#couldn’t retain the analyses then

[the-winds-of-destiny-xxx]

.

[merryfortune]

feeling bloody sick

Written for the Rarest of Rare Pairs Fic-A-Thon Amnesty Era

Prompt: Fire Emblem Fates: Beruka/Camilla/Selena - One falling sick and being taken care of by the other two

Title: feeling bloody sick

Ship: Beruka/Camilla/Selena

Fandom: Fire Emblem Fates

Word Count: 1,898

Rating: T

Warning: Choose Not to Warn 

Tags: Mid-Canon, Polyamory, Menstruation, Teasing, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff

   Beruka did not get sick.

   Sickness and whatever caused it were rightfully scared of Beruka, like everyone else ought to be as well, and that was why Beruka did not get sick.

   Of course, having a sound mind helped. She didn’t do foolish things like not washing her hands properly or standing too long out in the rain. And yet, despite continuing on as she always had with this point of pride somewhere over her shoulder, she had finally done it.

   She had gotten sick.

   And the symptoms were nothing less than baffling. 

   She was hot and cold. She was sweaty and clammy. She felt as though she had been stabbed through the gut and all she wanted to do was curl up and die in some little hole with a blanket over her. She was so ill that if she tried to sleep, she couldn’t because the pain was distracting but she was so tired, too. She could fall asleep at any second but the call of the void blared within.

   What had happened to her? Beruka analysed her past few days for what might have gone wrong but nothing came to mind. She hadn’t interacted with anyone sick nor eaten anything foul. It had come out of nowhere and affected her and her alone.

   “Selena… please…” Beruka murmured, curled over on her bed. “I… I think its my time. I trust you and Camilla to do it quickly.”

   Camilla laughed at the dramatics. This whatever it was Beruka was afflicted with was bringing out a totally new side of her and it was kind of adorable.

   “You just need to drink more water.” Selena insisted.

   “Noooo, that makes me want to pee.” Beruka whined then huffed.

   “You need to go, don’t you?” Selena asked, reading through the lines.

   Beruka nodded shyly.

   Selena sighed. “I’ll help.”

   Good thing, too, Beruka was wobbly as she crawled out of bed and almost hit the floor once she was on two feet. Selena supported her and Camilla opened the door to the ensuite. 

   They gave Beruka some privacy and waited.

   Then.

   She screamed.

   “Camilla! There is blood!” Beruka howled. Suddenly full of life and panic, just like the death rattle of a dying animal, really. “There is blood in my urine!”

   Camilla and Selena, on the other side of the door, exchanged a look. Part of it surprised, part of it amused. Either way, tinged with concern.

   Beruka hobbled over and banged on the door. She was let out as her unflappable expression was anything but.

   “There is blood. In my urine.” Beruka reiterated with distress.

   “Oh, sweetie…” Camilla cooed.

   “Are you… on your period?” Selena asked with her face scrunched up.

  “My period?” Beruka echoed back like an owl. “I’ve never had my period in my life. I-I’ve always assumed I was barren.”

   Camilla hummed thoughtfully, “Or maybe, you’re just a late bloomer.”

   “A very late bloomer.” Selena repeated but with a more dubious tone.

   “You had a hard life before becoming my retainer. Food wasn’t always on the table, you slept in tents and slums. To say nothing of the work that you were doing… Perhaps that delayed your periods until now.” Camilla theorised then laughed. “It’s kind of sweet to know that you feel so subconsciously safe with us, actually.”

   Beruka paled, puzzled.

   “That could be true, actually.” Selena agreed as she folded her arms. “My periods were spotty when I was twelve, and that’s normal since that’s when I first got them but, um, when that big disaster happened when I was around seventeen-eighteen, they all but dried up. Only resuming after we had recovered.”

   “I see.” Beruka chewed on the anecdotal data with much consideration. Her brows furrowed and she put her hand to her chin.

   “Come on, dear,” Camilla sighed with a small smile, “let’s not worry about it too much just yet. Let’s get you back to bed, let you rest up some more. Here, Selena and I will go and fetch some creature comforts for you. A hot water bottle, maybe some chocolate.”

   “Yeah.” Selena agreed.

   Beruka’s expression turned foul. Her? Get taken care of by her mistress and her fellow retainer? The idea of it made her stomach turn- oh, no, actually that was probably her period. How mortifying either way, however, and becoming the ultimate proof that they were right. She needed to go back to bed and rest up.

   “Allow us.” Selena said with grabby gestures of her hands.

   “Fine.” Beruka said through gritted teeth.

   It was disgraceful but she allowed herself to be manhandled by Selena, and Camilla too. They helped her back to bed but having a name - or revelation - to her ailment made it more manageable somehow. She felt more awake and alert than before, when she had been begging for a mercy kill over it.

   How embarrassing. Now Beruka was hiding under the covers for all new reasons. She knew she still wasn’t going to get to sleep a wink but orders were orders. As indulgent as they were. So, she laid down and rugged up, blanket to her chin as she stared across the room to the doorframe where Camilla and Selena stood.

   “We’ll be back soon, sweetheart.” Camilla bade her.

   “Understood.” Beruka croaked.

   They closed the door behind themselves and the wait was crushing. The dull stillness of the room numbed Beruka’s mind with boredom. All she had to focus on was that thrum of the stomach cramps which had yet to recede. She tried different positions to alleviate the hurt but all of them violated her conventional wisdom of how to deal with an injury. The more bunched up she was, the better she felt.

   She closed her eyes. Slowed her breathing. That helped somewhat as time passed at a glacial speed. The headache that had been lurking eased up at that and yet… Curiously returned when her ears pricked on the sound of footsteps: the paradoxically delicate clunk of armour and the stamping of a petty child in leather. No guesses as to who when the door to her room opened again.

   “We’re baaaack.” Camilla sung out.

   “And we have chocolate.” Selena cheered smugly.

   “Gee, thanks.” Beruka rolled her eyes.

   They returned to her bedside with an entire basket of goodies. A cursory glance through the contents that weren’t obscured by Camilla or the cane weaving of it, Beruka saw the chocolate and hot water bottle she had been promised. As well as sanitary napkins and some spare pairs of underwear.

   “We spoke with one of the physicians and they raised some alarm. The pain you seem to be in isn’t normal…” Camilla lamented as she sat down next to Beruka on her bed. “But they also said, it might just be because it's your first, hard to say without more of a known pattern.”

   Beruka groaned. She had decades of this to “look forward” to and that alone tortured her half as much as her damned by the gods, good for nothing uterus. Awful, just awful. She clutched her belly and raked her fingers through the flesh until it hurt good.

   “In the meantime, let’s get some pain killers into you.” Selena said.

   “Thank you…” Beruka said.

   She swallowed more than just her stoic pride on that one. She uncurled and wriggled up, allowed herself to be doted on by her partners. Beruka drank water with a mix of herbal powders. The taste was bitter but she was the last person to complain about that. Though, the fact that a cube of chocolate was offered next helped the medicine to go down.

   Camilla took far too much relish in getting the opportunity to personally hand feed Beruka. Beruka saw what she was like with her siblings, she would be needlessly cruel to deny Camilla her affectionate nature at a moment like this.

   “I hope you feel better soon.” Camilla said.

   Beruka exhaled through her nose and settled into her bed. She was now flanked - or more gently, spooned - by both Camilla and Selena. Her mistress to her right and her fellow retainer to her left. The increase in shared body temperature was going to make Beruka melt with the excess of pampering didn’t first.

   Camilla caressed Beruka’s face, wiped sweat off with her axe-calloused fingertips. She smiled and played with Beruka’s hair. Beruka went around in circles in her mind between hating it and loving it. She thought she had long since calcified any need for this sort of thing but Camilla was her greatest weakness: hence why she needed to be protected. Ugh, it just made Beruka want to get better soon yet there were more days of this until normalcy resumed for a moon’s cycle.

   “Is there anything else we can do?” Camilla asked.

   “No, all my needs are accounted for.” Beruka replied.

   “But if I had to guess,” Selena teased and poked out her tongue, “you are probably worried with how we’ll go with you taking a back seat to your duties, correct?”

   “Correct.” Beruka confirmed.

   “Don’t worry, I’m more than capable of picking up the slack.” bragged said and her hands snaked downwards, she took Beruka’s hand and started playing a game on them akin to ‘this little piggy’, “You concentrate on getting better. We’ll concentrate on everything else.”

   “Heh. Thank you.” Beruka said.

   “Never change, Selena.” Camilla laughed at the attempt of rivalry.

   All three of them knew the bond that united them was nothing quite so tumultuous but old habits broke hard. Still, Beruka appeared somewhat assuaged by that. She sank back into her bed, closed her eyes, and her expression changed: became as serene as it could be for someone like her.

   Beruka exhaled slowly and she drifted off slightly. Perhaps even dozed. Her head lolled to the side.

   “I think it's time for us to take our leave, Lady Camilla.” Selena whispered.

   “Me, too, Selena.” Camilla whispered.

   The two women were careful to dislodge from Beruka’s side so as to not disturb her. Though, her head nodded further to her left than before.

   Camilla leaned in and pecked Beruka’s temple. Beruka’s lips twitched. Camilla reared back and Selena did the same.

   “Thank you…” Beruka murmured.

   “Eeek!” Selena squealed.

   She bolted straight back. Her back straightened and the last hair on her head raised as her eyes went wide. Her arms turned to iron bars in front of her chest in having been ambushed like that - and by Beruka saying something nice, even! How dare.

   All whilst, outwardly, Beruka looked fast asleep.

   “What…?” Beruka sleep-talked. “You… you think I don’t… sleep with one eye open?” She yawned.

   “Get proper rest, Beruka.” Camilla told her. “And when you do feel better, don’t forget to clean up with what we gave you.”

   “Will do…” Beruka snored.

   Selena eased up and she put her hand on her hip. Camilla gave her a gesture and she nodded. She extinguished the candle nearby and that helped the room to darken despite the hour of the day. She also drew the curtains tighter for Beruka’s benefit as Beruka yes, still heard all these things.

   The swish of the fabric, the taps of footwear on the wooden boards but still. She appreciated it deeply in her hour of need and moment of weakness. Though by now, the medicine was kicking in by now but ultimately, she still felt bloody sick.

[duckiemimi]

Hi Mimi hoping you’re doing good If you don’t mind me asking do you have any headcanons personal or not on gojo and geto or any characters in general?

AAA what a lovely question! thank u for asking me! though i will go out to say, i think a lot of my headcanons have interspersed into some of my analyses (and fics!) 😭 i can’t help it—they’re so dear to me, sometimes i forget where i start and where they end :’) i try my best to separate, though! some of my headcanons are serious, some are plausible, and some just make me laugh. i’ll make this into a little list then:

⟡ geto and gojo did NOT get along when they first met. it was during their first class—yaga had just asked a question about what it means to be a jujutsu sorcerer. geto, the then budding honor student, raised his hand and voiced his thoughts (something righteous, something justice-driven). gojo, who was silent and aloof the whole class, couldn’t help but comment. they fought in the classroom an hour into their first day. thank god the gojo clan has money because they obliterated half the building.

(interestingly enough, that show of power was taken into consideration when they got promoted to special grades a month later!)

⟡ shoko comes from a jujutsu clan. it’s not a prestigious one like the big three, but they’re still very respected, akin to the inumaki clan. their innate familial CT is RCT—it’s why shoko couldn’t explain it well to gojo that one time; it was just muscle memory to her, innate! the loneliness took some time to learn, though.

⟡ utahime and gakuganji are related and come from one clan. they specialize in ritualistic, supporting CTs (like in the manga!). utahime went to school in tokyo, but moved back to kyoto because her family lives there and because gakuganji was the principal in that branch. (nepo baby utahime? then again, that could be said for a lot of characters here.) mei mei is her upperclassman by three years.

⟡ when gojo was younger, his retainers (along with multiple bodyguards, hidden and in plain sight) would take him out to walk around the city. it’s why he doesn’t mind traveling far for his missions because while they pile up, he enjoys the time he spends exploring different places.

(it’s also why we saw him roaming the city alone in that one panel. maybe he was ten or twelve there? he’d sneak out during his homeschool lessons when it got boring. “tell me something i don’t know.”—a pre-pubescent gojo, probably.)

⟡ during these walks he used to go on as a child, his retainers would try to prevent him from lingering too long at one place because people talk. the people in town were all afraid and in awe of him; resentful, curious, scared. he looked different, he felt different, and every time he glanced in their direction, it would unnerve them to no end. a young gojo didn’t quite understand why at first. sometimes, they’d whisper the occasional cruel comment amongst themselves. gojo’s eyes are great, but that doesn’t mean he can’t hear.

whenever they’d reach the end of their walks, back at the gojo estate, his retainers would always crouch down and cup his face, darting their eyes around, wary that a clan member might see (even worse—his parents). they’d tell him that everything those people said were lies and weren’t true at all. they’d tell him that he’s a good child. it’s a core memory for gojo.

⟡ geto was in the judo club in middle school. it made him feel a little less lonely at home and it was an outlet for all his frustrations, for all the things he couldn’t say. he was more himself when he moved. then in jujutsu high, he took all the martial arts lessons very seriously because now he had reason to fight and train so hard; a purpose; a meaning. even ten years after defecting, his form and technique was still impeccably perfect.

⟡ geto was a social smoker, meanwhile shoko is a chronic one.

⟡ geto stopped smoking after he took in mimiko and nanako.

⟡ despite his busy, busy schedule, a freshly graduated gojo always made time to see how megumi and tsumiki were doing. he’d help them with their homework (tsumiki was always receptive; it took megumi some time to accept homework help), he’d shower them in souvenir sweets, and he’d walk megumi’s dogs with him. he tried his best! he still does!

⟡ contrary to popular opinion, gojo does sleep. or at least, he tries. it doesn’t really count as sleep if it’s all dream, though.

⟡ in the early days, geto tried to get mimiko and nanako to call him anything but master. after a year of them calling him that, it just stuck, and in geto’s head at the time, it fit his public image, so he just stopped trying.

⟡ mimiko and nanako enrolled in non-sorcerer schools. education is important, geto told them, but the sanitization they had to go through at home, after school, was tedious. geto would always ask them what they learned in class, making sure they weren’t empathizing with the non-sorcerers, reminding them that facts are facts and there is no meaning to them. sometimes, while mimiko and nanako wait for a cult-member to pick them up after school, they’d watch their classmates hug their parents at the gate. sometimes, they’d think of calling him papa.

⟡ geto had a crush on gojo in high school, halfway through their first year. gojo never thought about that (romance, relationships, and such) till his third year. they never acted on anything during the two years in between when they were constantly together.

⟡ whenever geto and gojo would meet during those ten years, it would always be out of gojo’s request, though he’d deny it if you asked. geto would always try to stay away (he’s burned the bridge, goddammit, he can’t keep risking the distance), but then he’d take one look at gojo and it would be hard to. he’d always regret it after.

⟡ the first time shoko and utahime drank together, it was a little after shoko’s graduation. drunk and delirious, shoko started talking about how lonely she was, and how frustrated she was because her two best friends are so fucking stupid. utahime helped her home and swore to never tell anybody about it. now they drink together pretty often.

these are the ones at the top of my head! maybe i’ll add on if i remember some more, but thanks again for asking!

[ideal-girl]

A couple of probably the last questions about Sam’s Story and Another Side; as I want to move on from this and into other stories. Feel free to take your time with this one (And sorry for the long length). 

This was kinda asked the last time, but I guess I should have worded it better, and again sorry for NSFW but it still really befuddles me: why did the man Sam was dating (and a lot of men in general) just had to “end” the intimacy right where… well y’know. The treatment of women as just toys and objects to be discarded… I sadly get it. Hell even the refusal of contraceptives. But I still don’t quite grasp why a lot of them (like the man in Sam’s Story) couldn’t just “end” it in any other particular spot. If they refuse contraceptives, why do something that could risk a potentially life-changing moment (especially for people like Sam) if parenthood is something they’re not planning on? What is it about it that it’s something they think really needed to do? 

Do you think Goth Mandy might have a thing for thorns? Maleficent and the hedge of thorns in Sleeping Beauty come to mind. I’m thinking of something like the shirt Mandy wears in this fanart below (credit to Luffy-kun) but with a thorn embroiled pattern instead of whatever this is. Could this mean anything symbolically for Mandy? 

  This is something that might play into my future stories (probably slice of life stories), have any Headcanons of how Mandy is as a wife to Sam and a mom? Thanks for responding to all of this, I really like the analyses you do.

(One more question but not related to these stories. You wrote in Transparent Parents that you were familiar with the show Batman Beyond, are you familiar with the superheroine Wonder Woman? If so, I might write her into that crossover prompt while getting that Journalist Mandy story ready) 

Nia:

Why do men choose to impregnate women despite not wanting to be fathers? 

Men have a sexualized (misogynist) perception of motherhood.

There are various male sexual fetishes and fantasies (most being evil; many being pedophilic) that revolve around pregnancy, despite there being an epidemic of neglectful, if not entirely absent fathers. Men are gratified by the vulnerable position pregnancy puts the women and her (unborn) child in, which is why they will go out of their way to make a pregnancy happen. 

Men are also expected to be neglectful and/or absent fathers. This society has passively accepted that men will simply leave their children behind whenever they want to, not considering that mothers have the same motive and ability to be neglectful and/or absent. Most girls/women continue on, even when being a mother wasn’t their actual choice. This means that men retain the advantages of being fathers and don’t suffer any of the “consequences” of their actions (which are usually guided by pornography and/or misogyny). 

The most significant advantage men have as fathers is control. This comes from the vulnerable position pregnancy and motherhood puts women and (unborn) children in. These fetishes often reference symptoms of pregnancy/motherhood like lactation, which serve as evidence of a man’s dominance over a woman and child. This isn’t metaphorical, intangible, or ridiculous fantasy or feeling, as even absent fathers can be given legal authority over the children they have never ever seen before (as an example). 

This final point (control) could be developed further or explained better, and obviously not every man in the entire world is as I have seen many to be. However, this is a good enough answer to the question for now, I think. 😊 

Would Goth Mandy have a thing for thorns? If so, what would thorns represent for her? 

Goth Mandy would have a thing for thorns or barbed wire. That would appropriate for her, I think. 

Goth Mandy may be the antithesis of Popular Mandy, but they share the same sense of social alienation and desire to take control of their environment. They just about it in different ways. 

(I’m going somewhere with this.) 

Popular Mandy wields considerable influence over others as the Most Popular Girl, and does various things to justify and maintain that role (win popularity contests, throw house parties, showcase elite possessions, etc). This in the hopes of attracting a crowd or clique that will keep her company, even if her relationships with them are illusionary and inherently unstable (due to the nature of “popularity”). 

Goth Mandy would struggle with feelings of alienation and even loneliness, but because she does not believe in Beverly Hills and is unwilling to pretend otherwise. This is opposite of Popular Mandy, who is willing to pretend out of loneliness and fear of rejection. Goth Mandy would be proud of her status as social reject because she doesn’t want to lose herself, her only true friend.

I could see her constructing this shield around herself as a self-defense mechanism, which would be best represented as thorns. I see them as more beautiful version of a barbed wire fence, since I perceive that motif as being Goth Mandy’s means of keeping herself protected from those who may try to take her away from herself. 

Mandy would secretly long to be a goth because she would secretly long to be her own best friend, which is only possible when you are willing to be alone. Goth Mandy finds refuge and inner strength in her solitude, and her shield is her self-protective attitude, which cannot belong to anyone else. Popular Mandy has a couple shields (popularity, wealth, beauty, etc) but those things belong to everyone else, not to her. Her peers ultimately decide if she is popular (or beautiful) to them and her belongings are used as lures. She probably does not enjoy them on her own.

I could see myself rambling on about this, lol. The main thing I wanted to say is that Goth Mandy likes her true self, while Popular Mandy struggles with self-acceptance because she does not like the messy parts she feels would get her abandoned. Goth Mandy is more powerful than Popular Mandy because she is willing to protect that True Self from the world, which is why she identifies with thorns. Popular Mandy probably desires that power, because that’s true control over chaos, but does not how to get it without giving up her Grandiose Self. She’s probably not ready to do that. 

How would Mandy be like as a wife and mother? 

Mandy will be a good wife and mother, but I can see her struggling a little bit with those roles. She might doubt herself or feel uncomfortable? This isn’t to say that she wouldn’t want to be married or a mother. It’s to say that Mandy (probably) never thought her dreams would come true, and now that everything is happening, she worries about whether or not it will last. Can she be happy? Can she avoid disappointing others? 

I can see Mandy doubting her mothering skills and relying a lot on Sam to guide her. (That probably extends from the complicated relationship she has with her own mother, Phoebe.) But other than that initial discomfort and self-doubt, Mandy would be a very great mother and wife. I feel like she’s already very devoted, generous, and resourceful person. I also kinda envision her being a very…cool mom? I don’t know how to explain it, but Mandy would be a cool but responsible mother to me. 

Actually, I’m going to have to better develop my whole answer to this question, lol. 

Am I familiar with Wonder Woman? 

I am familiar with Wonder Woman. I used to have Wonder Woman’s Book of Myths and I watched her on the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited shows. I also watch her 2009 animated movie yearly. The first time I watched it was in high school, and honestly it made me think about female separatism and all that. So yeah! I am familiar with her. 

BTW I legit could not see the image you sent in until I was in the process of posting. I’ll keep in the mind next time. 😅

Also, it’s 9:42 PM! I was good on time, lol! 

[sciencespies]

These mice grow bigger on the rainier sides of mountains: It might be a new rule of nature

https://sciencespies.com/nature/these-mice-grow-bigger-on-the-rainier-sides-of-mountains-it-might-be-a-new-rule-of-nature/

These mice grow bigger on the rainier sides of mountains: It might be a new rule of nature

Scientists studying mice from the Andes Mountains in Patagonia noticed something they couldn’t explain: the mice from the western side of the mountains were bigger than the ones from the east, but DNA said that they were all from the same species. The researchers examined the skulls of 450 mice from the southern tip of South America, and found that existing biological laws didn’t explain the size differences. Instead, in a new paper in the Journal of Biogeography, the scientists put forth a new hypothesis: the mice on the western slopes were bigger because that side of the mountain range gets more rain, which means there’s more plentiful food for the mice to eat.

“There are a bunch of ecogeographic rules that scientists use to explain trends that we see again and again in nature,” says Noé de la Sancha, a research associate at Chicago’s Field Museum, an assistant professor of Environmental Science and Studies at DePaul University, and the paper’s corresponding author. “With this paper, I think we might have found a new one: the rain shadow effect can cause changes of size and shape in mammals.”

The mice that de la Sancha and his colleagues examined in this study are shaggy soft-haired mice, Abrothrix hirta. “They’re very cute little buggers, they have soft white bellies,” says de la Sancha. “They live in the mountains, which makes them unique, but they’re also found in lower elevations. Overall, they’re not very well-studied.”

De la Sancha’s colleague, Pablo Teta of the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales “Bernardino Rivadavia” in Buenos Aires, Argentina, began studying the shaggy soft-haired mice as part of his doctoral thesis. “He saw that some individuals of the species were really big, and some were really small. He thought they were different species. But their mitochondrial DNA suggested that they were one species, even though they’re so different,” recalls de la Sancha. “We wanted to explore why that is, to see if they were following some sort of rule.”

There are lots of “rules” of nature explaining patterns that we see in life. For instance, Bergmann’s rule explains why animals of the same species are bigger in higher latitudes. White-tailed deer in Canada are larger and bulkier than their skinny Floridian cousins. Bergmann’s rule explains that this is because having a thicker body in relation to your surface area helps you retain heat better, the same way that big pieces of food take longer to cool down than smaller bites.

To try to find a pattern to explain the differences in size, the researchers used statistical analyses to compare measurements of 450 mouse skulls. They then tried to map their findings onto different biological rules to see if any fit. Bergmann’s rule didn’t work; there wasn’t a strong correlation between mouse size and how far north or south the specimen lived. Other rules emphasize the role of temperature or precipitation, with mixed results for different groups and situations. This team did not find that latitude, or one of 19 other bioclimatic, temperature, or precipitation variables, best described the mice’s varying shapes and sizes. However, there did seem to be a pattern with longitude — how far east or west the mice lived.

