#don't fall in love with a loaned player they said | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

whatifyoulivelikethat · 2 years

Text

don't hold hands, m | myg

pairing(s): yoongi x reader

summary: You're fucking your ex-boyfriend's ex-best friend. You also now own a condo with him and owning this condo has made you house-poor. Yeah, it's not the usual love story and it's not going to be one. Not until you paint the walls black, that is.

warnings: rated M (18+) for language; mostly conversations and feels tbh; minor smut (fem reader, marking / scratching, m-receiving oral, doggy, penetrative sex); non-idol!AU; guitarist!music producer!Yoongi x novelist!reader - fwb / roommates-to-lovers

just a story about two people who shouldn't fall in love falling in love, I have plenty of nasty smut so this is a different beat for ya lmao

“Is it fun being tortured?”

“Not really, no.”

It wasn’t fair to be this critical but, as long as you didn’t let these words travel outside this room, it was fine, right? At least, you kept telling yourself that. Delusion at its finest.

“It’s so stupid that people enjoy sticking their nose in drama that doesn’t involve them only because their lives are too boring to have any,” you sighed, tossing your phone across your desk, letting it skid into a pile of post-its covered in scrawled notes. “All because I deleted some photos.”

Notifications were now blocked.

“Some people mistake privilege with right.”

You glared at your phone even though the contents were the offender and not the device. Rolled your eyes, knowing you would be coming back to a shitstorm, but you couldn’t take it anymore. There had to be a limit. And the voice beside you had been telling you to put the damn thing down and stop deleting comments one by one, but the stubborn ram in you thought you could just headbutt through the bullshit.

And that imagery was gonna end there, thank you very much.

Your forehead found the palm of your hand and you sighed again, suddenly feeling the weight.

“I’m never doing that again.”

“You don’t have to.”

Minutes passed.

Silence never felt so serene.

Then it was cut through by steady, slow acoustic guitar, the notes drifting out from behind you. It almost made you feel more guilty. Almost. How fucked was that? You, sitting here right now, staring at nearly bare walls and a table covered in notes and your trusty laptop, almost feeling guilty for the guy that had backed out of the joint loan for this condo in the city that you didn’t even fuckin’ want, but you had been too far into the process to not lose a whole lotta money and too angry to let yourself lose.

How ironic, feeling guilty for the guy who cheated on you.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” was the guitar player’s response. “And you shouldn’t be either. For anything.”

You knew you shouldn’t apologize. It just felt like the thing to do, because you hadn’t been wholly right either and, even if you weren’t more in the wrong, you were still wrong, and wasn’t that fucked, putting levels of blame on a situation that, at the end of the day, was all said and done and left everybody bitter and full of scars.

The shitty part was everyone was on your case now and blaming you.

This was what you got for dating the lead singer of a punk band that skyrocketed to popularity on social media. Looked all elegant dark romance on TikTok and Instagram, just screaming and hate-fucking behind closed doors. Constant content to cover up the toxicity. And maybe it was your fault too, letting it get to your head that maybe you really were the beautiful, mysterious muse that the followers painted you out to be. You glossed over red flags – late nights, drugs and drinking, sleeping in rooms of girls that called themselves fans – all part of the industry. Nothing happened. Honest. But the greatest mistake was letting him tag you on Instagram. How cool was it that you were an author?

This bastard.

Not only had you given him some of your best quotes for his lyrics, but now you couldn’t publish those words as your own because this bastard would fuckin’ sue you for plagiarizing.

The guitar continued behind you, on the mattress on the floor.

So, not only were you getting crucified on social media at the moment because he had called you a backhanded bitch in his Instagram stories but also because you had deleted all photos of him on your profile and said fucking nothing. Silence to be polite and all that. He cheated on you, he was leaving you for some whore you had plenty of suspicions about, and, worst of all, he waited until you and him were finalizing the down payment for this expensive-ass-fuck high-rise condo – that money was out of your own pocket, not his, how convenient – and backed out of the loan for the mortgage. His reasoning?

You cheated on him first.

Hello?

With his former guitarist.

Hello?

Your ex-boyfriend had fired his former guitarist ages ago because you and him had gotten too friendly.

Alright, man.

You liked the guy, sure. Talked to him when he was in the studio and found you had a lot in common. Plus, he was crazy talented. Made most of the melodies, self-produced a lot of the songs for the band so they could save money, even contributed to lyric writing so they didn’t have to spend on that either. He even had a good voice, although sadly the band rarely used it. Your art of words paired with his knowledge of music made some viral hits. But then tensions rose between him and your ex when they started butting heads for no reason (there was a reason and it was ugly jealousy). Then arguments rose between you and your ex, but instead of breaking up, you buried yourself into writing your next novel to let the situation cool off.

Sigh, okay, call a spade a spade.

You were avoiding the confrontation.

He fired his guitarist and got a new one.

Then things were good.

Until they weren’t.

Of course, they weren’t. You didn’t solve shit, and he was fucking every girl that threw themselves at him behind your back. Good thing you had strict rules about condoms, otherwise you would probably have some lasting consequences right now. So, when the ground cracked and split apart from under you, what did you do?

Yup, this was the part that made you no better.

You found that former guitarist and fucked him.

Word travelled around. Word also travelled around that somehow you got someone to be part of that insane loan you got talked into. And, oh, shit, did things get messy once a certain someone knew who it was.

But here you were.

Feeling guilty.

You probably couldn’t publish for at least six months to a year because, harrowingly, your demographic was young adult – you had even relied on social media for self-marketing, fuck – and the half of a novel you had now had to be scrapped considering that so many of the quotes were now distressed in dark venues by the lips of an egomaniacal dick that you allowed into your pussy far too many times. Once was already too many.

Fuck.

You didn’t even want to live in the city.

It’ll be so much easier for me to get bigger opportunities. Don’t be a selfish bitch and only think about yourself.

You wanted to scream.

You wanted to throw your laptop into the wall and break it into smithereens, but you didn’t because this piece of technology was currently your only chance of making money. Fuck. Me. Always talking about himself like he was only important member of the band, even though it was the other guys who wrote most of the music and lyrics. No one sided with you, obviously. This was their job and technically not their romance. They were sympathetic but not empathetic to the point of jeopardizing their jobs. Obviously, you hadn’t signed any contracts for royalties or credit. This was supposed to be your soulmate.

Soulmates weren’t so generous to give you pennies.

You’re being greedy and self-important. Oh, so you’re only in the relationship for the money? I’ll give you money once we make it big. Once we get it all, I’ll buy you everything you want. But you gotta help me out now. We’re starving artists, ya know?

You should have asked your parents for monetary help, but you didn’t. Your pride didn’t want to hear the told-you-so speeches for dating a guy they didn’t choose for you. You also didn’t want the arranged marriage appointments back in your life either.

So.

Trapped in white walls, post-its of false starts, and impending doom.

Dramatic, but you were a writer.

“Come here and sit down with me.”

Some part of you didn’t want to face him. It was really dumb. He was your new roommate now. You were fucking him when you were too sad to avoid it, and it was pretty obvious he knew. You were living off his money. Sure, he only paid for half the rent but then food mysteriously appeared in the fridge, bathroom necessities were stocked when they were running low, cleaning supplies neatly sorted into the closet, and all that other shit. None of that wholesale stuff either, but the nicer things normal households could afford.

It wasn’t an exaggeration that you cried into the soap during your shower last night.

All because you finally acknowledged it wasn’t one of those shitty bars that made skin feel like plastic but actually fragrant lathering liquid that you could put on the dense, not-falling-apart-in-one-use loofah that you hadn’t bought. You would have been satisfied with cutting coupons and living on the dregs of the bare minimum, but someone cared enough to not let you do that, and you currently couldn’t do anything to contribute and probably couldn’t for a while.

And that made you feel undeserving.

Maybe you were only fucking him because that was all you could offer.

Pathetic.

The guitarist called your name softly.

Like a beaten dog, you got up and sat down beside Min Yoongi.

He continued to play a melody you didn’t know on his black acoustic guitar. He hadn’t moved in all his instruments and equipment yet. You had told him he could have the whole living room for his studio. He had asked if you were sure and you responded that you were sure that you weren’t going to have anybody over ever so, unless he wanted a living room space, you didn’t want one.

“Shit always happens, you know,” the deep voice reminded you.

“This happening was of my own doing and now I’ve ruined my own life,” you muttered, bitter over a boy and hating that you were bitter over a boy.

A small chuckle. “You have to admit you had help.”

Stupid boy.

“Can’t be helped. Humans are animals of regret.”

It stung to regret.

The guitar playing stopped and now you were met with silence.

Don’t cry.

But it was so tiring to be angry. So easy to be sad. So easy to think, my fault, for being swept up in what he was but not who he was, for believing that you knew what was best when clearly it wasn’t, for being spiteful on purpose. For avoiding looking at Yoongi in the face because you were too ashamed to acknowledge what was going on here.

For being too afraid to ask what he thought of it.

“I regretted not stealing you from him sooner. Thought you were too fuckable for that loser from the first day we met.”

