#gotten a LOT of feedback from gay women because the way their love was expressed in the second book was so ... complete

[maydainsula]

The light now poured out of the doorway along with the final words of Rick Astley's “Never Gonna Give You Up.” In that door stood a small person […] so full of “fuck the world” energy that there was absolutely no one else it could possibly have been.

-Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, 2020

[ktheist]

2prettybestfrens | jjk

muses. jeon jeongguk x reader x park jimin ft. kim taehyung

genre. strangers to lovers!au. university!au. 

words. 18.2k

drabbles. pjm

feedback.

warnings. mentions of physical insecurities, alcohol use, juul use, mention of adoption, mentions of dysfunctional families, handcuffs - lots of handcuffs, jeongguk crossdressing, too many one-sided pinings lmao 

synopsis. you’re in love with kim taehyung who’s in love with jennie kim who’s in love with professor kim namjoon. so park jimin doesn’t exactly fit in all of this, yet he’s always been there in your weakest moments which may or may not be caused by your heartbreak boy - or so jeongguk likes to call him.

oh and jeongguk? you don’t even know jeongguk until that party-gone-awry night where you end up handcuffed together to ponder on what you did.

x

when you uploaded a snapchat of your darkened room and a single teary-eyed emoji because kim taehyung uploaded one where a beautiful girl was covering her mouth while she giggled, jimin snapped back a ‘why r u awake 😬’ to which you snapped the same darkened room with a slightly different angle and a ‘just cause’. his last snap to you contained a ‘cool wanna call?’ before you dialed him up and ended up talking until 5 in the morning before bidding each other-

“well, good night then,” you’d muttered.

“g’morning,” he’d wished you back in a soft mumble and a hint of sleepiness taking over.

that happened on a friday night. on monday and for the rest of the week, you merely greeted each other in the hallway and went on your days without the inclusion of the other.

when you sat by yourself on the bench on the sidewalk of campus, under the shade of a great old tree a few feet away from your department after being left high and dry when kim taehyung’s friends asked him if he’s joining them to get mcdonald’s which he’d in turn asked if you wanted to tag along and you said you were good only because you never did well in groupies - park jimin sat down next to you, head thrown back as he squinted at the gaps of the leaves where the tiniest of sun rays managed to pass through and dot his face. blonde tresses swaying ever so softly when the wind blew past you.

“so how was finance?” he looked like he was asking the waving branches.

“eh, it was fine, professor kim’s a good teacher,” you shrugged, the sight of jennie suavely smiling and said professor shooting glances at her made you mentally vomit.

“man,” he blew a gust of air from his mouth as he ran a hand through his semi-long tresses, “were we in the same class? because all i remember was dozing off five minutes into class.”

“that’s why you should sit at the front,” you’d suggested.

it was then, did he push himself off the ground and stood up, black and white jacket pushed back as he slipped his hands into the pocket of his jeans. eyes narrowing while his tongue protruded against the inside of his cheek before he went, “you hungry?”

“starving,” you rolled your eyes before collecting your mac and holding it to your chest, bag slung over your shoulders.

the both of you didn’t go to mcdonald’s but the food tasted just as good that day at the cafe in your faculty.

when kim taehyung asked jennie if she was free friday night and the girl turned to you with an endearingly oblivious, “do we have any plans on friday?” and taehyung awkwardly but not so hesitantly corrected, “um, i mean, just you jennie,” the air, without a doubt turned tangibly tense and awkward.

“oh,” jennie’s brows knitted together as she stared at him, as though trying to spot the caption on his forehead as to why he invited only her when everyone knew you and jennie never go anywhere without the other if you didn’t have any prior engagements, “well, ___ and me are going to hang out together so yeah, i’m not free.”

you weren’t sure if she was dumb or playing dumb but you’d found out later that night, that she’d been irritated with kim taehyung’s non-considerate advancements which she’d recently noticed seemed to exclude you ‘i hate people who make plans in front of someone and not invite them’ was her exact word before she followed up with a ‘blockedt’.

but backtrack to when the tension seemed to rise higher than the sky, you were saved by jimin when he came mini-jogging towards you with that adorable boyish smile and crescent eyes, “hey, i was looking for you - you wanna walk to accounting together?”

you’d waved jennie and taehyung goodbye and gladly walked with jimin to class.

and so it goes, with kim taehyung’s eyes lighting like fireworks in the midnight sky when he sees jennie and the girl itching to make a beeline to the opposite side of where he comes from and you shooting her ‘be nice’ looks whilst park jimin pops up now and then in the most convenient time until ‘us’ no longer comprise of you and jennie but also taehyung and jimin.

so much so, some of your casual friends come to you asking for either of the boys when they seem to have something to inform them which you’re not sure why isn’t informable through text. but either way, you’ve become two best friends with additional friends.

maybe said additional friends happen to fall in the top list of cuties in the girls and gays’ books but besides kim taehyung, if you looked, like really really looked at park jimin, you concurred, perhaps he does have the right to be in said list with his unblemished, smooth skin, perfect pink lips and pretty sparkly eyes.

“what?” his lips do the thing where they curl, revealing a pair of perfectly lined white pearls.

“nothing,” you say as you find yourself third-wheeling in taehyung’s bmw with jimin at the back and the first commenting something about his older sister liking to shop at zara as well when jennie asked you if you were free tomorrow to go to the mall near campus.

“i mean i can go with you girls, i have a two-hour gap between classes,” the boy offers.

“oh,” the first laugh trickles out of your mouth without a stop switch, “you’re so cute.”

you can hear jennie snickering in the passenger seat as you turn away from the angle where taehyung could see you in the rear-view mirror, only to come face to face with jimin who seems to get your humor.

“it’s not a big deal,” taehyung shrugs, a tinge of pride in his voice.

“my man,” jimin pats said man on his shoulder, “you don’t know jack shit about women.”

“what?” the older boy asks, perplexed and quite honestly irritated for some reason - but then again, he never seems to like jimin’s quick-to-catch-on nature when it comes to any girls-related topics.

“two hours is not enough to shop, taehyung,” jennie finally decodes the long standing cipher, “we can barely explore one shop.”

by the end of her words, you’re is full out snickering like an unattractive hyena, “i thought you have a sister?”

“i do,” there’s a tinge of confusion in his tone, “she usually goes shopping with her boyfriend.”

“well, how long did it take them to go shopping?” she quizzes, sharing an amused look with jimin.

“uh,” it’s then, do you hear the sound of the screws in taehyung’s brain twisting, “she usually stays over whenever they do.”

“well, whatever you think they did after they went shopping - it’s probably not it,” jimin snickers, shoulderline jolting as he crosses his arms over his chest.