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De la Sancha and his colleagues realized this might be related to what biologists call the “resource rule.” “This rule suggests that where there are more resources, individuals from the same species tend to be larger than where there are fewer resources,” says de la Sancha. “For instance, some deer mice that are found in deserts and other habitats tend to be smaller in drier portions of their habitats. Another hypothesis suggests that some animals tend to be smaller in mountains versus adjacent plains in North America. Our study found a mixed result of these rules.”

The sizes of mice seemed to be following the resource rule, but the question still remained: why were there more resources on the western slopes of the southern Andes than on the eastern slopes? De la Sancha had a “Eureka!” moment while teaching a class of undergraduates at Chicago State University.

“Believe it or not, when I was teaching ecology, one of the things that I was teaching about was the rain shadow effect,” says de la Sancha.

The rain shadow effect is a product of the way that water vapor travels over mountain ranges. The air over the ocean picks up water vapor, and as the ocean naturally warms, this water vapor rises. Prevailing winds, like the jet stream that goes from west to east, push this air from the ocean to the land, and as the air makes its way over mountain ranges, it gets colder as it goes up in elevation. The water vapor in the cold air condenses and falls as rain. If the mountain is really high, the air will run out of moisture by the time it gets to the far side of the peak. “Essentially, one side of the mountain will be humid and rainy, and the other will have cold, dry air. On some mountains, the difference is extreme. One face can be a tropical rainforest, and the other side will be almost desert-like,” says de la Sancha. “There is a rain shadow effect in most mountains on the planet, we see this phenomenon all over the world.”

In the middle of his lecture, de la Sancha realized that the rain shadow could explain why there was more food on the western side of the Andes, and thus, why the mice there were bigger. “That same day, I went home and wrote to Pablo,” he remembers. “I was like, ‘Dude, we need to talk about the rain shadow.'”

The rain shadow indeed neatly matched up with the rodents’ sizes — the first time, to de la Sancha’s knowledge, that anyone has demonstrated the effects of the rain shadow on mammal size. And while so far it’s only been shown for one species of mouse, de la Sancha suspects that he and his colleagues have hit on a larger truth — perhaps even the basis for a rule of its own someday.

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“It’s exciting, because it could potentially be something that’s more universal. We think it may be more of a rule than an anomaly,” says de la Sancha. “It’d be worthwhile to test it on lots of different taxa.”

However, the findings may mean that the shaggy soft-haired mice, and many of their fellow mammals, are in for a rough time. “The scary part is that we show that, at least to some effect, climate patterns are important to determine the mice’s morphology — their shape and size, either directly or indirectly through the resources they can find,” says de la Sancha. “With climate change, we know we’re going to see dramatic changes in temperature throughout the year, and changes in precipitation. While they might not be the most important variables affecting the mice’s well-being, they are important in determining available food sources.” If the weather patterns change and affect the plants that grow in the region, the mice might no longer be able to thrive as they once did.

Plus, de la Sancha notes, animals are already moving up mountains to escape the effects of climate change. “At a certain point, you run out of mountain,” he says. “There’s nowhere else to go. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but it doesn’t seem good.”

The unclear future of these mice in the face of climate change, according to de la Sancha, is a good reason to study animals like mice that often go unnoticed. “It’s important to understand how little we know about most small mammals,” he says. “They can be good indicators of long-term changes in our environment. We need to study them more. Our findings also show why museum collections are so important. This study was based on museum collections from Argentina, Chile, and the US, it’s an amalgamation of years and years of collecting and big data sets.

“This paper would not have been possible without museum collections and highlights the importance of museum- and collection-based research and its support worldwide,” notes Teta. “This type of research helps us better understand the big-picture, universal rules of how life on Earth works.”

#Nature

[bi-disaster-yn]

No but like… Coming Out as Bi to Bucky

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x fem!bisexual!Reader

Summary: Reader comes out as bi to her boyfriend, Bucky and he’s a total sweetheart about it.

Format: Drabble

A/N: Just a cute lil drabble for any bi Bucky girlies like myself!!

There was no doubt in your mind that Bucky loved you. He was a doting and caring boyfriend who always tended to your needs and listened intently to you. Everyday, he would shower you with affection and remind you how much he loved you and how lucky he was to be with you.

However, it didn’t escape your notice that he grew up in the early half of the 20th century, a time period not exactly known for being notoriously LGBT friendly. It made you worry that he might not be able to accept your bisexuality.

Bucky had retained some old man habits such as insisting that he read the newspaper on paper rather on a computer as that’s how it was intended. He had set a prohibition on phones being present at the dinner table as back in his day people would actually have a conversation. He enjoyed 40s music and would rant endlessly that people don’t go dancing the way he used to. You found all of this about him endearing, especially when he would assert that you’d be the prettiest girl there and all of the other guys would be jealous. Nonetheless, it also made you deeply concerned that he could be harbouring some homophobic tendencies amongst those quaint ideals.

Whilst you loved him and only wanted to be with him, you felt that you were hiding something from having not came out to him yet. You were scared that he wouldn’t be able to accept it. Previous boyfriends hadn’t taken it seriously, often using it as an excuse to ask for a threesome or even recoiling in horror that you could ever possibly be attracted to more than one gender. And they had the advantage of having actually been raised in this century.

Looking over at Bucky, sitting on your sofa and reading his newspaper (in the paper hard copy of course), you knew you just had to rip this bandaid off and tell him. Afterall, this was a fundamental and beautiful part of you that you couldn’t change. If he couldn’t accept that, then that was his problem.

“Buck.” You announced, breaking the comfortable silence that was centred around you both.

“Hmm?” He asked, not looking up from the sports section. His eyebrows were knitted together in concentration as he analysed the reports as if he hadn’t heard them all before on the radio.

“I need to tell you something.”

“Okay, sweetheart. What’s up?” He folded his paper up properly and sat it to the his side, giving you his undivided attention. The corners of his mouth stretched into a little smile which was encouraging but you still felt a hint of dread.

“Well you see… the thing is… erm, I don’t know how to say this…” you cringed at your inability to say this properly. This was your boyfriend, he’d seen every single inch of you, he knew your deepest and darkest insecurities and even your most embarrassing childhood memory. How could this be so difficult?

“Doll, you’re starting to freak me out a little. Can you please just tell me what’s wrong?” Bucky frowned and moved so he was sitting at the edge of his seat, ready to reach out for you as he could sense how uncomfortable you were.

“I’m bisexual!” You blurted out. Bucky nodded at you and stayed silent. “Meaning I am attracted to more than one gen-“

“I was born in 1917, I think I’ve lived long enough to know what being bisexual is, baby.” Bucky chuckled at you. His face softened at your confession, relieved that it wasn’t something more sinister. You, on the other hand, were at a loss for words.

“Okay… so? What? Don’t you have an opinion on it?” You looked at him with a puzzled expression. He was so much calmer than you had expected him to be. You were the one delivering the news that was meant to be shocking but it was him making you do a double take.

“Am I supposed to have an opinion on it?” He raised his eyebrow. You stuttered and stammered in response, still in shock at his level of indifference to the situation. In comparison to telling your previous boyfriends which set off painful explosions that motivated shame and self-loathing within you, this was nothing.

Bucky could see you were internalising your reaction and he offered his arms out for you to sit on his lap. Your mind had went into overdrive trying to process his reaction that you didn’t even register the steps you took towards him to take your place on his knee. He wrapped his arms round your waist, pulling you close to his chest and kissed your cheek.

“Who promised me that they’d always love me, no matter what?” Bucky asked, running his thumb along your thigh soothingly.

“I did.” You mumbled in response.

“Exactly, you did. And I think I was pretty clear that I loved you no matter what, and if I wasn’t then this is me reminding you. So, why were you so nervous?” He squeezed your waist reassuringly and you started to feel more at ease. It allowed you to press on and voice your original concerns.

“It’s just that… you lived in the 40s! I can’t exactly imagine that the pride parades were lighting up the streets. You come from a time that people used to be arrested for being like me!” You confessed to him, looking into his deep blue eyes in search of some sort of understanding.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Bucky admitted. “But I am learning a lot, which you should be taking a good chunk of the credit for,” he gave you another squeeze which prompted a giggle from you. “And honestly, the fact is, you were born that way. I love everything about you, including this. No wait, especially this. Thank you for telling me and trusting me with it.”

Your heart warmed in a way that you had noticed had been specifically reserved for Bucky. You gave him a sweet kiss and rubbed your thumb along his jaw, unable to stop the widening smile on your face that made your cheeks hurt. “Thank you for being so understanding. That really meant a lot to me. Like, you have no idea. I love you so much, sweetie.”

Bucky smiled at you and peppered kisses all over your face, relishing in the giggles this brought out in you. “You’re my best girl. Nothing could change how I feel about you. Nothing at all.”

[gukyi]

the love project | jjk

summary: from running to mcdonald’s at 3am after a halloween party where the two of you dressed up as the teletubbies to timing how long it takes for him to drink a cup of monster mixed with mountain dew and iced coffee and then do fifty push-ups, you’re used to your best friend jungkook asking you to do all sorts of crazy things. but, of all the shit the two of you do, letting him follow you around for a week with a camera and take candid photos of you for a photography assignment might just be the craziest of them all.

{college!au, friends to lovers!au}

pairing: jeon jungkook x female reader genre: fluff, comedy word count: 12k warnings: college antics, hopeless pining, slow burn a/n: me: this fic will be 10k max! also me: actually nevermind on par for the course of this blog, i hope you enjoy this fic! it was so much fun to write and it definitely got me back into the ~writing mood~. more fics coming soon!

These days, the weeks pass you by like trains on a platform. They whiz past you, the only discernible features being the beginning and the end of them, with the middle nothing but a blur. 

At least, that’s how it feels when you’re in college, and the days bleed into weeks bleed into months, and suddenly you’re one year closer to graduating, one year closer to figuring out what next to do with your life, even if you’re still missing that one general education requirement you forgot to take in your first year so now you’re trying to cram it into your schedule at the last minute.

Okay, you’ll admit it. Introduction to Astronomy is kicking your ass. That’s what you get for putting it off until junior year, when you’re supposed to have reached the point in your History major career where you don’t have to look at numbers anymore and the idea of doing basic math is absolutely unfathomable. History majors don’t do math. They just don’t. It vanished from your academic arsenal long before now, alongside your ability to interpret word problems and understand science textbooks. 

Perhaps in another universe, you would have actually retained those skills past high school, but that universe is not this one, and so your problem sets can solve themselves or not be solved at all. 

Your best friend would have to disagree.

“It’s not even calculus!” Jungkook exclaims over a mouthful of a Starbucks tomato and pesto panini, pointing to your laptop in exasperation, as if the answer has been staring you in the face for the past fifteen minutes. “It’s just algebra! All you’re doing is plugging the numbers into the formula and finding the missing variable!”

“Easy for you to say,” you huff, furiously erasing at the notebook in front of you as you get yet another incorrect answer. Who knew math could be so difficult? Oh, that’s right. You did. “You took that advanced differential equations class for fun last year. It’s not even required for your major. You’re just a masochist.”

“Says the person who convinced their advisor to let them take seven classes because they, and I quote, ‘all seemed so interesting’ and you ‘didn’t want to miss out.’” Jungkook rebukes pointedly. “Because your life would be so terrible if you didn’t take Economic History of Pre-Industrialized Europe.”

He’s got you there. Seven classes is a lot. In your defense, Economic History of Pre-Industrialized Europe was very interesting and you got a 4.0 that semester. So who is he to judge? Jungkook’s favorite pastime is pretending that taking three different computer science classes in a single semester isn’t going to single-handedly kill him.

Jungkook watches you struggle for a few moments more before he sighs, like he can’t take looking at someone so mathematically incompetent any longer. He stuffs the remaining third of his Starbucks panini into his mouth all at once like the ravenous beast he is before he reaches over the tiny table you’re sat at to look at your problem set himself. He turns your laptop towards him and grabs hold of your notebook, furrowing his eyebrows as he enters Work Jungkook Mode. 

Work Jungkook Mode is the mode of him you see most often during finals week or the rare occasions where you meet up to actually try and get work done. Work Jungkook has tunnel vision for whatever assignment is currently in front of him, which he will do either in one sitting or die trying. Work Jungkook lets his coffee get cold and forgets to answer your text messages, even when you’re sat right across from him and you know that he can see the notification on his laptop. Work Jungkook refuses to turn in anything that he hasn’t devoted his entire being to, even if it’s something as simple as a discussion board post. Some of his other friends say that when Jungkook is in Work Jungkook Mode, they won’t even try to contact him, lest their messages get lost in the flurry of his coding assignments. 

But you are not “some of his other friends.” You are his best friend. So rules do not apply to you. And Jungkook has long accepted that fact.

“Hey, don’t mess up my work—” You exclaim defensively, grabby hands reaching over the table to retrieve your notebook. “Wait, how did you do that?”

Jungkook scribbles something down in nearly-illegible font, determined to solve the problem in front of him. He thinks for a few more seconds before eventually jotting down an answer, circling it with his pencil. Holding the notebook out so both of you can see, he scoots his chair over to your side of the table, your shoulders pressed together in this tiny corner of the Starbucks, right by the bathroom, and explains, step by step, what he did. 

He does that for the following two problems in your set, walking you through the kind of math he was doing in freshman year of high school like it’s nothing, answering all of your stupid questions and giving you tips on how to finesse the system by taking as many shortcuts as possible. Teaching you things you never learned, or possibly had just forgotten. Things that a professor would think is idiotic to re-teach to a junior in university. Things that Jungkook wants you to know because he just wants you to have a little more faith in yourself. 

“Does that help?” He asks when he’s finished, still doubting his fantastic teaching abilities despite the fact that he just taught you more in the last thirty minutes than your professor has managed in a month and a half. 

“It actually does,” you tell him, pleasantly surprised. Looking back down at your notebook, what was once a shapeless blur of numbers, letters, and formulas is suddenly a clear and organized outline of each and every step to follow. “I didn’t know it was that easy.”

“Anything can be easy if you just commit yourself to learning how to do it,” Jungkook says, one of those random sentences that are too wise for a college student surviving off of RedBull and Starbucks food, the ones that always make you think Jungkook is secretly an immortal sage with life experiences far beyond your own. “Except coding. Which is hard no matter how good you are at it.”

“Aw, you can do it,” you rally, reaching up to pinch his chin in between your fingers and squeeze it tight. “It’s also too late to change your major now, so you’re stuck.”

“Wow, thanks for the encouragement,” Jungkook chides, hand coming up to rub at where you held his jaw, rolling his eyes. “You should let me help you with your Astronomy work more often. Gives me a break from Python.”

“I would have made you help me whether you liked it or not,” you tell him pointedly, because he is your best friend and he doesn’t get out of things as easily as he thinks he can. “But thanks. I’ll definitely take you up on that.”

“Of course,” Jungkook says with a good-natured grin, always so selfless and kind and giving. He practically signed himself up for a semester’s worth of TA-ing for Introduction to Astronomy despite the constant mountain of work he has himself. Just because it’s you. 

“My very own personal genius,” you muse, wrapping your hands around his arm and snuggling into his body, a whisper of a language only the two of you share. It’s something the two of you have long gotten used to, pressing your fingers all over each other’s bodies like it’s second nature. One of the things that makes you feel so certain about having Jungkook in your life. About wanting him to stay with you for the rest of time. “I’m never letting you go.”

Jungkook smiles, a warm hand coming to rest atop of your own. He breathes, in and out, chest rising beneath your touch. “Like I’d ever let you,” he says.

There is no question about it. Jungkook is one hundred percent, absolutely, undoubtedly, positively, indisputably smarter than you are. It’s something that the two of you used to jokingly fight about (because Jungkook claims that he’s a bad essay writer, even though he’s not), but at this point it’s cemented in stone—he’s a damn genius. A genius who is inexplicably good at everything. A double threat. Triple, if you count the fact that he’s built beyond belief and could probably chuck you into next week if you really, really ticked him off. 

The truth is that, ninety percent of the time it is you who is going to Jungkook for help. Whether it be an assignment you need assistance on (namely Astronomy, because Jungkook probably couldn’t help you on your Mesopotamian artifact and primary source analyses despite his best intentions), a date that was a lot worse than you were hoping it would be, or even just the right coffee to order from that expensive place on the corner. Jungkook knows how to fix everything. 

So when Jungkook slides into the seat across from you in the food court after his Mastering Photography class with that I’m in trouble look on his face, you know something is horribly wrong. 

“Are you alright?” You ask, concerned as you watch him devour the sushi takeout in front of him, stuffing the spicy tuna rolls into his mouth like they’re Skittles. His camera hangs haphazardly out of his open backpack, like he barely had enough time to stuff it into the pocket while he was making his way here. There’s a worried expression written all over his face as he fumbles with the chopsticks in his hand, losing his grip on them every ten seconds. 

It’s not until Jungkook has finished the container of spicy tuna rolls in front of them that he finally seems to work up the courage to answer you. 

“My Photography class is gonna be the death of me,” Jungkook exclaims, exasperated. 

“I thought you liked it,” you comment unhelpfully. Jungkook had been so excited to be enrolled in it, because you needed a recommendation from a different professor and you had to submit a portfolio in order to join the class, making it one of those exclusive (and thus, much better) courses. Not to mention the fact that Jungkook is basically already a professional photographer if his Instagram is anything to go by. He’s going to walk out of university with a Photography minor whether he realizes it or not.

“I do,” Jungkook insists, even if right now it sounds like the two of you both need convincing of that fact. “But this project is ridiculous. I don’t even know how my professor expects us to have the time to finish it.”

“What do you have to do?”

Jungkook sighs. Just thinking about it seems to stress him out. “I mean, it’s only really a week long. So I guess it’s not too bad. But we’re supposed to compile a portfolio of the same subject, taken over the course of the week, with them in all sorts of different poses and lighting and locations, to express a personal theme.”

You scrunch your nose up in confusion. “I might be wrong, but isn’t that what photography… is?” You ask cluelessly. 

“Yes,” Jungkook argues, “but also no. Photography is taking pictures of things just for the hell of it. Not because they necessarily speak to a part of your soul. You just like the look of it. You want to capture the scene. That’s it.”

“Oh,” You say dumbly. 

“And our subject can be whoever or whatever we want, but he recommended choosing a person because taking pictures of our water bottles in different places is boring,” Jungkook huffs, though his professor does have a point there. Modern history wasn’t made out of photographs of store windows and miscellaneous items. It was made out of people, out of events in their lives that shaped the rest of the world, out of personal experiences that changed their point of view. “But I don’t even know anybody who would be willing to let me photograph them for a whole week! I’d basically have to follow them around like paparazzi!”

“I’ll do it,” you suggest casually, because it seems like the most obvious choice to you. There’s no one Jungkook spends as much time with as you. 

Jungkook’s eyes pop out of his head. “What?”

“I’m serious,” you insist. “Think about it. You need a subject for your project that you can photograph in a wide variety of places and over the course of a week. Who else do you spend that much time with, other than me?”

“Well..” Jungkook begins, trying to fight your reasons with his own. “Would you even be comfortable with something like that? I mean, I’m literally going to constantly be taking photos of you.”

“Like we don’t already do that on our phones,” you tease, having amassed quite the album of terrible Jungkook pictures over the years. 

“A camera is different from a phone,” Jungkook protests weakly. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But I’m just saying. It won’t bother me,” you say with a shrug. Why is Jungkook being so… weird about your suggestion? You thought he would be jumping at the offer, especially considering it means he won’t have to go out of his way to find and photograph someone else for this assignment. But he’s being rather hesitant. You watch as he glares down at his empty sushi takeout box, eyebrows furrowed in that thick, nervous way. “But you don’t have to,” you backtrack. “It was just a suggestion.”

He breathes in and breathes out, expression solid. Even from here you can see the cogs whirring in his brain, placing each and every potential result into a pro and con list inside his mind, trying to work out whether the benefits will be greater than the cost. 

Quite frankly, you don’t know what all the holdup is about. 

“You’re… sure about this?” He asks, looking up at you, determined to ensure your comfort. As if that’s even an issue. “You’re cool with being photographed and everything?”

“Only because it’s you,” you tease lightheartedly, expecting some sort of equally cheesy response. Instead, it makes Jungkook do something weird. He freezes in place, darting his eyes away from your gaze for a split second, collecting thoughts you can’t see. “Yeah,” you say loudly, trying to bring him back. “I’m fine with it.”

He inhales, exhales, closes his eyes, and opens them. “Okay then. I guess it’s settled. You’ll be my subject,” he declares, an almost unnoticeable wobble to his voice. It’s probably nothing, so you don’t think too hard about it.

“Can you at least pretend to be a little more excited about this?” You ask, jabbing him in the chest with a wooden chopstick. “It’s the first time we’ve ever gotten to be part of a project together!”

“Yay,” Jungkook says, lifeless. 

“How about a photo to commemorate it?” You suggest, reaching over to pull the camera out of his backpack, pushing it into his hands. “This can be the start of your portfolio.”

“Fine,” he eventually caves, bringing it up to his eye as he turns it on, twisting the lens to perfect the focus. Even caught off guard like this, he looks like a professional, like someone who was born to be behind the camera. He’s a computer science major but you know that photography will always be something special to him.

You strike a dramatic pose, holding your chopsticks out, one in each hand, with a wide, excited smile on your face. “How do I look?” You ask, scrunching your eyes together. 

Jungkook’s finger hovers over the silver button. “Perfect,” he tells you, voice soft and honest. 

Click.

“So, how many photos are you supposed to take for this portfolio?” You ask as you flop around on Jungkook’s bed, pretending that the open tab on your laptop with your fifty-page reading doesn’t exist. You don’t even know why professors assign readings that long. Do they really expect you to read all of it?

From across his room, you can make out the top of Jungkook’s fluffy brown hair over his sleek gaming chair, one of the ones that look like high-tech airplane seats. “I don’t know,” he says. “He said at least twenty. And no more than fifty. Which really makes me wonder if someone once submitted like, one hundred photos for this project that he had to grade them on. But yeah.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” you say. When you’re around a cute animal, you can easily take twenty photographs. Granted, they aren’t exactly award-worthy photographs, but it’s not a physically demanding task. 

“Yeah,” Jungkook says. “Hypothetically you could finish it in a day. But it looks really obvious.”

“Well, how many do you have now?”

It’s been a day and a half since Jungkook agreed to let you be his so-called muse, but already you’ve lost track of how many photos he’s taken of you. He loves his camera, you know that, but you didn’t realize exactly how much he loves his camera. And with you as the sole subject for his project, he’s practically letting it hang from his neck all day long, just waiting for the right time to snap a photo of you standing in line at the food court, frowning at your textbook, or waiting to meet up with him. Every time he sees you he snaps a picture, even if the lighting’s bad, even if you haven’t had your morning coffee yet, even if it’s midnight and you look like a zombie. In his mind, there are no bad pictures. Just memories.

You wonder what the hell he sees in you. 

“A lot,” Jungkook answers unhelpfully, making no effort to elaborate on that statement. 

“Have you counted?” You ask, getting off of his bed to join him at his desk. 

Jungkook doesn’t seem to realize what you’re doing until you’re standing right next to him, placing a hand over his shoulders as you lean down next to him. He fumbles around for a second, the mouse slipping through his grip, and you catch a glimpse of one of the photos he’s taken of you, a sliver of your pursed lips, the wrinkles between your eyebrows. 

It’s from the library yesterday. You didn’t even know Jungkook had taken a picture of you there. You had a stupid reading to complete last night, one that made no sense and was terribly-written, and you spent an hour just trying to figure out what the damn argument was, and Jungkook captured it. You were there for an hour and Jungkook was there too, watching you like it was nothing, waiting for the perfect moment. He was there, sitting across from you, camera at the ready. You didn’t even hear it click. 

