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useless-slytherclaw · 3 years ago

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Relationships: Lán Jǐngyí/Lán Yuàn | Lán Sīzhuī Characters: Lan Jingyi, Lan Yuan | Lan Sizhui, Lan Qiren Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Fluff, Light Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, All of the angst is in Jingyi's head, First Kiss, Love Confessions, Light-Hearted, Getting Together, Gay Panic, Disaster Gay Lan Jingyi, Friends to Lovers

Fresh spring air drifts through the windows and open doors of the Orchid Room, making the students even more restless than usual. Lan Jingyi sits in the second row at the second table from the center aisle right next to Sizhui. It’s their usual place and a compromise found over the years between Sizhui’s desire to be up front and Jingyi’s desire to be as far away from Lan-Laoshi’s sharp eyes as possible.

Their seats are directly in a pool of golden sunlight filling the room. The warmth combined with the fresh air, a smell that’s a tiny bit floral and a tiny bit pine but entirely indescribable, mixes to make it almost impossible for Jingyi to focus. It doesn’t help that they’re reviewing material that Jingyi already knows. If it was something interesting, he might be able to sit still.

“Lan Jingyi!” Lan-Laoshi’s voice is sharp, and Jingyi jerks into a more upright position, turning his gaze back to the front. “This is your last warning to pay attention.”

“Yes, Lan-Laoshi,” Jingyi says, ducking his head low in a show of apology.

He catches Sizhui’s tiny- probably disappointed- headshake out of the corner of his eye. It’s not Jingyi’s fault that he’s easily distracted or that Sizhui is as unfairly good at modeling proper Lan behavior as he is at everything.

Jingyi picks up his calligraphy brush and starts taking down notes rather unenthusiastically. He already knows these things, and they weren’t particularly interesting the first time. Beside him, Sizhui sits with perfect posture, dutifully taking meticulously neat notes. There’s even the faintest hint of a smile in his serene expression.

Jingyi watches Sizhui’s paper, copying down what he’s writing, but his gaze drifts to Sizhui’s hands: elegant musician’s hands, with slender fingers that are deceptive in their strength. Even his hands are nice: holding an artist's brush, playing the guqin, gripping his sword… Jingyi blinks and drags his gaze back to his own paper.

He manages another few lines of characters before his gaze is drifting back to Sizhui, as it so often does. The warmth of the sunlight suits him, bringing out the warm highlights in the deep black of his hair and kissing the curve of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose with a note of bronze. Jingyi has a perfect view of his profile from his seat, and though it’s more familiar to him than his own face, he finds his gaze drawn back, again and again, lecture after lecture.

He’s the picture of refinement and masculine beauty from his perfectly neat ponytail, to his upright but never stiff posture, to his somehow lovely hands, to the soft curve of his lips. Some part of Jingyi longs to touch him, to see if his hair is as soft under his hands as it looks and to see what his smile tastes like-

“Lan Jingyi!” Lan-Laoshi’s voice snaps Jingyi back into the present, and he turns towards the front, spine straightening so fast his back cracks. Mentally, he braces himself for the next words. Punishment is coming, handstands probably, the question is really how many. He is not at all prepared for the next words out of Lan-Laoshi’s mouth. “Stop admiring Lan Sizhui and pay attention. You can daydream after class.”

For a moment, Jingyi is absolutely frozen as his brain processes the words, not quite able to believe that he’d heard what he’d just heard. His whole body goes hot and then cold as the mortification sets in. A murmur spreads through the class, but Jingyi can’t hear it over the ringing in his ears.

He catches a movement from Sizhui out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t dare to look at him. If he had, he might have seen the slight widening of Sizhui’s warm brown eyes or the way his lips part ever so softly in surprise. He might have seen the blush, pale as cherry blossoms, that spread across his cheeks or the expression in his eyes that looked a little bit like hope.

Jingyi opens his mouth to say that he hadn’t been staring at Sizhui, but he had, and lying will only get him in more trouble. He shuts his mouth. Then again, the punishment for lying might be better than Sizhui knowing the truth. Before he can untangle his tongue to come up with some kind of response, Lan-Laoshi has resumed teaching.

