#elaboration on any of these facts can happen

[buddhistmusings]

Why do you care so much?

I've been asked this question a few times in the past year - why I spend so much time thinking, reading, and reflecting on antisemitism, especially because I am not Jewish myself. There are a few reasons, really. One of them is that I think antisemitism is a hatred that spawns other hatreds, but even if it did not, it would still be worth studying, because the fact that it is a hatred at all is enough. The fact that antisemitism impacts Jewish people is enough of a reason to oppose it.

It's also because it's important to oppose because of the way it damages the thinking habits of people who believe it. I saw somebody say, "Jew-Hate makes you dumb," once. And though I think it was probably an off the cuff statement for them, it stuck with me, and I think they're right. In my religion, we say hatred is one of the three poisons - it can seriously harm your mental well-being in a way that deepens your suffering in all aspects of life. Often, hatred can also be spread like a contagion. It's something that destroys social harmony and causes severe social dysfunction. And right now, I think antisemitism is the most contagious of hatreds - I've seen people in my life fall off the cliff, I've been able to talk some back from it, and I've seen how so many people wander towards it without any idea that that's what they're doing.

Part of the problem is that antisemites consider themselves righteous in a way I think most racists don't. Often, you'll see "I'm not racist but" I almost never see that with antisemitism. They don't add that qualifier. They just say it. Most racists I know will make a tacit acknowledgment of the racist implications of what they're about to say - antisemitic people don't. They often even engage in anti-Jewish racism while invoking anti-racism.

I don't really know any Jewish people in real life, perhaps only two. But I don't need to know them to know that hating them is wrong. I think I also have a debt of gratitude to many people in the Jewish community because of the advances in Buddhist Studies made by Jewish people, which sounds strange - but it's true that many leading voices and researchers, both in academia and within Buddhism itself happen to be Jewish. I'm not sure why this is, but it's absolutely true. The most prolific translator of Pali into English that I can think of is Jewish. The most impactful Vipassana instructor in America I can think of is Jewish. The most impactful voice in Deity Yoga, for Tibetan Buddhism, is Jewish. People who are Jewish, for some reason, contributed probably more than ex-Christian Americans or atheists combined to the proliferation of Buddhism in the United States.

Buddhists and Jewish people are known to have a close relationship. There are a lot of different reasons for this that I would suggest, but none that add up to explain the amazing contributions to Buddhism made by American Jews.

I think another reason I have for being so interested in antisemitism as a non-Jew is the kind of... political disillusionment I've been experiencing? It's been a disturbing few years, and I haven't seen many people elaborate very well on this feeling of abandonment and horror, witnessing people who you thought shared your values become hateful and deeply violent in their beliefs. The only people I've seen consistently speak about it happen to be Jewish.

I think all of this has helped contribute to a feeling of closeness to Jewish people as a group, despite that I don't really know Jewish people in my real life, and only have one or two Jewish friends online. This year has been a horror show of watching people's minds become twisted - it's so scary in a way I can't quite capture with words right now.

I also sometimes have a back and forth with myself about when and if to mention I'm not Jewish when I talk about antisemitism, because I do think it's totally necessary to explain the perspective from which I speak, but to be honest it feels kind of icky to be like "I'm not Jewish, but antisemitism is bad", because antisemitism is bad whether or not the person saying so isn't Jewish, and I think it might be a negative for people to think "not being Jewish" is something which makes it any less valuable to be against antisemitism, and talk about how against it you are. It's very real that people who talk about antisemitism are perceived to be Jewish, and obviously, it's important not to lead people into thinking you're Jewish when you're not, but adding an "I'm not Jewish" qualifier to statements about antisemitism I worry might contribute to the perception that those against antisemitism are Jewish.

Antisemitism is such an insidious ideology. And it's everywhere. I see it daily in so many different spaces. It has the largest impact on Jewish people, but it also impacts non-Jewish people at times. I distinctly remember being mocked throughout school for "looking Jewish." I think about that Greek restaurant which was attacked because they were thought to be Jewish. Or that man in the Amsterdam violence who tried to help and was then accused of being Jewish himself. It's so deluded, violent, and manages to consume people's thoughts like a parasitic worm in their brain.

Anyways, I planned for this post to be more organized. Oops.

[tsscat]

I’ve learned that apparently Sevika’s seat is supposed to be the house Kiramman’s* which if this is true this is kinda. Big and completely changes the context of Sevika joining the council? To me it paints a very different picture of what happened here than what I initially thought. It implies that Piltover was actually unwilling to give Zaun any sort of emancipation or representation after all that, and that Sevika had to take the house Kiramman seat to get anything. I suppose this also lines up with the hostility from the other council members she faces in the one second we see her. It also does have character implications for Caitlyn as well given that she would have had to give up her spot for Sevika. All in all a very different perspective/message on Sevika’s position than what the rest of the finale seemed to imply.

*This itself is based on the fact that Caitlyn is not on the council and that Sevika sits down on what used to be Cassandra Kiramman’s seat. This of course hinges on the idea that Caitlyn would have taken that seat in place of her mother traditionally which is???? A little unclear actually? There’s some dialogue/context that could maybe imply this, but we don’t really know a lot how the council replaces people when council members die. We know that the council can vote to remove/appoint members (though it’s rare), and according the Arcane wiki it in the past has typically had all of the “wealthiest and most powerful mercantile houses”. Regardless though I don’t why Arcane writers didn’t take like. Even 1 minute from Jayce monologues to elaborate on this.

[the-whispers-of-death]

10 Fun Facts About Stone

I wanted to talk about Stone and give a little more insight into his character, so ten fun facts about Stone. Ten facts about Kali will be in another post! Btw, while this is numbered, the order is by no means a measure of importance.

Stone gets henna done on his hands whenever he's home from deployments. Depending on when his plane lands, he either goes straight to his trusted henna artist or if there's no time, then he has her come over to his house to do it (because he rarely leaves the house when he's home, ofc the artist gets a hefty tip when she goes over to his house).

He doesn't read fiction, he solely reads non-fiction books. His house is full of either books on warfare or medical books. There are some books on astrology because he loves stars.

Not only would he be a cat dad if he was home more often, he'd also be a plant dad. He loves both cats and plants and if he ever retires, he's 100% getting cats and plants.

This me inserting myself into his character (but I mean, isn't that part of the point of OCs?), but he does not like ketchup. Hates it, in fact.

To elaborate on the hating the ketchup fact, Stone is autistic. He was undiagnosed for years until he was in his late twenties. The elaborating on the hating ketchup thing is that he hates ketchup because the smell of it makes him gag.

Stone hates horror movies. He doesn't watch much TV, this is a known fact about him, but he will watch something during recreational time on deployments if someone on his squad pesters him enough to watch a show or movie with them. Except horror/ thriller movies, he will not watch those.

As for what he would watch, he'd unironically get interested in a romcom movie. Someone puts on a romcom movie for shits and giggles and pulls him down onto the couch to watch it with them. While everyone's making fun of the movie, Stone shushes them because he's now invested in the plot.

Stone tries and fails to communicate via stares. He swears up and down that his eyes do the speaking for him, but no one can tell the difference. His eyes always look the same and then they just think he's mad at them because he's just full-on staring, practically glowering at them.

He once unintentionally walked into his neighbor's house when coming home from deployment one year. It had been three in the morning and he lives in a very safe/secluded neighborhood so everyone more or less leaves their front doors unlocked. Despite the fact that he himself locks his front door, he didn't think anything was wrong when he stumbled onto his neighbor's front porch and opened the unlocked door and went inside. He got all the way to the bedroom before realizing he was in the wrong house and thankfully it was the same neighbor who gets his groceries so he was used to Stone's antics.

While Stone is tech-averse, he does listen to music. How does he do that? With the help of his neighbor and Kali, he buys vinyl records. And his favorite music genre is Bollywood music.

Reblogs are welcomed & appreciated! Asks are open, feel free to pop in and talk or request something! (SFW requests only, please and thank you)

[magnusmodig]

rough childhood headcanon qs / @clxscdeyes / no longer accepting !

╰┈➤ 7 . how old was your muse when they realized they had childhood trauma?

||. one whole "today years old" post!ragnarok and hela's reveal. Except, even then, according to the movie, not really because Thor is still in heavy denial about all of it where Odin is concerned. I've spoken a bit (here) about how Thor adores his family; he idolizes them and views them through blinding rose-colored glasses, (especially when they're deceased) and that is especially true of his circumstances.

So, very often times when the truth clashes with the rose-colored view of them (namely: his father), Thor does one of two things: find a way to justify the words or action with the surrounding context of the time to make it make sense (e.g., well he scolded me harshly because i was talking back), or avoid it altogether. (this is his go-to. no talking about it; thor would rather not right now, so he does not.)

Key example being: he would rather focus on how his father changed his ways, and the Odin that he knew and grew up with was a man who had turned away from pursuing war for war's sake, and was instead one who valued peace and life. He would rather focus on that aspect of Odin, and take in the broader picture of Odin's life. REGARDLESS of the fact that what Thor is deeply, personally affected - not with the realization that Odin changed his ways once upon a time - but by the fact that he lied to him, manipulated him, and controlled and shaped every aspect of his being, for Thor's whole life, JUST to avoid another Hela. Someone who Thor is not, could not be farther from, and never knew about, because Odin (apparently) kept the matter of his true first-born a closely-guarded secret and seemingly would have continued to were it not for Odin's death, Hela's escape, and Ragnarok all coinciding at the same moment in time. And this, all because Thor rationalizes it as "well, I wouldn't want to be remembered and judged based on the person that I used to be. I should extend that same kindness to my father, because he too, changed." (x10 because now Odin is dead. And it's in poor-taste to speak ill of a dead man.)

The problem namely being: Thor only talks about things when Thor decides it's time to talk about things ; when he is ready. ...but as this is a topic that ripple effects down to Thor's core, good luck getting him to open up about it, even just with himself.

[mantisgodsdomain]

i just wanna say that you're 100% right about Vi, i also wish people wouldn't just toss her aside like that, she's just as important to the team. like, she has depth dang it! she's more than just Funny Bee Who Likes Berries! also you're super right about people trying to squish Team Snakemouth into little nuclear family shaped holes. that's all, just wanted to give you a high five for complaining about stuff that also annoyed me

We've been chattering about it for... more than a year now, we think? Not necessarily via public venues, since this fandom's close-knit enough that stepping on toes is a major issue, but Team Snakemouth is a TRIO, not a duo, and trying to squish the relationship down to just "two dads and their baby kid" really just seems... reductive. Exhausting.

Vi's one of our favourite characters in the game, and it gets really tiring to see her treated as a third wheel. Even beyond the infantilization that's utterly rampant in this fandom, Vi, more than everyone else, gets things... sanded off, or just ignored. Either she's a bratty little kid who doesn't know better, or she's a background object, and that's just... taking a big chunk out of the team dynamic. She's got complexity! She's part of the team, not some random kid that Kabbu and Leif are dragging along on their adventures! She's a valuable part of the team, and she should be treated as such!

[arolesbianism]

Every now and then I remember that oni in fact will eventually have more lore added and I get so excited and scared for a moment and then I remember that it could take months until we see any of that and I proceed to forget abt it again and the cycle repeats

[ckret2]

Chapter 51 of human Bill Cipher is once more the Mystery Shack's prisoner: Dipper and Mabel try to figure out what the Axolotl's poem means; Dipper gets the hang of astral projection; and... whatever's going on up there happens.

####

Ford and Dipper came back into the shack through the gift shop; Ford didn't want to risk crossing paths with Bill. While Dipper went into the house, Ford went down—returning to the safety of his subterranean study.

Once Ford had put on the old black trench coat he'd worn during his multiversal travels and gotten comfortable at his desk, he pulled out Journal 5 to document the events of the last few days. In a cheap ballpoint pen, he wrote, I've lost my #1 Grunkle pen (and favorite coat) to the waters of Lake Gravity Falls. And then, deciding this didn't adequately express his feelings, he drew a small frown. That coat had served him well for decades, and he'd really liked that pen. It did write excellently, and it had reminded him of his gniece and gnephew.

He spent three pages documenting the eclipse—what happened, what readings he'd taken, what he and Dipper observed—and then another four pages talking about Bill. What he'd told them, why Ford had dismissed it; his claims about a trans-dimensional axolotl distorting gravity with its migration; the statue, the rescue, the breakdown.

The act of writing always helped Ford clarify his thoughts and untangle mysteries; it wasn't until he was writing that he realized the limbs Bill had said he couldn't feel were the ones that had broken off the statue.

He listed the rules of the chess variants he could remember Bill inventing. He drew Bill huddled in front of the board, grim, tear-streaked, exhausted; and then scratched out his face, embarrassed at the thought of immortalizing such a raw moment for his private viewing.

He wrote, There's still a slim possibility that the entire "eclipse," start to finish, was Bill's masterfully-orchestrated scheme to make us pity and trust him; but it's unlikely. Although Bill is fiendish enough, he isn't currently powerful enough, and his lies certainly aren't elaborate enough. If he could pull off such a byzantine ruse, then he could just as easily escape—and if he can escape, why hasn't he? Bill may be insane, but he's never been THAT irrational.

And so, even as twisted as Bill's idea of "friendship" is... for the very first time, I'm convinced that he was telling the truth all along when he said he wants me as his friend. It's not an act. He risked his life to save someone who's an active threat to him.

And at the end of it all—though I'm grateful to be alive in spite of my own stubbornness—do I like him any better for it?

Ford leaned back and shut his eyes, sifting through the inner tumult of anger and old hurt that defined most of his memories of Bill, looking to see if anything had changed.

There was a sore, tender spot in his emotions, a place beginning to rot with remorse; when he prodded at those emotions, he found that it was shame over his own harsh conduct of the last couple of days. But he was only ashamed of how cruelly he'd acted; he wasn't ashamed that Bill was the one he'd done it to.

Outside of that tender spot—regret over his own behavior—nothing else had changed.

No. I still hate him. I'm grateful to be alive, but I hate him. He hasn't undone anything he did to my family and me, and he never will. Forgiveness can't be purchased with favors.

I'm only relieved at the certainty of it. Bill has committed an act that can't possibly be a lie. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he's shown me the truth; and the truth is he'd rather see me alive than dead. Whatever other lies he may tell, I can hold on to that fact.

Bill's miserable eyes peered out at Ford between the scribbles he'd drawn across his face. It was truly a pity that Ford had to hate him. Pity that Bill hadn't been somebody better. He could have been better.

Ford couldn't find it in himself to be embarrassed that he'd filled four pages talking about the monster he'd already wasted so many more on. Bill had been right about him: You might hate me to my face, but behind my back you're as obsessed with me as ever. The only thing Bill didn't understand was that hatred and obsession weren't mutually incompatible.

####

"Hey, Dipper," Mabel said, unfolding the living room sofa bed. 

"Hey, Mabel," Dipper said, passing through living room on his way to the stairs. He climbed up to the attic.

He came back down from the attic. "Mabel. Why's Bill asleep in your bed."

"He really needed a nap," Mabel said.

"Okay but why on your bed?"

Mabel pouted. "Dipper, do you realize he's never slept on a real bed? Ever?"

Dipper tried to imagine sleeping on a couple couch cushions on the floor every night. "Yeah, okay, that does kinda suck." Even if it was Bill's own fault he wouldn't sleep in the living room.

By unspoken mutual agreement, having a Bill in the bedroom followed the same law as finding a centipede in the bathroom. The law was "that's the centipede's bathroom now." So once the folding bed was set up, they sat on it to serve as their hang-out spot for the evening and caught each other up on what they'd done the last couple of days.

After Dipper & Co. had left, Grenda had come over to take advantage of the low gravity to retrieve the kite that had been stuck in a tree near the Mystery Shack since last summer (it was, tragically, too tattered to salvage), and then they'd gone over to Candy's house to photograph each other performing feats of impossible strength. (Mabel would be sending some pictures to their parents to confuse them, and adding the rest to her summer scrapbook.) She'd spent the next day breaking the trampoline world record until Soos came outside and said gravity was probably too low for it to be safe to be up in the air anymore, if Bill's warnings about being off the ground when gravity hit zero were true; at which point Mabel had hung around inside air-swimming until she suddenly slammed against the ceiling, and then the ground. She was fine. She just had a couple of bruises. She showed Dipper her bruises.

In return, Dipper told Mabel about how their quest had gone: the checks for micro-rips, Bill's increasingly frantic warnings, the lake—

("You got to see a bajillion magical axolotls and I didn't?!")

—the cliff, the Axolotl, Dipper's near-death experience, and what he now knew about his out-of-body dreams.

"Seriously?" Mabel hissed, eyes bugging out. "And he had us looking up lucid dreaming books! What a jerk!"

"I know! He could have just ignored the whole thing, we didn't even think it was anything but dreams."

"And I'd thought he was being so helpful, too! Like he was really trying to make up for giving you 'nightmares'!" Mabel laughed in disbelief and flopped down on the flimsy mattress. "All that because he just didn't want us to know how it was really his fault? Biiill, ugh."

His fault. Dipper hesitated, wondering whether he should tell Mabel what Bill had said about Mabel's Fault; then decided against it. Bill had probably been telling the truth when he'd said he only wanted all the credit for Weirdmageddon.

But—Dipper did tell her about Bill saving their lives. He would have felt like a liar if he hadn't—like he was trying to trick his sister into thinking Bill was worse than he already was. He hoped Ford wouldn't mind; but how could he not tell Mabel?

"He could have just let you die and didn't?" Mabel turned that over in her head, processing this sudden shift in Bill's behavior. "Wow. I'm impressed."

He also told her about their previous encounter with the Axolotl. Considering the other lies Bill had told recently, anything he said about them meeting the Axolotl was dubious at best; but Dipper could remember the Axolotl, so maybe some of it was true, even if Bill had twisted as much as he could. ("The Axolotl said hi, by the way." "Aww. Tell him hi back!" "Yeah, I... don't know how to do that.")

Dipper laid out his journal between them on the folding bed, and Mabel read over the couplet a few times. "'Sixty degrees that come in threes, watches from within birch trees'..."

"It's got to be talking about Bill," Dipper said. "Equilateral triangles have three sixty-degree angles. I just don't know why the Axolotl wanted to talk to us about him."

Mabel frowned at the lines. "I think... I remember meeting him too," she said.

"You do?"

"Kinda. Like in a dream," she said. "We were in some kind of futury space race car. And he had a really comfortable beanbag chair."

"Yes! I remembered the beanbag chair, too!" And he hadn't mentioned it in his journal. "This is great! Talking about it must... must cause us to remember, somehow. Maybe since the universe where we met the Axolotl doesn't exist anymore, our memories of it are... detached or something? Psychically floating around between dimensions until we try to remember them?" He took in Mabel's skeptical frown and shrugged. "I don't know!"

She scrunched up her face. "Ugh. Last summer's first-grader time travel was complicated enough. This is like college-level time travel. Maybe we can ask Bill how it works?"

She said it so easily, like she thought it was actually a good idea. Right after she'd heard about the lucid dreaming thing, too. "I don't think he'd help." Dipper lowered his voice. "He really didn't want Grunkle Ford and me to find out about the Axolotl—and he kept telling me not to think about what the Axolotl told me. He's trying to cover something up."

"Oo-oo-ooh." Voice dropped to a whisper, Mabel said, "Do you think it's some kind of Space Axolotl conspiracy?"

"It could be," Dipper said. "All I know is he was trying to tell us something important about Bill. Some kind of prophecy, or... maybe a warning...?"

He trailed off. Mabel had stopped listening to Dipper. She was rereading the couplet Dipper had written, moving her lips like she was murmuring under her breath—but whatever she was saying, it was much longer than the couplet Dipper had written down. Distractedly, she said, "Do you have a pen?"

"Yeah, here." Dipper quickly handed over the pen he kept in his vest.

Mabel clicked it, went to the bottom of the page, and wrote: A different form, a different time.

Dipper sucked in a sharp breath as the words snapped into place in his mind. "That's it! That was the last line! What else do you remember?"

"That's it," Mabel said. "It was free form poetry with a bunch of rhyme pairs."

"I don't think free form poetry rhymes."