A strange feeling.

Skin prickling, glancing the that pale hand of graceful, callused fingers simply resting on the neck of that guitar, not looking at Yoongi’s face even though you knew it quite well in profile.

“That’s one way to make me feel better,” you replied.

“I’m not trying to make you feel better. Just being honest,” he replied, tapping his fingertips on the wood. “You are ten times too talented and a hundred times too pretty for a guy like that.”

You twitched. “Are you shitting on my standards?”

“Back then? Yeah, I am.” A calm hum, setting aside his guitar and placing his elbows on his sweatpants-covered knees, charcoal gray and worn. “Pretty clear you went full desperado for a guy that didn’t deserve it. Also, he ain’t hot shit like he thinks he is.”

Ow and what the fuck. “Fuck off.”

You felt movement and tracked his hand raising, spinning a finger around his temple. A brief glance and the details sank in. Long, windswept black waves, light cream skin, pointed gaze directed forward and not at you, pensive slight frown of pink lips. You looked away again, past his loose white t-shirt and to your hands.

You used to be proud of them.

They used to be able to type prose like no other.

Now they were twisted in an oversized, olive-green sweatshirt that you picked up from the sale bin of the convenience store for dirt cheap and they didn’t write jack shit.

You also hated olive-green.

Nothing personal. It just wasn’t your color.

“You’re a psycho bitch to put up with him,” Yoongi commented.

He wasn’t wrong. “I’m a psycho bitch all the time.”

“Yeah, and I don’t date crazy.”

You thought you would feel insulted, but you were past the point of caring. Also, there was something about the way his calm voice said it. Like he knew what he was doing. Huh. That was a silly thing to think. Of course, Yoongi knew what he was doing. He did it. He let you in his studio when you tracked it down and camped out until he showed up. He had listened to your psychobabble and didn’t back away when you pinned him to the wall.

This wasn’t dating.

“At least, I thought I didn’t,” Yoongi added, not touching you.

He fucked you too. He wasn’t a starfish in bed, that was for sure.

“I wanted to get back at him too, you know,” that deep, hazy voice murmured beside you. “That bastard turned my friends against me, stole my mixes, and cut out all my connections. Made me start from the ground up, alone.”

Yeah, you did know that. You helped badmouth Yoongi. In the name of love.

Shit.

“Sorry.”

“You’re not sorry.”

Ouch.

“And you shouldn’t be, ‘cause what’s done is done and being sorry isn’t going to change anything.”

You untwisted your hands from each other, realizing your knuckles were white from anxiousness, and relaxed them on your bare knees. Best you could, anyway.

“Yeah,” was the best response you had. This fucking boy ruined your life and stole your eloquence too, apparently. Motherfucker. “You’re right.”

Neither you or Yoongi said anything.

Minutes passed.

Another night in the condo and both of you were sitting on a mattress with a single blanket, deflated pillows, and a box of condoms on the floor.

You touched his forearm the same time his hand moved to grip your thigh.

And then it was the don’t-look-him-in-the-eyes challenge, and he was doing the exact same thing, eyes averted, black hair over them, lips grazing your jaw. Breath against your ear. Hot. His neck under your lips, flexed, fair skin with remnants of bruises, and your teeth sank in, making new ones, listening to his hiss and feeling his hands slide under your sweatshirt. Weighted palms and blunt nails. Digging in.

“Harder.”

He scratched you up as you climbed into his lap, tasting flesh.

Those firm hands gripped your hips and forced them down. Grinding. Softness to growing hardness, unhooking your bra, hands all over like you had lost your mind, your thighs squeezing his sides, yanking his shirt collar down and licking up his collarbone, dripping spit, shivering as you saw it glisten over his marred skin.

Clothes coming off, thrown aside. Guitar sliding to the hardwood floor as bodies tumbled. Your hands on his chest, your hard nipples pressed into the sheets as Yoongi slipped his hand into your hair and shoved your head down. Mouth open, tongue curling around. Moan striking the air, echoing in the nothingness.

Hard, hot, now wet.

Up, down, hitting the back of your throat, unable to choke in the adrenaline of lust, in need, in desire for pain, rubbing your tongue all over as Yoongi face-fucked you hard and fast, thick cock swelling in your mouth, your lips grazing the swollen head and making him shudder, saliva slipping down your chin that was smacking into his balls.

Was it shameful that you were good at it?

Sex solved nothing but you sure had a lot of it as if it did.

A sharp gasp and salty cum filled your throat, drinking, swallowing with effort and the burning sensation of your locked jaw, maintaining the soft tightness. Tongue tracing the contours, keeping him hard, hearing the rip of a foil packet above your head.

You hadn’t even realized that Yoongi had let go of your hair, letting you lick him all over at your own pace.

“What position?” Yoongi panted, husky and breathless in the mostly empty bedroom.

Mattress, chair, desk, laptop. Oh, and guitar.

Bodies on the floor.

You didn’t say anything.

You just turned around and slid down, elbows on the bed, knees spread, ass up.

“Alright then.”

You bit your lower lip.

You almost turned your head, almost looked back, just to check, right, just to check he was okay with it, and then strong hands gripped your hips, lifting them, sliding in, condom on and stretching you out right away, his knees pushing your knees apart and forcing you to arch your back for the angle.

No chance to look back.

You gasped, gripping the sheets, blinded by pleasure and the fading resonance of pain.

Hard.

Deep.

You pushing back, deep not deep enough, hitting your preferred depth and letting your eyelids flutter, veins burning with the repeated ecstasy. One of your hands lifted and reached back, squeezing his hand on your hip, and the grip became tighter, fingertips digging in, smacking his hips into your ass, and your body threatened to throw him back, carnal power meeting his every thrust, clenching around his hard length, and you could hear Yoongi growl your name, low and deep and voracious.

Somehow, his name fell from your lips too.

Rough and sinful, no better than an animal.

His nails dug into your back and dragged down, burning lines into your skin.

Your head tipped back and you moaned, a clear, shameless sound that would become familiar to this ceiling. Pooling wildfire, tightening muscles, wasted nectar sticky between joined thighs, surge after shivering surge of orgasmic apex stinging your veins as you barely registered Yoongi’s shudder and blissful groan, feeling the pulse inside you made than hearing the sound.

The rush of blood roaring in your ears was far too loud for you to hear anything.

Your face felt hot, so hot.

Gripping the sheets, twisting them, pulling them off the edge of the bed.

This moment.

Very few things were as intense and exigent as an orgasm. Fleeting, but a violently memorable. Pure nothingness of soaring high. You chased it. Again. And again. And again, your fingers tangled in Yoongi’s dark hair, pulling it over his face but he didn’t look at you anyway, eyes closed and teeth trapping his lower lip, breath trapped in his chest, driving his hips into yours again and again.

You both kept going until the limits were reached.

The darkness willingly swallowed you up.

Min Yoongi always considered himself a rational person, which was precisely why he found himself entangled in the break-up between his former best friend and the only woman he ever considered committing a felony for.

Yeah.

He also didn’t believe in love at first sight.

She was still way too hot for that idiot though.

His eyes could communicate well enough with his dick. The short skirt and exposed thighs didn’t really help either. Still, Yoongi had let it be. Respect was keeping his distance despite racing heartbeat and keeping calm despite shaking hands. He got used to it once the late-night talks about music and wordplay became a regular thing. Sometimes they talked about general life and were surprised on how well they aligned. Still, she never spoke poorly about her then-boyfriend even though there was plenty to talk about.

Scorched earth was their sacred ground.

It was painful to witness.

Yoongi regretted valuing the friendship, mostly because it didn’t mean jack shit at the end of the day. He regretted believing in the elegant, age-old saying.

Bros before hoes.

Tch.

But mostly, Yoongi regretted pretending like nothing was wrong.

He would see the pain in her expression and not say anything. Watch her pack it all away and greet him with warmth that he didn’t deserve because he had a racing heart and shaking hands every time they met. He would watch his former best friend disappear into hotel rooms without explanation and Yoongi knew damn well it wasn’t right, but he kept his mouth shut because he was a coward, something he figured out later.

He could have washed his hands clean of that shitshow, but instead his hands had held her shaking shoulders and watched her struggle not to cry on that cold night.

Yoongi considered himself a rational person, but never a good one.

Too many ways to judge, and her lips had already connected with his as soon as his shoulder blades hit the wall. He didn’t stop it. Maybe it was bitterness. Vengeance. Hate.

No, it wasn’t any of that, actually.

He didn’t know exactly what but, in that moment, Yoongi knew that he would murder that asshole if he saw his former best friend’s face right then, ready to commit a felony all because those beautiful eyes couldn’t look at him, closing instead to blink back the tears that bastard didn’t deserve.

That meant something, all right.

He knew it could take a long time. He knew it would almost certainly be hopeless. He knew he would probably end up with a broken heart and broke as hell. He knew it was a bad idea and he knew it was going to tear him up, this spiral, but when he found himself looking up to the ceilings of these mostly empty rooms, this condo he now half-owed with the woman that was formerly his best friend’s girlfriend, and Yoongi found he didn’t know and he didn’t care what the future held.

