you back, alright?"

The sound of his name leaving Vince's lips made her heart jump. What the fuck, Marina? Her eagerness to see Nikki again over-rid every decision she had just made. She had to take what she could get right now, did that make her such a bad person? But then again maybe it was just her drunken mind making him into something he wasn't and when she saw him tonight she might think the total opposite.

She kept telling herself this as she hung up from Vince and made her way to the bathroom for a shower.

But maybe, just maybe, this was actually what she felt and her drunken state created feelings her sober self would not let her feel-not after what she had been through in the past.

These thoughts continued to circulate her mind while she showered, washed her hair, shaved her legs and other various body parts in preparation for tonight. Maybe it was the jealousy she was feeling about her friends new 'beau' or maybe it was the bitterness felt in regards to Nikki and how he could so recklessly abandon whatever it was she thought she felt between them.

Had he not actually been staring at her all night? Was she going full blown crazy?

"Surely if I was going to go crazy I would have by now," the girl mumbled to herself while she climbed out of the shower and proceeded to dry off.

"Up for tonight?" Bonnie spoke from her spot on the couch in the living room- The Brady Brunch reruns on the television, Marina walking through after a shower.

She was taken aback. Had Nikki called and invited Bonnie himself?

"Yeah," small smile. "Pretty keen."

She was doing a bad job at hiding her sour mood, she had to do better.

"You alright girl? You seem weird." Bonnie picking up on Marina's mood that she couldn't seem to shake.

A quick thought, had Bonnie completely blanked on the fact that Nikki and Marina were talking when she came up to them? Marina was sure of it, she would never have done this had she known otherwise.

Reassurance, shaking her head, smiling. "Yeah, n-no, I'm fine. Pretty hungover actually."

Bonnie, laughing, choosing to change the subject for both of their sakes. "Still can't believe you did your first profesh lap dance!" Playful shoving, Marina now sat next to her friend on the couch.

"Shut up!"

Bonnie had gone to school with Marina back in Massachusetts for a year when they were in ninth grade. The two girls got along like a house on fire right from the start. Unfortunately, their friendship was only that of a year, Bonnie moving back to California at the beginning of tenth grade (her dad was in the army). The girls kept in contact as best they could but as they got older it became harder-only a couple of letters exchanged per month.

"Did Nikki call you then?" Changing the channel from The Brady Bunch to some cartoon, Bonnie not looking at her friend more focusing on what she was watching.

"Yeah, just before."

The two girls sat in an uncomfortable silence-or maybe that was only on Marina's end.

"So do you think Vince is hot?" Bonnie looking at Marina now-Bonnie playing with the ends of her wet hair.

"Yeah, he's not bad. He has a girlfriend though..."

"No..." Bonnie turned to fully face Marina.

"Like, I suppose it's fine, I mean, guys who are married and what not get dances all the time," Marina, putting her long hair up into a bun on the top of her head, shuffling in her spot on the couch. "He wanted to have sex though, like, he wanted to take me back to his place.

A gasp-Bonnie.

"Did you know he had a girlfriend at this point?"

Shaking her head, Marina sighed.

"Nope. I would have felt terrible if I had gone through with it, I was honestly thinking about it but it didn't feel right.

Bonnie, knowing her friend well could sense her feelings. "You would have felt like a hooker, right?"

Marina making eye contact with the blonde girl, finally. "Yeah..."

A few moments silence.

"Nikki paid me for last night." Bonnie, an admittance.

Marina couldn't believe he had paid her, she had taken it. As far as she knew, Bonnie had never been paid for sex but maybe she didn't know her friend as well as she thought.

"He gave me four hundred."

An audible gasp came from Marina, accidental. He certainly didn't look like he had that sort of money, but she knew better than to judge a book by it's cover.

"I didn't want to take it, I told him I'd really enjoyed myself but he insisted," she was fiddling with the hem of her t-shirt. Did she not want Nikki to look at her like that? She seemed bothered.

"I told him I didn't want him to see me like a hooker and he told me he didn't," she sighed. "But I suppose he did call me to come out with him and his friends tonight so that's a good thing, right?" Looking at her friend for encouragement, something Marina struggled with for a second realizing her friend perhaps felt the same way about Nikki that she did.

Also cementing the fact that she in fact, had no recollection of how they actually met. No clue that Marina had been in a conversation with him when she so rudely interrupted.

"I'm sure he doesn't see you as just a hooker, you aren't one after all." Marina leaned her head on Bonnie's shoulder.

"Even if he did pay you for sex, stop complaining! Now you're four hundred bucks richer...you can buy me my drinks tonight thanks."

The two girls giggles sounded the room.

"Come on," the brunette pulled her friend from the couch. She was choosing to change her mood, to be happy. "Let's go find something to wear because I'm running out of new outfits to wear and I'm running out of them fast!"

She of course would never let her friend know that her pure intention of a hot outfit tonight was to keep Nikki's eye on her.

"I think he's a tits guy," Bonnie pondered aloud as she sifted through her friends exceptional wardrobe. Marina definitely had the better wardrobe of the two, something that Bonnie was never jealous of because she always had a free pass to peruse and use it.

Looking in the full length mirror, Bonnie cupped her b-cup breasts. Robert had hinted at how beneficial a boob job would be for her work but she knew she would never have enough guts to go through with it; always brushing him off with a giggle and a flirt.

"What makes you say that?" Marina asked from her spot on the floor where she was re-painting her toe nails.

"Just spent ages on them is all," she turned to the side, pushing out her chest a bit. "Look at all the bruises he left!" She laughed, pulling her bra down to expose her bare breast covered in small, scattered bruises.

Marina winced. Not at her friends boob, but at the actual proof that Nikki had in fact slept with her friend.

"He'd die over your tits!" Bonnie winked at Marina. "So stay away from him with those perfect things!" She laughed as she put her boob back into her bra.

Marina laughed half-heartedly.

She wasn't so sure she could do that.

TAGLIST: @chocolatealmondmilkshake @motley-queen @kingbouji3 @fandomshit6000 @lovesick-heart0 @primal-screamer @redhotvinyl @wheresmyvodkabitch @random-internet-user-4471

#nikki sixx #nikki sixx fanfic #douglas booth #douglas booth!nikki sixx #the dirt #the dirt fanfic #motley crue #motley crue fanfic

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mademoiselless · 6 years ago

Text

Summer Time

Pairing: Jaehyun x Female Reader

Word count: 4k

Genre: Romance ; Smuff

Warnings: mature content ; age gap

Story: In which Jaehyun drafts a series of notes to her just to secretly meet her in the study. One contains an obscene expression of his impure thoughts for her which includes the word “cunt” and "come". He writes it only as a joke as he laughs to himself. He writes another one, more formal and serious letter and smoothly slip it under the girl’s door that one night. Only after he went back to his room, does he realized that he has given her the explicit one.

“In my dreams, I touched you, your soaking and sweet cunt. In my dreams, I kissed you, take you up against the wall, all drenched for me. I want to see you come before my eyes, come while I’m very deep inside y-….”

Jaehyun swivels his chair, chuckling quietly to himself. “So whipped, Jay.” He sighed audibly, deep dimples appearing from his cheeks. Indeed, people’s thoughts in the middle of the night are kind of weird. He’s a man after all, young, handsome and hormonal. It was his special girl anyways, his Jane, he argues to himself. It seem like it was his hundredth attempt of writing a note for her and damn it was supposed to be just a simple letter but his mind can’t focus and find his right words. A simple letter of apology just for her, but his thoughts were flying out of space, or perhaps flew all the way to his dick by the time his hand randomly started to scribble some words again on the white sheet. It was all mixed up frustration and disappointment, reason why he just couldn’t make up on it. Plus it was Jane, his lovely Y/N.