"Pbbbt." Mabel blew a raspberry and shoved Dipper's face. "Whatever! You know what I mean." She pointed at the last line. "Do you think the poem's about why Bill's here? He time traveled to the Mystery Shack in a new body..."

"Exactly! Bill must be back here for a reason. He's got all those powers—or, used to, anyway—and he knows more about the multiverse than anybody on Earth... Maybe there's some kind of big threat coming, and Bill's the only one who can stop it, and—and the Axolotl wanted us to know...?"

"I like the sound of that," Mabel said. "That'd basically make him a hero, right?"

Dipper grimaced. "I mean. I guess? But we're talking about Bill. If he does help us stop a threat, it'd be like if a serial killer picked up a hitchhiker and killed him, and then it turned out the hitchhiker was an even worse serial killer."

"That still sounds kinda heroic to me."

"Pfff, okay." He looked at his journal. "But... what is he here to do?"

Mabel considered what they'd already written. "Maybe we can use him to spy on our enemies through birch trees!"

"Thaaat's probably not it."

"No, I think I'm on to something. I can feel it."

There was a lot of empty space between his couplet and Mabel's line. "There's more we're missing, though. Maybe the rest of the poem describes the threat? Or what we need to get Bill to do?"

"I can't remember anything else, though."

"Me neither."

They stared at the page together, waiting for something to come to their blank minds. Mabel looked at the fish tank. "Hey, Primrose! Do you know anything?"

The pet axolotl in the tank ignored her serenely.

Dipper said, "'Primrose'?"

"Yeah, last summer Grunkle Stan said her name is Freakface, but I thought she deserved a cuter name. She's primrose color!"

"Ford says he originally named him Nikola."

Mabel gasped. "Nikki..."

Dipper twisted around to look at the axolotl. "Do you know anything? Do you... get messages from the Axolotl's heralds, or anything...?"

Nikola slowly opened his mouth, and slowly closed it.

Mabel said, "Hey. The Axolotl's one of those dimension-crossy time-travely guys, right? He probably wouldn't have given us a prophecy in the wrong timeline and then made us forget it unless he knew we'd remember it in time in the rightdimension!"

"I guess," Dipper said uncertainly.

"So we don't need to worry about it! We'll remember it when we need to."

"Unless this timeline's going to branch, and the only one where we survive is the one where we put all our effort into trying to remembering—"

"Shhh!" Mabel put a finger over Dipper's mouth. "Uh-uh. No college time travel. We'll be fine!"

Dipper pushed her over. "Okay, but we should at least try a little to remember what the Axolotl told us."

"What if we work on it separately?" Mabel propped herself up on an elbow. "Instead of just sitting around thinking about it. And whenever we remember a line, we can tell each other and see if it makes anything click."

"That might be faster," Dipper said, stroking his chin. "We're already remembering different lines."

"Yeah! And that lucid dreaming book said something about focusing on a problem before you sleep so you can figure it out in your dreams! We can just work on it in our sleep and we'll remember it all in no time!"

Dipper laughed. "What? No way, I think lucid dreaming is just one of those made up pop psychology things. I didn't get it to work at all." Either it didn't work or Bill had deliberately recommended a terrible book.

"I did! I can remember like... eighty percent more dreams. And I can tell when I'm dreaming a lot more often!"

"Huh." Or, maybe Dipper just wasn't doing it right. "Maybe I need to start over from step one. Do you know where the book we were using went?"

"Over here!" Mabel had set a couple library books on the end table next to the sofa bed; she pulled out the second one, which had a glittery pink bookmark with a cat on it stuck two-thirds of the way through. "Just don't lose my bookmark."

"Thanks." He'd reread the first step before bed. "We should probably be getting ready for bed anyway, huh?"

"Seriously?! It's barely bedtime!" And when the adults weren't watching, official bedtime was an hour and a half before Actual Bedtime.

"I'm exhausted. I just hiked up and down a mountain and faced down death."

Mabel pointed at Nikola. "You faced down a big salamander."

"Close enough."

They went upstairs, brushed their teeth, went to their bedroom...

And stopped in the door. Bill was still asleep. "Oh. Right," Dipper said.

He was curled into a ball on his left side, facing the wall, covered with only the zodiac blanket and his borrowed/stolen top hat sitting on the side of his head. He didn't use a pillow; he'd pushed Mabel's pillows and dolls behind himself to form a squishy makeshift fortress.

"Please don't wake him up," Mabel whispered. (She'd already set up the folding bed for herself; she'd clearly planned on this.) "He's had a really really hard time the last couple of days, and I think he needs as much sleep in a real bed as he can get, and it's just for one night, and I'm sure he'd rather sleep than do anything evil—"

"He said something, didn't he?"

Mabel paused. "Yeah. I think seeing his body really messed him up."

Dipper sighed. "We were trying to keep him away from it." He didn't want Mabel to think they'd forced him to stare his own death in the face. "But he did that... eye thing and looked through the trees, and..."

Mabel nodded.

Well. Dipper couldn't kick him out now. For Mabel's sake.

As children, occasionally when they got hotel rooms with a bed too few, their parents would stick them in one bed with a barrier of pillows in between them. At age thirteen and without two crabby parents trying to get them to just go to bed after a long plane flight, they unanimously vetoed that plan. Dipper decided against asking Stan if he could sleep in Ford's unoccupied bed, both because he suspected Stan would just go upstairs and drag Bill out of the room and because he didn't want Stan to think he was scared of Bill. He wasn't scared of Bill. Not anymore. He could handle one measly night in the same room as him. Anyway, somebody had to make sure he wasn't unsupervised in their bedroom all night, right?

Dipper and Mabel quietly set a floor mirror and old lamp next to Mabel's bed, draped a sheet between them, taped on a pink poster that said "WARNING! TRIANGLE ZONE!" and was covered in stickers of triangular objects, and decided Dipper was adequately shielded. If Bill did get up during the night, he'd probably trip through the sheet and wake half the house before he got anywhere near Dipper.

Dipper went to sleep with a baseball bat in his hands.

####

"Okay," Bill said, hands on his sides, "what am I looking at here?"

The feral band members of Sev'ral Timez turned toward Bill, eyes reflecting in the dim light. They were squatting around Bill's petrified corpse like a pack of apes examining a sleek black monolith.

"Hey girl," Creggy G. said.

"Hey," Bill said. He looked down at himself. His onyx black feet hovered over the ground and the yellow glow from his exoskeleton illuminated the clearing. "Lemme cut to the chase, is this gonna turn into a raunchy dream? My corporeal love life is about as cold and dry as Antarctica, I keep hoping one of my dreams will get a little hotter and wetter—"

"Nah, G," Deep Chris said. "Mr. Bratsman got us fixed."

"Aw."

"We're here to pay you reverence for freeing our minds from the chains of the conventional," Greggy C said, gesturing to Bill's corpse. Leggy P was kneeling and bowing to it and Chubby Z was posing for it. "We want to help free you like you tried to help free humanity."

Bill's eye narrowed. He tapped a finger against the edge of one brick as he considered this offer. Finally, skeptically, he said, "Fine. I'll bite. Why should I think you can help me?"

"Because we can give you the understanding your heart's been missing, girl. You're just like us," Chubby Z said. "A horror never meant to exist, born of a dream to construct the perfect golden idol, forced to dwell within an unnaturally-fabricated human shell."

Bill tilted his head thoughtfully. "I'm with you so far."

"We want you to join us," Deep Chris said. "Cavort with us in the silvan night, G. Shun the harsh light of the spotlight for the healing salve of moonbeams. We'll get drunk on the sweet fermented summer berries, uncaring of how the brambles prick our flesh. We'll dance in a frenzy of ecstasy and only sleep when the morning sun lifts the dew from the flowers and the sweat from our skin. It'll be straight Dionysian, boo."

"We can kiss the hot trees," Creggy G said.

Bill grabbed his shoulder. "Oh, you're the human that keeps making out with birch trees! I knew your face was familiar!" He paused. "So... are there any eligible ones around here?"

"Sure, girl, just downstream."

"If I'd known, I would've polished myself first."

"Say you'll join us, Bill girl," Deep Chris said. The band crowded around Bill to either side, posing around him—the backup dancers for the star singer. "You'd be one of us."

"We're already exactly the same," Creggy G said, holding up a mirror so that it reflected his and Bill's faces beside each other. In Bill's human face were two empty white eyes with pinprick pupils and pale blue irises, exactly the same as the eyes of the Sev'ral Timez boys.

He sat up with a gasp, hands flying to his face. There were still green boughs at the edges of his dreaming vision, blending into the wooden boards of the Mystery Shack's attic. Before sleep had fully fled his mind, he seized up the zodiac blanket draped over his body and stared into his embroidered eye.

The eye stared back at him. Through it, he could see his horrified sleepy face, and his normal slitted yellow eyes. His connection to the blanket's eye disappeared as he finished waking up.

He heaved a sigh of relief and flopped back down. He'd been lucid, but he hadn't been in control of that dream. He still needed practice.

He rolled toward the light of the window, groped around beneath it until he found his journal, grabbed up his crayons, and flipped pages blearily until he found the first blank one. He started writing down his dream, pausing only briefly as he tried to figure out how to translate "Sev'ral Timez" before settling on a sufficiently goofy way to misspell "several times" in Plaintext.

He made it halfway down the page before he stopped. Hold on. This wasn't his beautiful journal. These were not his beautiful crayons. He checked the cover and grimaced in displeasure when he saw a pine tree rather than a hand. Dipper's journal. Bill ripped out the page, ate it, and set the journal and Mabel's crayons back on the table  under the bedroom window.

"What was that," Dipper asked, "some kind of Morse code?"

Bill yelped and twisted around. Dipper's soul was hovering above Mabel's headboard, watching over Bill's shoulder.

"Hey! Back, foul ghost!" Bill snatched up Mabel's pillow and swung it at Dipper.

"Ow—Hey! How did you hit me, I'm in the mindscape—"

"I said back!" Bill swung again, chasing Dipper off the bed. "Back into your fleshy tomb!" He climbed off the bed, stumbled into Dipper and Mabel's trap, tripped through the sheet and probably woke up half the house.

He yanked the sheet off and flung the pillow at Dipper by its corner. "Now get back in your body, go to sleep, and leave me alone."

"I don't know how to get back in it. I just wait until it happens by itself," Dipper said, floating irritably over his sleeping body, arms crossed. "Why do you think I just wander around every time I have this dream?" He paused. "Right—it's not a dream, is it."

Bill sighed heavily. "Try putting your body on like..." He almost said like an exoskeleton, remembered his audience, and amended himself: "Like it's clothing. I usually start with the hands. Just like putting on gloves!"

Dipper looked at the cold fingers wrapped tightly around the baseball bat. "How do I put hands on like gloves? There's no opening or—"

"Just try it, would you?" Bill sat tiredly on the edge of Mabel's bed.

Dipper shot him an irritated look, but pressed his ghostly hands against his fleshly ones, passing through the skin until one set of fingers rested inside the other. A fingertip twitched. 

Bill gestured with one hand, continue. "Now the sleeves."

"I know how to get dressed." Dipper laid down in his body, forearm into forearm, shoulder into shoulder—until he was wholly back inside. He sat up, awake. "Huh."

"There, see?" Bill said. "And if you want to take it back off, just do the same thing in reverse. Like degloving your body from your soul!"

"Did you have to phrase it like that?" Still, Dipper tried it, peeling out of his body from the fingertips up. He left his body sitting upright as he hovered over it.

Bill chuckled tiredly. "Lookit your face, staring at nothing. Stupid looking."

"Shut up." He slid back into his body, more quickly now that he knew what he was doing.

"Great," Bill said. "Now that you know how to get back in your body, never do that again." He flopped back onto Mabel's bed and rolled over to face the wall. "It's a pain in my base having you wander around all night."

"Then you should've thought of that before you ripped my soul out of my body," Dipper grumbled. "Can you reattach me to my body?"

"Sure, easy." He lifted a hand to point down at his regrettably human form. "Not like this, though. Wanna help reattach me to my body?"

"Never in a million years."

"Then come back in a million years. There's nothing I can do for you until then." Bill dragged Mabel's zodiac blanket back over himself. "So sorry. Go to sleep. Leave me alone."

Dipper bet Bill could do it and was only saying he couldn't to try to trick Dipper into helping him. But he lay back down—clutching his bat again—and shut his eyes.

After a moment, Bill asked, "Where's Mabel? Sleepover?"

"Sofa bed in the living room."

"Right."

And then there was silence.

Several minutes passed. Dipper nearly fell back asleep. He heard Bill climbing out of bed and creeping across the room; but the footsteps didn't approach Dipper's bed, so he didn't open his eyes.

A few minutes after that, Dipper heard him come back, walking more heavily. He cracked open an eye to see what Bill was up to.

He was carrying Mabel, who was still asleep; his arms were trembling from her weight, but even at that Dipper hadn't known Bill was that strong. With a quiet grunt, he set her on her bed, then haphazardly tossed her sheet and zodiac blanket over her. He picked up his top hat from the bed and put it on; and then he wandered off, footsteps quiet as a ghost, and Dipper heard the creak of the door as he left the bedroom.

That was a lot nicer than Dipper had expected from Bill. Maybe he did care about Mabel in his own way.

Mabel rolled over and latched on to one of her dolls. Dipper shut his eye and fell back asleep.

####

(My favorite part of writing this was Bill dreaming about Sev'ral Timez saying the most absurdly flowery things imaginable. Anyway, let me know what y'all think about this week's chapter! And reminder that I MIGHT skip next week or the week after because the next couple chapters need heavier editing than usual.)

[indigo6f00ff]

toontown drama on the timeline. What

[transmechanicus]

The description here confuses the hell out of me like i know this is the Blood Games and Custodes already have unlimited authority, but what's this about bribing a tech priest and taking control of a battlefleet solar ship, like are those ppl involved not going to be killed for helping with this training exercise??

I must say the author of the codex fluff story has managed the impossible: they managed not only the first canon appearance of a female custodes, but she also is a fan-favourite now.

[charyou-tree]

I need people to understand that Uranium is an eldritch horror

I'm not talking about radiation, or nuclear weapons, or anything that you can do with uranium, I mean its mere existence on Earth is a reminder of cosmic horrors on a scale you can barely conceive of.

When a nuclear power plant uses Uranium to boil water and spin steam turbines to keep the lights on, they're unleashing the fossilized energy of the destroyed heart of an undead star.

Allow me to elaborate:

In the beginning, there were hydrogen and helium. The primordial fires of the Big Bang produced almost exclusively the two lightest elements, along with a minuscule trace of lithium. It was a start, but that's not much to build a universe out of. Fortunately, the universe is full of element factories. We call them "stars".

Stars are powered by nuclear fusion, smooshing light elements together to make heavier elements, and releasing tremendous amounts of energy in the process, powering the star and making it shine. This goes on for millions to billions of years depending on the stars mass (although not how you might think, the bigger stars die young), the vast majority of that time spent fusing hydrogen into yet more helium. Eventually, the hydrogen in the core starts to run low, and if the star is massive enough it starts to fuse helium into carbon, then oxygen, neon, and so on up through successively heavier elements.

There's a limit to this though:

This chart shows how much energy is released if you were to create a given element/isotope out of the raw protons and neutrons that make it up, the Nuclear Binding Energy. Like in everyday life, rolling downhill on this chart releases energy. So, starting from hydrogen on the far left you can rapidly drop down to helium-4 releasing a ton of energy, and then from there to carbon-12 releasing a fair bit more.

But, at the bottom of this curve is iron-56, the most stable isotope. This is the most efficient way to pack protons and neutrons together, and forming it releases some energy. But once its formed, that's it. You're done. Its already the most stable, you can't get any more energy out of it, and in fact if you want to do anything to it and make it into a different element you're going to have to put energy in.

So, when a massive star's core starts to fill up with iron, the star is doomed. Iron is like ash from the nuclear fire that powers stars, its what's leftover when all the fuel is used up. When this happens, the core of the star isn't producing energy and can't support itself anymore and catastrophically collapses, triggering a supernova explosion which heralds the death of the star.

What kind of stellar-corpse gets left behind depends again on how massive the star is. If its really big, more than ~30 times the mass of the sun and its probably going to form a black hole and whatever was in there is gone for good. But if the star is a bit less massive, between 8-25 solar masses, it leaves behind a marginally less-destroyed corpse.

The immense weight of the outer layers of the star falling down on the core compresses the electrons of the atoms into their nuclei, resulting in them reacting with protons and turning them all into neutrons, which creates a big ball of almost pure neutrons a couple miles across, but containing the entire mass of the star's core, 3-5 sun's worth.

This is the undead heart of the former star: a neutron star.

If, like many stars, this one wasn't alone but had a sibling, it can end up with two neuron stars orbiting each other, like a pair of zombies acting out their former lives. If they get close enough together, their intense gravity warps the fabric of spacetime as they orbit, radiating away their orbital energy as gravitational waves, slowing them down and bringing them closer together until they eventually collide.

The resulting kilonova explosion destroys both of the neutron stars, most likely rendering the majority of what's left into a black hole, but not before throwing out a massive cloud of neutron-rich shrapnel. This elder-god blood-splatter from the collision of the undead hearts of former stars contains massive nuclei with hundreds to thousands of neutrons, the vast majority of which are heinously unstable and decay away in milliseconds or less. Most of their decay products are also unstable and decay quickly as well, eventually falling apart into small enough clusters to be stable and drift off into the universe becoming part of the cosmic dust between the stars.

However,

Some of the resulting massive elements are merely almost stable. They would like to decay, but for quantum-physics reasons decaying is hard and slow for them, so they stick around much longer than you might expect. Uranium is one such element, with U-238 having a half-life of around 4.5 billion years, about the same as the age of the Earth, and its spicier cousin U-235 which still has a respectable 200 million year half life.

These almost-stable isotopes were only able to be created in the fiery excess of energy in a neutron star collision, and are the only ones that stick around long enough to carry a fraction of that energy to the era where hairless apes could figure out that a particular black rock made of them was emitting some kind of invisible energy.

So as I said at the beginning, Uranium is significant because it stores the fossilized energy of the destroyed heart of an undead star, and we can release that energy at will if we set it up just right.

When you say it like that, is it any shock that the energy in question will melt your face off and rot your bones from the inside if you stay near it too long?

[comicaurora]

I’ve repeatedly seen you say that you can’t read any Aurora fanfiction “for legal reasons”. I assumed this was a joke and you’d just resolved to yourself not to read any that might change where you take the story (understandable), but the more I see you say it, the more I wonder if there’s actually a legitimate legal reason. So forgive my inability to pick up on humor sometimes— is that a joke? And if it’s not, could you elaborate a bit on those reasons?

I am not a lawyer so I only have a layman's grasp of this, but as I understand it, if I read a fanfic, think "oh that's a cool idea" and consciously or unconsciously integrate it into my future work, that ensnares me and the fanfic author in a terrible tangle of mutual theft.

Technically, fanfiction exists in an extreme legal gray area, and in the early days of the internet, authors were very litigious towards their fans using their work. In the same way that Disney will get on your ass for putting Mickey Mouse in your work, any author has the same legal ownership of their characters, and they can choose to exercise it. Some famously have, like Anne Rice, but most nowadays do not. Fandom is understood to be a beneficial ecosystem for a creator to cultivate. Most creators Pretend They Do Not See It so it can continue to exist.

But suppose you wrote a fanfic about Aurora where something cool happened, and then a few chapters later, your story showed up in Aurora itself. Maybe even with some lines ripped verbatim, for even less plausible deniability. Oh shit - you've been robbed. But your story was fanfiction to begin with, only loosely permitted to exist with the understanding that you didn't own the setting or characters used. In this scenario, I stole your work, but it was work you made out of MY work in the first place. If you got mad and litigious, the legality of fanfiction itself would immediately take center stage in the argument. Do you have a right to your work when you made it out of MY work without permission? Do I have the right to take work that was made out of my work and use it without credit? The fact that I think fanfiction is a great and fun art form has no bearing on the fact that, technically, it is IP theft. And the fact that it IS IP theft has no bearing on the fact that me seeing a cool idea in a fanfic and going "mine now" would still be a shitty thing to do.