She had trouble sleeping.

Less trouble after exhausting themselves.

He had trouble sleeping too, but that was because he was staring at the ceiling and wondering just how rational he really was. One hand behind his head, under the pillow. The other resting on the blanket, on the curve of her hip, feeling the steady hum of her breathing.

She never cried in front of him.

He knew she did cry, because he heard her in the bathroom sometimes. But never in front of him. Showed anger, yes, but never acted helpless even though it was perfectly reasonable to feel that way after everything that happened. Living on the least for his sake, even to the point of skipping meals and spending all her time trying to write, trying to get back to her livelihood, trying to get past all the false starts. Personally, Yoongi felt that she should give up for now and heal herself, but he also knew how it felt to feel stubborn and useless.

Hah.

It was weird, being so close and yet so far away.

He felt it most in the nighttime, even though that was when he was closest to her.

He was never going to be the same. He knew that. He already wasn’t, surprising himself with his own recklessness, and for what? He didn’t even know what she was capable of reciprocating after receiving all those scars. Didn’t even know if he was the right one, if he was better or worse, if…

If he was believing in something that wasn’t there.

Yoongi closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Livid.

It was weird. Feeling it. In the past, you buried it, numb, and promptly lived in delusion. But now you could feel it. What was more, you let yourself feel it. There wasn’t anything to stop you except for the occasional mental peanut gallery of you’re a bad person if you feel jealousy, but anger could overtake anything if you let it.

You stared at the scene before you, several meters away.

Seething.

It felt good.

Mostly because it was honest.

It surprised you. You hadn’t expected to feel anything. Sad, maybe. You had already been cheated on, so naturally you assumed the cycle would begin anew, just with less promises and in the gray area of uncertainty. But, no, instead of being distraught and delusional, you felt maddeningly, viciously, nearly on-the-edge of making a fist and dislocating Min Yoongi’s jaw from his skull because he was speaking to a female-presenting human at the entrance of the building that housed his and others’ music studios.

Did you lack context? Yes.

Would that get you arrested? Yeah, probably.

Would that probably not get you laid anymore and label you as an unhinged psychopath? Without a doubt.

But would it feel good?

Don’t know.

You had never punched someone before, although maybe you should have practiced on your ex-boyfriend. He was probably a more deserving candidate. In any case, you remained frozen in perplexation at your willingness for violence because you were pretty sure your… relations… with Yoongi were nothing more than a lonely bitch and a spiteful silver tongue executing revenge, so the amount of fucks you should give about Yoongi speaking to any human being – other than the obvious health and safety precautions – should be zero.

None.

Basket of fucks empty.

And yet.

Clearly wasn’t since you were mentally calculating the angle and force for jaw dislocation while having zero experience in doing so. In any sort of non-virtual manner, that is.

Hm.

Your hands were firmly in the pockets of your black cargo pants. The hip ones, although you had plenty of choice. You kept them there for the safety of passerby or, maybe deep down, yourself. This caused your jacket to fall open, the outlines of the sew-on patches and thick, bunched-up black denim crowding the space between your forearm and waist, your black cropped tank exposed to the chill evening air. You used to wear a plethora of band t-shirts, but, well, those were probably in a landfill or rotting in a secondhand shop.

You figured you would be cold. Unsurprisingly, the anger kept you warm.

Huh.

You thought about turning around and just straight up leaving, petty and picturesque of course, and then Yoongi seemed to sense your projected violence, looking up from the conversation. Dark waves over his cheeks, striking body line, backing away, hiding his eyes for a moment, not that you could see them that well from this distance. You twitched.

The girl reached out.

Yoongi simply bowed, out of reach, and pushed the glass door open.

Honestly, her role in this moment was so miniscule that you completely ignored whatever she did or possibly could have said to Yoongi’s retreating back. Sharpened gaze, and then he crossed the street with the crowd, walking past oblivious bystanders who may or may not become the harrowed audience of the next thirty seconds.

He stopped before you. Bomber jacket, white shirt, black track pants. Monochrome elegance.

You looked up at him, saying nothing.

Over one shoulder was his usual guitar bag that held said instrument and his yellow notepad sticking out of the pocket. He used it to jot down whatever came to him. You almost said something. Almost. Then you remembered that if this, this between you and Min Yoongi, if this was supposed to be nothing, then weren’t you supposed to do nothing but voice your casual annoyance for making you wait rather than, well.

Admit insecurity?

You looked away quickly.

No, it did not matter how reasonable it was, you didn’t like knowing that somehow you had been weakened by an ex-boyfriend, barely a man, no, a mere locust at best, so it was better to not say anything and accept that this was–

“Sorry, I got caught up with the staff about ending my lease.”

Compromised.

You didn’t look at him. “What?”

“Gonna end my lease this month and move my studio stuff to the condo. I can’t afford both.”

He had told you this already. It had been your idea. You already knew you were overreacting to a situation that you created in your head rather than reality. And, yet, the best your mind would allow was uh huh, a plausible explanation, sarcasm included.

“Ah. Right,” was your sharp, mildly frigid reply.

“I can’t read your mind.”

Do you intend to be exhausting?

Your mental peanut gallery was super annoying.

You breathed in. Cool, crisp air. The sound of cars and people bustling in and out of stores. You breathed in again. Did you really intend to be exhausting, irrational, and, worst of all, dishonest? Really, after all that had happened? After getting here, standing here, arriving to pick up Yoongi at his request to do the grocery shopping together?

You turned back to look right into black-brown, piercing orbs.

“I just realized that I have the ability to be jealous,” you exhaled, draining your lungs. “It’s unpleasant and not nearly as delightfully pivotal as the media makes it out to be.”

Something fluttered in those orbs.

Or maybe it was the wind catching his bangs, drifting black strands over his eyes shadowed by dark circles.

Yoongi half-smiled.

“Makes for good songwriting material though.”

There was an air of helplessness to his words. A tone you couldn’t define, except for the understanding, which left you both baffled and with a sense of guilt. There were emotions in that barely-there smirk on those familiar lips. Relief. Maybe a slight bit of shame. A shadow of guilt too. You realized people were glancing at you and him as they walked past, wondering why you both were at a standstill on the sidewalk. Yoongi seemed to not notice them or care.

You pulled your hands out of your pockets.

“Come on. We should go before it gets dark.”

Before you noticed it, your hand was rising.

You pulled it back, but not fast enough.

Yoongi’s free hand reached out and grasped around yours, strong fingers enclosing. Sliding up, calluses on your palm. Your hand lowered, slowly, your eyes moving in the opposite direction. Lips parting. His hand was colder than yours.

You stared at Yoongi.

He looked back, expression unreadable.

“I don’t hold hands,” you said, suddenly breathless.

You tightened your grip.

“Neither do I,” Yoongi replied, taking a step, on the cusp of walking past you, his hand around yours. “I simply just don’t like the idea of yours getting cold when I can do something about it.”

Previously, when you held hands, it was always with a purpose of showing public affection. The look-how-real-this-is-because-there-are-clear-witnesses show. Front row tickets nobody asked for. But this.

This.

You blinked hard and the sting was inside.

The sting of wasted time.

Your name in that raspy, soft voice. Familiar. You looked up, not saying anything and hoping the eye contact was enough. All Yoongi did was smile lightly and tug your hand.

“Let’s get take-out and shop tomorrow. We have plenty of time to eat healthier.”

“You can cry in front of me.”

Min Yoongi heard her breath hitch and still.

Seconds that felt like hours ticked by. It was the dead of night. Or maybe one could call it the time when honesty came to life, if the conditions were right. He knew this time well usually with a drink in his hand, but this time he was laying on his side with bruises of bites and carnal memories lingering on his fingertips.

“I wasn’t crying.”

Her voice was thick and strained from trying to keep it even. Her moment of jealousy had happened days ago. He had recognized it right away. Call it personal experience. He also recognized that she didn’t like to feel that way. It was obvious from her torn yet furious expression. It confirmed a lot of things for him. Still, she seemed pleased to help him move and set up his things in the bedroom. They found the living room to be a bit too echoey due to the large space so they switched the two, pulling the mattress to the living room and setting up his equipment in the center of what was formerly the bedroom.

He told her to paint the condo.

She had mentioned in passing that someday she would like to paint her entire living space black. Not this place, because he owned it too, and you probably think I’m crazy for wanting a dark space, huh, Yoongi? He asked her, why wait? No one lives forever. We’re just passing through.

She had given him a weird look.

We own this condo. Paint it.

There were cans of black paint waiting.

Yoongi had intended to go visit his family over the weekend. His parents and his brother who had recently been promoted to head chef at the classy restaurant he worked at. Someone in the family needed to have prestige. Well, that was his own personal feeling. Surprisingly at this point his parents had given up on telling him to get a higher-paying job. They told him to simply be happy.

And get married.

Yeah, about that.

He was still trying to get used to the music producer thing, for fuck’s sake.

“Are you afraid I won’t understand?” Yoongi let himself say, not turning around yet.