“so cute,” jennie echoes your earlier words, neck craning to look at the two other passengers in the back seat as she gives you a one-eyebrow-lifted look as if to say ‘this is the guy you’re crushing on?’

at that, you shrug, unapologetically mouthing ‘he’s cute’ - in a much different and adoring sense than the first time which jennie must’ve gotten when she shakes her head, a hopeless smile on her lips as she turns to the road again.

you were on your way to the movies then.

x

“oh my god,” jennie squeals, eyes skimming your specifically-handpicked-by-jennie-kim attire, “you look so cute!”

“only because i agreed to be your live mannequin,” you say rolling your eyes but the curl of a smile on your lips is unstoppable.

“no - because i know what kind of style suits you,” she narrows her eyes in a ‘you know i’m right’ kind of manner, “no offense, your usual style is cute too but it’s more like an... ‘i have a crush, don’t talk to me’ kind of look, you know?”

“am i wrong though?” your eyebrows rise, mimicking her ‘you know i’m right’ look.

she raises a hand, her free one scrolling through her phone as she announces, “i don’t recommend crushing on airheaded guys but you do you sis,” then she looks up, staring at you straight in the eye with the most deadpanned expression, “but if he breaks your heart, i’ll break his leg,” it’s a full, solid moment later, just as you were about to burst out laughing, does she say, “literally.”

and it’s times like these that you fear for another person’s life that isn’t yours - well, taehyung’s life isn’t just anyone’s but - as she turns back to her phone ever so casually.

but before you can fret any further, your phone vibrates, the words ‘chim’ flashing across your screen with a ‘get yo asses down’ and contrasting ‘ur chauffer awaits’ popping a second later.

“get your ass up. they’re here,” you end up saying, pushing your phone into the back pocket of your leather pants that jennie manages to convince you to put on for some unknown reason - that reason going along the lines of ‘kim taehyung’ and ‘jealousy’, but you’re not one to dwell on why one do things they do as you accept jennie’s grabby-motioned hands in request for assistance to be pulled up.

it turns out the shopping plan gets pushed to saturday where taehyung is basically spouting out how he’s a good judge for fashion and that he hasn’t gone to the mall since the semester started which to be fair, was only a month ago. 

you’re not sure how jimin ended up tagging along - the two aren’t even the bestest buddies - but someway, somehow, he always manages to get taehyung to pick him up and drop him off whenever the taller man makes plans to go out with you and jennie.

“wow,” jimin is the first to notice, mouth taking on an ‘o’ shape he basically ogles in plain daylight.

“what do you think?” jennie comes up behind you, chin resting on your shoulder as she wraps her arms around your waist then she turns to taehyung who was the last to get out of the car, “doesn’t ___ look pretty, taehyung?”

at the sound of his name rolling off the tongue of the girl he’s been pining for since he laid eyes on her, his gaze lights up - but only to meet jennie’s. one look at you and he turns back to her with the most beautiful smile, “yeah, she looks great - did you help choose the top?”

“actually,” the girl begins with a cheery tone - they’re walking a few steps behind you whilst you and jimin walk together. it’s been like that for as long as you remember, “i picked out the whole fit. it wasn’t easy though because...”

kim jennie walking side-by-side with kim taehyung whilst you with jimin whenever the two boys join you, be it whether to get to a class you all share, to go to the library to study or to get some lunch - has become a familiar view to your mutual friends. so much so, you’ve heard of a rumor going around that you’re a couple of best friends.

like literal couples. you with jimin and jennie with taehyung. thanks to that, no one would have suspected jennie’s relationship with professor kim nor would anyone see through the veil of friendly smiles and amicable conversations to be you pining over your best friend’s alleged boyfriend.

you’ve gotten used to hearing jennie and taehyung’s conversation fade into the background yet never really able to disregard the way taehyung laughs at something your best friend says or the sight of the two walking a few feet ahead with taehyung’s head almost always turned to jennie’s and the girl, oblivious, occasionally cranes her neck to look at him at the beginning of her sentence before directing her gaze to the front where she’s walking.

jennie dislikes taehyung less now, if only because he steers the conversation towards the areas of interest - which he seems to know a lot of. kudos to you for answering his ass-crack o’clock texts of ‘heyyy what kind of movie does jennie like?’s and ‘heyy you girls got any plans tomorrow?’s.

“you look great in those leather pants, by the way,” jimin’s voice makes you turn to the other boy, a boyish smile on his lips, “so let me guess,” his head tilts to the side as the dip between his thumb and index finger hooks itself underneath his chin, eyebrows knitted together in heavy contemplation, “are you going for a good girl gone bad kind of look,” a playful smile tugs on the corners of his lips, “or are you in a secret biker gang and have a biker meeting at 7?”

you lean closer to the man, hand covering your mouth as you whisper, “you didn’t hear this from me but we’re convoying to disney land. i heard it’s more magical during christmas.” 

or so you thought your whispering skills were close to perfect but a cat with brown hair pops up from next to you, eyes glinting with excitement, “did someone say christmas?!”

so you end up early-christmas shopping just because of that one word that triggers the warm-hearted-who-ness in her. and that’s how you, taehyung and jimin gets dragged from one store to another. but where your attention gets robbed with material things like-

“oh look, a snow globe with a puppy and a snowman in it!” you shake the see through globe, watching as pseudo snowflakes rain over the unmoving pupper and olaf lookalike before you sigh, “technically the snowman isn’t alive and the doggo is alone by itself in a world where nobody else can enter - and on christmas at that . oh my god, i think i’m gonna cry.”

- but jennie’s interest lies within the holiday-themed clothes. sweaters. costumers. lingerie. you name it and jennie kim tries it on.

“___ - pssst, hey,” there she goes, hiss-whispering your name as if you’re not right in front of the curtain she’s poking her head through, eyes darting around for the two boys who, last you saw, were doing the best to look interested in reindeers and candy printed sweaters.

“what, girl, what?” you whisper back, trying to peek through the gap of the curtain over her head as if you’ve never entered a changing room together.

and as if reading your mind, her bare arm that’s supposed to be wrapped with the floral cotton material of her sleeve - shoots out, hand wrapping around your wrist.

a “wha- ah-!” probably echoed off the walls and turned some heads but you’re no longer in the position to check as you find your back pressed against the wall of the cubicle and red and white lace-wearing jennie posing for you.

“so?” she beams.

“those are so cute, oh my god,” you end up his-whispering whilst trying to keep your voice low, “where did you get them? i only ever saw you checking out - and you have got to admit this - ugly sweaters!”

“girl, the lingerie section is just next to the sweaters,” her eyes seem to disappear behind her crescents as she crinkles her nose, “no but for real, you think i was gonna buy them? i just needed the boys to go away. and. they. finally. did,” she rolls her eyes, “it took awhile but kim taehyung is so persistent.”