Jingyi can feel the heat on his face and knows it must be nearly crimson. Part of him wants to glance at Sizhui, to try and gauge his best friend’s reaction, but he doesn’t dare. Not only is he afraid of what Lan-Laoshi might do, but he’s also not ready to face Sizhui’s reaction. Sizhui is his best friend, the closest person to him in the world, and he’s not ready to lose that.

Of all the insane scenarios that Jingyi’s brain had come up with, Sizhui finding out about Jingyi’s feelings from Lan-Laoshi was not on the list. His feelings. Feelings he doesn’t have words for if Sizhui asks. Feelings he has very been ignoring, very studiously if not very successfully, until now. He’s screwed.

Jingyi wants nothing more than to vanish into the floor; well, perhaps dying might do it. He keeps himself perfectly upright with his gaze on the front of the class, terrified that if he looks away Lan-Laoshi will somehow make this worse. He doesn’t know how, but he doesn’t want to test it.

His brain scrambles desperately for a solution to this mess. He momentarily considers lying to Sizhui about it and instantly discards the idea; he’s never been able to lie to Sizhui. Sizhui would know he was lying, which would defeat the point of lying, and Sizhui would be upset that Jingyi lied to him, which would make things worse.

Time seems to warp around Jingyi for the last two hours of class. Every moment seems to drag on as he tries to manage the absolute panic growing larger with each second, but time also seems to race forward to the end of class no matter how much he wants it to stop. Sizhui looks at him several times, and each time, Jingyi wants to fall into the floor a little more.

His heart starts to race faster at the last few minutes of the class. Two hours and he has heard not a single word out of Lan-Laoshi’s mouth, and he has gotten no closer to knowing how to handle the situation with Sizhui. As soon as the bell is rung, Jingyi grabs his bag.

“Jingyi-” Sizhui says, voice quiet and with an inflection that Jingyi is too panicked to read.

Jingyi turns towards Sizhui, unable to resist answering to the sound of his name on Sizhui’s lips. He looks at Sizhui for maybe a whole second, taking in the tiniest crease between his brows and the lack of serenity in his expression before his courage fails him, and he runs for it, leaving his notes, brush, and ink block on the table.

“Jingyi!” Sizhui calls after him, half-rising from his seat as he does so, hand outstretched a moment too late. Jingyi turned away too fast to see the blush on Sizhui’s cheek or to see past the confusion in his eyes.

All the other disciples turn to stare at the pair of them. Jingyi can feel their eyes on him, but he doesn’t care right now. It’s Sizhui’s expression that’s burned into his mind. There’s a rush of voices behind him as whispers spread from disciple to disciple and then Lan Qiren’s sharp voice: “Gossiping is forbidden!”

Jingyi isn’t sure where he’s heading other than away as fast as possible as he takes the shortest route out of the Cloud Recesses. He doesn’t slow down as he races past several older cultivators. Their admonishments about running and disturbing the peace fall on deaf ears. He skids to a stop past the last building and presses himself against the back of it, breathing hard in a way that has less to do with the run and more to do with anxiety.

He scrubs his hands over his face, trying desperately to gather himself. He can’t run from Sizhui forever, and he doesn’t really want to, but he also can’t face him yet. Probably, he should be embarrassed for running away, but he’s never had delusions about his own bravery. He might be scared of being killed by ghosts, but losing Sizhui’s friendship forever sounds worse.

Except he knows that Sizhui wouldn’t do that. Sizhui’s too good to just stop being his friend. He’ll be polite and calm- nice even- when he rejects Jingyi. Jingyi can picture the exact expression, gentle and consoling. He’s so… so… Sizhui that Jingyi won’t even be able to be upset with him when he breaks his heart. What he’s really scared of is things changing between them. He’s not sure he can handle Sizhui treating him with the same warm but distant politeness that he uses with most people.

Jingyi presses the palms of his hands into his eyes. He has to figure out how to make this mess right again, and he has to do it soon, but first, he has to figure out where to go. He can’t go back to his and Sizhui’s dorm room, not yet. Every place he can think of to hide is also a place that Sizhui would think to look for him. Their lives are so entwined that he can’t seem to untangle them even for a few hours.