Sometimes, people didn’t want you to see them weak. He could understand that.

Call it personal experience.

A shuddering sigh. Deep breaths. Words bogged down, drained.

“I can only be so pathetic before I lose my mind recalling the past,” she mumbled. He felt her weight deepen on her side of the bed, as if she was trying to melt into the mattress. “I made things hard for myself. For you. It’s pointless to cry about it anyway. In the end, it only makes me look ungrateful.”

Yoongi thought about it.

“It’s true that you probably shouldn’t have involved me.”

He shifted, laying on his back now.

“But I’m not a good person either. I agreed, after all,” he murmured, his skin tingling with bruises and carnal memories. “Hm, to be honest, he was always a dick though, from high school till now. Always will be, I fear.”

“You’re easygoing enough not to be affected by his asshole behavior.”

“Not my job to change people. I leave that to parents and clueless fools.”

A pensive silence. Surprisingly not an irritated one. She seemed to accept it.

“Why did you become his friend?” she asked, staring at the ceiling with him.

“We just happened to like the same thing. Music.”

“I’m lucky you decided to become his friend.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “I’m lucky that somehow he managed to bamboozle a hot and clever girl, two things he’s obviously not.”

She almost laughed. Almost.

“Who the fuck uses the word bamboozle?”

“You had to admit you were bamboozled, because you sure as hell weren’t dick-drunk.”

“Oh? You think you’re that good, huh?”

“No, I just know he’s that much worse.”

The faintest of chuckles.

“You… You get better every time,” she admitted. “I think I just caught you off guard the first time.”

“Firstly, I don’t like wasting time and, secondly, I had given up for a while before…” I met you. “Romance seemed like an expensive, worthless distraction when I could be using that time and money trying to push the band forward,” he pivoted, running a hand through his hair to push it out of his eyes. “Then that went to shit.”

“Sorry.”

Automatic.

He chuckled darkly. “I’m confident I got the better deal.”

A trembling pause.

“Why do you think that?”

He reached over and placed his palm on the top of her head, lacing his fingers in her hair. Messing it up.

“Tell me the truth. Was he good at sex?”

A burst of laughter. “Really? Alright. No, he wasn’t. He sucked. Thought he was a piston of a muscle car instead of a human being. Oh, and once he fell asleep on top of me.”

He cocked an eyebrow. Turned his head and forced hers to turn as well.

She was smiling.

Yoongi found his chest tight and breath shallow.

“And you didn’t leave him then… why?” he pressed.

She winced, albeit playfully. “I yelled at him. A lot. I don’t know, maybe he was tired.”

“Not an excuse.”

“I know, I know…” Sigh. “I… I didn’t want to believe I made the wrong choice.” Her eyes shifted, but her body was still turned to face his. “I… It made my entire family angry, dating him. Especially my parents. They would never forgive me and hold it over my head forever. I had to make it work. I thought, if only I worked hard enough…” Another heavy breath, squeezing her eyes tightly. “I know it was pride, but I wanted to prove to them and myself that I could do anything. Bad choices? Maybe. But they were mine. I don’t want my life decided by what is best for me. If I suffer for it, those are my consequences.”

Her eyes opened, but barely.

Yoongi kept his hand on her head, running his fingers through her hair.

“I… I feel like shit because now you’re stuck in my mistakes,” she breathed.

He liked to touch her hair. It felt comforting.

“You know what your problem is?”

She glared under lashes and dared him.

Undeterred, he continued. “You blame yourself for shit that hasn’t even happened.”

A disapproving frown. “Hah?”

He tapped her forehead. “You think it’ll bother me if you cry, but what truly bothers me is that you cry alone.” Pushed back the strands, and now he was closer, sharing breath. “You think I’m stuck in your mistakes. Mistakes don’t inherently have only negative consequences. They almost always exist in a gray area.”

“I... I know that,” she grumbled, face against his chest.

“I did say you were clever.”

A drifting, drowsy silence.

“I’m not clever,” she whispered to his skin, pulling her body closer. “I just like you.”

Yoongi felt himself losing to sleep.

“I’ve always liked you, since the moment I saw you,” he muttered into her hair, breathing in the familiar scent, so quietly that he wasn’t sure if he said it at all.

“Ah? Yes? Sorry about that. Oh, yes, uh, I’m painting. Everything. Yes, I’ll be sure the keep the windows open. Thank you.”

You closed the front door of the condo. Well. You had expected nervousness, but somehow the conversation between you and the downstairs neighbor had been very calm. Apparently, he worked from home and wasn’t expecting the loud crash of the ladder from your unit.

In your defense, you hadn’t expected it either.

Thankfully, you hadn’t been on the ladder, only trying to figure out how to set it up. It was one of those compact ones that saved space but required some innovative thinking to get the taller height you needed. One crash and a YouTube video later, the ladder was now secure, and then came the knock on the front door.

The thoughts flew by – I don’t belong here, I can’t do this alone, they’re going to scold me and I haven’t even done the upper half yet – but the guy just seemed curious and confused. Didn’t even comment on your awkward outfit of navy boys’ basketball shorts and ill-fitted gray sports bra. Both on super sale. You were still wearing your bra because of the incorrect size, so the gray blob was bordering on ugly-ass tank top.

Look.

Some people had clothing they didn’t care about to paint in and some people had to dive in sale bins because they left behind most of their wardrobe and, with the clothes, their bad memories.

That was the intent.

Things rarely go as intended.

For instance, you thought you were going to feel imposter syndrome for a neighbor knowing that you were painting your own goddamn walls. You turned away from the door after you locked it, frowning. That’s right. Like it or not, bad decisions and minus an ex-boyfriend later, these were your walls. You looked up, out the large, floor-to-ceiling living room windows, and saw the sunlight sparkle over the sprawling city, walls painted half-black and half white surrounding you, and you could say that you never wanted to be here, but.

It was a sick view.

We own this condo. Paint it.

Your muscles were sore from the repeated swiping motion of the paint roller, but there was still this inexplicable energy coursing through you.

“What if it doesn’t look good?” you had asked Yoongi.

He had shrugged. “Then we paint it again.”

“It’ll be dark.”

“Wow, really? I thought black was supposed to be bright and cheerful,” was the sarcastic quip. “Just believe you have good taste and paint the damn walls.”

This condo was an investment that made you poor.

That was the truth you needed to face.

You have good taste.

You scrunched your face slightly as you remembered Yoongi’s facial expression. Was he… praising you or himself? You squinted. This guy. Picked up the paint roller again and saturated it with ink black, making crispy crinkly sounds as you shuffled over the plastic. Good taste. Well, that was relative, wasn’t it? Everything was at the end of the day. You climbed onto the ladder and began the repetitive, monotone motion once more but at a higher elevation. You should have put your music back on. Your phone was on the plastic-covered mattress and you were not about to go back down until you finished this section or ran out of paint. This was going to be a long process, but you had several days and too much time as Yoongi had already left to visit his family.

Now you were alone with a lot of paint and mind-numbing fumes.

Shit, you should have opened the window.

You would have to paint a second coat anyway. Who cared if the first coat was shitty?

Sigh.

Climbing down and doing your due diligence before returning to your post.

You had forgotten once again to put your music back on. Hah. Well, that was fine; you had yourself. You didn’t mind being alone. Heh, sometimes it was better to be alone. You continued rolling away, hardworking in the consistent rhythm. Thinking about it now, this might have been the first time in a long time that you were okay with being alone. Before, you had felt guilty whenever you weren’t thinking about your relationship. Huh. Odd. Was it some kind of mental self-reassurance when you knew something was off? It was hard to tell, but possible.

Everything was off about that relationship. You just had too much pride to admit it.

You sighed, climbing back down to reload.

Wait a second. Was this why there was that wider step towards the top of the ladder? You poured some more paint in the tray and carried it up with you. Oh shit. Wow. Innovation. You coughed and went back to a different patch of wall. No one saw that. See, perks of being alone.

Well, you didn’t hate Yoongi being here.

You stopped painting.

You didn’t just think that.

You went back to painting. Shut up, nagging feeling. You furiously painted on, ignoring your soreness, telling that little voice in your head to shut up, because there were plenty of reasons not to think stuff like that. Firstly, you weren’t ready to think stuff like that. And what if it was only hopeful transference rather than genuine feeling? Asshole or not, your ex-boyfriend’s betrayal of trust was not something so easily overcome. It wasn’t fair to Yoongi either, pretending to like him if you weren’t sure.

You liked Yoongi before you broke up, too.

Wasn’t that fucked up?

You sighed and came back down, careful to scoot the ladder without spilling and causing a mess. Back up and at it. Of course, it was fucked up. And you knew it was, which might have been why you let it get that bad. Might? Was why you let it get that bad. Two hypocrites were meant for each other. You huffed, puffing your cheeks. It wasn’t enough to hold the ticking grenade; you had needed confirmation it was a, in fact, a bomb.

Maybe even hoping it would end you.

It didn’t.

For some reason, you thought Yoongi could see that in you.