His desk was full of crumpled drafts, papers scattered everywhere, his room can honestly pass as a damp site the time he finally jot his last word on the sheet. He withdraws his pen quickly as he rereads his somewhat masterpiece.

Dearest Y/N,

I was quite disappointing last afternoon, aren’t I? I’m offering you my sincerest apology, I shouldn’t have invited them during my stay here. I promise, I would do better next time, just don’t be mad at me. Okay?

PS: Meet me on our family library tomorrow evening, if you won’t mind. I would like to tell you something rather, personally.

Sincerely,

He jolts up his chair, barefooted as he exits his room. It was way pass everyone’s bedtime when he silently tiptoed through the hall, all the way to her door. His steps were quiet against the wooden floor, but he almost tripped on huge vase. “Damn it.” He screeched discreetly. The hall was dimmed and quite scary, the kind of what you read in some strange books. When he finally arrived in front of her door, he swiftly slip the small flap containing his letter in the slit of the wooden egress and spun around in instinct just in case someone might saw him lurking around in the darkness, worst is right in front of the girl’s bedroom like a creep. When Jaehyun finally returned to his room, he immediately slumps in the mattress, catching his breath like he ran a mile. And then, he smiles to himself, both hands clutching on his chest, he felt his heart pounding against it. “What a thrill.” He sighed as he stares at the sky blue old ceiling. Indeed it was a thrill, but not the one when he single-handedly made bunch of women cry, or the one when he got to date blonde ladies during his long stay in some country in the west. This was a different kind of thrill, the kind that make his insides flip and giddy at the same time scared. The feeling was actually not familiar to Jaehyun, it was all new, different.

For a good minute, he stares up thinking of what might possibly happen tomorrow, he’s nervous and excited. He could finally make up to her after a very long time. The anticipation is growing inside him that he can’t contain himself, not thinking of any consequences that might occur after.

Oh boy, however, happiness is really short lived.

Unexpectedly, his mind took a quick rerun, his eyes shoot wide open, his body stiffens in bed, as he hears the clock ticking from his bed side. “It can’t be.” He felt his temple pulsate as his heartbeat speeds it rate. When he finally decided to man up and turn to his desk full of crap, he was so sure that all the luck was really on his side that night. Jaehyun quickly stood up from his bed not bothering about the loud screeched coming from the spring of the mattress. “God fucking damn it.” He cursed, cold sweats starting to creep up his forehead damping his fringes, both hands clenched into fists. At that very moment Jaehyun swears he saw a flash back of his childhood right before his eyes, all the anticipation disappeared in just a snap. There atop the shabby table was a paper, neatly folded and untouched.

A thrilling experience indeed.

Jaehyun woke up the next morning to the chirping of the birds outside his wide window. For a moment, he thought everything was just a dream and that last night was just a piece of his imagination playing inside his head, but not when he stirs up from his bed and saw the large pile of garbage lying around his room. Last night was the real horror of his life, he wanted to scream and run but it was 2 freaking am and there’s no way he’ll get out of the big problem that he made himself. He had two plans running in his mind last night, first is to knock on her door, disturb her sleep and ask her some stupid questions only to pick up secretly the damn envelope in her door step and run as fast as he could. “Stupid”, he snorts. Plan B, steal the master key and secretly slip into her room like a thief, God forbid she might wake up and scream in the middle of the night. “Stupid”. And the last straw, go with the flow, whether she may or may not read the letter, just apologize to her and explain that the letter was not meant for her. But damn what might she think about him whenever she read that racy note? It will surely ruin everything.

He was checking his self out in the mirror and noticed that he was still wearing his trousers and dress shirt from yesterday. The bags under his eyes were terrible as he inspects closely and then the pounding headache started. After taking a quick bath, he took all the trash up his desk and threw every single one in the bin and then he finally settles again in his bed, contemplating whether to face the consequences or lock himself forever in the room until he starves to death. He was so sure Y/N already read the letter and is now hating him from head to toe. He was about to sleep again when he hears her soft giggling, for a second, Jaehyun thought he was already dreaming but then he heard her laugh again, this time louder. He shoots up in bed, trying to find where her voice was coming from, until he heard her mumbling. When he makes his beeline to the window and slightly part the thick curtain, there he saw her smiling brightly while watering the bed of flowers in the back yard. His gaze softens to the sight, all worries mildly disappears for a brief moment until he spotted a tall lad, also smiling goofily and by the looks of it they’re having a friendly chat. He thought Y/N will be out early to the hospice and will be back late but then he remembers, it’s Sunday. He glances at the clock and saw it was pass 10 in the morning. And then Jaehyun strikes back his attention to Y/N who was now laughing heartily from whatever joke the familiar neighbour cracked. His heart clenched a bit from the sight and somewhere along Jaehyun’s mind, something snapped.

Through the whole day, Jaehyun stayed in his room. He skipped breakfast and lunch, he didn’t even bother Mr. Kim, their house butler, knocking in his bedroom door to serve him something to eat. Maybe he should just pretend he’s out with friends and will be back tomorrow, but that alibi is foolish, Jaehyun knows he can’t avoid everything forever and that what’s done is done. So, he finally changed and get himself ready for dinner with his father, and of course with Y/N.

When he settled himself in the dinner table, Y/N wasn’t there but he couldn’t help but to fidget every once in a while. Jaehyun was so tensed that he didn’t catch his father asking him his whereabouts for the whole day.

“I’m sorry father, what was it?” He questions, his hand unconsciously gripped on the napkin and dabbed it to the sides of his lips albeit the dinner hasn’t been served yet. Shoot.

“I said, where have you been son?” His father asked with a calm tone that you’ll never know whether he noticed his son’s weird behaviour or not.

“I was at the study, father.” Jaehyun composed. “It’s been a long time since I last visited my old books. I guess it’s time to refresh since I’m back.” He added to make it a credible excuse.

“I see.” The old man nodded. “Why don’t you bring your old friends here for a visit. I also wanted to see my boy Johnny. I haven’t seen him in a long time.” He mused.

“Actually, he-.” He was about to answer when the dinner arrived causing him to pause but his breath hitched when Y/N appeared from the kitchen, she must’ve cooked one of the dishes tonight. To Jaehyun’s dismay, she sat across him and greeted them to have a nice and good meal. It surprised him that she was calm, well, not that he expects her to become hysterical but somehow she’s normal, so casual that she just talked about her day and that she enjoys working in the hospice. His father was so attentive listening to her but Jaehyun however couldn’t almost swallow his food. And he finally got choked on it when Y/N asked him out of nowhere. Damn he was so obvious.

“Here!” She hurries up to his side as she offers him a glass of water. “Jae, are you okay?” It’s been a while since they had that close distance, it was the closest proximity they had since he left, he was so young that time and for a second he misses her, he misses her warmth. And the sound of his name coming from her lips, her voice, very captivating, everything reminds him of summer.

“Are you okay?” Y/N then again asked, worry was written all over her face.

“Yes, I-I’m okay.” He finally answered after gulping the glass of water in one go.

“Son, you seems distracted.” His father spoke, earning a glare from Jaehyun. “No, father I’m just really hungry and I enjoyed the meal to much.” He awkwardly chuckled as he steal glances to Y/N who’s apparently already staring at him. Jaehyun fidgets again from his seat and cleared his throat to avoid the tension that he’s probably bringing up just to himself. It’s been already half an hour when they finished their hearty dinner, Y/N was the first one to excuse herself, telling that she’ll be up in the very morning for work. She kisses the old man in the cheek before saying good night to the both gentlemen. Jaehyun just stares at her retreating back as she made her way up the stair case. Maybe be he’s just being crazy or imagining things, or perhaps she didn’t read the letter. That evening, he prays for the latter.