“that’s why he’s so... cute,” you hum, eyes shutting close as the picture of the aforementioned man flashes behind your eyes. he’s looking at you with those dark eyes and he’s smiling at you with that magnetic-

“gross! get your ass out of the gutter,” a squeal hits the air as your eyes flutter open to the sight of your best friend’s contorted faces as if-

“um, girl,” you tilt your head just the slightest bit, hand on your hip while your other hand raises in a ‘hold up’ manner, “out of the two of us, you’re the one that’s gotta stop being silly and start wrapping professor kim’s willy.”

a stick of tongue out is all you’ve got as a response before she turns to her phone that’s vibrating at an alarming rate.

that’s when you feign almost-vomit, “did you - ulgh - sent him a - ulgh - nude?”

in any ordinary circumstance, she would have made faces to mimic a much ridiculous series of vomiting in response to your fake almost-vomits but when her smile tugs downwards in a disheartened pout, you practically drop all the ugly sweaters you picked out just for the sake of getting into the christmas spirit and rush over to the girl - which is only one and a half feet away.

“hey, hey, what’s wrong?” you coo as she starts blinking back tears.

“i knew it,” she huffs out a puff of air, hand fanning at her waterline, “i fucking knew it.”

in between the ‘you’re okay’s and ‘everything’s going to be okay’s on your part and jennie’s increasingly growing sobs, you manage to make out the words she blurts out. something along the lines of ‘not spending as much time as we used to’ and ‘because i’m ugly as fuck’. so you hold her tighter, fingers brushing out the potentially forming knots in her hair each time it gets into her tear stained face and gets aggressively pushed out of said face with the back of the hand. 

it’s been going on since the start of the third year - the ‘i can’t make it tonight’s and ‘sorry, i’m going to have to rain check’s. 

you’ve been a silent spectator of how your best friend’s face lights up whenever she talks about her secret affair with the youngest professor in the business faculty, how he lives up to her private swooning with the smallest ‘miss kim, how was your day’s when he met her in the hallway, ever so casually greeting one of his supposed students like any professor would and treats her to fine-dinings and became the reason why forehead kisses are her favorite kind of kiss now.

he never really tried to hide his fondness for her even at the faculty and though you knew your best friend could get anyone she wanted, you were dubious of whether that anyone actually deserved such a loving, beautiful person. nonetheless, kim namjoon seems to be the exact person who does.

“hey, look at me,” you implore, sitting cross-legged on the floor whilst your knees touch and your fingers twine together in a fingers hug, or so jennie coined the term in your first year, “you’re so beautiful.”

“you don’t mean that,” she mumbles out.

“girl, if i were to be born again and were allowed to choose how i’m going to look - i want your eyes, they like, pull people in - not gonna lie, i started talking to you because you were intimidating but also really alluring. does that make sense?” you hold up a hand when she begins to giggle lightly, head shaking in show of her disagreement.

“but when i did get to know you, you’re the sweetest, squishiest,” a protest falls from her lips as she clasps a palm over the spot on her arm that you just pinched, “person alive. and oh!” you pinch her cheeks next, chuckling at how she crinkles her nose and like the feline she’s always been associated with, “and i want your cute chubs cheeks! and your adorable nose, and your lips,” you pause for the longest moment before retracting, “okay maybe i’d want my lips but your lips are juicy too!”

she makes a sound at the back of her throat, eyes of dried tears rolling, “please, i barely have any lips.”

“i mean, they’re still kissable,” you shoot her a suggestive look, “and i know out of the two of us, one would kiss you if she’s a little bit more fruity.”

“okay, maybe you think i’m kinda pretty,” she gives in.

but that’s not enough for you,“bih, you’re a literal goddess,”

“i’m not but anyway beauty is subjective so maybe namjoon’s perspective’s changed.”

“nope - nu-uh, we can cry and just... let ourselves feel the emotion that’s been bottling up and burst at one single message but what we’re not gonna do is mope around, being sad all day because of our presumptions that someone else thinks we’re not good enough or pretty enough. because you are and i would die for you.”

she hiccups, “i don’t know if i would die for you but i’d sacrifice my first born for you.”

“ew,” you feel your nose crinkling, “no, you’re not gonna trap me with a kid - that’s a trap right there and i’m not falling for it.”

jennie ends up laughing too loudly that one of the store attendants end up kicking you out. jimin and taehyung followed suit a second later, acting like they didn’t know you two but walking towards you anyway. you’re not sure if they noticed jennie’s swollen eyes but neither mentioned anything about it. instead, taehyung suggests- “since we’re already out, you guys wanna go to chanyeol’s party?”

x

so you end up going to the party. the apartment’s too cramped for your liking but jennie’s found some mutual friends of yours that she’s dancing and laughing with. and maybe that’s why you haven’t bolted right out of the door the moment you stepped in.

jimin found some of his own friends. they’re probably not from the faculty since you don’t remember seeing them around and taehyung-

you’re not quite sure why taehyung is following you around like a lost puppy and trying to make small talks with you. internally, your heart’s doing flips but your head’s been giving out one of those obnoxiously loud sirens with lights as red as the cup you’re holding.

“...and you know, it’s pretty cool how they managed to attract foreign investors within six months of starting up their business,” taehyung is saying, the awkward shrug and eyes glued to the ground telling you that he’s not so into whatever he’s saying either.

“yeah, like, they definitely got lucky or something,” you nod in agreement.

funny how the blare of the music is barely allowing you to have a proper conversation but all you hear is deafening silence as you stand five feet apart - the kind of distance that screams acquaintances but less than friends and most definitely not lovers.

but then he stands on his two feet instead of leaning his weight on just one - and he looks at you right in the eye for the first time that night. and your stupid heart goes fluttering like the petals in a field.

“hey, i don’t wanna be a nosy or anything but,” he pauses for the briefest second, eyes slanting to somewhere on the dance floor where you think you last saw jennie and then he refocuses back to you. but you already know where his mind and soul remains, “what happened today? like, jennie’s acting off, like something’s bothering her and she’s kinda drinking more than she should and it kinda feels like she doesn’t want me around.”

it takes a moment to ponder on how much you should say before your words become affirmation and affirmation will probably lead to more assumptions and - “well, you should ask her.”

“uh, i- she doesn’t- i don’t know how - i don’t wanna annoy her, you know what i mean? and since you’re best friends, i thought maybe you’d-” he’s scratching the back of his head when you cut him off.