Damn, he’s really living in your system, hm?

You frowned.

Your phone rang.

You almost jumped, startled at the sudden sound of an old song you used to enjoy. Back when you were a teenager, and the memories came back as you climbed down. A kid who just really liked rock’n’roll, and parents who did not, but that kid didn’t care, annoyingly setting it as her ringtone on her shitty flip phone. Couldn’t you be her again? Before you had time to ponder, you checked your hands for paint and picked up your phone, answering it.

“Hello?”

“Did you eat?”

You blinked, sitting down on the crinkly plastic upon hearing that deep, raspy voice. “Uh, no. I was gonna stop by the convenience store when the first coat was done.”

“No, you weren’t. You were gonna skip a meal,” Min Yoongi tutted. “Because you don’t want to be a nuisance and use the money I had left you.”

Damn. He knew you, all right.

“If I forget, I forget,” you grumbled.

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, pick up the food order from the front desk when it comes. They told me about thirty minutes.”

“You don’t have to order food for me. I’m not a kid,” you hissed.

“It’s the pho spot you like and if I don’t put food in front of you, you won’t eat. You intend to do all that hard work without some fuel?” A pause. You made a disapproving noise. “And I know you’re not a kid. By the way, what’s your waist measurement?”

You remained a grump. “Why?”

“I’m here, so I’m going to buy you some clothes.”

“Don’t buy me clothes. Don’t spend money–”

“You need things,” Yoongi cut you off. “Unless you want to come with me? You don’t trust me?”

“That’s not it and you know it,” you snapped back. “It’s not worth–”

“Of course, it isn’t. It’s vain and silly and superficial. And I’m still going to buy you things, so tell me your waist measurement.”

“Yoongi, this is your hard-earned money,” you puffed out, exasperated.

“Yeah, and I make money to provide you with a good life because I think you are the most important person to me. So, do you want me to guess with my hands or are you going to meet me halfway?”

Dead silence.

He called your name, softly.

You told him in centimeters.

“Got it. Don’t forget to check the front desk in thirty minutes.”

“I love you.”

His hair was stuck to his face due to sweat. “What?”

“I said I love you,” she said, staring right at him, their chests shuddering from exertion.

Yoongi couldn’t believe it, but also he wasn’t surprised. The room still smelled faintly like paint. The windows still had no curtains or blinds. They were still fucking on the mattress in the center of the living room and he was holding the used condom when she said I love you.

The walls and ceiling were all black, covering them in darkness as the city below glimmered with light.

“I love you,” was his reply.

It startled him, the suddenness of his response. He knew he did. Of course, he did, and he turned away quickly, making his way to the kitchen and throwing away the condom, skin tingling, cheeks aflame, and he was startled by the feeling that remained. He hadn’t expected those words to come out of her mouth even though he was sure of his own feelings. Yoongi had resigned himself to not hear it from her lips. He also didn’t need to hear it to know that it was true.

He saw her head to the bathroom.

Time was funny sometimes.

Suddenly they were both staring at each other on the mattress, the usual ritual completed, and the moment suspended.

“You didn’t have to say it,” he finally said. “For my sake.”

“I didn’t.” Her hair curled over her shoulder, caressing her curves. “I said it for my sake.”

Blankets and pillows and questions.

“I wondered about the validity of it,” she admitted to him. “Been wrong before and all that. Might still be wrong. So, I said it just to see if I regretted it.”

“Ah.”

They stared into each other’s eyes.

“Do you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No.”

He half-smiled. How very simple yet complicated. He understood. “All the paint fumes really got to your head, huh?”

She looked up at him and he realized with a start that she, too, was half-smiling.

He reached out, smoothing her hair.

“You have a pretty face, Yoongi,” she teased, eyes sparkling.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I thought it would be too cliché, you and me,” she continued and the tone was different now, softer and more serious. “I thought you would get tired.”

She meant, of me.

He had thought this was cliché too. Cliché didn’t mean worthless though. His hand fell, and rested over hers without a second thought. Warm and against the sheets. “If I felt that way, I would have stopped speaking to you long ago. You could take care of yourself too.” Not safely, but could. “Except for money.”

She smirked.

“So you’re saying I need a suga daddy.”

Yoongi twitched.

“Part of me wanted to sell the condo as soon as possible,” she went on, casually glossing over the comment. “But the realtor said it would be a bad idea. I wouldn’t have any buyers without a minimum of six months or a year. Too many superstitions. Part of me thought I should…”

She looked up to the ceiling.

It was a high-rise, after all.

“All the reasons to move here were his. More convenient, better opportunities, owning rather than renting for the investment… I believed in it, more than myself.”

He didn’t say anything. Couldn’t because all those things had benefitted him already. He didn’t only agree to move in help her out. He was still a working music producer. But she didn’t seem to be saying it to condone him.

“I didn’t really think this place was mine until I painted the walls.”

Yoongi thought he should at least confess this part. “That’s why I told you to paint them.”

A small laugh. “You don’t like it, huh?”

“Don’t you remember the walls of the old studio were dark gray? That was my doing. I always resented the last place I rented because they didn’t let me paint the walls.”

“Ah… He painted over the gray.”

“I bet he did.”

They had fallen to the bed now, side by side.

“I didn’t think this would work out,” she breathed.

“I thought it might,” he hummed.

“Why?”

“You’re hot and clever and I wanted you from the first day I saw you.”

A warm chuckle. “Just like that?”

“Well, you had to give me a chance. Couldn’t make the first move due to the circumstances.”

“It was a convoluted and confusing one.”

“Eh, life’s unfair.”

“Your husband already paid.”

Your what?

“What?”

The cashier waved you away. You shuffled back, dazed, seeing Min Yoongi emerge from the bathroom in the corner of the restaurant, tucking a bit of his long black hair behind his ears and finding you in front of him.

“The cashier just called you my husband,” you declared.

He shrugged.

“Surprise.”

You blinked at him.

Patrons chatted and laughed as if this was a normal day. The music was horrendous covers of cheesy 2000’s pop. It was very strange, but the pho was good and well-priced, which was why Yoongi and you came here often after his meetings with music companies. Popular talent was in high demand.

He ticked his head to your outfit. “I know you like this dress I bought you, but you’ve left your coat at the table.”

“Oh, shit.”

“You’ve been scatterbrained ever since you started writing again.”

“Shut up.”

masterpost

#yoongi x reader #yoongi x you #bts smut #yoongi smut #min yoongi x reader #min yoongi x you

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thatbrightblueshine · 1 year

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the full time whistle is blown. bottles scattered all around, disappointment written all over his face. he realises how alone he is with all this burden, so much responsibility to carry, yet, none at all.

is he happy he won't get blamed? or is he sad that his currently biggest rival might get blamed for not doing more? why is he everything that's on his mind. all the time.

aaron's feelings towards david haven't changed during these past few weeks. he went from being sceptical of mikel's decision to bring a new keeper into the team to realising he's actually a lovely lad to realising he might as well be slowly replaced. quietly. mikel sat him down and explained his decision to rotate keepers when the season had just begun - kind of like the match plan of pep. aaron wasn't happy with that decision but decided to play along, realistically, what could he do about it anyway? the media viewed all this as a very weird move from mikel - aaron was to be england's number one someday, so they said at least, he thought he didn't perform so badly last season, at least not bad enough to be blatantly replaced by a loan keeper. so mikel was meaning to rotate the squad - maybe play david whenever they were up against smaller clubs, aaron still being their undisputed number one. but as the season progressed, he realised that this wasn't the case. he had indeed been replaced. quietly. as if no one would notice. worst thing about it was that david performed on the same level as him, perhaps even better.

aaron couldn't help it but blame it on himself. his confidence was on an all time low. he trained with the others, putting on a happy face, waiting for his time to shine again. david was always around, he hated how much he liked him. he felt like he shouldn't. david was being genuine all the time, he could tell. he wasn't two faced, wasn't plotting, wasn't scheming. he was a goofball, a joker. someone who would always there for you, always knew how to see positives in things. but he was also naive, easily to manipulate. he was older than aaron, yet much more childlike, inexperienced. not in football, but in life. ben and martin joked about taking him to night out to get him laid, get him a girl, but david shied away, almost as if he was scared. the others kept joking about david being a virgin, but that was not the reason.

the looks david would give aaron sometimes were quite clear, even with language barriers, no words needed. "i think he's got a crush on ya" ben would say often. ben was bi himself, so he was likely not taking the piss here, no judgement whatsoever. aaron would laugh it off, not making anything of it. "well, he can try." but secretly he hated the idea of david taking a liking in him, as more than a friend. even if it was just a silly crush - aaron hated the idea of it. bloody hated it. david was not supposed to like him, aaron was not supposed to like david. that's not what rivals do - they don't develop feelings for the other, they don't yearn for the times they'd bump into each other during training, not the hug they'd give each other in front of thousands of fans after a match.

they don't fall in love. they don't. the talks were there, but they're just empty words. rumours would always arise, but luckily they were quickly overshadowed by declan's and kai's arrivals at the club. suddenly they were in everyone's mouth, david and aaron would only come second now, maybe even third. why did aaron bother that? why did he enjoy the attention the others would give him and david? the times martin would come to him and tell him the things he's supposedly heard, about how david apparently had a wank once and moaned aaron's name in the showers. how he immediately stopped when he suspected someone spying on him. or how embarrassed david would get whenever someone would jokingly say he's had a thing for aaron. these things happen all the time - players would hit it off and then move on. no shame in that, they're all pretty open about it.

but the attention went onto new players, overshadowing aaron and david, as if their supposed thing never existed. as if it never happened, it vanished as quickly as it came. and it didn't, it never existed. not to them, but to the others.