It’s quarter to eleven, but Jaehyun couldn’t make himself to sleep. He lays in the bed arms spread all over the soft duvet, up until now he was still thinking about her. How could he not? How could he become so careless and damn foolish? It was his last chance and he freaking missed it and worst, he ruined it himself. When he rolled to his side, he saw his desk and spotted the note he was suppose to give her. He rereads it before crumpling it and shoving to the bin. “Am I too late my Jane?”

It’s getting late but Jaehyun finds himself in the kitchen to get some glass of water. It was humid even in the night, he can’t sleep because of it, his room was like suffocating him, but summer is still Jaehyun’s favorite season no matter what. He was already at the end of the staircase when he noticed a light coming from the study in the basement, he double takes, and instantly turned to it’s direction. Maybe his father forgot to turn down the lights, Jaehyun thinks on his way. He was so drawn to the light that he made his way down just to see or check on it, he curiously entered the library, opening the stained glass door, his eyes instantly searching for the light switch when he entered the room. But the moment his gaze met her figure standing in front of the tall shelves, he swears he felt his soul left his body, it was like seeing a ghost. He stood there, stiff, both feet glued to the ground for a couple of seconds. At that time he thinks he was already dreaming yet again, and this was his chance to make up to her even if just in the dream. But his instincts were telling him otherwise, he silently turned, twisting the knob and about to leave the room when she spoke.

“Jaehyun.”

The scariest part was the tone of her voice, Jaehyun mentally notes, to the mention of his name, he was so sure it wasn’t a coincidence, it was as if she was waiting for him, not questioning why he’s there. The anxiety and worry, they all came back at once in his head that’s when he knew there’s no turning back.

“I- ah… y/n…” And then he finally had the courage to face her, but still avoiding the eye contact. “It’s late, what are you doing down here?” He decided to play it casually, assuming it was just pure coincidence.

“I couldn’t sleep.” She answered as she proceeds to read again the book she was holding. “Novels.” She mused, tapping the book on her palm. Jaehyun finally focused his gaze on her and noticed what she was wearing, it was a white silk night dress with thin robe, barely showing any skin but the fabric hugs her curves perfectly. Her long raven hair was down, shaping her bare face gorgeously.

“Oh.” Was all he could utter, his mouth was gaping the whole moment, when he realized she wasn’t responding and all her attention was still on her book, he proceeds to talk further to lessen the tension. “I was at the kitchen for a glass when I noticed the open library lights.” He continues, Y/N only nods in response.

“I should go.” At last, Jaehyun finally chickens out.

“I was waiting, Jae.” She speaks, her voice sounded different, almost breaking.

Jaehyun halts from his tracks, fist tightly gripped on the knob. He felt the cold sweats again slowly dripping down his side burns, the realization hit him like a ton of brick. She have read the note.

He honestly doesn’t know what to do at that very brief period, suddenly he feels small and embarrassed to himself. He really just wanted to sincerely apologize and tell her what he really feels about her but sometimes thing just won’t turn according to your will.

“Look Y/N, I’m so sorry.” He turns to her swiftly, all guilt and sadness written all over his perfect face. “I didn’t mean it.” He adds as he took a couple of steps closer.

“You didn’t mean it?” She questions him, her book already forgotten atop the shelf. Jaehyun was really out of words, he doesn’t know whether she was sarcastic or just plainly disgusted of him. “How could you Jaehyun?” Her words sounds accusing and it stings him.

“I’m so sorry Y/N, it wasn’t meant for you to read.” Jaehyun defends as a matter of fact. “I really just wanted to apologize to you about what happened last time.” He continues, he finally gets to the point but the fact that he sent her such vulgar letter was still hanging in the air and he knows he can’t just erase it in her mind, and forever it will be there.

“Johnny and my other friends were also sorry about what happened, I know it was so disrespectful on your part. But it will never happened again, Y/N. Sorry.” He really like to reach for her, comfort her in his arms like what she did to him before when they were young. But it’s like there’s a big barrier between them now, everything’s changed. “And of course they know you, because I always mention you to them.” He wasn’t supposed to let that part out of his story but it was the truth, she was his special girl.

Y/N remains stoic, but disappointment was apparent on her face.

“And the letter…” Jaehyun gulps before continuing. “I-I … it was a mistake… it’s wasn’t for you.” He uttered silently, thinking it was the best excuse of the year.

“It wasn’t for me?” Y/N finally speaks, eyes meeting his intently.

“Yes I-…. why are you crying?” Jaehyun panics stepping a little closer to her fragile figure. Y/N didn’t noticed she was already shedding tears until she dabbed the back of her hand to her cheeks. She didn’t like the idea of someone seeing her cry, no one can see her at her vulnerable state.

“Jaehyun, I-, I thought… you feel the same?” She asks, now boldly, her voice shaking that anytime she might really cry like a child.

He was taken a back for second, his brows knitted together as he took another step towards her. “What are you talking about?” He pressed, he wants know more about her statement.

“All these years Jae, I was hiding it. It was really hard for me, I-I really tried my best to move on, forget everything about you. I suppressed everything for years Jae.” She sobbed tears streaming down her face as she continues. “When I read your letter, I thought it was my chance, our chance. But I guess I was wrong.” Y/N tightly grips on her silk robe as she confess everything to him. Somehow, she thought, after this, all the burden inside her chest will disappear, not totally but at least she learned how to set herself free.

“And the fact that you can never ever be mine no matter what hurts the most.” She voices out.

Everything was clouded inside Jaehyun’s mind, he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t know what to do, every words she uttered was all jumbled in his head. Shock was damn evident in his face that he can’t even move a single muscle. In a snap, everything turned upside down. His mind really can’t absorb the words coming from her lips, her voice was like muffled sound against his ears.

“I love you.” She says and that was it, the last strand of his self-control.

Jaehyun lunges forward caging her petite body against his, his lips found hers in a heated kiss. Her breath hitches from his sudden advances but she let herself drown against his embrace. She slides her arms around his neck pulling him closer, chest to chest, his hands where dancing along her back to her waist and slowly glides up to the sides of her breast. She mewls a bit against his lips as Jaehyun tugged on her bottom lip to slip his tongue inside her mouth. Jaehyun gasped when Y/N sucked on his tongue, a little taken a back of her bold tiny act. But he was kind of amazed when she guides his hand down to the back of her thigh signalling him to hoist her up the shelves. He chuckles against the kiss as she buckled her legs on her waist. “Oh God.” He hisses, lips trailing to her neck, jaw, down to her chest.