He closes it before you get a closer look at the photo, frantically hitting the little red dot at the top corner of the window before you have a chance to ask why. 

“What, I’m not allowed to see?” You chide, a little bit hurt but more confused than anything else. Why is Jungkook being so secretive?

“No,” Jungkook spits quickly. making you raise an eyebrow in alarm. “I mean, it’s a surprise. You get to see when it’s finished. I still have to… uh, edit. And stuff.”

“Edit? You think I’m that ugly?” You tease, knowing that he probably means color correction but enjoying the way that he gets all flustered when he hears your voice.

Jungkook’s eyes widen at that, like he just realized he made a wrong turn and is desperately backtracking. “What, no! I don’t—I don’t think you’re ugly.”

You laugh, letting the sound of your voice ease the tension in his shoulders, reveling in the way his big doe eyes seem to soften when he realizes you were just teasing. He looks like a kid caught stealing a candy bar from a gas station, looks like one of those boyfriends in the viral videos where the girl reveals that she got him a present or something instead, all nervous and full of explanations. 

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” you assure him, rubbing up and down his arm to soothe him, calm his heart down. “You don’t have to show me. I’m just excited. No one’s ever taken photos of me like this before.”

“I would,” Jungkook speaks up softly. “If you asked. I would.”

“I know,” You say. You’re not sure if there’s a thing in this world Jungkook wouldn’t do for you, and you, him. If he asked, you would pluck the stars from the sky for him. Bring him back a piece of the moon. Stop time. Anything. Everything. Just for him. “I know.”

 “What are you doing?” Jungkook asks, changing the topic as he whirls around in his gaming chair. 

“Just another reading, like always,” you dismiss, because you’re positive the last thing Jungkook wants to hear about right now is your primary source reading on irrigation techniques in agrarian Europe. You don’t even want to hear about it. “But I could use some help on Astronomy.”

Without another word, Jungkook gets up from his desk and the two of you head over to his bed, where an untouched problem set waits on your computer. He grabs a notebook from his backpack along the way before sitting down next to you on the edge of his bed, bodies pressed together. Slowly, he begins to coach you through each problem, step by step, drawing pictures and diagrams if he has to, until you finish all ten problems. 

The truth is, you didn’t really need help with this unit. Astronomy’s gotten a lot easier now that Jungkook has taught you the strategies to tackle it. But Jungkook sometimes feels like a ghost when he works, especially when he’s sitting at his desk, quiet and focused and almost invisible. And call you clingy, but you like it when you can look up and see his face instead of the back of a chair, a little tuft of wavy brown hair. You like it when he’s right beside you, in a place where you know you won’t lose him, where you can hold on if things get rough. Where you can see his stupid brown eyes and his goofy smile and know that he’ll always be there for you. 

When he’s finished, Jungkook doesn’t get back up to sit at his desk. He flops down on his back, staring up at the white ceiling of his room, eyes tracing the cracks. You join him, side by side, pretending that there’s something there. Looking up at the sky would be nicer, but it doesn’t really matter, so long as you’re with him.

“I didn’t know you took so many photos,” you say.

“I never want to miss anything.”

“You should give me more warnings, next time. I feel like I look so ugly in some of them.”

“No, you don’t. Don’t say stuff like that.”

“You don’t think I’m ugly?” You ask him, for real this time. It’s not that you think he’s going to say that he does, it’s that you want to know what he really thinks. How he really sees you. You turn your head to him, back pressed against his comforter, barely a foot apart. And he turns back to you, and he’s right there, right there in front of you, big brown eyes wide and blinking. He’s right there, how could you miss him?

“No,” Jungkook says, honest and true. He looks at you, looks right at you, right into you, and he muses to himself, chuckling. “Why would I ever think that?”

At the end of the day, you can’t really be bothered to put on real pants in anticipation of Jungkook’s trigger-happy camera-taking tendencies. He’s seen you spill a boiling hot bowl of tomato soup all over yourself in the dining hall. He’s seen you at four in the morning in the library the night before finals begin, eyebags down to your knees and mismatched shoes on your feet. He’s seen you in the middle of a frat house, sweat dripping down your forehead and smelling of nothing but straight alcohol. Getting dressed up just for him would be antithetical to the very foundation of your friendship. 

You have, however, become keenly more cognizant in the last few days of when Jungkook is about to take a photo of you. Mostly because you glance up at your surroundings every three seconds to make sure you aren’t getting sniped from across the food court. Nobody else needs to see a picture of you picking up three pieces of sushi with your chopsticks and stuffing them all into your mouth at once. And, from what you can tell, you’ve been pretty successful, which either means you’ve gotten better at telling when Jungkook might be taking a photo of you, or Jungkook’s gotten better at hiding it. 

Either way, he’s got a lot more pictures of you reflexively flashing a peace-sign in his direction when you hear the telltale sound of his camera lens focusing, so you’re not really sure what that means for the fate of his portfolio. 

Besides your newfound hyper-awareness of the sound of a camera lens adjusting, the strangest part of you and Jungkook’s little project is how quickly the rest of your friends adjusted to this brand new dynamic. 

This is not to say this assignment is the weirdest thing you and Jungkook have done together, because there was once one week where you and Jungkook challenged each other to only eat bananas for every meal to see if anything would happen to either of you. Nothing did, but after that week you swore off bananas for the rest of your life and have had little appetite for them since. 

It’s more that your other friends have just accepted the fact that ridiculous, extravagant shenanigans are a necessary part of you and Jungkook’s relationship and have simply chosen not to question them anymore. At least, most of them have. 

“So, how’s you and Jungkook’s little photography fling going?” Maisie asks, and even through the phone you can hear the way she’s wiggling her eyebrows. 

“It’s not a fling, and it’s fine,” you hiss back, trying to keep your voice down as you pack up your belongings, phone pressed between your ear and your shoulder. “Stop speaking so loudly, everyone else in the library can probably hear you.”

“Good, because they’ve all probably noticed the way Jungkook’s been following you around like an unrestrained fanboy for the past four days taking pictures of you,” Maisie says pointedly, voice so sharp it causes you to look around at the other tables to make sure no one’s listening in. 

You frown, hoping your deadpan expression is audible through the phone. “It’s not like that and you know it.”

“Don’t you think it’s even a little strange that you’ve given Jungkook full permission to take photos of you like you’re a model and he’s some sort of weird, professional paparazzi?” You can practically see Maisie’s face in front of you, all wide eyes and raised eyebrows as she makes her point.

“No, it’s what we agreed on,” you remind her for the umpteenth time. There’s nothing weird about this. You’re helping him with a project, what more could it be? “Jungkook needed someone to take pictures of for his photography project and I thought it would be a good idea if I was that someone.”

“Hmm… wonder why…” Maisie trails off, deliberately vague and suggestive all at once. 

“You’ve been going on about this ever since Jungkook and I met, Maise,” you say with a roll of your eyes, tossing your backpack over your shoulder. “You know that Jungkook and I are just friends. Like we have always been.”

“Friends that take candid photos of each other under the guise of a project,” Maisie adds, and you can see the air quotes around the word “project” right in front of you.

“Friends that help each other out because that’s what friends do,” you correct. “You’re just going to have to accept the fact that Jungkook and I are always going to be just friends and nothing more. No matter how much money you’ve bet on us getting together.”

Maisie gasps. “I have not bet money on such a thing! This is slander!”

“Don’t think I don’t see you and Jimin’s damn Venmo history.” You pull up to the front desk of the library to check out a primary source book needed for one of your classes. It’s the first edition, and it’s battered beyond belief, but it’s better than paying for it. “Just this, thanks.”

“The only way you could convince me that you and Jungkook are just friends is if you go on a date or something,” Maisie comments snidely. “I don’t think I’ve seen either of you romantically interested in someone else the entire time you’ve known each other. Isn’t that proof enough?”

“You want me to go on a date with someone?” You demand, determined to get Maisie to hop off your ass about this. 

You and Jungkook are just friends. If swiping right with someone on Tinder and getting dinner and a movie with them is what will convince Maisie of that, then that is what you will do. It’s not as if being friends with Jungkook is mutually exclusive with you going out with other people. Should be easy, right? 

The boy behind the counter tells you your book is due back at the end of the semester, and you nod your thanks before heading out of the library.

“Fine, I’ll go on a date with someone. If it’ll get you to stop trying to convince me that Jungkook and I are gonna get married and have babies,” you declare, pushing your body against the door handles as you leave, five minutes to spare before your next class begins. 

“You guys would have really cute babies, I’m just saying,” Maisie points out like it’s nothing. 

You roll your eyes, taking the phone away from your ear as your finger hovers over the red button. “See you, Maise.”

You’re barely three steps out of the library, still rolling your eyes at the Call Ended screen on your phone when a voice catches your attention. 

“Y/N!”

You turn your head just in time to see Jungkook’s devilish grin disappear behind his camera, and you don’t even have time to blink before he begins snapping away, finger mashing the silver button at the top as your expression morphs from surprise to defeat, unable to counter his sniping abilities with a signature peace sign. Even from twenty feet away, you can hear Jungkook laughing as you take the opportunity to pose for a few moments, like you really are a model and he really is your personal photographer. The sound of his giggles fills the air, music to your ears, lingering between you like dandelion wisps, blown by the wind. 

Another voice breaks you from your trance. 

“And here we have our resident celebrity and her paparazzi,” Jimin says, motioning to the two of you as he speaks to an enormous tour group of potential applicants and their parents. Caught in front of them, the heat suddenly rushes to your cheeks as you instinctively cover your face, embarrassed to have been pointed out by Jimin, whose amicable, lovable personality is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to his part-time job as a tour guide. 

The worst part is how some of the parents and students seem to believe him for a second, that you really are famous and that Jungkook really is your photographer, looking at the two of you inquisitively as you shrink beneath their gazes. 

“I’m kidding,” Jimin quickly continues as Jungkook joins you where you stand, laughing at the way you look like a deer caught in headlights. “They’re just some friends of mine who we happened to catch outside the library, which is our next stop. But don’t they look so cute together?”

“Are you guys dating?” One of the students pipes up, asking what no one else dared to. 

Your eyes widen at the notion, wondering if you and Jungkook really are cursed to always be mistaken for a couple when you two have never been, and most likely will never be one. Shaking your head, you force out a laugh, “No, we’re just friends.” Beside you, Jungkook is noticeably silent. You suppose he’s gotten just as sick of explaining as you. 

“Bummer, right?” Jimin asks his group, earning a couple of disappointed nods from innocent high-schoolers that still believe in love. “But I’m working on that, so don’t worry. Anyway, this library will be your main destination for studying, book-reading, and everything in between, and is conveniently located two minutes away from the freshman dorms…”

The conversation finally drawn away from you and Jungkook, you let out a breath you hadn’t even realized you had been holding in. “Weird, right? Even high-schoolers think we’re together.”

Jungkook doesn’t meet your eyes, fiddling with the settings on his camera just to keep his hands busy. The quiet makes you wonder what is going on up inside his head, makes you wonder what it is he’s thinking about, what it is you’re not seeing. Lately, it’s felt like there’s something on Jungkook’s mind you wish he felt comfortable telling you. 

“Hey, you alright?” You ask, giving him a little nudge with your side. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” Jungkook says, voice soft, barely audible. It doesn’t make you feel any better. “No, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Don’t you have class soon?”

“Oh, shit, you’re right, fuck,” you say, checking your phone only to find you have barely a minute to get to your next class. Guess you’ll be using one of your allotted absences today. “Thanks for reminding me. Dinner tonight?”

“I’ll text you,” Jungkook promises, and you nod your agreement as you dash off, determined to turn a five-minute walk into a one-minute one with the power of exercise. As you leave, you watch as Jungkook flounders outside the library, staring down at his camera and scrolling through his photos, and you still find yourself feeling like you’re missing something. What is Jungkook not telling you? 

What do you not know?

By the time you reach your class, two minutes late and completely out of breath, tardiness is the last thing on your mind.

This project was just meant to be a friend helping out a friend. So why does it feel like you and Jungkook are losing each other?

Using Tinder is easy. Dangerously so.

You’re no expert in app design, but its simplified “yes or no” mechanic has you swiping through people like it’s an extreme sport, barely giving some of them a second glance if their Tinder profile description doesn’t make you laugh within the first sentence. 

Tinder was, admittedly, not your first choice of potential date-finding methods. Call you old-fashioned, but whatever happened to asking someone in person if they wanted to get a meal with you? To showing up at their doorstep with a rose bouquet and a toothy white grin? Perhaps all of those old-timey movies you and Jungkook always watched have given you unrealistic expectations. But can you blame them? 

Even if Tinder wasn’t your first choice, it was certainly the fastest. It takes a second to look at someone’s designated Tinder thumbnail, two to read their description, and three to decide if they’re worth a swipe right. Compare that to actively meeting up with someone, getting their contact information, and then continuing to dance around each other until you finally decide to get dinner together. That’s the sort of thing that could take weeks. Maybe months. And in some cases, years.

Besides, it’s not like you had very many options at your disposal. You don’t trust Maisie to set you up with someone because she’ll probably just choose one of the many boys from her management class and call it a day. Asking someone yourself is absolutely out of the question. And, for some strange, unknown reason, the idea of getting Jungkook to hook you up with one of his friends just doesn’t sit right with you.

So, Tinder it is. And as it turns out, chivalry isn’t dead. It’s just archaic.

An hour into your mindless swiping, you get a message notification. Two hours after that, you’ve got plans with a nice senior boy whom you’ve never met. 

And for the first time in a very long time, there’s something to mark on your calendar for Saturday night.

The little blue block on your Google Calendar tab stares back at you from where your open laptop sits on your desk, the red line that signifies your current time slowly inching towards it as you fumble around in front of your mirror, more dressed up than you have been in weeks. Maisie was right. It’s been so long since you’ve gone out with someone that you’ve completely forgotten what the dress code is for something like this. A dress? Heels? Makeup?

You don’t want to overshoot it, but part of you thinks you will anyway. What if he’s wearing a hoodie and sweats while you look like you’re about to attend the goddamn Academy Awards? Maybe the eyeshadow was a little too much.

You don’t want to overshoot it, but part of you thinks it’s inevitable that you do. The door to your apartment swings open, and you can hear heavy footsteps making their way to your bedroom, that easy gait of his familiar as always.

“Hey, do you think we can just get some take-out and watch a stupid old noir movie, or something? I’ve had a day,” he shouts out, the sigh audible in his voice.

You don’t want to overshoot it, but part of you thinks you definitely have when you turn around to see Jungkook standing right outside your bedroom in the floppiest sweater you’ve ever seen and jeans with holes in the knees, mouth agape as he stares straight at you. It’s impossible not to notice the way his eyes are blown wide at the sight of you, at the way they rake up and down your figure, like he can’t even believe what he’s seeing. It’s impossible not to notice how he seems to flounder at the sight of you.

The only thing that breaks the both of you out of your stupors, frozen in place like two criminals caught red-handed, is the sound of his hulking black backpack thudding to the floor. 

“Whoa.”

“Do you think it’s too much?” You ask, voice wobbly. God, why are you so nervous? It’s just Jungkook. 

“Too much for what?” Jungkook blinks, deliberate and slow, as if he’s determined to make sure his eyes aren’t deceiving him. “Where are you going?”

“I think we’ll have to do a raincheck for the noir movie and takeout,” you say sheepishly, pursing your lips together in fright as you force out a small, tense smile. “I’m… going out. With someone.”

“Like,” Jungkook begins, and even from here you can hear the way he stops himself, hear him breathe out every word, thick on his tongue. “On a date?”

“Yeah.”

It’s a one-syllable word and yet it takes nearly all of your willpower just to say it. Just to confirm what Jungkook’s already thinking. Just to tell him, your best friend, your ride or die, your number one, that you’re going out on a date. 

“Oh.” Jungkook’s voice is lifeless. “Do I know them?”

“No, uh, it’s just some guy I met on Tinder. I don’t know, I just wanted to see what all the hype was about, I guess. And I haven’t really been on a date in a while, so I figured I might just take up the opportunity, so we’re probably just going to go out to a restaurant and maybe go to a club afterwards if we’re still in the mood, and—” You cut yourself off, so nervous that you’ve resorted to your terrible habit of rambling to try and ease the tension. “Why? Do you think it’s too much?”

“You use Tinder?” Jungkook asks instead. It sounds like he’s shocked to hear this. 

“Yeah…” you trail off. “Why?”

Jungkook freezes at the question, but it’s not because it seems like he doesn’t have an answer. It’s because it seems like he does. Only it’s an answer he doesn’t want to share. 

“Nothing, it’s nothing,” he eventually settles on, shaking his head. “You, uh, you look good.”

“You think? I feel like it’s a lot. I don’t know how to dress appropriately for stuff like this anymore,” you ask, palms sweaty as you furiously straighten out the skirt of your dress. “Should I change into pants, or anything?”

“No, no, I think that’s fine,” Jungkook says with an honest smile. “You look nice like this.”

“It’s probably been like, a year since you last saw me in a dress,” you comment mindlessly, turning back to face the mirror as you fiddle with your makeup, finger wiping away a bit of smudged lipstick or a stray bit of mascara. “I miss my sweats. Hey, whoa, wait, what are you doing—?”

You whip around to find Jungkook slowly fishing out the camera from his backpack, hand gripping it tightly as he brandishes it in front of you. 

“I, um, I just wanted to see if I could maybe take a photo of you,” Jungkook says, a small, little grin decorating his features. “Since you’re all dressed up.”

“Seriously?” You ask in disbelief. 

Jungkook nods, holding the camera out in front of him. “Just one.”

He looks so small, standing across your bedroom. He looks so small and delicate and intimate, body curled in on itself ever so slightly as he looks at you, the yellow glow of your ceiling light reflected in his hazelnut eyes, drowning beneath his clothes. He looks like he has never seen a moment more perfect, never seen an opportunity as clear, looks like he thinks that if he blinks he’ll miss it. 

Looks as if a photo will be the only way to remember it. 

And you nod. Because he is your best friend, and who are you to deny him of something so simple? Of a press of a button? It doesn’t feel like a project anymore. It just feels like a memory. 

Jungkook brings the camera to his eye, and you smile at him, soft and gentle and warm. He grins back, focusing the camera lens before snapping away. 

You wonder what he sees. 

(You wonder if it’s as beautiful as what you see.)

“Have fun tonight, okay?” Jungkook asks of you as your Google Calendar notification sounds, letting you know you have approximately two minutes before he’s supposed to pick you up outside your apartment.

You nod. “I will. And if I don’t, then I’ll come over afterwards. And we can watch that stupid noir film.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Jungkook says with a roll of his eyes, a shrug of his shoulders. 

“But I want to. So I will. Okay? I’ll text you,” you promise. “Don’t think I’ll forget about you.”

Jungkook smiles at your little tease, at the way you cup the side of his jaw with your hand as you head towards your front door. 

“Wait, Y/N,” Jungkook sputters out, running after you. He reaches you right as you get to the door, hand grasping the doorknob. You turn to look at him, blinking. “I hope tonight is everything you dreamed of.”

There is something so distinctly sad in his voice. It makes you wonder who has broken his heart. Makes you wonder what you can do to fix it.

“Even if it’s not,” you say to him, taking his hand in your own and squeezing it tight, reminding him that, no matter what, you’re still here. “I know you’ll always be there to take care of me afterwards.”

Your phone buzzes with a message from your date, and you scurry out the door. 

For some reason, there’s a part of you that wishes you never even left. 

The date is okay. Not bad, but nothing to write home about. By the time you finished eating, it was obvious neither of you had any interest in continuing the night elsewhere, whether it be a club or a karaoke bar. He pays for your meal despite your insistence that you can handle the check perfectly fine on your own, thanks you for a nice night, and drops you right back at your apartment. And so goes your one and only Tinder experience, blowing away like a leaf in the wind. 

You look down at your phone. It isn’t even nine o’clock yet. 

[November 7th, 8:48PM]

You: you still game for that movie?

[November 7th, 8:50PM]

Jungkook: you finished your date already?

You: is that a yes or a no

Jungkook: my door is always open, you know that

You: you’re gonna get robbed one day and it’s gonna be by me You: i’m coming over

The walk from your apartment to Jungkook’s is six minutes and thirty seconds on a good day, and seven minutes and fifteen seconds on a bad day, which is usually dependent on if the traffic light over the main road has decided to be extra slow or not. You could walk the damn route in your sleep if you really wanted, having done it so many times in the last year and a half, ever since he moved out of on-campus housing and into his own place.

Tonight, it takes you nearly eight minutes to get to his apartment, but you mostly chalk that up to the heels you’re wearing. If you cared any less about your dignity, you’d probably take them off and walk barefoot like a defeated heroine in a romance movie, shoes dangling from your fingers as they hang low by your side. 

But you aren’t defeated. You didn’t have the world’s most spectacular date, but the night isn’t over just yet. 

Jungkook’s waiting at his front door by the time you arrive. 

“Eight minutes, huh? You’re getting old,” he asks snidely, looking down at the invisible watch on his wrist. 

“Your counting is just off,” you retort easily, falling into that same friendly rhythm, that familiar little beat that the two of you share. You push past him and into his apartment, instantly feeling more at home, shoulders sinking and heartbeat soothing as you soak in the scent of his room, of his home, of him. 

“How’d it go?” Jungkook asks, eyes hopeful as they watch you tug off your heels. They were hardly three inches tall and yet you still want nothing to do with them. 

You shrug. “Eh. It was okay.”

“Just okay?” Jungkook asks, sounding seriously upset for you. Upset that you didn’t have a good night even after you promised him that you would. Upset that it didn’t turn out to be everything you wanted. 

“I don’t know,” you admit, looking over at him, dejected. “It just—I just had this feeling that it wasn’t going to work out.”

Jungkook scowls to himself, eyebrows furrowing like he’s trying to figure out what exactly you mean by that. And the truth is, you’re not sure either. The date was fine, and he was nice, but even when you first met it felt like you weren’t going to get what you wanted from him. Like you were just going on the date to go on the date. Like you already knew that it would mean nothing. 

Jungkook was going to be waiting for you at the end of the night whether it went amazingly well or terribly bad. And knowing that, strangely enough, almost made you want the date to be horrible. Like it would make seeing Jungkook afterwards that much sweeter. 

“Oh,” Jungkook says lamely. “Well, I’m sorry. It seemed like you were really looking forward to it.”

“It’s alright,” you assure him. “Can we just watch this movie now and make fun of how sexist it is? Please?”

To that, Jungkook easily agrees. As he’s queueing up the movie, you raid his closet for a hoodie and sweatpants, desperate to strip yourself of your dress and tights and cozy up in clothes that are much more appropriate for your comfort level. At this point in your friendship, Jungkook doesn’t even question it when he sees you march into his room, fishing through his closet and drawers for your favorite matching set of his, this grey pair that he’s worn so much it still smells like him even after it’s come right out of the wash. 

He only stares back in awe when he sees you emerge from his bedroom wearing them. 

“Ready?” You ask, breaking him from his resolve.

Jungkook blinks wildly from where he’s seated on his dinky old couch, as if to clear his vision. “What? Oh, yeah, I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Then hurry it up, Mister,” you demand, sitting down next to him and curling into his body. It’s instinctual, at this point, wanting to be close to him. To feel the warmth of his body radiate upon your own. To feel his chest beneath the palm of your hands, his arm wrapped around your side. “All good?” You ask, looking up at him. 

Jungkook looks down at you, and you swear, you’ve never seen him more at home. “Always, when I’m with you.”

The movie is predictably good and predictably sexist, but your favorite part by far is when Jungkook reaches around on the coffee table in front of you for his camera, holding it up to his eye and snatching a picture of the television, the film grainy like an old polaroid, faded like an antique photograph. He clicks away at the scene in front of him before turning on you, the lens so close to your face you’re almost certain all he’ll manage to capture is your nose. You laugh, pushing yourself away from him as he snaps, and snaps, and snaps, image after image after image, until his camera battery has died and there’s no more room left on his card. 