“there’s your answer,” you raise the half-empty cup that’s been lying undrunken in your hands, “if you’re not gonna square up and tell her how you feel, then you, my friend,” your stomach drops at the word but you manage to land a solid pat on his arm, “are going to live the rest of your live like this - wondering what the hell is going on because you’re really not sure where you stand. and i get it, confessing to someone is terrifying and depending on jennie’s answer, you might or might not be able to talk to her ever again but it’s better to get it out there. feelings are like farts, you know?” the way his brows come together in a confused what-the-hell moment, is adorable, “hold it in and you’ll feel like something’s not right and it is never going to be until you get all of it out of your system.” and with a nod and a tight-lipped smile, you leave him with a “good luck,” before wandering over to the dance floor, not sure where you’re going because jennie, lisa chaeyoung and jisoo’s not where you thought they were and the only less crowded but still suffocating part of the apartment is the kitchen where you don’t want to risk going back and seeing taehyung there, unmoving in the spot where you left him.

amid all of it, you almost get your shoulder dislocated before a hand shoots out and pulls you back on your two feet whilst you raise your cup higher in hopes to save its contents from spilling.

the man that caught you looks between you and your raised cup for two solid seconds before a grin tugs on his face and he clicks his own cup to yours, “cheers.”

“aha, yeah,” you laugh as you feel his grip on your arm loosening and you pull it back to your side like a robot, taking a sip of your nicely saved drink.

“thanks for not letting me fall,” you say a moment later, after thanking whatever deity is out there that allows you to get your first drink into the right pipe without feeling the need to cough out loud.

“no problem,” even in the poor lighting, you can easily catch the sight of pearly whites lined up perfectly amid an alluring smile, that is, before a pair of brows knit together in what seem like an unresolvable conundrum, “hey, you don’t happen to...” he pauses for the longest moment, eyes slanting to scan the crowd and making you do the same until he commands your attention back with his next words, lips curling back into the breathtakingly attractive smile as words tumble past them, “...see two pretty best friends in here, do you?”

and that’s when your interest, wherever it is, plunges straight down to the ground and into the ether, “oh,” your vision shakes as you nod repeatedly before forcing out a dry “ha ha” which isn’t meant to disguise your displeasure at all - if anything, a wave of satisfaction crashes over you when his smile falters, “yeah, that - that’s really funny,” you say plainly, smile still plastered on your face.

“o-kay,” he drags out the word for half a second, teeth clenched together in growing panic as all traces of humor fade away, “...joke too old?”

“well, let’s see,” you feel your index finger tapping your chin as you throw your gaze up to the ceiling, “i get it, tell the ugly best friend she’s ugly but in a joking way,” you shrug, “you don’t need to rub it in my face cause i know and yes it’s getting old.”

it takes a whole solid moment of blaring music and non-caring half-way-drunken college students continuing to grind against one another and this insanely attractive stranger staring at you with jaws on the ground, for you to wave a dismissive hand.

“you know what? don’t worry, jennie’s not here, thankfully or she would’ve blo-” air fills your throat and cuts you off when he frowns, “who?”, to which you raise your eyebrows, “je-” you almost choked, “jennie?”

he shakes his head the second time, bottom lip jutting out in an additional- “nope” gesture as he continues with “never heard of her,” after your “jennie... kim?”

so you go one, “kinda cute height, long hair, brunette-” he shrugs, “nope- doesn’t ring a bell,” in the middle of your, “-fierce cat-like eyes but adorable as heck personality?”

in the end he wins with a final word of, “no - nope,” after a whole solid moment of your silenced disbelieve and him drawing his pondering session to a close.

“oh,” escapes your lips before you can even register, “so - it was- like-”

“yeap,” he nods, “it was-”

“a joke?”

“a joke.”

you both announce at the same time. the tones may differ but the essence is there, leaving one to stare at the ground in shame for having snapped at a complete stranger and the other staring with unapologetic eyes.

“i’m sorry,” you finally manage to utter, shoulderline falling with your walls of pride, “i thought it was one of those micro aggressive jokes people throw around just because they can’t straight out tell someone they’re ugly-”

but the words seem to enter through one ear and go out the other when his brows begin to knit together for the nth time of the night - and in a matter of less than thirty minutes at that - when he declares before you get to properly end your sentence, “you’re pretty as hell. why did you think i’d randomly try to crack a joke to a stranger and risk pissing pants off on the off chance she took it badly... which you did. i’m sorry for pushing the wrong button.”

“oh,” but just like him, your brain short-circuits and you seem to only truly hear the first part of what he’s saying as just like any girl - you curse yourself as you - shy away from his gaze, hand going up to tuck your hair behind your ear before you slowly peek up through your lashes, “thanks,” you blink once, shrugging, “and it’s fine i get that joke a lot - i don’t usually care, i don’t know what got into me tonight.” 

but before he manages to say anything, the loudspeaker starts reverberating with the sound of someone clearing their throat and a “how’s everyone doing?” and a dismissive “alright, alright you might be wondering ‘who the eff is this guy’ right? yea, yea, i know, but-” he stops, eyes scanning the crowd for a suspenseful effect, “-but you’re gonna wanna hear this,” to which a groan erupts from the crowd, so he quickly gets to the point “don’t panic,” most of the time, that’s exactly when you should panic, “so, the police are coming.”

x

his name is jeon jeongguk and he goes to your university’s rival university. his hair is actually a shade of rich deep brown that forms wavy ends and contrasts glaringly against his sharp jawline under the fluorescent lighting which also highlights his pearly whites that remind you of bunnies when his lips curl over them when he smiles.

to think that he’s doing that now while the police officer, a man in his 40′s and on the shorter side of the spectrum is ten steps from marching up to you with a disapproving gaze on his face.

his hair falls over his face in half ringlets, an excited glint in his eyes, “he’s mad cause we’re clean.”

a guy somewhere a few people away from you is sobbing increasingly loudly with every step the officer takes before he comes to a stop in front of you, eyes skimming each faces one by one until he stops on you.

“you,” he announces before sighing deeply, “you look like a kid who wouldn’t cause trouble, why are you here?”

“uh,” the chain around your wrist feels cold but jeongguk’s pinky that’s touching yours as your thighs brush together - is warm, “i...” you pause, in search for words before settling with a disappointing confession “i don’t know,”

the officer echoes your statement with a critical emphasize on the ‘don’t’.

and because of that, you blink once, “in fact, does anyone know what they’re doing at all? if you think about it we’re just astronomical particles in this vast universe which is called the milky way,” you pause, if only squint at his sparse mustache, “why is it even called milky way? like, there’s absolutely no scientific evidence that milk exists in outer space or do you reckon the guys that named it just feels like drinking some milk while they were-”

by the end of it, a few snickers have escaped from the people you and jeongguk were caught with, the aforementioned man, having turned his head the other way as his shoulders jolt silently and it’s only then does the officer’s increasing confused expression contorts into that of a maddened bore, “keep hanging out with him and you’re gonna find yourself behind bars.”