Eventually, he starts off around the edge of the Cloud Recesses for the Cold Springs. It’s one of the last places he’d thought of, which hopefully means it’s one of the last places someone would look for him. He has never been one for silent meditation and has never gone to the Cold Springs entirely of his own volition before.

It’s empty, blessedly, but not surprisingly, since dinner is soon. As Jingyi strips off his outer layers and folds them to set on the bank, he realizes this may not have been the smartest idea. He really hopes Sizhui doesn’t come here- either to find him or to meditate- because this is a conversation he really, really doesn’t want to have half-naked.

Jingyi hisses as his feet hit the icy water, and he starts to wade in, but he keeps walking. He lets out a shaky breath and focuses on the flow of his spiritual energy through his meridians until he feels, if not warm, at least not freezing.

He sighs, breath turning to white vapor in the chilled air, and resists the urge to cross his arms for warmth. The waters are supposed to have soothing and calming powers, and ancestors know he could use both right now.

Jingyi stays in the water until the sky starts to purple with evening, turning the problem over and over in his head. He’s no closer to knowing what to say to Sizhui, he has a dozen half-formed speeches in his head, but none of them seems quite right. He has however realized two things. One, he is hopelessly in love with Sizhui: a realization he has been shying away from for longer than he wants to admit. Two, he can’t stay here all night because he will either freeze to death if he’s lucky or be buried under more punishments than he wants to think about if he’s not.

Slowly, grudgingly, he climbs out of the Cold Springs and dresses himself. His feet are practically numb and the gravel feels strange underneath them. Once dressed, he pauses again, staring up the path into the rest of Cloud Recess, but he really can’t put this off any longer, and so, he starts slowly walking up the path and back to his dorm.

There’s candlelight in the window of their dorm, which means Sizhui is there; not that Jingyi expected him to be anywhere else. Despite the number of junior disciples housed here, the building is quiet when he enters, as all buildings in the Cloud Recesses are, and his footsteps sound loud in his own ears. He can hear, faintly, the sound of Sizhui’s guqin close by, and the soft melody of a flute from further away.

He hesitates for just a moment outside the door, but he knows that Sizhui would have heard his footsteps, and he doesn’t need to look more like a coward than he already does. He pushes the door open. The room is lit by the dying daylight and a lantern on Sizhui’s table next to a music score, and Sizhui is exactly where Jingyi expected him to be, sitting at his desk with his guqin before him.

“Welcome back,” Sizhui says softly, fingers continuing to move over the strings without any interruption.

“I-” Jingyi says and stalls. All the words he’d thought of earlier fail him as he looks at Sizhui.

Jingyi steps into the room and softly closes the door behind him. He hovers by the door, anticipating something more from Sizhui but nothing comes.

“I’m sorry,” Jingyi says, looking at the ground.

“For what?” Sizhui says. The tune of the guqin under his hands changes. Jingyi hadn’t been paying attention to what he’d been playing before, but his trained ear picks up the shift. “For running away when I tried to talk to you? For leaving me to eat dinner by myself? For making me cover for you when you didn’t show up to feed the rabbits?”

Sizhui’s voice is calm and not at all accusatory, but Jingyi winces. He’d forgotten that they’d been assigned to the rabbit meadow tonight.

“For embarrassing you in front of everyone,” Jingyi says. “Mostly myself, really, but you got caught in it. I know you don’t like to be the center of attention.”

“Ah, that,” Sizhui says. His tone is closed off, and it’s hard for Jingyi to read. Sizhui is usually reticent about his feelings, but Jingyi can generally tell them anyway, not right now; he’s shut himself down too far. “I accept your apology.”

Jingyi steps further into the room, not looking away from Sizhui. The silence between them stretches with the soft melody of the guqin the only sound.

“You aren’t going to ask about… earlier?” Jingyi asks tentatively, feeling unsure and wrong-footed. He hates it. This is exactly why he didn’t want this to happen.