But things can get muddier. Suppose you write an Aurora fanfic where events A, B and C happen, and then over the next several chapters of Aurora, A, B and C happen. Did I steal ideas from your fanfiction? Maybe, but it's also possible that I had A, B and C planned out beforehand, and you put them in your fanfiction because you picked up the foreshadowing and prep I was putting down. You could still be mad about it, but there's a very real possibility that in this scenario the only thing I'd be guilty of was Good Foreshadowing.

In this situation, if you got mad and litigious about it, my best defense would be ignorance. I couldn't have stolen your fanfiction because I never read it. There is absolutely no chance that I was influenced by your work; I've never even laid eyes on it.

And that is why I don't read Aurora fanfiction.

[13lov]

tethered pt. 2 | jjk

✰ pairing. — emo!jk x reader

✰ genre. — early 2000s au, best friend's older brother, childhood friends to lovers, smut, light angst.

✰ word count. — 10k+

✰ warnings. — swearing, family issues, friendship betrayal, mention of drugs/alcohol, smut [ cunnilingus, rough sex, ...idk how else to describe it ] reader and jk are both 18+, minors dni.

✰ a/n. long awaited part 2! the amount of love i received from part one was overwhelming and it means to world to meet that so many people instantly fell in love with this couple. another part is already in the works!

✰ taglist. @ahgasegotarmy116 @hellbornsworld @kissyfacekoo @littlestarstinyseven @skzthinker @cuntessaiii @nikkiordonez12 @ilikekpop-c @busanbby-jjk @xjjk187 @aloverga @kookcobain @mzeji @bxcndd @hoseokteardrop @canyon-lwt @hopefulrascalstatesmantoad @jksteponme @parkinglot-nights @chromekingkong @jk97bam [ if i didn't tag u it's because tumblr didn't allow me to! ]

part one | masterlist | ao3 | buy me a coffee?

“Did you seriously think I wouldn’t find out?” Somi is glaring daggers at you upon opening the front door, arms crossed across her chest as she eyes you. Her lips are twisted into a disgusted snarl, you’ve never seen her this upset before.

You swallow the lump in your throat, “Find out about what?”

She cocks her head to the side, squinting her eyes at you. “Don’t act like you don’t know.”

Fuck, you’re screwed. If there were a list of all the reasons why you shouldn’t have had sex with Jeon Jungkook, the simple fact of  him being your best friend’s brother would be number one.

With closed eyes, you let out a relieved sigh. As much as you wanted to wait to tell Somi about hooking up with Jungkook, it’d be an enormous weight off your shoulders not having to hide it any longer. It’d only been a few days since it happened, but you really hate keeping secrets from her.

“How’d you find out?” You question, chewing on your bottom lip.

“My parents told me, duh.”

Holy crap, Jungkook told his parents the two of you had sex? Why the fuck would he do that?

“They did?” You ask, completely bewildered.

“Well, yeah!” Somi finally uncrosses her arms, demeanor completely changing as her gaze softens, “Why didn’t you tell me your sister got engaged?”

Thank God you didn’t elaborate any further.

“Oh! Because they probably aren’t gonna last.” You respond, stepping into the Jeon household once Somi allows you to enter. It’s been a few days since you’ve been here, mostly due to the fact that you were completely avoiding Jungkook.

The empty condom in his trash bin had been plaguing your mind nonstop, you could barely even sleep from how embarrassed you were. Why did he fake his orgasm? What if he didn't fake an orgasm and just shot a blank? Did you do something wrong? Was he not attracted to you? Why was the condom empty? 

Seeing him in person would’ve only intensified the thoughts roaming in your head, so you avoided him at all costs up until now. You’d promised the Jeon siblings that you’d finally see Twilight with them and their friends despite not being able to function correctly around either of them. 

Somi snickers, following you into the living room. “Ooh, that’s not nice.”

“It’s true, though,” you explain, “she’s still so young, only a few years older than your brother. I mean, can you picture Jungkook getting married in a few years?”

The regret from that question fills you almost immediately.

“Sure,” Somi responds, pausing to greet the eager doberman charging at her. “As long as he finds the right person. He’d get married in a heartbeat.”

You want to ask what Somi’s definition of “the perfect person” would be for Jungkook or the type of girl she’d be willing to set him up with. It’d probably be the unnamed, mysterious redhead you recently dreamed about curb stomping (yikes!).

You don’t respond to this, taking a seat on the sofa when the sudden shout of your name has you flinching. It’s Somi’s parents, excitedly greeting you with open arms as you politely stand to properly hug them. “I feel like it’s been so long since we’ve seen you! How’s your family? We just heard the news about your sister!” Mrs. Jeon ambushes you with questions, all while cradling your face.

“About how she’s making the biggest mistake of her life?” You half-joke.

Mrs. Jeon playfully waves a hand in your direction as she steps into the kitchen, her husband only a few feet behind. “Oh, don’t say that. I’m sure the two of them will be very happy together.” She turns to her husband, grabbing his hand, “I just can’t believe Imogen is getting married. I still remember when she first started high school.” 

Mr. Jeon sighs in disbelief. “I know,” he mumbles, nodding at you. “You’re up next soon, huh?”

“Maybe she can marry Jungkook,” Mrs. Jeon comments, opening her fridge, “set him straight.”

“Gross, Mom. Don’t wish that on her.” Somi groans in disgust as she plops down next to you.

Well, that answers your previous question.

“We should probably get going, right? To make it in time for the trailers?” You ask.

“Yeah, we should.” Somi responds, tilting her head up towards the staircase, “Jungkook! Hurry up and come downstairs! We’re ready to go!”

“Gimmie a minute!” He shouts back, and a chill runs down your spine. It’s been too long since you’ve heard his voice. The last time you saw him, he was lying naked in his bed; you’re not sure how you’ll survive being around him all night knowing what your last encounter was like.

As promised, Jungkook is sliding down the staircase a minute later and nails the landing. He’s wearing a black Twilight shirt featuring the leading couple, black cargo pants, and, of course, black sneakers. He looks like his usual self until you take a closer look and notice the reddish-black eyeshadow that decorated his eyes. It wasn’t much, just enough to make his eyes pop, and it complimented him perfectly. A second later, you see the black nail polish neatly coated on his nails. You have to blink a few times to ensure this is real life and you’re not trapped in a wet dream.

He strolls into the kitchen, ignoring the stares from his parents before digging through the fridge. His mom clears her throat, crossing her arms at him.

“What?” He asks, retrieving a two-liter Mountain Dew bottle. 

“Seriously, Jungkook? The makeup? The nail polish?” She questions, clearly frustrated.

Jungkook cocks his head, unscrewing the soda bottle’s lid. “What’s wrong with it? Somi’s wearing the same thing.”

“Son, you know that’s different.” His father interjects.

Jungkook takes a swig of the soda before responding. “Why? Because she’s a girl?”

“It’s not like that, hon. It’s just…we didn’t make a big deal of it when you first started the piercings, and the tattoos, and the hair dye, but this…it’s a little much. Don’t you think?” His mother asks.

You want to step in and remind his parents that Jungkook is old enough to make his own decisions and express himself as he pleases, but it’s not your place. Instead, you cheer silently when Somi surprisingly interrupts the discussion. “Did you guys seriously force him to come back home just to criticize how he presents himself, or would you rather have a peaceful summer?”

“We aren’t trying to criticize him, Somi. We’re just looking out for our child.” Mr. Jeon responds.

“It’s a special occasion, Dad. Is it bad that I wanted to look nice for—” Jungkook abruptly cuts himself short, quickly glancing in your direction before returning his attention to his parents. “...to go see Twilight with my friends?”

What was that about?

Silence passes, and the three stare at each other until Mrs. Jeon sighs defeatedly and says, “No, there’s nothing wrong with that, sweetheart. I hope you guys enjoy the movie.”

“We will,” Jungkook responds, closing the soda bottle lid and placing it back in the fridge. He heads for the front door, beckoning you and Somi to follow behind. He’s eager to leave the house, quickly swinging the front door open and jogging towards his car.

You and Somi say goodbye to her parents with a promise to be home by eleven before following in Jungkook’s footsteps, who already has the car running. As you wait for Somi to finish locking the front door, Jungkook rolls down his window and shouts, “Hurry up! Let’s go!”

“Will you calm down?!” Somi throws back, rolling her eyes as she finally removes the house key from the lock.

You follow her towards Jungkook’s car, sliding into the backseat as you pretend not to notice Jungkook watching you through the rearview mirror. He wants you to look at him, but you refuse, busying yourself by buckling your seatbelt and convincing Somi to do the same. Once Jungkook is convinced you’re not going to do so much as glance at him, he puts the car in drive and pulls into the road.

Somi talks your ear off in the backseat about whatever comes to mind while you keep your eyes on the window. It’s hard to not notice Jungkook glancing back at you through the mirror at every red light or stop sign, but you don’t dare meet his gaze.

The movie theater’s parking lot is crowded when you arrive; it takes Jungkook a few minutes to eventually locate a spot. A smile is plastered on his face as he parks the car, eager to see some of his closest friends after being separated for months. He informs you and Somi to disregard anything foolish he friends may say, claiming they arrived early to smoke behind the movie theater, so they’re more than likely too high to function properly.

Jungkook shrugs when Somi asks why people do that, shoving his hands into his pockets as the three of you approach the theater entrance. "Some people say it makes the movie experience better."

You want to ask Jungkook if he's ever been high, but you can barely even bring yourself to look in his direction, let alone ask him a question. So you're silent as the three of you enter the movie theater, instantly spotting Jungkook's bandmates in the far corner.

Well… Jungkook's bandmates and one other guest.

The bubbly redhead greets you guys first, running up to Jungkook with open arms as if they haven't seen each other in a million years. It makes you want to vomit.

You look away as they hug, directing your attention to the concession stand employee who had already been watching you. His name tag reads 'Beomgyu,' and he resembles a younger version of Jungkook, with the same dark hair and similar lip piercings. His eyes stay on you until a customer blocks your path, and you're back to watching Jungkook reunite with his friends.

"Hey, you were the one at that party, right? With Somi?" The redhead asks, squinting her eyes at you.

"Yeah." Is all you respond with, because why in God's name is this girl talking to you right now?

"It's nice to meet you. I'm Scar," she introduces herself, extending a hand for you to shake.

Somi interjects, grabbing ahold of your wrist while glaring at Scar. "Your name is Scarlett."

She drags you along to the ticket booth, mumbling about how she doesn't like nor trust Scar. When you ask for her reasoning, she responds with, "I don't need one. I just don't like her."

At least you're on the same page about that. 

Still, you can't help but wonder why Somi has a distaste for Scar. You have your petty reasoning for disliking her, but Somi (more than likely) has better knowledge of Scar's personality, so whatever reasons she dislikes her could be legitimate. 

You're thinking of this as Jungkook orders the tickets for everyone, asking the employee to give him a minute when the friend you recognize as Yugyeom starts tapping his shoulder. "We should go see Saw instead; it just came out."

Jungkook looks genuinely confused at the suggestion. "What? No, we came here to see Twilight."

"So?!" Jaebeom chimes in, eyes red as the devil, "Come on, dude, you've already seen Twilight. Don't you wanna see something new?"

"Fuck no, we're literally in the middle of buying the tickets." Jungkook reminds everyone.

"I kinda wanna see Saw, too."

"Same."

"Yeah, me too."

"I do, too."

Jungkook whips his head around at his sister, "What? Even you?"

Somi scoffs, "Well, yeah! Twilight just seems boring in comparison."

"Come on, guys," the employee interrupts, "you're holding up the line."

Jungkook turns towards you. "Do you still wanna see Twilight?"

Truthfully, you want to go home; but seeing how excited Jungkook was for the movie made you feel something, so you nod. He lets out a relieved sigh. 

He moves out of the way to allow his friends to buy their tickets first, slipping his sister cash to pay for hers, which she initially rejects. "I don't need your money," she claims.

"Just take it, Somi. I brought it for you." 

From what you can make out, it's enough to cover her ticket and grab something from the concession stand. The pair of siblings may bicker a lot, but it's nice to know Jungkook still looks out for his younger sister whenever he can.

Somi reluctantly accepts the money and purchases her ticket; you watch as Jungkook follows suit, ordering two tickets for Twilight and stopping you from opening your purse. "Don't worry about it."

"Oh, it's fine. I have enough." You reassure him.

Jungkook laughs to himself, "Why are the two of you like this?" He questions, fishing out crumpled dollar bills from his pocket and handing them to the cashier, who sighs in annoyance, straightening and inspecting each bill before placing it in his register.

You don't know why Jungkook insists on being so nice to you despite your persistence in not speaking to him. A part of you wonders if he thinks this is some kind of date now that the two of you will be separated from the group. It doesn't matter. You don't know why you're overthinking it.

Once all the tickets have been purchased, the seven of you head towards the concession stand. Somi debates pushing herself to the front of the long line, claiming that the theater should make accommodations for those whose movie is starting sooner. Or something like that, you can't really focus with the way Beomgyu is staring at you. You're used to guys always staring, but they tend to shyly look away upon making eye contact. 

Beomgyu is quite the opposite, staring you down every chance he gets. Your skin feels hot, and you're suddenly anxious under his gaze. 

When the group ahead of you has finished ordering and is heading off into their theater, you're sure to stick close to Jungkook as you approach the counter. Beomgyu eyes him over once before returning his gaze to you. "What can I get for you guys?"

Jungkook takes the liberty of ordering a large popcorn for the two of you to share and doesn't even get mad when you request a slushie instead of a fountain drink. He doesn't let you pay, swatting your hand away when you absentmindedly reach for your purse. "You seriously have to stop doing that." He mumbles, handing Beomgyu the cash.

Beomgyu quickly prepares the popcorn and Jungkook's drink but takes his time making your slushie. He's sure to fill it to the brim, and you're worried it may accidentally overflow and leave a sticky mess. "You didn't want candy or anything?" He questions, handing you your drink. 

You shrug, "Maybe Twizzlers, but—"

Before you can finish, Beomgyu is reaching under the counter and sliding you a pack of Twizzlers. "On me."

"Oh, are you sure?" You ask, hesitant to accept the free candy.

Beomgyu sends Jungkook a cocky smirk before he responds, "Yeah, enjoy the movie."

You thank Beomgyu and pretend to not notice the death glares the two boys are sending one another before walking with Jungkook to your theater. "That guy was weird." He comments.

"Yeah." You agree, but it's definitely not true. Beomgyu was friendly and clearly interested in you, unlike Jungkook, who sent you nonstop, draining mixed signals. If his definition of weird is someone straightforward, then you should start going after weirdos.

Once you're settled in your seats in the back of the theater — per Jungkook's request — he clears his throat and says, "So, I tried messaging you on Facebook. Didn't get anything back."

"Oh, sorry. I haven't been using Facebook that much." You reply, hoping your lame excuse is believable enough.

He nods, eyes bouncing between you and the movie trailers playing in the background. "Yeah, I figured." He says. When you don't respond, he continues, "I would've asked Somi for your number, but I didn't want her to get suspicious or anything."

"That's smart." You admit, nodding in agreement.

"Are you okay?" Jungkook asks suddenly, his full attention to you.

You finally make eye contact, and the expression on his face makes your heart sink. He looks genuinely concerned and confused by your sudden coldness. You hate being so mean to him, but you're too embarrassed to explain the real reason why you've been avoiding him. So you nod and say, "Just a little tired."

It's clear he doesn't believe this; the same expression is still on his face as he refocuses on the movie trailers. 

You hate how awkward it feels to be around him now. Never in a million years would you have guessed the two of you would end up like this. A week ago, you would've been overjoyed at the idea of being on a movie date with Jungkook, and now you're considering leaving early and catching a taxi home.

The two of you remain silent as the rest of the trailers play on, and Jungkook immediately sits up in his seat when the lights finally dim and the curtains are pulled back further. He's reticent throughout the movie, aside from a muffled chuckle occasionally; he even side-eyes anyone making too much noise.

You enjoy Twilight nonetheless, agreeing with Jungkook that you do, in fact, dress like Bella Swan from time to time. When he asks if you liked it as you're exiting the theater, you tell him it was very nice and that you hope there'll be another movie.

Jungkook smiles at this, tossing his empty cup in a nearby trash bin. "I'm sure there will be. Maybe they'll even cast you as Bella's stunt double since you already have the clothes."

"Shut up." You tease, and it feels nice to joke with him as usual. You may finally have the courage to tell Jungkook why you've been so distant these past few days.

Saw doesn't get out for another few minutes, so you're stuck waiting in the lobby for Somi and everyone else. Jungkook gestures towards the nearly empty slushie cup clutched in your hands, "You get free refills on that, I think."

You take his word, strolling over to the concession stand. Beomgyu spots you immediately and gestures for you to skip around the line. You shake your head, but he still beckons for you to come over. You feel bad, but the line has gotten longer since you were first here, and you really don't want to wait in a long line just for a refill. 

"What flavor?" He asks once you've slid him your cup.

You tell him anything is fine and he gets to work, combining the cherry and blue raspberry flavors. "How was the movie?"

"It was good. The vampire stuff was cool."

"Have you seen Saw yet? It just came out."

"No, I haven't."

"It's so good; if you wanna give me your number, maybe we can see it together sometime."

What is it with guys offering to take you out to a movie they've already seen? You're not complaining; it's just odd.

Beomgyu is clearly interested in you and has offered to take you out. You'd be silly to pass up on this guy just because your current relationship with your longtime crush is at a standstill. So you accept, scribbling your phone number down on a napkin with your name underneath. He promises to call you once his shift ends and that he looks forward to seeing you.

When you turn to meet up with Jungkook, he's gone. You catch him storming out of the theater, hauling ass to his car.

You run to catch up to him, calling out his name and begging him to slow down.

When he finally does stop, there's a look on his face that you've never seen before. He gets angry all the time, but this was something completely different. "So you were just using me, huh?"

What? What is he talking about?

"Using you for what?"

"To lose your virginity. You just wanted to get it over with, right?" His voice is slightly hushed now but still loud enough for you to feel embarrassed about anyone passing through the parking lot.

"Jungkook, what are you talking about?"

"You used me to lose your virginity, so when you date other guys you can tell them you've had sex before. Is that what this is?"

This accusation hurts, considering that Jungkook was the only guy you've ever been interested in romantically and sexually. You don't know where this theory originated, but you don't like it.

Jungkook continues before you respond, "I tried reaching out and talking to you, and you just blew me off! And yet, here you are, giving your number to random guys! Am I not good enough for you?!"

"It's not like that, Jungkook!" You don't mean to raise your voice at him, but you can't help it. Both of your emotions were at an all-time high.

"Then what is it like?!"

Here goes nothing.

There are already tears forming as you go to explain yourself. "I didn't reach out to you because…because I was embarrassed."

"You were embarrassed to have sex with me?"

"No!" You yell in reassurance, "No, no, no. Of course not. I was embarrassed because I know you didn't finish. I just thought maybe I did something wrong or didn't do enough."

Jungkook quirks a brow at you, "What makes you think I didn't finish?"

You really hate that he's making you explain this. "I saw the condom afterwards; it was empty."

"You went digging in my trash can to find the condom?" Now he looks more disgusted than confused; this is going so horribly.

"No! I saw it when I went to get my phone off the charger."

Jungkook takes a minute to process everything, scratching his chin in deep thought. You can't tell what he's feeling, but he does look hurt. It makes you regret avoiding him in the first place.

"So, you were prepared to never talk to me again over an empty condom?" Despite his stern demeanor, he's clearly shaking as he questions you.

You want to say no, that it wasn't a case, but you can't bring yourself to lie to him again. So you say nothing. Jungkook nods at your lack of response before turning around and walking towards his car. You remain still, frozen in place, watching as he sits on the hood of his car and smokes a cigarette.

If it weren't for Somi finishing her movie within the next few minutes, you would've walked the entire way home.

This bitch is driving you crazy.

Your older sister, Imogen, is home for a few days to start her wedding preparations. The fake bridezilla persona she's putting on bothers you the most, bursting out in tears at the most inconvenient times or having a breakdown about selecting a theme. Deep down, she doesn't care about any of this bullshit; she's like you about parties or big events.