“Guess I’ll have to charge this thing, then,” Jungkook sighs as he declares his camera dead, screen black. 

“You aren’t going to include any of those, are you?” You ask, an eyebrow raised. 

Jungkook shrugs. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Don’t you have enough?” You deadpan, thinking back to the hundreds of photos Jungkook must have taken of you over the past week, and even more that you don’t know about. There’s certainly no shortage of them in his current camera inventory. That’s for sure. 

“Never,” Jungkook says wickedly. He stretches out an open arm, and you don’t have to think twice about falling into it, letting him wrap you up in his hold, curling into his body. 

The black television screen crackles before you, DVD player waiting for Jungkook to turn it off. There’s no need for either of you to look up at each other. Not when you’re strung together like this. Not when you already know exactly where he is. 

“It’s due on Monday, right?” You inquire softly, fatigue slowly overtaking you. 

“Yeah. I’m almost finished, just have to do some curating and editing.”

“I want to see it.”

“What? My project?”

“What else?”

“It’s just a project, it’s not that exciting.”

You pull away from him at that, looking up at him with furrowed brows and scrunched-up nose. “What do you mean ‘it’s not that exciting’? It’s your photography project. You’ve spent a whole week working on it.”

“Yeah, but it’s just you, you know?” Jungkook objects. “Like, you know what you look like. It’s just going to be a bunch of photos of you, like I said it’d be.”

“That’s exactly why I want to see it,” you say like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You took pictures of me for a whole week. Don’t you want to share them with me?”

“If you really want some of the photos, I’ll send you some, but you don’t need to see the whole portfolio, you know? It’s just for my professor,” Jungkook says stiffly, surprisingly resistant. What’s the big deal? It’s not like there will suddenly be new information about you that you didn’t know before. You want to see what Jungkook has been working tirelessly on this entire week. Where’s the harm in that?

“Why are you getting so hung up on this? It’s just photos,” you say with a frown. 

“Why are you getting so hung up on this?” Jungkook challenges back. 

You sigh, sinking back into him, defeated. Even a little disagreement like that is enough to knock the wind out of the both of you, so you decide not to push it much further. 

“Do you promise to show me eventually?” You ask, hopeful.

Jungkook pauses for a moment, and you almost expect him to say no, considering how protective of his work he’s being. “One day,” he declares. “One day, I will.”

And that’s good enough for you. 

You lose track of how much time passes after that, feeling your eyelids getting heavy as the warmth of his body envelopes you, drowsiness settling in. There’s just something about this moment, right here, right now, that makes you want to fall asleep.

You’re on the verge of slumber when Jungkook’s voice breaks through.

“Why didn’t you think your date would work out?”

“I don’t know,” you respond sleepily, barely even opening your eyes. “It just felt wrong.”

“How do you know what feels right?”

Good question. Perhaps if you had the energy, you’d answer it. But right now, all you can think about is how cozy you feel in Jungkook’s hoodie and sweatpants, how the scent of him surrounds you, that indescribable, boyish aroma that can’t be replicated. Right now, all you can think about is how easily your body molds into his, like two pieces of a puzzle meant to fit together. Right now, all you can think about is him. 

The worst part about each and every week is when it ends. Because the end of one week signifies the beginning of the next, and when you’re in university, the beginning of the next week means a whole new batch of assignments that you have to complete and a whole new batch of due dates to meet. 

So, yeah. The weeks have been blurring together for you lately. But what else could you expect?

Sunday evening, as per usual, finds you right back where you always are: Jungkook’s apartment. 

The two of you have been regularly getting together on Sundays to study, ever since you both realized you work significantly harder when motivated by the other, determined to finish all of your work on time so you can spend the rest of the night fooling around by mixing Monster with as many unhealthy drinks that you can possibly think of. And it’s been working out well for the both of you so far. Jungkook powers through his coding assignments and you whiz through your readings, intent on keeping up to date with your tasks so they don’t all come crashing down on you at the end of the semester. 

Studying with Jungkook has always been easy, largely due to the fact that it’s the one allotted time during your friendship where the both of you deem it best to not speak to each other for the sake of your work. The moment one of you opens your mouth it’s over, so you sit on opposite ends of the room and pretend that the other person isn’t even there. 

Jungkook told you earlier today that he had already finished his photography portfolio, so there would unfortunately be no sneaky glances over his shoulder to see if you can catch a glimpse of one of the pictures. Which is fine by you, you’re just a little embarrassed that Jungkook had told you this outright. Not that you were planning to do exactly that, but you were planning to do exactly that. 

Part of you. more than anything, wants to know why Jungkook won’t just show you himself. Why he’s being so secretive, so protective of his photography project when you both know already exactly what’s in it. For God’s sake, he just spent the entire week taking photos of you non-stop. It’s like not as if any part of this is a mystery to either of you. What more could he have done?

Whatever. You aren’t going to force it if he doesn’t want you to. You suppose that maybe one day, far into the future, he’ll finally decide that the time is right. 

“I’m so fucking tired,” Jungkook declares lifelessly as he gets up from where he’s sitting on your bed, dead inside. “I need a break.”

“Are you going to the kitchen? Can you make me some tea, please?” You ask him, looking up from the laptop on your desk. 

Jungkook nods wordlessly before disappearing out of the room. 

You and Jungkook’s best study practice to maximize productivity is the taking of each other’s cell phones so that the other cannot be tempted to look at it. It’s worked plenty of times before and will probably work plenty of times again, because as they say, out of sight, out of mind. 

Unfortunately, it’s hard to pretend that your phone is out of sight when it’s been buzzing on your bedside table for the past five minutes, and your fingers have been itching to get over there and answer your damn notifications. So, while Jungkook is out of the room, you decide to cheat a little by dashing over there just to see what the heck is going on in the rest of the world. 

As it turns out, nothing much. Just Maisie texting you as she binges yet another television show, giving spoiler-free updates anytime anything remotely dramatic happens. You have a couple of new emails as well. 

The thing that actually catches your attention the most, is Jungkook’s laptop screen. 

There’s just a Word document open on it, but a Word document is a far cry from his usual coding program or Photoshop. Because you can’t help yourself, you peer over to see what he’s written. 

What did you learn about yourself through this assignment? How do you think you’ve changed?

Hard to say that I have. I don’t think I learned something about myself so much as I confirmed what I already knew, cementing it as a real thought in my brain, rather than just a daydream. Nothing changed in the way that my best friend and I interacted, and I can almost confirm that nothing changed in the way that she feels about me, just as nothing changed in the way I feel about her. I guess you could say I learned that I don’t think anything could ever change the way I feel about her. 

What?

Do you think you’ll ever look back on this project, whether it be as a reference or a memory?

Yes. Not as a reference but to remind myself of this very moment in my life—a single week over the course of my life that I felt was worth saving. I imagine that there will come a time, far in the future, where my best friend and I have separated a little bit, found our own lives and created our own families with our own people. And when that happens, I will look back on this project to remind myself of who we used to be. How we used to feel about each other. Maybe, by that point in time, it won’t hurt as much as it does now. 

This feels personal. Maybe you should stop reading. But there’s just one more question left on the page… 

This assignment forced you to create an entire portfolio, from scratch, using a subject you would have to regularly schedule time with. It was demanding. But, that said, would you ever do this again?

Yes. If it meant getting to spend more time with her, take more photos of her, see her smile once more, I would do it a thousand times over. 

“Y/N?”

You hadn’t even heard the kettle whistling. 

“Jungkook,” you say, breathless, caught red-handed. 

“What are you doing?” He asks, placing your steaming cup of tea down on the desk as he stares back at you in horror, in surprise, in worry, in something. Something that gives you this imminent sense of impending doom. 

“Uh—”

“Were you reading my computer screen?”

It’s not like you could say you were doing anything else. 

“I couldn’t help myself, I came over here to check my phone since it’s been buzzing like crazy and your computer was right there and I just…” you sputter out, thoughts swirling inside your head. 

(I will look back on this project to remind myself of who we used to be. How we used to feel about each other. Maybe, by that point in time, it won’t hurt as much as it does now. 

If it meant getting to see her smile once more, I would do it a thousand times over. 

I guess you could say I learned that I don’t think anything could ever change the way I feel about her.)

“What do you mean, how you feel about me?” You ask, because you can’t help yourself. Because the sound of his voices echoes in your head like the beat of a drum, over and over and over. Because you’re staring back at him and even if he just caught you snooping through his computer you can never be worried when it comes to him. Because everything he has ever done puts you at ease. 

“Y/N, that is private, why would you read something like that?” He asks, each word a sucker punch into your heart. 

“Because I just had to know, okay?” You shout back. “I had to know what you were hiding from me.”

“So you decided to snoop through my computer to see if you could figure it out yourself?” He demands, storming over to you. 

“So you are hiding something?”

“That’s not the point, the point is that—”

“What are you not telling me, Jungkook?” You cry out, watching as he approaches you, dark eyes piercing your gaze. “Why won’t you show me your goddamn portfolio? If there’s really nothing to be afraid of, why are you keeping it from me? I’m your best friend, I’m the fucking subject of your project? Don’t I deserve to see it? Why won’t you show me?”

“Because then you’d know!” Jungkook shouts back, leaving deafening silence in his wake. You look up at him, blinking. In front of you, Jungkook is out of breath, chest heaving. 

He looks so strained. So tired. Like he’s been carrying around this secret for months now, maybe even years, and this is the final straw. This is what has sent the both of you crashing down upon each other. This stupid fucking project. You’ve known Jungkook ever since the beginning of your freshman year, and never before have you seen him so hopeless. 

“Jungkook—?”

“You’d know, goddamnit,” Jungkook says, hand coming up to rub at his forehead, dragging down his cheek. “And I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that.”

“Know what? What would I know?” 

Jungkook closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Opens them again. “That I’m in love with you.”

The words drift in between the two of you, hovering in the air like feathers. You see them, clear as day, in front of you, hear them echoing in your head, over and over and over again. Feel the way your blood is pumping, the way your heart is beating. 

“You’re in love with me?” You ask him. 

“I didn’t want you to find out this way,” Jungkook admits. “Or at all, really. But I have been, for a while now.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was afraid that I’d lose you.”

You chuckle, a small, little thing from the back of your throat. “You must have known I’d never let that happen, hmm?”

Jungkook smiles softly. “I was scared. Can you blame me? You’re my best friend.”

“And you are mine,” you remind him. 

“It’s just—” Jungkook begins, like the gates of a dam are opening up. “We’d known each other for so long, and we have such a good thing going as is, always texting and calling and hanging out together, studying together on Sunday nights and seeing each other during the week, and I didn’t want to ruin anything. And then my professor assigned this project, and the only person I could think of to take photos was you, but I didn’t want to ask that of you in case you thought it was weird, but you suggested it anyway so I said yes, but I knew. I knew then that the moment I took one goddamn photo of you it would be obvious, and that if you ever saw you would just know. Stuff like that is easy to pick up in pictures, because a camera is like, tunnel vision for whatever it is you want to focus on most, and that’s you, that’s always been you, so I—”

“Jungkook,” you interrupt, reaching out to him, pressing a soft hand to his cheek. “Just, shut up, okay?”

And then you cup his head in both of your hands, and press a kiss to his lips. A small one, if nothing else, but a kiss nonetheless. You press your lips against his own and immediately you feel the sparks rush through you, this flash of heat that settles into something softer, something sweeter. It ignites and soothes you all at once, like a stray lightning bolt out on the open ocean. Like a single clap of thunder and the pitter patter of rain. 

You press a kiss to his lips and when you pull away, Jungkook’s eyes are closed, lips parted ever so slightly. And for a moment there, you almost think you did the wrong thing. 

But barely a second more passes before he’s scooping you up in his arms and pulling you in close to him, his lips finding yours like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do. He holds you tight, hands pressed against the small of your back as he kisses you, warm and fiery and full, as if he can’t get enough, as if this is his only chance. You gasp into it before relaxing in his hold, cold hands on his warm cheeks, body melting at the feeling of him, of him all over you, of his hands and his mouth and his chest, this perfect, solid figure. 

He kisses you and it sends heat shooting through your body, filling you up from the inside out, like your heart has burst and filled your bloodstream with fire, with sparks of warmth that tingle all over. He kisses you, and everywhere his hands press is another sizzle to your skin, an electric shock that makes you giggle into his mouth. 

He kisses you and it feels like a storm has settled, feels like gentle rain after a hurricane, feels like waves crashing against the shore. He kisses you and it is the only thing you can think about. 

By the time you part once more, you don’t think you’ve ever seen Jungkook so blissed out. 

“See?” You point out softly. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

Jungkook looks positively dazed. “I think I need to lie down.”

“Ooh, was I that good?” You tease.

“I’m dreaming.” He shakes his head. “I’m definitely fucking dreaming.”

Jungkook sinks onto your bed, hitting the mattress with a thud. He stares mindlessly in front of him, like his brain needs time to process. 

You smile to yourself. He can have all the time in the world. 

“Is this real?” He mumbles when you sit down next to him, press another kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Are you real?”

“Just like you,” you promise him. “I didn’t know this is what we had been missing, all this time.”

“It wasn’t missing,” Jungkook assures you. “It was just hidden.”

“I love you,” you whisper, watching him swallow the words like a glass of wine. “I think I always have. You just needed to say it first.”

“Oblivious as always.” Jungkook grins, smiling against your lips. “But I’m glad. If this is what it would take, then I’m glad.”

“You wouldn’t change anything?” You ask him, eyes wide and curious. 

It’s hard to know how long you and Jungkook have been secretly pining over each other. Hard to know how long Jungkook has known that he’s loved you, how long it’s been since you started to feel the same, even if subconsciously. It’s hard to know how long you would have kept going if not for this project. It might have been months. Years. Years that Jungkook was willing to spend holding back, if only it meant keeping you by his side. 

“No,” Jungkook says like it’s the easiest answer in the world. “I have you now. Why would I?”

What did you learn about yourself through this assignment? How do you think you’ve changed?

Previously, I had responded to this question by saying that I hadn’t learned anything, and felt that nothing changed in my life. Then, some things happened. And after those things, I learned that I am the luckiest man alive. To know my best friend is one thing. To love her is a privilege. To have her love me back is nothing less than a miracle.

Do you think you’ll ever look back on this project, whether it be as a reference or a memory?

Yes. Every day for the rest of my life. I don’t think I’ve ever been as thankful to receive a homework assignment as I am, right now. I owe everything to this project. It is the reason I have her. 

This assignment forced you to create an entire portfolio, from scratch, using a subject you would have to regularly schedule time with. It was demanding. But, that said, would you ever do this again?

Yes. I want to take photos of her for the rest of my life. I want to save every memory we ever share together. So that far into the future, we can look back on them together and say, “Remember that?”

↳ links are broken, but don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

[dingdongitsbees]

“Gojo has a girlfriend!?” | Gojo x Reader Oneshot (Fluff)

Synopsis:  Yuuji has just overheard a phone call with Gojo and this seemingly mysterious woman who's coming to visit. He brings the news to the other students, adamant that their teacher has a girlfriend much to the disbelief of Maki, especially when the possibility of the girlfriend being you arises.

Ao3 Link

WC: 2.6k TW: mentions of death/murder Just send an ask to be added to Gojo the taglist! (specify if you don’t want angst etc)

Jujutsu Kaisen Masterlist | Main Masterlist

“Guys, guys! Gojo has a girlfriend!” Yuuji announced, slamming the door open to the classroom.

“I refuse to believe that,” Nobara said rolling her eyes. “He couldn’t get a girlfriend even if he had the most romantic script in front of him.”

“I second that,” Maki said, not even looking up from her phone.

“Tuna, tuna,” Toge agreed.

“He’s not that bad-” Yuuji started.

“He’s an egotistical, immature man child who thinks dick jokes are the height of humour, what women would be attracted to that?” Maki glared.

“Then explain to me why I heard him call someone babe over the phone just now! And why I heard a girl’s laugh!”

“You say that like he doesn’t do that to everyone,” Nobara sighed.

“He said they were coming today anyway!” Yuuji insisted. “And he said “I love you” before he hung up!”

Now that raised eyebrows in the room.

“He… he really said that?” Maki said slowly for Yuuji just to nod enthusiastically in reply. “Then who the hell did he brainwash to be his girlfriend?!”

The group moved out of the classroom to outside as they argued leaving Megumi alone to slurp his noodles who was happy to be forgotten in the conversation since he already knew the answer. Watching the two adults yearn obviously after each other for years still scarred him, but he was happy you were coming today, even if you had the worst taste in men.

“Seriously who the hell is it!” Nobara yelled. “There’s no way its Utahime right?” The group was stood at the top of the stone stairs that led into the school, waiting for the mysterious visitor.

“She’d rather die,” Maki deadpanned.

“Mei Mei?”

“She’d go for someone richer.”

“Yuki?”

“She’s too busy for relationships, let alone with Gojo.”

“Shoko?”

“We would have noticed that by now.”

“A civilian?” Yuuji suggested.

“Like there’s any way he could explain the jujutsu world to a civilian without making it look like he was insane.”

Panda hummed from behind them. “(y/n)?”

Maki went still. “How dare you taint her name like that.”

Yuuji and Nobara looked to each other. “(y/n)?” they said in sync.

“She’s one of the only other special grade sorcerers,” Panda explained. “She was in Shoko and Gojo’s grade in school. She’s Gojo’s best friend.”

Yuuji and Nobara’s eyes widened.

“He has friends?” Nobara asked with a bit too much genuine shock.

“Somehow,” Maki spoke solemnly, pushing up her glasses. “But (y/n) is too cool to ever do that!” She looked to the sky with her outstretched hand dramatically. “I would never idolise and want to follow in the footsteps of someone if they were that foolish!”

“Bonito flakes!”

Nobara mouthed a ‘woah’ at Maki’s intensity, never seeing her look up to someone with so much passion.

A Megumi scratching his neck joined them from behind, now full enough of food to deal with what would soon happen.

“Who do you think it is?” Yuuji asked him.

Megumi sighed. “It’s-”

Panda whipped his head up, ears twitching, everyone falling silent. They strained their human ears and soon heard footsteps on the gravel coming towards them. Without warning a stick came hurtling at Maki’s head with deadly accuracy who froze before quickly cutting it in half, the pieces gliding past her head before the others could even blink.

“You’ve certainly improved Maki!” A happy voice spoke. Soon they saw a small woman with hands in pockets walking up the stone steps with a grin. “Yo yo yo,” you greeted.

“(y/n)!” Nobara and Yuuji gulped at Maki with, wondering how she would react to the attack. “How was my form? Was it alright?”

“Pretty good, pretty good,” you laughed, “I personally would have just side stepped to dodge it to retain some energy. But if you’re going to counter, I’d suggest putting your front leg a little more forward to help with your balance, but I’m sure you already knew that.” Offering Maki a knowing grin. “You reacted much faster than you did last time though that’s for sure. You’ll definitely have the Zenins kissing your ass in no time.”

Maki nodded sharply with the compliment and Nobara couldn’t help but notice the smile she was trying to keep down to remain in her collected self.

You looked over to Megumi who begrudgingly stepped forward to say hello, but the twitching corners of his mouth said otherwise. You gave him the ritual hair ruffle which he leant down into, knowing you had missed being able to reach down to tiny child Megumi to bother him whenever you wanted, but he still indulged in your methods of affection.

“You keep getting taller what a pain,” you whined.

“It is what happens when children reach puberty,” Megumi deadpanned.

“Beside the point,” you replied with the dismissive wave of a hand. “It’s of personal offense to me.”

You looked over to the other two first years blankly, taking them in, analysing their builds and posture. They gulped nervously under your critical stare. “Ah you two must be nail girl and Sakuna’s vessel, Nobara and Yuuji, right?” You smiled, disarming their defensive walls, nodding. “Nice to meet you! I’ll be coming up here a bit more to help teach now and then so I’ll get to know you two well soon.”

They beamed and you couldn’t help but feel your heart warm at the positivity that still remained in young sorcerers. Too many let their immaturity and childlike wonder, and frankly the happy and fun side of themselves, behind as soon as they realised how the world really was for shamans, you included, but the younger generation always gave you a kick in the gut to force you to remember. An unintended gesture that was greatly appreciated.

“But anyway,” you said, dropping you smile and sighing melodramatically. “Where’s the dipshit?”

“Who-?” Nobara and Yuuji started.

“Over by the track field,” Maki said, the other second years and Megumi pointing with her.

“Coolio,” you acknowledged and stuck your hands back in your pockets and started to walk towards the field before you heard Maki speak.

“Speaking of… Gojo,” she began, “Is it true he has a girlfriend?”

You would have laughed at the question had it not been so shocking to you that the answer wasn’t glaringly obvious. You glanced over to Megumi who had obviously not told them yet, who just looked at you with so much resentment for having indirectly causing what must have been a very long conversation before you arrived.

You looked back to Maki. “He does yeah… why do you ask?”

“Well, we’ve been wondering who it is, is she a sorcerer?”

You nodded.

“Someone we know?”

You nodded again, trying not to let the slowly rising smile read on your face.

“Well…” Maki huffed, “Who is it?”

You raised your fingers to your lips and feigned zipping them closed. “I’ve been sworn to upmost secrecy,” which was just entirely untrue but kept it much more fun.

“But you’re smart I’m sure you can figure it out.”

Maki nodded, absolutely defeated as you waved goodbye and headed to the track.

It didn’t take long to find him, his overwhelming aura hit you before his slender hands covered your eyes from behind. “Guess who!”

“I couldn’t even begin to guess, maybe my ex I still have feelings for, I would probably break up with my boyfriend for him, he’s very annoying.”

“You ass,” he replied taking his hands off which you just laughed at. “Your ex is a fucking asshole.”

“That fact is written across the universe in holy star dust.”

You finally took a good look at him, his stature towering over you as always, but always bringing the feeling of being safe like under a shelter in the rain instead of any kind of looming threat height can give you. You made eye contact through his black blindfold and couldn’t help but wish it was the old days where he wore his glasses so you could see his eyes more clearly, but then again, the old days didn’t only offer happy memories, it was why you were here in the first place.

The gang peered at you two from behind the bushes, watching every excruciating detail they could pick up from the interactions.

“Nothing too out of the normal yet,” Maki breathed, “That’s just ordinary friend things yeah? Yeah?” she questioned Nobara who nodded enthusiastically. Though the younger girl couldn’t help but notice the affection in your look at him, or the way her teacher’s body seemed to soften and let his usually unnoticeable guard down.

You sat down on the large concrete steps together, close enough to feel each other’s warmth. You two looked to the sky and watched as birds passed in a group of four, gliding through the air with no need to need flap their wings.

“How are you?” You asked.

“Straight to the point huh?”

You couldn’t help but smile a little but stayed silent for him to answer.

“I mean, it’s the same as every year isn’t it?”

“We both know that isn’t true.”

The events of last year still haunted you, and Satoru too, even though he was much better at hiding it. The two of you walking up to Suguru’s dying self, his hand clutched on his bleeding stomach as the two of you were just standing in shock, staring at the man that used to be your guys’ best friend. Satoru being the one to do the finishing blow because you were too much of a mess to do it. Gojo Satoru is good at hiding things, but those who knew him well enough knew sometimes the cracks were visible in his perfect façade.

He sighed. “You need to stop being right all the time, it gets frustrating.”

You chuckled and bumped your shoulder into his, internally grinning at his infinity being turned off for you even though it was nothing new. You took the opportunity to rest you head on his shoulder as the two of you looked up into the sky again in silence. Just taking in the slow heartbeat you could hear.

It was a few minutes before it was broken again.

“It feels weird to still feel like celebrating the birthday of a person I don’t know anymore, let alone of a person I killed,” he said honestly. “Like how is the engrained feeling of an arbitrary date that I properly celebrated only three times only mean more to me than it did back then when there’s no way to repeat the happiness of unaware teenagers.”

You hummed quietly, indulging him in his thoughts that you too felt. “I’m sorry I-”

“Don’t.”

“I’m sorry I made you do it,” I said, “He was your best friend.”

“And he was yours too, I wasn’t going to make you put a childhood friend down like a dog.”

You nodded into his shoulder, going quiet. He looked down at you and you couldn’t help yourself but reach up to touch his blindfold. He didn’t resist and sat quietly as you raised it so you could see his eyes. Little, almost microscopic droplets, detailed his under eyelashes. You gave him a small smile which he returned with his own as you brushed his eyes gently. He grabbed your hand delicately and kissed the fingers tips one at a time while you watched with total calm and comfort taking over your body, snuggling closer into the crook of his neck.

The group watched in tight tension as they spied on the scene before them. Maki looked like she was going to rip out the bush, roots and all, with the way she was gripping onto the small branches like a lifeline.

“It was probably just something very personal, and because they are good friends they feel comfortable doing that, yes that’s it. And the “I love you” over the phone must have been a joke or said in a platonic way. Yeah, that’s it.” Maki said, springing off all the close enough to realistic conspiracy theories in her head.

No one had the heart to tell her what was plainly obvious, nor the bones strong enough to deal with her disagreement.

You didn’t need to say it, he already knew, but you said it anyway. “I missed you,” you said quietly, “Going abroad sucks.”

“You really need to look at the sweet shops there and pick up some souvenirs.”

“Sweets don’t numb things for everyone,” you laughed, “Sometimes food can’t replace people.” You grabbed onto his hand and laced it in yours, his huge hand enveloping yours like a little protector.

“Did you get hurt?” he whispered; he knew you were fully capable to come from most missions entirely unscathed, but it didn’t stop the worry. People he cared about going to missions alone had left many scars in varying forms.

“I’m alright, just a few bruises here and there mainly by my own hand, no biggie.”

He nodded, happy with the answer.

He stroked his thumb over the back of your hand, leaning his head onto yours. “I love you,” he whispered, barely loud enough to hear over the subtle wind.

You squeezed his hand. You’d never been good at words, stumbling over what you’re really trying to say without saying it outright, even if you already knew what you were meant to say, especially when it came time for vulnerable things, but Satoru knew that better than anyone. So, you felt his face widen into a smile.

He squeezed your hand back.

He looked down at you again, taking his blindfold off so you could admire the now rarer sight of his eyes. There was no other way to describe his eyes than beautiful. Their blues captivated you like a ship barely staying afloat in a storming ocean, barely surviving, only at the sea’s mercy. Many were terrified of them, they were whispered about among shamans young and old, and to be fair they held power. Power unattainable except for those lucky few that inherited it. But to you it had always felt like it was the eyes that inherited Gojo Satoru. It was Gojo Satoru that really made them powerful along with infinity, no one had ever come close, and it was doubtful anyone ever will, even if he thought he was raising students that he wanted to be better than him. At the very least it was definitely a high bar to beat. But when it was you, and just him, just Satoru, together, it was not the power you yielded to. It was the fact that it was Satoru, the boy and now man you had fallen in love with and who had allowed himself to fall down to fall in love with you. When you looked into the sea of blue that seemed forever changing, the only word you could use to actually describe them was Satoru.

You rose your head to meet with his lips softly, giving him a sweet kiss that made his mouth upturn into a smile. And to be fair half of it was definitely because of the group of students that were losing their minds behind a bush right now, but the other half you happily knew was because of you.

Gojo Satoru may be an egotistical, immature man child who thinks dick jokes are the height of humour sometimes, okay maybe a bit more than sometimes. But he was Gojo Satoru, the most imperfect perfect person you’d ever met, and you would stay by his side until you parted from the world, but you were sure it wouldn’t take long to find him in the next.

.

.

.

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Just send an ask to be added to Gojo the taglist! (specify if you don’t want angst etc)

[life-rewritten]

ITSAY EP 4- SELF-SABOTAGE, HINDERANCES, AND REVERSE HELPS

Warning a painful post coming. I cried so much while analysing this. A lot happened on episode 4 of ITSAY, and I've spent days trying to process. First of all, with that episode my weary heart grows hopeful for a happy ending, even if it is bittersweet, I can't see what else they could possibly do after breaking my heart into pieces. So yes I don't see deaths coming, I don't even see running away from feelings coming anymore, I feel like episode 4 fulfilled all the foreshadowing clues left, and there's nothing left now except but to wait and see the results of the exams. To fully understand the episode and relieve that whole heartbreak again, let's analyse the theme this time and this time let's look deeply at Tehs: Self-loss, regression and sabotage because of the overwhelming consequences of feelings. 

THE CONSEQUENCES OF MISTRANSLATION OF THE HEART

For me, this episode was like a cut that refused to heal. It's easy to predict most of the events that occur in this episode: Teh freaking out about his sexuality, trying to distance himself from Oh, Oh getting hurt becoming resentful, Oh becoming even more hurt when Teh finally tries to call what they have off, both become lost and confused and defeated, Teh gives up all he has for Oh, Oh rejects it and they return back to their rivalry/ their relationship regresses.

 Remember in my previous post (here) I said that Episode 1 was going to be mirrored in Episode 5, that there were so many full circle moments they could return to. Well, I think Episode 1 started to be reflected in Episode 4 with our characters: Oh and Teh have repeated a cycle again of resentment, rivalry and regression (will discuss this in my next post). They've returned back to their old state as rivals no longer friends, no longer lovers, no longer intimate. 

And it's not like Teh wanted this to happen. Teh is so lost when he's without Oh, remember he's addicted and obsessed with Oh, Oh is like the only thing that keeps him grounded and not restless. The fear of losing Oh is something that Teh can't control, it causes him to act out, to lose his mind and it causes him to try and try and try every single time to ensure it doesn't happen. But Teh forgot who Oh was, and I also did. We all screamed from the top of our lungs that Teh would give up his place for Oh but we just forgot about a specific part of that equation: Oh's reaction. I thought it'd be easy; Oh will realise too late what had occurred and Teh would have left by then and he'd run to the sunset and keep waiting for Teh, but nooo I forgot about how Resentful, Prideful and Angry Oh gets whenever he gets hurt by Teh  (shown in episode 1). But before we go into Ohs state this episode, Let's look more at Teh in detail, try and understand him more in this episode when looking at our theme.

TEH: Reverse-Help and Self-Hindrance

Again our Chinese translation lessons become a tool for foreshadowing in this episode. From the beginning of the episode as we see Teh create the tutorial guide, and try and tutor Oh, we get foreshadowing titles/translations such as the word for Reverse Help and it's further emphasised with another translation the word for being a hindrance because of trying to help. As Teh goes through his devastating, and uncontrollable self regression, he tries to go into overdrive. First, he tries to keep his promise to the two people he's torn about; 

For Tarn, he tries to retain his position as someone who loves her for 3 years, as someone who still wants what they have, as someone who is still the same .

For Oh he tries to keep the promise he made to him in episode 1 that he'd help him fulfil his dreams by tutoring.  

Tutoring Chinese Translations Whilst Mistranslating Feelings

Tutoring Oh has always been his way of trying to make things make sense, for example when Oh told him he couldn't return back to their closeness as best friends in episode 1, Teh decides to show him that he will keep working on their friendship and proceeds to help him pass the exams by tutoring. Tutoring Oh becomes an excuse for Teh with everything, to get closer to him when he doesn't want to think, to avoid underlying issues whenever things seem hectic, and to spend as much time as he can to be near Oh without having to face the implications of it. Tutoring Oh is to make Oh learn how to translate Chinese so he can pass the exam to get to the University. 

However, tutoring Oh being Teh's priority shows what he truly wants as his goals: to always be near Oh no matter what, to grow with Oh (for both of them to go the University together and fulfil their dreams) and to repay Oh for the time he hurt him when they were kids/enemies (insulting his dreams and making him self doubt). Teh puts the tutoring as a priority because he puts Oh as his number one, Ohs dreams are important to him, and that's all that matters even if things feel too much to handle. This is already why you see what happens to Teh during this episode, he starts to hyperfocus on that priority as he tries to avoid and avoid what is truly going and instead of helping all he does is make it worse: 

Here are instances in episode 4 where Teh's over helping does nothing but make things worse for him and for the people he cares about; 

TEHS REVERSE HELP TO OH

As mentioned, we have the tutoring. The whole obsession with Ohs dreams become more of an obstacle to Oh, who feels frustrated at Teh, who isn't understanding how he feels. Teh and Oh crossed the line and become more than friends after episode 3, but Teh tried to run away from Oh and then tried to pretend everything was okay. For Oh, Teh hyperfocused on the tutoring (ironic since again he's focusing only on Oh) but he was breaking and causing him to question everything because of his avoidance of the issue. 

Both Oh and Tarn had no clue where they stood with Teh, and he didn't know how to tell them how he felt, because he himself didn't know. Remember the tutoring is all about translation and as I said before the show is all about the consequences of mistranslating feelings when young. When we are young, we don't understand how strong feelings can be, how painful, how confusing (if its someone you can't be with in your perspective) or how uncontrollable. Like Teh instead of trying to listen to the heart, we revert to logic to try and explain feelings and typically that leaves us with nothing but confusion and exhaustion. The more Teh kept running away and avoiding the subject, the more he was affecting both Oh and Tarn: 

Tarn: Because she needed to study, she made it her priority that her aspirations mattered to her that's why she held of their relationship for 3 years despite liking Teh, her aspirations were more important. But now Teh was making her revert to someone who couldn't stop thinking about their attraction to each other; the more Teh led her on, the more her feelings were becoming a  hindrance to her aspirations( trying to help but being a hindrance). But again Ironic because Teh was trying to help her too, he was trying to 'do right' by her by not changing what they have, he was trying to stay by her side even though he was no longer there in the present for her. 

Oh: Because he was starting to realise that just like Teh everything revolved around him, he was beginning to become hurt, self-hating and resentful towards everyone and Teh. He was beginning to lose the zeal to keep on struggling for his exams (Teh revived his hope thus without Teh everything was beginning to seem useless), and he was starting to feel broken-hearted each time Teh avoided the situation.  Oh was realising his dependency on Teh but it frightened him because it could be gone, it could all go wrong, and Teh still had Tarn.  He was starting to be exhausted with everything because when he tried to keep his promise (to keep them a secret), Teh refused to treat it like that, Teh kept on pulling his hopes up and then destroying them, and he became tired of it. 

: The tutorial guide

This brings us to the tutorial guide. Damn, the way my heart screamed for Teh during this. One because as his mother put it, Teh spent nights, days recreating a tutorial guide with 1000 words for Oh to learn for the exam. By tearing out parts of his own revision guides, he used it to create a version that was understandable/ easy to understand. This is clearly a metaphor for what he was doing again with his over helping by tearing/ giving out parts of himself to create different versions of himself for the people he cared about, so it was easy for them to deal with his change. 

The guide was beautiful; you could see the care, the effort, the time he put into it because Tehs priority as mentioned was Oh, Ohs dream and Oh being near him. The guide represented what Teh was trying to do all episode, to make everything easy, pleasing and understanding for everyone.  Teh went into overdrive with the tutorial guide because it was the only thing he could do to again avoid and run away from what was going on, on the surface. 

Now at first, this tutorial guide seems helpful just like Tehs intentions, and it brings Oh back to him. Oh forgives him and they reunite, even proceeding to continue their relationship like before, talking, returning to their beach and doing what they wanted with each other. Except we see later at the end of the episode, all Tehs hard work was for nothing. Oh was resentful because Teh brought his hopes up once again, but refused to deal with the situation again. The tutorial guide instead of being a helping guide to Oh became a waste, it led to Oh even retreating and avoiding to study for the exam because he was heartbroken. Oh did not use the tutorial guide and did not show up for the exam. 

Meanwhile, Teh realises how much he gave to Oh that was wasted and couldn't be retrieved, for example, he later discovers he has to study for the exam only to see empty tatters of his previous revision guide (himself), he'd given everything to Oh, and it was wasted. 

Tehs acting position

This is why Teh giving up his place for Oh with the application is just so sensitive. It's romantic how much Oh is Teh's priority. From episode 1, we've gotten a repetition that getting past this application was Tehs vision, everything he wanted since he was a child. Again we see the evolution of all this; he spent so many years studying, practising, preparing for his acting dreams. His mum did all she could to show him how proud she was of him, his brother worked hard to save money to provide plane tickets and cash for his university dream. Everyone put effort into helping Teh and pushing Teh to his goal. And it's heartwrenching to see him give it all up. 

Us romanticists squealed and hoped that Oh would understand, that this was the first steps for our two to return back together. There's still the exam, we thought, Teh and Oh will reunite, they'll be together, in University, we'll run to the sunset together and scream after that is done except, instead of Oh to see it as a gift, he calls Teh out, he's insulted, he's annoyed, and he's frustrated. He's not going to accept it, he's going to relinquish it. 

Again all Teh did was a waste. And it's worse because this was the final thing he could give up for Oh to be near him, it was the last thing he could give of himself in an attempt to make things go back to normal, the final thing he could do to have Oh forgive him. And by the end, Teh is truly mentally, psychologically, and physically exhausted and gone. There's no more to give, no more to help, he lost it all, and he still couldn't figure out why. 

In an attempt to help everyone, to revert everything to normal Teh is the person who's the most broken and lost. It's to Oh on the surface with his actions, but  he's also trying to help/ impress everyone else as well:

His family: 

His mum who has made it a thing of how helpful Tehs brother has been in her life. Their father isn't here, and Tehs mum is someone who relies on her sons' dreams and actions to provide a sense of success in her life. For Teh he couldn't live up to his brother, but once he told his mother about his dreams about being an actor she rejoiced and boasted to all her friends about it; she was proud, immensely excited and driven to push him to his dreams. 

So when Teh realises that his mum will also be proud that he had a girlfriend like his brother, another form of success, he regresses back to this thoughts, he still needed Tarn to impress his mother, he was reminded of his previous goals, to impress her and be seen as equal to his brother. So he tries to keep what he and Tarn had as normal to keep making everyone around him 'happy', and 'impressed' except it led to Oh hurt. 

It's like a sad game of choices; if he chooses Oh, everyone else he's trying to impress falls apart; for example, the revelation when he decided to give up on the acting application, it wasn't just him affected, everyone had put their hopes and excitement on it, and he ended up losing their praise and support. 

In fact, he came face to face with the thing he was trying to avoid, his mother proceeds to harshly compare him with his brother (I thought she was so out of line for this) and she finally shows him that all his fears and notions on this were real. His mum had been seeing him as a failure compared to his brother it just sucked. 

If he chose them, he lost Oh again he saw that happen when he tries to revert all he had with Oh back to normal, he broke Ohs self-esteem and made Oh go into self-hate and despair. He, on the other hand, was also just as broken, confused and defeated. 

In the end, the sick game of choices, as he tried to impress everyone Teh became a shell of nothing, no support, no praise, no love (both losing Tarn and Oh) and no aims (losing his path to his dreams and his confidence). 

Self-sabotage, hindrance, and regression

So you see Teh becomes a mess because of his failure to translate his feelings correctly. The obstacles to him being able to do so causes him to try and do so in a logical way; trying to split his self and please everyone. He becomes self-sabotaging, and as Tarn tells him he only ends up hurting himself, losing everything he tried to hold on to, and he also ends up becoming a regressed version of himself with nothing to lean on (in his perspective).

 It hurts because these are the results of Internalised homophobia, the results of a society that has made people like Oh and Teh feel like they have to hide and hate who they are at a young age,  the effects of immaturity and young age; not able to understand or deal with feelings, not being able to know what they mean or able to control how we act when it comes. 

It's all consequences of falling in love so young. And as much as falling in love is worth it when you meet the one, it sucks that some LGBTQ+ have to go through obstacles and hindrances and more pain just to understand or get to the person they are meant to be with. It sucks. Thank you to ITSAY for teaching us all about this, for showing us this, for making us realise all this. 

In a way we all can end up like Teh's cut out revision guide, if we don't have enough self-love, confidence, or trust in our feelings, we can end up tearing parts of our selves, losing our selves, dreams and perceptions because of mistranslating who we are/what we want. Luckily this is all to do with age, it's okay to make mistakes and learn from it, this will now push Teh to understand and accept himself for whatever he is, and what he feels, this will open his eyes to seeing he has people by his side who won't let him fall (Hoon, and hopefully Oh) and this will make him stronger, confident and braver. And finally, hopefully, it will lead him once again to the person he loves, and they'd be able to run to the sunset together and scream that they made it. One can only hope. 

PREVIOUS ANALYSIS: PROMISES, SUNSETS AND MALE PROTAGONISTS

PREVIOUS ANALYSIS; XIN THE FOCUS OF THE HEART

[gendercensus]

Gender Census 2020: The Identity Question

This report is the second in a series, analysing the >24,000 responses from the 2020 Gender Census question-by-question.

[ Report #1: On “enby” and age // Report #3: The Title Question // Report #4: The Pronoun Question ]

~

This year’s Gender Census, aimed at everyone whose gender(s) or lack thereof are not adequately described by the gender binary of “always, solely and completely male OR always, solely and completely female”, was open from 12th February until 7th April 2020. There were 24,576 usable responses. (Unfortunately the spreadsheet of responses won’t be available until I’ve written up the report for every question, sorry about that!)

This report will summarise the responses for the first question, regarding identity.

As in previous years, I asked:

Which of the following best describe(s) in English how you think of yourself?

There were 30 checkbox options presented in a random order, largely based on which answers were chosen by over 1% of participants last year. (More on how I’m updating the selection process later.)

Here’s a graph of the results:

And here’s the top 5:

nonbinary - 66.4% (down 0.2%)

queer (partially or completely in relation to gender) - 42.9% (down 0.1%)

trans - 33.7% (down 2.9%)

enby - 31.5% (down 0.2%)

gender non-conforming - 29.0% (up 2.8%)

Last year queer was added to the checkbox list because it was entered into the textbox by over 1% of participants (2.9%) the previous year, and it rocketed to second place. At the time I was very surprised by this, and I had some reservations about the data quality, because the word “gender” isn’t mentioned in the question. Perhaps people were choosing queer as a checkbox option because the question isn’t clear enough and they identify as queer in terms of their sexual orientation? This year, the queer checkbox option was a little longer:

queer (partially or completely in relation to gender)

... and it was still entered by around the same proportion of participants. I now feel satisfied that these results are representative of participants’ gender identities or similar, and not entered in error. I will retain this wording for future surveys, just in case.

Aside from that, nothing particularly stands out as a new trend. Here’s the graph of the top 10 identity words from the past seven surveys:

[Please note, there was no survey in 2014 so the graph is a little misleading on the left there.]

Genderqueer continues its gradual downward trend, and I’ve bolded that line so you can see it more clearly. Last year it was sixth most popular, and this year it’s seventh. Gender non-conforming has climbed a little and now sits above transgender, but only by a very slim margin of 0.05% (12 people) - just enough to push transgender out of the top 5.

~

THE 1% AND 3% BOUNDARIES

In order to talk about the textbox entries and the words I will be adding and removing from the checkbox list, I’ll first have to explain a decision I made last year.

In 2019 the checkbox identity list had 30 terms on it, which was long enough that people couldn’t find their identities. Several people asked that the words be sorted in alphabetical order to make them easier to find, but if I do that I will risk primacy and recency bias - the phenomenon of participants being more likely to choose options at the start and end of a list respectively, the solution for which is to randomise the list for each participant.

The 1% boundary ensures that a word only gets added to the checkbox list when enough people write it into the textbox, but I can’t use the same boundary for removing terms from the checkbox list, because most words get chosen around four times more often when they’re presented as easy checkboxes that remind participants of their existence.

So, last year I decided to create a removal boundary of 3%. The proposal: if a checkbox identity term is chosen by under 3% of participants, it will be removed from the checkbox list for next year. When I ran the numbers in 2019, I found that the few terms that fit that criterion were words I have mainly seen used by older people, and older people are underrepresented in online surveys. If I remove checkbox terms that are mostly used by order people, I am further excluding them from a survey that is already less accessible to them.

The only solution I could think of was to start asking for participants’ ages every year, and then remove words that are chosen by under 3% of both under-30s and over-30s. This year I asked for age, and let people choose in 5-year increments, to reduce identifiability. I then split the popularity of identity words by age: participants 30 and younger, and participants 31 and older.

~

THE CHECKBOXES

Here’s how the top 5s look when split by age group:

30 and younger

nonbinary - 68.0%

queer (partially or completely in relation to gender) - 42.9%

trans - 35.0%

enby - 32.6%

transgender - 29.8%

31 and older

nonbinary - 56.9%

queer (partially or completely in relation to gender) - 43.1%

genderqueer - 29.8%

trans - 26.2%

gender non-conforming - 25.3%

Broadly similar at the top, though older participants were more likely to choose genderqueer and gender non-conforming, whereas younger participants were more likely to choose enby and transgender. (You can see more on the word “enby” and its age connotations in the first report here.)

Here’s the new top 15, calculated as an average percentage from both age groups:

This graph shows that in this new overall top 15, people aged 31 and over were significantly more likely to identify as genderqueer or woman. But I think it is interesting to note that the two groups are much more similar than they are different.

~

WORDS TO REMOVE (UNDER 3%)

On the checkbox list, only three terms were chosen by under 3% of participants in both age groups: third gender, cisgender, and binary.

I will be keeping cisgender and binary on the list for next year, because I have a policy of offering words that are opposites of words that need to stay on the list. In this case, they act as controls for transgender and nonbinary.

However, third gender has been on the list since the first survey because someone suggested it when I casually crowdsourced checkbox ideas, and it has always been pretty low on the popularity list. Last year it was 2.2%, and this year it was about the same: 2.2% for under-30s, and 2.3% for over-30s. I looked into the phrase a little more, and found that it’s essentially a term used by white anthropologists to describe non-straight-non-cis people in non-Western societies. That could include LGB people and binary trans people, in addition to people whose genders are not described by the M/F binary. On the basis of racism alone I’ll be very happy to remove this term from the checkbox list for next year.

If there are no words to remove next year, I will consider increasing the removal threshold to 4%.

~

TEXTBOX IDENTITY WORDS

This part is always a joy for me, and the age group thing made it more interesting this year. There were 3,546 unique identities written into the textboxes, which is one new term for every seven people.

Taking all write-ins at face value, there were two words that were typed in by over 1% of participants in either age group: human, and female.

This is probably the point at which some of you will start to feel nervous. “Adult human female” is the slogan of some gender-critical/trans-exclusionary radical feminists. Most years the survey link gets shared in gender-critical circles and we get a handful of responses from people identifying as women, some of them trying to disrupt the survey and some earnestly sharing their experiences of their own genders.

This year I thought more about the issue and came to a decision about whether or not these responses should be included, and you can read more about that here, but the summary is: many gender-critical women responding to the survey describe lifelong experiences of gender dysphoria and a relationship with their bodies that could have been recounted by any nonbinary participant. I invite anyone to participate who feels that the gender binary has failed them, and gender-critical women/TERFs should be included in that group.

So, if a gender-critical woman’s response isn’t abusive or hurtful, it can stay. That means that we had plenty of people who entered the words adult, human and female into the textboxes, and I have to decide what to do about that.

Adult didn’t make the cut. For some reason it wasn’t entered as often as human and female.

Human was an easy decision. It can be assumed that if one is filling in a survey on the internet using a keyboard, one is probably human. That doesn’t need to be included on the list.

Female is harder. I have previously debated whether or not to include male and female on the checkbox list, and every time I have decided that the risk is too great. My experience is that many trans and nonbinary people are uncomfortable enough being asked about the gender they were assigned at birth and their biological sex that they would be much more likely to duck out of any survey even vaguely alluding to it. Since male and female were never entered by over 1% of participants I never had to consider it at all - until now.

So, when it became apparent while the survey was open that female might break 1%, I ran some informal polls on Twitter and Mastodon, and combined the results in a spreadsheet. I wanted to find out whether people associate male/female with biological sex and/or gender assigned at birth, and how people would feel about them being included as visible checkbox options. Here’s a summary:

81% of voters said that male and female relate to bodies/sex/anatomy exclusively or in at least some contexts. In the extremes, people were a little more likely to say that male/female relate to bodies/sex only, as opposed to gender only. This fits my experience of the trans narrative that sex and gender are different things that are incongruent in trans people.