Y/N proceeds to unbutton his dress shirt earning a glance from Jaehyun who was busy sucking the alabaster skin of her neck. He watches her intently slowly unbuttoning his dress as he smiles. “I’ve been waiting for this for so long.” He whispers in her ears before licking its shell. He then tugged her robe off and slowly pull down the thin strap of her silk gown exposing half of her breast. She sighed loudly when he trails his warm supple lips yet again on her throat down to her cleavage slowly baring the bud with his tongue before suckling it, one of his hand kneading the other. Y/N moans, as she covers her mouth to suppress her noise. “J-jae...” Her breathless tone pleading. “Yes my love?” He says before halting his ministrations with a pop. His eyes were fluttering, so lust filled, that she was really lost from it. “Feel me, please.” Jaehyun doesn’t need to be told twice, as he abruptly hike her dress up and danced his fingers to her inner thigh. He kisses her then again, torridly, as he hooks her leg around his waist, carefully, he lets his fingers part the satin cloth to the side before sliding his long finger inside her heat. She moans against his lips as she felt him curl his finger and rub the sensitive spot inside her. It was all mixed up pain, pleasure and excitement pooling in the pit of her stomach and she needs to let it out any time soon. Meanwhile Jaehyun, was already having a hard time ignoring the strain in his trousers. She noticed it immediately when her right thigh accidentally brushed against it. He choked on a moan when he felt her palm his hard on, feeling his hard arousal in her hand feels satisfying, never in her whole life she thought he will be this hard for her. “Fuck.” He curses under his breath. “Jae, give it to me please.” He proceeds to unbuckle his belt, the clinking sound of it echoes in the room before zipping down his trouser down to his ankles. Their breath hitched as they felt each other’s heat the moment he finally slip inside her warmth, he moans against her ear, mouth agape from the sensation as he stills for awhile, feeling her warmth in-cage his hard member. “Y/N?” He breathes heavily in her ears. “Jaehyun?” She pants against the crook or his neck feeling his cock inside her pulsate. “I love you.” Jaehyun confessed before slowly withdrawing and ramming back inside her earning a yelp from her. She felt the pain mixed with unfamiliar sensation that she craves for more. Y/N tilts her head capturing his lips for a greedy kiss savoring his taste that she yearned for years, she felt the pressure between her hips building up, getting stronger at each deep thrust. “D-Deeper…” Y/N demands. He complies, lifting her one leg slightly have a better angle. “Are you near love?” Jaehyun asked in between each thrust, he felt himself getting almost there when he felt her insides slowly tightening and it was driving him to the edge. “Jae…” She pants breathlessly. “P-Please come inside.” That was the little push he needs as he releases his warm seeds inside her. He groaned as he felt her insides tensing milking him thoroughly. “Look at me when you come.” He urges her. Just then, her eyeballs rolled back, lips parted from her release and the sight was blinding for Jaehyun, it was driving him insane.

“All this time, this was all I’ve missed.” She heaves, carding his silky hair to admire his perfect face. Jaehyun’s smiles tiredly, feeling his chest leaps from the beautiful sight right before his eyes, both of them groaned when he slips himself out of her.

They sat themselves on the floor, backs leaning against the old shelves of the library. It was silent, only their breaths and heartbeats could be heard. Jaehyun felt her head rest on his shoulder, he leans his cheek on it and he finally grinned shyly to himself. “You are smiling.” Y/N mutters. “How did you know?” He asked curiously. “I felt your dimples deepen through my head.” She says like it was the most obvious thing in the world. He still can’t believe of what had happened, everything passed by in bliss. Who would have thought he fucked up plan would turn out this great?

“Noona.” He starts, his hand slowly intertwining their fingers,

“Please don’t call me that.” She pleads instantly, glaring at him.

“Okay, Y/N.” He counters, smiling lopsidedly.

“What?”

“What if we ran away?”

note:

i posted this fic somewhere but I decided to might as well bring it here on tumblr. This was not proofread lol sorry. This fic was actually inspired by the movie “Atonement” that film was a hell of ride.

#nct jaehyun #jung jaehyun #jung yoonoh #nct #jaehyun smut #jaehyun scenario #jaehyun

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kamihoshi · 6 years ago

Link

Sakura and their assistant (and fellow mangaka) Risapaso were interviewed together for Creator’s Voice by Rikiya Kurimata. I don’t think Sakura’s ever done an interview so this was a surprise. Sakura talks a bit about aiming to become a mangaka and all things Yugami.

As this is a Yugami-centric blog, I’m only going to translate the questions and answers related to either the series or Sakura.

Apologies for any mistakes made (there are bound to be some), they are not my intent.

(Note: The interviewer’s name is listed as his nickname 仕掛け番長 but screw it, I’m just gonna call him by his real name. And since I have no idea what gender either Sakura or Risapaso are I’m just gonna use “they” as the pronoun.)

Jun Sakura ✖ Risapaso Interview: Connected by Yugami-kun

A love of drawing since childhood

Rikiya Kurimata: Alright, first question, what made each of you decide you wanted to become a mangaka? Sakura-sensei, you can start, if you please.

Jun Sakura: There wasn’t a particular event that made me want to do it but I’ve liked drawing ever since kindergarten. That never changed and in elementary school, I’d draw manga all over my notebooks.

RK: You were drawing original stuff from the start?!

JS: It was nothing that spectacular, just stuff like copying Doraemon. I remember doing the same with other manga I liked in my later years of elementary school.

RK: Did you like making your own stories back then?

JS: ............Probably, I guess?

RK: That was a long pause (laughs).

RK: What was it like when you were aiming to become a mangaka?

JS: I worked a side job in my hometown at the time. I’d get home from work dead tired and fall asleep before even drawing manga (laughs). After saving up some money from working, I quit my job and started working as an assistant for a mangaka who was publishing in a monthly magazine in my area. As a monthly assistant, you really need to have another job or else you don’t have many days where you’re actually working, so my living expenses were tight at the time but I figured I’d draw manga while living off my savings.

JS: I submitted my work to a competition and even though I didn’t win, I got a call from an editor at Shogakukan who wanted to work with me. After that I was told, “Draw whatever you want” and what I came up with ended up getting selected. It was decided that I’d debut so I moved to Tokyo and got to draw a number of oneshots while working as an assistant for a weekly magazine but I just couldn’t think of a storyboard for a series no matter how much I tried. I drew my last idea thinking I’d go back home if it didn’t get accepted. That was Yugami-kun ni wa Tomodachi ga Inai.

RK: Alright, thank you! Next, Risapaso-san, please.

[...]

RK: Risapaso-san is currently also an assistant to you, Sakura-san. How’s their work?

JS: They’re very dependable and always draw up these awesome backgrounds for me. It makes my art look so much better (laughs)! They’re a real pro and very reliable.

Risapaso: You flatter me.

RK: I think a lot of people aren’t aware of what assistants do - could you fill us in?

RP: I guess you can say we help give form to the what the author envisions. Sakura-sensei basically gives me a drawing as a rough guideline and using that as a base, I draw in the details.

RK: Ah, so you have to be able to read what the author wants and help them complete the drawing! That takes the skill of a professional!

JS: Yes. I'll ask them to spruce a panel up for me and they’ll give me a draw up a really nice backdrop for me.

RK: Sakura-san, what do you think of Risapaso-san’s series, Garyayama Poyomi no Kataomoi?

JS: The black humor and twists are really great! Whether it’s being comedic or serious, it surprises me, like, “That’s how it plays out?!” It betrays my expectations in a good way and the developments are so engaging. Even when the mood becomes serious, it’s well-balanced so I have nothing but glowing thoughts after reading it. Likewise, even when the story gets dark and heavy, there’s always a bit of comedy afterwards. I really like how it’s able to flip the mood back like that. I’m eager to see what happens next.

RK: And how about your thoughts on Yugami-kun ni wa Tomodachi ga Inai?

RP: I love it. I really like Yugami for how he’s the complete opposite of your typical shounen manga protagonist - acting not for the sake of those around him but for himself.

RK: For sure. When Yugami-kun ni wa Tomodachi ga Inai first came out, there weren’t many protagonists like Yugami. I think as the series got popular, we’ve seen an increase in them. How did you come up with Yugami-kun?

JS: It was born from a conversation I had with my editor. We were talking about people that were oddballs yet could also be strangely likable and that’s when I realized there are actually tons of people like that all around me, myself included. I took a bunch of those different aspects, pieced them all together bit-by-bit and made it into a manga.

RK: Wow, from a random chat like that?! When the first volume (of Yugami-kun) came out, my bookstore colleagues talked about it a lot. They were surprised at how well it sold. I think it really changed our image of a shounen manga protagonist and because you modeled the characters after people you know, that might be why a lot of the characters feel so real.

[...]

RK: And do you use Twitter too, Sakura-san?