"This is literally the biggest day of my life, and you're being so fucking difficult." Imogen snarls at you, pouring herself a cup of coffee. You're sitting a few feet away on the kitchen counter, staring out the kitchen window. Despite Imogen's occasional yelling and snarky comments, all you can think of is Jungkook.

It's been an entire week since the movie theater incident. You haven't stopped by the Jeon household not once, telling Somi you fell ill and don't want to get her sick. It's another lame excuse, but she buys it, opting to talk to you on the phone daily until you recover.

You have yet to speak to Jungkook; it's not like you've tried. The idea of messaging him on Facebook and not receiving a response makes you anxious. It's hard to believe you subjected him to the same torture not long ago. It doesn't help that Scarlett is suddenly all over his page, commenting on nearly every one of his posts, writing on his wall, or tagging him in pictures. Your recurring dream of curb-stomping her is back in full force.

You sigh at your sister, "Whatever you say, Imogen."

She waves dismissively at you, "Please, don't even talk to me right now."

You hop off the counter in annoyance and stomp off towards the staircase, mumbling, "Fucking drama queen."

"Language." Your mom warns you, flipping through one of the several bridal magazines your sister has stacked on the coffee table.

Imogen scoffs, setting her mug on the counter. "I'm the drama queen? Whenever I talk about my wedding, you throw a fucking fit!"

"Why are you pretending to care about this stupid wedding and that stupid boy you barely even know?!" You shout back from the staircase.

"If my wedding is so stupid, then don't come!"

"I don't even want to go to your stupid wedding, with your stupid fiancé and your stupid red velvet cake that no one's going to fucking eat!"

This is probably the dumbest fight you've ever had.

Imogen doesn't respond to this, advised by your mother not to and to let you stomp up the stairs in a furious rage. You make a beeline straight to your desktop, waking up the computer with a mouse shake and entering your password.

Facebook is already open once you've signed in, Jungkook's page staring right back at you. You're ashamed to admit you'd been cyberstalking him, but you had no choice. Seeing him in person would've been too much, but you still want to ensure he's doing okay.

There's a new post up when you refresh the page; you chew on your bottom lip as you anxiously wait for it to finish loading.

It's a picture of his dirty Chuck Taylor's perched upon a wooden stool. You recognize the background immediately; he's in the treehouse in his backyard. You and Somi would spend hours up there as kids, giving each other manicures and exchanging secrets; now, you can barely look her in the eye without bursting out in tears. You hate how complicated things have become.

A light tap against your door has you swiveling around in your chair. It's Imogen, leaning against your doorframe with her arms crossed. "Who's that?"

"Somi's brother." You respond, scrolling to a photo that actually shows his face.

Imogen steps further into your bedroom, squinting her eyes at the computer screen. "Oh, yeah. Hasn't changed much, has he?" When you remain silent, she asks, "Would it be wrong of me to assume he's the real reason why you're so upset?"

You sigh, letting your shoulders drop. "You'd be very correct, actually."

She nods in understanding, sitting on the edge of your bed. "So, what's going on? You like him?"

"We kind of like each other, I guess." You mumble. Honestly, you're not quite sure how Jungkook feels about you at the moment.

"And Somi doesn't approve of it?"

You snort, "Somi doesn't know. There was nothing to tell her at first, but things have changed."

"Are you guys dating?"

"No. We actually haven't talked in a week. I may have hurt his feelings."

Imogen nods towards your desktop, “Where is he now?”

You shrug, “Home, I guess.”

She stands, stretching out her limbs. She glances around your room, locates a jacket dangling lifelessly from your doorknob, and tosses it to you. “Let’s go.”

Taking an impromptu trip to the Jeon household had you sweating. What if Jungkook doesn’t even want to see you? What if Somi catches you talking and asks what’s going on?

Each concern you raise is instantly shot down by Imogen, claiming you’re creating excuses to avoid seeing him, how you’re only imagining the worst possible scenarios. You appreciate her overwhelming support but can’t help the nervousness creeping through your body as her car approaches the Jeon household.

“Remember, be apologetic but not desperate,” Imogen informs you, putting her car in park in front of the house.

“I am desperate.” You remind her.

“Well, don’t let him see it. You got this.”

You thank your sister one last time for the advice before stepping out of her car. You’re careful to avoid being seen from windows as you make your way into the backyard; not entirely sure what you’d say if Somi were to catch you.

You scale the tree quickly, silently praying the old wooden steps are stable enough to hold your weight. 

You sigh in relief once you’ve reached the top, only to groan at the sight of Scarlett sitting across from you. She looks up from her iPod with a bright smile, quickly pulling out her earbuds as you enter the treehouse. “Hey, stranger! Watcha doing here?”

Her enthusiasm really makes you sick. “Came to see Jungkook,” you pause to glance around the tiny, wooden deathtrap, “but he’s nowhere to be found.”

“He’ll be back soon; went to use the bathroom,” Scarlett informs you, running her hands through her hair. “So, you guys really like each other, huh?”

What? She knows about that?

“Jungkook told you?” You question, trying your best to appear unbothered. You’re unsure where she’s going with this, but you have no reason to trust her.

Scarlett nods, “We tell each other everything. So when he told me you guys weren’t talking, I may have devised a plan to help you come around. You do use Facebook, right?” She smirks

Holy shit, all the posts of them together were to make you feel jealous enough to have a conversation with him; and your sworn enemy was the mastermind behind it. It was all a ploy to get under your skin, and you fell right into the trap. 

“You’re a stubborn little thing, though. Didn’t think it’d take you so long.” She comments, slipping her jacket on.

You shrug, “I didn’t think he’d want to talk to me.”

“Jungkook always wants to talk to you. I don’t mind it, though. You seem good for him.”

Aside from Somi, Scarlett is probably the last person you would’ve expected to be supportive of your relationship with Jungkook. So, to hear she’d been secretly rooting for you behind the scenes nearly gives you whiplash. You almost feel wrong about your dreams of shoving her face into the pavement.

You tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear, “So, nothing is going on between you guys?”

Scarlett grimaces as if you deeply offended her, “Of course not! Don’t get me wrong, he’s cute, but not my type. His sister is cute, though.”

Woah.

“Somi? Jeon Somi? You’re into her?” You ask, completely stunned.

“Hell, yes. Hey, do you think you could set us up? Jungkook would never.”

“You do know that Somi can’t stand you, right?”

Scarlett excitedly nods, “I know, it’s kind of a turn-on.”

You hold your hands out to stop her from elaborating any further. Scarlett has surprised you in more ways than one in less than five minutes. You’re sure any new information would’ve made your head explode.

“I’ll…try my best.” You promise; not quite sure how Somi would feel about the idea of Scarlett liking her.

“For what?” A voice interrupts, causing you and Scarlett to direct your attention to the treehouse’s entrance. And there he is, in all his gothic glory. 

“Girl talk, none of your business,” Scarlett responds, making room for Jungkook to crawl in. 

“Fine. You keep your secrets; I’ll keep mine.” Jungkook groans, sitting between the two of you.

“Will do. I’m outta here. Got a hot date with a box of hair dye. See you suckers later.” Scarlett waves goodbye as she exits the treehouse, reminding you of your promise before disappearing down the steps.

Jungkook clears his throat, sweeping his hair away from his eyes. "So—"

"I'm sorry," you cut him off, "I should've reached out and talked to you, but I was just too embarrassed and didn't know how to approach you about it. I really like you, and I wasn't using you to lose my virginity. I mean, you're the only person I've ever been interested in. So, again, I'm sorry."

He sighs, "I understand why you were embarrassed, but I promise it had nothing to do with you."

"Then what was it?"

Jungkook anxiously scratches the back of his head before he responds. "It's just that…sometimes…it takes me a little bit longer to, uh…to finish."

Oh.

"Is it because of your…size?" You can't help but wonder.

Jungkook snorts, "What, you think I'm big?"

"I'm out of here." You joke, faking as if you're about to leave.

"Wait, wait, wait." He stops you, "I was only kidding. I never really thought size played a factor in it, but every guy is different. But, still, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy us having sex. I mean, you had already finished, and I didn't want to tire you out just for my sake."

Knowing he had a perfectly reasonable explanation makes you feel even worse about spending all that time avoiding him. You want to tell him you wouldn't mind him tiring you out, that the idea excites you, but you refrain.

A beat of silence passes, and you ask, "But, I'm sure if there's something that you're really into, then it wouldn't take as long for you to finish. Right?"

Jungkook nods, "I guess."

"Then, what is it? What are you into?"

He coughs, tips of his ears turning a light shade of pink. "Um…I guess I'm into…roughness?"

Ah. 

"That's not a big deal. A lot of people are probably into that."

"I mean, it's fine either way, but I mostly prefer when girls are kinda rough with me. Fuck, this is embarrassing."

"It's not!" You reassure him, placing a gentle hand on his knee, "It's nothing to be embarrassed about. I appreciate you trusting me enough to tell me."

Jungkook stares at your hand on his knee before placing his own on top. You twist yours upwards and interlock your fingers, not missing the smile that forms on his face. His bangs have swept into his eyes again, and you use your free hand to move them out of the way. "It was my first time, too, by the way."

You snort, "You don't need to say that just to make me feel better."

"I'm serious," he continues, "I mean, I've gotten pretty handsy in the past, but nothing like what we did."

You shake your head, "I don't buy it. You seemed so experienced like you knew what you were doing."

Jungkook shrugs, "I mean, I'm not completely innocent. I may occasionally watch certain videos and read certain stories from time to time."

Porn and smut. Beautiful combination.

He shakes his head, "You still don't believe me; how come?"

You sigh, memories of the night before he left for college flashing in your mind. How you ran home in tears, how he only responded to Scar's comment on Somi's Facebook post. It almost hurts to think about. "The night before you left for school, there was an opened condom wrapper on your floor. I just figured…you know."

Jungkook nods at the memory. "I wasn't gonna go to the dorms the next day. I was planning on running away, that's why I gave you that bandana. After my parents helped bring my stuff to the dorms, I was gonna put everything in my car then take off."

You're having a hard time processing this information. Why would Jungkook plan on running away? What does this story have to do with the empty condom?

He continues, clutching your hand even tighter. "I only told a few people I was leaving, and there was this one girl who came over to say goodbye. She'd been really into me for a while and was heartbroken that I was leaving. We were about to hook up, hence the condom wrapper, but I couldn't do it."

"Why?" You question.

"Didn't feel right. I wasn't into her the same way she was into me. Just couldn't do it." He explains, eyes staring deep into yours. You believe him; you know he's being truthful.

"What made you decide to stay?" You ask.

"For Somi," he answers, "I couldn't just leave her like that. And for you, too."

Though you've felt it for many years, telling Jungkook you love him is too soon. But you want to, so very badly.

"I'm glad you decided to stay." Your voice is barely a whisper now as you try to stop yourself from tearing up.

He nods, "Me too."

You sit in comfortable silence for a minute, clutching each other's hands. You wish you could stay like this forever. 

"I just realized you never told me if there's anything you're into." He points out.

You shrug, "Just you." And it's true: Jungkook is the only person you've ever been interested in. Everything he says and does is genuinely attractive to you.

He drops your hand gently, using it to tilt your head towards him, and he kisses you. 

You're quick to cradle the back of his head as his hands snake around your waist, deepening the kiss. You move to straddle his lap, slowly pushing him onto his back. He grunts in surprise, breaking away from the kiss. "You—"

"Stop talking." You demand before your lips intertwine with his once again. With one hand on his chest, you reach to grab a fistful of his hair and tug lightly, earning a satisfied moan from him. You're not used to being rough with guys, but you're sure Jungkook enjoys it with the way his erection is already pressing up against your thigh.

Reluctantly, you pull away from him and sit up, staring at him sprawled underneath you in complete awe. "Alright, I'll message you my number so we can text. See you later."

"No! No, no, no. Please don't go." He pleads, holding you in place when you go to stand, "Just stay a little longer, please."

You smile down at him, fighting the urge to stay in the treehouse. "I can't. Imogen is waiting out front. We'll see each other soon, okay?" You promise, planting a kiss on his forehead.

Jungkook nods, fingers drumming against the floor as he watches you crawl out of the treehouse. "Don't be too surprised if I seem extra excited to see you next time." He calls after you.

"Trust me, I won't."

Jungkook is the first boy to ever sneak in through your bedroom window.

He carelessly tosses his backpack in first, cringing when it lands on your carpeted floor with a loud thud. Though you’ve assured him your parents are heavy sleepers, he’s still worried you’ll get in trouble if he makes too much noise and accidentally reveals himself. “Sorry,” he apologizes, wrist gripping your forearm as you help pull him in.

“It’s fine,” you whisper back, “they’re not gonna wake up.”

“Still,” he grunts, using his upper body strength to pull him further into your room. “Don’t want you getting in trouble.”

It’s a day after the treehouse incident; as promised, you sent Jungkook your number and spent all day texting back and forth. Despite not being big on texting, you admire how Jungkook likes to keep you updated on what he’s doing and how he checks up on you to ensure you’re okay. 

“We’ll be fine, but just in case, I did make room for you in my closet in case you have to hide.” You inform him.

Jungkook stifles a laugh, “Good to know.” He settles himself on the edge of your bed, moving over once he realizes he’d sat on a pile of clothing. “Oh, were you about to shower?”

“I was,” you answer, moving the clothing over to your nightstand, “but I’ll wait until after you leave.”

He has to stop himself from making a joke about joining you in the shower. He nods, leaning down to drag his backpack towards him, “Guess what I got today.”

“What?” You question, legs folded underneath you as you sit beside him.

Jungkook slowly unzips his backpack, careful not to make too much noise before rummaging through it and clutching something in his hand. He momentarily turns his back towards you, clips something to his shirt, then turns back around.

There’s a name tag on his chest now with his name scribbled in black ink and a little star next to it. “A job?”

He nods, “At that music store, Spin City. Need to start saving up before classes start. Plus, I wanna take you out somewhere nice before summer’s over.”

You gulp, “Like, a date?”

“Yeah. I mean, unless… I don’t know. I just kinda figured…” He trails off, suddenly worried he may be scaring you off.

You grab ahold of his hand, “I know, and trust me, you’re perfect, and I want us to be together. But, the night we saw you at that party, I did ask Somi if she would be upset if I was into you. Surprisingly, she said she wouldn’t mind as long as I talked to her before making a move on you. And, well…”

“We made a move on each other without telling her,” Jungkook finishes for you.

You nod, “Exactly.”

He sighs, “So, I’m guessing that means you wanna wait before we make things official.”

“Yeah. No matter what, I still want to be with you. But it’d be best for all of us to get her on board with this first. Show her how much we truly care for each other, and make sure she’s okay with it. So she knows my relationship with you won’t affect our friendship, and vice versa.” You explain. Jungkook’s eyes never stray from yours, listening intently and nodding at everything you say.

“That’s fair,” he agrees, “It’s a good idea. Do you want me to talk to her? Or for us to talk to her together?”

You shake your head, “She’ll definitely freak out on you; it’s best if I do it alone first, then you talk to her afterward.”

Jungkook leans back against your bed, resting his head on your pillow. It’s funny how different your aesthetics are; he looks perfectly out of place, sprawled on your baby pink pillow surrounded by teddy bears. “When?”

“I dunno,” you respond, lowering yourself until your head rests comfortably on his bicep. “Doesn’t have to be right away. As long as it’s before we move into the dorms.”

“We shouldn’t wait too long, though. It’ll only make things worse.” Jungkook mumbles, pulling you closer to him.

“I know. I’ll have a talk with her soon, I promise.”

You interlock pinkies to solidify your promise and ease his nerves. You hadn’t realized how anxiety-inducing this was for Jungkook as well. The idea of Somi not approving of your relationship had him genuinely worried. 

“But, you should know that no matter what—” he starts.

You cut him off, “I know.”

The hands that once purposely dumped slime in your hair are now tugging your panties down your legs.

“Can we try something?” Jungkook asks with a mumble against your lips, your soft blue underwear now clutched in the palm of his hand.

“Like what? I actually make you come for once?” You joke, earning a laugh from Jungkook.

“Don’t worry about me.” He presses another kiss against your lips, “You trust me?”

“Of course.” You respond, sitting up in Jungkook’s bed as he moves backward, never breaking eye contact with you. He pushes your skirt up slightly but pats your hand away when you go to remove it altogether.

“Leave it on.” He commands, bringing himself at face level with your cunt.

You’ve never felt this shy in your life, grateful your bunched-up skirt created the tiniest barrier between having Jungkook see you all flustered. Never had you been this intimate with a guy, especially not a guy you technically weren’t even dating.

His thumb is circling your clit before you have the time to protest, to tell him he doesn’t have to do this just for your sake, but the feeling of his fingers pressed against you has you at a loss for words. 

“This okay?” He asks.

“Yeah.” You respond, tilting your head upwards to stare at the ceiling.

Before you know it, his middle and index fingers are pressed against your opening, eliciting a gasp from your lips. At your reaction, Jungkook slips his finger into your entrance, thumb still playing with your clit. He insists on being teasingly slow today, wanting to draw out every moment and observe your reaction.  

He pumps his fingers in and out of you in a slow, consistent motion, an amused smirk on his lips when he hears your breathing become ragged. Abruptly, he slips his fingers out of you, moving your thighs to rest them atop his shoulders. 

“Wait, you don’t have to—oh fuck.” You’re cut off by Jungkook pushing himself forward, placing a sudden kiss on your clit that has your hips jolting in the air. His hand grabs your waist and licks at your slit, keeping you in place as he gently returns your body to his mattress. 

His growing erection is the last of his worries, all too focused on dragging his tongue across your cunt. He flattens his tongue, pulling the wetness upward until he’s circling your clit again. In search of something to grab onto, your hands grip the bed sheets until Jungkook reaches forward, moving your hand over to grip his hair.

His eyes are closed when you look down at him, and you swear you can hear him moan as he eats you out. You try your best to keep the noise down out of fear someone will hear, but you can’t help but yell out when he’s back to fingering you, all while circling your clit with his tongue. 

Your grip on his hair tightens, pushing his face further into your pussy, and he lets out a satisfied groan. It’s embarrassing how quickly your orgasm approaches; everything with Jungkook is so intense. He knows this, eyes fluttering open to watch your expressions. Black eyeshadow is smeared across his eyelids as his eyes focus on your own, hands gripping your thighs as he tongue circles your clit.

His fingers are relentlessly pumping into your cunt now, contrasting against how teasingly slow his tongue is moving. He pulls his mouth away, lips glistening with your arousal, and asks, “You close?”

You don’t respond directly, but the grip you have on his hair gives him all the answers he needs before he’s diving back in. It doesn’t take much for you to come after that, a final kiss pressed on your clit, sending you over the edge and coating Jungkook’s fingers.

Jungkook doesn’t stop there, still continuing to lick and suck your clit until you’re begging him to stop from the overstimulation.

“Sorry.” He apologizes, planting a kiss on your inner thigh, “Was that good?”

“That was literally the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” You respond. Jungkook lets out a laugh as he crawls up next to you. “I should be upset with you, though.”

“What?” He questions, peppering your face with kisses, “Why’s that?”

“I came over to talk to your sister about us, and you distracted me.”

“How’d I do that?”

“Because! You came downstairs in your eyeshadow. Then you were all like, ‘Oh, hey. I cleaned my room; wanna check it out?’” You mimic a deep voice that sounds nothing like his. 

“I apologize for putting on eyeshadow, bringing you to my room, and eating you out. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

“I guess.”

You both laugh at this as you move to pull your skirt down. “Hey, how’d you realize you like it when girls are rough with you?”

Jungkook shakes his head as the memory returns to him, a shy smile on his face as he glances over at you. “A couple years ago, I was picking on Somi for something. I don’t even remember why, but it got to the point where my parents were telling me to stop, and I wouldn’t. Then, you just started yelling at me out of nowhere, and I don’t know why, but it was the hottest thing ever. I was in awe. I really thought you were gonna slap me. Since then, it’s just been a turn-on of mine.”

“Wow. That’s actually kind of pathetic.” You tease.

He groans, “Please don’t say that. You’re gonna make me hard again.”