#rambles #fic

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redrascal1 · 10 months

Text

Adam Driver celebrated his 40th birthday last month. And looks better than ever. Like Harrison Ford and Hugh Jackman, he's maturing like a fine wine!

Meanwhile...it will be exactly four years this month that Kylo Ren/Ben Solo faded into the Force and took my four decades plus love of the SW franchise with him.

As a woman in her fifties, I'm too old to 'fall in love' with another franchise. And I intend to avoid ANY Disney products in future, another franchise that I loved as a little girl, because they are no longer entertaining but promoting what I see as a highly toxic agenda.

The more I see of Adam's performance in the ST the more I simply cannot believe Disney did what they did to him. His outstanding portrayal of the broken Ben Solo dominated the entire trilogy. The others gave good performances but Adam was sensational - only matched by Mark Hamill in TLJ, both of them easily as good as some I've seen win Oscars - and better than some of the said winners.

The way they treated him in TROS was diabolical.

That whole mess of a film was from start to finish just a two hour plus promotion of how great Rey's character is, and how we must all WORSHIP her, as the rest of the cast did.

Unfortunately it had exactly the opposite effect on me.

I have completely lost all interest in Star Wars. I don't want to watch any of the spin offs. As for further Rey adventures to quote 'frumfrumfroo' ...you couldn't pay me to watch them. Especially if Boyega is in them after his treatment of Loan Tran and his behaviour on twitter.

His fans tediously drone on about hard done by he was in the ST, but he had far more screen time than Adam. Heck, all three of the Trio did - despite Poe and Finn being the supporting characters (no, 'J' of the JCF, Finn was not meant to be 'Black male lead' as you told me before getting me banned). Finn was conceived as a supporting player right from the start.

Adam was playing the last descendant of the OT heroes. He shouldn't have just had a major role, the entire saga should have been HIS story. Not that of a rogue stormtrooper. Not that of a Han clone pilot.

And certain not that of the daughter of a failed Palpatine clone.

Adam's behaviour has been a masterclass in dignity since aTROSity. No ranting on twitter. No moaning about hos 'hard done by' he was. Domhnall Gleeson and Loan Tran have been equally classy, with Domhnall making just one lighthearted joke about his shameful abrupt exit at the beginning of TROS(he SHOULD have been Big Bad) and Loan making no complaint over her truly racist erasure from TROS (she was a MAJOR character for crying out loud.) The three of them deserved better.

As Kylo/Ben did. As Hux did. As Rose Tico did.

As anyone who truly loved SW did.

They let every single one of us down.

And I am so very sorry for Rian Johnson, whose beautiful film was the most critically acclaimed of all three and who reacted to it's brutal retcon with good humour, joining its three stars in class.

#I will never forgive them.

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timoswerner · 2 years

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hello. i’ve been reading your thoughts about conte and i agree with some of your thoughts. i’m also reading comments from people and trying to get a better understanding about the situation. if you suggest we should sack him, who do you think would be a good replacement? considering that whoever the manager is, it’s still gonna be a challenge if the owners or the club keeps doing nothing to back the manager. as i understand it, this situation has become a cycle and it can’t be fixed by only changing managers (or do you think it actually could?) thank you! sorry if you have talked about this before and i probably missed it.

hello!! this ended up being really long so i'll put it under a read more

so to be completely honest i don't really have an answer on who i think should come in next. i know tuchel's name keeps getting thrown about and i did like what he did at chelsea (he's the only chelsea manager i've ever liked whilst they were managing them haha) but surely at some point we have to move away from the ex-chelsea manager thing lmao it is a little bit embarrassing us always going after their castoffs. i'm really torn on poch coming back because i think it might be too soon, but then at the same time, there's only really 5 players left from his time so there's plenty of new ears that would be listening to him and he would play better football than we've got now. i know a lot of people still think potter could do a job but i think he'd be out of his depth with us too, i've not seen a single thing from him at chelsea that makes me think actually yeah he'd be a good fit for us, and i wasnt overly impressed with him at swansea (cooper did better with a worse squad) so i personally dont want him anywhere near us. after poch i was actually like 'i'd settle for howe' and i think he's done great job at newcastle but unless they sack him for a big name or something, he's not leaving them for us. at this point in time though i really just feel like anyone but fucking conte, i shouldn't be physically at matches thinking if i closed my eyes i could easily fall asleep lmao. it's awful that my dad (and others) didn't go to the north london derby of all games because they just can't stand to watch us play right now.

i do agree that we shouldn't just keep sacking managers. the only club that's worked for is chelsea but they thrive from chaos lmao and we are not them. we have been better when we stuck with a manager. however, conte isn't showing me anything that makes me think 'yeah he just needs a bit of time to sort this out'. but whatever happens even if we don't sack conte now, he's not going to be here in the summer and i've said that since the start of this season. there's no point in backing a manager now if he's not going to be here in the summer because then you just end up with a new manager with a bunch of players that aren't his own and especially with the way conte loves older players.

i think the whole backing managers thing isn't necessarily black and white. personally i think conte was backed last january in a way that poch never was. conte was definitely back in the summer with the likes of richarlison - i'm still shocked we paid so much money for him (i like him but i'm not sure he's worth 60m to us - but maybe we'll get more out of him next season). we've also cleared out players under conte (okay some only on loan but they're not physically at the club) which we didn't seem willing to do before him. when you look at poch's last summer he was backed with the money we spent on ndombele, lo celso and sess and clarke - but firstly it was too late, and secondly especially with ndombele it wasn't money well spent. sess is the only one still at the club and bless his soul he's not having the best time. so i think there's an element of we actually are willing to back managers now, but we just don't seem to be spending the money well. paratici is now the one who is meant to be dealing with all this, and i think it's unfair that when it's a signing people like they praise him but when they don't like it they blame levy. i think paratici's signings have been a bit hit and miss, and i don't trust his taste in managers at all. i don't think he's the guy for us, and all the stuff with the investigations in to juve leave me a bit nervous tbh.

i think levy needs to accept these big superstar managers just aren't for us. we are never going to act like chelsea when it comes to spending money, so bringing someone in who complained that chelsea didn't spend enough money for him was never going to work. i think we need to take a step back, get someone in who is actually willing to work on a project and plays somewhat progressive football. i was willing to give mourinho a chance and move away from how i was used to watching us play in exchange for actually success with trophies, but after him and now conte (who is absolutely shite in cups lmao) not working i just want to go back to enjoying watching my team. if we're not going to win trophies i'd rather we play with some flair and excitement than not win trophies still and be absolutely horrific to watch. i also want my manager to feel like he is part of the club, and not someone who's just doing us a favour and we should all be so thankful because he was successful at other clubs, you know?

to sum it up - a change in manager to someone who is actually willing to coach and improve players does fix a lot of problems, but the club need to take a look at themselves. if you are not going to back a manager and spend the money like chelsea then don't bring in managers that can only work with that. go back to what we know works and is sustainable but just spend money more wisely when we do spend big, then we will be grand.

i know a lot of people found windy annoying for being very anti-mourinho but i think his little blog post here sums up how i feel quite well too

#answered #anonymous

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symbianosgames · 7 years

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Prune is a tiny mobile game about the simple pleasures of growing and cultivating trees.Of breathing life into barren soil and thriving against all odds in a hostile, indifferent world. It’s a delicate dance to remove that which does not matter in favor of that which does.

Prune is my love letter to trees.

The seed of the game (first and last tree pun, I promise!) actually started with a tweet from a friend:

The game was originally supposed to be a short two to three month project to get my feet wet as a solo indie game designer. I had a fair amount of experience as a designer on large AAA teams but had never put anything out on my own so I figured I should start as small as possible. Unfortunately, three months quickly turned into six months, and finally into a year and three months.

I, along with the help of Kyle Preston and Simon Ferrari, finally managed to get the game out onto the Apple App Store in July of 2015. For most of the game’s development I had zero clue as to how the game would be received since it was this weird procedural, interactive art thing. Prune has far exceeded any of the modest expectations I had for it. On release it garnered Apple's Editors' Choice award and more recently has been named TIME Magazine's Game of the Year for 2015 as well as Apple’s iPad Game of the Year.