JS: I do, but I’m no good at social media. I never know what to tweet. I've been like this since my student days so I’m probably just not suited for it. Yugami-kun is being rerun on Sunday Webry right now so I use Twitter to get the series out there while adding some of my own commentary on it. But I’m so stuck on what to say that it takes about three hours just to write three lines...

RK: Three hours?! That time ought to go to working on your manuscript, no? (laughs) But since you’re serializing in a magazine, you must get some fan mail, correct?

JS: Yes! Getting fan mail is so encouraging. I feel bad that I can’t return the favor with anything but new year’s cards... But I treasure every letter I get. When I’m feeling tired, I read them over again and they cheer me right up. Some senders have been writing to me since they were students and as time’s passed, they’ve sent me letters telling me they’ve gotten married. It feels like I’ve really gotten to know these people through their letters.

RK: Well then, Sakura-san, is there a particular chapter of Yugami-kun that sticks out in your mind?

JS: There was a moment when I was drawing up the draft storyboards and felt like I finally understood the characters. So in Yugami-kun, there’s an arc where the hero and heroine sever ties with one another. I wrote it without deciding how the two of them would make up. All I knew was that it would end with them reconciling and I forged ahead without deciding how it’d happen. But once I started drafting the storyboard, the chapter just wouldn’t go the way I wanted it to. Even if the story ended there, it wasn’t over for the characters. Characters were saying things they’d never say and things just didn’t feel right.

JS: I have a habit of cutting up parts of my storyboard drafts and reassembling them and in that mountain of papers was the heroine’s smile. Suddenly it hit me, “Ah, this is it!” and the somewhat sombre end of that arc did a complete turnaround. Just by picking up one piece of scrap from my drafts, all the other aspects of that chapter I was struggling with started to click as I pieced everything together like a puzzle. Like, “Oh, so that’s what he was thinking?” It felt like the characters were guiding me. It took a while to go through all of it but part of me drew the storyboard wanting to know how they all ticked.

RK: It sounds like the characters came to life in that moment!

JS: I discussed it with my editor beforehand but when I went to draw the chapter, something about the characters just seemed off so I submitted a completely different storyboard from the one I discussed with my editor, rewritten even though I’d already gotten the OK for the previous draft... I’m nothing but grateful to my editor for letting me make those changes.

RK: Thank you for all the work you put into this series! Well then, are there any manga you’d like to recommend?

JS: My friend told me I should read Ousama Ranking (King Ranking) by Sousuke Toka. It’s great; it has a kind of warmth to its style like a children’s story but also has these intense scenes that feel straight out of a shounen manga. A lot of times I’ve cried reading it. I love how multifaceted the characters are. Re-reading it and reflecting on the characters thoughts and actions with that hindsight never gets old.

[...]

RK: Finally, is there anything you’d like to say to your fans?

JS: Yugami-kun was really only slated to run for one volume with five chapters but it received a lot of positive feedback on reader surveys so it was given a second volume, and then the first volume got a reprint... And on and on, that cycle repeated. It’s thanks to all of your support that the series is still going and I’m forever grateful. When I was drawing Chapter 1, I’d thought of the ending by then but writing the story up to that point wasn’t possible so I figured that at its slated end, I’d show how the characters had grown in that time frame. But thanks to everyone, it looks like Yugami-kun will be fortuitous enough to finally have the ending I’d envisioned. I’ll be doing my best to make the rest of the ride enjoyable, so I’d be happy if you stuck with me.

[...]

RK: Thank you for doing this, you two!

Notes

Some of the oneshots Sakura has written in the past (all before Yugami began serialization):

こなた彼方の箒星 Konata Kanata no Houkiboshi

ぼくらのヒーロー Bokura no Hero / Our Hero

サンスポット！ Sunspot!

＆スマイリー &Smiley

The development Sakura mentions about Yugami and Chihiro severing ties with one another is a reference to chapters 56-58.

#yugami kun ni wa tomodachi ga inai #sakura jun #translations #yugami was only supposed to get one volume wow

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shawnsorangeglasses · 6 years ago

Text

Better Conversations - Part 3

2.3k words

Get you some tea, it’s BC Part 3

Hello yellow, you gotta read part 2 if you haven’t already. Better yet, here’s the masterlist.

It feels like the whole world has gotten wrapped up in Shawn’s appearance with (Y/N) in the streets of New York. She faces some consequences.

warnings: a little dramatic, sweeter ending

......................

News of Shawn’s mystery “girlfriend” caught fire and spread rapidly across all social media platforms. Fans were either happy, suspicious, or appalled. No matter what they felt about it, young girls from all over the world began to analyze and pick apart pictures of them together in the streets of New York. The group of fans they met at the diner took a video of their meeting with Shawn and that only stirred up some more talk online as well. There were screenshots and red circles and literal YouTube videos on this. It’s not like (Y/N) and Shawn were caught holding hands or making out, but all the gossips sites wasted no words and no time getting their articles out for clicks.

The video of them only caught her from the chest down, a snippet of her voice, and Shawn’s full body sat at the lunch counter. Some people were kind enough to comment that whoever this mystery girl was had really nice legs. That seemed to be the only positive aspect in all the chaos.

Bea, (Y/N)’s sister, only recognized her because of her clothes, specifically the boots she always wore. She was just as confused and shocked as the rest of the world when she called. It took about ten minutes to calm her down and explain the whole mess.

Shawn still had to leave for Toronto that night. Goodbyes weren’t even an option. His people wanted him and him alone at the airport, which (Y/N) understood. In her mind, she had already caused enough trouble.

Miraculously enough, not one person had been able to place (Y/N)’s face or social identity. She never really posted pictures of herself online and rarely allowed anyone to take a picture of her and post it without permission. Her Instagram page only had three posts, all city photography, and her profile picture only displayed a solitary bumblebee doodle. For a while, it seemed like the damage would repair itself. (Y/N) thought she may have been in the clear.

Then she woke up. More photos were published. Her phone had ten missed calls. Eight from Jason and two from Lawrence Derringer, the head executive of his branch. (Y/N) prepared for the worst.

It was Sunday by now. The Jason and Mr. Derringer opened up their offices just to talk to her in the conference room. She wore the most conservative outfit she could find in her closet.

“Ms. (Y/L/N), are you aware of the story that has surfaced about you and Mr. Shawn Mendes in the news?”

“Yes Mr. Derringer, but I can explain. Nothing happened at all between Shawn and me. I would never get involved with a client in that fashion, and as far as I know, they never even got a picture of my face.”

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Ms. (Y/L/N).” They present a laptop screen to her, opened to a TMZ article with her and Shawn stood at the gemstone pop-up shop. Her face is clear and visible. “This was published eight hours ago,” Jason mumbles.

“I know your intentions must have been pure, Ms. (Y/L/N). What I’m struggling to understand is why you never questioned any of the endeavors you had with Mr. Mendes. Harmless as they may have been, this could have a negative effect on our firm’s relationship with him as well as our image in the industry. Did this not occur to you when you realized you were being photographed? Surely it must have.”

(Y/N) doesn’t answer, right away. Saying no, would have been a lie. She did consider the possibility of them getting a little publicity, but she didn’t think so far ahead about how that might affect the company.

“I suppose you’re going to have to fire me then?”

Mr. Derringer glances at Jason, then back at (Y/N). “Fortunately, no. You will not be fired for this. Apparently, Shawn called our offices several times last night trying to get a hold of one of us. He managed to reach me and said the day out was his all idea and that you should not be fired for the events that followed.”

“So, I’m not in trouble?”

“Well yes and no. I told him you would keep your job but that does not mean you can get off without some repercussions. Since Whitman was the one who hired you, I figured he should be the one to enforce that.”