“You clearly don’t want to talk about it,” Sizhui says without looking up at Jingyi. There’s something in his voice under the forced calm: disappointment, maybe. Jingyi isn’t used to having to work so hard to understand his best friend. Something about Sizhui’s tone urges Jingyi forward until he’s standing in front of Sizhui to better see his face. His bangs cast shadows on his face, partially obscuring it from view. Though he’s not sure why it’s obvious to Jingyi that Sizhui wants to talk about this.

“I didn’t know what to say,” Jingyi says, “still don’t know what to say.”

It’s not much of a statement, he knows, but it’s an offering, an attempt to bridge the odd gap between them, a way of letting Sizhui know that it’s okay to ask questions. For a moment, Jingyi thinks that Sizhui will remain quiet, rejecting Jingyi’s attempt, and that hurts more than he wants to admit.

“Were you?” Sizhui asks. He doesn’t look up from the instrument in front of him, but the motions of his hands are exact, deliberate, not at all his usual easy motion. “Was I?” Jingyi asks.

“Were you looking at me?” Sizhui asks. His voice is as careful as his motions. The answer to this question matters to him.

“Yes,” Jingyi says. “I was.”

“Why?” Sizhui asks, and the note from the guqin is ever so slightly off, slightly out of tune, and too sharp.

“Because you’re beautiful,” Jingyi answers his question without thinking, still trying to put together Sizhui’s reactions. He realizes what he’s said the moment after it’s left his mouth.

Sizhui lays his hands over the strings, stopping the music, and finally looks up at Jingyi. His eyes are intense, searching Jingyi’s face for something, but Jingyi doesn’t know what.

“Is that all that you think?” Sizhui asks.

Something in his tone, in his expression, in the way he’s leaning towards Jingyi now, emboldens Jingyi.

“No,” Jingyi says, watching Sizhui’s reaction as closely as Sizhui is watching his. “I think you are clever. I think you are talented. I think you are good, kind, and generous. I think you are the most important person in my life. I think that you are my best friend.” Sizhui’s expression flickers ever so slightly, but Jingyi pushes on because if he doesn’t say it now, he’s not going to. “I also think that,” he hesitates, “that I’m in love with you.”

The words hang between them in absolute silence without even the sound of the guqin to soften it. Jingyi’s heart hammers against his ribs, and some part of him thinks he’s going to faint.

Then, a smile spreads across Sizhui’s face like the rising sun, and all the air goes out of Jingyi’s lungs for an entirely different reason. It’s not a polite smile or a consoling one, it’s a genuine grin: the kind where his eyes crinkle at the corner and his cheeks dimple. If Sizhui is beautiful normally, when he smiles like this, Jingyi doesn’t have the words.

“Sizhui,” Jingyi says, voice sounding ever so slightly panicked, “please say something.”

Sizhui grins even wider, a glimmer of amusement dancing in his eyes.

“Jingyi, I love you.”

There’s no ‘I think’, no qualifiers, no doubt whatsoever in his voice.

“What?” Jingyi says, faintly. Not quite sure that he’s heard this properly.

Sizhui gets to his feet in a single graceful movement. He steps out from behind his desk so that the two of them are standing together.

“I love you,” Sizhui says, slowly, deliberately.

“You do?” Jingyi asks, a grin spreading across his face.

“Yes,” Sizhui says, and there is laughter in his voice.

He steps closer to Jingyi, and Jingyi mirrors him, moving so they are nearly touching. This close, Jingyi has to look down at him. He can smell the cinnamon and smoke smell of incense clinging to his robes and the hint of almond from his hair. His eyes are bright, and his lips are curved into a smile.

His lips.

“Sizhui,” Jingyi says, dragging his gaze up from Sizhui’s lips to back to his eyes.

“Yes?” The undercurrent of excitement in his voice is obvious to Jingyi now.

“Do you know what I was dreaming about in class today?”

Sizhui tilts his head slightly, curious, and blinks. “No?”

Not quite breathing, Jingyi reaches out and cups Sizhui’s face in his hand before leaning in to kiss him. His heartbeat is loud in his ears. Part of him still expects Sizhui to pull away, but he leans in closer, eyes falling closed.