I wanted to write this postmortem for a couple reasons. First, I’ve been reading postmortems for a while now, starting with classic issues of Game Developer magazine, so it feels almost like a rite of passage when you finally get to write your own (as cheesy as that sounds). But more importantly, having read so many, I know it can be tempting to not exactly give the whole truth, to sugar coat things, to TED-ify the long arduous development into Five Easy to Digest Takeaways. And as a reader, especially as a young, thirsty game designer, it can be easy to convince yourself that if you just “do these five things, and avoid these five other things” you’ll be well on your way to your very own Notch house.

Just pick the exact right platform (Ouya obviously), iterate-iterate-iterate, and find the “fun”, all the while avoiding nasty things like feature creep and you’re set!!

So with all of that in mind I’m going to try my best not to candy-coat the development of Prune. I want to try and illuminate some of the less talked-about aspects of indie game development, especially as it relates to success. Obviously game development is an incredibly messy and complex process and a single write-up is never going to paint a fully accurate picture, but hopefully it will help paint a slightly more honest one.

1. White Moves First

Privilege is something that’s really easy to take for granted and of all the postmortems I’ve read over the years I don’t ever remember seeing it mentioned. Yet, more than an original game idea, more than streamlined design, more than any other thing I feel that privilege was the key contributor to Prune’s success.

It’s impossible for me to fully acknowledge everything that was on my side, but here’s a start:

I was born male, middle-class, and white. My dad was a computer programmer and we had a computer in the house from an early age. Since I was a boy growing up in the 80s and 90s videogames were this socially accepted thing for me. Being middle-class gave me the free-time to dabble in computers from an early. It gave me the luxury of taking part in the Quake mod community and eventually led to me getting my foot in the door in the AAA game industry.

Being fortunate enough to work in the game industry gave me a huge advantage. I may not have known much of anything when I started back in 2006, but seven years later I had an Education in game design, in the game production process, in how to make an interactive experience worth having. It also allowed me to make friends and connections that proved crucial later on. I’m truly not saying any of this to boast, but to simply point out the huge amount of privilege I had on my side when I decided to quit my job and go indie in the fall of 2013.

Even upon going indie I still took so much for granted. I was incredibly lucky to have time and money to burn (more on that below). Oh, and did I mention I live in the US? Turns out being near critical developer events like GDC is a pretty big deal, not to mention that whole speaking English thing. Indie developers in other countries have a much tougher time breaking through and we in the US get this free ticket to a ton more coverage and press.

Looking at Prune’s success in a vacuum is just seeing the palm tree and cute little mound of sand peeking above the water and ignoring the mountain of privilege that built to that island. It’s ignoring the years of repeated failure I was allowed to have suspended over a safety net built and subsidized by my starting position in life.

If you’re reading this and you are in a minority or marginalized position, then you’re well aware of the uphill battle you face. Please, please don’t be discouraged by all of this. New organizations are popping up more and more lately to help address the issue. There’s Girls Who Code, Dames Making Games, and Different Games to name a few. Plus the IGDA has long advocated for inclusivity and even the ESA is trying to help. I, and I’m sure many other indies, would love to help out, so please don’t hesitate to reach out.

2. Have a Lot of Time/Money (Preferably Both)

The hopefully not-so-big secret is that becoming a “successful” indie (usually defined as financially sustainable) takes a whole lot of time. A recent Gamasutra article concludes that it tends to take two to three years to sustainability while I’ve heard some indies estimate the average to be as much as five years. And all of this is assuming that you’re even lucky enough to become sustainable at all.

The main reason it takes so long is because you need plenty of time to fail a lot. For me, first there was the last 15 or so years of stumbling my way through how to even make game experiences, then upon going indie there was six months of prototyping questionable game ideas, and finally with Prune I spent another six months lost, prototyping everything I could think of.

Having the luxury of time allowed me to eventually find the soul of the game.

Six months in, I basically had a full game, with over 60 levels (more levels than I eventually shipped with). But I wasn’t happy with it. Playtests showed the game was clinical and frustrating. After talking to some friends, I worked up the courage to essentially reboot the game.

I stripped things down to a bare minimum: just a tree, sunlight, and shadow. I also had been thinking for a while about how to make pruning more expressive. Up until now, pruning was a wholly subtractive process. Trees were these static structures that could be cut away but that was it. This was limiting and was one of the reasons I had to rely on a bunch of other mechanics to bolster the game.

Instead, what if I made pruning both a subtractive and additive process? By imbuing the tree with a sense of “conserved growth potential,” I could get a much wider, more dynamic range of expression from the tree.

Old vs New

Of course, this wasn’t as easy as flipping a switch in code. I had to completely rewrite how the trees grew in the game, and it took me several tries over a couple months’ time to get it right. But it finally felt like I had found Prune’s soul. If I had had tighter constraints on my time, the game likely would not have found nearly the success that it did.

I’m extremely fortunate to have had all of this time and runway to experiment. Growing up middle-class put me at an advantage from the start. Add to this living in the Midwest, being lucky enough to not have any student loans, and being a generally frugal person. Combine all this with the money from my AAA job and it meant that I had way more time than I deserved to get the necessary failures out of the way and have a chance at success.

3. Don’t Listen to Advice (Including Mine)

The indie scene is in no shortage of handing out advice, that’s for sure. There’s plenty of advice on which platform to bring your game to, how best to market your game, how to monetize it, etc. Of course, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with advice, as long as you temper it appropriately and realize that it might be tied to a specific time and/or place. Videogames as an art form is moving so fast that the sage advice you hear at the beginning of developing your game may be completely null and void a year or two later when you finish.

The first piece of advice I heard upon going indie back in late 2013 was, whatever you do, don’t go mobile! Mobile is an unhealthy marketplace, a hopeless wasteland where your game will go to die. The PC/Steam was where any smart indie should bring their game. Make a good game on PC and you’re pretty much guaranteed success, is what they said.

So I actually listened to this advice and probably would have followed through with it were it not for stumbling upon Prune. Of course, now it’s 2016 and the so-called indiepocalypse is a thing and PC is not at all the safe bet it once was. Here’s the funny thing about advice—if you’re hearing it then EVERYBODY ELSE is also listening to this advice. Any proclamation that doing X is a guarantee for success is a lie and is going to be this incredibly fragile thing.

Another commandment I failed to follow was if you go mobile then you HAVE to go free-to-play. Premium mobile games are dead! It may be true that going F2P can increase your revenue by 10X or whatever, but F2P certainly wasn’t right for me (I can’t stand it) and I wasn’t necessarily interested in maximizing the game’s revenue. It also turns out that there are a lot of mobile players who are thirsty for quality experiences and are willing to pay a fair price for that. My point isn’t that F2P sucks and you should definitely go “premium”, but that you should listen to your heart. Do what’s right for you.

4. Finding a Creneau

Now that I’ve finished telling you to never listen to any advice I’m going to dispense some advice! First, some background: I’m the type of person who always wants new experiences, new and different ways to do things. This can sometimes drive my wife crazy when I refuse to watch a good movie again if I’ve seen it in the last ten years or so. But it turns out this is a pretty useful trait to have when you’re an indie since you’re naturally drawn to want to try things that nobody has done before.

As it also turns out, there have been entire business and marketing books written on the subject. Crazy, huh? I would have never sought one of these out on my own but, upon going indie, a friend suggested I read the book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, and it did a great job of explaining what was already deep inside me. It’s not a revolutionary concept but it explained how to find a creneau. That’s fancy French for a hole, or pivot, in which to get a foothold to position yourself with respect to the competition. If that sounds too business-y, think of it more as what makes your game special? What’s the one thing you’ll focus on that is going to make it stand out against all the others?

This was exactly my approach with Prune. The App Store is crowded with cutesy match-3s, zombie tower defense games, and infinite runners so why do anything remotely close to any of these when I could instead go the complete opposite direction? One of the clearest ways to see this is in the art direction for the game. Rather than finding an artist and commissioning elaborate, hand-drawn or 3D modeled assets I chose to embrace my limitations and make something procedural that didn’t look quite like anything else I was seeing on mobile.

5. Have a Lot of Luck

This postmortem wouldn’t feel complete without mentioning the L word: luck. Luck tends to be a big part of any success and it’s not something I want to discount. I’ve already mentioned a few things but just to drill home the point here is a non-comprehensive list of times when luck was on my side:

Lucky that I even saw my friend’s tweet to begin with

Lucky that I had time and money to burn, finding the game’s soul

Lucky that I happened to have an iPad to test on (I don’t own a smartphone)

Lucky that I had a family to support me while working from home (to keep me sane)

Lucky that I met Kyle Preston and that he was able to contribute his amazing talents to score the music in the game

Lucky that well-respected, successful indies would take the time to help me find the game’s soul and build up my confidence

Lucky, when black smoke started billowing out of my computer, that it was only my spare hard drive

Lucky that I was introduced to Apple contacts from a friend

Lucky that Apple happened to love this particular game

Lucky that I didn’t go up against Angry Birds 2 which released the following week

Et cetera, et cetera

And who knows how much luck I’m not even accounting for! Please don’t take this as me saying “hey guys and gals, just be lucky like meee!” Again, it comes from a place of trying to be sincere.