“that hurts my feelings, detective yoo,” jeongguk confesses, forehead creasing as his uncuffed hand holds the spot on his chest where his heart should be.

the man finally shakes his head, motioning to a younger officer who looks just about your age to start unlocking everyone’s cuffs - there were a few other people you’ve never seen before dragged out of the vicinity and to the station. he speaks a moment later, “you kids are lucky because none of you are associated with the ones down the hallway - we were initially going for them. busted their asses and found over a hundred kilograms of cocaine.”

once your cuffs are off and you get your phone back, you’re fast-scrolling through the messages on the notification window before swiping up and searching for jennie’s contact. it turns out she, taehyung and jimin guessed you were one of the few who didn’t make it and waited for you near the building where the party was busted.

“oh my god,” jennie is the first to dash into your arms as if she hadn’t seen you since forever, “i’m so sorry i left you!”

“well to be fair, i left you,” you mumble, your arms banded around her waist while hers around your neck.

and just when you thought the melodrama would end when she pulls away, you find yourself staring at sparkly-eyed jennie and the most heartbreaking downturned lips, “i will never,” she pauses, “ever let you out of my sight.”

you’re exactly against that idea - after all, you’ve made plans to buy a beach house and move in together in your olden days once you’ve poiso- burried your husbands who died of a totally natural cause.

it’s only after breaking apart from a second hug, do you realize the man standing not-so-awkwardly five feet away.

“don’t mind me,” jeongguk holds up his hands, “i don’t watch much drama but i might after all this.”

“jeongguk,” you can’t help the smile that creeps up your face at his joke, “this is jennie,” then you turn to the girl who still has her arm around your waist, and you her, “jennie, jeongguk.”

“have i seen you before?” her cat-like eyes narrows just the slightest bit, as though if she tried hard enough, she’d see the pieces of moving memories that’ll somehow point out where she claims to have met him - but you don’t doubt it if they have, jennie gets invited to a lot of parties and hookups.

you should’ve known when jeongguk’s eyes sweep over you with a playful glint in them as he begins, “that’s funny because ____ here-” that from this point forward, that you shouldn’t have put your foot forward and prance at him like a predator with a secret, hand clasped against a surprisingly hard chest before your brain can register what you’re doing.

and when it does, you’re left to awkwardly pat his chest in what you hope to be friendly gesture whilst you force out a laugh, “that- that was really funny jeongguk,” you turn to jennie who, having known you all your life easily catches onto your out-of-character laugh but says nothing, so you point at the guy you’re basically and is still groping - to which you’ve finally tear your hand off his body, “he’s a funny guy.”

“and who exactly is this funny guy?” taehyung comes up on your left - you think you catch sight of his sleek bmw parked on the other side of the street where he must’ve strutted up from in his beige jacket with his hands buried in its pockets.

“just...” you trail off before your brain completely fries and you blurt out, “some guy.”

and that’s when jeongguk decides to call you out, “some guy? i helped you through a life lesson.”

you attribute the alcohol in your system that’s slowing down the neurons and disables you from thinking before you act when you roll your eyes, “in case you didn’t realize, you were in there laughing your ass off when i had to have my own back while that officer looked like he was a word away from dragging me to the police station for talking back to a law enforcement.”

“you talked back to an officer?” jennie chirps, her jaw falling to the ground as her cat eyes widen in excitement and astonishment.

“she did,” jeongguk nods at the girl, a displaced proud smile on his lips before he looks back to you, “brought out the boomer in him too.”

“you pissed off an officer?” this time, it’s jimin who pops up from behind taehyung, before casually nodding to jeongguk with a “hey man.”

“i mean, it was probably ___’s sheer guts and rebellious streak alone that helped free us,” jeongguk goes on, eyes glinting with amusement in the briefest moment they slant to meet yours but they’re gone too soon as he redirects your attention to jimin and jennie’s overpouring questions.

and because jennie wanted to hear more about how jeongguk embellished what went down, taehyung ends up agreeing to give the stranger a ride as you get squished between two men with jennie constantly pulling on the strap of the seatbelt to look over to the backseat, her mouth constantly dropping with every word jeongguk utters like he’s some well-known storyteller.

by the time the car rolls to a stop in front of his apartment building, jennie’s shooting you approving, borderline provocative looks your way - you don’t doubt that if she had any power in her hand to put both you and jeongguk in the same room, lock the door and swallow the key, she would in a heartbeat.

“hey,” jeongguk leans over the doorframe, “can i talk to you for a sec?” it’s the way he tilts his head to the side on a 35 degree angle, paired with that dangerous smile he’s been shooting you in the briefest span of moments jennie’s head is turned to the road and jimin’s gave is thrown outside of the window and taehyung isn’t stealing glances from the rear-view mirror - that makes you want to shake your head in rejection to his request and prance out of the car like a predator in heat at the same time.

but instead, you calmly slide over to the side now vacant side and slip out of the car, closing the door behind you so no ears can eavesdrop.

the scent of his cologne wafts stronger into your senses now that you have no police officers to be cautious of nor any embellished stories to correct.

that, or maybe it’s the way he’s got you trapped against the car door and his body, right arm placed perfectly on the roof of the car, next to your head.

“bout time you give me your @, no?” the corner of his lips tilts higher into a cocky smirk.

“um, yea,” you begin, “i think it’s better if we leave into the night like strangers with stories, you know? and if we’re meant to find each other, we will,” you swear on your grandmother’s grave that you will never go to any parties anymore, “makes a good plot for a drama,” eyes going wide and mouth taking on an ‘o’ shape, you continue, “didn’t you say you were gonna start watching those?”

 his shoulderline shakes as he chuckles, head dropped it tilts up, eyes capturing yours, “i’m not falling for that,” his announcement is plain and simple and yet you’re forced to put twice the effort in your smile as to not let it falter, “after getting my chest groped and caressed, i deserve at least-”

“it was a friendly pat, mind you,” you correct, smile still glued to your face before rolling your eyes, “but snapchat is as far as i’m willing to go.”

“works for me,” the screen of his phone flashes with a dark mode keypad splayed over it - you’re not sure how he unlocked it without taking those glinted eyes off you but he did. so you swipe the phone off his hand and send yourself a request through his account.

“i’m gonna open your snap and leave you on read!” you announce, and he laughs, “alright, bet!”

and with that, he waves at you using the same phone he told you to put your number in, taking a few steps backward, allowing you room to breathe properly again before he whirls on his heels and walks through the glass double doors.

you don’t wait any longer than you have to, shivering from the cold night air when you slip into the car.

“did you give him your number?!” jennie practically screams.

“no but i gave my snapchat only because he looked like he wouldn’t sleep a wink at night if i didn’t,” you shrug.

and that’s how kim jennie gets it into her head that you’re going to get your first-boyfriend-cherry popped. or so she likes to believe.

but that’s the least of your concern for the greater one comes in a devil with black jeans and matching plain t-shirt and timberlands and a lit up screen at exactly three something in the am, right after you’re done with a hot shower and in a middle of towel drying your hair and putting on your night routine skincare.

you open the text revealing a night view of a cityscape from a window which room is surrounded by darkness and a transparent horizontal strip with a ‘❄️ ’ in the middle from a goldenjks.

so you snap a picture of your skincare products next to a mirror with you and a towel on your head, face blocked by your hand that’s holding your phone, choosing  to send ‘🍜’.

and so it goes, the snap war that erupts between you and user goldenjks throughout the night which, after you’d gotten into bed with the lights off, basically includes snaps of your darkened room and his more superior window view.

before long, you started texting on snapchat about how the police officer seems to know him and how-

goldenjks

u were p chill for someone who got arrested for the 1st time

you’re giggling in the darkness at 5:23 am.

you

cs ik i didn’t do anything wrong

duh

and he mentions something about a sobbing kid that was made to wait with you and nobody really did anything to comfort him.

goldenjks

that coulda been u if i wasn’t there probably

you roll your eyes but you can feel your muscles becoming sore from the way your lips are stretching from ear to ear.

then it starts with how taehyung didn’t saying anything throughout the ride up until the car rolled to a stop in front of jeongguk’s place.

goldenjks

r u guys using him for his car???

cs same 

i would 2

you

wtf

we’re not 😭😭

and without much thought, you end up spilling a not-so-secret but not-so-well-known truth.

you

welp

he’s using me to get close to jennie so

ig i should use him for his car

oof

goldenjks 

ooof

so let me guess

u can’t say no to him  cs u have the biggest crush on him

“what the hell?” you mumble to yourself, smile pulled down into a frown, but before you can type out a reply, two more pop up on his side.

goldenjks

and jimin head over heels for u

you

🧢 🧢 🧢

u funny 😂😂😂

goldenjks

fr fr tho 😔😔😔

i would b too

all of a sudden, a boy with the softest blonde hair and crescent eye smiles floods your throughts. you and jimin might have been casual friends for the longest time and only until recently started hanging out together - and he may or may not hold confidential information about the littlest details of the lack of smile on your face and the blank snaps in your stories whenever you’re down.

but to say he’s reacting such way because he’s into you would be a total scam.

so you shake your head, laughing out loud, “nah can’t be.”

you

alright imma 😴😴😴

to which jeongguk tests back a gnight and after one whole solid minute, a text u tmr?

you leave him on read.

x

“like, who does he think he is?” you huff, burying the plastic spoon into the ice cream before scooping up a chunk of neapolitan flavored goodness and directing it into your mouth, “he literally met us just last night and he’s spouting shit like he knows us for years?”

“i don’t know,” jennie humps, tongue darting out to lick the remnants of strawberry ice cream on her upper lips before she goes on with a smile that screams ‘just get together already’, “it’s kinda hot to me when guys know shits, you know what i mean?”

you’ve managed to avoid jimin and taehyung at all costs and sneak to the ice cream parlor that’s five minutes away from campus where you spilled your guts out about how you got unreasonably irritated by the long running joke, about how jeongguk’s hand wrapped around your wrist and he pulled you out of the way of the chaotic college students who were rushing to get out of the small, cramped apartment and how you stopped him from relaying your disbelief of his lack of knowledge about her.

“like, i flipped out at him because of some stupid joke,” you shrugged, hands fiddling with each other while a coat of smoke wafted over the newly scooped and paid-for ice cream.

your name rolled off her lips before she stared at you with her hands on hear heart, “i- i didn’t know you would go so far as fight a guy for me for calling me ugly,” then she laughed, “but you don’t have to. girl, we been knew i’m ugly as fuck.”

your jaw hit the ground at the word she used to describe herself before you blinked and came back to your senses and aggressive defenses, “oh my god, i’m the ugly one and you’re the literal goddess - like, i shouldn’t even be looking at you. i should be looking at your sole. you should be stepping on me - step on me! now!”

a yelp resonated into the air as you groped around for jenni’s left leg in an attempt to lift her foot to make her step on you to which you both ended up laughing hysterically after realizing that she was wearing a skirt and the way you were sitting may or may have not resulted in an array of possible outcomes.

“oh my god, do you think she saw my panties?” she meant the woman in her late 40′s who were shooting disapproving eyes at the both of you as she scrolled through her phone, seeming to be waiting for someone before placing an order.

“you just flashed a poor old woman who came to have some ice cream,” you were hunched over, hand covering your face as you stole glances her way which didn’t hold long because you ended up giggling with the girl when you caught each other’s eyes.

“you think she likes what she sees?” jennie’s brows rose suggestively and you knew what she was going to say next before the words even leave her mouth, “you think maybe i should tell her about my onlyfans?”

it was a few bursts of giggles later, that you’d finally managed to talk properly. or probably because jennie’s question brought out an unwelcomed emotion that you pushed to the back of your conscience last night and for the most part, managed to forget, “so,” her brows were wiggling like earthworms on her forehead, “did he text you?”

that was what spurred the whole confession and up to the moment where you spilled the contents of the unfairly attractive stranger’s text.

“i don’t know, he kinda went overboard,” you shrug and jennie’s hand reaches over yours, patting it once with what you assume is an understanding manner.

“sweetie, i get it,” she announces, “you feel exposed because he said the absolute truth and only the truth and now you’re projecting your embarrassment on him through disdain.”

silence follows her statement.

and staring.

on your part, that is.

“girl,” you blink once, eyebrows arched, “whatever you’re having - i want some.”

that warrants a bout of giggles from said girl before she scoops her last bite of ice cream and hook arms with you as you walk towards the trashcan to dump your empty paper bowls, “no but for real, i like jeongguk-”

“then you date him,” you announce, nodding in approval.

“i like how he brings this... this... fire out of you, you know?” she quizzes to which you shake your head in a ‘no, i don’t know’ kind of manner as she goes on, “and i already have namjoon so,” she sing songs as she starts to skip in the middle of the mall and since your arms are linked together, you end up taking larger steps to accommodate to hers before deciding that you can’t root your feet down to slow her down into a normal pace. so you join her, skipping to the exit where you wait for your uber.

“you guys made up?” the question comes out in a calm, poised manner once you’ve both slipped into the backseat of the uber - you’d like to believe you’re doing a pretty good job on trying to conceal your spiking disbelief and the need to whoop someone’s ass. that someone being a girl who just pledged an oath to choose herself first instead of some man who-

“i texted him and told him how i felt with him cancelling on our plans and when i didn’t get any reply, i turned off my phone and got into bed because i’m not gonna mope over someone who won’t appreciate me,” at that, you give her an approving nod, “but then he came knocking on my door at like 5 in the morning in yesterday’s suit because apparently he has a deadline to meet and he’s been bending over backward trying to finish it on time and he brought his laptop with him too and managed to submit on time after explaining everything. he said he tried calling multiple times but obviously it went to voice mail so... yeah we made up.”

“that’s...” you trail off, only to stare at your friend’s beaming face like she’s just had one of the best facials on earth, “wow, i... i don’t know what to say now that we know he’s not trash.”

“i know,” you feel her pat the back of your hand sympathetically, “and that’s what a man is,” and when she looks at you with eyes that have one goal in her mind, you know not to start listening because the facts are going to bruise your pride and hit the nail on the head more times than you’d-

“liking a boy has more downs than ups but i’m not too worried because you’re a self-loving bitch and i love that for you but kim taehyung is not it,” she says all that with a straight face.

“yeah,” you mumble, thumbs fiddling together as you turn your attention to them as if it’s the most magnifying thing in the world to find out that identical parts of your body could move on their own with just a thought.

“okay, but i swear, he’s so oblivious all the time-” the girl stops short of her lament, you can see her head tilting to peer at you at a slightly different angle as if to see traces of an impostor on you, “wait, what?”

“we got into a fight last night- i don’t know if it’s even a fight but you know how i go off in a tangent when i get like annoyed, right?” you steal a glance at her for half a second before going back to your thumbs, “so i kind of did that to him before the dude announced the cops were coming and we haven’t really talked to each other since then.”

before any of you could say anything else, the sound of a cough echoes in the air, warranting your attention to turn to the driver, a woman in her mid-thirties. you return her smile through the rear-view mirror, “if you don’t mind me saying this - i know you girls are smart as fuck, but you sound just as dumb as that guy - whoever he is because it’s completely normal to get mad at someone you’re crushing on and still have a crush on them but sounds to me like you’re thinking one fight is the end of the world for you.”

“sis, please, don’t encourage her,” jennie talk-whispers as she leans forward just the slightest bit and covers the side of her mouth with her hand.

“well, we’re not really friends,” you begin and jennie groans - you two went over this and agreed to disagree with each other’s wildly contrasting views about crushing on crushes that could crush you but the lady hasn’t heard it so you’re not going to stop lamenting over it, “and whatever i do, it’s like i’m teetering on a tight rope because one wrong move and he probably won’t talk to me ever again and i’m not like miserably crushing on him - like, whatever we are right now - it lets me see him every day and he has the cutest smile and the prettiest fingers- i just - it’s better than not talking to each other forever, you feel?”

“um, don’t i?” she rolls her eyes, as if coming from a place filled with oblivious boys and hopeless crushes.

her name is solar and she does uber as a part time while working 9 to 5 at a firm that she claims to pay better but still not enough for her to save up for her wedding on the side and she and her fiance knew each other since high school but she’s seen him date two girls and get his heartbroken by both before he actually noticed her, the friend that’s always been there for him through his heartbreaks.

coming from someone who isn’t jennie and her alarming obsession with breaking parts of bodies of people who hurt her loved ones, solar’s view is somewhat a mixture of you and your best friend’s which still bases on one simple fact: whatever you say to and about taehyung comes bouncing back at you like a ping pong ball because-

“you have a crush on him and he has a crush on jennie,” she surmises before looking over at the aforementioned girl, “and people with crushes act like idiots- by the way how do you feel- like how do you handle the guy’s advancements and still aren’t awkward with each other because i have never seen...”

when the car rolls to a stop in the parking lot of your faculty, she finally turns to the two of you, her bleached blonde hair framing her face in waves as the silence - on you and jennie’s part as you both share glances at the indicative joke opening - hangs in the air with a sort of tension you can feel.

might even bite back like you did with jeongguk but you’re more in control now.

 “...two pretty best friends who are still best friends when there’s a guy that comes between them.”

“oh thank god,” jennie sighs, laughing and you’re nodding in agreement, “thanks for not-” and your best friend echoes, “yeah,” before you can even finish your sentence, “-saying that cliche joke or like for giving your own twist to it,” waving a dismissive hand, you address her initial worries, “and taehyung doesn’t-”

“he doesn’t-” jennie chimes in.

“-come between us.”

you both say at the same time. 

“oh my god, that’s great, you know my best friend tried sleeping with my fiance behind my back once,” solar crinkles her nose, “wasn’t a good experience but anywho, i’m so glad to see two girls having each other’s back like you guys. makes me want to...”

it’s a few moments later that you finally hand her the money and murmur out appreciations for being such a great uber driver along with some ‘give me five stars! thanks!’ and ‘we will! have a nice one!’

you both part ways in the hallway when you’re supposed to go for marketing and she has to go for personnel management. jimin’s already reserved a seat for you, waving at you to catch your attention which he succeeds splendidly. by the start of the second year, you’ve opted to sit together in classes you have in common, though not as close as the front as you’d like, it’s better than sitting at the back where you can hear the buzz of flies - you mean people, talking.

“are you doing anything this friday night?” jimin asks amidst people zooming out of the class as if they don’t want to be there for longer than a minute after being dismissed.

that, or they have another class to get to on the other side of the campus.

“uh, just me or me and jennie ‘you’?” you dumbly question.

that warrants a chuckle from the boy, “you and jennie... unless you wanna come alone?”

a hum vibrates in your chest as you narrow your eyes at him, as though if you looked close enough, you can see through his skull and right into his thoughts. 

but you can’t so that’s why you’re spouting out another question, “where exactly are you inviting us again?”

“so, like, you know i dance right?” he drops his gaze for the briefest moment before coming back up to lock it with yours, “it’s very lowkey - just something i do for fun, but we kind of have a dance off with other teams every month and this month’s round is this friday night so i was wondering if you wanna come?” then he quickly adds, “with jennie, of course.”

to be frank your weekends are as boring and dull as it gets - the party-busted incident was a rare exception - but you and jennie are quite content with it. you start having more to do and places to venture out to when taehyung and subsequently jimin join your group of two and made it a group of four but for the most part, if you’re not going anywhere, your weekend is usually spent with watching movies and burying yourself in work for the rest of it.

“bet,” your reply might have come a tad bit delayed judging from how his brows rise to the ceiling and his eyes go round as he chirps, “really?” 

“yeah, just text me or jennie the location the day before,” you request as you both walk down the hallway.