Jason steps forward, looking like he was trying so hard to be authoritative in front of his superior. “I made the decision to prohibit you from attending any future corporate events where Shawn or any other Island Records artist may also attend. It’s probably for the best that you don’t see Mr. Mendes anymore in public for any reason. Your recent promotion has also been revoked as well and your salary will revert back to the earnings you made prior to said promotion.”

(Y/N)’s jaw set, keeping her tongue from saying everything she wanted to spit in his stupid Ivy League face. Everything she’s wanted to say to him for the past eight months feels like holding acid in the back of her throat. She swallowed her thoughts.

“I understand. My sincerest apologies, Mr. Derringer. It won’t happen again.”

“I certainly hope not, Ms. (Y/L/N). You’re a valued member of our staff and you contribute so much to the floor and the board. It’d be a shame to lose you over something like this. Jason will see you out. Have a good evening.”

(Y/N) is already at the elevator smashing the down button before Jason can even make it down the hall. Tears of humiliation sting her eyes as the elevator slowly takes her and Jason down from the top floor. He tries to lay a hand on her shoulder, apologetically, but she shrugs it off and steps further from him. If he was sorry, it only because he felt like he had to be, not because he actually was.

“Are you seriously pissed at me? You brought this on yourself.”

“You have no right to try and keep me from seeing him or anyone.”

“That’s what you think this is about? Maybe you ought to think twice before sleeping your way through our list of clients.”

Of course, it’s all my fault that I didn’t feel like eating alone one afternoon.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware going to lunch with one man is the equivalent to shoving my tongue down his throat.”

“You might as well have been, the way you were smiling at each other in those pictures.”

“I knew it. I knew you had a problem with me seeing other people. You can go and fuck every girl in Times Square if you want, but I have to sit idly by like your personal dumping ground?”

“You can see whoever you want. Just not him. You should know better. This firm—”

“Like you give a damn about the firm. This is about you and your fat ego. You can’t handle the fact that somebody might even be a little interested in me because you know that as soon as I find someone who actually gives a damn about me, I won’t have a reason to come back to you for a goddamned quickie in the janitor’s closet.”

“It’s that kind of thinking that keeps you behind that desk.”

(Y/N) falls silent. No more words are spoken. There was no use in trying to argue or be right. Jason was jealous again. He’d done this once before when another coworker, someone on (Y/N)’s pay grade, showed interest in her. The elevator doors finally open and she treads heavily out the front doors, never looking back.

…………………..

(Y/N) spent the rest of the evening wrapped in her bed sheets, at first crying with her makeup still on, then eating leftovers and watching Criminal Minds reruns. Hearing Dr. Reid talk about m.o.’s calmed her down. She’d turned her phone off hours ago just to get some peace. Family and friends were calling and texting her non-stop yesterday evening about her appearance with Shawn. At the time it was too much to handle with possibility of getting fired still looming over her head. But now with the worst over, (Y/N) figured she should probably check her notifications for anything important.

Through all the messages from cousins and people who barely knew her, one single text from Shawn floated to the very top.

[please call me]

He sent it about an hour after (Y/N)’s meeting with Mr. Derringer. It’s 1 AM now but Shawn was in LA. She checks the time zones first then finds his contact and presses the call button. He picks up on the first ring.

“Hey, are you okay?”

(Y/N) grins for the first time today, more than happy to hear that soft voice again. “I should be asking you that. Every news outlet has a story on you. And me, I guess.”

“Yeah but are you okay?”

It sounds like he’d been waiting to ask her this question all day. Technically, (Y/N) was okay, but she could be better, given the circumstances. She chooses her next words carefully.

“I…I will be. I didn’t get fired if that’s what you mean. Thank you for that by the way.”

“I’m so sorry. I said everything would be fine and I should have known this would happen.”

“It’s not your fault. People aren’t that crazy about it. Your fans are being relatively nice to me, now that they know my face.”

“They know your face?”

“Yeah. More photos came out this morning.”

Shawn goes quiet for a moment. It sounds like he’s moving into another room away from the chatter in the background. “Could we video chat?” The new echo of his voice sounds like he’s moved into the bathroom.

(Y/N) looked at her reflection in the mirror on the wall across the room. Dramatic streaks of mascara still trailed down her cheeks and her eyes were still very red. She should say no, but she desperately wants to see his face. And this technically didn’t go against Jason’s stupid new rules for her.

“Give me a minute.”

She washes her face in the bathroom the best she can. Her eyes are still red when she’s done. Fuck it, she thinks. Maybe he won’t notice.

(Y/N) flops back down on her bed and opens the app. Shawn’s face pops up on her screen, riddled with concern. He’s sat in the bathtub, one in a hotel probably, wearing a white t-shirt, hair fluffy and wild without its gel. One “s” curl fell on his forehead.

Unfortunately, he does notice. “You’ve been crying?”

(Y/N) bites her lip. “Maybe.”

Shawn doesn’t speak. He just wants to look at the girl on his screen. The truth is he didn’t really have a good reason to facetime her other than just wanting to see her again. He was so sure that she would never want to talk to him again after all of this.

“I want to know why, but you don’t have to tell me,” he says.

“No, it’s alright. I’m not fired but I am never allowed to be seen in public with you again as long as I work there.” (Y/N) sniffles. “Which is fucking stupid.”

“So quit,” he mutters. The words leave his mouth before he can think twice about saying them.

“Quit?”

“I mean—I’m kidding, that’s not what I meant. God, that sounded really bad.”

“It did,” she says through a smile. “But I have thought about it. About a year ago actually.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I met someone. At work. We’re not a real couple but...” (Y/N) realizes she doesn’t have an appropriate label for whatever she and Jason are, but Shawn seems to understand. “I wasn’t trying to get ahead. I did actually like him once upon a time. But he never wanted to be anything more with me. Then he became my boss and things just moved under the table.”

Shawn thinks this time before speaking. “Was it that guy you were with at the party?”

“Damn, you’re good. How much of that did you see?”

“I saw when he tried to get you to dance. And when he was at the bar.”

“Well if this music thing ever bombs—it won’t—you should be a detective.”

Shawn gives her a weak smile. A piece of his heart broke a little when she admitted to being in a relationship, albeit a noncommittal and toxic one. Someone already had her heart and her eyes.

“Do you still love him?”

(Y/N) thinks about it for second. Love? It seemed so unattainable for her at this point. At the start, Jason was romantic but never with the usual gestures. Just clever lines and secret lunch dates on the rooftop. Then one day he just stopped. Looking back, it doesn’t seem like love anymore. Just regular sneaking around. “I don’t think we ever made it to the love stage of it all.”

Shawn slouches down into the tub more, forcing his long legs out and his feet up on the tiled wall in front of him.

“I take it back. Maybe you should quit.”

(Y/N) blinks at him. “Very funny. I may be unhappy, but I still have bills to pay. That bastard docked my salary too, so I’ll be working double shifts again.”

“No, I’m serious, (Y/N). If you go in tomorrow and put it your two weeks’ notice, you can have a job as my assistant.”

She sits up in her bed, not believing a word of what those bright pink lips were telling her. “I thought we we’re joking when we talked about that.”

He shrugs. “I wasn’t.”

“Doesn’t there have to be a few more conversations with a few more people before you just bring a new person on board?”

“I’ll talk to Andrew tonight,” he promises. “He knows who you are, and I’ve told him how hard you work.”

“I’d have to think about it Shawn. That’s a big leap.”

“I know, but I do mean it. You have a job waiting for you whenever you want it.”

(Y/N) tried feel good about this, but everything about working for Shawn scared her. She knew his intentions were good but there was more risk than that. What if she fell into the same hole she did with Jason? What would fans say? What would people think?

“I call you when I have an answer.”