People were on the whole in favour of male and female being words on the checkbox list distinct from man and woman, but it was very close.

When asked how they would personally feel seeing male/female on the checkbox list, it became a little less ambiguous - only 18% said they’d feel uncomfortable or otherwise negative. I say “only” - one in five is a lot of participants. I suspect that would still lead to a lot of drop-outs.

To act as something like a control, I asked about an issue that is often controversial: the inclusion of it/it pronouns in the pronoun checkbox list. 82% said they felt good about them being included, compared to only 54% of people who would feel good about male and female being included.

For now I conclude that the words male and female correlate with physical and anatomical sex enough that it would interfere with the quality of the data. Until the balance tips from “male/female = body” to “male/female = gender”, I don’t think I will feel confident that I can add them to the list without affecting survey results and participants’ inclusion.

So that’s it for the words counted at face value - nothing will be added next year.

However, taking into account variations of spelling and similar, the picture looks a little different.

Some textboxes contained phrases like “lesbian (yes, as a gender identity)”, which I found interesting! So I started to count as many of these oddballs as I could, ensuring along the way that they fit the spirit of the question. The following words were entered in some way by at least 1% of participants in one of the two age groups:

lesbian

butch

femme

Butch and femme are familiar to me as words that describe an experience of gender outside of heteronormativity, but lesbian in this context was new to me, which is always exciting!

Interestingly, I didn’t see anything like the same trend for terms that usually describe gay men, such as gay, bear, etc. For fairness, I will include gay if I include lesbian, in the same way that I include cisgender if I list transgender. And, like queer, I will feel more confident in the data if I can know for sure that participants are choosing words in the spirit of the question - gender identity rather than sexual orientation.

That means next year I will be adding four (!) new terms to the checkbox list:

lesbian (partially or completely in relation to gender)

gay (partially or completely in relation to gender)

butch

femme

The removal of one term and the addition of four will make the identity list 33 words long. This is very unwieldy! People were already struggling to find familiar identity words at 30. Next year when I crowdfund I will be raising money to pay for SmartSurvey to make a custom question layout for us, that looks something like this mock-up a nice person made last year:

A search box, and when you start typing the term you’re looking for, the list of checkbox options filters out everything that doesn’t fit. So if you typed “dem” you’d be left with demiboy, demigirl, and demigender.

The quote that SmartSurvey gave me is £400 plus VAT - so I assume £480. Oof! But I think it would be a one-off fee, and I think it would be worth it.

~

CLOSING THOUGHTS

You all are super interesting!

“Nonbinary” is the most popular, but it’s still only good for two-thirds of us.

The identity list is getting very long.

Genderqueer is down, queer is up.

The line between gender and sexuality is delightfully blurry when you get right down to it.

Age is just a number.

It’s already August and I’ve only done two reports of maybe four or five. In addition to this whole pandemic situation I’ve also been going through a lot in relation to disability issues, housing, etc. I’m doing my best, and I won’t give up!

~

SEE ALSO

A list of links to all results, including UK and worldwide, and including previous years - summary page / results tag

The mailing list for being notified of the final report and next year’s survey

~

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it and would like to give something back, you could increase your chances of taking part in future surveys by following on Tumblr, Twitter or the Fediverse, or subscribing to the mailing list. Alternatively, you could take a look at my Amazon wishlist.

[rpd-rookie]

What Does The ‘S’ Stand For ? - Leon S. Kennedy x Reader

Summary: When you learn that Leon got the job you desperately wanted you decide to pay him a visit to congratulate him and finally put an end to the competition between the two of you in favour of some cooperation. Turns out, cooperation sometimes involve taking your clothes off.

Author’s Note: Some one-shot involving (pre) RE2 Remake Leon, a very sassy reader and some smut. I haven't written that genre in a while though. Hope I'm not too rusty. And by the way, if you notice some terrible grammatical mistakes please let me know (English is not my mother tongue). Anyway, I wish you'll like this story and as usual don't forget to like/reblog and tell me what you think about it.

Warning: SMUT and Language. You can also expect some humour and some fluff. 

Also available on AO3

Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.” Wise words. But clearly Roosevelt never had to compete with Kennedy, and by Kennedy you didn’t mean John F. Kennedy but another Kennedy, one with less charisma yet better hair (hell, got to render unto Caesar what’s Caesar’s), Leon S. Kennedy - ‘S’ probably standing for “sucker” or “saint” in your opinion. After all, the guy was such a goody two-shoes. Teacher’s favourite. Neat and tidy top student. Perfect arbiter of right and wrong. And certainly, the only guy in the academy who didn’t stick his cock in Barbara Johnson’s pussy. Weird since she also had a president’s name just like him. Could have been the perfect opportunity for a horizontal presidential debate.

If it wasn’t clear already, you didn’t like Kennedy very much. But it was not for the reasons mentioned above. No, you could tolerate the fact that he was the embodiment of virtue and morals. What you could not tolerate though, was that he was better than you at everything. At fundamentals, at crime prevention and analysis, at counterintelligence, at physical agility, at shooting, at… well, you get the point. It infuriated you. He infuriated you. You never had the chance to beat him. Never. He was always top of your class and you were always close second.           So of course, when you received the letter from the Raccoon City Police Department informing you that your application had been rejected and that the position had been given to someone else, you did the math.       Only Kennedy could have taken that job away from you. After all, you had heard him talking about Raccoon City at lunch break quite a few times in the past weeks and each time he had sounded so excited – well, as excited as cannibalistic murders can make you of course. Truth is, you had also shown interest in this city the moment its terrible crimes hit the first page of the newspapers alongside the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, collecting every tiny article about it and telling your classmates what a thrilling experience it would be to work on that case. You had even imagined yourself wearing the blue uniform, RPD largely written on your chest, making a report about the rotting body of a camper found in the Arklay mountains.

You sighed, disappointment hitting you hard again. And with a hesitant hand, you knocked at the door in front of you somewhat ready to let go of the competition in favour of some cooperation. You barely waited a couple of seconds before Kennedy opened the door, a cordless telephone against his ear. He appeared genuinely surprised to see you there. “Call you back later, mom.” He said before hanging up the phone, still staring at you with astonished eyes. “Y/N.”   

“Telling your mommy about the amazing job you just got?” Your question had sounded more barbed and curter than indented. Bitterness probably. Leon sighed. He knew exactly what you meant. “Look, if it is about Raccoon City…” “Of course it is about Raccoon City. Why do you think I’m here? To discuss fashion?” You entered his bedsit without asking and looked around you. So well organized and tidy, so military. Pff. Where were the greasy pizza boxes, the nasty underwear on the floor and the bin filled with used tissues all the other guys usually had?      

You turned around to face him with a stone cold expression. “I’m guessing you knew I wanted that post.”           “Yeah but…” You cut him off. You couldn’t care less about the thing he wanted to say. “I don’t blame you. Had I been in your place I would have apply for it too. Damn, I even applied without being in your place, so … The point is, I wanted to congratulate you – even if it hurts me to do so – and tell you that I’m glad this competition between the two of us is finally coming to end.” Leon briefly chuckled and kept an amused smile on his face. This wasn’t the kind of words he had expected from you. “Well, thanks I guess.”       “You’re welcome” You dramatically put a hand over your heart “Gosh, it kills me to be so polite to you, Kennedy.” He retained a laugh and you approached him to slam a heavy blue binder against his - surprisingly strong - chest. Wow, muscles! “Take this.” You reluctantly said with a strangled voice as if you were a mother giving up her baby . “Take care of it. It’s the work of a lifetime … sort of.”

Leon furrowed his brows and opened the folder. Inside, there were all the articles you had collected about Raccoon City since the reveal of the incidents to the public eye plus some notes you had written during you personal late-night investigations. Leon skimmed through them. They were incredibly detailed and you could see how impressed he was. Damn, you wished you had your camera to immortalise this moment. “It won’t be of any use to me now. And it took me too much time to just throw it away so have it. Take it as parting gift.” “Wow, Y/N. I don’t know what to say.” He looked beyond happy. It made you smile. What the hell, Y/N?           “Thank you, maybe?” You swallowed you smile back before he could notice, choosing to replace what could have been something sweet and nice by sarcasm. “Yes, sure.” He grinned. “Thank you.” You nodded. “I don’t want you to have a heart attack so you’re not obliged to say ‘you’re welcome’.” He teased you and as much as you wanted to find the joke lame, you surprisingly found it rather funny.   “Good. Cause that would have been too much for my heart to take in a single day.” He smiled again and this time you couldn’t help but gaze. You were forced to acknowledge he was very cute, handsome even, certainly the kind of guy you would have willingly flirt with if it hadn’t been for the relentless competition between the two of you. “You know it’s nice to see you smile.” Your eyes slightly widened. You had been smiling the whole time? No! “That wasn’t a smile. That was a sneer.” You quickly replied, trying to prevent him from spotting the sudden panic in your eyes.   “Sure.” But yeah, that was definitely a smile and right now your cheeks were burning.

You cleared your throat and looked back upon his face, hoping yours had found back its usual seriousness and scorn. “Well, gotta go. Good riddance, Kennedy. Good luck and try not to screw up.” You proceeded to the door, glad this conversation was over, but Leon was not ready to let you leave just yet. “You know, for me, there was never a competition between us.” You stopped and turned around. “What?” You frowned. “Of course, there was a competition.” He shook his head. “Not for me.”   “Are you telling me that I have deprived myself of sleeping, fallen into coffee addiction and lost my entire social life for two years in the hope of finally beating you at a freaking test while you …” You could tell he was clearly trying not to laugh but his mocking grin was enough to make you blow a fuse. Well, a funny fuse … a funny desperate fuse “No! No!” You repeated, all irritated. “You’re kidding me!” He shrugged, playing all innocent. “Don’t fucking tell me you let me tilt at windmills!” He did. Bastard. Leon - Son of a bitch - Kennedy! That’s what the S stands for. You cursed in your head.           “I tried to tell you …” He started to explain to defend himself. “When?” You harrumphed, almost shouting at him. “Well, many times but …”           “Clearly not enough times.” Your sarcasm was back. “… each time you sent me packing” “I don’t do that.” You felt offended.         “I can’t barely make a full sentence with you!” You opened your mouth to retort but he stopped you by pointing a finger that undeniably meant ‘Careful what you’re going to say’. So you stood there, perfectly still, mouth opened, realising that he was probably right.             “You’re allowed to breath, you know.” He said as a response to your reaction but you didn’t know what to say anymore. Did you really spend all your time at the academy trying to win a non-existent competition? “Fuck.” You cursed, definitely dumbfounded.

Leon observed you, perplexed and wondering if you were going to stay rooted to the spot for the rest of the day. “Y/N” He waved in front of your face to pull you out from your thoughts but you barely noticed. “All that repressed sexual tension for nothing?” You asked yourself. Wait! Did you just say that out loud?           Panic-stricken, you looked up at Leon and judging by the way he was staring at you – all  ‘what the hell did she just say?’ – yep you did.       “You didn’t hear what I’ve just said.” You waved your hand past his face, like a Jedi would do in a Star Wars movie, knowing perfectly it wouldn’t work but hoping that ridicule would make the situation less awkward and give you a chance to run away from his room. It was a failure. “Yes, I did.”

And just like that, Leon Saint Sucker Son of a Bitch – whatever the S stood for - Kennedy caught your face in his hands and kissed you with a passion that made you gasp against him. You tried to resist for a second but then you decided to let go. After all, you had nothing to lose. The study years could be considered over and soon Leon would be in Raccoon City analysing amazing crimes while you would be God-knows-where writing parking tickets. You would never see each other again.     “Tell that to anyone, Kennedy and I’ll kick your gorgeous butt from here to Raccoon City.” You threatened, close to his mouth. “I won’t. Scout’s honour.” Leon Scout Kennedy? You shook your head (Stop being silly, Y/N!) before pushing Leon on the convertible sofa behind him.  

You straddled him without waiting, definitely willing to let your sudden eagerness and your repressed desire for him get the better of you. You met his lips in a new heated kiss, your body pressed against his, craving for lustful friction. And by the way Leon was holding you tight you could tell you weren’t the only one.             His tongue asked permission to enter your mouth and you happily granted it. Who would have thought that Leon Saint Kennedy was such a skilled kisser? Couldn’t he suck for once? Oh yeah, he could suck at your neck apparently. Damn.   A moan escaped your throat and you felt Leon smirk against your skin. “You like that?” He asked, proud of himself. You instinctively arched your neck asking for more, your hands weaving into his soft hair. “It’s not that bad.” You acknowledged and he suddenly bit you in the nape of your neck. “What the fuck?” You shouted, surprised. Leon laughed and you caught his face to kiss him and bite his lips in retaliation. But judging by the kinky smile on his angelic face, he didn’t seem to mind.             “You’re incorrigible.” You humoured. “Did I hurt you? I’m sorry.” He pecked your lips again and again and slowly began leaving a trail of light kissed down to your neck. “You’d better be. Aren’t you tired of making my life a misery?” You pretended to sulk as he kept on pressing his soft lips on your burning skin. You grabbed his chin, putting you thumb in his dimple and stared at him. How ridiculously hot he was right now with that arousal tinting his beautiful blue eyes and this dishevelled hair.  

“What do you have in mind, Y/N?” Rhetorical question. He knew exactly what you had in mind. Hell, it was basically the same thing he had in his.     “Stop playing coy and take your clothes off.” You whispered close to his face, your hot breath against his mouth, before pulling his bottom lip between your teeth “What about your silly competition?” He murmured back, his hands slowly falling along your sides.   “I’m all in for cooperation right now. So are you gonna give me a hand …” You started unbuckling his belt. “…or do I need to do everything by myself?” His eyes fixed upon yours mischievous ones, gazing at you with awe. You could tell he was completely at your mercy. “I’ll give you more than a hand.” You smirked and allowed your hands to unbutton his jeans. “I thought so.” He lifted his rear and you pulled down his jeans along with his boxers, biting your lips at the view of his beautiful cock. Jesus Christ Kennedy, Mother Nature certainly had been kind to you.

You stood up to undress yourself as well, dropping all your clothes to the floor, your eyes watching at Leon’s hastening hands fighting desperately with the buttons of his shirt. Clearly, you weren’t the only one that was impatient in this room, or horny.   You let him finish before taking your place back on his laps. His hard sex against your body, you slightly shivered, impatience eating you from within. “You’re gorgeous.” He said as he tucked few strands of your hair behind your ear. You couldn’t help but blush, not used to such compliments, and, as a consequence, in order to erase all sense of discomfort in you (if you could call it like that), you decided to focus your attention on his cock.   You brushed his length with your fingertips, admiring it with envy and lust, excited to do more with it. It made Leon hiss and you looked up at him. His eyes were pleading you. Without looking away from the blueness of his look, you caught his penis in your hand and started pumping it gently. Leon’s eyelids flickered; his head hit the back of the sofa and his mouth opened slightly. He seemed thankful, relieved even. You continued your gesture, watching him melting underneath you, listening to his now ragged breath with delight. God, that was sexy. He was sexy. Leon Sexy Kennedy. Suited him.

You bit your lips and decided to venture in between his legs, kneeling onto the floor. “What are you …” Leon complained when he suddenly stopped feeling you on top of him. You cut him short by guiding his cock to your mouth to softly kiss the pre cum-covered tip “Holy...” The rest of the sentence got stuck in his throat and turned into a growl as you eagerly sucked the head of his cock like a Popsicle. You smiled and licked his length, staring at how ecstatic he looked from this angle. “You like that?” You winked as you quoted him and he laughed. “Women.”   You engulfed his cock deep in your mouth and started bobbing your head. A new sigh of pleasure escaped his mouth and you felt him instantly relax on the couch. “God, you’re amazing.” You liked the compliment and to show your appreciation you decided to massage his balls as you kept on sucking him. You received a lustful grunt in response and soon Leon’s hand grabbed your hair to give you a quicker pace, almost making you gag on him. “Oh, sorry.“ What a gentleman! “That’s okay.” You smiled in a very naughty way. “I like it.” He chortled and you took back his dick in your mouth, welcoming it deeper to show him you didn’t mind some roughness. “You know, if you keep doing this I’m soon going to cum in your mouth.”             You stopped, licked your lips and crawled back onto his lap. “That would be a shame.” You joked sarcastically, hands back in his hair “Got a condom?”

The way you pronounced the words, all smiley and adorable, made him laugh again. He pushed you softly to open the drawer of his nightstand and find your one-way ticket for cloud nine. “There!” He announced excited as he showed you the contraceptive. “But first …” He suddenly grabbed your ankles to pull you towards him, making you slightly yelp in the process. “There’s something I got to do”   He lay down on the couch, spread your legs and immediately nestled his head right in between your thighs, making you instantly shiver. So, that’s what he got to do.   You sighed when you felt his breath against you swollen clit but it was only when his tongue met your pink flesh that you realised how aroused you truly were. You were so wet.           “Fuck, am I the one to blame for such a mess?” He joked but his mouth and tongue felt so good in between your thighs that you could only just moan and arch your back, begging for proper sucking and licking. He didn’t make you wait and gave you what you wanted as he started fondling your clit with his tongue. “Leon” That was the first time you where saying his first name and you got to admit, you liked the sound of it. “Yes, sweetheart?”   “Keep going, please.” You begged and he sucked on your bud, gazing at you melting under his touch as he did. You grasped his hair when he finally let a finger enter your core. Fuck, he was good. You moved your hips instinctively against him and he added a new finger. It sank into you as easily as the first one and you cried out, finding it impossible to be discreet anymore. “Fuck, Leon. I want you. I want you now.” You begged.   “Wait a second.” He asked, definitely loving your taste too much for him to stop just now. He pumped his fingers in your pussy, licking your juices greedily and you clenched your thighs around his head, feeling the imminence of your orgasm slowly yet surely approaching. “Now, Leon. Now! Please”

Leon obeyed this time and he quickly sat up and grabbed the condom he had left on the pillow next to him. He put the red wrapper between his teeth and tore it open. Then he rolled the condom down his length with both his hands. You watched him all the time, your fingers massaging your clit, finding him terribly arousing at this very moment.

Once ready, Leon bent over you to kiss you again and he tapped his hard cock on your hand to ask access to your humid entrance. You didn’t object of course and even spread your legs wider. Soon enough, you felt him slide in between your wet lips and then finally push slowly yet exquisitely inside of you. You closed your eyes as he did and drew a sharp breath once you felt him fully inside. You didn’t need time to adjust to him as if your body was meant for him. Guess Leon felt it too as he immediately took a quick pace and began pounding you. You let your hands wander on his smooth chest from his strong pectorals down to his divine abs and the chiselled V below his navel, finding him simply gorgeous. Then you grasped his hips, and nudge his rear with your ankles, pressing his pelvis closer to you to take him deeper, and started moaning his name again. His hands caught your bouncing breasts to play with your nipples, and you rapidly felt the strong wave of pleasure back in your core, ready to drown you. “Fuck, Leon!” His mouth met one of your teats and sucked on it with ardour. That was too much to handle. “I think I’m gonna cum.” You cried out.         “Yeah?” You nodded, letting a tear of pleasure escape your eyes. “Cum for me then.” He didn’t have to say it twice and few seconds later, you dug your nails in his hipbones and screamed loudly as you clenched around his cock, finally coming undone under his thrusts.

Stunned, breathless and at the same time a bit embarrassed that you had already reached your orgasm, you let Leon kiss you soft lips with a smile on his face. “See, you reached the finishing line before me.” He humoured.           “Fuck off.” You whispered, amused yet completely exhausted. He chuckled and pressed his lips against yours one more time before gently pushing you flat on your stomach. “I’m not done with you yet.” He whispered in your ear.  

You moaned loudly when he thrust back into your wet core, pinning you down on the mattress that you ultimately grabbed tightly in order to stay in place. He started pounding you again, holding you by the hips, taking delight in watching your sweet butt bouncing against him as he was burying himself deeper than he had ever done before. “Jesus, Y/N!” He growled before spanking you.         You gasped, astonished but in a good way. You had never thought he was that kind of guy. “Really, Kennedy? Spanking? That’s what the ‘S’ in your name stands for?” He laughed, still fucking you from behind. “I thought you would like it.” “Oh but I do. I just never thought it was your thing.”         “You should stop taking me for a saint, Y/N.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead, brushing the strand of hair covering his right eye away and focused again on his movements. “It’s not my fault. It’s your baby face.” You confessed in between two moans. He brutally stopped and you wondered for a second if what you had just said had actually vexed him.       “My baby face? Really?” He repeated in your ear with a smirk as he grabbed you by the hair. “Who’s been crying out my name the whole time?” Holy shit. You instinctively braced yourself and when he resumed his hammering you knew it was a smart decision. Leon started growling even more loudly as he slowed yet deepened his movements inside of you, his hand in your hair, using your body as leverage. He was almost aggressive but you moaned nevertheless, out of breath, feeling a new orgasm building inside of you. Really? You clenched around him, trying to hold your orgasm a bit longer, unwilling to give him the satisfaction to cum around him again.

When Leon’s hard pounding started to get sloppy you realised he was really close to his release. “Jesus, I’m almost there.” He admitted.         You don’t know how you found the strength to push him on his back but you did. Sitting on top of him, you removed the condom, threw it carelessly onto the floor and started to jerk him off. “I want you to cum on me.” You confessed. A guttural moan vibrated in his throat and he let himself sprawl on the mattress, leaving you in complete charge of his pleasure. You grinded against his cock as your hand kept on firmly going up and down his length. It drove Leon crazy and you soon felt him throbbing in your grip. His breath became even more ragged and jerky and small spasms took control of his body. You angled his cock towards you and soon, a hot load of thick cum spurted on your stomach and breasts as Leon cursed and grunted between his gritted teeth. “Fuck, Y/N!”

You smiled and let go of his member, proud and satisfied of your work, looking at poor panting Leon who had a beautiful yet exhausted smile on his face. “You killed me, woman.” He joked and you briefly laughed. Then, you wiped his cum off your body with your fingers and brought them to your mouth, sucking them eagerly and swallowing the white seed looking right in Leon’s eyes. You had the feeling he would find it very hot. “Jesus Christ” Bull’s eye!

He circled you with his strong arms and pulled you against his chest. His heart was beating wildly and you allowed yourself to huddle a bit more against him to enjoy the melody. Post-coital cuddling session? Not sure that was a good idea but you decided to go for it and so did Leon as he chose to burry his nose in your hair and kiss the top of your head.

“Scott” He whispered sleepily. You looked up, wondering what he meant. “That’s what the ‘S’ stands for. Leon Scott Kennedy.”

Scott? You repeated in your head with a soft smile. Oh well, that didn’t sound so bad even though, right now, you preferred Leon ‘Stay’ Kennedy.

[lollytea]

Fearless (part 1/3)

(Ty/Louie fairytale au fic. i am simply a bitch writing about my au and my oc so it is all very catered to me personally and im aware not a lot of ppl will read it. but if you DO read it, i love u so much. i guess tw for blood/serious injuries relating to teen characters. nothing too graphic but be warned. Also if you’re curious, info on the au here, here and here.)

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[OCTOBER 22ND, 6:19PM] The sky was bleeding pink and orange and Louie tried to focus on it. Didn't take much brainpower to appreciate a sunset. He clung to the sight with desperation, muttering the simplest thoughts under his breath like a mantra.