Their lips brush together, hardly more than the touch of a butterfly's wings, but Jingyi’s heart is still trying to pound its way out of his chest.

“This,” Jingyi whispers and kisses him again.

The kiss is more solid this time but no less gentle. Sizhui sighs ever so slightly, leaning into Jingyi’s hand, and Jingyi’s brain whites out for a moment when his soft lips part.

Jingyi knows, from their friends, that kissing can be more than just this tender press of lips, but he doesn’t dare push further even though he wants to. The most he dares is to allow his own lips to part and perhaps to hope that Sizhui will dare to be bolder than him. Sizhui’s breath catches much the way Jingyi’s had, and Jingyi can feel it. They linger there for another moment, neither daring to take that next step before pulling away.

Jingyi is relieved to see he’s not the only one who’s breathing a little fast. He lets his hand fall away from Sizhui’s cheek and down to his side. Sizhui takes a step back and takes a breath, composing himself.

“I think you owe me dinner,” Sizhui says.

Jingyi blinks.

“If you saved me dinner-”

“Mn.”

“Gods, I love you!”

Sizhui just laughs and moves back to his desk, putting away his guqin. Jingyi settles on the opposite side of the desk. The movent is familiar and comforting in its familiarity. It feels just like always, just like them, just like it should be.

Sizhui sets a neatly wrapped fabric bundle on the table and starts to untie it. The smell of food almost immediately makes Jingyi’s stomach rumble.

“Sizhui, I could marry you,” he says as he snags the chopsticks that Sizhui sets down. He doesn’t think about the words. He’s made the joke a hundred times before.

“Careful what you say, Jingyi,” Sizhui says, lips turning up into a smile that isn’t entirely joking, “or I might take you up on that.”

#lan sizhui #lan jingyi #zhuiyi #mdzs #the untamed #fanfic #mdzs fanfiction #the untamed fanfic #ao3 link #fic

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sealegs2414blankpages · 7 years ago

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#19/44 - “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on m-”/”That’s the one more thing I regret doing.”

TaeJin

Word Count: 1753

Seokjin had to do a double take as he took his first step onto the crosswalk. The red light of a hand print blinking before it changed to a countdown of numbers. He didn’t think that it was possible for him to randomly run into on the busy streets of Seoul, his old lover. However, there the man stood, frozen in place with what seemed to be the same shock mirroring off Seokjin’s face onto Kim Taehyung’s. Their eyes gazed directly into the others. It had been a long time. Six, seven or maybe even eight months since they had last seen each other.

His feet began to move against his will. He didn’t want to go closer to Taehyung, in fact his mind was screaming at him to turn around, to look away to not turn back. Except his heart had always been one beat ahead of him, one beat close to Kim Taehyung than he could stand. So here he was, only a foot step away from being on top of the man who had turned his life upside down and inside out, made a mess of the kind of man that Kim Seokjin was, aimed to be, knew he could be. Here he was gazing into those warm chocolate pools of deception, as seductive as they had ever been.

“Hi…” His greeting died in his throat, vocal cords congealing together which was honestly, for the best. What did he have to say to this man who still was able to sweep the breath out of him without even trying.

“Seokjin-ah,”

The intimacy in a singular greeting that shouldn’t have been said with such a fondness that didn’t exist within Taehyung. How could it? The younger male had proven that long ago. Had proven it when Seokjin had overhead, hah, he shouldn’t even be calling it overhead when Taehyung had answered his call. When he had heard the breathy hitches and falls of someone else through the phone of his boyfriend. He could almost visualize the sweat beading down Taehyung’s brow as whoever that man was moved in such a similar way along his lap that Seokjin had less than 24 hours ago.

Reaching a hand up, Seokjin rubbed his stomach, he was growing nauseous, every single sordid memory was coming back to him. The way Taehyung had sucked in a breath and cursed ever so softly but still rang loud and clear through the receiving for his boyfriend to hear. It was as if he wanted the other to know exactly what was going on. As if he wanted to drive in the knife and twist it over and over again.