......................

taglist:

@spider-mendes @sebsdreamboat @innositer

#shawn mendes #shawn peter raul mendes #shawn mendes fanfic #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes imagine

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charlesxavirs · 6 years ago

Note

Ohohohoh! Please, if you want to I won't make you I'm sorry- Stenbrough? That's my actual shit and I love it but if you for any reason I will be okay I'm so sorry I'm a literal mess.

okay so i’ve had this written for ages and i’ve tried to expand on it and write more but it’s just never really happened so i might as well just post it. hope you enjoy! read on ao3 )

Stanley Uris considered himself a man of many talents. He could recite well detailed spiel about any bird at the drop of a hat, he had got washing his clothes down to a precise science so none of the colours would even dare to run, and he had to admit that he was quite flexible, although he wouldn’t ever admit that on a first date. Yet, despite his vehement efforts, despite his dedication and despite his might, he cannot get fucking glitter out of his hair. He’s tried washing it, brushing it, even vacuuming it once with Eddie’s careful guidance. He dreads the days when it is inexplicably part of his routine, and he prays and prays and prays that he’ll be able to get it out of his curly locks come bedtime.

He never fucking does, though.

And so, Stan was in a foul mood as he pulled up in the parking lot this morning at precisely five minutes to seven. As usual, he was the second car in the lot and he took the time to count the binders on his passenger seat again before he gathered them in his arms, to make sure he had replied to any emails he had to and ran over his lesson plans in his head before stepping out of the car and making his way towards the staff entrance of the small elementary school.

Just as he had expected, Ben was sat behind his desk at the main office, looking bleary eyed as he sipped at his coffee and flipped through papers that Stan would ask about if it wasn’t so early in the morning and if Ben didn’t look so tired. Stan threw him a smile and waved at him the best he could with his arms full, a wave of fondness washing over him as Ben offered him a bright smile in spite of his fatigue, and he started his trek along the red bricked corridor to his classroom.

Stan had started teaching just four years ago, starting off with Kindergarten kids at Derry Elementary before moving to the fifth grade the year after, and he’s stayed there ever since. His psychology degree was supposed to lead Stan into the world of therapy, yet instead, he got pulled into early years development, which ultimately led to him training to be a teacher. His father was more than displeased at sudden change in career choice, hoping his son would be a hotshot shrink in no time, but Donald Uris had to admit that it was nice to have Stan close to home. He also had to admit that Stan was good at his job.

The kids loved him. They giggled at his sarcastic remarks, groaned at him whenever he set homework and were unafraid to come to him with their 10-year-old problems, seeking his fair judgement and level headed advice. Yes, Stan Uris loved his kids dearly, he even admitted to shedding a tear here and there when his classes finally left for middle school, and he’d be damned if they weren’t going to grow up in a safe and loving place. The thought of packing it in and walking the career path his parents had hoped he would pave after college was a tempting one when he came home with stack after stack of homework sheets and essays and school books, but the way the kids eyes would light up when they saw his neatly written praise on their last homework assignment was more than enough to quash the idea. In short, Stan loved his class, and his class loved him.

Stan pushed open his classroom door with his shoulder and blindly searched the cold wall with nimble fingers until they settle on the light switch, and he flooded the room with the white, artificial glare of the ceiling lights. He walked the well known path to his desk at the front of the room, reaching down to pick up a stray pencil by his chair after he set his folders down on the clutter free table. He took pride in his classroom, keeping it clean and tidy at all times. An untidy working space means an untidy mind, his mother had always told him, and he very much believed it to be true.

Over the summer, he had spent a full day painting new displays on the walls, changing the colour scheme of the room from light yellow to sky blue, penning sparrows onto the walls with help from Richie. All of his pencils had been sharpened, papers organised, glue sticks neatly stacked and reading books tidily arranged on shelves.

“You’re like Mary Poppins when she does all that clicky shit.” Richie had astutely commented, trying to snap his fingers for added effect, but he somehow ended up punching himself in the face.

Stan wished Richie took the same pride in his own classroom instead of giving Stan shit for doing so himself. Richie was content to replace the framed picture of Bill Nye above his desk with an updated snap and buy a new board pen every year. He loved his friend dearly, but he often wonders how he even became qualified to teach, considering he was a health hazard on legs, always tripping over chair legs or barely skimming the children’s faces when he got too animated with his hand movements. Stan had been teaching for a year longer than Richie had but he had known Richie all of his life. In fact, Stan likes to credit himself as the guiding force for getting him off his ass and into the workforce.

It had been a Sunday, when they were both Juniors at UCLA, and Stan was putting the finishing touches to his project for his Primary Education class. He was sat cross legged on the floor of his cramped apartment, blasting Abba, the ground in front of him covered in newspaper as he dabbed his project delicately with his one dollar paintbrush and paint. Everything was peaceful in the world of Stan, that was, until Richie bounded through the door in a whirlwind of neon colours and unruly hair, already speaking at one hundred miles per hour.

“Stanley the Manley, you’ll never believe what the fuck just happened. So i’m sat there, enjoying my weekly Dorito date with that weird guy down the street and- what the flippity fuck is that?”

Stan looked up at him, carefully setting his brush down on the newspaper and moving curls out of his eyes, following Richie’s gaze down to his project, standing sturdily in front of Stan.

“It’s homework.” Stan said, stretching his stiff arms above his head. “It’s a fish.”

Before he knew it, Richie was kneeling on the floor next to Stan, eye to eye with his papier-mache creation, staring it out with trepidation in his gaze.

“So I’ve gotta do a shit ton of consumer research just to have the chance to grace the airwaves, but all you’ve gotta do is make a fish?” Richie whined, sitting back on his heels and pouting at Stan. He reached out his hand to touch, but Stan quickly swatted it away before leaning back down to apply another coat of purple paint to his aquatic masterpiece.

“If you’re that bothered, why don’t you train to become a teacher, Trashmouth.” Stan chastised, ignoring the ‘humph’ that escaped Richie’s as he watched him paint. Stan never actually expected him to do it. He had turned up at Stan’s door almost a year to the day later, holding a handmade dog, wearing a bowtie and donning a kippah on over its curly ears. Stan had answered the door with a hand on his hip, eyebrow raised. Richie had only grinned, his cheeks turning red with the force of him holding back a laugh at his own joke.

“It’s a Cocker Staniel.”

Stan slammed the door in his face.

And now here they were, almost five years later, Richie running late as usual and Stan dreading the looming presence of glitter on his Thursday morning.

Parent-Teacher conferences were the bane of Stan’s existence. He held two every year, one in October while the kids were relatively new in the class and one later on in the year, normally before they left. Usually, the parents didn’t care at all or seemingly cared too much, berating Stan for things as trivial as how he worded homework sheets to the way he dressed. The sheer stress of such things meant that Stan spent the short hour between school ended and his first appointment with Eddie, the school nurse, drinking juice boxes with an ice pack held securely to his head while they chatted aimlessly and watched reruns of Judge Judy on the room’s shitty TV set. This year, though, was going to be the first time he’d handle the parents smoothly and professionally, and he certainly wasn’t going to have a breakdown in his store cupboard afterwards. No way.

He heaved in a sigh, revelling in the slight burn of his lungs as he drank in the air. It was getting closer to half past now, and Stan finally started to get into gear, setting up for the day, refusing to look at the offending vials of metallic crap until he had to. It was 8:55 when Richie finally pulled up outside, fifteen minutes later than he usually was, and he didn’t even afford himself the luxury of mithering Stan as he sprinted down the corridor, hands full of boxes and slammed his classroom door behind him. Richard Tozier was well suited to be a second grade teacher, Stan thought, considering he was a second grader himself.