Laughter is shared between you once again before you lean your head down to rest on his chest, the sound of his steady heartbeat making you feel calm. A comfortable minute of silence passes before you have to address the unfortunate inevitable, “Somi should be here soon, right?”

“Yeah,” Jungkook mumbles, “within the next ten minutes.”

You sigh, “Next time I come over, I’ll have to tell her about us.”

The next time you stop by the Jeon household, Jungkook has you bent over in the backseat of his car.

His finger digs into your waist as his cock is plunging into you at full force, emptying all the thoughts from your brain. You still haven’t fully adjusted to his size, but you don’t care; the pain of being split open makes you come faster. It feels better.

Jungkook insisted on taking things slow, telling you that you’d need to adjust to his size, but the moment you sunk your dripping cunt onto him, he was under your spell. 

Your body lunges forward with every rough stroke Jungkook gives you, hands buried in your hair as he pulls you up against his chest. His hand moves from your hair down to your neck, tilting your head back while applying the slightest bit of pressure against your throat. Your eyes close out of instinct as tears form in the corner of your eyes before trickling down your cheeks. He kisses them away one by one before settling his lips on your neck. You make a mental note to check yourself for hickeys afterward.

You’re coming around him before you realize it, body spasming as you grip the driver’s seat headrest. Jungkook shows no signs of stopping or slowing down; in fact, he’s sped up even faster since fucking you through your orgasm. He lets go of your neck to push down on your back, left hand gripping your waist while the right intertwines your fingers with his. 

A few strokes later, he’s finally coming and jokes about showing you the used condom as confirmation.

You shake your head, gesturing for him to pass you the shorts he’d tossed in the front seat. “I can’t believe I let you trick me again.”

“What?!” He exclaims in utter shock, reaching in the front seat to grab your discarded clothing, “How exactly did I trick you?”

“I came over to talk to Somi, but then you were all like, ‘Hey, come look at my car; I just got it washed.’” You playfully roll your eyes, searching around the backseat for your underwear.

“Can I keep these?” He asks suddenly, the most nonchalant expression on his face as your panties dangle from his middle finger.

You scoff, reaching to snatch them from him, confused when he retracts his hand. “I think I will keep them until you talk to Somi. Since it was you who wanted to talk to her first.”

“Then, I guess I’ll get them back tomorrow because I’m definitely talking to her today.”

Except you don’t.

You spent the entire summer sneaking around with Jungkook and procrastinating about having that talk with Somi. It was anxiety-inducing, to say the least, and you had no idea how she’d react. You tell yourself she won’t be upset as long as you assure her your friendship won’t be affected by you dating her brother. 

You’re scheduled to move into the dorms within a few weeks, so it’s best to sort things out now before you all live under the same roof, unable to avoid one another. Jungkook doesn’t seem nervous at all. In fact, he’d given you a pep-talk the day before you showed up at their home.

“She can’t stay mad forever.” He pointed out, eyes sealed shut as you do his eyeliner.

“I know,” you mumbled, adjusting yourself on his lap, “but that girl can hold a grudge.”

“Right, but this is you we’re talking about. You mean a lot to her, to both of us, actually.”

His words play in your mind as you enter the Jeon household, following Somi into the kitchen. “Baking something?” You ask, a sweet, decadent scent hitting your nose.

“Brownies for some stupid bake sale my parents are having. Help me clean up?” She asks, pouting her lips at you.

“Sure.” You agree, under the assumption that there wouldn’t be much to even clean up. 

Boy, you were wrong. It’s like Somi used every dish in the house to make one sheet of brownies. There’s no backing out now; you already agreed to help, and it’d be best to stay on her good side for now.

She gets to work rinsing each dish before handing them to you to load the dishwasher, moving quickly to get everything done faster.

“What a beautiful friendship.” A familiar voice comments; you fight back a smile as Somi groans at her brother.

“You wouldn’t know; you don’t have any friends,” Somi responds, laughing at her words.

“Neither will you, soon,” Jungkook whispers back, groaning when you swat him in the chest. “Any brownie batter left?”

“None for you. Shouldn’t you be at work?” Somi asks, handing you another dish.

Somi takes a break from rinsing off the dishes to bicker with Jungkook for a minute. You tune out from the conversation, dipping your fingers into the leftover batter bowl and gathering the chocolate on your fingers.

“I’m leaving, I’m leaving,” Jungkook says. When Somi finally directs her attention elsewhere, Jungkook takes the opportunity to grab your wrist, bringing your fingers up to his lips before sucking the chocolate off them. 

Your eyes practically bulged out of your head, nervously glancing behind you to ensure Somi hadn’t seen anything. You swat at Jungkook’s chest for the second time, and he laughs as if you’re being overly dramatic. It’s odd how surprisingly calm he is about everything. His demeanor would have worried you if you didn’t trust him so much. 

Jungkook wipes the renaming bit of chocolate around his lips before mouthing ‘Good luck.’ You give him a nervous smile, watching as he slips past Somi and leaves out the front door. You get back to work, making small talk with Somi as you help her load the dishwasher.

It’s now or never.

“So,” you start, “we’re gonna be living together soon.”

Somi smiles, “Finally! God, I can’t wait to have some freedom. My stupid curfew is a major cock-block. Right when things are finally getting good on a date, I have to go back home. So fucking frustrating. There’s literally cobwebs in my vagina.”

You snort, loading the final dish into the washer. “Well, you won’t have that problem anymore.”

“I know. And maybe you’ll even find someone worthy even to date you.” Somi jokes, hopping on the kitchen counter.

“Uh, what if I already have found someone…worthy enough?” You question, pressing a few buttons to get the dishwasher going.

“As if.”

“Somi, I’m serious.”

She sighs, still not buying your confession. “Alright then, who is it?”

“...Your brother.”

A beat of silence passes, and then Somi doubles over in laughter, nearly slipping off the counter several times in seconds. It takes her a minute to catch her breath, clutching her collar for support as she regulates her breathing; even tears are forming in her eyes. “Holy fuck, can you imagine? You and my brother? Jesus Christ.”

“Look, there really isn’t an easy way to say this, but we really do like each other. We’ve been…together this whole summer. Well, not officially; I didn’t want to put a label on anything without talking to you about it first.” You finally confess. The weight on your shoulders doesn’t immediately drop as you expected; it’s like the load has gotten heavier.

Somi has a blank expression as she stares at you, eyes darting around the kitchen as she processes the information. “You’re serious?”

You nod.

She shakes her head, “What kind of friend are you?”

Fuck.

“Somi, please, let me—”

She cuts you off, hopping off the counter and inching towards you. “So, what? All this time, you were using me to get close to Jungkook? Out of every fucking guy on the planet?!”

“No! Of course not! Somi, I never even imagined myself in a relationship with him until this summer, I swear!” Your voice trembles as Somi approaches you. The two of you have never been in a physical fight before, but the expression on her face tells you there’s a first time for everything.

“Oh, really? You expect me to believe that, huh? So it’s just a coincidence that you guys suddenly got together right before we’re all gonna be living in the same building?”

“I know it doesn’t sound great, but—”

“I think you should go.” Somi cuts you off calmly, her sudden change in demeanor shocking you. A moment ago, she looked angry enough to hit you, but now, she seems a few seconds away from breaking down in tears. 

You nod understandably, telling Somi to take all the time she needs and to call you when she’s ready to talk. 

She doesn’t say a word as you exit her house, and you wonder if you’ve just lost the best friend you’ve ever had. 

“I’ve never seen her this angry, Jungkook. I thought she was gonna hit me or something.” You groan, ear pressed up against your phone as you rant to Jungkook.

It’d been a few hours since you left Somi’s house; Jungkook had promised to call you during his break to hear how the conversation went. You’re still shaking as the memories flood you, how your best friend in the world accused you of using her. What a fucking joke. 

“She’ll get over it, trust me. Y’know, before I called you, she spent five minutes yelling at me over the phone. Five fucking minutes, and I just took it. She’ll be fine.” He says, following up with a loud slurping noise that suggests Jungkook has chosen to have ramen for lunch.

It’s astonishing how calm he’s managed to stay this entire time.

You flip over on the couch, head resting on the armrest as you stare at the ceiling. “I just don’t wanna lose her. She’s a fireball, for sure, but she’s my fireball. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

“I just told you you’re not gonna be without her, okay?”

“...Okay.”

There’s a knock at your front door, most likely from the pizza delivery Jungkook had sent to your house.

“I gotta go. The food is here. Are you still stopping by after your shift?”

“Of course. You gonna be alright?”

“Yeah,” you stand, making your way to the front door. “I’ll save you some pizza.”

He chuckles at that, “You better. I’ll see you later, okay? I love you.”

He what?

“You what?” You pause, hand on the doorknob.

“I love you, and I’ll see you later.” He hangs up.

You don’t have time to process his words; the knocking at your front door happens again.

Twisting the knob, you’re met with Somi staring back at you. “Somi? What’re you—”

“I don’t care if you date Jungkook.” She claims, storming through your front door, “If you guys want to be together, then I’m not standing in the way. But I will not be your friend if you date him, so it’s either him or me.”

You follow Somi into your living room, your pulse quickening upon hearing her ultimatum. “Somi, that’s not—”

“Before you choose…as a girl, and as your friend, I have to be completely honest with you.” She sighs, fingers nervously raking through her hair as she sits on your couch. “I called Jungkook after you left, and he talked to me about you guys.”

You nod, taking a seat next to her. “Okay, and…?”

She sighs again, taking your hand in her own. “Everything he’s ever told you was a lie.”

[thewriteadviceforwriters]

The Telling Truth: When 'Show, Don't Tell' Doesn't Apply (You Don't Always Have To Show, Don't Tell.)

Hey there, fellow writers and beloved members of the writeblr community! 📝✨

Today, I want to talk about something that's been on my mind lately, and I have a feeling it might resonate with many of you too. It's about that age-old writing advice we've all heard a million times: "Show, don't tell." Now, don't get me wrong – it's great advice, and it has its place in our writing toolbox. But here's the thing: it's not the be-all and end-all of good writing. In fact, I'd argue that sometimes, it's perfectly okay – even necessary – to tell rather than show.

First things first, let's address the elephant in the room. The "show, don't tell" rule has been drilled into our heads since we first picked up a pen (or opened a Word document) with the intention of writing creatively. It's been repeated in writing workshops, creative writing classes, and countless craft books. And for good reason! Showing can create vivid, immersive experiences for readers, allowing them to feel like they're right there in the story.

But here's where things get a bit tricky: like any rule in writing (or in life, for that matter), it's not absolute. There are times when telling is not just acceptable, but actually preferable. And that's what you all will explore today in this hopefully understandable blog post.

Let's start by breaking down why "show, don't tell" is so popular. When we show instead of tell, we're engaging the reader's senses and emotions. We're painting a picture with words, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions based on the details we provide. It's a powerful technique that can make our writing more engaging and memorable.

For example, instead of saying "Sarah was angry," we might write, "Sarah's fists clenched at her sides, her jaw tight as she glared at the broken vase." This gives the reader a clearer image and allows them to infer Sarah's emotional state.

But here's the thing: sometimes, we don't need or want that level of detail. Sometimes, efficiency in storytelling is more important than painting an elaborate picture. And that's where telling comes in handy.

Imagine if every single emotion, action, or piece of information in your story was shown rather than told. Your novel would probably be thousands of pages long, and your readers might get lost in the sea of details, losing sight of the main plot or character arcs.

So, when might telling be more appropriate? Let's explore some scenarios:

Summarizing less important events: If you're writing a story that spans a long period, you don't need to show every single day or event. Telling can help you summarize periods of time or less crucial events quickly, allowing you to focus on the more important parts of your story.

For instance: "The next few weeks passed in a blur of exams and late-night study sessions." This sentence tells us what happened without going into unnecessary detail about each day.

Providing necessary background information: Sometimes, you need to give your readers some context or backstory. While you can certainly weave this information into scenes, there are times when a straightforward telling of facts is more efficient.

Example: "The war had been raging for three years before Sarah's village was attacked." This quickly gives us important context without needing to show the entire history of the war.

Establishing pace and rhythm: Alternating between showing and telling can help you control the pace of your story. Showing tends to slow things down, allowing readers to immerse themselves in a moment. Telling can speed things up, moving the story along more quickly when needed.

Clarifying complex ideas or emotions: Some concepts or feelings are abstract or complex enough that showing alone might not suffice. In these cases, a bit of telling can help ensure your readers understand what's happening.

For example: "The quantum entanglement theory had always fascinated John, but explaining it to others often left him feeling frustrated and misunderstood." Here, we're telling the reader about John's relationship with this complex scientific concept, which might be difficult to show effectively.

Maintaining your narrative voice: Sometimes, telling is simply more in line with your narrative voice or the tone of your story. This is especially true if you're writing in a more direct or conversational style.

Now, I can almost hear some of you saying, "But wait! I've always been told that showing is always better!" And I completely get it. I'm a writer myself and prioritize "Show, Don't tell." in my writing all the time. We've been conditioned to believe that showing is superior in all cases. But we can take a moment to challenge that notion.

Think about some of your favorite books. Chances are, they use a mix of showing and telling. Even the most critically acclaimed authors don't adhere strictly to "show, don't tell" all the time. They understand that good writing is about balance and knowing when to use each technique effectively.

Take, for instance, the opening line of George Orwell's "1984": "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." This is a perfect blend of showing and telling. Orwell shows us it's a bright, cold day (we can imagine the crisp air and clear sky), but he tells us about the clocks striking thirteen. This immediate telling gives us crucial information about the world we're entering – it's not quite like our own.

Or consider this passage from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice": "Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character." Here, Austen is clearly telling us about Mr. Bennet's character rather than showing it through his actions. And yet, it works beautifully, giving us a quick, clear insight into both Mr. Bennet and his wife.

The key is to use both techniques strategically. So, how can you decide when to show and when to tell? Here are some tips:

Consider the importance of the information: Is this a crucial moment in your story, a pivotal emotion, or a key piece of character development? If so, it might be worth showing. If it's more of a transitional moment or background information, telling might be more appropriate.

Think about pacing: If you want to slow down and really immerse your reader in a moment, show it. If you need to move things along more quickly, tell it.

Evaluate the complexity: If you're dealing with a complex emotion or concept, consider whether showing alone will be enough to convey it clearly. Sometimes, a combination of showing and telling works best for complex ideas.

Consider your word count: If you're working with strict word count limitations (like in short stories or flash fiction), telling can help you convey necessary information more concisely.

Trust your instincts (Important): As you write more, you'll develop a feel for when showing or telling works better. Trust your gut, and don't be afraid to experiment.

Now, let's talk about how to tell effectively when you do choose to use it. Because here's the thing: telling doesn't have to be boring or flat. It can be just as engaging and stylish as showing when done well. Here are some tips for effective telling:

Use strong, specific language: Instead of using vague or generic words, opt for more specific, evocative language. For example, instead of "She was sad," you might write, "A profound melancholy settled over her."

Incorporate sensory details: Even when telling, you can include sensory information to make it more vivid. "The room was cold" becomes more engaging as "A bone-chilling cold permeated the room."

Use metaphors and similes: These can help make your telling more colorful and memorable. "His anger was like a volcano ready to erupt" paints a vivid picture without showing the anger in action.

Keep it concise: One of the advantages of telling is its efficiency. Don't negate that by being overly wordy. Get to the point, but do it with style.

Vary your sentence structure: Mix short, punchy sentences with longer, more flowing ones to create rhythm and maintain interest.

Remember, the goal is to create a seamless narrative that engages your reader. Sometimes that means showing, sometimes it means telling, and often it means a artful blend of both.

It's also worth noting that different genres and styles of writing may lean more heavily on one technique or the other. Literary fiction often employs more showing, delving deep into characters' psyches and painting elaborate scenes. Genre fiction, on the other hand, might use more telling to keep the plot moving at a brisker pace. Neither approach is inherently better – it all depends on what works best for your story and your style.

Now, I want to address something that I think many of us struggle with: the guilt or anxiety we might feel when we catch ourselves telling instead of showing. It's easy to fall into the trap of second-guessing every sentence, wondering if we should be showing more. But here's the truth: that kind of constant self-doubt can be paralyzing and ultimately detrimental to your writing process.

So, I want you to understand and think: It's okay to tell sometimes. You're not a bad writer for using telling in your work. In fact, knowing when and how to use telling effectively is a sign of a skilled writer.

Here's some practical ways to incorporate this mindset into your writing process:

First Draft Freedom: When you're writing your first draft, give yourself permission to write however it comes out. If that means more telling than showing, that's absolutely fine. The important thing is to get the story down. You can always revise and add more "showing" elements later if needed.

Revision with Purpose: When you're revising, don't automatically change every instance of telling to showing. Instead, ask yourself: Does this serve the story better as telling or showing? Consider the pacing, the importance of the information, and how it fits into the overall narrative.

Beta Readers and Feedback: When you're getting feedback on your work, pay attention to how readers respond to different sections. If they're engaged and understanding the story, then your balance of showing and telling is probably working well, regardless of which technique you're using more.

Study Your Favorite Authors: Take some time to analyze how your favorite writers use showing and telling. You might be surprised to find more instances of effective telling than you expected.

Practice Both Techniques (Important): Set aside some time to practice both showing and telling. Write the same scene twice, once focusing on showing and once on telling. This can help you develop a feel for when each technique is most effective.

Now, let's address another important point: the evolution of writing styles and reader preferences. The "show, don't tell" rule gained popularity in the early 20th century with the rise of modernist literature. But writing styles and reader tastes have continued to evolve since then.

In our current fast-paced world, where people are often reading on devices and in shorter bursts, there's sometimes a preference for more direct, efficient storytelling. This doesn't mean that showing is out of style, but it does mean that there's often room for more telling than strict adherence to "show, don't tell" would allow.

Moreover, diverse voices in literature are challenging traditional Western writing norms, including the emphasis on showing over telling. Some cultures have strong storytelling traditions that lean more heavily on telling, and as the literary world becomes more inclusive, we're seeing a beautiful variety of styles that blend showing and telling in new and exciting ways.

This brings me to an important point: your voice matters. Your unique way of telling stories is valuable. Don't let rigid adherence to any writing rule, including "show, don't tell," stifle your natural voice or the story you want to tell.

Remember, rules in writing are more like guidelines. They're tools to help us improve our craft, not unbreakable laws. The most important rule is to engage your reader and tell your story effectively. If that means more telling than the conventional wisdom suggests, then so be it.

As I wrap up this discussion, I want to leave you with a challenge: In your next writing session, consciously use both showing and telling. Pay attention to how each technique feels, how it serves your story, and how it affects the rhythm of your writing. You might discover new ways to blend these techniques that work perfectly for your unique style.

Writing is an art, not a science. There's no perfect formula, no one-size-fits-all approach. It's about finding what works for you, your story, and your readers. So embrace both showing and telling. Use them as the powerful tools they are, and don't be afraid to break the "rules" when your instincts tell you to.

Remember, every great writer started where you are now, learning the rules and then figuring out when and how to break them effectively. You're part of a long, proud tradition of storytellers, each finding their own path through the winding forest of words.

Keep writing, keep growing, and keep believing in yourself. You've got this!

Happy writing! 💖✍️ - Rin T.

Before you go, why not join us at The Write Right Society? We're a supportive Tumblr community where writers lift each other up. Whether you're a newbie or a pro, we'd love to have you! Share your work, get feedback, and connect with fellow wordsmiths, writers and aspiring authors. 

[dyaz-stories]

casual (1) || gojo satoru x reader

chapter 1: i like the way you kiss me

synopsis: Getting recruited for a double position as a teacher for Jujutsu High in Tokyo and a strategist, tasked with assigning missions to sorcerers in the region is the perfect situation for you. It pays well, it's well regarded, and it's as safe as possible — by sorcerer standards, anyway.

There is one problem though, and his name is Gojo Satoru. The one who's supposed to collaborate with you and answer to you.