Yet here he was, standing directly in front of the man who had stolen his heart and ripped it to shreds so easily and his heart was just one beat ahead. As if… as if Kim Taehyung owned it. The longing he felt disgusted him and Seokjin really wanted to just tear himself away. He didn’t want to see the smooth sun kissed skin, he used to caress so gingerly, nor those stupid curly brown locks the man insisted on wearing simply because he could pull it off that he itched to feel beneath his fingertips. Seokjin didn’t want to become sucked right back into the powerful vortex that was Taehyung’s eyes. They sparkled and gleamed with all the wishes, wants, false love that one craved. Offering to give you everything but never truly executing such a deal.

Taehyung’s large nimble hand reached out for his, the pad of his thumb caressing the top of his hand. It took more strength for Seokjin to remove his hand from the others than he would like to admit. Just standing here he was aching for the worst type of man. It was ridiculous but he didn’t know how to stop.

“How have you been?” The rich smoothness of his jazzy baritone wrapped around the elder like a gentle breeze on a summer day and oh how he wanted to turn towards it, embrace it.

“Fine.”

The words were ground out, terse, anything to keep himself from following the irrational part of his mind wanted.

“I…” Taehyung’s eyes hesitated, glanced away as if he was contemplating if he should continue. It wasn’t something Seokjin was familiar with and if he was a dog his ear would have perked up in intrigue. Kim Taehyung was overflowing with confidence, ease in whom he was, what he was doing in life and who he would be doing in life. A front. A front that was so strategically put into place that Seokjin could never find a chink in his armor.

Until now.

“I miss you.”

His own armor was battered, dented, rusting, he knew. Taehyung didn’t need to know that. He didn’t need to see. That was, he didn’t want him to see. Three words. Three words were enough to knock the wind out of Seokjin and if he had wanted to flee before, he wanted to flee ten times more now. No, a hundred more times now. Stumbling back, he had forgotten they were already so close to the road. The bruise inducing grip that was on his arm, the blaring horn honking and Taehyung yelling at him was nothing compared to the hammering of his heart.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, walking into traffic like that? Do you have a death wish? Do you hate me that much? Damn it Seokjin!”

The words barely registered but if the horn honking at him had truly been a warning as to Seokjin going into oncoming traffic then he deserved it. What was control? He had none, none whatsoever when it came to Kim Taehyung, clearly six, seven, eight months later didn’t make any difference. The grip on his arm hadn’t lessened, he certainly would have a bruise in the morning. Seokjin tried to shrug away but it didn’t work, Taehyung was still yelling but in frustrated, not with words just noises. It hurt, his arm, the pounding in his head, but mostly his heart.

Taehyung had him pulled so close against him that the outer layer of his skin was tingling, pinpricks of pain because he wanted so badly to touch the man again but he also rejected such a touch because it would be even more painful to endure. The touch of a man who didn’t care about you, want to be with you, love you to even an ounce of the way that he wanted to be with Taehyung, cared about Taehyung, is hopelessly in love with Taehyung.

This time he successfully shrugged his arm out of the grip, it still ached, he could feel each fingertip that was indented into his arm.

“Don’t. Just stop. Stop. For the love of god Taehyung don’t feed me anymore lies. I can’t,” His arms were flailing, pointing out any and all points of what the other was doing to him but it didn’t really make much sense to anyone but Seokjin.

“This fake act, drop it. You know what they say… Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on m-”

“That’s one more thing I regret doing!” They were shouting in the streets of Seoul, not a sight that was unheard of but one that was unseemly.

“I regret it so, so, so much hyung.”

Hyung?

He hadn’t heard that term in ages. It wasn’t something Taehyung had used much. Seokjin had let him get away with it. So hopelessly in love. Taehyung only used it when he felt insecure, when he needed contentment, comfort, something that he couldn’t find in himself. Taking a moment to steel himself and gaze upon the man who had turned his world topsy turvy, all Seokjin saw now was a small, young, beaten down maybe even a bit broken shell of the man he used to know. The bright smile was gone, the facade was gone, the fake bravado that before been rather adorable and still seductive in its own rights, gone.