He opened his door at 8:59, only just making it back to his desk before the whiny ring of the school bell flooded his ears and children started to walk through the door, unbuttoning their coats as they bid him good morning, groaning as they saw what Stan had written on the whiteboard, and Stan couldn’t help but smirk. If they were going to destroy his classroom and his life with pipe cleaners and glitter glue, he was going to make their brains explode with maths.

Stan was sticky by the time 4:30 rolled by. In an effort to make his class a bit more cheerful, he had allowed them to make name tags for their books and work so their parents could easily identify them that evening. He hadn’t, however, thought it was such a good idea when Timothy Jones had walked into him with a full pot of PVA glue, subsequently spilling it down his neatly pressed chinos, covering them in a shiny, brown stain that was going to be a bitch to get out. He couldn’t possibly greet parents looking like there had been an oil spill on his trousers, so in a last resort to gain some semblance of put togetherness, he went knocking on Richie’s door.

“Woah there Stanley,” he grinned as he cut what looked like a melted dinosaur out of a piece of blue card, adding it to a pile of similarly drawn jurassic creatures. “Looks like someone didn’t make it to the can in time. Say, I didn’t know you were into watersports.”

Stan didn’t dignify him with a response, instead sighing and muttering a halfhearted ‘Beep Beep’. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any pants, have you?”

Stan should have known to fear the worse as Richie’s face lighted up with mirth and he spoke to Stan with his Southern Belle drawl.

“Well, Sir, I surely surely do.”

And that’s how Stan ended up sat behind his desk, listening to parents talk about their kids as if they were the only ones on the planet, wearing a pair of hot pink yoga pants that barely fitted him, never mind Richie.

(“Where the fuck did you get these?” “They’re Eddie Spaghetti’s. I-” “Never mind, I’d rather not know.”)

He nodded empathetically as they talked about their children, resisted the urge to roll his eyes as they told him how to do his job, but under no circumstances did he stand up from the table. Propriety be damned, he didn’t want to be fired for public indecency. He was almost done at five minutes to six, his schedule closely adhered to, and if all went well, he’d be in bed by seven. He only had one appointment left, and he let himself relax in his chair, straightening his papers and ticking off names as he waited.

Five minutes passed. And then ten. And then fifteen. It was quarter past six, and he was still waiting for his last appointment to turn up. A pang of annoyance gnawed at Stan. He had been preparing for this for over a month and the parents didn’t even have the decency to listen to him talk about their own kids, for God’s sake. Huffing, he started to pack away, stuffing sheets back into their binders when a ball of emerald and auburn and brown came charging through the door with a small boy in tow.

“I’m so s-sorry, I thought Noah’s mother was coming instead.” the man groaned, panting as he ran a hand through his son’s hair.

He quickly caught his breath and made his way in front of Stan, offering him his hand to shake. If Stan wasn’t so annoyed, he would have noticed the way his blue eyes sparkled or the warmth of his touch or the way his mouth quirked as he spoke. But Stan was irritated, so instead he shook the man’s hand and refused to look at him as he pulled his sheets back out. Stan quickly realised, though, that Noah was stood next to his father, grinning up at Stan.

He quickly softened, smiling back at the boy. Noah was a boisterous member of his class, yes, but he was polite and was quiet when Stan needed him to be and often had an amusing anecdote about his Aunt Bev and Uncle Georgie. Noah Phillips-Denbrough was a good kid, and Stan liked him very much.

“Hey buddy.” he greeted as Noah waved back, his grin widening as he shot back an exuberant ‘hi!’, almost shaking as he gripped to his father’s arm.

Looking at the pair now, Stan could obviously see the family ties. He had had a few dealings with Audra Phillips, and from what Stan could gather, she was a reserved woman who only seemed to speak when she was spoken to, quite unlike her son, who was rowdy to say the least. While Noah had inherited his mother’s swarthy skin and tightly coiled locks, it was easy to see his father in him. Their eyes both lit up in the same carefree way when Stan looked at them and the smile on their faces seemed to be permanent. That, and the blue hue of their eyes were almost identical. While Stan knew divorce often made kids shrink into themselves, Noah had done anything but, and he thinks Mr. Denbrough had been part of the reason why.

“Sorry we’re so late, Mr Uris.” Noah beamed, no evidence of regret traceable on his face, and Stan’s grin involuntarily widened.

“Don’t worry about it Noah.” he said, throwing him a wink that made the young boy dissolve into giggles. “Hey, why don’t you go and finish your drawing from today while I chat to your dad?” he suggested, and Noah didn’t have to be asked twice before he was sitting at one of the rickety desks and scribbling away.

Stan turned his attention back to the man in front of him, cutting him off with a wave of his hand as he tried to speak again, probably to apologise again. “Why don’t we get started, Mr Denbrough.”

“Bill, please.” he insisted, and the smile on his face had Stan repressing a blush.

“Okay then, Bill,” Stan didn’t miss the man’s chuckle, “Let’s talk about Noah’s progress so far.”

In all fairness to Stan, he was completely professional from there on in, only making eye contact when appropriate, never letting himself stray from the topic of Bill’s son, and he certainly didn’t let himself get excited when Bill pushed the sleeves of his dress shirt up to his elbows. Stanley Uris was a paragon of a teacher, answering questions thoughtfully and easily. So what if Bill’s appointment lasted twenty minutes longer than it should have, it’s not like Stan was counting.

It went so well, however, that Stan had ignored one huge, almighty, dirty big fat flaw. He had completely forgotten that nothing good ever happens to him, and sooner or later, it was all going to go tits up. Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait long for it to happen.

“Thanks a lot for seeing us, Mr Uris.” Bill had a smile on his face and his voice was dripping with an appreciation that had Stan blushing.

Stan waved his hand in front of him, turning to smile at Noah, who was once again glued to Bill’s side. “Thank you guys for coming.” He shot him a small wink, making the boy beam up at him.

When he turned back to Bill, there was a look clouding his piercing eyes that Stan couldn’t quite decipher, yet it made the warmth on his cheeks deepen further, and before he knew it, Bill was standing out of his chair, arm out in front of him to shake, and Stan was following suit.

He only realised what a huge fuck up it was when Noah burst into fits of giggles.

“Mr. Uris why are your pants pink?” he squeaked out in between laughs, clutching onto Bill’s arm to hold himself up.

Stan’s cheeks burned now, and he was pretty sure you could see him in the dark with the intensity of his blush. He glanced at Bill out of the corner of his eye, surprised to find that his cheeks were the colour of his pants, and he didn’t miss the way his eyes ran over Stan’s somewhat scantily clad legs.

He cleared his throat, the deep bass of his chuckle reverberating in Stan’s chest as he pushed a stray strand of auburn hair from his eyes. “The pink suits you.”

All Stan could do was limply shake the man’s hand, squeak out a pathetic goodbye and usher the pair hastily from the room.

He let his head fall with a thunk against the pink painted door as he shut it closed behind them. Stan had prided himself on keeping himself composed for the past five years, no matter how hard it was. He had people complain about him when his shirt sleeves were too short or when the amount of time designated to reading was deemed ‘questionable’. The way Stan was feeling now had to stop. Yes, he’d had crushes before, but never on a parent. It was hard enough for him being gay in Derry, it was even harder to try to be so and teach at the same time. The last thing he needed was a silly schoolboy crush to come along and wreck the order he’d created.

So, Stan did what he usually did when he’s had, what he’d consider, a stressful day: go home, eat a shit ton of ice cream and watch Say Yes To The Dress until his eyes melt.

Thank God it’s Friday.

#niamh writes #works #this is like 3k words so i doubt it's gonna show in the tags #sigh #stenbrough #stan x bill #stanley uris #bill denbrough #i luv my boys #Anonymous

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