The one you can't keep your hands off...

word count: 9.5k

genre: 18+, friends with benefits to lovers, coworkers to lovers, canon divergence, smut, emotional slow burn but they fuck like rabbits

warnings/tags (chapter): fem!reader (she/her pronouns, reader is afab), takes place ~5 years before jjk0, teacher!reader, sorcerer!reader, canon-typical violence, mild angst, smut (semi-public sex, fingering [fem receiving], vaginal sex, sorta dom!gojo, corruption kink if you squint), mentioned slut shaming (not the sexy kind), gojo satoru is a little shit

A/N: This is quite the Behemoth of a first chapter, I'm sorry to say. I love really long chapters, but I can only hope you all do too and this isn't too intimidating! This is a fic I've had in mind for ages and finally got around to start an outline for and actually write it. There are actually a couple of drabbles here and there on my blog for this couple already, happening at various points of their relationship.

I really hope you will enjoy this first chapter!

‘Make use of Satoru Gojo however you see fit.’

Such are the first words spoken to you by the higher-ups, at the end of an exhausting recruitment process. You nod sharply at the instruction.

“Duly noted.”

Truth be told, you don’t see why they need to specify it. You had assumed that went without saying from the very beginning.

The job offer had, at first glance, been for a strategist who would work directly under the higher-ups for the region of Tokyo. Devising teams, advising the council, and assigning missions were supposed to be the main tasks you would have to fulfill.

‘Supposed’ because, when you were one of only three candidates left, the higher-ups had revealed that there was, in fact, a second role you would be expected to perform. One that you had not imagined would be available for decades.

A new teaching position at the Tokyo Jujutsu High School was opening up, though you couldn’t understand why for the life of you. You had no connection to the establishment yourself, having left Japan as a child and trained abroad your whole life, never returning for more than a couple of months at a time, yet you knew, as did the entirety of the sorcerer world, that Satoru Gojo had been appointed there less than a year before. Well, rumor had it that he had appointed himself, and you had to wonder if that was why they were keen to have a more… traditional teacher by his side, since firing him was an option.

In that case, your lack of ties to Satoru Gojo, Masamichi Yaga and to the Jujutsu Headquarters could explain why your name ended up being the last one on the ballot. You were the best placed to be an independent monitor.

The distorted voice keeps going, bringing you back to the present.

“Unless stated otherwise, always send him to battle first.”

You school your face so you do not let any emotion appear, though the statement surprises you. You have to assume that they don’t mean for any mission you receive, because that would be catastrophically ineffective. Then again, sending him on Grade 1 missions, if he is available, makes some sense.

“Report to us if you encounter difficulties with him,” the voice adds before falling silent without elaborating.

You understand, from the finality of their tone, that you have been dismissed, and bow your head, your movements polite and sober.

“Thank you for the trust you are placing in me. I will not disappoint you.”

“We know you won’t,” another sepulchral voice answers.

In the dark, candle-lit room, it sounds sinister enough to chill you to the bone. You wait just a second longer, in case something needs to be added, before turning on your heels and walking away. No one calls you back, and you’re more relieved about leaving the room than you would like to admit.

Outside, the summer sun is high and bright. You tilt your head backwards and close your eyes to let its rays warm your face. It will take a while before the cold instilled in you in that meeting room dissipates.

You’re expected in Jujutsu Tech by the end of August. Being a teacher there is as close to the ideal position as it gets, for a sorcerer. The pay is excellent, the risks minimal, and it commends great respect from the society at large. You have no doubt that, had the offer been for that position in the first place, numerous sorcerers far more qualified for teaching than you are would have thrown their hats in the ring. You wouldn’t have made it past the first interview.

You got lucky. Just this once, you’re going in the right direction.

You inhale deeply. For the first time in a long time, you no longer envision your life as an endless successions of missions, countries, and houses that never become homes.

For the first time in the long time, you think you have a future.

There is a spring in your step when you make your way down the stairs, away from this freezing place and the ghouls that haunt it.

Behind you, the Headquarters; ahead, Jujutsu Tech.

Masamichi Yaga is a cautious man. His handshake is warm and firm when he greets you, and though his voice is calm and steady as he guides you through the hallways of Jujutsu Tech, he remains evasive. He provides all the information you might need, answers any question you have when you ask them without missing a beat, and yet you can tell he is guarded, keeping you at arm’s length.

You cannot determine why that is with certainty, though you have a handful of hypotheses. It could just be that he isn’t used to the presence of strangers. Dealing with a total stranger is a rarity within sorcerer society, even more so in Japan. You doubt that he would know anyone who could talk about you, let alone vouch for you. You understand why that would make you a suspicious character.

Another option is that you were forced onto him as a member of his staff by the higher-ups, though you haven’t heard anything about that. With you being a complete outsider, he would not have any valid reason to outright reject your presence, not when his only teacher is frequently gone for days at a time, but that would not mean that he’d be pleased with it — or view you as trustworthy, for that matter.

The third possibility, of course, is that he just finds you off-putting.

‘Cold’, that’s how you are often described by the people around you. You don’t do it intentionally, but you also cannot pinpoint what it is that you do ‘wrong’. Something about your tone, your expressions, or lack thereof, your cold eyes, the way your mouth naturally curves downwards.

That and, of course, the trail of bad omens that you bring with you everywhere you go.

These don’t tend to be active problems when it comes to sorcerers. With normal humans, now, it’s a different story. Oh, there are exceptions, who find that this all makes you intriguing, but it typically makes it hard to build actual connections with other people. You wouldn’t normally care, but in a situation where you have to collaborate with others, you could see that becoming an issue.

You had seen that coming, of course — it wasn’t like it was new information to you. As a result, you had made sure to be on your very best behavior from the moment you’d stepped foot within Jujutsu Tech grounds. You had nodded with interest, you had reminded yourself to smile, you had asked all the right questions, and yet you could feel that you had not once managed to turn yourself into a likeable person.

Ah, well. Not being likeable would not stop you from doing your job right.

“I’ll introduce you to the rest of teaching staff,” Yaga announces, his voice deep, as he reaches a new door. His hand is hovering over the doorknob when he stills, turning to look at you. “Are you ready for this just now? They were both students here, but I assume this can all be overwhelming for a newbie.”

That is a kind sentiment.

“I’m okay.” Then, because answering in monosyllables is not what likeable people are supposed to do, you add: “I read the files available to familiarize myself with the school grounds before coming here.”

His eyebrows jump up behind his glasses, but it’s followed by a hearty chuckle.

“You’ve come prepared.” He nods, appreciative. “Good. It will be nice to have someone who takes their job seriously around here.”

You don’t have the time to question the sentence before he opens the door.

The room is small and reeks of cigarette smoke. In the middle of it, a desk, and behind it, sprawled on an elegant black chair, a white-haired man that you recognize at first glance. You let your eyes slide over him. You wouldn’t want to look too, um, curious, just yet.

The brown-haired woman with the long white coat who is perched on a window sill, doing her very best to look inconspicuous, is the one responsible for the smell. You identify her as Shoko Ieiri, school doctor and reverse cursed technique prodigy. Next to you, Yaga sighs.

“Shoko,” he protests with a paternal disapproval, “I thought you’d quit smoking?”

“I did,” she answers, staring at him, her eyes dark and tired, “and then I had to regrow a lung. Do you have any idea how much of a pain it is to regrow internal organs?”

A light laugh comes from the man in the middle of the room, and you consider that this gives you permission to look at him without coming off like you’re gawking.

He has his feet propped up on the desk, and he’s using them to push himself backwards in a precarious balance. White hair spills on the dark leather, long arms hang on both sides of the chair, and he hasn’t bothered to so much as glance in your direction so far — or at least, you don’t think he has, because white bandages are wrapped around his head, covering his eyes.

Even without being able to spot their signature blue, you know who he is. There isn’t one sorcerer in Japan, nor in the whole world, who doesn’t know his name.

Satoru Gojo, in the flesh.

“Maybe if you hadn’t cheated your way through medical school, it would be easier, don’t ya think?” he asks Ieiri with fond familiarity.

“Don’t—” Yaga takes two steps into the room, kicks the legs from underneath the chair. “—sit at my desk, Satoru.”

Effortlessly, Gojo jumps off the chair before it hits the floor and lands on his feet, facing Yaga. He is just as tall as the Principal, and from the wide grin on his face, it’s obvious that he is thrilled to have gotten a rise out of him.

“Then get me my own office already, what are you waiting for?”

“We’ll see which one of you gets an office first,” Yaga sniffs, and it doesn’t sound like Gojo is at the top of his list. “First, there is someone you need to meet.”

Ieiri has been observing you since you’ve walked into the room, not looking away when you had met her eyes. Yaga’s words have Gojo finally directing his attention to you, though, and something in the room shifts. You can’t see them, yet you know his eyes are on you, dissecting you and your cursed energy, collecting every possible bit of information on you. He walks past Yaga, burying his hands in his pockets as he approaches you. He has an easy smile placated on his lips, but you know when you’re being judged.

Behind him, both Ieiri and Yaga are still, tense. Yaga’s jaw is set, and Ieiri fiddles with a pack of cigarettes in her pocket, clearly itching for a new one. Ah, so this is the real test.

You don’t back off, staying rooted in your spot. He towers over you easily, and you have to tilt your head back just to look at him. You’d heard he was a handsome man, but you hadn’t expected it to be so obvious, even with the bandages on. He studies you, sharp jaw clenching, before the dazzling smile returns.

“Right! You’re the substitute teacher, aren’t you?”

His voice is light and airy, the previous tension completely absent from it. You blink.

“She will be teaching instead of you when you’re away on missions,” Yaga intervenes, “but that doesn’t make her a substitute. C’mon, Satoru, we’ve had this conversation already.”

On that last sentence, his voice turns into a threatening rumble.

“Sure, sure,” Gojo dismisses him without looking back, “and you’re the one who will be giving me missions as well, right?”

He keeps his tone cheerful, makes it sound like he’s just trying to have a conversation, but there is an edge in his voice, a bite. You cannot tell what he is trying to achieve with the question, though, or why he is being hostile, so you choose not to engage.

“Indeed,” you answer, bowing your head politely. “It is an honor to be meeting you all.” You make quick work of giving your name and briefly mentioning that you hadn’t grown up in Japan.

You’re met with silence, Gojo’s lips pressed together as he tries to read you. You do your very best not to give him anything to sink his teeth into.

“Your family’s known for their precognition, aren’t they?” Ieiri asks from the other side of the room.

“Foresight, yes”, you reply. Your answer is rehearsed, polished. Your family has somewhat of a reputation within the sorcerer world, but fortune tellers are a dime a dozen, even among non-sorcerers, and the results vary greatly — it’s not an ability that inspires trust, even for a legitimate sorcerer like you. You don’t wish to reveal too much of yourself just yet. “I look forward to working with you.”

A smile finally forms on her lips.

“Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I won’t be seeing too much of you. Would be a shame if I had to patch you up. If you want to go out drinking though, just let me know. I know all the best bars in the city!”

“She does, and she’s banned from half of them,” Gojo chimes in. Now that his focus is back on her, his tone is softer; teasing, still, but no longer harsh. “She could use an actual designated driver instead of exploiting her kouhais though, don’t you think, Shoko?”

She laughs at that, sincerely, her eyes creasing.

“Fuck you, Gojo,” she answers fondly.

“I apologize for these two,” Yaga says, wincing at the coarse language. “We’re very happy to have you here. I’m sure it will do the kids some good, having someone serious to take after.”

“Hurtful,” Gojo protests, pouting. “They’re good kids,” he adds, directing his attention back to you. He sounds proud now, no trace of his earlier defiance left. “They’ll be great soon. They just need a little push to get there.”

At that, you nod.

“Of course. I’ll do my very best to help them on that path.”

There is a second, between the moment when you finish speaking and the moment when a wide smile splits his face. In that second, his lips part, and you feel his eyes plunge into you, digging into the very core of your being. He doesn’t look pleased. No, he is sizing you up, and you doubt you measure up to his expectations as well as you should. You’re the only one facing him, though, and when he smiles, just a little too late, it all vanishes like it never happened.

“Good to hear! As long as that’s the case, I’m sure everything will go smoothly.”

It’s said differently, but it’s as threatening as the higher-ups’ last words to you. Still, behind Gojo, Yaga heaves a relieved sigh and exchanges a look with Ieiri that tells you just how worried he’d been about your arrival. To him, it looks like the situation is resolved.

“Why don’t we all go and get a drink together to welcome you properly, if we’re done here?” he asks, walking over and slapping Gojo in the back.

“Sounds good to me,” Ieiri hums.

“As long as we go somewhere with good desserts, I’m in,” Gojo declares, intertwining his fingers at the back  his head.

“You better be, Satoru,” Yaga grumbles, “you’re paying.”

“Not sure the Gojo clan has enough money for your appetite,” he sighs dramatically, “but I mean, I can try.” Then, eyeing you, “You coming or what?”

“Of course,” you say, swallowing around the unexpected knot in your throat. “Thank you for having me.”

You follow them cautiously, keeping quiet as the banter continues, hands held behind your back, observing. You had not expected to feel welcome here. You could have done without Gojo’s strange hostility, but with your track record, you had expected far worse.

“Let me know if Satoru makes your life harder, alright? I’ll talk some sense into him,” Ieiri tells you, placing a cigarette between her lips.

“And I’ll beat it into him if I have to,” Yaga adds, snatching it from Ieiri’s mouth and crumpling it between his fingers.

“I’d love to see you try,” Gojo grins.

“Noted,” you answer, “but I’m sure everything will be fine.”

This last part is a lie. Even as he’s joking around with everyone, you know he is still observing you, courtesy of the Six Eyes, watching your every move, waiting to find a fault somewhere so he can figure out what to do with you. You can’t blame him. You will be the one sending him into action, after all, even if the higher-ups would review missions assigned to grade 1 sorcerers and special grade sorcerers. Of course he’d need some time to figure out whether or not you’re trustworthy.

Not that his opinion on the subject matters to you. You’re not the type of person who needs other to like you. You don’t even need him to trust you. All he has to do is let you do your job.

Everything else is futile.

It is no surprise that the first few weeks at your job are slow. The end of summer and the beginning of fall are always quiet periods for sorcerers, and as a result, you don’t have many missions to hand out just yet. The few, low-level ones available in Tokyo are systematically claimed by Gojo before you can look into them, as training for his students.

“Kids gotta learn somehow, right?” he tells you with a grin the first time it happens.

He’s just waltzed into your classroom and he’s leaning over the desk, elbow conveniently resting on the mission files. You try not to think about how brazenly handsome he is right now, even when he is openly provoking you. You stare at his bandages, right where his eyes must be. He may be smiling at you, but there is no sincerity behind it, no joy, and that wasn’t really a question.

You shrug.

“Alright.”

The smile falters.

“Yeah? That’s alright with you?”

“Certainly. If you think these are good exercises for them, and if you plan on being there to supervise them, I don’t see any issue with it. Just return the files if there are any they can’t clear, and I’ll transfer them to the appropriate person.”

He tilts his head. Watching. Assessing.

“You should join us!” he exclaims cheerfully, smile back in its place, clapping his hands together. “The more, the merrier, isn’t that right?”

Oookay. He is testing you. The infuriating part of that is, you have no idea what he is testing you for, what he wants you to display — or fail to display. Trying to see if you’re good enough of a teacher? You have nothing to prove here, certainly not to someone who has been on the job for such a short time. Then again, you don’t see any harm in humoring him.

“No problem. Just let me know when you intend to take care of them, and I’ll be there.”

His smile widens, but you’re not sure if it means you’ve succeeded or failed his test.

“Good,” he hums. “I’ll be taking that, then.”

In one swift movement, he retrieves the files from your desk, and he walks away with them before you can say anything.

You roll your eyes — this whole song and dance are so unnecessary — but you don’t see any reason to stop him, so you just watch him leave. You catch him stopping in the doorway, turning back to look at you. The smile is still dancing on his face, all edge and teeth.

“You’re not what I expected.”

You stare at him just a moment longer, brow furrowing, before he vanishes and you’re left with nothing to look at.

‘Not what he expected’. You turn the sentence over in your mind a couple of times, trying to conjure up an image, a personality that would fit better for the role you’re supposed to play, but nothing comes up. You have two roles: teaching the future generation of sorcerers, and assigning missions. If doing one task can facilitate the other, there is no reason not to do it — and you find it even harder to comprehend why he wouldn’t have expected you to do just that.

You shake your head, willing his words out of your mind. You’ve never felt the need to meet anyone’s expectations, so why should you start now?

Taking kids to a cemetery for a mission seems in poor taste, but that’s not what you tell Gojo when he announces it as his first choice.

“The mission is for a number of grade four curses and a couple grade three,” you state instead, “but considering the spot, it’s likely more powerful ones went unnoticed. Are you sure that’s appropriate for first-years?”

“Well,” he answers, hands casually in his pockets, towering over you with all his height, “it will be good to see how adaptable they are and their abilities in the face of danger. Plus, they’ll have two guardian angels looking after them, won’t they?”

There’s that toothy smile again.

You still don’t know what it means.

“As long as you’re here, it will be fine, I guess” is what you end up answering him with a shrug.

This time, he doesn’t say anything as he leaves, doesn’t stop to look at you.

You suspect that you said exactly what he was expecting from you.

Contrary to popular belief, cemeteries don’t typically harbor powerful curses. The smaller ones are numerous, born out of loss and grief, but the bodies of non-sorcerers don’t take the pain they endured with them in the grave. They leave it all over their houses, leaking through the walls and ceilings, seeping through the cracks in the floor, cursing their loved ones.

Cemeteries remain clean.

The exception to that rule is a notable one. In any place where cursed energy accumulates for long enough, there is a risk for it to congregate to the point where strong curses can emerge. This slow growth means they learn to better hide themselves, and it makes them harder to spot and eliminate. In an ideal world, there would be a sorcerer expedition every other decade to ensure nothing big can develop, but sorcerer numbers being what they are, that is impossible to ensure. There is also a high likelihood that it would be useless anyway, a waste of time and resources, far too much firepower for the bunch of fly heads sorcerers would find.

Still, you keep an eye on the three, baby-faced first years, and chew on the inside of your cheek as they start to make their way through the alleys.

You don’t like this.

“Don’t tell me you’re scared,” Gojo says lightly, next to you. “You’re a grade one sorcerer, aren’t you? There’s nothing more powerful than that here. I’d know it if there was.”

“My evaluation took place in Europe. I don’t know if I would have ranked that high, had I taken it here.”

“Aw, c’mon, if even you think you’re that weak, who’s going to believe you’re strong?”

The sentence surprises a chuckle out of you. A grade two sorcerer is nothing to turn your nose at, but you can’t say you’re shocked that the Satoru Gojo would equate that status to weakness. He is so far off the scale that he would break it altogether if it wasn’t for the convenient, murky ‘special grade’ title.

You look at him, find him already turned in your direction. His lips are parted in surprise. You don’t realize it, but you have somehow managed the feat of getting Gojo’s undivided attention. The Six Eyes are focused on you, dissecting you, taking you in. This is— new. People are predictable. It’s not always a bad thing, though it gets a little boring. You— you keep catching him off guard while doing things that seem completely natural to you.

For once, you’re the one who is smiling, and he’s stunned into silence.

“It doesn’t matter to me, whether or not people think I’m strong. All I care about is—”

Teeth reflected in a pupil. Muscles like lead. A hand raised in defense. Flesh that turns into mist, there one second, gone the next. Clicks like a laugh, coming from behind. ‘Morino Iori — 1954-2010’, splattered with blood. A curse with its head thrown back, an arm coming out of its open mouth, disappearing when it swallows. Tears dripping down from the chin to the ground, barely diluting the puddle of blood that has formed there.

The rest of your sentence is lost when you turn around and take off running.

There is a string of cursed energy pulling you in the right direction, one that found its way to you, one that the cursed technique engraved in your brain knew how to decode. You’re old enough not to question it, not to struggle with the vision, and following it comes as a second nature. Just as you get there, you see Sota rounding the corner slowly, looking around, squinting, searching for something he isn’t finding. Your fingers close around the weapon at your waist, withholding your cursed energy — for now.

To a non-sorcerer, you would appear to be holding nothing but a stick. A sorcerer would know it’s a cursed weapon, though most would not be able to figure out its use.

At least, not until the curse emerges from the fog, only two steps behind Sota. In a flash, you let cursed energy irrigate your weapon, and a blade of sheer energy appears. The stick is now a scythe.