There are, of course, ways to increase your chances of being “lucky.” The usual advice is to open yourself up more, to try and make more connections with people. I pushed myself to do this. I went to local events. I shared the game with people. I kept a devlog. One example of how it paid off was that I got to meet Kyle, my eventual composer, through TIGSource where I had posted my devlog.

But luck is also a messy, tangled web of systems that are ultimately out of our control. To me it seems wise to acknowledge that luck exists and do our best to influence it. But at the end of the day, we also need to remember that luck, of the out-of-our-control variety, is still a considerable factor for any success or failure.

1. Getting Lost in the Wilderness

The initial prototype for the game was finished in only a couple evenings. It was clear this would be a game with procedural trees growing in real time and the player’s main verb would be cutting branches away. Oh, and remember: it would be finished in a couple months!

My next step was to explore the design space. I had heard repeatedly over the years from wise, successful indies that the key to a great game is to fully explore the design space around your game idea. I’d heard it described as this vast undiscovered wilderness. Some game idea design spaces will prove to be rich and fertile with gold nuggets lying everywhere, while others would be barren wastelands.

The problem is that I misinterpreted this advice to mean I should just start prototyping anything and everything related to the broad topic of trees. I didn’t know what my design space really was, I had no focus.

My initial focus (basically everything)

I spent the next six months prototyping all kinds of things--shield power-ups, infinite fractal trees, tree planets, weird inverted trees, and countless game modes like 2-player coop, FRENZY!, and endless modes.

This all had a time cost and a mental cost. I started to become overwhelmed with the possibility space, lost in the wilderness. In retrospect I should have focused in on the heart and soul of the game. Pruning as player expression was the most interesting part of the game and I should have been searching in that much more constrained space from the beginning.

Where I *should* have focused

2. Worry About Every Little Thing

I don’t want to belabor this point since others have talked about it at length, but I definitely have a bit of a perfectionist streak running through me. This is a common trait with game developers and can often be good for ensuring things that really matter to the project are just right. But when the things you’re fretting over don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things you just end up wasting a lot of time.

I would waste hours of my time tweaking the look of a soon-to-be-cut mechanic, days of my time picking the exact right font, and weeks or months of my time deliberating over decisions such as how to represent the score in game.

Even up until the end of the project I maintained a hotlist of must-do items before shipping the game. These were “super important” things like ensuring certain branches in certain levels didn’t look too thin when curving a particular way, or certain pipes at the end of the game not having proper collision. Well guess what? I shipped the game having never addressed a huge chunk of these “critical” issues and even now, half a year after release and I *still* haven’t managed to get to them and nobody has noticed! The point is, our time as developers is incredibly precious, it’s limited. I should have asked myself more often than I did, what’s most important and what will nobody ever care about?

3. Be Really Bad at Scheduling

If there was an award for being the worst at scheduling I’m pretty sure it would have my name on it. Remember how I mentioned that my initial goal was to finish and release the entire game in two to three months? That’s a bit of a lie. In actuality I was hoping to “game jam” it and have it out in a month. But I’d heard enough times that you should double or triple your initial estimate so that’s why I picked two to three months. It’s hard to explain just how bad I was at accurately forecasting how long things would take me and actually sticking to a schedule.

Here’s how it would generally go down. I would first make a crude schedule, not based on anything reasonable or sane but based on what I delusionally wanted to get done. I would give myself a fraction of the time actually needed to accomplish the remaining tasks. And then I would let this schedule sit in a dark corner of my hard drive for a while and get to working on stuff. Then one day I’d happen to unearth the schedule and look at the calendar and realize it was now 45 days later and I hadn’t even finished half the tasks on my list.

I did this over and over again during the development of Prune, partly because I didn’t know what game I was making and partly because I had completely unrealistic expectations. After a while it started to become a boy-who-cried-wolf situation where I felt like I couldn’t even trust myself at all any more. The only thing that saved me was finally realizing that I could use external deadlines, such as awards submissions, to force myself to focus and make hard decisions.

4. Struggling to See the Light

Searching for my game’s soul, spending too much time on dumb things, and constantly being over schedule all led to some really low, discouraging times for me. I constantly questioned whether this was the right project to be working on or whether I was just wasting my time. I considered just cutting my losses and releasing the game as-is several times since I figured the game would probably never make back the little bit of money I put into it. I questioned whether I was even cut out to be “indie,” to work on my own game.

Even though going solo was the right decision and is how I work best, toiling away alone for over a year was hard on my emotional well-being. It may not sound like a lot, especially when some indies endure three or more years of this, but for me it felt like an eternity at times. I’m fortunate that I had my wife and two boys to keep me in balance—I at least had an escape at the end of each day, somebody to talk to.

I went on a lot of walks during dev. Often it would let me distance myself from a problem just enough to let me think clearly about it. But at the lowest points I walked to distance myself from the game, to distance myself from my self.

Of course, all of this that I’m describing develops into this vicious downward spiral wherein you get discouraged and stop doing any productive work on the game, which in turn discourages you further, causing you to lose more calendar time, ad infinitum.

This is something that isn’t talked about as much as it should be in the indie scene. So often we only pay attention to results. Was the game a hit? Was it successful? Did it pay off the dev costs? We sweep under the rug the process, the struggle, the emotional drain. In the future I need to focus more on my creative process and direct more of my attention to my mental health before it gets too late.

Even though I struggled and made a whole lot of mistakes, I’m still really proud of Prune. My goals for going indie were to live modestly, work on new and interesting games, and make just enough money to get by. As my first project, Prune has done all of this and more.

One of the best parts about the experience has been the player reception. I didn’t make the game for gamers—there’s plenty of options out there for them—but for anyone. My heart has been warmed over and over again upon receiving touching emails from old ladies who have never played a video game in their life. I’m humbled that my tiny game has resonated with so many people and am incredibly grateful that I’ll be able to continue on this journey going forward.

#IFTTT #Blogger

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trennoandgreggo · 8 months

Text

Don't fall in love with loaned players they said....

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symbianosgames · 7 years

Link

Prune is my love letter to trees.

The seed of the game (first and last tree pun, I promise!) actually started with a tweet from a friend:

Just pick the exact right platform (Ouya obviously), iterate-iterate-iterate, and find the “fun”, all the while avoiding nasty things like feature creep and you’re set!!

1. White Moves First

It’s impossible for me to fully acknowledge everything that was on my side, but here’s a start:

2. Have a Lot of Time/Money (Preferably Both)

Having the luxury of time allowed me to eventually find the soul of the game.

Old vs New

3. Don’t Listen to Advice (Including Mine)

4. Finding a Creneau

5. Have a Lot of Luck

Lucky that I even saw my friend’s tweet to begin with

Lucky that I had time and money to burn, finding the game’s soul

Lucky that I happened to have an iPad to test on (I don’t own a smartphone)

Lucky that I had a family to support me while working from home (to keep me sane)

Lucky that I met Kyle Preston and that he was able to contribute his amazing talents to score the music in the game

Lucky that well-respected, successful indies would take the time to help me find the game’s soul and build up my confidence

Lucky, when black smoke started billowing out of my computer, that it was only my spare hard drive

Lucky that I was introduced to Apple contacts from a friend

Lucky that Apple happened to love this particular game

Lucky that I didn’t go up against Angry Birds 2 which released the following week

Et cetera, et cetera

1. Getting Lost in the Wilderness

My initial focus (basically everything)

Where I *should* have focused

2. Worry About Every Little Thing

3. Be Really Bad at Scheduling

4. Struggling to See the Light

#IFTTT #Blogger

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symbianosgames · 7 years

Link

Prune is my love letter to trees.

The seed of the game (first and last tree pun, I promise!) actually started with a tweet from a friend:

Just pick the exact right platform (Ouya obviously), iterate-iterate-iterate, and find the “fun”, all the while avoiding nasty things like feature creep and you’re set!!

1. White Moves First

It’s impossible for me to fully acknowledge everything that was on my side, but here’s a start:

2. Have a Lot of Time/Money (Preferably Both)

Having the luxury of time allowed me to eventually find the soul of the game.

Old vs New

3. Don’t Listen to Advice (Including Mine)

4. Finding a Creneau

5. Have a Lot of Luck

Lucky that I even saw my friend’s tweet to begin with

Lucky that I had time and money to burn, finding the game’s soul

Lucky that I happened to have an iPad to test on (I don’t own a smartphone)

Lucky that I had a family to support me while working from home (to keep me sane)

Lucky that I met Kyle Preston and that he was able to contribute his amazing talents to score the music in the game

Lucky that well-respected, successful indies would take the time to help me find the game’s soul and build up my confidence

Lucky, when black smoke started billowing out of my computer, that it was only my spare hard drive

Lucky that I was introduced to Apple contacts from a friend

Lucky that Apple happened to love this particular game

Lucky that I didn’t go up against Angry Birds 2 which released the following week

Et cetera, et cetera

1. Getting Lost in the Wilderness

My initial focus (basically everything)

Where I *should* have focused

2. Worry About Every Little Thing

3. Be Really Bad at Scheduling

4. Struggling to See the Light

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes