#even if I can smell them smoke pot outside

[notjustjavierpena]

Cravings

Series Masterpost | Main Masterpost | Support a disabled creator

A/N: A while back, I saw a text post made by the lovely @kteague and immediately, it sparked a need for more husband!javi. This is the text post in question. It’s sososo great. You should go follow ❤️ It also made me realize that I haven’t written Javier going down on his wife, and honestly wtf??? This takes place before Lucas is born.

Summary: Javi isn’t perfect. He needs a nicotine high badly, but your pregnancy isn’t allowing you to tolerate the smell of cigarettes. He indulges in his next favorite thing to satisfy his craving; going down on his pregnant wife.

Pairing: Javier Peña x f!reader (no y/n)

Tags: +18 smut (mdni), nicotine withdrawal, javier is a menace to the pussy eating society, pregnant sex, dirty talk, eat up javi

Word count: 1.8k

Link to this work on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49812556

Cravings

Javier feels extra twitchy today. He paces around the house like a caged animal, tapping his fingers on the side of his thighs, and considers throwing caution to the wind and just having that damn smoke. He has a packet of cigarettes stashed in one of the potted plants outside, but it’s for emergencies only. Like that one time that his Pop had called him to say that a tree had fallen down on the barn overnight, and the very thought of the cost and time it would take to fix it had made him fly out the door to smoke in the far back of the garden.

He does it for you though. He’d do anything for you. Especially now that Lucas Peña is making his arrival in less than three months. He remembers you going into your second trimester, and you’d been around his cigarette smoke only to run to the toilet to reject your dinner. He never wants you to feel like that again, so he quit cold turkey. 

“Perhaps it won’t be a problem when we’re having the next one,” you had said to him, and he had stubbed out the cigarette immediately. He didn’t need the rush of nicotine, because he had the rush of you already thinking of more kids. He knew that he wanted a family with you since he saw you, but only then he had known just how big of a family.

But Javier needs the rush now. He has been through all of the coping mechanisms; sweets, rubber bands on his wrists, even has run out of nicotine gum but he doesn’t dare go to the store in case he comes home with more cigarettes. Has run out of patches too, which he would like to plaster his arms in right now.

You are not home and he needs you. He has a rare day off and you are not home. When are you coming home? He watches the clock, hears the ticking, and wants to rip it off the wall. You’re usually home by now. Where the fuck are you? 

Fuck it. Javier speedwalks to the door to the garden.  He is just about to rip it open, harsh enough to be tearing it off its hinges when he hears the front door. 

“Javi?” You call out his name so heavenly, “Can you help me with the groceries?” 

Oh, so that’s what you have been doing instead of coming straight home to him. He finds you by the front door, barely successful in holding two brown bags and your keys at the same time. Without hesitation, he takes both bags from you and heads to the kitchen to place them on the counter.

“You could’ve asked me to pick something up, y’know,” he says as he busies his hands by unloading everything into their respective places. His hands shake; he needs something to hold onto but you won’t let it be you if the milk hasn’t gone in the fridge yet.

“I was passing by anyway,” you enter the kitchen and start helping him, and he can feel your eyes watching him with curiosity at his urgency, “What’s up with you?”

“There’s something up because I’m helping you in the kitchen?” He quips.

You laugh quietly, “Well… yeah.”

Javier doesn’t know if it’s funny, but he knows that he needs an excuse to get you worked up so that he can satisfy his cravings in the way that works the very best.

He finishes unloading the groceries, turns to you, and doesn’t even hesitate despite you holding onto a box of cereal; he kisses you right then and there. It’s a long, deep, and satisfying kiss with his hands rubbing up and down your sides. You gasp into his mouth, melt against him, and awkwardly put the cereal box onto the kitchen counter so that you can embrace him right back. 

“Thank fucking God you’re home,” he mumbles into you, relishing in the taste and warmth of your tongue. He is insisting in the way he holds you close, and starts to guide you out of the kitchen and towards the bedroom at the end of the hall. 

“Javi,” you protest as you realize his motives. He doesn’t relent, and you reluctantly drag your lips away from his. He groans in frustration, but you find his eyes with flushed cheeks and he might just burst right then at the shy look you are giving him, “I can’t. I haven’t even… I need a shower.”

“No, you fucking don’t,” he opens the door, realizing that the window has been open all day to air out your shared bedroom. You shiver at the cold air and Javier feels like he might be seeing stars soon when he notices your nipples hardening underneath your top. He steers you to the bed by your hips, “Need it. Please don’t deny me, mi amor.”

“What’s gotten into you?” You groan after another kiss, one where Javier’s hand comes up to cup your breast as he devours your mouth. Then you let yourself be guided down onto the bed, legs hanging out over the edge and Javier kneeling down on the floor. 

“Ran outta nicotine gum,” he mutters, too busy undoing your last pair of jeans in a while; they’re straining against your growing belly but he knows how much you love this pair. He yanks them down over your hips after he has undone the zipper.

“Makes sense,” you lift your hips to help him. 

“So lemme have this?” He pleads. He notices the wet patch that has formed on your white cotton panties, refraining from chuckling to himself. You aren’t going to say no. 

“Yes,” your breath hitches in your throat as he finds your clit on the outside of your underwear. He rubs in lazy circles and watches the wet and shiny patch grow larger underneath his touch. He even dares to press his finger against your slit, digging the fabric just slightly into you. 

“Chica sucia,” he says softly as you let out a sigh of pleasure, “So filthy walking around with your pretty little panties so wet.”

“Hasn’t been like this long,” you argue, “Just since you kissed me. Still think I need a shower.”

Javier shakes his head, “Like you like this. Can’t stop thinking about this pussy.”

He slides your underwear down over your thighs, calves, and then ankles. He drops them onto the floor by your jeans, admiring your legs and the cute bows on the socks you are still wearing. You are so beautiful that he might lose his mind, growing belly right in front of him as he kisses his way up your right leg and hears your smile through your moan. 

“Javi,” you say when he loses himself in staring at your swollen cunt a little too long. He can see your clit jump in anticipation and it makes his mouth water, cigarettes long forgotten. 

He pulls you a little closer to the edge of the bed, large hands slipping under the backside of your thighs to bend and spread your legs simultaneously. He handles them roughly and places them flat on the surface of the bed, causing you to whine. Then his palms slide upward to rest on the swell of your belly, his broad shoulders holding your legs in position so you don’t clamp down on his head just yet. He isn’t in doubt that he’d be able to count your heartbeats with the way your cunt throbs. 

“Please,” you clench once, and slick drips from your slit. 

“Shh,” he coos. 

And then he goes down on you like he hasn’t in a long while. He credits himself with being enthusiastic about eating you out every time, but he rarely has the frustration of withdrawal from nicotine to accompany him in his hunger for your sweet taste. He runs his mouth over your whole cunt, kisses your jumping clit, and sucks the slick off where it has smeared across your folds. You taste better than ever, salty and slightly sweet in a way that a shower would have ruined. 

“Mhm,” he hums whilst satiating his cravings. Your breathy moans reward him more than he thinks a smoke could right now. His fingers start to dent your protruding belly, holding on tight as he flicks your clit with his tensed-up tongue over and over again. 

“Just like th— ah, fuck,” you reach for his wrists to desperately hold onto something. He goes harder, moaning into your pussy. It makes you shake on top of the sheets, gushing just a bit into his mouth and he swallows it down greedily. He wants more, dips down to slip his tongue into your cunt, and eats right from you. He fucks you open whilst nosing at your hard clit, the nub peeking out from underneath the hood to demand more attention. He will just have to suck it once and you’ll be screaming, but he needs a little more and reluctantly refrains from doing so. 

Your breathing has become more irregular by now, more high-pitched too. He knows you’re getting close but he keeps you dancing around the edge, tongue sliding through your folds as he bobs his head. 

“Fuck! Baby!” You cry loudly, bucking your hips to seek more friction. 

“Not yet, mi vida, just a moment more,” he mumbles against you, but his mouth still starts climbing up towards your clit again. 

You entwine your fingers with his, holding his hands tightly over your belly as your legs start to move involuntarily. Your feet flex, muscles rippling all the way to your thighs as you near climax.

“I’m… I-it’s gonna happen,” you whine at the ceiling, “Fuck, suck my clit. Javi— fuckfuckfuck.” 

He gives in, raises his head slightly to cover your clit with his mouth, and then he sucks hard. 

You come so hard that your legs find the strength to shoot up from where they are being held down on the bed. Your thighs clamp around Javier’s head, muffling the sound of your cries whilst he works you through every crashing wave of pleasure. 

“I’ll buy you that stupid gum,” you eventually say. 

“Huh?” Javier looks up at you.

“Your nicotine gum, I’ll go out and buy it later,” you clarify, letting go of Javier’s hands to throw your arms above your head on the bed. You stretch, letting out a soft moan, “It’s the least I can do.”

“You spoil me,” he crawls up onto the bed, lying down beside your exhausted body. You’re so perfect, he thinks to himself. 

“But first,” your breathing is finally getting under control again. You turn onto your side, and Javier finds himself supporting your pregnant belly as you move. You smile gently at him, reaching for his belt to unbuckle it with both hands, “I’m going to take care of you too. See… I too have cravings.”

Javier didn’t think that every passing second with someone could feel like his life had peaked. Yet here you were.

.

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[heartthrobin]

your kiss carries me home

javier peña x female!reader

wc: 1.1k

warnings: none, just fluff

an: this has been sitting in drafts for eons but i thought y’all deserved a little sm sm while you wait on the Hotch fic :)

summary: every day is harder than the last, but Javier’s got you to kiss him drunk as soon as he steps in the door and that’s more than he deserves.

The light in the hallway outside the apartment had stopped working, it steeped the entrance in darkness.

Javier's eyes flickered up to it. He'd been meaning to put in a new bulb for almost a month now.

He didn't know why he was so bothered by it. The apartment wasn't his own, not really. It had been DEA appointed and the rows of apartments down the corridor belonged to colleagues who's faces he passed every morning but who’s names he couldn’t be bothered to remember.

He'd felt weird when he asked you to move in - considering it wasn't really his own place - but you bounced on your toes with a soft “really, Javi?” on your lips and kissed him like he'd invited you to Buckingham Palace. The logistics of the matter were quickly lost on him. 

Evening wind whistled through the corridor and unstuck the hair that sweat had plastered to Javier’s forehead.

Yellow light peeked out from underneath the door, you were home. He could hear you rustling around the kitchen: cupboards closing and plates clinking.

A wave of guilt washed over him. It was almost midnight.

You'd probably waited on him to eat dinner. Every day he promised to be home earlier, and every day he managed to arrive later.

He reached to scratch at his top lip, where the bristly brown hair sprouted out under his nose, and sighed. It had been such a godawful long day. A narco had run him down what felt like the full length of Bogotá and they’d lost another informant he’d been using to monitor Pacho Herrera.

Javier’s eyes dared a glance down at his state: his cream button up was caked in dust, sticking to his chest with sweat, and he reeked like a tobacco shop. He knew how you hated the cigarettes. Javier was coming home to you a mess, as he did every night.

It scared him that it wasn’t enough. The late nights, the cigarette smoke, the broken hallway light. That he wasn’t enough. 

The sound of a distant crash pulled his gaze back up to the door, it was followed by a faint "shit!" and he smiled.

God, all he'd thought about all day was you.

About getting home and crawling into your arms and tasting your lips. About your hands and how they would trail down his back and feeling the rumble of your giggles when he kisses your neck.

You never complained about his tardiness, only wrapped your arms over his shoulders as if every night he was returning from war, and told him you missed him.

The thought was enough to urge his hand over the door handle and it squeaked as it twisted. The door pushed open, it was unlocked.

Cool air rushed over him, the AC was cranking loudly in the corner: fighting to ward off Colombia's heat of the night.

"Javi?" Your voice carried from the nook of the kitchen. The smell of food was wafting after it and Javier's stomach nudged at him in hunger.

He set his gun and badge carefully on the counter before following the sounds of dinner being made. "Baby, it's me."

The kitchen was small and you turned from where you'd been mixing something in a pot on the stove to look up at him, he thought he might melt through the floor at the look on your face.

Your smile tugged on either end of your mouth and the fuzzy yellow light made your eyes sparkle.

"How many times do I have to tell you to lock the door when I'm not here?" In two steps Javier had you between his large hands, squeezing at your hips and pulling you against him so he could stare unabashedly down at your face. His tone was playful. "Hm?"

"I'm sorry..." you grinned, "I left it open so when my boyfriend arrives he can come right in."

Your eyelashes bat up at him and Javier wondered how he ever managed to look away from them.

"Oh, yeah?" He inquired, tilting his head and pulling you closer against him. "And where is your boyfriend now?"

Javier felt your hands slide down his back and into his bum pockets. You shrugged, playing along. "I don't know. He said he was going to be here by nine, but he hasn't shown up."

"Is he always such a flaky asshole, your boyfriend?" His tone was gentler now, less playful, concealing a soft apology.

Your hands slipped from his backside up to either side of his face where your thumb ran softly over his top lip. "Most of the time, yes. But I love him so it doesn't matter."

Javier pressed down against your lips tenderly. You tasted like the white wine that was sitting in a glass not too far down the counter and the pasta sauce warming in the pot.

"I'm sorry, baby." He whispered against your lips.

You shook your head, kissing him again. "You're here now."

Javier's hand tightened on your hip and licked at the seam of your mouth. His tongue slipped in and he didn't think he'd ever get over the little sounds you made.

The first kiss you'd shared had been a menagerie of melodies that left Javier's head spinning for hours afterwards. He'd known just then that you had to be his.

The hands cupping his face moved to drag scribbles against his scalp with your long nails and he was sure he was dying and dreaming and melting all at once. 

He guided you carefully until you were leaning back against the countertop. You pulled off him with a slight pop, never wandering to far: close enough that you could offer short sweet pecks to his glistening red lips, wet with your saliva.  

"I thought about you all day." His words slipped out like hot steam from the mouth of a kettle.

"You did?" Your fingers twisted the curls at the base of his neck. "Shouldn't you be thinking about catching bad guys and keeping Colombia safe from narcos, mi amor?"

He let out a chuckle. "Not when I have the most beautiful girlfriend in the world at home waiting to kiss me drunk as soon as I step in the door."

The blush that chased over your cheeks made Javier's chest bloom with pride. Knowing that he could do that to you with just his stupid words.

"Eres demaisiado suave, Peña." You tutted, the grin of playfulness ever present. "Es muy peligroso."

"Just for you, baby." He swooped down for one more taste at heaven, sighing as your teeth caught his bottom lip before straightening up. "I'm starving. Let's eat before your boyfriend gets here."

[mysticmunson]

rainy days (steddie x reader)

summary: when rain wakes you up earlier than usual

word count: 1.5k

authors note: this is for my best friend @lilacletter i love you so much and appreciate you beyond what i can say. i hope you have an amazing birthday and a fabulous week in general. you deserve all the love in the world, to many more. i hope you enjoy. :)

(not proofread)

The gentle patter of rain on pavement roused you from your sleep, the room being a shade of grey due to the storm outside. Peering at the sleeping figures on each of your sides, Eddie and Steve remained in deep slumber, both sets of lips hung open slightly with light snores.

Entangled in them, you stealthily slipped away, adjusting the blankets around them and walking downstairs. The quaint home was a new edition after a few years of dating, deciding more space was necessary amongst the chaos of each of your work schedules, along with your schooling.

Pine seeped from the dried candle on the countertops, mixing with coffee as you put some in the machine. Rubbing your eyes, you checked the time to see it was barely 8 am, something unnoticeable due to the lack of sun. The April showers transcended into May, greeting summer with the chilly water, a welcomed addition.

Hickory liquid began to fall into your pot, smoke surrounding it, as you reached for your blue mug. With a dash of cream and sugar, it soon blended as you poured it in, reaching the very top of the rim. 

Thunder rumbled, averting your attention to the small patio out back, the rain not too heavy against the roof. Wandering through the door, the smell of rain met your brew cohesively, looking out at the land before you. 

A few years ago, the plausibility of having a home to share with the men you loved seemed slim to none. The mundane became something to be cherished, never taking a moment of solitude for granted. You all had done a lot of growing, fleshing out to be functioning adults once leaving Hawkins. 

Steve had used his free time while working at Family Video to learn about the growing world of the internet, taking classes to get more experience after you persuaded him enough. It was one of the first times he really felt good about his abilities, seeing he was good with technology, and he secured a place at a global company. 

Eddie had graduated and had a slight crisis, not positive about what exactly his path was. After a few weeks, he decided to try tattooing, knowing his love of the art and his knack for drawing. He didn’t know he could love something as much as playing guitar until he started that, saving up to have his own store that was now successful in your new city.

They had been more than supportive of you continuing your education, bragging about how smart you were, even if you failed a test or cried out of frustration. Along with school, you worked at a hotel as a receptionist until you could work in your field. The boys insisted that you didn’t need to work, knowing they both had bills and extras covered, but you were stubborn in that sense.

There were ups and downs, Steve having to travel, Eddie working overtime, and you being overly stressed with your workload. However, the one thing that saved you all was the effort put in, there was never a moment you doubted the other didn’t want to be with you, making sure communication was clear due to past scenarios.

Part of you wanted to run out in the storm, to feel the cool water trickle down your arms and onto Steve’s shirt. The warmth in your palms kept you restrained, letting it run down your throat and burn slightly in your chest. The caffeine was slowly rising, now more alert of your surroundings as your feet rocked on the cement.

“What’re you doin’, trouble?” A teasing voice spoke softly, the door shutting and tattooed arms wrapping around your waist. A bare chest pulled flush against your back, soft pajama pants skimming past your bare legs.

“You’re up early.” You mused, securing your spare arm against his, feeling his soft brown hairs. His chin rested on your shoulder, stubbly cheek pressed against your soft one, raising your drink to his lips.

Stealing a bit, his eyes fluttered as you tilted it back, pulling away after a beat. Gulping it down, he winced at the slight burn, but thought of pouring himself a cup in a minute.

“Rain woke me up. Also didn’t feel you.” He murmured with closed eyes, pressing his nose against your face, kissing below your jaw. You tilted your head to nuzzle upon his curls, smelling the hints of his coconut shampoo, kissing his hairline.

Taking in another taste, the coffee was gone and the smoke had vanished. The cup clinked against the small side table beside a double-framed photo. One side had Steve, aged 5 at summer camp with missing teeth, and the other with Eddie, about 3 at a picnic. 

Holding the frame, you looked at it in adoration, the coloring slightly faded after being shoved between photos in an attic for years. Steve hated his, but it was one of your favorites. You wondered what they were like as kids, to be boys together despite not knowing one another, so unaware of everything else going on. 

“He looks so sweet.” You cooed, finger tracing over his outrageously 1970s haircut. Bangs rested above his eyebrows, hints of blonde between hazelnut locks, eyes squinting due to the sun. He was sitting on a log in front of a lake in a yellow shirt and jean shorts, hiking sandals on his feet. 

Your eyesight went to the one of Eddie, a mess of ringlets as he reached his chubby hand at a teddy bear. The hand extending it to him had painted nails of pale pink, his wide eyes looking at her with an even wider smile. You could practically hear the giggle erupting, imagining one like his own, but up a few octaves.

“I love this photo of you too.” You commented, touching where the blue gingham cloth sat beneath him years ago.

Blushing at the affection he still hadn’t grown into full comfort of, he scoffed, standing straighter, but pulling you closer.

“I just know I look cooler than Steve does.” He remarked, making you laugh at the foolishness, interjected by the opening door.

“What? When?” Steve questioned, walking out in a baggy shirt and boxers, scratching at his navel. He held his own cup of coffee, but he had his mostly black, only a spot of sugar.

His eyes fell to the frame in hand, groaning himself, grabbing it and putting it back in its place. The furrow in his brow was not solidified as it quickly vanished as he pecked both of your heads. Instead, he glanced at Eddie in a mysterious, silent agreement.

Suddenly wet lips peppered kisses on both sides of your face, exaggerated smooching noises to add to the dramatics. Squealing, you tried to shrink away, being stopped by their firm hold. 

“Thinks she can be all cute and embarrass us.” Eddie teased, lifting you up an inch off the ground, your arms wrapping around his neck instinctively, “Did say you were cute though.”

Ignoring Steve’s obvious blush, you playfully berated them instead, “I was just enjoying my rainy morning, go back to sleep.”

Now they both scoffed, Steve wiggling his fingertips against your belly to make you squirm in the other man’s grasp. A sharp gust of wind signaled you all inside, your feet now back on the tiled floor. 

“Want pancakes?” Steve asked, yawning behind the back of his hand, already reaching for the cupboard as the answer was always yes. Still, you and Eddie confirmed, leaning against the beige countertops.

The meek hiss of the batter hitting the pan was the only noise as you stood in comfort, Eddie’s arms having returned to your body moments after becoming stationary. He found comfort in touch, not responding well to playful resistance or as a form of punishment. Ignoring either of them wasn’t an option for any of you, no matter how big or small the issue was, it left both distraught.

Without much thought as Steve handed you both a plate, you smacked his bottom with a smirk, noticing how it jiggled. He blushed profusely, leaving both boys’ mouths agape, Eddie’s with a bit more amusement.

“You’re paying for that later.” He quipped, narrowing his eyes with a pointed finger, taking his own plate, and settling you all at the table.

Even if your whole day had consisted around this wooden table, the sticky syrup on the sides of your glass of water from accidental touches, you think you’d still be one of the luckiest girls on the planet. There was every ounce of care and love imaginable in their being, even when being playful.

In decades from now, pictures of the three of you would collect dust on a shelf as loved ones enjoyed their own versions of this day. You hoped the warmth you felt at this moment resonated from the ink, seeing the sparkle in their eyes as you did daily.

The bad days felt heavy, but each of those was worth days like these. Ones where the rain poured, the coffee brewed, and old photographs resided in your possession.

[featherandferns]

Smut with prompt 1 if that’s alright <3

In retrospect, this is not what I had in mind when I said surprise me.

Um, I got REALLY carried away so basically have a short-fic???

feel free to request: prompt list

Happy Anniversary - prompt 1

JJ’s never had an anniversary before. The longest ‘relationship’ he’s been in, before you, lasted a whole two weeks in ninth grade. The farthest they went was holding hands, and that was only because their friends wouldn’t stop heckling for them to. So, when JJ casually asked you what you wanted to do for your one-year anniversary whilst the two of you were walking back from the beach, you shrugged and said possibly the worst answer you could’ve given him. “Surprise me.”

JJ isn’t heartless. He knows what girls like, inside the bedroom and outside. He knows how to woo someone. What to say to have them all mushy and blushing and stuff. Hell, it’d clearly worked with you. But was he romantic? Now that’s a different thing entirely.

It didn’t help that you were rather low maintenance. That you were more than content with date nights that involved surfing and smoking and sometimes a late-night walk. Staying and watching a movie, usually ending up with the film completely neglected and your clothes on the floor. Dinners and presents and all of that weren’t as much your style. You weren’t against them, per say, but as a broke cut-resident yourself, you didn’t care about all the finer things in life.

“Why don’t you buy her a necklace?” John B offers from the deckchair.

“She doesn’t really wear necklaces,” JJ replies from the hammock. “She just has this one chain with her mom’s wedding ring on it. Always wears it.”

“A book?” Pope says.

“Not much of a reader,” JJ returns.

“Why don’t you do something for her instead of buying her something, then?” Kiara tries.

JJ sits up at that, frowning at her. “What’d ya mean?”

“Well, she seems like the kinda girl who likes doing things.”

“Oh, definitely,” JJ replies with a growing smirk.

Kie rolls her eyes at the innuendo. “JJ, gross. I mean, she’s always surfing or crocheting or whatever.”

“I don’t know shit about crocheting,” JJ tells Kie. “She does like to cook though. Makes the best lemon sea bass ever.”

“Why don’t you cook for her then?” Sarah says.

John B and Pope burst into laughter. JJ glares at them, unamused.

“What?” she innocently asks.

“JJ’s level of cooking is a piece of toast,” John B says.

“And even that’s got a fifty-fifty chance of success,” Pope adds.

“Fuck you guys! I can cook! How hard can it be? You just follow a recipe and throw some shit in a pan and then boom,” JJ challenges. They stare up at him, amused and unconvinced. “I can cook!”

“What’s her favourite meal?” Kie asks.

“She likes Italian,” JJ thinks aloud. “Maybe spaghetti and meatballs or something?”

“You’re going to make spaghetti and meatballs? Something that requires three different things being done simultaneously?” Pope asks him, eyebrows raised so high they nearly teeter on greeting his hairline.

“Watch me, golden boy,” JJ grins self-assuredly.

The only form of reply the blonde boy gets is John B digging into his pockets and pulling out a five-dollar bill, which he then holds out to Pope in bet.

~*~*~*~*

The first thought you have as you walk up the porch steps of the chateau is ‘what the hell is that smell?’ It’s something akin to burning, though tinged with an overwhelming stench of garlic and tomato. The second thought you have as you open the door is ‘oh dear God.’

You’re greeted by a cloud of smoke and steam. It stings yours eyes a little. There’s chaos in the kitchen ahead. The clattering of pots and pans and JJ’s mumbled curses. The fact that the fire alarm hasn’t gone off can only mean that it’s broken. Smiling smally to yourself, amused, you dump your bag and cardigan on the pull-out sofa and walk through to the kitchen.

“In retrospect, this is not what I had in mind when I said surprise me,” you say, loud enough for him to hear you over the madness of his cooking.

JJ spins around at the sound of your voice. His hair is sticking in every which way (cap clearly abandoned) which only tells you he’s been stressfully raking his fingers through it. His eyes are wide and frantic like a man who just committed murder. Muscle tee damp with sweat from the overwhelming warmth that is standing in an unventilated kitchen of mayhem.

“I told you to come at eight,” he says.

You quirk a brow. “It is eight.”

“Wha—” His eyes flit to the clock on the wall, to the right of you. He cusses under his breath.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m…Well, I’m…”

You watch as he looks around at the chaos, as if coming to from sleepwalking. Your brow quirks higher still. “Starting a small house fire?”

“Cooking you dinner,” he corrects, shooting you a glare. “For our anniversary.”

Your smile can’t help but grow at that. Heart does a little summersault. He’s never cooked you dinner before (and now you can see why).

“Spaghetti and meatballs,” JJ adds, driven by your expression it seems. But then his confidence dwindles as he gestures lamely to the hob. The smoke and steam coming from it is the source of the garlic-tinged smell monstrosity. “But it’s, uh, not exactly going to plan.”

“In what way?”

“Well, to start, the pasta isn’t going all soft and stuff. It’s just sorta sticking to the pan,” he sighs, annoyed.

“Well, how much water did you add to it?”

He looks to you, blank. “I’m supposed to add water?”

You stare at him, gaping a little. Seriously?

Walking to the hob, looking down into the pan…Yep. That is just pasta, glued and burnt and probably never coming free. Then, you glance into the second pan. Pasta sauce that is weirdly brown-ish in colour, saturated with garlic (you can tell from smell alone) and mixed herbs that haven’t been diced properly, leading them to float at the top like driftwood. The meatballs are burnt past the point of no return. Chargrilled. The cooking top is covered in splatters of sauce and seasonings, making it filthy. The countertops are cluttered with every cooking utensil and appliance under the sun: spoons, knives, spatulas and even whisks (?). A bowl of grated cheese sits sadly to the side; the only thing that survived JJ’s culinary hand.

But, despite the catastrophe that it is, you can’t help but feel your heart thrum happily. Ironically, it’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever had done for you and is weirdly the perfect anniversary celebration. All of this took thought and time and effort. So, turning around, facing a very meek, embarrassed JJ who stands with his back against the fridge, hands shoved in his pockets and head hung in defeat, you find yourself smiling lovingly.

Your hands cradle his jaw, drawing his gaze to you, and you lean forward to kiss him. “I love it.”

“You do?”

“I do,” you assure. “And I love you.” Then you’re kissing him again.

JJ’s hands find home on your waist as he kisses you back, smiling. Pulling away after a moment, a little breathless, you glance over your shoulder. “I love it,” you repeat, “but I don’t think we should eat it.”

“Oh, definitely not,” JJ agrees quickly. The two of you laugh.

Another fleeting kiss and then you’re stepping out of his hold, the two of you moving to turn everything off. You toss the pan of pasta into the sink and run the tap, dunking half a bottle of washing up liquid in. Maybe that might give it a fighting chance. JJ half-arsedly piles up all the cooking utensils he’d used so there’s some more space. He then moves to the fridge to put away the grated cheese (no point letting it go to waste) whilst you tip the sauce and meatballs down the drain or into the bin.

“So, the main course might have been a bust,” JJ says with his head still in the fridge.

You chuckle as you lean to crack open every window in the kitchen, hoping to aerate the room. “To put it lightly.”

“But, hey: dessert and wine are still good,” JJ announces.

You shut off the tap and turn around, wiping your hands dry on a towel. He’s holding a tub of chocolate mousse and a bottle of cheap white wine up.

“Dessert’s the best course anyway,” you tell him with a grin that mirrors his own.

With that, the two of you head to the pull out. You swipe two spoons from the drawer on the way whilst JJ grabs a couple of mismatched wine glasses. Sighing as you sit, shuffling back to the pillows, you get to opening the wine. JJ’s wandering around the sitting room, messing with the old CD player, and as you’re filling up two glasses, some soft R&B music kicks on from the early 2000s.

“Oh?” you jokingly say, raising a brow at him.

He rolls his eyes and joins you, taking the outstretched glass you offer him. Smiling, you lean up to kiss him.

“Happy anniversary,” you whisper.

He clinks his glass to yours. “Happy anniversary, baby.”

The two of you drink and then JJ’s placing his glass on the window ledge, moving to open the mousse. You clap your hands happily, rubbing them together with a giggle.

“This might taste like shit,” JJ warns as he grabs one of the spoons. You place your glass on the side too.

“Can’t be much worse than your cooking,” you reply.

He decides not to respond to that, but you watch him roll his eyes mirthfully. Then he’s dipping the spoon in and holding it out for you. Leaning forward, you taste off the spoon.

“Mhm!” you nod, swallowing.

“Good?”

“Good!” you grin.

You take the other spoon and do the same for him, watching as he eats practically from the palm of your hands. His eyes hold your gaze as he does. Shamelessly, you squeeze your legs together. You swear only he could make something this cheesy sexy to you.

“You like it?” you wonder. He licks his lips.

“It’s alright,” JJ says, feigning being in thought (his growing smile giving him away). “Think I know something that tastes better.”

“Oh?”

“Mhm,” he nods, leaning closer until you’re subconsciously sinking onto your back.

Playing along, you innocently ask through your excited smile, “what would that be?”

He takes your spoon from your hold, tossing it to the side after doing the same with his. Hovering over you, JJ leans down so his lips are a breadth’s width from yours.

“I think you know, baby,” he mumbles.

With that, he’s kissing you. Tastes like chocolate and vino. Your hands grab at his face, pulling him nearer, hooking your feet over his legs. JJ sighs against you, chuckles a little as you do too. Breaks away to kiss down your neck, moving slowly down the bed, coming to rest on his knees and dragging you by your feet to pull you nearer, making you laugh all flustered-like. JJ chews on his lower lip, grinning that punch-drunk grin you love, as he pulls off your skirt and panties. Then he’s going down on you. Relentless and unforgiving, as if to make-up for the cooking catastrophe. He’s tongue-fucking your centre and lapping at your wetness.

“Fuck, JJ,” you whimper, eyes slipping shut.

It’s like he’s spurred on by the sounds you make, likes when you whine out his name. You grip at the blankets on the pull-out sofa, staring at the ceiling, moaning through a blissed-out smile. His thumb rubs at your clit as he works at you with newfound fever. Moaning from the taste of you, the sound making you clench your legs tighter against his head. JJ uses a hand to hold one of your legs open for him. It’s all so fucking good. You’re building, closer and closer, until you’re coming with a gasp, quietly chanting his name.

When JJ pulls away, panting, you whine at the loss of his mouth on you. Moving atop of you again, you kiss at his mouth, sighing at the taste of yourself that lingers on his tongue. Your hands hurriedly move to undo his shorts as he kisses you, making him chuckle.

“Need you to fuck me,” you tell him breathlessly.

“Yes, ma’am,” he grins, moving to suck a hickey on your jawline.

Shucking the shorts off – JJ pulling back a moment to help – you slip a hand into his boxers and work at him. He groans against your jaw, falling pliant to your touch, making you smile. But you’re impatient the way he is, and you shove off his boxers.

“I wanna be on top,” you say as he kisses your neck.

“Fuck yes,” he replies. Climbs off you and grabs for your hips, guiding you atop of him as he collapses onto his back. You’re guiding him to your entrance, moaning as he slides against your wetness. As you go to sink down, he’s stopping you, making you meet his gaze. “Wait! We need a condom.”

You shake your head. Move to sink down again.

“Baby, stop, I’m serious,” JJ chuckles, breathless.

Smiling to yourself, you lean down to kiss him. Then, against his lips, you tell him your anniversary gift to him. “I’m on the pill.”

JJ pulls you away from him by the jaw so he can meet your eyes. Through nothing but looks, the two of you have a quick, silent conversation. Really? Yes. Chuckling boyishly, kissing you again, deeper and rushed, you giggle against him.

“Happy anniversary, baby.”

[nohoney]

k im in desperate need of tooth rotting comfort in the c&c universe T^T

i just got over a really bad migraine so tooth rotting comfort is definitely the vibe ( = ⩊ = )

“Deep breaths, you’re doing good doll.” Touya murmurs gently, holding you against his chest as he feels your body slowly inflate and deflate as you take slow breaths. He’s stood in his spot in the kitchen for the last five minutes since you returned home, not moving until you were ready to do so.

It’s normal to have some off days where you don’t feel your best, but even a bad case of unexplained anxiety could happen to anyone. Usually you carry yourself well, even through some tougher times, so when you experience the days that you don’t feel able to handle your own emotions, it’s often upsetting for yourself. It partly hurts your pride to feel so weak and it took extra effort in the early days of the relationship to rely on one another during the bad mental health days.

You melt against Touya’s body and the uncomfortable feeling in your gut slowly works it’s way up. It spreads through your body and the sudden weight of finally letting go makes you cry. His arms hold you tighter, the smell of cigarettes is a comfort to you in these times and you just want to hold on tightly to him.

Touya’s not the greatest at comforting words. He’s better at putting his foot down when he needs to and being a little bit snarky when it comes to other people. Most of his comfort is through actions. Tight embraces and small acts of service are what get you through these rough moments. Because you can’t explain why you have anxiety, you can only feel it and let it out.

“C’mon, let’s have a smoke.”

You nod against him, wiping away your tears and following behind wordlessly.

One cigarette to share.

The two of you stand outside the balcony together, Touya holding you from behind and waiting for his turn for whenever you pass the smoke back to him. The nicotine is comforting and he likes the way the smell melds with your floral perfume.

The butt of it is stubbed out in the ashtray and he heads back inside with you.

Whenever you have these off days, you’re clingier than usual. You hang onto Touya like a sloth whether it be in the shower or when he’s stirring ramen in a pot for a lazy dinner. And when he needs to step away, you’re hugging your favorite plushie that he bought for you on your six month anniversary. Touya texts his friends to let them know that he might potentially cancel on their next day plans depending on if you’ve shaken off your bad feelings or not.

“Touya…” you come up to his side with your plushie held in your arms. “Hey…”

“Yeah? What is it doll?” He asks as he washes his hands after stepping out to smoke, “Dessert?”

Something sweet to hopefully lift your mood a little which is a typical want when you have your down days. There’s a batch of cookie dough he could pop into oven or the bag of mini candies that you and him eat slowly over time.

“Ice cream?” You ask him in such a small voice almost like you’re a little girl.

“Sure, let’s go. Which one do you want?” He asks you, thinking if the gas station nearby has anything you’d want right now.

There’s a bit of hesitance from your end before you tell him, “I want the other one. Where they make it into a rose shape.”

Ah, the fancy one.

Touya makes the drive for you, his hand on your knee as you still hold your plushie tight against you. He offers to go alone so you can stay in the car and be comfortable but you want to cling to him. He orders at the little kiosk and taps his phone to make the payment, waiting patiently with you hugging him tightly. Ice cream is formed in the shape of a rose and given to you in a little cup. It’s a simple thing that manages to bring a smile to your face, the first one you’ve had since you had returned home.

Unfortunately the anxiety doesn’t subside the next day, it’s still lingering and it keeps you rooted in bed beyond the time that you should be up. He offers to stay in bed with you, but you want some space this time. Touya tells you that he’ll give you an extra hour to stay in but after that, you are going to get up.

He sits on the edge of the bed waiting for you to muster the energy to get up. He watches you take a deep breath in and then exhale out. It’s difficult to see you struggle but he softly encourages you to stand on your feet, to make it to the restroom and wash your face. A very simple goal to reach that feels impossible in that moment. But he’s with you every step of the way as you leave the bed, shuffle your feet to the bathroom, standing beside you with a face towel ready, and then he’s hugging you as a reward.

It sucks to have these kinds of days where you just don’t feel yourself but Touya is with you to help make it easier.

[chogiwow]

in search of happiness | part one.

pairing: bang chan x gn! reader

genre: heavy angst, hurt-comfort, fluff undertones

wc: part one : 20.6k+

warnings: suicidal themes, suicide attempt, drowning, dysfunctional family, death, smoking, major character death, themes of depression, mentions of anxiety, cancer (minor character), language, heavy themes, suggestive, eventual smut (there will be allusions, but i’m hoping i won’t have to write actual smut for this).

a/n: she is back bitches

PART I | PART II | PART III | PART IV

ONE – UNWASHED DISHES IN THE SINK. 

It's a Saturday afternoon, and Kim’s Diner is brimming with locals and tourists alike during a particularly busy lunch hour.

The suds of the dishwater splatters on your arm, tiny bubbles staining the sleeve of your old black sweater before getting swallowed into the fabric in an oval patch. The lingering worry of the rolled up sleeves getting drenched is drowned in the pile of dishes waiting to be washed and dried, something Minho reminds you of with an attempt to hurry you up in the process with a subtle threat of the orders on hold. It mocks you, somewhat.

You can smell it, the oily meat and the spicy soup in the midst of the lemony scent of the dish soap, clanging of pots and ladles behind your back and the swift hands working their knives into chopping vegetables.

A bead of sweat slides down the side of your face, falling into the sink, the tiny kitchen cramped and hot, making you perspire and wipe your face, but you resist the urge to rub the tingling left behind by the trickling sweat down the side of your face in the fear of getting soap bubbles all over your face. That would certainly be a gross feeling.

The bell on the wall dings, another order slip clipped to the wire mesh across the small window separating the dining and the kitchen area, a new set of instructions being yelled. Another portion of soup, another plate of grilled meat, a bowl of udon, pan fried noodles; a loud chorus of yells break out, everybody scattering towards their workstations – in essence it’s mostly the same, because the restaurant doesn’t offer much when it comes to a diverse platter. Not that you were catering to people with a refined palette, it was a small local restaurant tucked away in a small cranny of the hill where everybody knew everybody, and for those who had been living here for years, they didn’t even require the menus – now yellowed and fraying at the edges of its lamination, the plastic bent and peeling.

Stacking the last plate onto the drying rack, Felix is quick to take over, smiling at you as he picks up the dry cloth and wipes them down before putting them away carefully on the shelves. Removing your pink scrubbing gloves, your attention is called to the front where Mr. Kim – the owner, a man in his sixties now, who mainly mans the front desk and chats with the customers, giving free reign to the younger generation after keeping this place alive for almost thirty years– asks you to serve and clean up tables. A sharp pain jolts through your left wrist, the first sign of a terrible ache seeping through your bones. You ignore it.

Untying the damp apron from around your waist, you leave the chaos of the kitchen, wiping your sweat on your sweater sleeves only to shiver when you push open the door into the diner, the sudden change in temperature noticeable and a temporary respite from the heat of the oils and spices, but only for so long since it would eventually start to feel much too cold out here as it got darker outside.

It’s not long after that the chilly air makes you pull your sleeves down, your loose knitted sweater too flimsy for withstanding the cold by itself, but hustling around the diner helps you disregard the occasional gusts of winds through the open doors and cracks in the windows.

The restaurant itself was a quaint little thing with white stone walls, the telltale coziness of being perched atop a hill between tall trees, aged with vines draped around its chipping paint like a dress made of leaves, flagged along the perimeter by small ground lights, all glowing in different intensities with age. A wooden sign with roughened edges now fading engravings of ‘Kim’s Diner’ hung above the door.

Nobody minded the worn out wooden furniture and the same old chequered tablecloths in red and white, if anything, there was a sense of familiarity to it all, like a place preserved in memory for years, still running and still alive.

Tucked in the hills, the sloping terracotta roofs perched up were visible from the foot of the hill, burnt brick and missing a few tiles, but a certain landmark even still after years. The huge trees almost clamped down like an overgrown canopy, wide steps with moss carpets gradually merging into a downward slope leading down to the main hill town, but it was a decent walk downhill and the spot where the restaurant was nestled felt like a secret shared by the people of this small hill town.

You liked it up here though, leaning against the rusty railings to look down upon the town under a darkening sky, lights blinking into life and people walking by; nothing seemed rushed, it wasn’t quiet but it was calm.

From where you leaned across the table, running a slightly damp cloth over the plastic covering the tablecloth, you spot a figure through the window with bright blonde hair climbing up the stairs, struggling to breath and bending against their knees to catch his breath. Another tourist, you suppose, from the looks of their bright hair and camera bag strapped across their shoulder.

They stop for a moment, leaning against the balusters of the long railings, their profile inclined sideways such that the foggy windows don't let you have a good look at their face, but you discern it to be a man. You stare for a while at the broad back, the weather inappropriate attire of a simple brown cashmere sweater with the neck of a white t-shirt visible under the collar unsurprising, since most tourists didn’t often feel the cold of the hills as you did, usually coming from lands hotter and their winters more cruel that the winds of the hills were but a mere breeze of respite after a long day of hiking for them.

Inhaling a long breath, he’s still for a few seconds, eyes closed and turned towards the sky as if soaking in the winter sun, lips parting when he exhales through his mouth, chest heaving at the slight exertion, one strap of his bag slipping off his shoulder before he pulls it back up.

A low rumble echoes and you're momentarily distracted, your eyes turning towards the sky which was starting to turn grey, the clouds slowly rolling in and you knew the evening would get chillier if it indeed rained. The thought makes you shiver, drawing the knitted sweater closer around you, too flimsy for the incoming weather, the familiar sting in your wrist explained.

Placing the salt and pepper shakers beside the napkin stand, you attend to a call of a bottle of soju, pacing towards the refrigerator and pulling out a chilled bottle of the drink before placing it on the table with a shot glass for the customer.

Felix calls from the front, order for table seven ready to be served and you make your way to the serving counter, placing the hot steaming bowls of udon and a set of chopsticks each, swishing it away amongst the loud chatter and gradually louder rumbling of the skies with a practised proficiency, almost missing the ding of the bell that goes off when the front door opens.

You're in a hurry to serve though, not catching the person entering and by the time you've placed the dishes down in front of the hungry teenagers who ordered them, you only catch the same broad back with a mop of brilliant blonde hair walking towards one of the tables and sitting with their back facing towards you. The tourist from before.

The first few drops of rain are fat droplets of water, you’re in the kitchen again, the steam of dimsums and steamed vegetables greeting you as you stir a pot of clear soup, heating it exactly for three minutes and then ladling the slightly frothy and thickened with cornstarch liquid into white bowls, plating them on a large tray, ready to be handed out. With Seungmin, your usual helping hand, on a three day leave, you suddenly found yourself helping with the serving and cooking simultaneously, Felix helping you out as much as he could but he could only do so much, especially when Minho required him in the back, chopping and cooking. Regardless, you appreciated the help and didn’t mind the extra work.

There wasn’t really a concept of the intricacies of cooking like in high end restaurants such as the ones in the city, in fact, all the recipes were a Kim family heirloom, handed down through generations before Minho came and changed up the dynamic in his own way without ever entirely changing the essence of it. The noodles were handmade, the vegetables cut using only a knife, without worrying about the exact thickness of the onion  rings – at the end of the day, really, no one cared about all that fancy stuff, satisfied to just be able to enjoy the same old dishes.

Maybe that’s why you stayed, even though you had craved change so longingly. In the end, you only found comfort in what was familiar.

A new order is strung up on the mesh wire. You’re already out the doors with the previous order, the rain now having picked up pace and turned into a steady drizzle. It already smelled like wet earth and freshly mown grass. You have no time to stop and appreciate the scenery though, quite literally hustling now since it was only you on serving duty now.

The sound of chatter increases, the rain falls harder, harsher, the already dim diner turns darker and gloomier, only alive with the constant chattering of people and the sound of cutlery. Felix rings from the front, handing you the order for table number five, a two seater near the window where the blonde haired tourist sat, head turned towards the window and watching the rain as it poured now.

You smile and lift the tray, wincing when your wrist bends a bit too painfully, almost dropping the tray but you’re quick to disregard it as you move with caution now, slightly breathless at the exertion. You might not be complaining but it seemed like you did mind the lack of another helping hand what with the diner being busier on weekends.

“Order for dim sums and udon,” you say, carefully picking up the bowl and pot of steamed dim sums and placing them on the table with a pair of chopsticks, “enjoy your meal.”

You look up at the man, your perfunctory smile for the customers already making its way up to your lips before you abruptly stop short, lips awkwardly turning back down in belated realisation.

You stare at the man with a breath you don’t even realise you’re holding, the cogs in your brain positively churning, and yet you don’t exude the bewilderment on your face, containing it in your chest with pursed lips and a choked up throat.

“Hey (y/n), it’s been a while…” the man smiles, the dimples on his cheeks deepening then vanishing when he realises you don’t return his greeting.

Your claw-like hold around the tray goes limp, almost slipping through your fingers as you stare dumbstruck and quite idiotically. The rain pounds on the roof like a torrent of bullets outside as if to maim, trees swaying under nature's assault, the diner lights up in a yellow glow under the darkening sky. 

A jolt of pain surges through your wrist again, your fingers twitching against the serving dish. The noise in the diner heightens, a dull throb in your head like blood rushing up too suddenly, the heat from the kitchen suddenly turned reminiscent even though you had just been in there not even five minutes ago.

A loud gust of wind blows through the cracks of the doors and windows, carrying with it tiny splatters of rain that tickle the back of your neck as it seeps through your loose knitted sweater and settles like a chill in your bones.

It doesn’t bother you.

TWO – ON A SATURDAY AFTERNOON.

It was late by the time Chan woke up.

Rubbing his eyes groggily, he groaned at the light filtering through his windows, covering his face with his hands, his limbs still weighing him down in a relaxed state on his worn out mattress. The time on his phone read way past noon, and with an absentmindedness induced by his just woken up mind, he noted that this was by far the most he had slept in an entire week.

Sitting up on his bed, he scratches his naked chest, recalling getting rid of his shirt sometime in the middle of the night when he kept tossing and turning against his sheets. Lazily stretching out his limbs, he lets out a loud yawn that makes his jaw hurt and eyes tear up.

He has no plans today, except staying at home and studying for semester finals. He wasn’t looking forward to it, his body promptly confirming that doubt when he plopped back down, head hitting the pillow with a dull throb.

His phone buzzed somewhere around him, his hands prodding and searching amongst the scrambled up sheets for the device. A message from Jisung reminding him to cover his afternoon shift at the cafe and thanking him yet again. He groans when he realises he promised Jisung to cover for him today and only had a little more than two hours to get ready and as he had been putting it these days, get his shit together. Two hours was more than enough, it wasn’t like he had much to do except shower, eat and smoke a cigarette.

His thumb scrolled through his planner app, his day cleared off his usual ‘history - finish module 1’ to ‘cafe shift!’, the former shifted to a later part of the day since weekends were mostly flexible for him.

Chan had fallen into a habit of planning his days, which meant every day on his calendar had been planned to the T weeks prior, from exactly every single activity and chore he would carry out the following month so that by the end of it, he had something going on for him. If Friday was grocery shopping, then no matter how tired he was after an extended tutoring session, he’d be there at the 24/7 mart at three AM, slapping watermelons to check their ripeness or grabbing whatever was left of the fresh kale in the isles.

For the majority of his day, he was impelled to study for his finals in a week from now, hunched over his desk cramming his History of Photography III textbook wondering why this was necessary in the first place, while he tried not to be distracted by the imposing anxieties of the world waiting for him after these last few months of the protection of his university.

In his final year of his photography major, he couldn’t deny the increasing apprehension of having to step out from under the protective umbrella over his head, his professor’s chimes of his prodigal achievements deemed smaller and superficial the nearer he approached his graduation. Already politely turned away from three interning companies, his alleged talent was under full threat of being judged and tossed aside as an average to decent performance. He still had a few months, but time either seemed to slow down on some days and yet on others speed past him in a whimsical blur where he would be left reeling under his unproductiveness and the growing pain in his chest of not being enough.

His planning had not all been in vain; he had started off with a fresh mind, keeping up with applying for internships, completing his assignments all the while working at a cafe that had been a godsend in the form of Jisung and his unusual knack for convincing the manager to get another barista even though they weren’t short of staff, and on some days doing photoshoots for weddings and the fashion department for a decent wage. He was adulting, and though his sixteen year old self had looked forward to the prospect of this notion, now he wanted nothing but to go back to those days.

It was this same prospect that had excited him when he received a full scholarship to his university in Seoul. Much of his life, all he could remember was spending it in the hills, where even though the weather was pleasant and the people were kind, his starry eyed dreams as a teenager to leave that small town and move to a metropolitan city had been a fixation – a drive for him to work hard and shoot his shot and get out of that place.

It was nice for a while, he was in his honeymoon phase, quite literally marvelling at the fast paced life in the streets, adrenaline filled lungs breathing in the new life excitedly till his nights bled into days which bled into more nights and not long after, he felt like he was dangling from the hands of a clock that dictated every move he made.

He forgot about his home in the meantime, so caught up in the chaos of everyday life, of the same smell of coffee and baked buns, the same fabric of his brown apron, the same bus to the university campus, the same classes with a professor droning on about visual literacy, the same stick of cigarette dangling between his lips, the same stress of finals every year. Same, same, same. Boring. Mundane. Exhausting.

The stars in his eyes dulled with every passing day, his room often reeked of takeout food, prints upon prints of films lay in a scatter across his desk, none of them seemingly what people were looking for.

Turning the shower cap on, Chan lets himself dwell on his mundanity, at the end of the day he was another faceless person in the crowd because the city was too big and too grand and too dazzling that it hid all other beings in its shadows. It was a big wide hole, a void sucking everybody in. Chan was also lost somewhere in there, lured in by the diamond like gleam at first sight, only to be trapped in a tedious life where he competed against himself every day without knowing what he was competing for. It was like sitting in a test without knowing what he was to be tested on.

The water spurts out ice like in the cold January, making him flinch when it hits him out of nowhere. But he stays rooted under the showerhead, standing his ground till he got used to the temperature and the water gradually turns lukewarm. It reminds him of a memory in the back of his head, of children squealing and a water fight. He urges the images to go away, inexplicably chastised at the mere thought of it. He was no child anymore, whining for a nostalgic summer in the cold months.

The water has always been Chan’s greatest friend.

In fact, he’d go as far as to say that it’s been a sort of companion to him when he was younger. He claims so only because of a vivid recollection of throwing himself in the huge wave with his dad yelling at him before two strong arms picked him up and away from the clutches of the water.

He had whined, missing the way the foamy waves had engulfed him in a topaz hug, the sand under his feet dissolving like air through his toes, the silky curtain leaving him drenched and longing for a taste of more. He whined and whined and whined till at last he was sent to swimming lessons just to shut him up. That, and also, his parents didn’t want their son to drown doing something reckless like that again.

He was comfortable in the water. It held him snuggly in its embrace and when he dunked his head underneath and opened his eyes, he was met with a blue silence that deafened any other noise with its dulcet palms over his ears.

Under the comfort of the transparent blanket, the voices and shapes above his head were garbled and distorted and a part of him liked that. A part of him liked to envision those shapes as blurry blobs speaking a gibberish language. He didn’t have to put a name to them nor try to distinguish them from one another; a childhood fantasy that became a habit and stuck like a leech to him.

It’s a calming fixation on most days now when he doesn’t have to worry about his career. But of course, we will talk about it, because there’s a trouble plaguing everybody in the small nooks and crannies of their life, some people just let it stay there, oblivious to its existence and others have a hard time fighting it off when it seeps into their bones like moist vapour, settling down heavily in the calcium crevices.

Chan likes to believe this process of staying underwater for as long as his lungs permits him to, now heavy with the smoke he’s injected in them, as cathartic. A shit load of help that is when he’s vividly aware of his rotting insides with what he had done to them himself, but regardless, he likes to think that the longer he stays in water, he’s ridding himself of the plague that is always a hair’s breadth away from attaching themselves to his core, except he takes the extra measure of ensuring that he’s inhaling chlorine water if he loses control and spluttering in surprise as if that weren’t his intention from the start.

He wouldn’t like to admit it, but it was his coping mechanism as Jisung had put it so blatantly, because doing so would mean he needed help. He didn’t need help. He just liked to hold his breath underwater when things got slightly inconvenient, but that did not equate to needing help.

He’s out of the shower soon enough, draping on a black hoodie in his cramped one-and-a-half room apartment, the most he could afford under his crippling student loan, strolling towards the tiny refrigerator for breakfast. There’s only some leftover kimchi, a day-old kimbap roll and ripe bananas.

Chan didn’t have a dining table, he didn’t deem it necessary, rather a hassle to fit it into his tiny apartment, especially when he ate all his meals alone, which he could do perfectly well sitting on the ground with his back against his beaten down couch, the plastic takeout containers placed on the low coffee table and his laptop beside it, playing some movie he put on for the sake of a break from his hectic days.

Yet, he wasn’t entirely unhappy with the way things had turned out. His gaze trails up from where he sat on the couch, the wall in front of him bereft of any photo frames but filled with strings of polaroids and sticky notes. The grainy films with smiling people – his friends, sticky notes, crumpled and some torn and taped back with silly doodles and one with a lipstick stain – Chan still smiles, even though the paper jaggedly torn and the number of the girl who hit on him at the bar two years ago tossed out a long time ago, Hyunjin had thought it funny to add the memento to a growing collection of silly, smiling people on the wall. He was happy, he was fine. He had friends, they loved him and he loved them.

But why couldn’t he smile? Why were his muscles so tense and tired? The food in his mouth suddenly feels too hard to chew, his jaws aching and throat burning when he swallows. His eyes suddenly blurry, a thin curtain of moisture veils them. One moment he swallowed the smoke of his cigarette and the very next he gasped for air like a novice beginner.

He was fine, but he sat there with a mouthful of rice and kimchi as the tears rolled down his face in a gentle stream.

THREE – UNFINISHED CHAPTERS

The present would not exist for you had there not been a past.

In hindsight, everything that you did now, whatever you were now, had all been because of who you had been in the past, or rather whatever scraps the past had left you to be sewn.

You wake up rested, but even more exhausted than when you went to bed. Your days sewing a paradoxical blanket whose weight you had gotten used to.

You’ve never paid much attention to how people around you felt, because mostly they were happier than you were with dysfunctional families and it only rooted a sense of deep reproach in you; how were you not allowed to be this happy? How could people smile and pretend the stench of their broken homes didn’t stick on their clothes and seep through their skin, following them around wherever they went? How did people go around you without feeling the continuous need to scratch that itch of jealousy and resentfulness of not having what someone else did?

You realised it was so jarringly easy to disassociate yourself from all that under a pair of chocolate eyes that stared down at you kindly, just a sliver of boyish mischievousness behind them, but the inexplicable yet unavoidable comfort of slowly easing yourself into a sense of warmth that they brought.

It's the smallest of things that lead to a bigger plan premeditated all along and in your case it was the forgotten pencil pouch on your study table at home that fateful Wednesday morning. Of course you scrambled around, rummaging through your bag in the hopes of finding a stray pen in the depths of it, but it was no luck and you had resigned yourself to borrowing one from the person sitting behind you except, he seemed to have beaten you to it.

Three little taps on your shoulder had you turning around to a kind smile and an upraised hand with a pencil between its fingers, motioning at you to take it.

You decided then that you didn’t like this boy.

It was an impulsive decision, yet it was one of those intuitive feelings of having an immaculate dislike to someone who didn’t mind being scoffed for helping the scapegoat of the class, perfectly capable of ignoring the disbelieving stares of his classmates.

Had the sixteen year old you sensed an ulterior motive to his actions? Or had you just reproached the genuinity in his eyes? You had ultimately accepted his offering, the wooden stick with its yellow plastic wrapping around its shaft feeling alien against your fingers, but before long you had learnt to ignore the confused glares directed towards you and pressed the lead against your workbook as you proceeded to work in silence.

You weren’t at the extreme brunt of your class’s ramifications of simply wanting to be on the top of something, but you weren’t exactly the most ingrained in its social gratifications either; it was perhaps your aloofness to it all that made you a part of the outcasts. So far, eating alone had worked out for you, jogging along the track at your own pace had suited you, spending your time in one corner of the library in your free time had been gratifying.

In spite of making it clear that it was what you preferred, you found yourself being plagued by him at all times. Those brown eyes seemed to be looking out for you everywhere you went and the kind smile always curled on his lips when you finally took notice. You didn’t like it, not one bit, starting from the way the chair beside you at lunch was always occupied, there was always a pair of panting lungs when you jogged along the track field and the ever so present sound of pages being flicked in your ears in a spot in the library that was supposed to be only yours.

You didn’t like finding yourself gazing up at a pair of chocolate orbs, drowning you in their depths every time you stared too hard, a beat longer than you were supposed to. An unusual friendship bloomed out of it, one where you reprised your aloofness and Chan, his endearing demeanour of sticking to you like a leech. The much too energetic one and the much too tired one – a dynamic your classmates had never expected, but you weren’t complaining when it acted like a shield before eventually, they started to take less notice of you. Or transitioning to high school made them mature.

Your dislike for him did not arise of its own accord; at first it had been a conscious decision to resent someone who looked happier than you. But even the most stubborn person can be moved by genuinity, and you had never quite turned entirely stone cold stubborn. Perhaps he had saved you in a way, for a brief moment, but he had prevented you from walking down the steps of the dark void.

Where does one even start with Chan? In all fairness, you didn’t think you would ever have to start with him again; he was an unfinished chapter in your book you had long decided to omit. You were sure if you were to ever pen down your autobiography, you would not mention him in the least, treating him like the air around you, unnecessary to bring to notice.

But even air is ever so present, though not required to be brought up in everyday conversations because of its unconsciously silent presence.

He would be there, under countless drafts of your uneventful life, the pages filled with a curly haired, brown-eyed boy whose cheeks blossomed into dimples when he smiled. It was romantic, it was tragic. It was a story you wished would never end, but even so, the gurgling pit in your stomach ever so present served as a reminder that every story has an ending.

The only thing worse than having an ending would be an unfinished book. You hid under the cover of the pristine pages under this reassurance, that Chan would not be an unfulfilled fragment of memory you would jot down in ink like a summer dream, before exactly that happened. Aloofness causes no pain until brought to reality.

The basis of your friendship lay on a strong foundation of your peculiarly clashing personalities, interests and fears.

While Chan was a social butterfly in your school, you were the quiet one simply there for education. Making friends had never been your forte nor was that on the forefront of your mind for as long as you could remember. Till Chan, quite literally, thrust himself into your life.

Yet, quite amusingly, he was the one who made you resent the water less.

There has only been one instance you’ve had a brush with (almost) drowning, but it made you regard the prospect of even stepping near a water body a daunting and scary once.

The first time it was in second grade, the time when people this age are usually immature little brats and would do anything for the sake of entertainment. You had only learnt how to doggy paddle and float in water, but even so the thought of trying to stay afloat in the 6 feet deep end, the idea of not being able to feel the ground with your feet, had daunted you and you pretty much made it through every time by just swimming along the length in quick strokes till you were certain the water didn’t reach above your waist with your feet touched the slippery ground beneath.

It was an unpleasant surprise therefore, to find yourself being pushed into the deeper end out of nowhere, your body falling straight down vertically and your inability to come up to the surface making you take huge gulps of air which in turn only choked you more. It was quite a scene, your limbs flailing and silent screams of help escaping in bubbles through your lips.

You never went near a pool again. 

Almost four years later, you feel yourself drowning in a set of familiar eyes you had already once found yourself a victim to ages ago. The familiarity was nostalgic, akin somewhat to finding a lost piece of jewellery years later after you thought you had lost it. And it was so different. It was breathing and suffocating at the same time, it was fear and euphoria in a concoction, it was too much all at once. You liked it. You hated it. You hated liking it. You liked hating it. You… you missed it. You didn’t resent it.

You find yourself getting drawn into those eyes again, perhaps similar to the way you had back then, ever since, but you've never quite been able to place this feeling.

You've both changed drastically, it’s not just physically you’re sure; he looks wiser, more tired and much more mature. You catch a whiff of mint breath fresheners, a scent you had never associated with him but nonetheless so characteristic of him, you couldn’t call it alien or unlikely of him to adopt it.

Yet it's more than that, he is just so... so very beautiful.

You blink.

Once, twice and thrice. He grows shy (or perhaps uncomfortable) under your gaze, flickering his eyes down to the condensing drops of water glazing around his cup of iced tea, beaded diamonds easily destructible with a flick of his fingers. He twists his digits in his lap, resisting the urge to do so.

You wonder what would have happened had you not forgotten your pencil case at home that Wednesday morning.

“Hi Chan, long time…”

The din inside the restaurant feels like white noise, it’s everywhere, sticking to your thin sweater, buzzing through your hair, nipping at your skin.

“Long time indeed…”

You smell like dishwater and oil. Chan smells like breath mints.

“Good to…see you?”

White noise. Humming, buzzing, electrifying. Everywhere; on your skin, on your clothes, in your hair.

“Yeah. Yeah, you too.”

“Enjoy your food then.”

Perunctionary smile, polite bow, retreating steps.

“Um (y/n),” a halt in your steps, you turn around, “we should…hang out some time. Catch up, maybe?”

Expectant eyes, hopeful voice, cautious words.

Do you want to finish this chapter after all?

FOUR – ICED TEA IN A SPOT OF SUN.

Most people don’t understand the amount of theoretical knowledge that goes into a major like photography, it’s not always pointing a lens wherever you want and taking a picture. Anybody can do that, anybody can be good at taking pictures without having to pay for a degree for the same.

Nonetheless, Chan rose beyond the intimidating notion of having to do well. He enjoyed what he did, had a passion for it and therefore he thought he could make it past four years banking only on his passion and talent.

What nobody told him was the world outside was too cold, too frigid – downright ignorant of him and his flame that sputtered out the second he stepped outside. He was a nobody in the huge bowl of success stories chosen at random by the universe. 

In fact, who was Chan at this point? What was he?

Another product of the society that force feeds their generation to do well…. No, he had risen above that semantic error, he had worked hard, he had understood every single text and every single parabolic function in his textbooks rather than remembered them by heart before throwing up the texts jammed in his head on his exam papers.

He read every single book like they held the world’s greatest information, studied extra hard, solved equations for the mere fun of it all because he wanted to understand; he wanted to know the working behind them, dismantle them and play with them.

And yet here he was, twenty four and supposedly much wiser than when he was in middle school, and still! He understood nothing, what was he supposed to be doing?

All his life, he had been fed the grains of being a talented individual, sure to do great things, of having such a pleasant personality, someone who would never hurt a fly. Someone loved, adored and precious to not just family and acquaintances but even to fleeting strangers who strayed into his life momentarily.

It’s admittedly easier to hold back on such thoughts as of the moment though, when Chan is busy battling the cobwebs all over his clothes and sneezing into his hands so he doesn’t further unsettle all the dust around him.

Since the day he arrived, he’s been at the gargantuan task of cleaning up his old house in the hills. Granted, his parents had put it out for rent even as a holiday home, they had never hired someone to regularly keep this place in check. Now that their son was back in the hills for a few months at the most, they were more than happy to let him stay sans the rent.

While it wasn’t all that bad, he would have to call in for some minor plumbing work and look at the light out front in the porch since it wouldn’t work and he had almost tripped on his own feet trying to navigate his way to the front door through the dark.

Though only a week had passed, he had not made his presence known explicitly. He knew for a fact that you and Minho had stayed back, he wasn’t sure he was up for a rendezvous with the town people. It wasn’t like him to avoid social gatherings, he had indeed noticed most of the older folks who were still here, but he would much rather have some time to himself before stepping out and announcing his visit.

So he busied himself with cleaning up the house, turning down his mother’s proposal to find a helping hand, insisting that he would rather do it himself. He needed that time for himself, and though a helping hand sounded like a godsend, the ache in his back every night he went to bed almost felt gratifying. The dust in his nose and the grit under his nails did not.

Though a part of him was slightly impatient in wanting to reach out to his old friends, it was also equally anxiety inducing to anticipate your reactions. Where does one even start with such things? Back in the city, it was easy to lose connection for weeks during finals, but there was an unspoken bond of reconnecting right after with a simple text and a coffee date down a few blocks.

Chan hasn’t been here in almost four years. That was four years of lost contact and unknowingly, it was suddenly starting to weigh down on him of how quickly the time had passed by without him even noticing. How do you reconnect with friends you haven’t talked to in so long?

The answer came in the form of his front door ringing on his fourth day while he was in the midst of scrubbing a particularly stubborn spot of grime on the floor.

He opened the door wearing his rubber gloves, sweating and with a frown at the interruption. The moment the stranger makes themself known, Chan is gasping in recognition and grinning almost like his ten year old self had – all too bubbly and pleasantly surprised.

“Minho! Holy shit!”

The boy in question smiles back gleefully, pulling Chan in for a hug disregarding the protest and a faint cry of dirty gloves and clothes.

Chan pulls back and stands at his doorstep, watching almost in awe as Minho takes his shoes off and lifts up a box wrapped in blue cloth, grinning down at the boy who had been a dominant part of his childhood. He still had his catty eyes and pouty smile and was as tall as Chan himself, maybe even taller, definitely a toned physique since when he last saw him in high school. Still reeling under slight shock, he realises he hasn’t stopped ogling at the boy till pointed out rather sassily by him.

“I know I grew up handsome and all, butt geez, are you gonna invite me in or stand here the whole day?”

Letting out a fond scoff, Chan leads him in, still grinning.

Minho sits on the floor where Chan had laid out a jute mattress for the time being, all his furniture subjected to a rough dusting and cleaning out in the backyard where they now sat basking in the sun before he would bring them in later in the evening.

“Sorry for the mess, and uh, lack of furniture,” Chan remarks sheepishly, bringing out a large glass flask of filled honey lemon tea and two glasses, “I’ve been making this place habitable again.”

“No worries, I don’t mind.”

Chan adjusts the table fan to face them, taking a seat beside him in a spot of sunlight streaming in through the huge windows in the front. Though colder in the evenings and at night, Chan lived at the foot of the hill where it was comparatively warmer for most part of the day and his house always received a good spot of the sun during afternoons.

Minho takes a swig from his cup, letting out a sigh of satisfaction when the cold drink hits the right spots and pushes the box towards Chan.

“I brought you some food, guessed you could use some when I heard you’ve been ordering takeout for three days straight.”

Chan eagerly unwraps the bundled knot to find a huge wooden lunch box sitting within.

“Thanks a lot Minho, your mom sent this?”

“Nope, I made it.”

“You did?!”

Minho scoffed at the look of surprise on Chan’s face and he worried he might have offended him in some way, but before he could apologise, Minho cut in.

“Yeah, I went to culinary school and know how to cook now, surprise!”

If anything, all the new information was only slightly overwhelming to Chan who was still getting used to his old friend’s presence again in his childhood home. It was reminiscent and nostalgic.

“That’s great! We should…we should catch up some day, there’s so much I want to talk about.”

“I’m sure there is,” Minho smiles and Chan can place him again in his memories of a sixteen year old nerdy boy with a shy smile and glasses, “I would love to as well. You should come over to Kim’s Diner, it’s on the top of the hill. I work there now.”

“Hey, I remember Kim’s Diner. Wow, you work there now…that’s just…wow.”

Minho laughs again at his friend’s disbelief. It was fascinating how much had changed in the past few years and yet, now that they sat here chatting and catching up, it was easy as always to laugh and smile in each other’s presence.

“So…culinary school huh? I always thought you would either end up majoring in CS or performing arts maybe. Not that it’s not good, I just mean, you know…you were always inclined towards those.”

Minho contemplates the question for a while, leaning back on his palms and stretching his toes in the sunlight. Chan takes the time to gaze at him more; he really has changed so much. His naturally black hair was dyed a dark midnight blue now, falling gracefully across his eyes that were bereft of the glasses he had been so used to. His hands are more callused and the veins visible, posture so much more mature and confident. Lee Minho had grown up so well, and a surge of pride flowed through Chan at the sight. He was happy for the man Minho had become and proud of him even though he didn’t know all that was to know yet. But that was okay, they will catch up gradually. Yet, there was no doubt Chan would only feel more proud of his friend.

“I guess I didn’t see it coming either. It just sort of happened. I think I met Seungmin around that time and he may have hinted that I could make some real use of this talent. The rest is sort of history.”

“Seungmin?” Chan asks, not missing the fond smile on Minho’s face.

“My boyfriend.”

“Huh?!” 

“Why, is there a problem?” There was a split second of defensiveness to his tone that is not lost on Chan but he'll be damned if Chan made the impression of being against it.

“I mean! I don’t care if you date boys…I mean I care of course, but like– not as in…it’s not a problem, not that I consider it one! I just meant that you– that…”

Minho cocks a brow at his friend, stifling the laughter bubbling up his chest at the way Chan’s ears grew hot and red and the man basically stuttered his way through the piece of information.

“It’s just…you keep dropping all this stuff out of nowhere, I’m just surprised. In a good way, I mean!”

With that Minho finally laughs, and it’s only then that Chan can really recognise his friend behind all the changes. The soft tinkle of his voice and the uncontained glee as he almost rolls on the floor. Ah yes, this was Lee Minho indeed – his childhood friend.

Chan cracks a smile, joining in the laughter and sipping iced tea late into the afternoon. They talk a lot, from university to life in the city and the hills and old memories and friends and all the new people in their lives but there’s still so much to uncover and so little time.

It was around half past five when Minho finally stretched on his spot on the floor and sat up.

“I should head back now, I need to start preparing for the dinner shift. Besides, Seungmin’s leaving for Seoul tonight, I promised to spend some time with him.”

“Oh?” Chan remarks, sitting up too from where he had been slouching against the wall, “he’s leaving tonight? I was hoping I could meet him.”

“Oh don’t worry, he’ll be back in a few days. He got invited to a teaching camp for extra credits and he intends to go. You know Shinha University in the next town? He works there as a TA.” Minho says with some pride.

Chan nods in acknowledgement, walking Minho to the door where the latter struggles to wear his shoes standing up, eliciting an amused chuckle from him.

“Hyung, you should come to the diner tomorrow. I’ll treat you to a meal and…you can also meet (y/n).”

For the first time since the afternoon, Minho had almost cautiously let your name slip into the conversation. He would like to think it sneaky of him, but the stunned look on Chan’s face almost made him feel guilty for not mentioning your earlier.

Chan on the other hand simply stood and stared at Minho who met his gaze sheepishly.

“(y/n) is…still here?”

Minho nods, shoving his hands inside his pocket.

“Oh. I guess I could drop by sometime this week.”

Biting his lips, Minho contemplates his next words carefully, trying to decipher what the smile on Chan’s face meant and whether he had crossed the line or not. When it seemed like Chan wasn’t upset at him, he ventures to say:

“We all missed you, you know? And…(y/n) had a bit of a hard time after you left,” taking a deep breath, he confesses, “but you’re back now so…so maybe we could all catch up.”

Breathlessly, Chan nods with a clenched jaw. He forces himself to keep smiling though his chest has suddenly started weighing down on him. He knows that Minho probably didn’t mean to keep your being here a secret, but just the minuscule realisation that he had waited until he was leaving made him wonder whether this had been the intent of his visit after all. Regardless, the soft undertone to his words was not lost on him and he was thankful to Minho for letting him know.

“We will Minho, I promise. I just gotta…figure some stuff out and then I can face my past I guess.” A light chuckle follows his statement and Minho smiles, tight lipped.

Chan bids him a good night and stands on his porch, staring at Minho’s back till it grows smaller the further he walks away. The sun was already touching the tip of the mountains by the time he retreated into his house, picking up the empty glasses and placing them in the sink.

Though for a moment Chan wanted to believe he could carry on with a few more chores before night fell, he doesn’t let himself feel too bad when he retires into his room and flops down on the mattress with a thump.

Closing his eyes, he drifts into a slumber, gulping down the thoughts of facing his past and a certain someone who kept plaguing his mind all night.

FIVE – MINT AND NICOTINE.

When Chan had left right after graduating high school, a part of him had also been sad regardless of the exciting prospect of a new life awaiting him.

He had to ultimately leave his friends behind and too many memories that had been a part of him since childhood. He felt like he was trying to bury their existence by leaving and it filled him up with immense guilt at the thought.

Yet, perhaps the most heartbreaking part would have been your muffled sobs against his chest, your hot tears falling into his red scarf and soaked up into a wet patch. He might have shed some tears too, but in his grief stricken mind, he had been too concerned with your sobs that had threatened to wrench his heart and tear it in two.

You had known, even then, that Chan would leave one day; that this sedentary lifestyle would never suit him and there lay your varying personalities. All you knew, and accounted it to therefore, was that he had always been a restless person. Always looking to do something all the time.

Sitting and merely observing like you, was not a glove he fit into. Always volunteering for events, the first one to suggest dragging you around town during your breaks against your protests which were laughed off with a promise of a fun time. You didn’t want a fun time; you wanted to stay home and sleep in till well past noon and spend the remaining of your day reading. Chan wanted nothing more than to be the one to teach you how to swim.

It was a fateful summer. Eventful, mostly for him. While you spluttered in four feet water, he swam past you in obnoxious strokes, splashing your face with more water. It enraged you, and yet you didn’t just up and leave, fumed at him maybe but he took it all in stride.

You wonder why he stuck by you, you used to have such an awful temper, even you wouldn’t want to spend time with yourself.

But Chan was driven by his restlessness, his enigmatic soul if you may. You may have learnt to float and master the front stroke at the cost of many a gleeful and not-so-peaceful days, but watching Chan glide in the pool like a fish, as if it were his natural habitat, was a reward in itself. It was peaceful too, simply sitting with your feet dipped in water while he bobbed up and down in the water gracefully.

Unaffiliating yourself from the constant presence of the boy you had grown used to had been more difficult for you than you had ever thought it to be. You tried not to mind too much when your phone never rang and no new messages popped up either. You were already easing yourself into the realisation that Chan had indeed forgotten about you.

For a fact, it seemed to have been of some consolation when you found out that Minho has lost all contact with Chan too. It definitely hurt significantly less, but you both grieved the distance together.

You supposed, and accepted eventually, that this was part of life. Of friends who would come and go – some would stay and some would leave, the pain will be there, s bit of regret of not being able to protect those relations, but in the end you would have to swallow it like a bitter pill and make do with what you had.

Except, it had been so hard for someone like you. University had not treated you well, if anything it had been like a huge blow across your face. Where once you had certainly been a part of the above average crowd, you had faced the wrath of being placed even below decent performance and gradually let yourself believe that it was all you would sum up to be.

Minho had kept you company, been there when you were feeling at your lowest and held your shoulders shaking with your sobs in his arms when you finally broke down. He had assured you that you were no less, nor would you ever be so, if you decided to give up. People made the wrong choices all the time, there was no need to beat yourself up over it no matter how much you justified yourself for it.

You dropped out and Minho loved you the same. Things were okay; you were okay.

Chan had become a distant part of your memory by then. Relationships were not a part of your life and the more you floundered in an unknown place, the thinner the strings connecting you to people became until they finally snapped and you were left quite alone. You embraced this life as best as you could and did what you could. You worked whatever small jobs you could, learnt a little bit of cooking from Minho and stacked away all your hard work to get into uni in a closet you never opened; what was it worth anyway when it got you nowhere in the end.

You had not planned out your entire life and it had played to your advantage. You didn’t feel as disappointed in things as you would have earlier because you didn’t expect things to follow a predetermined path.

There was so much to say about this matter, but who really wants to wallow in disappointment? There were still moments in your life when you would wake up with a heavy heart and an empty mind. Days like those would be harder to see through, every move you made pulling on your muscles and tugging you down under their heavy weight. You would want to cry and yet find yourself unable to. There would be no meaning to why you did what you did, an urge to find out what would happen if you stopped doing those things and a desire to sleep for a long, long time.

Yet you would sit at night in an empty house, curled into yourself and find that you were incapable of doing anything. You would wait for the next day to arrive and the clock would tick ever so painstakingly slow.

So when you found yourself facing the blonde boy, tall and broad with kind brown eyes you had once drowned in looking at you, the ghost of the past you didn’t even realise had lurked within you was suddenly coming back to life without a warning, that it left you breathless.

You felt your head being dunk underwater, cold and dark liquid enveloping you as you struggled to resurface and gulp the air greedily.

Minho had dragged you, against your protests after a long and tiring day, to the community hall where a meeting was supposedly about to start promptly at eight in the evening.

So far, most of the townsfolk that had arrived had managed to snag the front seats, leaving you, Minho and Felix to grab ones in the middle. They were good spots, hidden behind people so Minho could make fun of whatever new agenda was going to be discussed and not get caught snickering. You don’t understand why Minho forces himself to sit in these meetings when he doesn’t even pay attention, but you’ve found it’s his way of relaxing after a long day and part of the reason is because he gets to hang around town before finally heading home.

Initially it had been because of Seungmin, their cat and mouse bickering, quite the talk of the town, and under a very teasing confrontation from you and Felix, Minho had given away his little growing crush on the boy he had referred to as his ‘arch enemy’. 

The three of you wait while chatting, Minho texting on his phone and you can only assume it’s Seungmin, waiting for the town head to arrive along with everybody else. He seemed to be running late, because soon the large hall filled up with people until there’s practically no more seats left.

It has been two days since you last saw Chan.

Well, you’ve seen him since then, but never gone up to him or started a conversation. You had almost bumped into him at the grocery store, but quickly retreated in your steps to avoid him. There had suddenly been too much Chan in your life, even though you had only seen him a couple of times since he last showed up at your workplace, and it had left you feeling confused and weird at having his familiar face pop up in a place as mundane and everyday as your local grocery store.

Quite frankly, you wouldn’t like to ponder upon the reason for doing so because you already know it arises from a place of pettiness and of an urge to make him taste his own medicine. Minho though, as you had gathered from the boy himself, had met up with Chan on more than one occasion since he last came to the diner. Though he had not raised any questions on your part since you largely avoided talking to him about Chan, he had been unable to keep you out of his conversations with the said boy since he had been so keen on asking about you every time they met.

Chan’s arrival back to your hometown had been weighing on your mind since forever. To you, his existence had become a strongly pronounced obstruction in your day to day life. You worried he would pop into the diner again and you almost anticipated it, you had nearly given in to Minho’s invitation to go down to his house.

Oh god, his house. You had more than enough memories of his house stored away in your mind, it almost made you sick with its overwhelming presence made known to you.

The seat next to you suddenly creaks when someone sits on it, your attention turning towards the source and you find yourself staring directly at the source of your worrying mind.

Chan smiles at you softly and you almost choke on your spit when you notice his newly dyed black hair and the small silver hoops in his ears.

“Hey (y/n), long time,” he offers you a small wave before greeting Minho.

“It’s been two days,” you resist the urge to roll your eyes, shifting ever so slightly towards Minho who was seated beside you. Chan notices, masking the sudden heaviness in his heart with a pursed smile, but doesn’t point it out.

“Chan, this is Felix, another helping hand at the diner and my junior at culinary school.” Minho speaks up, introducing Chan to the younger boy who smiles at him brightly while you sit stone faced in the middle of it all.

“Hey, nice to meet you, I’m–”

“Bang Chan, I know,” Felix smiles warmly and you can attest to the fact that Chan likes him immediately by the way he grins and his dimples appear, “I’ve heard a lot about you from Minho. He couldn’t stop talking about you, you’re like an idol to him or something.”

Minho turns red while Chan laughs shyly, the former smacking Felix on the head who retorts with an “you do!” and sticks out his tongue.

While Minho and Felix bicker, Chan smiles and turns his attention to you, about to say something when the huge doors to the hall suddenly opens and the town head walks in to loud protests from the people complaining about being kept waiting for too long. You glance at your wristwatch and sure enough, it was twenty minutes past eight.

You try your best to ignore the presence by your side and listen to the man talk – something about the annual spring festival still three months away – but it’s admittedly hard to do so when Minho and Felix keep snickering beside you like five year olds at a church and Chan’s cologne and the nicotine disguised under breath mints ever too present in your nose. You want to ingrain this scent in your memory but at the same time hold your breath till you choke and die.

Chan suddenly leans towards you, his lips close to your ears and whispers.

“Are town meetings usually this long?”

You nod at him and pretend to listen attentively to people now raising questions and concerns like they did in every meeting to discuss whether the town needed any new facilities or not.

Chan was a lot of things; he had been a lot of things. To you it was the strong smell of chlorine and the cheap aftershave he used to disguise the smell of the bleach. It was a mild odour of sweat mingling with those two scents and the freshly washed laundry detergent on his clothes. And if he leaned a bit closer, just to annoy you or tease you, then the slightest whiff of his papaya shampoo.

Realising now that he didn’t smell anything like that anymore, it makes you shudder at the revelation of the mint concealing the nicotine. Change must have been so drastic for him, that you could no longer find a place in your memories where he fit. He was gone, the youth from him was gone, long ditched in a puddle of illusion where things were still bright and days were pleasantly sunny and the world smelt like fresh rain on earth. The boyish glimmer was lost from his eyes, sucked deep by the void behind them.

Your own body itches under your clothes, the smell of soap and oil so deeply ingrained in your skin after your entire day at the diner, you’re almost certain he can smell it too.

However awkward you felt in your own skin right now, it was nothing compared to the obvious attempt Chan was making at conversing with you and your blatant refusal to offer him that, yet, it didn’t seem like Chan had any intentions of dropping the opportunity of a conversation.

“Are you free tonight? Minho said we might get dinner together after this.”

His voice is still hushed, but you cannot ignore the shiver that passes down your spine every time he leans in, clenching your fingers against the cold metal of your chair.

“Maybe.”

Twiddling his thumbs again, he chews on his bottom lip with a frown on his face. You miss his disappointment since you’ve made it your life’s mission to give your unfiltered attention to the town meeting, something you never thought you would do, but well, people change.

You are graced the chance to drop your hushed conversation when people start chattering around you and with a start you realise that the town meeting is over, everybody scraping their chairs against the floors and leaving in groups while some hang back to talk.

Felix is, thankfully, more than interested in your old friend and swoops down on the opportunity to strike up a conversation with Chan the minute he’s up from his chair; something that Chan obliges him with a lingering gaze that flits towards you. You step to the side with Minho, finding Felix more than capable to keep up a distinct string of chatter all by himself, sharing smiles with Minho at the sight.

“Did you tell Chan about the meeting?” you ask, pulling the scarf around your neck against the cold wind that blows in through the open doors. More and more people start leaving till it’s only a bunch of you who are left behind.

“Yeah, figured he could get out more and re-familiarise with the town.”

You nod at his explanation.

While Chan and Felix are still talking, your phone buzzes in your jeans pocket. Digging around to grab it, you let out a tired sigh at the caller ID. Minho peers at your screen and offers you a tight lipped smile, patting your back sympathetically. You excuse yourself and step out into the cold night to receive it.

“Mom, hi.”

“Hello (y/n), have you had your dinner yet?”

“Not yet, I was at a town meeting.”

“Again? Why do you even waste your time going to those?”

You feel it coming, this is where the conversation changes. And you’re not even four pleasantries in. You resist the urge to sigh yet again.

“Why did you call mom?” you know why she’s called.

“The semester applications are in three months, have you been studying?”

“Mom, I told you, I’m still thinking about it.”

“What in the world is there to think about? You’ve had enough time and I’ve wasted enough money on your hobbies already. Sit for the entrance exams and get into business school. At least get a degree!”

“I’ll think about it.”

“(y/n) please don’t start again, how many times do I have to repeat myself? Do you not care about your education? If you keep thinking now, when are you going to actually do something?”

“How many times do I have to repeat myself…I have no intentions of getting into business school mom, that’s just not for me.”

“Oh, so this is what you’ve been intending since the beginning then? Business school is not for you, you can’t even stick to…was it worth it? Was choosing your hobby as a career path worth it at all (y/n)? What exactly is it that you can do then? Waste your time and money? How are you going to get a job, how will you pay for yourself?”

“I’m doing it just fine right now, if you haven’t already noticed.”

The same shit, over and over again. You really can’t tell at what point of the day you would have to attend to these calls and have your entire day or night ruined.

“I’m tired of fighting with you over this (y/n),” your mom sighs on the other end, “do whatever you want.”

One would think that’s how you find yourself relieved of this matter, but that is exactly how it ends every time before you get another call like a weekly reminder that you are, in fact, not to forget.

“Good night,” you say and promptly cut the call. You’ll have to hear about this the next time she calls.

Taking in a long breath, you shut your eyes when you feel the prick of tears behind them. You could simply pay no heed to this and let it go, but you know you will overthink and you will definitely let it ruin your mood. The heaviness embedded in your muscles starts creeping up again and you find yourself, for a moment, panicking that your limbs will give away on the streets and you’ll fall down.

You hear the faint voices of your friends approaching and sniffle, blinking your eyes rapidly so the tears don’t fall. Instead, you feel the familiar weight like a pot of water quickly filling up, slithering its way into your head, a headache that will have settled by the time you reach home tonight.

Minho is the first to come stand beside you, gently pressing his arm against yours in a silent comfort. You wish he wouldn’t; it only makes it harder not to cry.

“We’re getting dinner down at Condiments, what do you say (y/n)?” Felix’s cheerfulness is lost on you. All you can focus on is the heaviness in your heart and your pounding head.

“Umm…I think I will skip.” you reply, causing Chan to look at you in concern. To be fair, you might be good at hiding your feelings, yet sometimes you cannot help but let it affect your mood. Right now, you know by the worried glance from Felix, that you were most certainly not doing a good job at concealing your distress.

“Everything okay?” Felix immediately moves to you, looping his arms through yours with a concerned pout.

You smile assuringly, not having it in you to let on that you were most certainly not fine right now.

“I’m okay Lix, just…got a headache and I’m tired. I’ll walk back home, y’all go get some dinner. I’ll join next time, I promise.”

“Okay,” Felix is convinced, you know that. In fact, you don’t feel half as bad for lying since you practically were telling the truth. You let him hug you before waving to Minho and nodding towards Chan before you start walking uphill.

“Wait,” Chan calls out from behind, making you turn in your tracks. Felix and Minho watch curiously as he approaches you.

“Let me walk you home? It’s late and–”

“Thanks Chan, but it’s alright, I walk home alone all the time, there’s nothing to be worried about. Besides, I live uphill and you live down here. It will only waste your time going up and down.”

“But–”

“I will be alright,” at this point you’re merely trying to convince yourself of the same, “I’ll see you…when I see you.”

Chan for sure is not convinced as easily as Felix. He may have missed four years being absent from your life, but he knows the signs of dismay on your face when he sees it even now. You may very well be tired and have a headache, but it still concerned him to see your gloomy expression. If you’re actively trying to avoid him right now though…

“Are you really fine? You don’t need any medicines for your headache? If it’s too bad then I can–”

“Chan,” you are firmer this time, smiling at him with a pained expression and a frustration poorly disguised under your breaking resolve of fighting your tears, “I am fine.”

Chan stands his ground for a moment in silence, inadvertently upset and slightly hurt that you were doing your best to push him away. He knows though, he cannot fight you on this; he has no rights. It’s only when Minho clutches his arm from behind does he relent.

“It’s alright Chan, (y/n)’s used to walking home alone and it’s not particularly dangerous either.”

You shoot Minho a thankful look.

“Okay,” Chan lets go, “you will let us know when you’ve reached home, right?”

“I will text Minho,” you promise, hurriedly agreeing to do whatever so long as you can finally leave.

“Okay then…get home safe.”

“I will. Good night guys, enjoy your dinner!”

A chorus of good-nights ring back and without sparing Chan another look, you walk away, alone with your thoughts and your drumming head.

SIX – PINE TEA, BURNT TONGUE.

Coming back to the hills has so far proven to be a good decision, as far as a healthy lifestyle goes.

Chan often finds himself waking up with the sun, even without an alarm, he would be up and about by at least eight in the morning and compared to sleeping in till after noon or not getting enough sleep at all, he preferred this. But on days that he would sleep way past noon, he wouldn’t wake up feeling anxious about the lost time at all.

He has also finally managed to clean the house, the strain in his muscles lasting for a few days for which he covered himself in pain relief patches, but otherwise it has been a fruitful journey. All that remains now is to set up his equipment in his old room. Though he’s out here on a break from life itself, he can never truly give up on the joys of his hobby-turned-career path. He almost never steps out without his camera when he’s wandering in the town, capturing the most mundane things and preserving the beauty in either his digital camera or in 8 mm films.

In the little time he had been back, Chan had taken over a hundred photos already. He didn’t believe in capturing everything visible to the eyes like some sort of maniac, but he also did not have anything against preserving memories.

It’s how he lived – through moments frozen in time, perhaps the only way he saw his little reign over life – by capturing them in films. It was his own solace, his peace of mind; something he could always come back to no matter how much the world around him changed. He would always have that piece of memory only he saw, something that would most likely change ten years down the line and he would look back on an old piece of glossy paper and be reminded of the world he had seen all those years ago.

This particular morning is not the most refreshing though. Last night had been a fun time indeed with Minho and Felix, catching up and recounting stories and exchanging more with Felix as a new friend. As promised, you had texted Minho when you reached home and that was all he had heard from and of you last night.

You had not ceased to plague his mind though, even long after he had bid goodnight to the others and walked back home. He had stayed up quite a while, slouched against his pillows, swiping through his collection of photos in the dark, the screen illuminating his face.

He had worried too for most part that the reason you left last night could have been him, because though you might have told him you weren’t avoiding him, the incident from his grocery store run kept replaying in his mind on loop.

He had definitely caught you rushing away from him but had decidedly not confronted you about it. What if you really were uncomfortable around him? If so, then he had promised not to bother you again, except, he just wasn’t sure whether he would be able to stay away from you much longer.

He’s reminded of the first time you met after so much time had passed, that day in the diner. You were wearing a thin sweater and your hair was in a mess like you were harried, serving and helping out in the kitchen. You had not cracked a smile then at first, staring at him wide eyed, and his first thought had been of how much you had grown up. How beautiful you had suddenly become.

Your cheeks were flushed with all the rushing about, strings of hair framing your naked face and he could tell that age and maturity had favoured you in all the right places even through your winter attire.

The thought makes him burn, his mind momentarily distracted at the very sight of you imprinted in his memory like all the pictures he captures. It’s not until late that sleep finally takes over him, but it’s a restless slumber that he tosses and turns through.

In the morning he’s met with a tourmaline sky, splotches of tissue like clouds splattered across as the sunlight filters through his windows. It was sunny and bright today and Chan squinted up at the sky through his window, rubbing his tired eyes as he lay basking in the January warmth that spread through his bones, toes curling up underneath the sheets.

Outside he hears the birds chirp in contrast to the constant honking and cars like in the city, and the air is filled with the sweet scent of pine and cyprus. Inhaling deeply, Chan feels like he must be in heaven.

His morning routine is unrushed and he takes his sweet time preparing breakfast and eating out on the verandah under the January sun above the hills, the rays of light bespeckling his skin in warm patches that danced with the trees in the gentle wind. It was a quiet meal and Chan was, for once, not planning his entire day out in his mind, though he did have a rough idea of how he might want to spend his day.

His phone pings with a message; it’s from his mom.

mom: morning son, don’t know if you’re up already, but this is your reminder to have a good day

The smile on Chan’s face is instant, he can’t help the little leap of joy in his chest at the sight.

mom: this is also a reminder to check your smoking habit

A small chuckle passes through his lips before he replies.

me: morning, your favourite son is already up. and he says he’s trying really hard to keep his smoking in check

mom: tell my favourite son (his words) to try harder

me: this is all dad’s fault you know?

mom: your mom is giving me the stink eye now, why did you have to say that to her - dad

Chan laughs in amusement, knowing that the last message was sent in good spirits and as a joke.

me: morning dad, hope you’re treating mom well!

mom: he is darling, don’t you worry about us. are you having a good time there?

me: yeah, it’s all pretty nostalgic and stuff, but i enjoy every day here. even went to a town meeting last night and grabbed dinner with minho. you remember him don’t you?

mom: town meetings! it’s been a while since i’ve heard of those. of course i remember minho…he was a darling boy back then. how is he?

me: he’s good, it was fun catching up. i also met (y/n)

mom: oh. how are they? last we heard before moving out was their father passing away…must have been hard all this time.

Chan blinks down at the message in surprise. He did not know that.

me: their dad passed away??

mom: yes, didn’t you know? it was cancer, i believe i might have mentioned this before.

Sucking in a breath, Chan finds it incredibly hard to process this piece of information. It was like a sudden dump of emotions and his stomach curled at the revelation. His mom definitely did not mention this, there was no way he would have filtered this kind of news away like it was nothing.

me: i don’t think you did, i would have remembered…

mom: oh channie…i’m sorry, we were probably too busy with all the packing and moving back then, we only heard in passing.

me: it’s okay, not your fault

mom: do drop by at (y/n)'s and give my best regards. let me know how they’re doing okay?

me: will do mom

After a few more messages about his day, he bids his mom goodbye and tosses the phone aside. Shutting his eyes, the very first person to come to his mind is you, a resounding pang in his chest when he’s reminded of your father too. He had never spent much time around your family, in fact, you had always been the one to come over at his place majority of the time and he had only met your parents once in a while during annual school meets or sometimes during the town festivals as a child. As it so happened, your parents were never around much, both busy with work as you often told him. Still, he remembered your father, and he had always seemed a good, kind man.

Why had Minho not mentioned anything to him about this? Sure, you did creep into the conversation snow and then, but even so, every time Chan brought you up, it’s like Minho tried to safeguard you and let on as little as possible.

Nibbling his lips, he sits and ponders whether he should ask Minho about this, even retrieving his phone to text him about it but in the end concedes. Maybe Minho had not deemed it his place to tell him.

Deciding that he would listen to his mom and drop by at your place, from what he knows you still live in your old home, he spends the next hour or so doing small chores like washing the dishes and getting ready for the morning.

He’s out of the house not long after, showered and refreshed and surprisingly ready to face the day. With his camera bag slung across his shoulder, he makes his way on foot around town, exploring some of the older shops lining the hillsides under tarpaulin covers, fresh steamed bread and hot noodle shops already open and catering to people.

Chan doesn’t stop much, only lingering enough to familiarise himself with the market place which was always seemingly buzzing with people and cheerful chatter. He makes his way up the hill, pulling up his hoodie to cover his head as he walks under the gradually thickening canopies of trees above him. The road leading up becomes narrower and fewer people lurk about, only some tourists who stop by the road to take photos.

Chan doesn’t use his camera till he’s way up higher, simply walking through the pine scent till he reaches a small hilltop that overlooks the town below. Colourful buildings nestled between sloping lush greenery, the roads snaked around the town in smooth curves. He can spot the community centre and the restaurant he had dinner last night at. The market place is the most lively place at this time of the day, strings of flags strung across the semi marketplace flapping in the wind. It was like a small community tucked away from the rest of the world. At one further end of the town, a tall blue tower rises up and immediately Chan is hit by nostalgic memories.

Almost instinctively, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a packet of cigarettes, lighting one up and exhaling deeply. He reminds himself that 9 in the morning is too early for this, but the optimist that he is, he’s also inclined to wave it off with ‘it’s midnight somewhere’.  

He turns sentimental the more he looks at the lone tower visible behind a cluster of hills. It’s his high school and upon seeing it after so many years, he almost missed going to that place.

His hometown was not such a huge place afterall. Most people knew each other here after spending so many years in the same place, but there was also the never changing map of this tiny town that losing yourself here was practically an impossible task even if you want to do it on purpose. Everything was etched out like permanent ink, Chan still remembered all the prime locations of his childhood here like the back of his hand.

In a way it might have been the reason he left too, an aspect of waking up to the same thing every day had been his drive to leave this place but the city had been no different either. Chan was slowly starting to realise that now.

He takes in another puff of the stick, now dangling between his lips before dropping it on the ground and squashing it with his feet, guiltily reminded of his mother’s text this morning and his promise to her.

Shoving his hands inside the pocket of his hoodie he strolls aimlessly along without a destination in mind. He’s aware that only a few shops and restaurants dot the top of the mountain, he’s vaguely aware that there’s a few more clearings along the way and your house was somewhere there. He does remember you having to walk a long way down to school and complain about it often to him.

Soon enough, he reaches a smaller path branching out from the main road to the side. He takes the rocky path, edges lined with wild grass and strewn with stray pine cones, a flatter piece of land leading off to a bunch of bakeries and small cafes.

It's almost like a small chunk of hill had been cut off to create an alcove, small vintage shops huddled together and the scent of fresh bread and ground coffee wafting in the air like a sweet aroma.

Chan has had his fair share of cafes working in one himself and though he had been sick of the smell of coffee for a while, here, out in the open and so far away from the city, he almost didn't mind it.

He stops for a moment and takes a few pictures, the colourful vibrant roofs of red, blue and yellows catching his eyes as he squats to capture this seemingly fairytale come to life picture. Everything in the mountains was just automatically magical. 

He's drawn to a tiny little cafe with a sloping blue roof tucked away further back against a huge rocky wall.

The wind chime tinkles against the gentle breeze above Chan who peers inside from the big window in the front with blue frames. The cafe is almost empty except for a few people scattered about on huge wicker seats.

There's no bell to notify you when a customer enters, just the loud creak of the door, which can be a bit alarming as you've often mentioned to the cafe owner.

You're at the counter scrolling through your phone when you hear the door opening, immediately shutting your phone and smiling at the customer.

"Welcome, how can we help–"

Oh. It's Chan.

"–you?"

Chan seems to be equally as surprised to see you here; he thought you worked at the diner. Nevertheless, he returns your smile.

"Hi," he greets, approaching you at the counter, "I didn't know you worked here."

"I don't, just here to cover for a friend."

You do sometimes pick up shifts here when you’re free of your duties at the diner. It’s more of a casual workplace for some extra cash and since it’s never too crowded, the employment criteria is not too rigid. You help out once in a while when the tourist season is at its peak and extra hands are required. As it so happened, January usually serves as a gradual ease into the rush, with a couple dozen or so customers always coming in for a warm drink and a cozy place to relax and read a book. By March, the tourist count increases and that is when you find yourself financially more stable. You are therefore quite dependent on the tourism sector. Right now, you're covering for Seungmin who won't be back till next week, and you could definitely make do with the cash.

"What can I get you?" you ask, waiting for Chan to look over at the menu and decide. While he examines the laminated display on the counter, you watch him quietly nibbling on his lips, the rings in his ears dangling gently when he moves, the smell of smoke nestling under your nose again. You dislike it but you can't bring yourself to look away until he turns to you with a sheepish smile and wide eyes.

"Umm…it's a bit hard to decide," he chuckles and the noise settles in your bones like a warm shiver, "there's too many to choose from. What would you recommend?"

Startled by the sudden question, you stare at him sceptically as if he had just asked you to do something unreasonable.

"You want me to recommend something to you?" You point at yourself as if to make sure for certain.

Chan nods with a smile, leaning against the counter for your opinion.

Licking your lips, you scan through the menu even though you remember everything by heart. It's just that, you can't bring yourself to meet his stare.

"Do you want a hot drink or something cold?" You question, glancing at him briefly to find him still staring. God, you hope you're not flushed.

"I would prefer something warm, but wouldn't mind if you recommend a cold drink either."

His smile again, the stupid upturn of his full lips and the tiny dimple on his cheek. You dislike it so very much. You don't even dare to meet his eyes, the brown in your memory too haunting even to this day.

"Then I'd recommend the pine tea. It's aromatic and light. I could get you some mushroom bread rolls with those or do you still not like mushrooms–"

You halt in your speech, eyes flickering up to his like a deer caught in headlights. Upon seeing him blinking back, you immediately start spluttering out an apology.

"S-sorry, I don't know why I said that…I shouldn't have assumed–"

"It's okay," Chan cuts you off hastily with a wave of his hand, "you didn't assume anything, it's fine!"

"Oh…oh, okay. I…so do you want to get something with your tea or just…?"

You trail off in embarrassment, every second a new word that falls off your lips feels like a shovel digging at your own grave. You should probably shut up right about now.

"Oh…oh yeah. Umm, anything without mushrooms," he claims, rubbing his neck with a nervous chuckle, "what about the orange loaf cake? Sounds delicious."

"Orange loaf cake, right. Good choice, it'll go well with the pine tea. I'll get you your order then, why don't you take a seat," you gesture at one of the empty tables by the window.

Chan obliges, nodding his head and taking a seat while you scurry into the pantry to get the tea leaves.

Inside the dark cool room, you take a moment to let out a breath you hadn't even realised you were holding in, leaning your head against one of the shelves, the cool wood like a comforting balm across your skin.

You just keep making a fool out of yourself in front of him. He's just an old friend, why does he affect you this way?!

The tea Chan receives is instantly aromatic, the gentle scent of pine and a savoury pinch of cinnamon in it making him look forward to the drink.

You place the steaming cup in front of him along with a plate of sliced bread, slightly warm and golden in texture. Chan feels his mouth watering though it hasn't been that long since he had had his breakfast.

"Umm," you hesitate, glancing at the box of cigarettes on the table, "there is a no smoking policy in here so…"

For all you know you could have said that just because you hated the sight of it, he could have very well just placed them on the table without any intention to smoke them inside. Your brain really wasn't in sync with your mouth today and you were regretting every second of it.

Chan follows your eyes, immediately flushing and pocketing the box, crumpling it almost as he hastily shoved it into his pocket.

"Of course, I don't smoke a lot. I mean, I do, but I won't right now. I work at a cafe too, I mean I used to, of course I know there's a no smoking policy–"

Chan doesn't finish his statement, feeling a rush of heat along his neck as if he had just been called out. He vividly remembers the red text of caution stating cigarettes causing cancer and nearly facepalms.

"Okay well, glad you know," nice save, you're doing a great job, "enjoy your meal then. Let me know if you want anything else."

With that you're gone by his side back to your place behind the counter where you immediately bury your nose into your phone, willing the heat in your cheeks to go away without fanning yourself.

Chan takes a large sip of his tea in a hurry to hide his face when you glance up at him and your eyes meet, scalding his tongue in the process and it takes him his all to not curse out loud. He stuffs a large piece of bread in his mouth to soothe the burn.

What an absolute mess.

SEVEN – IT MUST BE NICE.

Seungmin had texted you at night, a flurry of apologies and making up to you with dinner when he came back, and he was so flustered, he had completely forgotten to mention the reason for this impromptu travesty.

When you had pointed it out, it had only prompted another tirade of apologies and eventually you had ended up calling him. You were in your bed, showered and with an ache in your limbs that came with a long satisfied day.

“(y/n)? Oh my god, I’m so sorry–”

“Seungmin, stop apologising,” you had smiled, shuffling in your bed under the blankets, “how’ve you been?”

“I-what? Oh, yeah, I’ve been good.” he had sounded genuinely surprised at your inquiry, as if he hadn’t even thought you would ever ask him something like that.

“That’s good, how’s your workshop?”

“It’s fine, doable certainly. There’s a lot of interesting things, and I’m hoping to sign up for a few more non-credit courses because they honestly sound really amazing and I think I might be able to squeeze in a few after my credit classes.”

That was Seungmin for you, always the one who loved to learn and cram his breaks with a truckload of workshops and seminars, citing that he didn’t have enough time to attend them during the academic year, what with his classes at university. Your group was proud of him and all his achievements, but you were also concerned with his health.

He had just completed his teaching degree and was working as a TA in Shinha University, which was an hour away by train. You both had initially bonded over your shared interest in books and when you had told him that you had got into university for your bachelors in journalism, he had instantly clicked with you, having pursued journalism as well and then getting his B.Ed.

Seungmin had never been invasive of your reason to drop out, always keeping a polite flow in your conversations without sounding demeaning.

“Wow,” you remark, smiling into your pillow at his ramble, “does Minho know about this?”

“Does Minho know that I’m sleeping three hours a day?

“Jesus, Seungmin!”

“I know,” he groans on the other end of the line, “I couldn’t help it. Please don’t tell Minho, he will go batshit crazy.”

You can already imagine Minho getting upset, except, when it came to Seungmin and his ridiculously well planned but jam packed academic calendar, Minho tended to channel all that anger into making extra efforts at taking care of the younger boy. They would call this their freeze-zone, which lasted about eleven days at maximum – Minho would be all quiet and calm, not necessarily ignoring Seungmin, but neither did he acknowledge his lifestyle in high regards. Seungmin would also be quiet, but follow Minho around like an apologetic puppy, trying to make amends.

It would always end with a hug. And if you were unfortunate enough, then you would catch them in the kitchen after closing hours in the diner, making out heatedly. Then you would want to bleach your eyes.

Regardless, and you really had no other way to describe what they had as cute. They had a healthy relationship, as far as you knew, with their ups and downs, but they were tight. And it made you happy to watch them be happy with each other.

“Okay, I won’t tell him, but he’s gonna find out anyway,” you sigh.

“I know, I’ll be the one to tell him anyway. It’s like he’s got this sixth sense when it comes to these things you know, until last year I was convinced either you or Felix were tattling to him.”

“Hey, have some faith in us!”

“I do now.”

You can hear the smile in his voice and chuckle.

“So, what is it you were apologising to me about?”

“Oh. Right, so I've been working under Professor Lee for my research paper for a while."

You nod even though he can't see you, listening carefully.

"He’s been looking for an assistant for the new semester, and…please don’t get mad okay, but I may have told him about you. I told him you were pursuing your journalism bachelors…”

Sucking in a breath, you groan at the insinuation.

“Seungmin–”

“I swear I didn’t put you down or anything, I didn’t even tell him the reason you dropped out. It’s just…I thought you might want to check out the work at least.”

“That’s…that’s kind of Seungmin, it really is. I’m just not sure if I’m qualified enough.”

“You really think so? You almost completed your degree (y/n), you were going to graduate.”

“You know, you’re starting to sound awfully like my mom,” you mumble.

“(y/n)...you know I didn’t mean any harm.”

“I know Seungmin, I know…”

Which is why this was even more difficult for you. Seungmin’s been of immense help to you ever since you met. He’s got you to write for an anonymous column in their University paper a couple of times and though you had agreed, you had rejected the offer to become a regular in their columns. As much as Minho had been adamantly loyal to your decision of dropping out, Seungmin had his own gentle way of nudging you to pick up your pen again.

“What’s wrong (y/n), I know you want more than what you have right now.”

You detest the bitterness of his truth, the way it swirls around you in green coils and makes you sick. You do want more, but in the crevices of your bones laden heavy with the lead of your self proclaimed worth, you know you shouldn’t. You can’t want more, not when there’s better people out there.

“Seungmin I…I don't know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything, just sleep on it yeah? But if you agree, and no pressure there, then let me know and I’ll set you up a meeting with the professor. Okay?”

“Okay…” you reluctantly agree. You’ll sleep on it for sure, but you lack the assurance of a positive response. Maybe Seungmin senses it too, apologising again.

“Don’t apologise really, I should be thankful that you’re looking out for me.”

“Of course I am, that’s what friends do.”

Your head weighs down on the soft pillows, tears stinging your eyes in the darkness of your room.

“Yeah. Thanks a lot Seungmin, I appreciate it. I really do.”

You hope the way you force out your words is enough to let him know exactly how much this means to you even though you can never put it in enough words.

“Anytime (y/n). Goodnight then.”

“Goodnight.”

Guilt fills you up almost instantaneously when the call drops with a click from the other side. Looking back on the conversation, you detested how quickly you had compared Seungmin to your mother when all he had done was look out for you. Confusion and frustration diffuses through your guilt right after; were you a hypocrite because you felt guilty when it was a friend who looked after you and not when your mother did? Wasn’t she also just looking out for you?

You don’t find it in yourself to remove the phone from your ear, fingers loosening their hold against the device till the screen blacks out.

Left alone with your thoughts, you find the sleep behind your eyes slowly disappearing, replaced with a thin layer of tears that fail to escape, instead settling behind like heavy moss, fogging your mind and senses.

The bed feels uncomfortable, but the weight of your limbs tie you down in your place, unmoving against your will and you find the hands of the clock on your bed stand ticking too loudly. Moving your head, your gaze flits across the window on the wall, the tall peaks of hills visible, glowing with the faintest hint of warm orange from the town lights below.

Slowly, as if it ached your very soul to move, you rustle out of your blanket, dragging it along as you trod towards the balcony, curling your toes when your bare feet touch the cold marble flooring. Your flat was small but the balcony was spacious, often your haven on summer days but in the cold January, it leaves you numb. It's admittedly a good feeling, the urge to keep yourself warm by rubbing your arms and pulling the b;anket closer around your frame overtaking the need to think.

The family living below you is still awake, their apartment rings out in cheerful laughter. You can see the shadows moving on the grassy garden illuminated by the light from their windows. They dance like flames in the wind, flitting about aimlessly and chaotically, in tune to the kids yelling and playing around.

It must be nice, you think. You credit the sentiment to their laughter, but you’re unsure of whether there’s a longing behind that thought that popped up without a warning in your mind. What must be nice?

If you lean against the railings, you can catch a small portion of the town which was not hidden being a large clump of trees, twinkling under a starry sky. You hear the distant hubbub of the liveliness if you hold your breath and strain your ears. It must be nice, the voice in your head goes again.

You want to cry. What must be nice?

Why were you here on a Tuesday night, sitting on your cold marble floors wanting to simultaneously scream and cry and throw yourself off a cliff? Why did it feel so insanely morbid to feel so numb and feel so many things at once? Why would your limbs not move and tears not fall no matter how much you willed them to?

Why does this house not feel like a home? What were you so homesick for, a place that did not exist or a place that you had buried so deep in the depths of your tangled memory that retrieving it would cost you your life? Where would you run when you wanted to, how would you know what you’re running from, how long would you have to run?

What was this feeling you were drenched in? Why can’t you comprehend it? How do you get rid of it?

Your phone dings yet again with a notification and you retrieve it from somewhere in the depths of the blanket you had swaddled yourself in. another message from Seungmin.

seungmin: Professor Lee, faculty of Linguistics and Literature Studies, Shinha University. Contact details: xxxxxxxxxx

seungmin: just in case. g’night.

Your wrist tingles uncomfortably and you rub your fingers across it soothingly. It was probably going to rain later. Or soon. Time was merely flitting past but your eyes remained wide open, not a drop of sleep to be expected any time soon.

The shadows on the grass settle down in a dark lump, quiet and peaceful. The lights below lose their glow, dimming into the night one by one as the town falls asleep.

It must be nice, to be able to sleep.

EIGHT – BUTTERFLIES, LOLLIPOPS, SHARED LAUGHS.

The next time Minho texts you about dinner plans, it's with the carefully added notification of expecting Chan's presence too.

You've been entirely too busy with the diner the past few days, that you've managed to avoid another encounter with Chan naturally. You woke up early to prepare for the day and went home late after cleaning up. It was the same for Minho and Felix, and only now do the three of you realise what a great help another helping hand is. You all miss Seungmin.

But the work pays off, and the cafe work is an added bonus to your savings. If anything, at least you're saved from overthinking once you get home all tired and grisly from kitchen duties. You don't have time to worry about little things as much nor the guilt of missing calls from your mom.

It was the gentle plea at the end of Minho’s text, asking you to please join in for at least old friends’ sake that gets you thinking about the whole thing.

It’s not a particularly mind gnawing decision, you simply decide that you don't need to avoid Chan as much. Fine, you definitely did not know where exactly you stood with his reappearance after all these years, but that didn’t mean you were going to be so cold as to continuously turn down these little reunions. Minho had definitely embraced his old friend with welcome arms and tonight he was finally going to meet Seungmin. You did not mind when Minho was open to introducing his life here to your old friend. There’s only so long you could possibly avoid all social interactions as you could keep up with a steady denial to let Chan affect your day to day life.

You text Minho back with a promise to join in on this dinner.

That is how you find yourself sitting in the tented bar, the sizzle of the barbeque and the delectable aroma of fried vegetables wafting in the air and a few too many bottles of beer in front of you, huddled together in a circle around a table.

Felix chats away excitedly, seemingly never at a loss of conversational topics, while Seungmin joins in with Chan. Minho looks after the barbeque, serving the food to everybody once he’s finally done. The first bite is like a doorway to heaven opening up, a bit too hot that you need to blow air before promptly stuffing yourself with more.

You stay quiet for the most part, only replying when someone asks you something, sitting directly opposite Chan and hence obliged to keep looking away when your eyes meet. It’s happened so many times already since you first came that you don’t even bother with the awkward smile anymore, glancing away quickly before downing your glass of beer.

Chan looks extremely good today, even though it doesn’t look like he put in too much effort behind his black hoodie and his usual silver earrings. His hair lays flat, fingers occasionally brushing through his fringes which he keeps straightening out. You really try not to stare, but when you do and catch yourself in the act, you convince yourself that it’s only because you’re trying to memorise this new and older Chan from the younger one with curly hair and unpierced ears.

“Hey, do you remember that time (y/n) got in detention because Chan kept poking them and they yelled at him in the middle of calculus?” Minho points out in the middle of dinner.

Chan laughs at the memory eliciting a fond smile from you too as you look back on that day, it had indeed been the first time you got into any kind of trouble at school and you had cried during your after school detention.

“I was somewhat troublesome back then, wasn’t I? Chan says, grinning at you apologetically but with a happy smile as if he held his mischievous days close to his heart.

“Somewhat?” you question incredulously, “you were quite the troublemaker, honestly how did you get appointed as student council head?!”

The table erupts into giggles and laughter, a surprised Seungmin looking at Chan in awe, finding it equally hard to believe Chan could have ever caused any trouble. You find it easy to laugh along, just old friends reminiscing on good days gone by, leaving behind fragments of floating memories you had to glue back together. It felt like you were teens again at one of your annual dinners after exams were over. It felt good to be here right now, maybe with a broken friendship, but with a sudden jolt you realise that you may have been looking forward to this unknowingly after all, and now that it was here, you were willing to put behind petty regrets and patch things up.

After all, how often will you find a friendship so precious, right? Shouldn’t you appreciate it and let go of the past for the sake of reviving whatever weak flame was flickering now?

A warmth blooms in you when you look around, eyes lingering a little longer on the man in front of you. He notices and tilts his head in question. You smile widely and shake your head and in a long while, Chan finds himself feeling elated as if the sun itself had bloomed inside his chest and was extending its rays all through his body. He has not felt this happy in a while and the sight of your smile directed at him lightens the burden without a source on his shoulders he’s been carrying ever since.

Though in the morning you might try to convince yourself that warming up to Chan had been a consequence of the alcohol in your system, you ease yourself into the light atmosphere and enjoy the moment for as long as it lasts.

Chan and Seungmin get along well, some sort of sibling dynamic forming quickly between the two with comfortable bantering which slowly backfires on Minho who gets teased by the two and turns pouty. You chuckle when he turns to you for help but only gets a pat on the back from you.

Regardless, Seungmin only needs to lean his head on his sulking boyfriend’s shoulder for him to smile sweetly and kiss his cheek. Felix and you pretend to gag at the sight, which is quickly shot down by protests.

“You’re only jealous because you’re both single!” Minho yells over the table, eliciting a gasp from you and faux display of hurt from Felix who clutches his heart and pretends to cry.

“You’re single?” you look up to find Chan looking at you, an unreadable expression on his face and you wonder why he directed his question at you even though Felix was sitting right beside him.

Before you can respond, Minho speaks up on your behalf.

“(y/n)’s been single ever since high school, I think they’re gonna die single and lonely.”

“Am not!” you stick out your tongue at him, “also I did date in uni.”

“Two weeks doesn’t count,” Minho smirks, “you didn’t even kiss him.”

“And how would you know that?” you challenge, glaring at him now.

Chan listened to the conversation curiously, hearing you talk for the longest time since the evening.

“Did you?” Minho’s eyes widen and you feel like they might pop out of their sockets if he kept staring any longer.

“No…but that’s not the point,” you grumble, hiding your face behind your glass and looking away.

“Why don’t you and Felix try dating once, huh? I’ve been waiting for y’all to get together since forever.”

You choke on your drink, suddenly embarrassed at all the attention. How did the conversation turn to your very prospective dating life all of a sudden? Granted Minho may be drunk, but he was better at holding his alcohol. You feel an apprehension when you look over and notice the smug grin he has on, regarding you through narrow eyes.

“What?” you splutter, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand and ignoring the way Chan stares at you, “why would you even say that?”

Felix chooses that exact moment to lean in and cling onto your hand, rubbing his face against your shoulder. You know he’s had one too many drinks, and if you didn’t then he made it very obvious when he mumbled against your neck.

“Yeah (y/n),” he pouted, “if both of us are single by the time we’re forty, let’s get married!”

You laugh endearingly, letting him nuzzle his face closer for warmth, the tip of his nose cold against your skin and you shiver.

“Okay Felix, only if you promise to do the laundry,” you tease.

“Shit don’t do it Lix, it’s a trap!” Minho scoffs, leaning into Seungmin who nods vehemently, also under the influence of more alcohol than he can usually tolerate.

“For my beloved (y/n), anything! I will even cook and clean and take the dog out for walks!” he proclaims. You giggle, stroking his blonde hair gently and it seems to draw him closer.

“Okay Lix, whatever you say. Oh, you’re going to make such an amazing husband one day!”

Felix simply giggles like a child, hiding his face behind his hand as he leans away and slouches across the table, the tips of his ears now red, poking out.

Minho shakes his head disagreeably, sending you a nasty glare which you respond to by sticking out your tongue. While Felix stills remains slouched on the table, probably asleep you figure, but none of you have the heart to wake him up, Minho falls into a quiet conversation with a slightly drunk and sleepy Seungmin, the two huddling close and speaking in soft tones completely ignoring you and Chan who are left alone in an awkward silence.

Chan clears his throat, gaining your attention before mumbling an ‘excuse me’ and leaving the table to step outside. You follow his movements, moving the plastic curtain and shuffling out into the cold night, standing under the makeshift awning. He lights a cigarette and puffs in air, smoking out clouds which disappear into the night, distorted behind the plastic curtain, the orange glow splitting into a line whenever he brings up the stick to his lips.

Downing the last few drops in your glass, you excuse yourself too, though you don’t think anybody listens – Minho is far too invested in playing with Seungmin’s hair while the latter hums happily against his shoulder and Felix is, well…passed out, probably – and make your way out too, pushing the curtain aside and shivering when the cold wind hits you. Nights in the mountains get chillier by the hour and you’re glad you’re wearing a thicker cardigan tonight.

Chan looks up from where he’s standing, smiling in greeting when you come to stand beside him. The silence shared outside is shared comfortably, with all the late night buzz of people and veiled chattering around you. A few street lights line the street, glowing warm yellow under a darkened blanket studded with little silver dots that twinkle brightly without any clouds in sight. It’s a moonless night, but there’s enough light around you to make out Chan’s face; not entirely hidden in the dark but illuminated in a muted yellow glow that lines his side, sloping down his nose and falling onto his lips before disappearing under his chin.

The smoke from his lips coils into the air in a grey haze before disappearing into the air. You sniffle, warily eyeing the stick between his puckered lips, folding your arms across your chest when another wind blows.

“Those things aren’t really good for you, you know” you comment, feeling awfully like a nagging mother, always confronting him about his smoking habits whenever you see him. You almost snort at the revelation.

“Ah…sorry, I’ve been trying to quit too, but it just…force of habit.”

You smile sadly, tucking your chin in your neck and leaning against a wooden pole.

“I heard about your father,” Chan’s voice is cautiously quiet in the night, the syllables coming out hushed and apologetic, “I’m sorry about him.”

“Don’t be, we saw it coming but he was worse off than we had hoped,” you reply just as quietly, but without the tremor that had been present in your voice some years ago. In fact, you don’t think you’ve talked about your father in a long while, not even with your mother. It makes you slightly sad that the first time you’re doing this is because of an old friend who, until recently, hadn’t even been in contact with you.

“It was…it was all the smoking he did…the cancer, I mean.”

You sniffle, looking up at the sky, eyes mindlessly following the clusters of stars twinkling silently.

“Ah shit…I’m so sorry. Does this make you feel uncomfortable?”

You shake your head in denial, but even so you both know it does. You know you don’t want to see someone smoking in front of you; it had been difficult enough to get over that particular phase in your life where you blatantly disliked people for smoking, but you slowly got over the fact that you had no say in how they should live their life or not. Not everybody who smoked ended up with cancer after all. But you also knew that you would always try to help your friend quit, because quite frankly, you were the type to be haunted by the fear of something that had the tendency to scar you.

When you were seven, you had fallen off the monkey bars and bruised your knees pretty badly – the scars are still there, a dark patch against your skin – and you had a huge fear of the accursed bars, steering clear of it ever since. Then you grew up and grew taller and your fingers coiled around the cold metal bars without even having to lift your feet off the ground and you realised that it was no fun that way anymore; it was much more fun and exciting when your feet swung in air and your muscles strained trying to hold on to the slippery bars. There was a beauty in having to risk your seven year old soul to hang on to some monkey bars for dear life, something you had missed out on for the longest time in your life.

Then of course, there was your fear of water. You may have never mastered the element, but once you learn to float and keep your head above the water in the deeper end, you wonder why you had been scared in the first place.

Chan throws the cigarette on the ground and stubs it with his feet, picking it off and throwing it in the dustbin nearby. The silence prevails as he leans beside you. The smell of smoke remains in the air, stagnant and pungent under your nose.

Shuffling on your feet, you dig into the pocket of your jeans, fumbling around as you struggle to pull something out of it.

“Here,” you say, handing it out to Chan who regards the lollipop between your fingers with visible confusion but accepts it gingerly nonetheless, “I would rather you died of diabetes than cancer.”

The chuckle that he lets out is easygoing, tumbling from his lips like tiny bells, chiming into the night charmingly. You know you've heard it countless times before, but it makes you feel warm out here in the cold, like a sweet blanket of comfort and nostalgia.

“Why do I die either way?” he questions, snorting at your proclamation. You shrug, sharing a smile.

“It’s a better way to go?'' It sounds more like a question but doesn’t stop Chan’s amused laughter.

“You became funnier after all this time,” he teases, surrendering by putting his hands up when you threaten to hit him.

“So, do you always carry candies with you wherever you go?” he asks, fiddling with the patterned wrapper.

“No, Lix gave it to me. He’s always got some sort of sweet with him, god maybe he’ll get diabetes one of these days.”

“Is there something between you and Felix?” you miss the slight frown on his face and the nervous lip biting, his fingers fiddling with the crinkling wrapper of the candy between them.

“No, why would you think that?” as if realising the answer to your question you add, “Minho was just joking back then.”

“Oh, I thought you might. He’s just very…”

“Clingy? Sweet boyfriend material, makes everybody fall in love with him wherever he goes and whatever he does?” you raise a brow when Chan trails off, smiling teasingly when he sputters out another laugh, flustered.

“Yeah!”

“That’s just the way he is,” you snort, “isn’t he adorable though?”

You both take this moment to glance inside where you left the three boys. Sure enough, Felix is now cupping his cheeks between his hands, red faced and hiccuping with his eyes half closed and lips out in a pout like a duck, looking around like a lost kitten. He's had one too many drinks and you can tell; his elbow keeps slipping off the table and he glares in confusion as if to gauge the problem. Sharing a glance you both burst out laughing, doubling over yourselves as the giggles erupt out of you from nowhere.

The night is chilly, but as you both huddle close, laughing over something small and mundane as a silly friend who’s had too much to drink, you feel your cheeks warm and tummies tremble in merriment.

Chan laughs with his whole body, the chimes of his joy gurgling up from his chest like butterflies that fly around you with pretty wings. Unknowingly, you start filing away little things about Chan in a place that were fond to you in your memories, like a small cabinet of his quirks. The cute dimple on his cheek, the way his eyes turn into crescents and can’t stay open when he laughs too hard, his hands which circle his waist or often find respite behind his neck when he’s too sheepish and the way the silver rings in his ears tremble all the while he’s shaking with joy.

You let yourself bask in this moment, ignoring the voice in your head telling you not to enjoy so much. It gets drowned under the horde of butterflies that circle over it, out of its reach and high above as you watch with a longing to reach out and let one sit on your finger. You stay rooted though, keeping your hands to yourself, afraid you might damage its wings if you so much as brush against its petal like fragility.

The flap of their wings send a wave of small breeze towards you, gentle and almost akin to a fever kiss, fanning your hot face and urging you to look at them past the shambles of your ruined castle walls with moss and wreck. They fly too high and you have to crane your neck just to look. They’re free, without a threat of being captured inside glass cases or having their wings clipped and you know in that moment you wouldn’t want anything happening to them.

Maybe one day, one of these winged wonders will approach you and let you lend your finger to sit.

Chan walks home that night with a spring in his step and a smile that never leaves his lips, the lollipop inside the pocket of his hoodie with its tiny but obvious weight and crinkling wrapper.

It’s too sweet for him, but he finds that sucking on it does indeed act as a substitute in the long run. He sleeps at night with the lingering taste of cherry at the back of his tongue and a warm memory of shared laughter in the cold night. It spreads through his body and lulls him to a comfortable sleep.

The straightened wrapper of candy finds a home in his bedside drawer, placed carefully beside his camera.

[hanasnx]

i hav been obsessed with ur blog and how u write anakin since i found it, i have a prompt and i would love to see what u do with it. all i will say is greasy nic addicted pothead linecook anakin. thank u god bless 🙏🙏

no bcos this is my sweet spot actually. something about linecooks having a sailor’s mouth, barking shit at people in their way, sweaty from labor and from the heat of appliances, flirting with the cute waitresses & giving them meals to go home with…

☥ he’s the guy that works the most, probably as much as he can, bcos hes like… hobby-less

☥ i’m imagining dane cook’s look from the movie “waiting…” so the black bandana around the hair to keep it out of his face. eyebrow piercing, maybe some lip piercings ….. ooooo

☥ the nic and pot is so real and so special to me. you’d more often than not catch him outside in the back having a smoke. one time he came to work with a bong and he passed it around with the other ppl in the back

☥ horsing around constantly with his coworkers like theyre all siblings that hate each other

☥ but when you walk in,,, he gets so bashful sometimes

“heyy, miss (y/n)…“

his coworkers mocking him, batting their lashes like, “hEyY, mIsS (y/N)—“ and he whips em with a towel a little to get em to shut up

☥ always leaning on things, any excuse to get closer to you. you pick up a plate and he throws a towel over his shoulder and hes chewing on a toothpick and hes like, “when’s your shift up?” bcos he wants to hang out with you after even if its just smoking with you in his car

☥ he’s got that oral fixation, his vape, a cig if hes got it, pre-rolls he has in the pocket in his apron, toothpicks, toying with his snake bite lip rings when he talks to you

☥ you get so nervous around him bcos he looks so big and mean and acts so commanding in the kitchen. you like him in that black shirt he wears all the time even if it’s stained with food and sweat and it tucks so nicely into his apron

☥ listening to his shitty music on his shitty radio and every other song he’s like “ohhh this is a good one, this is a good one—“

“this is your playlist, ani—“

“shut up and listen. this chick is a genius. listen to this.”

he’s such a jackass.

he’d probably grab your hand on the way out and twirl you to the song. “dance, waitress, dance.”

☥ he rly would be so greasy. so disgusting. i love the word to describe him. greasy. smelly from working istg you’d love his musk. like the stench mixed with his deodorant and cologne. you’d joke with him how he smells so good and that you wanna stick his nose in his pit and he laughs it off like “knew you were a freak.” even tho that’s not technically what you meant but now you’re thinking about him shoving your face in his taint

☥ imagine the two of you finally smoke together as an excuse to hangout and suddenly youre straddling him in his backed up seat and making out like you’re trying to inhale each other. all that sexual tension finally having a space to be worked out as youre grinding down on his halfie and he’s got a joint still pinched in between his fingers

maybe he does you inside his car and the next day you can’t stop flirting with each other hardcore during work. he starts grabbing your ass discretely whenever he can, and your fingers draw down his chest while hes eyeing you hungrily. trying to lure you outside during his smoke break for a quick make out and grope session because he just can’t stay away from you

☥ bet a bunch of your coworkers think hes so hot and youre listening to em knowing youre the one doing him after the shift

[ja3hwa]

Harmless | San

「Synopsis」 : A mysterious plant catches your eye, but what happens when the useless plant becomes not so useless...How would react to their bunmy hybrid mate getting hurt? [A mini series]

「Word count」 : 1.02k

-> Genre: Suggestive, Fluff, Fantasy

Paring: Wolf!San x Hybrid!Reader

[Warnings] : Sex pollen, suggestive, swearing, reader goes crazy for San. If I missed anything let me know.

For other members click -> Here

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

[This can be read as a stand alone]

Working long hours in your greenhouse was something you enjoyed. Even though to others it might have seemed like a chore, making healing agents, potions, or writing your studies down on any and all new plants you discover. The wolves envy your hard work and only wished for your stamina. The brothers would make jokes questioning if you were truly a rabbit given you don't have the want for long sleep or laziness. But then again, a lazy nap session with San was one of your favourite things to do. You fitted in, in other words. You could go out on patrols with some of the boys, gathering supplies without the worry of slowing them down. You were useful, and everyone enjoyed having your fuzzy kind company.

You have been stuck in yet another project, studying a new plant that was recently discovered on the outskirts of the pack grounds. It was a bright purple flower on red-ish pink vines, the leaves have small detailing of blue mixing in the purple. You haven't seen a plant like this in all your years of study. A lot of the members were worried it could be poisonous but through hours and hours of testing nothing toxic seemed to be showing. You were stumped, confused about what the plant's purpose would be. But as you sat at your desk with the plant sitting on the large dark oak table that hugs the wall in the corner of the room, you rub your temples feeling a sense of frustration.

You let out a big huff standing up with a loud scratch of your wooden chair sliding against the floor. If you weren't going to be able to find out its purpose, maybe giving it a purpose will help you feel less annoyed at the mystery plant.

Grabbing some beakers, your knife kit and various other sharp and pinching tools that would make any outsider think you were about to perform surgery on the plant. But in truth it was a form of surgery, you wanted some of the content of the plant to work on without actually hurting or killing the plant. So if someone said you were performing surgery, they wouldn't be wrong. Picking up a scalpel and tweezers, you carefully cut one of anther's off the filament. You hold your breath as you place the anther —making sure not to lose any of the pollen that is stuck to it— on the small tray you prepared.

You grab some herbs and other ingredients for a very basic calming potion. Maybe the flower can bring a weakening agent or even a fatigue spell. You pour, cut and throw different leaves, and spices into the small pot, letting it start to brew. The liquor starts to turn its normal blueish colour with the smell of fresh grass and lilies filling your nose. You pick up the pollen slowly with the tweezers, dropping it into the concoction.

"Nothing!?" You started at the pot in disbelief, normally when you add a new ingredient there would be a change almost immediately. Leaning closer to the potion you inhale the smell to see if the scent changed and even that was still the same. Maybe the flower was indeed useless, and it was nothing but a harmless little flowe—

"Fuck!!" You swear at a blast of bright purple smoke spraying straight into your face, invading your senses within seconds. You cough out, closing your eyes, rubbing the left one while placing the lid on the pot, sealing the smoke from spilling out even more.

"Well, I guess you're not useless." You take a sharp inhale as your voice was croaky from the vaper. You stand up to fetch your logbook from your desk but as your feet hit the ground you felt a sudden shiver cores through you. Your legs become jelly, and your vision blurs slightly, but not enough that you cant see. A weird feeling overwhelms your system. It was almost like the feeling of a heat, but much, much worse.

You try to shake the feeling, leaning against the desk, almost gasping for air. You look around the room, searching for something, anything. At this point, you have no clue what you're searching for. You bring your hand up to your face and an audible shock echoes in the greenhouse. Veins of purple scatter all over your hands and up your arms. Looking down you spot them peaking out of the cuffs of your pants. You were covered in them.

"Sweetheart are you okay I heard screamin—Y/N! Oh my god!" San stops mid-sentence, running over to you. His eyes scan with worry, you were covered in strange veins. Your eyes tinted purple with the white of your eyes bloodshot. You stare at him desperately, with eyes that he would only be able to call 'bedroom eyes'.

"San, Help me." You plea, rubbing your thighs tightly together, leaning into his touch as his hand snakes around your waist. You felt like a wild animal, lost in primal instinct. Your fingers claw at his clothes as tears began to run down your cheeks. "Please Sannie, it hurts so bad."

"What hurts baby, tell me what's wrong. What happened?" He held you closer, drawing circles into your hips, which made you crave his touch more.

"The-The flower. It's a lascivious toxin." You practically moan out, leaning back so San's body and the table would trap you. You feel so hot, sweat beading down your forehead. He looks at your with confusion, feeling himself grow with worry and lust. He can smell you dripping, but he shakes the thought, trying to make sure you are okay first.

"W-what does that mean Sweets?" He asks, bringing his hand up to hold the back of your neck.

"Argh, It's a toxin that makes you horny San!!" You look at him dead in the eyes, frustration taking over. "It makes you very..." You grind your hips against his. "Very..." You do it again. "Very horny..."

"Oh..." I mean at least you are not actually in pain... Well the bad kind anyway.

-

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[hermetichermethermes]

Would you mind writing up a guide or sharing existing resources re: anarchogardening? Thanks!

SUPER LONG POST!

A NOVEL REALLY.

I'M SO SORRY, I'M AUTISTIC AND I LITERALLY TEXT IN HUGE PARAGRAPHS EVEN. MY FRIENDS HATE ME FOR IT

Ok so Honestly there's no real guide I could give. But, Well, ok so story time ! This isn't really a guide but I guess it's my origin story:

I just started out with these Bee bombs you can get from gardening centres, they're small clay pellets full of native bee favourite flowers. I'd throw them down any place I thought could use some beautiful flowers. So this whole damn country really. That's arguably where I started. No intentions except to help our comrades (the bees 🐝)

Some time After that I realised all the many, many plants I have grown in my house and in my garden (especially the ones not doing very well) could probably do with being relocated as a last hurrah attempt since they were near death anyway and I needed room for more plants. A constant issue of mine.

Outside my local library there's this corner that backs onto the playing fields round back. This corner had benches in a sort of maze shape and was surrounded by various unique bushes and lavender, marigolds and a few other plants clearly put there by a gardener to make a nice natural area.

After the council shut down my beloved library I would walk past it still when I walk my dogs. Sometimes picking some flowers from the now neglected area for my herbal smoking blends and sometimes throwing down handfuls of various seeds I kinda collect. Just to see if I can add to this area.

Most of them took and bloomed in the spring, getting out of hand actually. Growing and taking on a life of their own. This was pretty cool. Then I saw the trellis up the wall. I need a trellis for my morning glories mostly. But I can't just Steal a 10×12ft terrace, but my climbers were falling over themselves. Plus at one point I had morning glories on my windowsill and they grew around my curtain pole. Not very practical but wow they looked very cool. So I took them down to that library trellised wall and just half buried the pots in the ground and wove them in and out of the trellis fully expecting them not to survive. (I've transplanted them once before From my room to my garden but those morning glories didn't recover from the shock) But these ones did! They covered this trellis. It was beautiful. They went to seed and I collected many seeds and since then I've planted them and ransom other plants everywhere really, in 3 cities. I've never been back to check on them unfortunately. I did most of those when I was homeless and jumping trains to random places with 2 friends I was made homeless around the same time they were with (I don't recommend jumping trains unless you need to btw. And if you do , DON'T get off at Reading Central (UK). Not unless you want to be fined £879.10! An amount I'll never forget)

I moved a bunch of plants from my room in pots onto the easily accessible roof of the library too but that was stupid and very exposed, they didn't last a week! Stolen, removed by the police idk. Lost some cool blood grass and passion flower that way. Still bitter about it

Anyway, I have a habit of taking cuttings and runners from my plants and repotting them. (Infinite plant glitch) Which is how I've ended up with so many ornamental pineapple plants, Hops, Mints (including a chocolate mint flavoured one! Smells exactly like mint chocolate ice cream!) oh and I have way too many cacti and succulents from this way too.

So what do you do when you have too many plants? You go and replant them any place you can! Especially in abandoned building sites! That's where my succulents in particular have really taken over. Nature will always take back what's hers, I only assisted her. As her Seed Thrawl if you will.

Ok so now I'm going to admit to a variety of crimes. So , this anonymous grocery store has this garden centre small shed like building near me that they obviously lock all the plants in at night but it was open one night . At like 2am so some employee fucked up but won't be coming back. Man, I stole so many fruit trees it's not even funny. I was drunk (ok on other drugs too) and I loaded up a large trolley and just fucking ran across the car park like Harry Fucking Potter at platform 9 3/4, and was gone. I got a lil paranoid of getting caught with my hoard of plants the next day. So I just went around (in the dead of night) and planted most of the redcurrants and blackberries and raspberries and apricot and goji berry and something called Aronia (some kind of berry thing, ooh and blueberry plants too!) in every place I thought might be suitable for the plants to grow, but also rather inconspicuous too. So the blackberry bramble bushes I planted among already established bushes of the same type on a main road for example. The blueberry bushes in the acidic soil on this patch of nature surrounding one of those electrical boxes etc

Man, I kept tabs on these plants when I walked my dogs and I started seeing local kids picking the berries and also Nepalese families especially doing the same (spoke to many of them, they used to go foraging in Nepal their whole lives and were happy to find all these strange fruit plants growing everywhere. I really wanted to reveal that it was me who did it but I didn't need the clout or the risk of doing so)

At first I was a little annoyed because I didn't mind people taking the fruit but I thought everyone was exhausting the fruit which meant no seeds and future die off. But wow, even the kids knew to only take some and wait for more to grow. That's probably when it hit me that people weren't greedy really, and nobody that didn't want or need them were taking any. Just regular people, being happy, taking what they need, teaching their kids to forage. Naturally I became a vaguely illegal plant planter.

So I started prop lifting from garden centres to grow roots on the leaves I was propagating (was doing it before this but I REALLY went hard on it now)

I met this girl who told me how to get away with taking cuttings from botanical gardens (the prestigious places with rare plants and overpriced ones in the gift shop). I was planning to go to Kew gardens with family soon anyway. Idec, I stole cuttings of some rare and beautiful plants and didn't damage the host plants. Conservation in mind. Such a rush. Ugh . You don't know true ecstasy until you smuggle dragon fruit seeds out of a botanical garden's security checkpoint.

I kept some of these, planted some others. I won't go into details about how I stole from those botanical gardens for obvious reasons. As a seasoned shoplifter and with the aid of that girl's tips and genuinely preparing like a bank heist, all I'll say is it was easy if you wear a small bag full of certain tools and room for small plants under your hoody.

Now the grafting. I learned how to graft genetically similar plants together like a botanical Frankenstein from a YouTube channel called Jsacadura. I thought it was so cool and I practiced on my mum's two different apple trees. I was so excited! It worked!! I later read on some book from ZLibrary (I can't remember which book, sorry. I've downloaded over 1500 books from there onto a dedicated tablet because I apparently hoard everything) and in this book I learned that you can graft the rootstock of a cannabis plant onto the above ground vine of a Hops plant. I had both of these. Both for smoking. I hated beheading my 2 foot tall baby cannabis plant and was so worried! But it took a long while to heal and I couldn't tell if it worked until it continued growing or shriveled up to die. But it fucking lived! The thing about this hops plant with cannabis roots... Was it looked like a legal normal hops vine... BUT IT NOW HAD CANNABINOIDS IN THE FLOWERS!! actual magic. Can't even believe it but sure hops and cannabis are closely related. And this alchemist shit worked out! Bit of a tangent but it's crucial to understand how and why I got into grafting. Now there's some apple trees down my local park...

I was going to air layer one of my mum's apple trees because it got root rot. She had them in pots with no drainage holes 🙄 (to air layer you shave off bark at soil level of the trunk revealing that light brown inner Cambrian layer that is like the tree's vascular system. You always graft onto this layer btw) . After it's shaved you can tie a bag or container like a plastic takeaway container around it full of dirt. A big ol' dirt bandaid if you will. It'll grow roots from the part you shaved after a couple weeks. OH WRAP THE CONTAINER IN TINFOIL OR SOMETHING. ROOTS LIKE DARK AND DO NOT LIKE SUNLIGHT. Then you cut the original rotten irrelevant roots away with a saw , below your new roots and BOOM. new tree basically, from a single branch of a dying one. Yeah! Science bitch!

It should be noted that you can only really graft in the spring when the sap is flowing and the plant is actively growing. If you can't easily peel the bark from a branch then chances are it's not ready.

Over time I got a few small trees from this method. All clones genetically because they all came from one plant originally. Not a seed made by two parents.

So I started my clone army, didn't execute order 66 or anything but I did have enough now to warrant risking some being a loss by grafting them onto those park apple trees. There's a chance it won't work even if you do everything right. I really thought someone would peel off the graft sight coverings/bandages/grafting tape but lichen grew all up the tree and covered the tape so maybe it helped camouflage it. I did all this in the dead of night again, using a quick flash of my phone light to see what I'm doing and quickly turning it off again and working from memory. No idea lf this is illegal but most things I enjoy doing is so idk. Precautions. These grafts all survived but 2. So 5/7. Some cunt later knocked one of the trees down crashing into it on his dirt bike , the bastard tore up the field too. It's bad enough the dirt bike cunts keep me awake often ugh. One down though I guess, I see it as the tree taking HIM out as a thank you to me for the new bioprosthetic ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

These events seem close and linear from how I write but this all started just before and then during the pandemic. So ~5 years (jfc time sure is a thing that just continues to go on huh)

It's kinda how I stayed sane really during the height of COVID. I've toned it down a bit but sInce I started this I still kinda plant random cuttings everywhere, just for fun and idk help get fruit to anyone that would be delighted to be able to gather fresh fruit when they want without the expense of grocery store fruit. Also no pesticides etc. I just like doing it tbh, I'm not really thinking I'm feeding the homeless or anything. Just an added bonus. I give everyone I meet a cactus or pineapple plant because they keep reacting so well to cuttings being taken and/or asexually reproducing anyway. People think I'm quirky and being nice but I just need to offload my Frankenstein children to make and buy new ones.

I think that's about the jist of it. I currently have a few projects in the works. Frustrating things really. Like trying to get my lychee seeds to grow and my Syrian Rue for the harmala alkaloids. Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds too for the Lysergic Acid Amides. But wrong climate in the UK :( . Oh but I've grown two avocado trees from seed now! They're both maybe 3 foot tall. I have a new plastic greenhouse now and they love it in there. I also have so many physalis plants that I get fruit from. Idk how but there's two varieties and they just keep growing all over the place. I swear I put some seeds in one pot and they haven't flowered, fruited AND seeded AND spread to germinate. They're not even that old. But I'll plant them at that library plant corner maybe. Haven't checked on all these plants in a while, so I probably should.

So that's my story, I haven't told anyone any of this before. I hope you and anyone else can take something valuable from this!

I honestly have no books or resources on Anarchogardening ! I checked ZLibrary but shockingly found nothing. You can try though (singlelogin.re) [DON'T GO ON ANY OTHER SITE CLAIMING TO BE ZLIBRARY. THOSE SITES ARE SCAM SITES TRYING TO GET MONEY OUT OF YOU. ONLY SINGLELOGIN.RE)

Or if you wanted to use TOR the .onion site is:

http://loginzlib2vrak5zzpcocc3ouizykn6k5qecgj2tzlnab5wcbqhembyd.onion/

[itsaash]

Pumpkin Spice

@noots-fic-fests thank you for including this prompt so I can take something that happened in my life and turn it into something decidedly better, ha. Enjoy some fluffy, domestic Jily! And I believe sweater weather Harry was born in March? So he'd be 8 months old the next October

Lily had just wanted to make something nice. Sure, sure, the days are long but the years are short. But when you’re in the thick of having a 8 month old people could just fuck right off with that advice. Because the never ending loop of naptime, nursing, introducing solid food, play time, diaper change, and repeat made some days interminably long. And James was an amazing partner and an even better dad, but the season had started up again, and Lily was not in the groove of solo parenting. She was skidding on one wheel on the edge of the groove threatening to fall over at any moment. 

When she was nursing Harry, cuddling his warm body close, she’d sometimes scroll on her phone and cooking videos were some of her favourites. She’d be lulled by the perfectly aesthetic backdrops and clean kitchens. The process of turning a group of ingredients into something new and amazing. Her feed knew her well and alternated between plans and ideas for baby food, and delicious looking snacks and drinks. Being October, pumpkin everything saturated the videos. Bread, muffins, cookies, stew, coffees, all featuring pumpkin. She didn’t have much time or energy for more time in the kitchen after the essentials of baby food and basic meals. But maybe a pumpkin spice syrup was achievable? 

So after forgetting to get canned pumpkin at the next two grocery store runs, Lily finally remembered and was excited to make something for herself. Harry went down for his afternoon nap, and after stepping carefully to sneak out of his room she went into the kitchen to make the syrup.  The can opener, pumpkin, vanilla, and spices were lined up on the counter, and she measured  the sugar into the water for a double batch. She stirred the sugar in with her little purple whisk and watched it dissolve. She checked the recipe again, ok, it needed to reduce for a while. She turned down the heat and went to the bathroom. 

Then went to move the laundry into the dryer. Shit, that was a pile of clean laundry. The clothes got put away, and she tracked down the new box of trash bags for the garbage in the laundry room that she had emptied the lint trap into. May as well take out the other bathroom garbages while she was at it. Weird, this bathroom smelled bad. She looked around, had a diaper fallen behind the trash can or something? There wasn’t an obvious culprit so Lily finished emptying the bins and brought them all downstairs to the main garbage in the kitchen. 

The kitchen was a haze of smoke. 

“What in the ever loving pumpkin fuck of goddamn stupid pumpkin fucking shit…”

A string of incomprehensible curses continued as Lily dropped the trash bags and raced to the stove to turn off the burner. The water had long since evaporated and the sugar was beyond burned with her cute little whisk melted sadly to the side of the smoking pot. The smell hit her senses like a freight train as she put on an oven mitt and carried the pot outside and left it on the porch, slamming the door just a bit on the way back in. She turned the hood fan all the way up and went around opening every window she could get her hands on. Thank god it wasn’t too cold outside yet. 

Lily hardly knew if she should laugh or cry. It smelled truly awful. How had she not realized that smell was a burning smell? How could she have forgotten this one thing she had wanted to do for herself so quickly? And how had the stupid fucking smoke detector not gone off?? Although now in hindsight, with no major harm done, and the smoke already dissipating, she supposed she was glad to not have a baby awoken from a nap by screeching added to this situation. She walked away from the blaring sound of the hood fan and sunk to the floor under an open window on the other side of the house. Which is where she was when James got home. 

“Hey Lils love! I’m home — oh shit wow you’re right there! You scared me,” James said. He came in the door and was startled when he turned to take his shoes off and saw Lily sitting there. He set down his bag and walked over to her and slid his back down the wall. “Why are we sitting on the floor?” he asked softly, nudging her with his shoulder. 

Lily waved her hand vaguely at the house, cheek resting on her bent up knees. “I ruined our house with this awful fucking smell. Can’t you smell it?”

“Well, yeah, but you don’t seem to be panicking, so I figured it’s not an emergency.” He scooched even closer and wrapped his arm around her shoulders and Lily turned to tuck her face into the warmth of his shoulder. “Want to tell me what happened? You ok?”

Lily wasn’t crying, but her voice was thick and she was just so tired. 

“I just wanted to make pumpkin spice syrup. But then I got distracted and immediately forgot about it and it’s such a stupid thing to have done and now it smells so bad.” Her breath hitched at the end and she heaved a breath in. “And my little whisk and the pot are totally ruined.”

James just tightened his grip on her shoulders and hugged her close, let her breathe and be still and cry. 

“It doesn’t smell that bad,” he said, finally. 

“Fuck off, yes it does.”

“Ok, yeah it does.” He took in a theatrical sniff and winced. “That’s what burned sugar smells like? It’s nuclear level.”

“It was even worse 20 minutes ago,” Lily muttered. 

“Want to go cuddle on the furthest couch from the kitchen until Harry wakes up?” 

Lily laughed but nodded, and then moved to the couch in the theater room, which was quite separate from the rest of the house and had a baby monitor in it. James laid on the couch and Lily cuddled into his side, making herself small. James ran his fingers through her hair over and over. 

“You know it’s ok, right Lils? You’re fine, Harry’s fine, the house is fine. It’s ok.”

Lily hummed noncommittally. 

“Ok, but can you tell Loops about it? So that I can tell Sirius how bad sugar can smell? Because, honestly, who would’ve thought.”

James smiled to himself when Lily let out a real laugh and reached for her phone. She texted him, a smile quirking on her face. 

my house smells like sugar. And not the good kind like in cookies. Like the awful burned kind and it’s truly terrible. 

I also need to test my smoke alarms. 

These two things may be related.

Not one minute later her phone was ringing. James laughed and kept running his fingers through her hair as she talked to Remus. She told him the story, after reassuring him they were all fine, and her voice lost some of its tightness as they joked over the lengths they’d go to for a PSL and Remus threatening to come smell it for himself while the smell was “fresh”. She, laughing, said fuck off and good bye, hung up and turned to cuddle into James chest even closer. He smelled like the soap from the rink and like himself and when she breathed in deeply she didn’t smell the sugar at all. 

“I’m sorry I made our house smell terrible.”

“I literally don’t care, Lils. I’m just sorry it didn’t work out how you wanted it to.”

She let his breathing soothe her as his chest rose up and down under her cheek. 

“You can close your eyes if you want, flower. I’ll get Harry when he wakes up and I’ll go out with him and get a grocery store special for dinner.” Lily knew that meant a rotisserie chicken, a truly bizarre combination of the pre-made side dishes, and probably something sweet from the freezer aisle. But it was always perfect. She hugged him tighter and nodded. And she drifted off.

Lily woke later to the sounds of James and Harry coming into the house. James was keeping up a running conversation with Harry, talking to his son like he was much older than his 8 months. Lily stretched under the blanket that James must have laid over her, and the smell hit her nose. She cringed, but tried not to dwell and went to see her boys. 

“Mommy’s awake, Harry, look!” Harry babbled happily and Lily took him from James, kissing all over his face. 

“Did you two go on an adventure?” she said to Harry in an animated voice.

“We sure did,” James replied, picking up bags and heading to the kitchen. “To the wilds of Target. And we totally scored.”

Lily watched as he pulled groceries from the reusable bags like a magician pulling a never ending scarf from a sleeve. First came the expected rotisserie chicken, a container of spinach and artichoke dip, two options of chips, a pre-made spinach salad, and a few other grocery essentials.

“Wow, good choices, Harry!” Lily cooed. “I’ll be breaking into that dip immediately. Hopefully the terrible smell doesn’t ruin all this good food Daddy got us.”

“The power of spinach and artichoke dip can overcome anything,” James reassured her, and moved to take Harry from her. “Can you open up that bag, Lils?” he asked, pointing to one. Lily raised an eyebrow, but went to the bag and looked in. She paused for a long moment before reaching in and pulling out a wicker basket filled with all sorts of treasures. 

“James! What is this?!” she exclaimed as she freed the basket from the bag. 

“It’s a boo box!” James said happily. “You’ve been doing such a good job taking care of Harry when I’ve been on roadies, babe. And I love you so much, you do so much for us, so Harry and I wanted to do a little something for you.” He came over and leaned in to press a soft kiss below her ear and Harry pulled her hair happily.

“Thank you so much,” Lily said thickly. 

“You're welcome,” James said easily. He turned and settled Harry in his high chair, and got some blueberries and a mini cucumber from one of the bags and washed them to pass to Harry for him to gum. 

Lily looked through the basket. There was pumpkin spice syrup, of course there was. She huffed a laugh but was thankful for the easy version of the fall treat. Next she touched the new whisk, red this time, and sent James a small smile still tinged with sadness. There were also smaller bottles of brown sugar cinnamon, apple, and chai syrups. She set those aside and found three of the tubes that have all the ingredients you need for different soups, a foot mask, a lip mask, and finally underneath all of that she pulled out a crew neck sweater. It felt creamy and soft in her hands, with cute fall themed charms all over it. She hugged it to her chest and looked up at James. “James, baby. This is so nice.” James stepped close and took her into his arms, wrapping her in a hug from behind, his chin hooked on top of her head. He reached around her to point at some of the treasures. 

“Lots of syrups to try is fun, right? I’m so going to try that apple one in something. And look how funny that lip mask is. Harry laughed so cutely when I held it over my mouth and pretended to talk with it. Let’s see the sweater on, isn’t it so soft?” he rambled. 

Lily smiled with her eyes prickling as she pulled the sweater over her head. It was a bit oversized, the sleeves hung perfectly so she could scoop the cuff into her hands and feel the softness. James hugged her again, trailing his hands under the sweater to rub her back and feel the softness of the inside of the sweater. 

“I love it James, thank you.” 

“Love you, Lilyflower,” James said and leaned down to press a kiss to her lips. Lily turned and pressed a kiss to Harry’s head, thanking him too. He burbled happily back at her with purple fingers and mouth. James pulled out his phone to take a picture when the doorbell rang. He set his phone down on the counter.

“I’ll get it! But I’m so getting a picture of you in that sweater with Harry when I’m back.” He pointed finger guns at her as he walked a few steps backwards towards the front door.

Lily laughed and watched James’ back as he turned around and walked down the hall to open the front door. Her thoughtful, giving husband. The smell of burnt sugar still undeniably hung in the air, but it was fading. Her guilt was fading too, replaced with love for her family. 

“Hey! Oh wow no way,” she heard James say from the door. 

“Who is it?” she called as she started to put away the soups and syrups into the pantry. 

James didn’t answer and she walked back to the side of the kitchen from where she could see the door. 

“James? Oh!” 

He surprised her, he was right there when she turned the corner, a big box in his hands.  

“No one was at the door when I opened it. They must’ve just delivered the box and left.”

“What is it?” Lily asked.

James placed the soft cardboard box on the counter and opened the lid, revealing 6 of the most beautiful cookies Lily had ever seen. They were huge, fluffy and delicious looking. A chocolate chunk on, one that must be red velvet, one that looked like it might be peanut butter, and more that she could only guess at the flavours, but couldn’t wait to taste them and find out. 

“Oh my god. They’re beautiful. Who are they from? Did you order these too?”

“Nope, not me, oh here’s the card,” James replied. “Awww, they’re from Loops, see.” He passed the card to Lily.

To Lily

I hope these drown out the burned smell!! Congrats getting through the day without a kitchen fire!

Re

Lily laughed. “That little shit.”

“I’m surprised he went with cookies and not some sort of fire extinguishing blanket,” James laughed. 

“Don’t suggest it, or at least 2 will be at our door as fast as he can get them shipped here.”

“Actually, I think that’s kind of genius? I’m going to order one. I’ll send them one too.” He broke off a piece of the chocolate chip cookie and popped it into his mouth as he opened up his phone. “No harm in being prepared.”

Lily could only nod along with that logic, and she reached out and broke an orange cookie apart, and yes, as the taste of pumpkin spice cookie filled her senses, the burned smell finally faded away.

[ooppo]

My Highschool Weed Story

I grew up in a household that grew a lot of pot. For reference, here is my cousin standing next to a marijuana plant my dad grew a few summers ago:

That thing was fucking awful to harvest. Anyways, so growing up as a teenager I always smelt like weed, but the nice emo and goth kids I hung out with didn't care because they were weed-starved and would sniff my clothes like a pack of starved beasts. So this one time I go to school and that day I apparently absolutely REAKED of pot. So I go up to my emo friend and I'm like "🥺 Marlana, do you have any perfume I could use...?" And she was like, "Um, yeah actually here!!"

Then Marlana handed me a can of Axe Body spray, which did nothing but amplify both smells somehow. So I was sweating hard in math in a class full of like 40+ students hoping to god no one says anything because I was so paranoid that I would get in trouble and then my parents would get in trouble because we certainly were going over the legal limit of plants. I was sitting there trying to convince myself that I just needed to make it through the day and eventually the weed smell would air out of my clothes. However,

Suddenly, from the back, this kid jets up and shouts "IT SMELLS LIKE WEED IN HERE‼️".

My life flashed before my eyes. I was already making up excuses to take the fall for my parents like how I joined some random group of kids at the back of the school to smoke a joint or some shit. Btw I didn't smell a little like weed, either. I was wearing the jacket that was in the same room they were drying the weed branches out in. I smelt even worse than a dispensary. My parents were super hippies that didn't buy regular fucking deodorant, either, they MADE me WEED DEODORANT that only smelt a little like weed but it was "all natural" and were great for some fucking gland in your armpit or some shit. Idk they were hippies and my dad was an unmedicated bipolar. He convinced us all he cured cancer and asthma once.

I shit you not, this kid rounds up his little posse of friends and they start SNIFF checking every single student and INTERROGATING THEM. My absolute worst fear made real. Literally my most paranoid nightmare giving birth to reality.

I would like to pause to show everyone what I looked like back then when this happened. Here is my school ID from around that time:

This but I wore nerdy black rimmed square glasses and a frog hoodie. This is important information for later.

This kid and his group go down every fucking isle smelling every kid and accusing them like "John, do you smoke pot??" "Jessica do YOU smoke pot???". Eye contact. Calling them by name. Everything. Now I don't only have to lie to the teacher and principal, now I have to lie to my classmates and my god I was never a good liar back in highschool.

The kids get to the girl in the seat next to me and ask her if she smokes pot, which she proceeds to just tell them to fuck off, which was inconceivable to me as an option.

They make eye contact with me.

They see this sweaty little big glasses cringefail artist white girl shaking like a Chihuahua at her desk and I for sure think I'm about to get laid into hard with questions. But, no. They take one look at me and WALK PAST ME‼️‼️ TO THE STUDENT SITTING NEXT TO ME AND CONTINUE THEIR SEARCH.

That point forward it was absolutely ridiculous what I could get away with. Once I sat on the opposite side of the class as literally everyone else by the open window and a kid said it smelt like weed and they all looked up AT ME and then one of the kids said "it must be coming from outside". LIKE BITCH. On my last day in French class I leaned over to one of my class-friends and I told her that I was the one who smelt like weed and she could hardly believe it even though I sat next to her every fucking day.

And that's how I got away with smelling like weed for all of highschool. By looking like a complete fucking loser.

[fictionfordays]

Tyelkormo HCs

Fandom: Tolkien

CW: Some gn!reader towards the end!

A/N: Requested by @a-world-of-whimsy-5 as part of my 100 Followers Milestone Event! Thank you, my beloved! Tyelko is my sweet sweet baby boi and my comfort character. I just love him sm frfr !!! <3 thank you for the request! I hope these are sufficient :)

Back to Main Masterlist | Tolkien Masterlist | 100 Followers Masterlist

❀ I think he's a lot more understanding than he lets on - depending on the person

❀ He loves the living void out of his brothers and cousins, especially his parents, though his relationship with his atar is pretty rough at times

❀ He's the only one allowed to tease his brothers. Even pranks, he might let his cousins in on the prank but generally speaking, pranks do NOT go well when done by others.

❀ And he's not afraid of beating the living shit out of someone for it

❀ Tyelko is a big cuddler. He LOVES physical touch and physical attention. His hand will always be on someone whether protectively or drunkenly (bc, yes, this hound loves a good drink and a good time)

❀ His favourite cuddles are admittedly with Húan. The big ball of fluff is like a bed, a pillow, and a blanket all in one. They can usually be found napping in the shade of a big tree or in the sun by the window if indoors

❀ He loves plants and animals. He'll sometimes collect acorns and other nuts to hide for the squirrels that might need some extra help.

❀ I hc that he works with plants a lot more than other members of his family. He has an herb garden he loves tending to near his hunting cabin, which isn't actually that far from his family's estate.

❀ He loves making herb bundles. He'll hang them in doorways to help make his hunting cabin or his chambers in the family house smell better while also adding an aesthetic charm to the space. He also uses them as like smudge sticks / smoke bundles for cleansing his indoor spaces

❀ Loves picking bouquets of flowers for his ammë (and eventually his partner)

❀ He really loves the outdoors - a known fact - and he tries to bring in as much as he can. The forest is his home, but he can't ALWAYS be outside for whatever reason so he brings a lot of nature inside. Lots of flower pots, trailing vines, rock collection, sticks, feathers, furs he might keep from his hunts, etc. He just loves it so much

❀ Definitely the type of dude that likes to sit in the rain or sit next to an open window while it's raining

❀ He's not known for his musical talents, but I think he does play a couple of instruments and he does sing. He knows a lot of campfire songs and knows a lot of spooky stories too. 10/10 camping partner



Some domestic hc:

❀ Will definitely come into the bathroom to have a conversation with you while you're trying to pee, or while you're trying to relax in a warm bath. Will also use the excuse of styling or brushing his hair in the mirror, too. You promptly scream and kick him out if he tries to do that while you're going #2 though

❀ He can read. It may have taken him longer to learn than his brothers, but he CAN and he'll read books or short stories occasionally when the feeling calls. Definitely reads a lot more once you come around though. He wants you to think he's smart and well-read. He loves listening to you read to him, but will sometimes indulge you and read to you as well.

❀ If you're having a hard time falling asleep, he might read to you, or tell you a comforting story. He'll gently trace your facial features or rub a little lavender oil on your temples to help you fall asleep as well.

❀ He actually really loves drinking tea with you by the hearth. You could sit in comfortable silence or speak quietly about your days. Maybe he'll give you a back rub (though that might lead to other things...)

❀ If you're struggling with your anxieties or insecurities, he's got you. You will never ever doubt for even a millisecond that he would dismiss or make fun of your feelings. He can always sense when you're feeling a little off, and can feel when you're about to have an attack. He loves the outdoors for this reason - it's quieter and there's no one there to poke and prod at you. It's just you and the forest.

❀ He'll pull you into a firm hug, breathing in your scent, which calms him just as much as it calms you

❀ He enjoys your company, even if you're mad at each other for one reason or another. He doesn't like how quickly relationships move traditionally as he feels like he wants to get to know you, enjoy you and who you are and what you enjoy, and really take his time doing so. It might take a little while before he asks for your hand in marriage, but he'll get there eventually when you both feel ready for it

❀ On a similar note, it takes him a while to confess his love for you. He's very open in the fact that he likes you and that he enjoys your company (and that no one else is allowed to have you), but love is... different. It's stronger. It's more vulnerable. It's scary. He was very nervous of saying it the first couple of times.

❀ When he's feeling soft and cuddly, he'll whisper praises in your ears or against your skin. He just loves you so much. He thinks you're smart and beautiful, and he adores you even more if you like similar things as him.

❀ Man blushes and almost looks like Carnistir if you were to ever give him a drawing or painting with him as your muse. Doesn't matter how bad the drawing or painting is. It's the fact that you thought he looked pretty enough or that you admired him enough that you drew his features on paper/canvas. He gets so flustered, beet red, and... quiet. Honestly you've never seem him so quiet and it makes you VERY nervous. Did he just have a heart attack? Does he hate the picture? WHAT IS GOING THROUGH HIS HEAD???

❀ (Don't worry, he loves the fuck out of it)

❀ Same reaction if you write a poem for him jsyk

Tags: @a-contemplation-upon-flowers

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I do not own these characters. All rights to the original creators. All content—created rights are reserved to Wallabypriate©2023.

[reggie-writes]

Wrench’s Birthday- Wrencus Oneshots

If you like it there’s more on Wattpad.

*Drug and suicide topic Warning*

It's been a few days and Wrench hasn't been looking too good. He surprisingly showed up yesterday after not coming in for 4 days and he was miserable. That's not all, he barely even talked to us. I've asked him multiple times if everything was ok, and he just replied with "I'm fine" with that fake tone that he gives to stangers.

I'm hoping he comes in today because it's his birthday and I got him something. Usually, it's just me and Wrench that exchange gifts on each other's birthdays.

This year I got him a particular gun, which I can't get out of our 3-D printed machine. Not saying our 3-D printed ones aren't good, it's just that Wrench has been talking about this "Daredevil" shotgun. It's an expensive gun and highly rare because there are only about 50 of them worldwide. And guess who got their hands on it? I grin to myself knowing how ecstatic Wrench is going to be. He's been talking about this ever since I met him, the way he glows when he explained what he's wanted for years.

The day was slow at the hackerspace, just watched the clock go from 8 to 9, to 10, to 11 and it felt like it could never end. I couldn't get up and leave because we all working on something important. Finally, it reached 6:30 I immediately got up and left. I forgot to say goodbye to the rest of them. Since Wrench didn't come in, I decided to stop by his house. It wasn't that far of a walk, it was only fifteen minutes away.

The rain pattered on the blacktop beside me. It was calm, especially when a car doesn't pass by. The birds were chirping and the frogs were croaking. The fog began to roam in. When I turned the corner, I saw Wrench outside taking a drag of his cigarette, also talking to some lady dressed in white fishnets and knee-high boots. They exchanged goodbyes and she disappeared around the other corner. I continued walking staring at the ground. I couldn't help but think he got a hooker for his birthday, I didn't understand why I felt a certain way like I was upset. He thinks he could call up a hooker but can't even chill with his friends?

I was pissed off about that and was going to tell him off but as I walk closer to him, his eyes were shallow and you can tell he was sleep deprived. He was in a trance like he was thinking hard about something. I was concerned about him now.

"Hey Wrench," I say clearing my throat.

He looks up at me with sorrowful eyes. "Hey man." He takes one last hit of his cigarette, throws it on the ground, and crushes it.

There was a moment of awkward silence before I spoke again.

"Well, I stopped by to give you something."

He raised his eyebrows but didn't say anything. His eyes glance over to the suitcase, being held by my sweaty hands.

"Okay." He mumbled and opened the door and turned on his living room light. Then the smell takes me back to when I was younger. The stench of cigarettes. How many packs did he smoke a day? I didn't wanna ask because I didn't want to be rude. There have to be like 30 empty cartons laying around. The last time I was here, this place only smelt a tad bit like pot and was a tad bit messy. Now it's worse, probably because he's not okay.

We sat down and Wrench snapped back to reality. He took in his apartment's scenery as I unlock the suitcase.

"Shit man, sorry for the mess." He apologized. "I really got to get myself on track." He rubbed his eyes.

"Hey don't worry man, shit happens in life. You know?" I stared into his eyes and glanced back to the case.

I slide it over to him, and he carefully opened the lid. He looked astonished with his jaw hanging wide open.

"Ma- mar-." He couldn't speak.

"I know, I kno-." I got cut off by Wrench's tight squeeze.

"Marcus I love it!" He sobbed.

"Are you crying?" I gently whispered.

He loosened his grip, then let go shortly after.

"Thank you so much." He grabs the gun carefully out of the case. "How-? How did you-."

"I found it in a dumpster behind Arby's." I grinned.

"Aw fuck off." He nudged me and examined the gun like it was an artwork.

"I gotta try this thing tomorrow. Oh! I got something too!" Wrench got up and ran to his room. Immediately he comes back out holding 2 perfectly wrapped blunts and his bong.

I chuckled. "Man, you're the best!"

******

We leaned back onto the couch and gazed into each other's eyes. We weren't super close though, but I could still tell his eyes were red. We were silent for a few minutes until Wrench smirked and we began laughing our asses off. I don't know why I found it funny but I just did. It felt like we were laughing for hours, but it was probably only for 10 minutes.

"You wanna go somewhere to eat?" I was getting bored and hungry.

"Yeah man sure, we can go to Milos bar around the corner." He stood up. "I'll go grab some..."

I grabbed his wrist. "It's on me, I'll pay."

"Look what you got me, Marcus!!!" He points to the gun. "Just let me at least pay half please?"

I got up and let go of his wrist "No, Wrench. It's your birthday."

"Fine." He exhaled and put his mask back on. "You'll let me pay next time."( ~ ^)

"Alright deal." We head out and began walking.

*****

We arrived and sat down at the bar. Wrench and I ordered water, I'm not sure if we're going to drink tonight, but I have extra money on me.

The bartender served us our water and some chips. Wrench took his mask off and we began snacking on them immediately.

"Damn, these are the bomb," I said with my mouth full.

"I know." He continue to eat the freshly baked chips.

Time went by fast and we realized we were out of them so the waiter comes by and takes our order. We both got appetizers so it was quicker to make.

"So- How've you been? Are you okay?" I started to fill the void of silence that Wrench was purposely creating.

"Ugh-." He cleared his throat. "Yeah, I'm fine." He shoves a whole bunch of taco dip in his mouth for only half of it to fall out. I hand him a napkin and laugh.

"No but seriously, how's your head? What's going on with it?" I asked concerningly.

Wrench looked like a deer in headlights.

"I'm just depressed. As always? What do you want me to say? Aww Kittens, Rainbows, Fairies, blah blah blah." he rolled his eyes.

"What's making you upset." I didn't want to go too far if he didn't want to talk.

"Meh, a lot." He mumbled.

I noticed he was getting upset so he decided to back off. " We don't have to talk about it now, just let me know later if you want."

"Alright, tell me what's up with you?" he pushed the chips to me since he was done.

"I've been worrying about you, but there's nothing new really. We got some work done at the hackerspace." I continued on about the work the crew has done.

"I hope they don't think I bailed on them." he frowned.

"No, no. They're worried about you more than anything." I reassured.

"Really?" he looked shocked. "I'm sorry, I just didn't realize people thought about me."

"Dedsec is family Wrench, including Ray. We're always here." I was concerned that he thought that.

The bartender gave us our food and smelled delicious.

Wrench murmured. "Can I try a piece." then placed a mozzarella stick on my plate.

"Yeah of course." so I gave him a wing.

The bartender asked if we wanted anything to drink, and we ordered a drink each. Wrench got some fancy rum thing and I took a beer.

*******

Time passed and Wrench was on his 8th rum thing and I was on 6 beers. Wrench was more fucked up cause he was slurring his words a tad. I was slightly drunk, I didn't wanna drink too much so we can walk home.

"Heyy M?" He looked up from his drink after staring at it for a while.

"Yes?" I turned over to him.

He got quiet and thought for a moment while tapping the glass. "I don't wanna make you feel bad. But Ima say it anyway if you don't mind."

"Wrench you're not going to hurt my feelings. What's up?" I wasn't expecting much.

He struggled to pull his phone out of his pocket. "I was born at 9:42, it's 9:41."

"Happy birthday!!" I started shaking his shoulder and he softly smiled. I grabbed my beer and gestured to drink. So he grabbed his cup and I put my arm around his shoulders. We cheered and chugged.

"So your 25 now?" I joked.

He chuckled to himself then his smile dropped. He barely managed to say. "You know, yo- you saved m- me today M."

My heart slightly sunk since I was confused.

He looked down at his feet resting on the footrest. "I was gonna end it at 9:42." he gulped.

I was dismayed and my immediate response was to hug him. If I didn't see him today, he would've bit the dust. Fuck man. Losing him would make my life miserable, I just wish he knew that he means so much to me. I wrapped my arms around him tight and he moved closer to me. I can tell he was softly crying on my shoulder.

"I'm sorry Wrench. I should've come by sooner, I was so caught up with-" I stopped cause he let go of the hug with tears still forming in his eyes. He placed a finger on my lips. "Shh.." then slowly dragged it down and started at my lips for a second then back up at my eyes. "Don't feel bad, don't apologize. It was my fault. I was so lost in my head man I get into these weird depressive states and it almost won this time again."

"Again?" I raised my brow.

"Yeah, when I was a teen." he picked up his drink and took huge gulps.

"Oh wow." I felt very sorry for him. I had an idea that something was going on but didn't know it was this severe.

"I'm sorry that you're friends with an unstable person. I wish all the time that it would fade away, but it always comes back." His hands were cupped around his drink looking at his feet.

I sighed. "It's not your fault Wrench that's just how you are. Yes, I know it gets scary sometimes, you might have to be more positive in those times You know I care about you, my life would turn upside down."

"I try M, I really do. I have so much ballsly confidence and when it's time to end it. I don't second guess myself. It's my mind M and I can't fix it myself. I think I need meds but I don't wanna take them. I tried overdosing back when I was 16 so it's kinda traumatic taking medicine regularly. Then I think it's just better off..." he stopped for a second "Being fucking dead." He looked up at me with sorrowful eyes.

I was silent processing his feelings. I felt a pain in my chest, I cared so much for him. I hated to see him like this.

"I just realized today, that when I'm with you, they all disappear. I'm able to think again."

That made me smile and I rubbed his arm.

"Not cigarettes, not pot, not beer. Yeah, they help me to confront things with ease but..." He thought for a few seconds. "Since the day I fucking met you they just began to silence. Every time we hung out when I had a low day you always bring me up."

His eyes were moving slowly almost like they weren't keeping up so where he was looking at. 

I felt a warm feeling inside me, usually, this happens a lot with Wrench. I just didn't think about it too much before. It was there briefly in the past, this time it was lingering. I didn't know if this was a crush feeling because I thought I was straight.

"That means a lot Wrench, thank you. You always cheer me up all the time.  I'll be here through every step of the way" It felt like I was blushing.

"I wanted to say that I'm not saying I depend on you for happiness 'cause I have days that I do it myself. You just mean so much M, you are closer to me than any other friend or even other family I had. You know?"

"I believe you, I believe you." I nodded. "I'm getting tired, and you're slurring a lot, we can continue this convo walking home right?"

He nodded. "Sure thing, imma go piss." he hopped off the and I practically caught him.

"I'm ok, I'm ok." He tried to maintain his balance.

"Are you going to make it to the bathroom?" I placed down the cash with the bill.

"I don't know, maybe not. How are we gunna make it home?"

"We'll find out." I patted his back.

So I guided Wrench to the bathroom he was able to follow he was slow. I also went too and next thing he was holding the wall for balance. So took him back out, grabbed the change, and left the tip on the table.

"Where are we going again?" he couldn't keep his eyes open.

"Your house." I opened the door for him.

"Home? It's pitch black out."

I grabbed his hand and he opened his eyes wide. "M, are you making a move?"

"No, you keep closing your eyes I'm going to make sure you don't end up somewhere else."

"Oh. Well Marky Mark I feel something when you hold my hand."

"My hand?" I wasn't too sure what he meant cause he was plastered.

"Oh right! Duhh." He laughed then tripped over his feet. "Shit."

We walked for about a minute till he blurted out. "Wait no, mentally. I feel it inside." he pointed to his chest.

I squeezed his hand and he looked down at the ground grinning.

I hear this one song play in my head by U2. The beginning of where the streets have no name.

The sidewalk was uneven in some places so we were stumbling and laughing hard. We were intoxicated.

At one point Wrench fell into the grass which made me fall onto the cement. He stumbled to get back up then screamed, "I'M NOT LETTING YOU TAKE ME THIS TIME!" then smiled. "FUCK YOU!!" He raised his middle fingers at the trees. It echoed back strangely and it sent a shiver down my spine. I was still on the ground admiring him and the moment that he was having. I didn't understand why and I didn't need to.

He turned around and his smile was bright and he managed to walk over to me. "You need help there buddy? Why are you on the ground? Didn't I fall?"

"You took me with you." I got back up and held his hand again.

The rest of the way we walked home still holding hands with the beginning of that song still playing over and over again.

We walk into the door he threw his vest on the couch as he dragged me into his room. He ran over to his radio and turned it on.

He tackled me into his bed. "Ahh woah!" I wasn't expecting that.

We were face to face as he held himself up by his hands. He had a big grin that made me blush stupidly hard.

He kissed my cheek and snuggled right up next to me. I put my arm around him and cuddling with him felt so natural and so right. I was focused on the lyrics of this song but I didn't know it. I began running my fingers through his hair.

"What song is this?" I mumbled.

"Explosions, three days grace," he mumbled back.

"I like it."

*******

I woke up and realized I was at Wrench's house. There was something warm wrapping around me and grabbed the hand to look at it. I saw his incognito tattoo and my eyes widened.

"Wrench?" I whisper to myself. Did I sleep with him? Or was this platonic? I was confused so I laid there for about 30 minutes trying to put the pieces together.

I eventually remembered what Wrench told me and then his scream in the woods. But had no memory of us flirting. It felt like a dream trying to figure out what the fuck just happened.

So I turned over to him, he was sleeping peacefully and his arm slightly rested on my waist still. I smiled as the butterflies swarm my chest again I remembered the feeling last night. I just couldn't recall what was exchanged between us.

I can't be in love with him, am I? I get up just to clear my head still trying to figure out what happened last night.

I stretch and take in Wrench's scenery, empty bottles, empty cigarette boxes, and dirty laundry everywhere. I check the time it was 9:30 so I figured I would just clean a bit so he can have a fresh start. Living in his apartment would give me much anxiety as it is. I put the blanket back on him and he just looked so adorable. Maybe I am into him.

I silently clean up his room did a load of laundry, threw out the garbage and wiped down his dresser, emptied his ashtrays. Swept the floor and then moved onto his living room. Picked up all his stuff off the ground and then switched the laundry. Sweep and cleaned off the counter and tables. I placed his shotgun back onto the coffee table for later.

I was going to make breakfast, but I had to clean out his fridge and wipe it all down. Then I started, at 1:00 making food for us. While I was at the stove cooking, I heard footsteps from behind.

"Good morning M, why is my apartment cleaned up?" he questioned,

"'Cause I did, after we eat you got to change the sheets. Also, most of your laundry is in the dresser."

He stayed silent so I turned around. His mouth was slightly ajar.

"I just figured you needed a little help for a fresh start." I shrugged and continued cooking.

He sat down on his barstool which was behind me. "What happened last night? What did I tell you?"

I thought for a second. Did he not remember? I barely did but I knew something happened.

"You told me what was going to happen last night." I frowned remembering that part. I placed his plate in front of him and sat down across from him.

"Why are you doing this M? I appreciate your help, I do. I'm just confused."

I knew I would've helped him either way even if I wasn't interested in him. "Well, 'cause I care for you. I was worried about you, so I hope it'll be a bit easier for you."

Then that song started to play again in my head. Then I remember that Wrench pointed at his heart and said inside. He feels something inside in his chest but we were hammered so that was the best way to say it.

"Thank you, M." he was shoving the food in his mouth.

"You told me last night that you liked me, Wrench."

His eyes shot wide open, stopped chewing then swallowed. "I- I what?"

"I had to hold your hand walking home and- you told me that you felt something. I woke up to you on my back."

He looked off to the side trying to remember. "I've always felt something when I'm with you. I just don't remember anything last night."

That gave me so much relief because I was starting to fall hard for him.

"Do you Marcus?" He asked.

I nodded quickly. "Look, I would've given you a fresh start ethier way. But I wanna take this slow Wrench."

"Oh yeah, I agree." He nodded. "I have to recover from it. Marcus I would love to start a relationship with you, but I just can't right now." he started to tear up.

I grabbed his hands and held them. "I know it's hard, I'll be here. You take as much time as you need. If you are having a bad day, call me and we'll hang out."

"Ok, thank you M." he got up and grabbed out empty plates, and threw them in the dishwasher. He noticed his fridge on the outside clean, then opened it. "Oh my god! Marcus! You didn't have to, it looks so much better."

He ran over to me and kissed me on the cheek and hugged me. I wasn't expecting that but shrugged it off.

"You've done so much for me."

We both got up and put the clean sheets on then made the bed. He dove into the bed after it was made. I laughed then it reminded me of last night.

"Hey, do you wanna try out your new gun today?"

"OH MY GOD YES YES YES!!" he bolted into the living room.

I smiled as I walked out of the room and closed the door.

[leorawright]

Maaaaay I request mercs with a S/O who is a botanist? Lmao during combat instead of weapons they summon plants like Ivy from the DC comics, lol but they look more like the chomp plants from mario hell they even give the mercs a mini chomp plant in a pot to keep them company their class name is literally "The Gardener" as they spend their free time outside tending to the different flowers out on the entrance to the base

P.S they have a green house that's next to the medbay called the "apothecary" where they have "Natural remedies" for upset stomachs or mild colds

Bro that's so cool!

Mercs with s/o who can summon plants

Scout

He'll sometimes stop whatever he was doing to watch you fight

He can't help it you're just to cool not to watch

He adores the way you make little flowers blow alongside the chaos that is the battlefield

Scout will also go to your greenhouse just to hang out with you

Soldier

He was skeptical about your fighting style until he saw you summon a Venus fly trap that swallowed your opponent

He'd definitely love it if you got him a mini chomp plant

He'll also praise your greenhouse since Medic doesn't really do little things like that

Demoman

He loves seeing people just get swallowed by your plants he thinks it's hilarious

He's also extremely careful if you give him a plant to keep all his bombs away from it so he doesn't hurt it

Demo often has hangovers so he's almost always in your greenhouse (definitely not because he wants to hang out with you)

Pyro

They'll love you forever if you get them a mini chomp plant

They adore all your plants and refuse to use they're flamethrower anywhere near them out of fest they'll accidentally burn your plants

They do often go to your greenhouse simply to hang out with you and smell the plants

Heavy

He's quiet intrigued by your plants

He's probably one of the best at taking care of a plant if you give it to him

He'll often come to your greenhouse when he's stressed because the smell from the plants helps calm him

Medic

He finds it absolutely delightful when you swallow someone with your plants

He'd adore a plant from you and will do everything in his power to keep it alive

He's also thankful for your greenhouse that way he doesn't have to deal with the small things and can focus on watching your plant doctor things

Sniper

He'll get super flustered if you propel yourself to his perch with your plants, give him a kiss, and leave

He'd definitely want a pitcher plant and he'd keep it alive for a long time

He likes your greenhouse when no one's there so he can hang out with you and your plants in peace

Spy

He has several plants scattered around his room from you that he's had for years

He doesn't keep any in his smoking room because he doesn't want the smoke the damage them

Spy often comes to your greenhouse to clear his lungs and his mind

[stalwart-spirit]

I'm late but 46 for the one word writing prompt ask game!

46 - Skies

Went with a different direction for this one, with all four of my boys and their views of the skyline during random snippits of their lives!

Bitter are the early mornings, but oh so refreshing. Dewdrops cause the surrounding verdant garden to glitter, magical in its own natural way and reflecting the bright blue sky blessed with soft cotton clouds carrying the fresh northern winds. Rain was sure to come later, he could smell it on the crisp air, but nothing more than a light downpour. He was sure of that.

Despite how early in the morning it was, Bjarni was kneeled within the flowerbed, clothes covered in soil as he tended to the various plants around him. Perfect condition, cared for their every need. A painstaking process, but one that he adored. Each day before heading to the Studium the kit would awake early and set about tending to the garden, a routine he never broke.

An echevore nudges his side with its snout and huffs, raising up onto its hind legs to let out a demanding squeak.

“Yes yes, I’m a-almost finished, then I can make breakfast!”

Digging with his hands he sets a new plant into the soil, padding it down firmly. Under his care it had quickly outgrown its old pot, and now could be moved into the garden itself. Bjarni was certainly proud of his efforts, as he was with each plant which graduated from its nursery.

–

From burning bright the sun had now begun to set below the horizon, casting long rays of light between the swaying palms. Market stalls were beginning to bustle with activity now that the air had cooled, the city truly becoming alive with the coming night. It was looking to be a clear evening, clouds sparse and few allowing a vivid swash of amber to cover the sky.

Sat perched upon a few crates, Saeed sits with pipe in hand as he watches the to and fro of the evening crowd, his eyes particularly resting upon the passing guards going about their usual patrols as the city gets busier. No doubt looking to start trouble as usual. 

“Bastards.” His teeth click upon the ivory mouthpiece of the pipe as he smokes.

A woman snorts at his side. “You’re thinking aloud again.” He doesn’t look at her as she speaks, but can clearly hear the smile in Farah’s voice. “Are you intending to get into another fistfight with them if they hear you?”

“Are you sayin’ they don’t deserve it?” Another voice chimes in, and Saeed is jostled by the weight of the crates shifting as Tahsin throws himself down to sit. “I could go for a fight-”

Saeed is swift to cut off that train of thought with a quick cuff to the back of the skull with his fist. “No, you won’t.”

–

Desperately did pinpricks of light try to break through the heavy, dark clouds which smothered the night sky, bringing with them a flurry of cold weather and covering Ishgard with a bitter blanket of snow. Most nights were like this, it was a wonder any work could be done at the Atheneum Arcaneum with how covered the constellations would get.

Even so with the threatening blizzard, comfort was to be found within a warm bed. Not his own, but anothers. It had been a productive night in Soleil’s eyes, having spent his time buttering up a noble from another high house, coaxing him to take him home for the evening for some fun. 

He cared not for the trivial rivalries between the houses, although not out of the goodness of his own heart. Why bother with those below you, especially when each were the same; fools ready to melt at his feet when he said the right things, pulled on their hearts, tease and tempt. 

All a game, and one Soleil always won.

Normally he’d slip away once his prize had fallen asleep, never to speak to one another again lest their scandal become public. A good way to blackmail, as dirty as it was. But the storm outside kept him within the arms of a stranger, tangled and sweaty beneath tousled sheets. 

He’d just have to slink away come early morning.

–

How long has it been since the last rainfall? Days? Months? Years? Maybe not years, but with how swelteringly hot it was it really felt like such to the miqo’te, currently taking shelter in the shade. 

The sun stood high, beating down its dry and unbearable heat upon the Gyr Abanian desert. Not a cloud in sight, nothing to break the midday’s relentless warmth, yet hawks still flitted around the air looking for their roost, dark shadows dancing across the blindingly clear sky. 

Patrol duty was normally more active, keeping wandering Imperials from the far off camp out of the way of the tribe, but considering the heat it must have put off even the most dedicated and determined troops from marching in their heavy and thick armour.

Was this all there was? The heat, patrol duty, hunting… Having left Ala Mhigo and being taken in by the M Tribe, the world had only started opening up to him. Even so, having spent his time here, he grew restless. M’icaryn knew there was more to offer further away, more people he could help. If they were struggling, who else was? 

He’d seen passing mercenaries, sellswords, spending their time taking on any job they could and getting to see the world around them and putting their skills to good use. Why couldn’t he?

He was certain that broader horizons waited for him.

[dirtbag-linecook-kyloren]

Local dirt bag line cook returns with a bit from the kylux restaurant AU I”m working on. This is one of the like, softest things I’ve ever written because I’m working from the middle out with this Fic and it’s A Wild Experience even as someone who doesn’t write linearly.

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“How on earth can you spend every day in the place your parents fell out of love?” he asks when it’s his turn. This is certainly the most touchy question they’ve asked so far, but he can only ask about gross habits and underwear pregerences for long before he goes numb in the brain. “It’s complicated,” Ben says, adjusting the flame of his burner and tossing whatever he’s cooking for them. Hux has recognized shallots and white wine, and it smells amazing, but he’s clueless beyond that. “On one hand, a direct line is drawn from [restaurant name] to my parent’s divorce. She sold dad her part of the business and washed her hands of it. But I also grew up in that building.” He pauses, opening the oven to check on something. Watching someone cook is an interesting experience, given that most of his diet is protein bars, meal replacement shakes, and whatever dead food gets set in the server alley. Cooking is far beyond Hux’s energy level, at this stage of his life. “The happy memories are there, too,” Ben continues as he idly stirs another pot. “The last months before their marriage fell apart, especially. Before mom went to manage one of my uncle’s restaurant so he could focus on the food, and not the paperwork.” “I still blows my mind that your uncle owns multiple Michelin star restaurants, and you chose to work at [Restaurant name],” Hux says, mostly because it’s true. Ben puts so much pride in his work, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t thrive on the recognition there. For all the time Hux has spent at [restaurant name], he knows it’s near the bottom of the barrel, as far as fine dining is concerned. Barely a step about a chain steakhouse. Ben laughs. “He has an interesting managerial style. I worked a summer there, before I went to culinary school, but it wasn’t for me.” For a moment, Ben looks embarrassed. “I tried to set the place on fire, when I left, actually.” In shock, Hux spits out his sip of wine, covering his mouth and taking the towel Ben hands him. “It was just after my parents divorce, so there were some extenuating personal circumstances, but he still likes to remind me of it at Christmas. For a few years after, all he got me was a fire extinguisher.” “Ben Solo, aspiring arsonist,” Hux muses. “Why didn’t it work?” “Restaurants take fire suppression pretty seriously,” he answers. “Seventeen-year-old Ben didn’t remember that some of them trigger automatically at certain smoke levels.” “Still,” Hux continues, making sure to remember this piece of information for later, “those kind of connections could get you a job anywhere, right? Why stay here and work for your dad? Especially with how much you two argue?” With a shrug, Ben covers one pan and turns the heat off on another, grabbing his own glass of wine as he leans against the counter. As strange as this all is, from seeing the art on Ben’s walls to sitting at his island, sipping a glass of wine, it’s nice. There’s no fear settling into Hux’s shoulders, no tension in his spine. All of the anxiety he normally feels in social situations didn’t walk through the door with him, almost. It helps that outside the walls of [restaurant name], Ben seems more relaxed. His hair curls slightly from its place tucked behind his ear, and Hux wonders what it would feel like running through his fingers, brushing across his skin. “I could work at some place like that,” Ben agrees. “I would get too little pay for too much work, but it would be challenging. A creative exercise, I’m sure those sorts of cooks would say. “Or I could work in the same kitchen my mom taught me how to make cookies. When I was really little, I took naps in the office. After close, I would run around the dining room and one of the hosts would play hide-and-seek with me. At some point, I’ll have to do something else, but for now? How could I go anywhere else?” The timer Ben set starts beeping, then, and he moves a few deli containers of ingredients so he can set a trivet on the counter. “Are you sure you don’t want any help?” Hux asks one last time, and Ben gives him an entirely unimpressed look. “What do you think I’m making, right now?” With a blush rising along his cheek, Hux realizes that while he’s been watching Ben cook, he’s spent all that time looking at Ben, not the cooking. “I’m pretty sure there were shrimp, at some point,” he says, “and I watched you pour some of the wine in there, which seems like a waste.” “The real waste is that we’re drinking it,” Ben admits. “I don’t know anything about wine, I just found the Sauv Blanc with the coolest label.” They both look to the bottle on the counter, then, which features a strange logo and a flaming sword. “And no, I’ll pass on the help. I’m not prepared for all the things I’d need, to start from scratch on cooking knowledge.” He pauses. “I’ll need to change the batteries on my fire alarm, for one. Wouldn’t want you to try and emulate me.” Ben keeps talking, but Hux is staring at his hands. One is cupping his wine glass, and the other is resting on the counter, fingers splayed over the butcher block. The veins in his forearms flex as he gestures, and Hux thinks back to that girl on a date. Remembers Ben’s words, about how the time passed differently, when it was the right person on the other side of the table. Feels Ben’s kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Did I lose you?” Ben asks, moving to lean on the island. Hux can smell his shampoo from here, could reach out and grab Ben’s hand. For a moment, he considers being weak. Every change in their relationship, Ben initiated and Hux responded in turn. Even now, he’s following Ben’s lead, sitting where he’s told, waiting to be shown what the boundaries are and following them to perfection. He could keep following, let Ben lead in this dance and take direction. He reaches his hand across the cold surface of the island, lets his fingers brush Ben’s closed hands. They open as he does, and Hux slides their hands together, holds loosely so Ben has the chance to pull away. Ben stays right where he is, rubbing idle circles on the back of Hux’s hand with his thumb.

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all of this is of course unedited and subject to change but I’m having so much fun writing this au. I think about it while I’m at work, at it’s been great for my morale. Nothing like portioning broccoli while trying to flesh out a scene. The playlist for this AU is also going to be massive I’ll post that out of the main ship tag but under the AU tag I’ve created for this blog, which is just the working title for the fic in scrivener. It’ll be #hands off hands out

since you stuck around here’s another little bit that ripped my heart out writing.

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Hux is smoking the last cigarette of his break up pack when Ben comes outside. For a moment, he thinks Ben will just turn around and go back inside, that the awkwardness of the situation will stop him from staying. Instead, he lets the door close and lock behind them and stands in front of the bell. “I thought you quit,” Ben says, and Hux sighs. He’s only half way through this cigarette, but he puts it out anyway, throwing it into the sand bucket and cursing himself for his own pity purchase. “Times of stress can bring back bad habits. I’m sure I don’t have to explain that to you.” “If changing jobs is that stressful for you, maybe you should just stay here.” So that’s what this is about. Hux should have known Ben was too earnest, too open, to just let him disappear into the city and try to pretend he didn’t ruin this. Be couldn’t let him fall with grace, he had to push Hux on the way down. “I’ve had an open offer at the First Order for a few months, now. I just never had a reason to take it.” “And now you do?” A small, bitter laugh claws its way from his lips. Desperately, he wishes there was still a cigarette between his fingers, smoke filling his lungs. Anything to pull him out of this conversation for a moment. “Now I do,” Hux agrees. “The hours won’t be as good, with school, but I should only have to graduate a semester late. Nothing, in the grand scheme of my life.” “Or you could stay here,” Ben says, and there’s something in his voice, an emotion Hux can’t quite place. He would call it hopeful, but what would he have to hope? That he can stay here and continue to watch Ben fall apart? Watch the person he fell in love with continue to ignore him, treat the people around him like punching bags, fall into a pit of grief so deep that light won’t reach him at the bottom? “I can’t be here, be in love with you, and not have you. I’m changing the only one I have any control over, Ben. I can’t seem to stop loving you and you seemed pretty firm in your dismissal. So I can’t be here.” And like the coward he is, Hux stands, pushing his way past Ben and into the restaurant. He washes the nicotine off his hands like it’s evidence of a crime and reminds himself that there’s only three more shifts between himself and freedom. Ben isn’t even scheduled on his last shift. Two more days of the consequences of his fuck ups, and he can try to forget that he met the love of his life and absolutely fumbled his chance at happiness. He’ll graduate from school, wait different tables, and wonder for the rest of his life what might have been, if he’d just said yes the first time. If he’d let his feelings be more important than a job.

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I’m really glad people seem to like this AU because it’s 100% part passion project and part that I’m so tired of restaurant AUs by people who’ve obviously never worked in a restaurant and are just enamored with the idea of them. I don’t want to hear about the food, that’s the least important part. I want to hear about the conversations between servers and cooks that have to pause every time food needs to be run and the hidden complaining in the walk in about whatever dumb change management has made and the heart breaking moment when you hear an 18 top walked in with no reservation. I want awkwardly placed burns and broken equipment but also the satisfaction of a smoothly run busy shift and the feeling of a new oven on the line.

(I have another AU in my head inspired by recent events where ben is a restaurant repair tech, following in hans footsteps, and hux is a tired GM who just wants his things to stop breaking. We’ve had lots of repair people in lately and one of them worked on my table two days in a row and it was so annoying I went from pantry one day to saute the next and he was there both days with my table torn apart and in my way as I’m trying to carrying a pot of boiling water to and from my range while it’s filled with also ten pounds of cavatappi.)

((This AU will have to wait until the first one is finished though.))