What stood before him now was the ashes of the Kim Taehyung who had ripped him to shreds and maybe just maybe there was a phoenix in those ashes looking for a little guidance and forgiveness.

“This probably means nothing to you but I’m sorry. So sorry, a million times sorry and I-I don’t know what… No, I don’t think there is anything I can do to make it up to you but I want to.”

“Taehyung...ah”

And there he goes, doing things that he’s not supposed to be doing once more. Seokjin forever that heart being one beat ahead.

“Hyung, I just...I want to make you happy-

“Tae-”

The younger male held up a finger to silence the elder.

“But most of all I just want you to be happy. A-are you happy?”

Seokjin raised his eyes to meet his ex-lovers and the glimmers of hope that were there, true and honest hope for him to be happy broke apart the last of his armor. He didn’t want to shatter it, if anything he wanted to reinforce the other. He always had, hadn’t he.

“No.”

The shine instantly dimmed and Taehyung’s mouth made the shape of an o with barely any sound coming out. This time, Seokjin took a step forward of his own free will, no longer a byproduct of his fears or his emotions taking control. He reached out with his hand, with his eyes gleaming of their own hope, with his heart on his sleeve as it always seemed to be in the presence of Kim Taehyung. He reached out once more towards the turbulent man who had not only stolen his heart years ago but still laid claim to it.

“But, maybe we can work on that… together?”

His words were nothing more than a wavering whisper as his hand slid into the cold, shaking large hand of Taehyung’s he closed his fingers gently yet firmly.

“I-I have a lot to work on hyung.”

It was a question even if the words came out as a statement. Taehyung for once was asking, are you sure? Is this what you really want? Am I really enough? Do I deserve a second chance? I’m sorry I hurt you the way I did. It’s unforgivable, can you really forgive me?

I love you.

A million times I love you.

I’ll prove it to you this time.

“I know, Taehyung-ah.”

I love you too, always.

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trendingnewsb · 7 years ago

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Trolls called this fat activist a ‘landwhale.’ Now it’s the title of her memoir.

A few months ago, on a clear December day in Paris, France, Jes Baker was standing before a crowd as the city’s guest of honor, wearing a shimmering gold dress and a beaming smile.

“La grossophobie, c’est … bullshit,” she told them.

As a fat activist and prominent body image author, she doesn’t mince words, even in front of an audience that included the deputy mayor of Paris: Fatphobia is bullshit.

All photos via Jes Baker/The Militant Baker, used with permission.

She was speaking in the ornate salons of Hôtel de Ville as part of a conference of government officials, researchers, activists, and thought leaders from around the world. They had gathered to discuss discrimination against fat people.

The Parisian government, which hosted the event, also unveiled its manifesto challenging anti-fat bias and making a commitment to eradicating it. It was a monumental moment for the city, which had yet to include “size” in its anti-discrimination laws.

But it was also a deeply personal moment for Jes. She could never have imagined that her journey to make peace with her body would someday lead her to Paris, where she would assert the dignity of fat people around the world. And she would do it all while wearing a killer dress and heels.

Almost six years earlier, though, Jes wasn’t quite that confident. In fact, she says, that’s when she hit her “emotional rock bottom.”

At the time, Jes was 26. She was working as a full-time baker, living with a partner who, she says, “would rather watch television while eating chicken nuggets” than be present and engaged with the world or with her. With a demanding job and a lack of intimate connection, Jes occupied her time with lifestyle blogs, including her own about vintage kitchenware.

Surfing the internet one night, Jes found the blog The Nearsighted Owl, written by a woman named Rachele. “I instantly connected with [Rachele’s] love of thrifting, cats, and purple beehives,” Jes says. But it wasn’t the cats or vintage charm of Rachele’s blog that captivated Jes the most — it was seeing a fat woman living and loving unapologetically.

While The Nearsighted Owl is no longer online, Rachele’s fearless voice led Jes to an important realization. “[I thought] maybe I don’t have to hate myself for the rest of my life,” Jes recalls. “If she can love herself, maybe I can too?”