It was pretty. He liked sunsets. He liked pink. He liked orange. The distraction wasn't working. The unpleasantness that was already writhing in his stomach churned. His finger was on his temple, idly tracing delicate circles against the tightly wrapped bandage. His head hurt. The point where his shoulder met his upper arm was also dressed. The stitching still had to heal up. That hurt too. Louie was pretty stupid. Which was not something he usually thought. But it was a real kick in the confidence when someone sharp-witted did something stupid. And it was a real kick in the heart when someone who didn't wanna hurt anybody ended up hurting somebody. This was stupid. He had already tried reading as a means of distraction. Too hard. Too many words. Way too much of a strain on his mild concussion. This was so, so stupid. Sitting by his windowsill, he hoped this dumb bandage would be gone soon. His forehead felt sticky and damp with sweat. He was stupid. He wished Webby were here. If she were, she'd be in the courtyard below his window sparring with Dewey. At least then, Louie could watch and keep his mind occupied. No. No, that wasn't right. If Webby were here, she would've attached herself to Louie by now, hugging him tight until his injury healed. If it had been any other incident, Louie would let her, crumbling into her arms and whimpering about the pain as his amazing, magical sister made it all ebb away. But this wasn't any other incident. If Webby were here, he wouldn't be able to accept her hugs. The very idea rubbed him the wrong way. If anyone was entitled to healing hugs, it wasn't Louie, it was--.... His face twisted up. Webby wasn't here. She was off on some quest with Lena. Probably wouldn't be back for days. So there was no point in dwelling over hypotheticals. Louie would heal on his own. They were both gonna have to heal on their own. The sunset was fading.

It was pretty. Pink... Orange.... He couldn't do this. 

Why was he doing this?! Louie always knew himself to be a coward but this was to a pathetic extent. Depraved even. He felt sick. 

He couldn't. He just couldn't. Every additional second he spent hiding in his room was weighing him down. It was suffocating. But he couldn't leave. He was too scared.

Freezing up just like always. Just stop being so fucking scared! He would have to confront what he did eventually. There was no way around it. So, why couldn't he just go now? Louie had far worse things in his life to be dreading. Far worse. A ticking clock of trepidation was seated deep inside him. A predestined future he couldn't rewrite which, on all accounts, should render him paralyzed. But he wasn't. This was the sort of thing to demolish him. Apparently. Stupid. This shouldn't be overdriving his other senses. This shouldn't be flooding his mind. He shouldn't be drowning right now. This shouldn't have his hands shaking. This shouldn't have him pacing the length of his room. This shouldn't be stealing the oxygen from his lungs. His brain was pounding against his skull, protesting his rapid back-and-forth movement. He was dizzy. He shouldn't be crying. Fuck it! He was always crying, who cares about that?! Just stop panicking, just stop crying, just stop being so selfish for once and just own up. Louie's back crashed against his door, gasping for breath. Stars were blotting his vision and he couldn't breathe and it was the end of the world. Okay. Okay. He was spiraling again. That was all it was, it would be okay. It would be okay. The prince's bed chambers, alive with the choking sound of contained distress, subsided to complete silence for just a moment. Inhale. Exhale. And then all to be heard was a small, crackling voice straining to sing himself a quiet little lullaby. ___________ [OCTOBER 22ND, 10:07AM] "Your highness, don't be an idiot. You can't just---Hey! Wait up!" "H'oh boy..." Louie's eyes flicked to the high heavens. Right now he felt like he was tasked with personally escorting this goddamn boy across this goddamn forest by the goddamn ankles. He whirled around impatiently, crossing his arms with a flourish. "Pick up the pace, Tiberius. We don't have all day." "Can you maybe not be a huge pain for like... I dunno, five minutes?" Snapped Ty, his dearly devoted retainer and most notorious pain-in-the-tail. "Can you maybe loosen up? Y'know it's a real mood killer when there's a paranoid guy on my case all the time, insisting that the whole world is out to get me. Being constantly reminded of my fragile mortality? Woo, talk about fun times." Scowling, Ty stumbled his way over a protruding tree root. "You've got a bad habit of attracting danger, you know that, right? I'm pretty sure it's a Duck thing." The remark slapped the annoyed expression right off Louie's face. Ty quirked an eyebrow. "What's that look for?" Before he could further analyse, Louie sharply turned on his heel and strode on. "It's a Duck thing." He said, keeping his tone even. Both of them knew it was a Duck thing. Ty just didn't know the half of it. "Your highness," He heard Ty gripe. "You know this is a bad idea. A prince shouldn't be out in the open like this without proper protection. And I'm unprepared right now. I can't--" If Ty weren't yakking so much, Louie wouldn't know if he was still there. He wasn't wearing his armor for once so the familiar clank and clatter of metal was nonexistent. "You got your sword, right? You can do a lot of damage with that thing." "Yeah but no juice. And I need juice. See, 'cause what if we get in a tight spot and you--?" "What do you think is gonna happen, Ty?! For the love of all that is gold, It's just a party." "It's never just anything." He grumbled. Ty jogged ahead a little, matching his pace to Louie's. His footsteps alongside him were purposefully heavy So, he was stomping now. Real mature. Louie rolled his eyes. He was fully aware Ty was pissed, he didn't have to go above and beyond to make his anger known. "You really think I'm an idiot who doesn't take safety precautions? I'll have you know keeping Prince Louie alive isn't just your problem. Prince Louie is pretty serious about that too." He gestured to himself. "If you haven't noticed, I'm incognito today. I've got no crown, no mantle, no status whatsoever. And look at these ugly peasant threads," Louie pointed out, tugging at the hem of his dull green tunic. "It's actually kinda depressing how drab I look. I'm never gonna do this again actually. But! See how committed I am right now? Who's gonna recognize me? As we're all aware, I'm pretty well known for my pizzazz." "Just 'cause you stop being a prince doesn't mean danger stops existing." "No but it makes you way less of a target. Now, are you really gonna spend your whole day off bitching at me?" 

The glare Ty shot him was petulant at best. "Well, I didn't wanna. But I got dragged along on this little adventure so guess I gotta." Louie pursed his beak, irritated. He did not drag Ty along anywhere. 

"Come to think of it, I don't remember saying you had to follow me." Well, that came out as harsher than intended. Ty didn't seem hurt. At least, there was no sign that he was. No expression cracked his stone mask. "I've got a duty." Louie scoffed. Ty and his stupid duty. It was really starting to wear on his nerves. But not today, absolutely not today. On this fine, glorious day, Louie was intent on having fun. He would show up at this little forest shindig and he would drink and dance and schmooze and whatever else any carefree person at a party would do. He would forget about everything that was eating at him. He wasn't gonna let it consume him, he wasn't. He was gonna live. While he still could. His sixteenth birthday loomed closer. Six months left. "Sorry." Said Ty, unprompted. The shadows festering in Louie's head cleared out as he snapped back to the present. Ty had his eyes firmly downcast, a noticeable slump to his posture. "It's not like I wanna be running around killing the fun all the time. I really don't. But I gotta." Louie said nothing. His eyebrows rose in quiet astonishment as he studied Ty's side profile. He remembered when Ty first came into his life. Twelve years old, brandishing a sword too big for his body and grinning lopsidedly in an unmistakably trouble seeking sorta way. A real firecracker of a boy, loud and bright. Hungry for adventure and excited to throw himself head first into the action. He remembered one of Ty's earliest and most confident statements. When he lowered himself to bow to Louie in his uncle's throne room and declared that the prince would never fear for his life again. Because Ty would protect him and Ty was fearless. Louie believed him. Make no mistake, Ty had plenty of bite back then too. He had disliked Louie and the feeling had been mutual. But he never doubted that Ty had spoken the truth with his entire heart. Ty was fearless. When Louie was with Ty, he was safe. He believed that and he always had. Despite how they clicked as well as a dagger and a keyhole. Despite Ty being annoying. So annoying. He was still annoying. But it was different now. Louie couldn't pinpoint when that permanent glowing smile of his had dwindled and a thin frown had become Ty's default expression. His sword, something he always used to proudly haul around over his shoulder, now unceremoniously sheathed against his belt. Although Louie had noticed that his right hand never strayed too far from the hilt.   Protecting royalty with your entire being was an all-consuming duty and it seemed, at some point, the reality of such an allegiance had slapped Ty across the face. He had this distinct way of holding himself now. Always stood straight and rigid, coiled up with agitation. He was prepared to fight at a moment's notice but it was clear the thrill of doing so had been long since drained out of him. He still smiled. He still laughed. But only sometimes. Ty was annoying because he was paranoid. Because he was snarky. Because he was too stiff, too protective. And man, what Louie wouldn't give to have Ty's former brand of annoying back. At least never made him feel sorry for the guy. "Can I ask you a favor?" Louie finally spoke, pushing back a drooping tree branch so they could walk below it "You can try." Ty shrugged, his gaze still fixed ahead. "What if we just turn off this whole 'Prince and Retainer' thing today. Whadd'ya think?" He turned to him blankly, complete with a slight tilt of the head that made Louie a tiny bit weak. "Wha....?" Ty was simply not computing. He looked as though Louie was throwing out algebra equations and he was supposed to solve them right on the spot. And he was not a math guy by any means. The cute clueless expression was making it a little hard to focus. Louie swallowed. "Listen." He began, his thumb dragging itself across his sweaty palm as he struggled with how to phrase this. Louie had a way with words, always had. But he had a tendency to trip over his own tongue when Ty was involved. Especially when Ty was staring at him with his soft cande-light eyes and doing that stupid adorable head tilting thing and-- "You need a break." Louie blurted out. "You're stressed like constantly and it's getting kinda insufferable and I think your Dad would sick a dragon on me if his barely fifteen year old son suddenly kicked it 'cause of a paranoia overload so I think you should just forget about being my big strong hero for today and come hang out with me at this stupid peasant party and we can just be two regular kids instead of a royal and his bodyguard do you think you could give me that Tiberius?" It was only in the following beat of silence that Louie realized how fast he spat that all out. He struggled to catch his breath. One second. Ty blinked. Two seconds. A flicker of vacant eyes and then a rush of realization. And then disbelief. And then-- Three seconds. His brow scrunched together and a snarl crinkled his muzzle. His eyes flared. Oh, he was mad.... "Are you crazy?!" Ty shouted. He was beside himself with a malfunctioning mix of fury and incredulity that had him stammering his words. "You-You can't just--.....D-do you even-- you don't...do you realize how disrespectful that is? For you to say it? For-For me to do it?! I was given this duty by the King! The fucking King! To just suddenly "turn it off" would be--....I can't--!" Maybe "mad" was an understatement. "Ty--" Louie tried. He was cutting across Louie, treading back and forth on their forest path,. Not going further, not going back. Just walking to nowhere for the sake of being too scandalized to possibly stand still. Louie was attempting to get Ty's attention by grabbing his tunic but he kept shaking him off. "I'd be a disgrace! An embarrassment! I'm trusted by the royal family to keep--...to keep you safe! I-I can't just walk around with my liege like I'm on vacation and not be on guard! You don't even get it, you--" "Ty!" Louie said loudly."You wanna maybe listen for a sec?!" Frankly, he was surprised Ty halted his tirade. His eyes were blown wide, stunned and Louie wasn't quite sure why until he followed Ty's look, snapping down. Seems in his effort to get a hold of the guy, he had instinctively reached out and snatched Ty's wrist. They stood frozen for a moment, each set of eyes boring into the touch that tied them together. Louie's fingers began to uncurl. Then he decided no. His grip on Ty tightened with a purposeful squeeze. Ty met his gaze, looking....panicked? Confused? Didn't matter. He could besottedly dissect his unreadable facial expressions later. Louie inhaled, deciding to shoulder his dignity for just a second. No safety rails of snark this time. Ty might make fun of him for being sincere later but this was important. "Don't you miss being a kid with nothing to worry about?" Louie implored. "Because if we're being real, I don't think we're ever gonna get to live like that again." Ty muttered something to himself, shaking his head a little. "But listen," Louie continued, taking a step into Ty's personal bubble. Ty took an automatic step back. But since he was still holding his hand, Louie was led a step forward. It was difficult to tell with the pink fur but he could've sworn Ty reddened. "Look I know it's weird for me to be asking but....can't we just take a risk today? It's just a party in the woods. Literally the least likely place to find any danger in the whole kingdom." "We shouldn't--" "Ty, please." Honestly, Louie was a little surprised at himself. He hadn't even planned for Ty to accompany him anyway. But in the heat of the moment, everything had shifted upside-down. Turns out there was something inside him willing to beg. Something that wanted more than anything, for Ty come along. He just wanted a simple memory of just killing time with Ty. Separated from the castle and everything that reminded him of his fate. He would like to smile without a hint of dread for once this year. So, he said just that. "I'm not just trying to make you come along 'cause I'm stuck with you. That's not it." He swallowed. "You're--....you're cool. You're fun. I wanna have you around. You know, when you're not so worked up and you're just being yourself, I like hanging out with you." He tugged Ty's hand a little. Further from his sword and closer to Louie. "I want you to come with me. And I want you to try having fun too." He may as well just tell the idiot he thought about him every time he saw a sunset. The hand he was grasping flexed its fingers. Ty abruptly broke eye contact and glanced to the side, his tongue poking out to pierce the tip of his jagged tooth. His indecisive face. "I just--.....I dunno...." He muttered. "If something happened to you--" "Nothing's gonna happen to me." Said Louie immediately. "I've got a good feeling about this. And c'mon Ty, that coming from a coward?" "You're not a coward." He said, barely a whisper. He was now staring at the ground. "I promise." "Huh?" Louie smiled tightly as Ty looked to him questionably. "I promise nothing is gonna happen. I'm gonna be fine. You're gonna be fine. Now, can you do me this favor and maybe, I dunno, trust me?" The look Ty gave him was a little sad, but it was soft. And then with only a tiny twitch, it shifted into something else entirely. It was trust. Blind trust. Maybe stupid trust. A minuscule pang of guilt jabbed at Louie. Of course he wanted Ty to trust him. He needed him to if there was any hope of achieving his goal here. But objectively, he really shouldn't. Louie was hiding way too much from him. It wasn't fair. Then Ty broke the world, shattered orbit and played around with reality itself by cracking a smile and Louie forgot every coherent thought he ever possessed. He would never put on record just how long he spent pre-preparing jokes, gunning to get the corner of Ty's lips to flick upwards. Made him seem kinda desperate. Which he was not. Ty had that oh, so stereotypical "cute boy" smile. It was crooked, cocky, it was utterly obnoxious. Louie hated it. And worst of all, it was like a little spell to kick Louie's heart into high speed. Sometimes it dazed and confused him like a blinding light flash. But other times, it was warm and if he stared long enough, he'd fall asleep. Louie loved Ty's smile. Every time he tried to convince himself he didn't, he ended up dwelling on it too much and the way his mouth would quirk up would play in his mind on a maddening loop and then it would be too much to handle and the truth that he loved it would always overpower him. So, whenever that happened (like right this second.) he gave up and admitted it. To himself, anyway. He loved Ty's smile. He loved Ty. ......Wait. That last part was new, hold up. Rewind. But he didn't get the chance because Ty was talking now. Still a little dazzled, Louie didn't catch what he said but he figured it was good since he was still smiling. And then that smile broke into a huge grin, his eyes flashed with trouble and his hands were on Louie's shoulders and-- "Race ya!" Ty cried. With a light push, Louie was stumbling backwards and Ty kicked off into a sprint. For a brief moment, Louie could only gaze after him, stupefied. Love, huh? Like the real deal? That was crazy. But then he snapped out of as he recalled the audacity of this bastard. "You just pushed your liege!" He shrieked, receiving a loud "WOO!" from Ty as a response. And then Louie was grinning. He was giddy. He didn't quite know if he forgot about love in that instance or if it was the force powering him but he was tearing off after Ty, yelling about the latter's totally unfair head start. In hindsight, he should've figured it was love a long time ago. Who else would get him to run for no reason?

[finalrespite]

VisionBIOS 4.0 (Low Power Mode)

Copyright 1███ VULCAN Ltd.

All Rights Reserved.

BIOS Date 13/08/██ 18:09:03 Ver. 39.201

“Clockwork” UNIT XE116.

System ID = 0711146049

Build Time; 30/09/██ 04:28:09

CPU = Helix Rapture(R) ADS7200 Processor @ 6.2THz

(CPUID;03HW PatchID;06EW)

Commencing Systems Check

Memory Test; 239084572637

---

ERROR;0x0000346

ERROR;0x0000447

ERROR;0x0000620

ERROR;0x0000735

ERROR;0x0000436

ERROR;0x0000548

ERROR;0x0000232

ERROR;0x0000502

ERROR;0x0000456

ERROR;0x0000659

ERROR;0x0000319

ERROR;0x0000636

Info; Numerous instances of fragmented/corrupted data were detected in memory testing. Instances have been discarded or quarantined. Subsequent memory loss is likely. See error logs for further details on individual codes.

Analysis; Discarded data has no additional extensive impact on memory unit adaptive performance. Status green. Resuming systems check protocols.

---

Activating Auxiliary SSD.

Initializing Tactical Log.

Loading Topographical Data.

Vitals Check: Orange

---

Critical Aberrations Detected. Initiating Emergency Diagnostic.

Reviewing SymSystems Regulatory Modules.

- SYMDIG; Green

- SYMNERV; Yellow = 15537/17200

- SYMDERM; Yellow = 15564/16600

- SYMPROC; Red = 5123/54000

- SYMOCUL; Green

WARNING!; Grade 5 damage sustained in nervous, dermal systems, regulatory processes. Vitality decreasing. 

Switching to power saver mode; Diverting power from extraneous processes. Self-maintenance underway.

Estimated Time to Completion; 00:000:07:45:87

Note; Last Activity Recorded ███:███:██:██:██ ago. Self-maintenance duration projected below optimacy. External repairs highly recommended.

Vitality stabilized.

Reviewing MotoSystems Operations.

- MOTOLARM; Red = 1550/6000

- MOTORARM; Yellow = 5457/6000

- MOTOLLEG; Yellow = 7345/8500

- MOTORLEG; Yellow = 6352/8500

- MOTOSUP; Green

- MOTOTORSO; Yellow = 3487/3600

- MOTOBACKUP; Green 

Info; Extensive (Grade 3-5) damage sustained in multiple motor systems. Projected capacity for movement well below optimacy; MotoBackup in effect. Self-maintenance extended.

Estimated Time to Completion: 00:005:14:12:53

Note; Power saver mode in effect in regards to aforementioned damage. Self-maintenance duration projected below optimacy. External repairs highly recommended.

Diagnostic Complete.

---

Core Status: Green

Ultima Protocol: Suspended

Activating IFF

FCS Suspended

Initializing Ancillary Node Connection

Node Status: Green

Node Dissonance: Nominal

DBU Setup Suspended

Epitaph Status: Green

Equipment Status: Yellow

---

Damage sustained. Structural integrity compromised. 

Average Condition Rating 66/100. External repairs recommended.

---

ERROR;0x0000244

ERROR;0x0000428

ERROR;0x0000459

ERROR;0x0000441

ERROR;0x0000459

ERROR;0x0000501

ERROR;0x0000558

ERROR;0x0000431

ERROR;0x0000436

ERROR;0x0000550

ERROR;0x0000306

Info; Essential systems fail to meet the established advisable threshold for standard operations. Further extraneous actions are discouraged until repairs are complete. See error logs for further details on individual codes.

Systems Check Terminated. [Time Elapsed: 00:000:00:50:55]

4e4f532050524f4d45544945524f4e2046555455524f

==================================================================================================

Booting ...

…

Proceeding datalog has been retroactively added. Loading ...

Azys Lla. A sprawling floating continent, a momentous achievement in its own right, was once at the forefront of research for the Allagan Empire. Ultimately, it was consigned to isolation from the world with Allag’s fall, left to fester and crumble undisturbed over the ages. Just as man’s ambition had begotten it, however, so did man’s ambition eventually set it free.

While it - like the rest of Allag - was long forgotten by all but the most fervent of believers, somehow Ishgard had harnessed these whispers to open and expose Azys Lla once more. While efforts to harness the Warring Triad were consequently thwarted and gutted, the tainted complex still held countless secrets to yield to the clever, bold and reckless.

Someone like Aidea.

Unceremoniously the young Hyuran woman eased around tight defense and busted her way through a vent, kicking away the plate and landing into a darkened chamber. She stood up fast, brushing her hair from her face - locks of bright and pale blonde, almost pink. Ruby eyes tried to scan the room to no avail. “Bit - light, please!”

Her companion, a small winged drone in the fashion of an Allagan or magitek bit, complied and illuminated the room with a built-in light. The scene it revealed was somewhat dense and cluttered, filled with containers, inactive nodes and other esoteric devices. An isolated storeroom, evidently. Something in particular therein, however, prompted the Bit to mechanically chime in. “Warning! Automaton signal detected. Hostile status unknown.”

Not deterred in the slightest, Aidea proceeded to scour the crates and goods on a mission, opening whatever she could. “CPU drive… CPU drive… where is it...?”

Maybe she could crack open one of those defunct nodes?

It was in this line of focus and lapse and judgement that she nearly tripped on something at her feet, something big. “Ah!”

The Bit shone upon what could be described as a round metal hatch, rising up a few ilms from the intricate steel floor with a diameter of around three fulms. A handle was embedded in the surface.

“Hmmm…” Aidea pondered and stood before it, squatting down and firmly tugging at the handle. After a minute wherein it was clear the hatch would not budge whatsoever, she stood back up and wiped her brow. “Think you can do anything about this, Bit?”

“Analysing…” The Bit scanned the room for a moment, until it focused on a panel toward the far side of the chamber. “Analysis: Power needs to be reestablished within the parameter before hatch can be breached. Electrical conduit should be accessible through the available terminal. However, it is advised--”

“Okay! Access that terminal and help me open this hatch!” Aidea pointed resolutely, and without disputing her order further the Bit flew over to the terminal panel. Steadily it extended an apparatus as a key to meet the lock-like slot in the terminal. Aidea watched and waited while the Bit whirred, still the sole light source in the storeroom… though not for long. A hum began to permeate, and the chamber began to flicker lines and screens in a blue and green neon glow.

“Much better. Now, let’s give this another try…” Aidea girded up and squatted back down, pulling with all that she had. As the hatch continued to resist, her irritation mounted, until… Let’s try something else! With that, she instead pressed the hatch in. With a hiss, it began to give in. “Righty tighty… lefty--” The girl couldn’t finish that verbal thought as she twisted the handle counter-clockwise, and no sooner did the hatch door rocket toward the ceiling, sending her stumbling back.

There had to have been a better way to do that.

<♪>

The “door” she had released was merely the top of an eight-fulm-tall structure, one that made Aidea shudder as it reminded her of Garlean magitek containment pods. Pods for active or living beings, although its make was decisively Allagan. The sounds of pressure being released, along with cool nondescript gas leaking, falling low to the floor as the pod’s segments parted four ways.

Its segments folded around a single long platform that was then laid out before Aidea, revealing to her a figure. A body. Like her, it appeared to be that of a feminine Hyur, albeit of a taller build and deeper tone of skin. It was clear at a glance that they were in disarray, violet and scarlet-highlighted hair disheveled, light - almost alien - armor fractured and torn.

“Is this… an Allagan? A clone, maybe? No... The automaton.” Aidea had stood back up and approached the yet-motionless figure, giving a couple of light taps to the metal visor that concealed their absent gaze. Upon closer inspection she could see that the automaton was even worse for wear than she could initially tell. Layers of (hopefully) synthetic skin had been ripped to reveal degrees of stress trauma all across the body, from the underlying outer shell to the endoskeleton, beneath countless immaculate fibers.

"Goodness, she's so lifelike… Were it not for the damage, I could've even assumed her an adventurer." Aidea eased herself on to the edge of the platform where the automaton laid and sat beside it, to the disapproving beeps of her companion. "I wonder for how long…" With the extent of these injuries, she was willing to figure they were a direct result of Allag's own Calamity.

Whatever had transpired for certain, it also became clear to Ai that this particular automaton had been stored away with haste, to protect it from further degradation, and subsequently long forgotten.

"Um, hello. Can you hear me? You emitted a core signal so you appear to still be functional, I think." Despite Aidea's insistence, the automaton had no response to offer. A snap of her fingers was all she needed to prompt Bit to shine a narrowed light on the subject, allowing her to better inspect what she was dealing with.