It’s in poor taste, in a cemetery, but you don’t linger on that.

You’re between the boy and the curse before he can turn around. The curse’s abilities must allow it to hide its presence, would allow it to disappear back into nothingness a mere moment after the kill, but you don’t give it the opportunity to do that. The scythe cuts through it like butter, splitting it in two. The two halves haven’t yet hit the ground that you’ve already lowered your weapon, emptying it from cursed energy as soon as you’re done.

“Are you okay?” you ask Sota, turning around to face him as you anchor it back to your waist.

“Um,” he says. He doesn’t look scared, just mildly surprised. “Yes. I’m fine.”

“What happened to seeing his abilities in the face of danger?”

You bite your lip, glancing at Gojo. He is standing atop a headstone, balancing without any struggle and watching the two of you with unmistakable amusement.

“He freezes in the face of danger,” you answer.

Sota’s eyes go wide, and he turns away from you, shaking his head. He isn’t doing it for you, though, but for Gojo.

“That’s not true! I’ve exorcised curses before, you’ve seen me do it!”

He’s desperate to prove himself to his teacher, and something sinks within you. You don’t need a vision to tell you what will happen next.

“The kid’s got a point,” Gojo lets you know. “That precognition thing of yours, how accurate is it?”

There was a time when those words would have sent you reeling back. Even now, when you’re expecting them, you feel the blood withdrawing from your face as he speaks them. But you swallow, school your features. You know better now. Fighting now will only delay the inevitable. Gojo was standing next to you anyway. With the Six Eyes, he must know for certain that you hadn’t activated any sort of cursed technique when you took off running. That alone would be enough to make him suspicious, if he didn’t already doubt you.

Cassandra’s Bargain. Tell the truth, and save only those who believe you.

Unlike others, explaining the workings of your cursed technique doesn’t make it more effective — it makes it useless. If you try to tip the scale in your favor now, you will all pay a high price for it later.

You know what Gojo is implying, about your accuracy. Most people who have foresight see a number of futures. If he suspects you saw one in which Sota died, your actions must make sense to him.

“Enough to keep me safe,” you answer, tight-lipped.

“That’s what I thought. Let’s give the kid a fighting chance from now, what d’ya say?”

That’s not how it works, but it doesn’t matter. At least Sota gets to keep his arm — until next time.

What a waste.

“Of course,” you say with a nod.

You would do it again in a heartbeat if you had to, but you no longer feel threads of cursed energy, threads of fate, pulling you in one direction or the other. Oh, they’re all around you, and you’d know much more if you activated your cursed technique, but you know how it functions. That had to be the worst that could happen. Things should be fine now.

“Start running Sota, you’ve got some catching up to do!”

“Yes, Mr. Gojo, sir!” the kid replies, all but saluting. “I won’t disappoint you.”

Gojo’s laugh at that, as the kid takes off sprinting, couldn’t be more genuine.

You lean against the pristine Morino Iori headstone — it’s disrespectful, and you formulate a silent apology, but all you can do is hope they won’t mind. You’re exhausted, and yet the tension is keeping your body in hypervigilance, refusing to go away.

Gojo approaches you, hands in his pockets. The ghost of his usual smile is dancing on his lips. For once, though, it doesn’t feel mean-spirited.

“We have to save them if they need us,” he says, voice surprisingly soft, “but it’s as least as important that we teach them how to fend for themselves.

“I don’t disagree with that.”

This kind of reasoning just isn’t worth losing an arm over.

Gojo steps closer, leaning towards you, so close his nose is almost touching yours. You suck in a quick breath through your mouth. From up close, it’s much harder to ignore how handsome he is, even without seeing his eyes. You blame your accelerating heart rate on the fact that you’re in a high-stress kind of and you’re particularly pent-up at the moment. If your skin tingles when you feel his breath against it, it’s because of the cold. Must be. Whatever it is, you don’t let it show, and you hate that you’re finding it harder to breathe.

“You’re not what I expected.”

He’s said it before, but his voice is lower now, deeper, vibrating through your body, and something that you recognize all too well twists, deep in your abdomen.

Desire.

You don’t answer. You didn’t know what to say the first time, and you sure as fuck have no clue now — don’t know what he means, don’t know what you’ve done that you weren’t supposed to, don’t know if the interest in his voice betrays the same feelings rushing through you right now. So you glare at him until he laughs, light and airy, and takes a step back.

“If you need me, I’ll be on top of the temple, watching the kids.”

You wait for him to disappear between the tombs, keeping yourself still, too still, probably, to be inconspicuous, and it’s only once you’re sure he’s gone that you let yourself exhale very, very slowly. The urge to laugh at yourself bubbles inside you, because what the fuck is wrong with you? It’s not the right time, not the right place, and not even remotely the right person.

You’re fully aware of all of that, know it in the deepest parts of your soul, and yet your eyes still trail towards the temple. You could imagine that you’re seeing Gojo’s silhouette there, if you didn’t know better.

Except you do. You do.

When you look away, you know full well you’re doing it too pointedly.

You don’t get a chance to involve yourself in the Kyoto Goodwill Event. With the beginning of fall, files are starting to accumulate. Since you’re still getting your bearings in Tokyo and familiarizing yourself with the sorcerers you can send on missions, that is what you dedicate yourself to.

Or, well, that’s what you’re told.

You know that you’re more than capable of doing several things at once without botching any of them. Masamichi Yaga and Satoru Gojo are the ones who disagree. You’re called into Yaga’s office, and Gojo is already there, leaning against the wall behind him. For once, he isn’t wearing the bandages, but rectangular sunglasses. Even from behind them, you see the faint glow of his eyes, and it takes a lot — a lot more than it should — not to stare.

“The students taking part in this year’s event will be exclusively second and third-years. Satoru knows them well.”

“Yeah, and they’ve been training for a that for a while,” Gojo says without missing a beat. Where Yaga is stern and serious, his voice is relaxed and pleasant, lightening the mood without trying to. “The third-years have already won once, so they know what they’ve got to do for a repeat.”

That’s right. Tokyo won last year, under Gojo’s guidance, for the first time since… well, since he stopped competing himself, according to what you’ve heard.

“Satoru had already started putting this year’s strategy together by the time you joined Jujutsu Tech,” Yaga adds, trying his best to sound apologetic. “So there’s no need to concern yourself with that. It’s already well-oiled.”

As far as you’re concerned, the only thing that’s well-oiled here is this routine they’re performing, all for your sake. You click your tongue, not bothering to hide your annoyance, and watch as Yaga’s fingers curl, as Gojo’s chin lifts and the blueish glow focuses on you. There’s politics in the air, you can smell it, with a role you have to play. So they think, at least. Unfortunately, you lack knowledge when it comes to Japanese society, and you cannot quite identify what that role is.

To be fair, you also don’t care for it.

“Was it really necessary to waste all of our times with this charade?”

“I beg your pardon?” Yaga asks in response. His voice thunders dangerously. He’s warning you not to cross a line.

“If you don’t want me involved, you can just say so,” you answer with a shrug. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have missions to assign.”

You don’t wait for him to dismiss you to stand up, rolling your eyes once you have your back turned on them. How bland. You’ve never seen the point of engaging with this kind of theatrics when there are such greater things at play. Having you help the kids come up with a strategy of their own, going over the basics of planning, now that could have been interesting and helpful. It’s not that you doubt Gojo’s abilities in that domain, you don’t, but it is your specialty, and you’ve had to learn to survive with resources that are significantly more limited than his. Instead of doing that, in the name of whatever internal conflict is going on here, the kids have been deprived of that experience.

How boring.

Once the door has closed behind you, Gojo lowers his head, shoulders shaking. Yaga turns around, frowning, only to find him quietly laughing to himself.

“Told you she was a weird one,” he says once he’s caught his breath.

“Maybe,” Yaga mumbles, “but there must be a reason why she was placed here.”

Gojo hums. Outside the office, he follows your cursed energy. It has always been diffuse, fickle, fizzling out around you until it becomes hard to tell where it ends — even for him. Must have something to do with your cursed technique, but he hasn’t seen you use that yet. You go straight to your classroom, where you sit behind your desk to work, like you do every day until it’s late in the night.

Yaga is right, of course. There must be a reason. But you’re at least making it fun for him to figure out.

The Kyoto Goodwill Event does not go over well.

Maybe you should get some petty satisfaction from it, but there is none to be found, just a bitter taste in your mouth. Next to you, Utahime, the Kyoto school teacher, does not look up at the screens provided by Grade 1 sorcerer Mei Mei. She has her eyes on her hands, and she is nervously rubbing her fingers. In fact, while a few outsiders who have come to see the game for their own enjoyment exclaim at the students’ impressive moves, there is only one member of the schools who seems to be enjoying himself, and that is Principal Gakuganji.

Kyoto is methodical in their approach. On an individual level, you suspect that Kyoto is far ahead of them, but as a team, they have come up with the perfect strategy — at least against the Tokyo team. They have done their research, know everything there is to know about their adversaries. Then again, having one member of the Zen’in and one member of the Kamo family on their side, even if neither have access to their families’ historical techniques, must have been quite the help to gather that information.

You don’t see them doing anything revolutionary — if anything, a team such as theirs could have been composed hundreds of years ago — but they have no need for it, not with how brutal they are willing to be, leaving devastation in their wake. They’re prepared, efficient, collected. They’re also quick, having adapted to this modified version of capture the flag, one that involves curses, without hesitation.

Tokyo defends to the best of their abilities. They prove themselves especially capable when it comes to improvising on the spot, which means that Gojo’s teaching works on that front is working, at least. The match ends up closer than Kyoto must have been hoping for, but it doesn’t change the end result.

It’s a resounding victory for Kyoto.

“Well,” Gakuganji is the first to speak as it ends, “that was quite the beautiful display of sportsmanship, don’t you think, Satoru?”

You glance at Gojo, who is sitting next to you. There’s real anger in the way his jaw tenses at the question, but by the time you blink, he’s already relaxed it.

“That was really impressive!” he laughs, throwing his head back and clapping enthusiastically. “They’ve progressed so much since last year, haven’t they? I never imagined they would be able to come this far.”

You press your lips together at the barely veiled insult.

“Indeed, that is what realized potential looks like,” Gakuganji replies, stroking his beard. “Such a shame to see your promising pupils crashing and burning… Although that’s not the first time you’ve seen that happen, is it?”

That is the least charitable way of looking at what happened there, but it is impossible to argue with the facts: Kyoto bested Tokyo. You can’t say you appreciate the way he’s talking about your students, but you don’t think it’s your place to say anything.

Gojo’s smile thins.

“Well, I’ll be looking forward to the individual tournament tomorrow,” Gakuganji adds, standing up. “In the meantime, Yaga, I assume you have planned for accommodations, and all this action has given me quite the appetite.”

He leaves the room with an unmistakably pleased smile, Yaga getting up after him. He gestures at Gojo to join them, and he’s not hiding his scowl when he stands up, unfolding his long limbs slowly. The other sorcerers follow suit, Utahime included, though she is sporting a somber expression too. You’re the only one to linger in the room, in no rush to suffer through more of Gojo and Gakuganji’s quips.

When you do leave, you stop by the infirmary, where you find Ieiri cursing through her teeth as she works on the students. Even though several of them are fully healed, they’re keeping themselves huddled up together, shoulders hanging low, eyes on the ground.

Defeated.

“Professor Gojo has already come by,” one of them informs you without bothering to look at you. “We’re fine. We’ll do better tomorrow.”

“Yes, you will,” you confirm, and you see flashes of hope on their faces, mistaking your confidence for a prophecy. Truth be told, you haven’t seen anything for the next day, but this is often the best way of using the aura that surrounds you. “But you did well today. They saw a weak spot, and they exploited it. As long as you learn from it, there is no shame in this defeat.”

That deflates them, and Ieiri snickers, glancing at you with a grin.

“Quite the pep talk you’re giving here.’

She’s right. You’ve never been good at this.

“You’re all excellent sorcerers, but even you can be defeated by people who are not as good as you, provided they’ve prepared adequately. That is what you need to take away from today. Conversely, you will be able to defeat much stronger adversaries than you, with the right approach.”

Some look thoughtful at your words — most still look just as dejected as they were when you walked in.

“We’ll work on that once this tournament is over. For now, all you need to do is rest. You’ll prevail tomorrow.”

Smiles finally break on their faces, and you take that as your cue to leave, before you can say something that would ruin it again.

You’re in no rush to join the other sorcerers just yet, so you wander through the hallways, intending to go back to the classroom that’s become your refuge in the school. You’re one corner away from it, when the window that leads to the outside slides open, and Satoru Gojo jumps in, right in front of you. It is the second floor, yet you can’t muster surprise.

He shoots you a smirk that knocks the air out of you, but it’s nothing compared to what he does next. He looks back towards the window, looking displeased, and that’s when you notice voices calling for him — Kyoto students and low-level sorcerers. You’re about to look down when he catches you. He wraps a hand around your wrist to pull you away, presses the other on the wall, next to your head, and you freeze. He’s close, and everything you’ve been feeling for weeks at this point comes rushing back in.

“You know what’s a great way of getting people’s attention off you?” he asks, smirk even wider, if possible.

“Wh—”

Then his lips are on yours.

He tastes sweet, you’re surprised to find.

It’s playful, the way he kisses you, a press of his mouth against yours, stolen, daring. It’s also all you need to admit to yourself how badly you’ve been wanting this. That’s why you’re the one who wraps your arms around his neck, kissing him back harder. He lets out a surprised noise into you, maybe a chuckle, but he certainly doesn’t fight it, even if he wasn’t planning on it. In fact, it’s quite the contrary.

He reaches greedily for your hips, pulling you to him and keeping you pressed against his hard chest. When you part your lips, there is not a moment of hesitation on his part before he pushes his tongue in, swirling it against yours. You crane your neck to give him better access to your mouth, all while holding on tight to his neck to lower him towards you. Your back is against the wall, your body arched a way that would be uncomfortable if you weren’t so hot all over, set ablaze by his touch.

When he pushes his thigh between your legs, flexing it so it rubs against you just right, your knees buckle under you. It doesn’t help that, in this position, his semi-hard cock is pressed against your abdomen, and that awakens a very special kind of hunger within you.

There is no softness to the kiss or to the way your bodies move together, just pure lust. Wetness is pooling between your legs already, in anticipation for more, more of him, more of his body, more of his touch. He’s so tall, it’s like he’s everywhere, his scent surrounding you, his body caging you against the wall effortlessly, his mouth demanding more and more of you. You roll your hips against his, trapping his cock between your bodies, and he hisses into you, his grip turning bruising — not that you mind.

“Tease,” he manages to mumble as he takes a quick breath.

There’s no room for any more words before he reattaches his mouth to yours, almost biting into you, and fuck it feels good. His lips are soft, but that must be the only thing that is soft about this kiss. He moves your skirt out of the way, one hand coming to grab your thigh so he can lift it up, and that is when your eyes snap open, some reason coming back to your lust-filled brain at last.

“Wait,” you mumble, “not here.” Your eyes dart around the dark hallway — empty, but far too in the open for your liking. Problem is, your body is aching with how much you want him, and, even if it would be the smart thing to do, you can’t bring yourself to stop now. “Classroom,” you conclude, pulling him with you.

He lets out a breathless laugh, but follows. The second the door is closed, he has you against the wall again, this time with his chest pressed to your back while his lips find your neck, teeth pulling at the skin mercilessly before dragging his tongue on the sensitive area to soothe it. You let out a sigh, but it comes out much louder than you’d intended, almost a moan, and you have to lift a hand up to cover your mouth. He snickers, but doesn’t waste any more time on teasing you.

Instead, he snakes his hand into your skirt, and this time, you don’t stop him. Long fingers move past the hem of your panties to brush against your clit and you jump, biting your lower lip to keep quiet. His lips stretch into a smile on your neck.

“You’re so fucking wet already,” he comments by your ear, rubbing his fingers over your pussy lips, purposefully not entering you.

You groan in frustration, and push your ass against his now rock-hard cock. The low moan he lets out in surprise is delightful to hear.

“As if you’re one to talk,” you reply.

“Is that how you want to play it?”

Before you can answer him, he easily pushes two fingers inside you. They’re long and they fill you so well, you have to focus every fiber of you that’s not lost in pleasure on keeping quiet. Gojo’s free to take his fingers out, then plunge them into you once more, and you can’t help clenching needily around them.

“See,” he says, and oh his low voice, the way it makes his chest vibrate against your back, it all goes straight to your core, making you gush around his fingers some more, “that’s expected of me, ‘cause everyone knows I’m sorcerer society’s problem child. Aren’t you supposed to be the good girl?”

It’s no easy task to think with his fingers pumping in and out of you relentlessly, but even through the haze of pleasure, the words make you frown.

“Says— Ah— Says who?”

He uses the heel of his palm to press against your clit, and you’d conclude that he is actively trying to render you speechless if pleasure wasn’t shooting through you like electricity.

“Hmm, I don’t know, I’d say you’re being pretty good right now, wouldn’t you?”

“Would you— fuck— would you stop talking and just fuck me already?” you still manage to bite out.

He laughs again, delighted and maybe a little fond, but he stills his fingers inside you. You get some time to catch your breath, and use whatever self-control you have left not to try and fuck yourself on his hand.

“You sure?”

“As long as you’re clean, I’m safe,” you say — maybe not your smartest moment, but you can’t find it in yourself to care right now.

He pulls his fingers out, and you glance at him over your shoulder. He’s still wearing the bandages over his eyes, but his jaw is uncharacteristically taut, and his movements lack their usual fluidity. You grin. Good to see you’re having an effect on him too. It becomes even more obvious when he pulls out his cock, hard and veiny. You’re not surprised by how big he is, and you find yourself licking your lips, clenching around air at the prospect of what’s to come. Shit, you cannot wait to have it inside you, stretching you out.

“I’ve been wanting to mess up that skirt for weeks,” he mumbles, mostly to himself, as he pushes it out of the way and lowers your panties.

“Then what are you waiting for?” you ask with a click of your tongue. He is still talking way more than he should.

The smirk he gives you should concern you. He presses the tip of his cock to your entrance, and then, instead of penetrating you, as you’re frozen in anticipation, slides his length against your pussy lips, sending jolts of pleasure through you, but not giving you what you need right now. You whimper pleadingly, not catching yourself fast enough to keep yourself silent. You worry that he will keep teasing, but it appears he has reached his limits too, because soon he is pushing the tip of his cock inside you, and fuck, it’s even better than you’d imagined.

You hear him grunt behind you as he starts pushing himself inside you at a devilishly slow pace. You expected him to do it all at once, so you turn around once more, ready to throw another quip at him for his relentless teasing, but the words die on your lips when you see his face. His teeth are planted in his lower lip, and his face is contorted in a pleasure that he is clearly trying to reign in, his breathing quick and shallow, his chest heaving. The sight leaves you breathless, so you stay quiet.

“So fucking tight,” he all but whines as he keeps pushing himself inside you.

He bottoms out at last, and he stills for a few seconds, all so you can adjust and not at all because he is going to come too fast if he can’t get used to how warm and welcoming you are around him first. The discreet groans he was letting out turn into a full moan when you move forward, pulling him out of you, then back, sheathing him inside you completely once more. You’d keep moving, but he grips your hips tightly, fingers digging into the flesh, to stop any movement you could make.

It doesn’t last long though, because after that, he starts moving himself, and the pace he sets it merciless. The slapping of skin on skin echoes obscenely in the empty room, but you can’t find it in yourself to care, not when you can barely think, not when your knees are failing you and his hands on hips are the only thing keeping you standing, not when tiny whimpers keep spilling past your lips, no matter how much you try to keep them in.

“Couldn’t be even just a little patient, hm?” he asks you. It’s undercut by the gasps that interrupt him, the pleasured moans that escape him too.