Up until that point, this deceptively simple but powerful idea had never crossed her mind.

Inspired, Jes delved into the world of fat acceptance and body positivity, reading everything she possibly could, especially perspectives that were different from her own.

And along the way, those writers gave her something she’d never had before: permission.

“[I found] permission to feel worthy. Of what exactly, in the beginning, I wasn’t sure,” Jes remembers. “But I knew I deserved better than I had been treating myself.”

She continues, “I started to explore what I could do when I was relieved of some of the shame I had weighing me down my entire life.”

She stopped blogging about the history of aluminum measuring spoons and did something much more vulnerable: She started writing about her road to recovery.

Her blog, The Militant Baker, became about everything from fashion photography — where she wore short dresses and swimsuits that she never would’ve dared to before — to political posts taking diet culture and fatphobia to task.

With a mix of vulnerability, humor, attitude, and unfiltered honesty, Jes’s blog exploded in popularity, with media platforms like BBC, CNN, Time magazine, People magazine, and countless others featuring her work. But popularity was never the aim.

“For me, it’s always about the power of liberation,” she explains. “Freedom from any restrictions that others may push towards you. This includes freedom from subscribing to self-loathing and diet culture [and those who] have their own ideas about what that [liberation] should look like for you.”

Jes says liberation is a journey — one that begins with giving ourselves permission to live life.

“Liberation is freedom from all outside expectations, even our own,” she says. “Liberation is slowly learning how to become the best version of our whole selves.”

Becoming our best selves can be an intimidating goal, though. That’s why she has a few suggestions on where to start.

Diversifying who you follow on platforms like Instagram is one simple way to begin. “If we want our media feeds to represent real life (and ultimately show us that our body isn’t strange, weird, or awful), we need to go out and actively find diverse images for ourselves,” she writes.

Jes also advocates for gentleness. As she points out, the journey toward self-acceptance is difficult. “This is not the ‘easy way out’ in the slightest,” she explains. “But just because it’s not the easy way out doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.”

Jes admits that sometimes she thinks dieting would be easier in a world that celebrates thin bodies. But if she’s going to struggle, she’d rather work toward living her life on her own terms and not make her happiness dependent on something like size.

But it’s not about loving her body all the time, either. Rather than doing a full 180 and forcing herself to feel one particular way, Jes found that not obsessing about her body at all — and finding a neutral, self-compassionate place — was most helpful in her journey.

“We used to want the three easiest ways to lose weight. When we reject that, we then start looking for the three easiest ways to love our bodies. It’s totally natural,” Jes says. “[But] asking someone to achieve body love can quickly become another unattainable prerequisite, much like the desire to change our body into what is deemed desirable.”

“The real freedom lies in the gray area,” she adds, “which is also the most difficult to sit in comfortably.”

Jes unpacks all of this (and more) in her upcoming memoir “Landwhale.” The title, which was once an insult used against her by online trolls, is now a source of pride.

Jes’s journey shows that a simple idea — “I am enough” — can completely transform lives.

It’s a powerful message that can touch people across communities, oceans, and even languages.

Jes was reminded of this power after a panel at that conference in Paris, when a man eagerly approached her to show off his new book. “I looked down and saw an entire section dedicated to the Abercrombie and Fitch campaign I had done years ago,” Jes says. “I spoke little French and he didn’t speak ANY English, but there was this moment of gratitude for and between both of us — it was humbling.”

It’s a message that Jes now hopes will come from new voices, too.

“[I want] to amplify marginalized voices that are far more important than my own through this platform,” she says. She hopes that those coming up behind her will be a greater reflection of the diversity she sees in this movement.

She knows the road ahead won’t be easy, but the right to live your life on your own terms is what ultimately makes it worth it. It’s this kind of freedom that Jes keeps fighting for — not just for herself, but for every one of us.

“Trust yourself that you’re doing the best you can and that it’s enough,” she tells me. “And if you ever need a cheerleader in your corner to remind you of this, I’m here for you.”

Read more: http://www.upworthy.com/trolls-called-this-fat-activist-a-landwhale-now-it-s-the-title-of-her-memoir

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