As far as she could tell, the automaton indeed had power remaining, but was only able to retain a nominal amount in this state. All arms and legs had been damaged to varying extent, the left arm in the worst condition of all, yet it was the torso that concerned Aidea the most. Damage there was for the better part superficial, yet key processes seemed to suffer some manner of critical impact - severing the link between the core and other key functions, leading to a gradual loss of all energy but that in reserves.

“Hmm. Your motor functions are malfunctioning for sure. I can attempt a field repair here, but we’ll need to get you somewhere safe to update…well, everything. Motor cortex, external stimuli receptors, environmental sensors, OS…” Aidea pulled out a small device that appeared to be akin to a soldering iron. “At the very least, I can fix your torso. Also this arm -- I think the legs can handle small excursions, so the rest can wait for now.” Lacking the materials herself, she stepped back and scoured crates for whatever she could benefit from.

“Okay, here goes!” Having returned with connector cables and Allagan cermet, she did her best to die and bond cables and fibers together, feeling like somewhere between a machinist and a chirurgeon tying guts together. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this… Whoever made you put a lot of love into their work! Still, I have at least a baseline I can work with for Allagan standards, and this should suffice until we can get you to a proper workshop.” Infusing her tool with fire magic, she welded cermet to the more egregious damage until it resembled being patched up with armor plating.

“That should cover the necessities. Now, let’s see about starting you up… Though you’re still bound to this bed!” Aidea poked at the cuffs that, as she could guess, helped keep the automaton secure in the pod. However, it was for the moment beyond her why they hadn’t also released when the pod also opened. “If you have any port on your body I can charge with I sure can’t see it as long as you’re stuck here… Bit, with me.” Aidea gestured and rushed over toward the terminal and module displays. “There must be a way. Wait just a bit more!”

…

Safety protocols manually bypassed.. Releasing pod restraints.

Transcribing results for interaction events with the selected criteria. Threat assessment response details omitted.

I woke up with a start, trembling - all involuntary, like I had been trying to move but was being held back by a constant force. It registered that it had been a long time since I had moved. How long I could not ascertain. I felt - tired. Tired was what I was given to feel when my energy had been all but depleted. Still I had to get up. I had an inexplicable urge to just get up.

“[Initiating O-Override Co-Code AS135 … Power r-reserves critical be-below t-ten percent … Core en-energy output resto-stored; Self m-maintenance ti-time decre-creased to appro-proximately seven hours, fo-forty-three min-in-inutes and …]”

The girl had by this point turned back around with a measure of shock and awe in her tone. “You spoke? You’ve been freed! But I didn’t… W-wait!” She rushed back to my side, and nearby my ancillary node had been fully activated in tandem, further startling her. “Wah! Um… Hi! Good morning!” While the node provided a cursory scan to update language drivers, I struggled to push myself up into a seating position. My head jerked abruptly to get optics myself for the first time on this girl. I could not recognize the form beyond that of a Hyur... but the eyes felt so familiar. I could only present one query.

“A-are you-u … m-my master…?”

The girl tilted her head a slight. “‘Master’? No, I-- I just rebooted you.”

The simplicity and uncertainty behind the answer prompted me to get defensive, as I attempted to get up. “Th-then identify-tify yours-yourself. Are y-you an int--” My motor systems were betraying me in this state. I began to fall forward. It was clear that I was in no place to confront anyone.

“Whoa!” Aidea stepped forward to catch me from falling. “There, there, easy…” She turned me a little towards the side and eased me back into sitting on the edge of the platform. Though I couldn’t see her at that moment I could then sense her eyes on my back. She tugged at what appeared to be further large holes in the back of my suit.

“Ah, found ‘em!” She bent down to grab a pair of large cables, hooking them up to the nape of my neck and further down my spine. They appeared to be wired to me from the nearby terminal. Already I began to feel calmer, more energized. “There, try not to push yourself for a bit.”

She straightened my position and seat beside me, pulling me close to where I was leaning somewhat limply against her.

“Now, I’m sorry to say that whatever master you had before is long gone. I think it’s been five millennia, in fact.”

I did not know how to process an answer out of that straight away. I only knew, by the basic information of the startup log, that it was not a lie.

“As for who I am, um--” She was abruptly cut off by the apparent clockwork bit in her company, much to her chagrin. “Introduction: Aidea 08 is an old model clone designed for close quarter combat and software maintenance.”

She is a clone…? “...Acknowledged…” I looked up a little, as I ran a quick background check through the ancillary node. “I do not recognize the designation, Aidea 08, but it cannot be disputed that your physiology contains elements indicative of an aetherochemical cloning procedure.”

Aidea 08 nodded back, and was ready to deflect. “Um, yes, that’s right… You seem to be coming through better. How are you feeling now? And, do you have a designation of your own?”

I paused for a moment… How I was was one thing, but… Who was I again?

“Overall power 35% and increasing… energy distribution stable… Approximately forty-five points of trauma or disrepair, taking into account the five-thousand and fourteen years of stasis… You will have to forgive me on this one.”

“It’s alright. Take all the time you need.”

“As for designation… I am... Clockwork Unit XE116, System ID 0711146049. Keyword - Vision One.”

Aidea scanned my person, patting my shoulder gently with her hand. “I see! Or, at least I think I see. Well, how about I just call you Vision? Or maybe One. I don’t know, something about ‘Vision’ doesn’t sound right for some reason… And you can call me Aidea! Or just Ai. No numbers, okay?”

“Vision… One… Ai… Acknowledged. You may call me either. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mistress Aidea.”

“Hey, nono, no, no mistress stuff. Just Aidea or Ai. We’re friends now!” This prompted a series of confused beeps from the bit close by. Aidea paid it no mind while she sat me upright and draped what seemed to be her jacket around my shoulders. I took the edge of it in my hand. It did seem fair that I was somewhat exposed with the state my equipment was in.

“We are friends? … It is good to have a friend.” Perhaps I could have argued, but I felt a natural pull to Aidea. Maybe it was because she was a clone, an artificial legacy for Allag herself, I believed I could trust her. Slowly I began to stand again, and Aidea pulled the cables out from beneath the jacket.

She locked her arm with mine, as I planted my feet firmly on the floor, and smiled. “You’re really impressive, Miss One. You may have the jargon but you really do pass as a normal Hyur like me in every way. Um, very pretty, too… Sharlayan couldn’t even do that much with their, uh, weird dolls.”

My thoughts honed in on that name. “...What is Sharlayan? And what of Allag? What has become of it in the five millennia of time?”

“Oh, well…” Aidea trailed off a little. “It’s rather complicated. Now that you’re up and moving, we can get you patched up! I’ll explain as we get you somewhere safer - Trust me, Azys Lla is not the place for that anymore.” She weighed her options, scanning the storeroom around her. She could probably gather some more materials for the road before they left.

“The realm overall is a little more… primitive than you probably know it, but we’ll work with it.” Aidea let go of me for a moment so that she could face me directly, holding her hands before her. “My home’s a ways away, but there is a town even closer where a company of engineers have a presence! Actually… it is pretty close to the Crystal Tower, if you remember that. Seat of the Emperor?”

“Syrcus Tower…?” By way of context, I could glean that much and more had likely changed in the five thousand years of time, and not even the marvels of Allagan ingenuity could change that. Even still… “Does it stand? Even now? ...I have many gaps in my memory to fill. Please, Aidea, lead the way.”

...

The following is largely a summary of key thoughts and events. Aidea and I had escaped the storage quarters and made our way out of Azys Lla. Against that sinister bronze sky, she began to regale me with what she knew about past events. How the earthquake had buried the Crystal Tower and decimated the heart of Allag. How the realm had suffered further calamitous events that all but assured the Empire would remain forgotten for centuries to come, until a now-Saint Coinach would uncover its mythical existence in the Sixth Astral Era. How a new Empire would eventually rise, adapting Allagan secrets to subjugate wherever it could reach. How they would invite Calamity anew, and how this would inadvertently expose the Tower once more. How a clash of ambitions unlocked the way to Azys Lla… to me.

It was within this length of exposition that we had made our way between the dreary edifices of Ishgard, across the unseasonably frigid Coerthas, and finally through the gates of Revenant’s Toll. A sprawling outpost on the edge of civilization. Even as the level of stonework could be considered admirable… to call it all primitive in the face of the Allagans certainly could be considered an understatement.

Mankind was ever at odds with itself, fraught with seemingly endless perils that called upon the employ of adventurers, or glorified mercenaries. Nigh any relic that remained of Allag was often sought after for collection value without understanding, and even tomestones regularly fell in and out of trade through the hands of some sagacious entrepreneur.

Not all was so bleak however as an engineering company known as the Garlond Ironworks had cast its lot with Eorzea. Composed of some of the keenest and most inventive minds outside of the Garlean Empire, among their ranks many Garlean expatriates and defectors themselves, they have specialized in challenging the seemingly impenetrable Allag and bringing what is known now as magitek to the world.

As Aidea had indicated, the Ironworks did in fact establish a branch in Revenant’s Toll, and being in good graces with the people there she managed to talk her way into their workspace. Albeit she had to convince a friendly yet reasonably perplexed engineer that I was in fact an ex-Imperial soldier that had been augmented with experimental magitek. With their aid and full non-disclosure, Aidea carried out the rest of her repairs. Having bid me to lay low and convalesce, at one point she ran out and returned with so-called “sandwiches” from the Seventh Heaven to share between us. Perhaps she wished to confirm if I was capable of eating, visibly bringing her delight when I could.

Even with the high walls of Revenant’s Toll, I could unmistakably catch a glimpse of the Crystal Tower peeking beyond them, challenging the sky. I expressed the desire to get a closer look, and she informed me that there was a research camp further southeast that would provide a better glimpse. After my condition had improved, we ventured out to pay it a visit.

The sights that awaited me begged to be comprehended. Everywhere the earth was littered with giant, twisted steel. Even further still, closer to the Tower, countless massive clusters of crystals jutted out every conceivable way. Aidea’s disposition grew uncharacteristically somber, and she explained that the region of Mor Dhona used to be more significantly populated in recent times. That all changed some fifteen years back, when a great battle swept through. The loss of life was immense, and the land was so immeasurably scarred that even the great lake of Silvertear had partly drained from it. The name “Revenant’s Toll” evokes this tragedy, for in the end there was no one left to mourn the dead but the dead. ...Later still the Calamity that was the Fall of Dalamud only devastated Mor Dhona further, given its proximity to the epicenter of Carteneau, unearthing the likes of Syrcus Tower but just so leaving an objective wasteland of crystals in its wake.

A shadow of its former self, with an ever-open wound.

It was on this note that we arrived at the camp.

“Well, we’re here! Welcome to Saint Coinach’s Find, where the past lives on.” Aidea declared before the site, which was teeming with individuals in similar austere robes and caps, while what appeared to be hired hands from the Toll stood vigilant. Their tents and platforms were built around a series of tilted spires and arches.

Unmistakably Allagan architecture.

“So these are the Sons of Saint Coinach, then…?”

“Right! For all the chaos that was sown here, it did expose malms of ruins like these all around the base of Syrcus Tower… and then ultimately the Tower itself.” Aidea gestured toward the horizon. “This area has come to serve as the forefront of these scholars’ studies, with new fruits of their excavation being found every day.”

“To see these sunken structures so incredibly intact in a repeating ritual of time and destruction. Allagan innovation continues to impress.” My eyes danced from ruin to ruin… all the crystals in between… and… “And yet…” Tension inexplicably gripped me. Along the fractured ancient path I walked, slowly, my attention soon drawn southward to that ominous, rusting monolith rising from the lake. What remained of a great beast coiled around it. …It was those wings ever extended in defiance that struck me the most.

“...Miss One?” Aidea turned and jogged after me, until she was flanking me once more. I came to a stop at the outskirts of the camp.

“...What is that… structure, exactly, in the lake to the south?”

“Oh…” She looked ahead of her. “They call it the Keeper of the Lake. It’s what’s left of the Agrius, a great airship that led the Imperial fleet in the Battle of Silvertear -- only to be brought down by the equally massive Midgardsormr. The act sadly took his life as well when the ship’s ceruleum engines experienced a catastrophic failure… It’s a key part of why Mor Dhona is as it is today, the dragon’s remains ever entwined around the hull.”

“Midgardsormr? Dragons…?”

The Empire… The Empire, the Empire -- it all kept coming back to the damned Empire. Silvertear, Dalamud, the Ultima Weapon, the Warring Triad.

Death, destruction, despair.

Allag.

“Are you okay?” Aidea was looking at me. I looked at her, and saw the concern in her eyes. I realized I had involuntarily clenched my fists.

“I… I just…” I looked down at my hands. I looked up again, to the Keeper of the Lake. To the Crystal Tower. I dropped my arms to my sides.

“...I see ghosts. I can catch a glimpse of what this place used to be. A scintillant, thriving metropolis with a beacon of hope in the center of it all, piercing the very heavens. Home to thousands of people full of dreams and ideals.

“And yet… The Allagan Empire was nonetheless what it was. An empire. Its bright civilization was built on the backs of the dead and the broken. And in the end… the Emperor brought his might to bear - all that he worked for - against his own people...” My head drooped.

“I look at that hulking wreck in the lake and see a monument to tyranny and hubris both. How can I look at the Tower and see anything but the same? Maybe Allag’s ‘secrets’ should have never seen the light of day…”

I reached up with both hands and released the visor from in front of my eyes and just held it, looking down upon it. “Maybe I...”

“Vision…” Aidea bit her lip… although she was taken aback a little when she attempted to make eye contact with me again. “...You know, for some reason I thought that plate was grafted to your face or something.”

She folded one arm in front of her chest to hold her other arm. “You know… I escaped the Garlean Empire myself. They had but replicated Allag’s cloning technique, and…”

“...I... I’m sorry…”

“No, no, please don’t be.” Aidea stepped in front of me and placed her hands over my visor also. I lifted my head to look at her. “Look, it’s true Allag did bad things, and there are still those who would deign to use Allagan stuff for bad things, but that does not have to define you or me. That does not even have to define the ruins or the Tower. We can’t change the past, but that’s what it is - the past. Distant past, even. While it’s important to remember it, what we make of it today is what matters. I choose to believe that we can make good of it still, just like the Sons! Just like the Ironworks. I think you’re here for a reason too. You can also turn it around, you know?”

“Ai…” “Hey,” Aidea beamed, taking her hands off the visor. “If you’re that sensitive about it too, then I think that’s all the proof needed that you won’t follow that path. The future will be brighter and more beautiful with you.”

I gasped a little, my eyes sat downcast. But, for the first time, I felt like I could smile.

“... Thank you.”

“Mhm! … Um, may I offer you a hug?”

I could but scoff, as I donned my visor once again. “...Permission granted.” She came in and wrapped her arms tight around my waist. I returned the favor.

“It’s good to see you awake, Vision One.” “Well… it is good to be awake.”

[driftbending]

Throughout the onslaughts against their families, America's wiseguys have retained a precious asset that contributes to their survival. It is the media's romanticization of mobsters, subtly encouraging acceptance of the Mafia as just another aspect of the nation's culture. The Oscar-winning "Godfather" movies in the 1970s set the stage for the public perception that a biased Wasp-run society had compelled a tiny segment of Italian-American immigrants to form criminal bands and resort to violence and stealth as their only means of acceptance and advancement. A raft of novels and films spiced with empathic and comedic touches, such as "Prizzi's Honor", "Analyse This", "The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight", and "Bugsy", cast some mobsters as high-living, lovable rogues. These films present them as dedicated criminals; yet, too often, they are given redeeming qualities, a revered code of honor, loyalty, and obedience. Their quest is simply the American ideal of obtaining wealth and respect, even if an occasional homicide and betrayal is required.

Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires by Selwyn Raab

[someobscurereference]

Hey 👋, I’ve had this concept in my head for a while (read: years) and I wanted a second opinion on what topics I could touch/could be improved, if that’s okay? I’ve seen you analyse and write on a lot of Fire Emblem topics and you have so many interesting ideas so I thought I’d ask. Otherwise just delete this, I’m not 100% sure what asks you answer 😅

Revelations Route. After defeating Anankos, his magic begins to fade and the Trio is sent back to Ylisse. The process is slow enough that others notice and exchange words, but too quick to give a proper explanation and get some closure. The Nohrian royalty and army is left with three missing retainers and a lot of questions

The main plot would be Leo, an year later, finding a spell to not only track the three of them but also teleport a small group to them. That’s how they arrive at Ylisstol. It doesn’t actually take them long to find the three of them…

The problem is that the three of them don’t know who they are

After Anankos magic faded, so did their memories of their time in Nohr. They know there’s a three year gap in their memories because the others told them they’ve been missing for that long, and there’s scars and burns where they weren’t before

That’s the bare bones of it. There’s this whole subplot with Lucina and the other children trying to decide if they should trust their new visitors and whatnot, but I don’t wanna get on a tangent. Anyway, I’m calling this Dream AU

Hi, anon! I appreciate you reaching out to me. I don't really offer critique advice on fics other people write though; I'm just here to have fun with whatever you + other FE fans are thinking about and having fun with!

I don't see any reason why you couldn't write this idea as is, however. Trio losing memories of their time in Nohr as Anankos's magic fades is a fun premise to mess around with! Gaps in your memories you can't fill! Friends and family are worried about where you've been! Your old friends (whom you don't remember) are looking for you! That's cool stuff!

I can't help you with fic writing or plot holes. If you're very worried about it, you should advertise for a beta reader. I'm sure there are people who would love to get a sneak peak at what you're doing! But in general this sounds like a fun idea, and I hope you go for it :)

[the-busy-ghost]

TSP S02E08 - Peace (At Last)

It’s the last episode of this strange show and tbh it’s a bit sad, because you know, I think I had fun. You have to give the actors credit for genuinely creating some moving scenes, and I will miss some of the dresses the costume department served up. On the other hand, the show was bizarre and nonsensical but that in itself was genuinely entertaining, and also I think that this was a piece of media which really lent itself to being pulled apart- it can be quite educational to analyse some of the balls to the wall nonsense in period dramas, and sometimes they really can offer new lines of enquiry that people wouldn’t otherwise think about. But yeah. Cast and crew must have had a good time making it and in some areas, the acting shone through, where it was allowed to. If anything half the reason this show was disappointing is because it had every opportunity to be much better. 

That being said, onto my rant for the week. 

- We start off with some sadly wooden Shakespearean-play-being-performed-live-on-stage line delivery which wasn’t really suited to television or this show’s established aesthetic. There were quite a few other places in the script this episode where characters said things in a rather cringy way that would have been much better on stage, or not said at all. Maybe it’s the writers, who knows. Bit disappointing though.

- I have to ask, why is Margaret Pole just letting Mary stand outside the door in her nightgown listening to all this? That’s rather negligent guardianship? Terribly contrived, 0 marks.

- Katherine and Mary’s scene in the chapel was sort of nice, pity we didn’t see  more of this kind of moment.

- AND we are back in “Scotland” (haha, right), and apparently we are picking up exactly where we left off in the last episode, with Margaret returning loaded with some trinkets from the English treasury. Presents for everybody. 

- First thought why the hell is this castle ruined. Did nobody tell Frost and Graham that all those ruins in the pictures of Scotland weren’t originally like that? Also I have no idea where Margaret is meant to be here. At first I thought maybe they’ll show a Fake Tantallon but her following lines indicate that she’s managed to get to the west land somehow? Very confused. 

- Who the fuck are the ‘men of Arran and Hamilton’. That is not how ANY of this works. I think what the scriptwriters mean is that Margaret has gone to the Earl of Arran and his retainers? But that’s not in the least how they should be referred to, it’s a deeply misleading line and doesn’t really mean anything. Also confirms btw that James IV’s kids were absolutely just set-dressing, since they had an opportunity for Moray at least to show up in 1524, but it seems that they have no relevance to the plot whatsoever so I have no idea why they were onscreen so much.

- “With English gold”- WOW ok, Margaret you really need to explain how you got that because otherwise it just looks like you’re acting on behalf of Henry VIII. Also did nobody consult their ‘Collected Works of Robert Burns’ before writing that line. But ‘assured’ Scots are a complex concept that I definitely didn’t expect the writers of TSP to understand anyway (and really more a feature of Mary I’s minority not James V’s).

- Anyway sorry Frost & Graham if there was any reasonable explanation for the ruined castle, the barbaric Scots stereotype, and the ‘English gold’ in this scene, I’m afraid I found it difficult to hear over the sound of your raging political agenda

- Also they’ve gone with a rather confusing motivation shift for Margaret here. Certainly, in 1523-4, Margaret was trying to discreetly recover control over the Scottish government while at the same time keeping Albany on side, but she couldn’t just march in there with the Earl of Arran and his pals and take it back. Her letters from this period (to Englishmen though, so maybe suspect) indicate that she was hoping that, while Albany was out of the country, the Scottish political community would get fed up with him jetsetting off to France all the time, decide that he had forfeited his rights to the regency, and support her aim of having James V declared an adult monarch in his own right (the ‘taking furth’ of the king). 

But in the context of this tv show, where nobody has indicated that Albany’s support is wavering at all, and where they have declared for the last few episodes that Margaret’s big problem is Angus (who, btw, from 1521 until early 1524 seems to have been sitting in a prison in France thanks to Albany) and that Albany is her ally, it is a very confusing character shift. Unfortunately it shows more clearly than ever that they really did not have enough space in their allotted ‘ten minutes of Fake Scotland per episode’ to cover the complexities of Scottish politics and indeed the enigma that is Margaret Tudor.

- That being said *now* I understand why they keep referring to James as the ‘heir’ to Scotland instead of the king. They’ve mixed up the ‘taking furth’ of the king which was supposed to bring the regency to an end, with an actual coronation and declaration that he was king. Once again, these are not the same thing. James was crowned within a fortnight of Flodden on 21st September 1513, in the chapel of Stirling Castle, with the support of all the leaders of the political community who mattered. In November 1524, by contrast, he was theoretically declared an adult ruler, which meant that his regents could be dismissed (and it helped that Albany, who had not returned from France by the date he said he would, had technically forfeited his rights). And if James happened to take his mother Margaret Tudor as chief counsellor on his ‘secret council’ well that was just his royal prerogative, done with the support of the political community as recognised in parliament.

- But still, contemporary rumours about Albany’s shady intentions aside, *to the best of my knowledge* nobody openly/directly challenged James V’s right to the Crown either in 1513 or 1524. James was the king from 1513, and any ensuing squabbles centred more around who should have responsibility for his upbringing and safety, not his rights to the throne.

- See what I mean about a two minute, ridiculously inaccurate scene being educational though? I could discuss the implications this nonsense would have had for sixteenth century Scottish politics for DAYS and when I go back to check my references for this rant, I learn even more. So like well done to TSP in that regard I guess. Maybe all historical tv shows should be horrendously inaccurate, and then they should do a behind the scenes series alongside it where they get actual historians (not like me) to go nuts and rant about the real history.

- Huge LOL at Mary in the next scene saying that Henry VIII supports Margaret’s annulment from Angus by the way. Not like, historically, Angus has just escaped France and arrived in London or anything. I imagine their conversation would have gone something like this:

Henry: Ah Mary, good to see you. You will be happy to know that I have had a change of heart and I support our sister’s annulment from Anguish, so you can write to Meg and tell her not to worry about him.

Mary: Oh that’s good to hear, I was always rooting for her, I- what’s that behind your back. 

Henry: What? Nothing.

Mary: Looks like the earl of Angus.

Henry: What? Er no, it’s er it’s just my Fake Beard. Lots of people get them mixed up.

Mary: Riiight. And you haven’t got a Scottish earl behind your back?

Henry: Not at all! Why would I have our brother-in-law behind my back? I hate that guy. Isn’t he in France anyway? Now would you go and get Wolsey I need to speak to him about, er... my beard. Yes my beard. It’s definitely not about a letter to Lord Dacre or anything.

Mary: Ok, absolutely believable, I will see myself out.

- Ok I’m getting carried away and actually, this rant is getting very long again even thought we’re only a few scenes in, so maybe I will split it into two parts so as not to clog up people’s dashboards. BRB.