This time, you don’t find anything to answer. The angle, with you bent over, hands on the wall in a desperate attempt to stay on your feet, makes you feel so, so full that you can’t think straight. Pleasure is coursing through you with each time he hammers into you, and you clench around him helplessly each time he pulls out. He’s fast, relentless, but if the way his moans keep getting more-pitched is any indication, he’s close to reaching his climax. You’re not far yourself, you just— just need— just a little—

One of his hands abandons your hip, and you would stumble forward if he wasn’t holding you so firmly. His free hand finds its way to your clit, and pinches it expertly, just as he snaps his hips into you harder than he has so far, spilling himself inside you. The orgasm hits you like a thousand volts, and your hips jerk back uncontrollably, whole body shaking, as you ride the wave of it on his cock until it ends. Ah, you needed this so badly that, as it recedes, you can only feel content, the pleasure it gave you still tingling in your body.

For a while, the sounds of you and Gojo’s panting are all that fill the room. Finally, he pulls his sensitive, softening cock out a you with a hiss, and you ignore the squelching sound it makes. He tucks it back into his pants, and you finally find it in yourself to pull your panties back up, readjusting your skirt. Your hair is messy from the kissing earlier, but apart from that, you’re still rather presentable — you hope.

“Didn’t think you had that in you,” Gojo comments. He’s still catching his breath.

“At what point are you going to admit that you’ve just misjudged me?”

He laughs, but the smirk he shoots you, hands in his pockets, standing a few feet away from you, is proof that the distance between the two of you is back to what it was before. You don’t find yourself minding all that much. This is as good a way as any other to release tension, and you’re more relaxed than you have in weeks. The lightness of his voice tells you the same is true for him. Seems like you both got the same thing out of it, and that’s fine by you, even if it doesn’t bring you any closer.

“Once I know I was wrong,” he says. It sounds ominous, but, well, if he wants to keep clinging to that image he’s made of you, that is his problem. So far, you’d argue that it has rather worked in your favor.

You shrug.

“If you hadn’t felt that way, Tokyo would have won today,” you tell him matter-of-factly.

His smile widens.

“Guess we’ll have to see about that next year, hm?”

“I guess we will.”

Silence grows between the two of you. You normally wouldn’t mind. Now, you feel the need to say something.

“This should stay between us,” you finally manage to say. Sorcerer society can be— harsh, on women, to say the least. The last thing you need is for someone to know you’ve fucked your coworker. You’d be branded as a whore, and while you find this all horribly regressive, you’d still rather not have to deal with the fallout.

Gojo hums in agreement.

“I’m not really the type to want all my business out there either,” he tells you in a surprising display of sincerity. It’s ruined when he smirks and adds, “Next time, I think I should fuck you on your desk.”

You scoff, but you know you both hear your lack of denial loud and clear. You’re not opposed to there being a next time, provided this doesn’t get out. By the look of things, it would be mutually beneficial.

You don’t bother to answer him before you open the door, glancing outside. No one in sight. He would have known if that had been the case, of course, but you’re still relieved. You slip outside unceremoniously — it’s pretty clear you’re done here anyway — and he does nothing to hold you back.

Later, after you’ve taken a quick shower in the facilities available at the high school and you’re sat by Ieiri around the dinner table, Gakuganji can barely hide his smugness.

“Where you have been off to?” he asks Gojo, his tone making it clear just how pleased with himself he is. “Licking your wounds?”

“Something like that,” Gojo answers lightly, and you’re careful to keep your eyes on your food.

The conversation fades into the background. Your thoughts move to the upcoming solo tournament, the next day, to your students, to the missions you have to assign. And then, for the first time in forever, you find yourself distracted by something that isn’t work-related. You welcome the respite it gives you.

On your desk, next time, huh?

You could work with that.

thank you all for reading and getting all the way here! interactions are what keeps me writing, so please comment/reblog/send an ask to feed your author and have my eternal gratitude!

tagging people who expressed interest in the first chapter: @sapphiccloud @saccharine-nectarine @calypsothegoddess @aspiring-bookworm @aerismonia

[warmilikeit]

Yandere Batfam x Camp half-blood (Neglected reader)

Dc x Pjo

Part 5

________________________

Diana is seething, she's filled with rage, the lies Bruce fed her?

"I'm very worried for their wellbeing..."

"I miss them very much"

"they're so young, I don't want anything bad to happen to them"

Asshole.

She kicked the door of the justice hall down, startling the kids who had gone back on patrol from trying to find (Name)

"hey what gives?" Flash asks

Superman raised his eyebrow "you left so suddenly, mind telling us where you've been?"

She looks at batman's sidekicks and then at him, while staring him straight in the eyes "the kid is dead" she says

"what?"

A silence washing over the entire room

"the lady who attacked your house, that wasn't an ordinary lady, in the eyes of mortals she may look normal, but in the eyes of divine beings... It's a monster, that monster was an empousa, a poisonous fire breathing monster who feeds on the blood of mortals and divine beings alike" Diana thinks about how she'll explain everything to J'onn later, but figure that he's probably reading her mind right now

Her suspicions are confirmed as J'onn nods at her

"your kid, (Name), they're a demigod, because of that they're a target for monsters, they're gone, eaten, sorry Bruce"

Crap Diana thinks, was she too harsh? She was just too angry

Ignoring the fact Diana just announced Bruce slept with a god, Superman placed his hand on Batman's shoulder "My condolences Bruce"

Everyone was giving their apologies to the bats

She didn't look at the widened eyes of batman's sidekicks, she noticed but chose to ignore the sound of Dick collapsing into a chair, she heard didn't pay attention to the footsteps of Damian who had to run out of the room

Cass stiffened up, she trembled as if resembling a cracking statue, Steph wants to cry, but she knows very well that she doesn't deserve to cry over you, Barbara just- it's like she just stopped working

As much as she feels so cruel right now, she knew it was the only thing that will keep you hidden, if not, they'll keep trying to find you

Green arrow crossed his arms, but it was clear he was disturbed by the death of a 12 year old kid "Diana, please elaborate"

"Bruce here, had intercourse with a god, that led to (Name) being born, monsters attack demigods, people who are half god half human such as myself, without proper protection monsters kill demigods easily, and (Name) suffered that fate, monsters attack demigods while they're young and tasty and leave them alone as they grow older, they don't feed usually on humans, just animals and demigods"

It seemed like Batman or more appropriately for this situation Bruce wasn't even listening, his mind still stuck at the announcement of your death

"If it'd make you feel better, you can take a break for a while... I know what it's like to lose family, we all do, let yourself grieve Batman, you might be a hardcore vigilante but you're still a father" (to everyone but name) Barry suggests

Starfire has been trying to calm Dick down, his breathing has become irregular and unstable, switching between deep and short breaths

_________________________

Jon runs after Damian, it looked like any second, the unbeatable demon spawn fell to his knees

"Damian! Are you okay!?" Jon asks

"I-i thought it'd only last a few days... Maybe a week if they're incompetent, or maybe months if we're unlucky" Damian started to cough

He took off his robin mask and took a deep breath "Since there was no body, I was fine, I thought they're okay, maybe a few injuries here and there, but they're alive so it's fine, but- the reason there was no body... Was because she was eaten- by stupid, how'd -" Jon didn't know what to do, between the both of them, Damian was the composed one

Then two of his siblings came, Jason and Tim

"what the fuck? Demon spawn?" Jason was surprised, and immediately glared at Jon, accusingly looking at him for making his brother this way

Jon put his up defensively "I didn't do anything, promise, I'm trying to comfort him!"

Tim knelt down with Damian "what happened?"

"(Name) is dead"

And suddenly it feels like nothing matters anymore

____________________________

"okay! And this'll be your bed!" Selina ended the tour of the cabin

Selena Beauregard, Daughter of Aphrodite, she was your sister, Gosh you have a sister! And she was nice! She wasn't like Cass who for some reason, closed her eyes everytime you tried to communicate with her

Barbara pretended to be busy, too busy, what do you mean you have to work? Didn't your workplace get burned down by two-face two days ago?

Steph- at least she was honest, she straight up told you she' didn't want anything to do with you

A guy with blonde hair and blue eyes walked out of the bathroom, a nice change from the black and blue eyes you're used to

"hey! You're our new sister! The one who was flirting with that Hephaestus kid-"

"Aster! (Name) Told me they were just friends and if they were flirting what's wrong with that? Love is love" Selena came to your rescue

Aster tilted his head confused with the way you're shifting "what's wrong?" He asked

"aren't people in Greek mythology who are named after flowers turn into them?" You nervously fiddle with your fingers

With that some of your siblings who are in their respective spaces burst out laughing and Aster is hugging you laughing whilst explaining that in Greek mythology "the people came first, not the flower"

That seemed to calm you down a bit, then another girl, whose name is Drew spoke up "so (Name) who's your mortal parent?"

You freeze up at this question but the other kids seemed normal about it

"don't worry (Name) it's some game we play, cause mom's standards are high, we compare mortal parents" Another one one your brothers said, his name is Castillo, he had a faded hair color of blue to purple that reminded you of Ramona flowers

(this is actually canon in Pjo, lmao)

He continued "my father was a famous k-pop idol" he bragged

A little girl then shouted "My dad was a model for Designer clothing!"

Selena rolled her eyes "So whose your dad (Name)?"

You didn't want to answer that, but at the same time- this is the first sibling playing you've ever been in, you're included here!

"my dad is Bruce Wayne... You can look me up on Google- but he, he really wasn't the best- umm dad"

"THE BRUCE WAYNE?" Someone gasps

"i thought his name was Brucie?"

You hear in the background

"I didn't know he was an asshole" Aster muttered

"come on bro, the guy parties all day and he's with children, how could you ever think that guy's a good father?" Castillo shrugs his shoulders

"that's okay (Name), a lot of mom's lovers are vain, taking it too seriously in their heads that they slept with the goddess of beauty, that's why mom stopped revealing herself, there are rare moments, but they're rare" another sister of yours says

You honestly feel so at home here...

________________________

I'm now realizing that the "Neglected daughter" fandom is literally so small, I just saw like three of my readers in another fic I was reading XD

Let's support each other!!!! :3

Also the characters without description are canon characters, people who are actually in pjo

The one with descriptions are OC's!

So Drew and Selena are canon characters! :3

Callisto and Aster aren't

I hope you enjoy the chapter!

@wpdarlingpan @mountvesuvu @nathaly36 @delias-stuff @vanessa-boo @bat1212 @sadslasher13 @ellaprime7

[pcr-alice]

DPxDC - Missing Persons

also on AO3

It started so quietly no one really noticed.

People were disappearing. A veteran from the mountains, a firefighter from the city, a surfer from the coast, and on and on. All gone without a trace. The local authorities investigated, of course, but they never found any leads. After some time, the people were simply written off as missing, and their communities moved on. They remained forgotten until the Justice League got involved. Their systems flagged the uptick in disappearances, and once a Bat took a look, they were immediately suspicious. It took another Bat before the link was finally found. And it took Red Hood disappearing to confirm it. The missing people all had previous close calls with death. And so the League followed protocol – they announced an investigation.

The disappearances stopped.

It was a relief at first. There were far too many people who fit the profile, and none of their analysis could discern a usable pattern from the previous disappearances. But as time stretched on, they got nervous. Surely whatever this was wouldn’t just stop once noticed? What was going to happen next, and when? Justice League Dark got involved. Only once John Constantine started poking around did they find a lead, and even then only thanks to dumb luck.

When Constantine was finally dragged to the town where one of the early disappearances occurred, he zeroed in on an old woman living in a care home. As it turned out, she was mildly magically sensitive. Apparently her grandmother was a witch or something of that sort. But crucially, she had suffered a nearly fatal heart attack almost a decade ago. And she was all too happy to talk about the ‘nice young man’ from her dream who offered to take her away.

She granted Constantine permission to dive into her memory to learn more. Whatever he learned did not make him happy. He said he’d be back after a quick trip to Hell and disappeared, much to Batman’s irritation. But true to his word, surprising some, he returned with slightly singed clothes and a book.

So here he was, chalking sigils onto the floor. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern watched him work in silence, likely trying to wrap their minds around the fact that there was a so-called Ghost King who they were about to request an audience with. Constantine finished up his work and stood at what they all assumed was the front of the circle he had just drawn.

“I do all the talking, yeah? These ones can be tricky.”

Without waiting for a response, he waved his hand, magic glowing at his palm. The circle responded in kind, pulsing white then fading into a harsh, vibrant green. A large black, green, and red elaborately-decorated sarcophagus rose inside the circle, appearing to phase straight through the floor.

“Dramatic fuckers, eh?” Constantine muttered.

A thick fog billowed out alongside it, quickly surging out past the boundary of the circle. It spread upward, threatening to fill the entire room. Constantine cursed to himself and waved an arm, clearing out the fog around them even as it thickened throughout the rest of the room, obscuring the view of the ceiling and walls save for the door directly behind them.

A deep voice echoed through the room with no discernible source. Everyone tensed.

“Who would dare wake the sleeping tyrant?”

A pair of bright green slits appeared from the depths of the fog and widened into eyes.

“Eugh, it’s you.”

The voice lost its echo. It sounded annoyed but entirely human and...young? That didn’t stop Constantine from clenching a hand into a fist, charging magic and preparing for an attack. The eyes moved closer, revealing a pale face and snow-white hair that floated in an unfelt breeze.

“Peace, Hellblazer.”

A lanky figure stepped forward onto the sarcophagus from where they were floating. They wore all black save for their white gloves, white boots, and previously visible head. With an audible thunk they plopped down on the foot of the sarcophagus, one leg bent upward to rest their chin on and wrap their arms around.

“I mean you no harm.”

There was a pause as the others waited to see how Constantine would respond.

“We met?”

“No, but I know of you. And I must admit, I’m disappointed to see you working with the likes of them.”

They gestured to the others in the room.

“Yeah, well,” Constantine relaxed his fist but lost none of his tension, “Don’t meet your heroes.”

The stranger scoffed.

“Don’t flatter yourself. I just enjoy seeing demons annoyed.”

There was another tense pause as the stranger lazily looked over all those present. Constantine broke the silence again.

“Who might you be, then?”

The stranger slowly dragged their gaze away from Wonder Woman and back to the magician. After a pause they spoke.

“You may call me Ambassador.”

“Ambassador to ghosts?”

“If you’d like to think of it that way.”

Constantine straightened his posture.

“We would like to formally request an audience with His Majesty The King to discuss what we suspect is ghost activity in our world.”

The ambassador stared back in silence with squinted eyes before sighing and thumping their forehead to their knee.

“Where to even begin…” they whispered to themselves.

“Okay, let’s start with this.” They slapped the side of the sarcophagus and looked up. “What part of ‘sleeping tyrant’ wasn’t clear?”

“I was under the impression His Majesty was recently crowned and well-respected?”

The ambassador pinched the bridge of their nose and groaned.

“Ancients...”

They hopped to the ground without warning, causing everyone to flinch into defensive stances. If the ambassador noticed, they gave no indication.

“The king is a tyrant, he is trapped in forever sleep again, and I’d like to keep it that way this time.”

Constantine opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted before he got a chance.

“Speaking of which, how’d you even summon him?”

“Summon?” Constantine choked out, clearly surprised.

The ambassador walked toward Constantine, making everyone save for him slide backwards a step. They looked down at the chalk marks on the floor.

“Ancients, this is archaic. Where’d you find it?”

After a few seconds of silence, the ambassador looked up at Constantine.

“Well?”

“Ah...Merlin.”

The ambassador raised an eyebrow.

“What? It’s bloody true!”

The ambassador huffed out a laugh and walked back to lean against the sarcophagus and cross their arms.

“Can’t fault his demonology, but this circle is Bad. I suggest you lose it.”

Constantine opened his mouth to speak, but was once again interrupted, this time from an unfamiliar voice echoing through the room.

“Lord Phantom.”

Everyone flinched as a set of black armor coated in purple flames stepped into view from the fog.

“’Sup Frighty?”

“The dark one is marked.”

The ambassador flicked their eyes to Batman and stared for several tense seconds.

“So he is. Just like the other one, but actually concealed. Must be barely contaminated.”

The ambassador squinted and tilted their head.

“Sure enough. It’s weak, but there’s a family bond there.”

Batman clenched his fist.

“Where is Red Hood?”

The ambassador straightened their head, unflinching and unblinking.

“Safe. And being cared for.”

Before Batman could respond, yet another voice echoed from the fog.

“These are the ones?”

The ambassador turned their back to Batman and groaned.

“Is anyone not coming?”

A giant, four-armed, blue-skinned, armor-clad woman stepped out of the fog with two sets of crossed arms. She had the smallest smirk on her face.

“Apologies. I wished to see those who would obstruct our evacuation.”

Superman and Green Lantern perked up and shared a short look of confusion. The woman turned her head to Wonder Woman, her smirk replaced with a grimace.

“I am disappointed to see one of my kin among them.”

“I thought she might be, but I wasn’t sure.”

Wonder Woman stepped forward.

“My Lady, I –”

“You were not asked to speak, Child.” The woman snapped.

Her voice shook the floor underneath them. Wonder Woman flinched and stared up at her with wide eyes. The heroes tensed for a fight. But to their shock, Wonder Woman slowly raised her arm to press a fist over her heart and bowed her head in deference.

“I will make my displeasure known,” the woman growled, voice still angry but no longer violently.

“Take Dora with you.”

“Do you think me unable to fend for myself, Little One?” Her mouth curved up into a fond smirk again.

“I know better than to doubt you,” they briefly smirked back, “but given my limited experience, I don’t hold them in high regard.”

After a pause they tacked on a “no offense”.

“None taken.”

The woman stepped backwards and faded into the fog. Superman took a step forward, eyeing the armor cautiously.

“Ambassador, my apologies for our unpleasant first meeting.”

He waited until the ambassador gave him a slight nod.

“May I inquire what your companion meant by ‘evacuation’?”

“Exactly what she said. Our kind are being hunted, and we are trying to save them.”

“In that case I must apologize again. We were not aware of this unfortunate situation. Had we been provided an explanation, we would –”

“Typical,” the ambassador scoffed, “your primary patron government is committing a genocide, and yet we’re at fault for not properly informing you.”

Superman was smart enough to bite back his standard “we’re independent” retort. Green Lantern stepped forward instead.

“If I may, Ambassador, my name is Hal Jordan. I am a member of the Green Lantern Corps. We are a wholly independent organization dedicated to peacekeeping across the galaxy.”

The ambassador looked him up and down slowly before turning their head away dismissively.

“I don’t talk to cops.”

The heroes were stunned to silence. The ambassador turned to the floating armor.

“Prepare the Keep. I’ll ward against this circle once the sarcophagus is back in its place.”

“My Lord.”

The armor bowed its head then faded into the fog. Batman stepped forward.

“We have no involvement in the violence against you or your kind.”

The ambassador turned to stare at Batman for several seconds, squinted eyes glowing brightly.

“You’re an excellent liar, Batman.” The fog crept forward and wrapped around their legs. “Unfortunately, I know you’re full of shit.”

“What points you to that conclusion?” Batman kept his voice neutral and steady.

The fog had risen to the ambassador’s chest. They scoffed.

“There are photos of you with Amanda Waller.”

Batman’s fist clenched harder.

The ambassador turned to look at Constantine as the fog enveloped them, leaving two glowing green spots.

“I suggest you not push this any further, Laughing Magician. There are some things in this universe that trump even your luck.”

The glowing green eyes closed, and the fog faded away, leaving an empty summoning circle and untouched room. After several seconds of silence, Wonder Woman finally raised her head and spoke.

“I must return to Themyscira, perhaps for some time. If that was who I believe it to be...something has gone very wrong.”

Superman glanced over the others, who were all still silently processing the encounter. He turned back to Wonder Woman to give her a nod, and she quickly walked out of the room.

Constantine reached into his coat and pulled out his flask. He unscrewed the cap with a heavy sigh and downed whatever was left. He looked tired and annoyed, same as he always did. But Batman could tell he was shaken.

He looked away from Constantine and back to the empty circle again. There was a lot of concerning information to process, but one key thing did slip through. The knight had called the stranger ‘Phantom’. He had come across that name once before. One of three legible words on a burnt piece of paper in an abandoned and destroyed facility. A facility that stank of a classified government cover-up. A facility Waller had sworn up and down she knew nothing about. But he had a lead. The other two words. Amity Park. A small town that only existed if you looked at paper maps printed several years ago.

He had to act quickly.