“great- yeah, i’ll... i’ll text you the place,” jimin beams even as he bumps into someone behind him, turning around to lower his head and mumble out an oh sorry before turning back to you, “i got another class but i’ll text you- on thursday - not today, of course.”

and you wave back, shouting out an ‘okay bye!’

then he’s gone like the wind.

x

the days pass by like a breeze.

kim taehyung caught you in the middle of waiting for jennie’s class to end whilst also finishing up some work in the library. he knew your favorite spot and he knew where you’d usually be - but you had an inkling that you weren’t exactly the reason why he memorized these little things. he waved at you in greeting and you waved back. you would’ve pretended he didn’t exist after that and go back to your laptop if he didn’t hold up his phone screen with blank white space and blue and grey bubbles on the side.

so of course you picked up your phone, noticing that there were already three wiggling dots when you tapped on his name.

kth: hey

you met his gaze once, as if to affirm that he meant to send it. when he shota half, almost pleading smile, you typed out a reply.

you: hey what’s good

kth: nothing

kth: just waiting for a friend

seeing as there was not really a conversation going on where jennie wasn’t involved and how the boy’s blatant dismissal in addressing the big, giant elephant in the room, taehyung must’ve had seen the way your lips pursed into an irritated pout before his phone vibrated.

you: cool

and then you were back to your laptop, typing sentences out and backspacing because of its incoherent nature, or lack of quality or whatever reason that stopped you from doing your job before kim taehyung’s arrival.

then he started whispering “hey, uh, ____,” from across the table. upper body leaned to the front as if it’d help enunciate his words.

you took your sweet time taking out your airpods from each individual ear and placing them down next to your mac before finally arching a brow at the boy, “what?”

“hey,” he repeated, this time with a frozen mid-wave, “hi, how you doing?”

“great thanks,” there was a minimal effort on your part to disguise your ‘what even?’ expression on your face as you picked up your right airpod first - only to be stopped by the boy’s-

“i’m sorry.”

it’s clean and short but his face made up for conveying his genuinity.

“why are you saying sorry?” it didn’t mean you were going to let him off the hook easy.

“well, because...” he trailed off for the briefest moment but the unconcealable bop of his adam’s apple isn’t really helping him appear any more convincing, “i was being pushy...” he looked to you for an indication of him being on the right track to which you were not sure if he did get any but he still went on with his wits and his will - it took you everything not to gush over how cute he looks with his panic-blinking and pretty lips moving as if to say something but no words coming out, “...and i was generally being an annoying little shit.”

“and?” you pressed on, blinking once as if to paint a look of unbotheredness.

“...and...” he echoes, eyes darting from your phone to somewhere behind you and then something next to it but only silence fills the space between you and him.

“alright, i’m gonna be real with you,” leaning back, you cross your arms over your chest, “i know you talk to me when you need something and i don’t really care - well i do, but i just bottle it up until it one day burst out, you know what i’m saying? so yea, if you’re wondering if that night was me blowing up on you, it kinda was and it wasn’t because you were making small talks with me just to  poke into my best friend’s business - well, it kinda is but like not in that way, you follow? what i mean is.. don’t let me catch you sneaking behind jennie’s back asking personal shits about her that you don’t think she’s going to disclose even if you straight up ask her - that’s sus, taehyung.”

by the end of it, he was staring at you like you had two horns and a tail swaying around behind you. but you concur, that may or may have not been your inner self coming to light - just a hypocrite criticizing someone for doing the things she would have done, if she wasn’t already doing it, if she was in his shoes.

and to be quite frank, taehyung’s shoe size is probably a few inches bigger than yours but if they had laces, you would’ve been able to put them on and tied them up to accommodate your ego.

so taehyung didn’t - couldn’t say anything in response to your second time going off into a tangent and because of what he did, at that. he stopped texting you altogether and only talked to jennie whenever you weren’t around and left before you got to them if he saw you coming his way - jennie’s actually. 

either way, jennie wasn’t as elated as you thought she’d be once you told her that you called taehyung out on his bullshit.

“um, i’ve always wanted to tell him about me and namjoon so he’d give up - you were the one who didn’t let me,” she might or might not have said something along the lines of you making her “lead him on all because you wanted to an eye candy to look at every day.”

“what do you mean?” your forehead was creasing a thousand folds.

“not that i’m pointing fingers,” she went on, eyes glued to the pairs of indoor shoes in the corner of the room and anywhere but your eyes, “but i’m like, cool with or without him around but you sort of said ‘okay, then it’s cool if he comes with us right?’ and you were making puppy eyes and i couldn’t no to that-”

and so you were laughing dryly, “aha- wha- what so it’s my fault that he’s being a total wuss and won’t square up?”

“i didn’t say that,” jennie’s reply came a heartbeat later which meant yes, it was.

so now you’re not talking to your best friend and neither are you talking to the boy who’s crushing on her. which leaves you a lot of free time to finish up your work in time to hop into a bullet train and then an uber and get to the building where jimin’s dance off is held. 

you’re in the middle of texting the boy a ‘sorry, might b late. i didn’t know there’d be a line 😭’ when a figure comes up to you from the corner of your eye.

fitted in black jeans and matching tucked in t that shows off his slender waist and beanie, the only thing that isn’t black is probably his white-yellow timberlands, “so you weren’t kidding when you said you were gonna leave me on read.”

“you know, it’s so cute that you think you’re worth the reply at all,” you blink, eyes going wide and jaw hanging loose from shock, “this... this... confidence - where do you get it? seriously, tell me because i have never seen someone with such immaculate self-absorbance.”

jeongguk’s head moves as he nods in admittance, hands buried in his pocket before he looks up at you. that familiar glint in his eyes is telling you that whatever he has up his sleeve, you’re not going to be able to refuse.

“you know, eugene over there and i are homies,” he nods towards the burly tall man at the front who’s mainly the reason there’s a line in the first place - one that no one seems to dare cut, “i could get you in faster.”

“oh my god, look what that self-absorbance’s got you believing,” you put one, sympathetic hand on his shoulder as your free hand goes to cover the spot on your chest where your heart is, “i’m so happy for you,” you glance over to the not-declining-anytime-soon line behind you, “but sometimes, even confidence can’t get you into invites-only events.”

 to any other person, it must’ve looked like you and jeongguk are friends - friendly acquaintances hitting best buddies at the very least. but something in the way his grin curling sweetly on his lips and the curve of the half ringlet of his hair touching the corners of his onyx eyes, makes your toes curl inwardly and your stomach churn with a sort of emotion you can’t pinpoint.

and because of that, you know there won’t be any sort of friendship forming between you and jeongguk.

he leaves you with an amused smirk and a “see you inside,” and marches up to eugene, the two sharing an uncomplicated handshake before the man steps to the side and lets him in.

well. 

it takes you another ten minutes of standing in line and assuring jimin that he doesn’t need to rush out and risk having his team go without him when their turn comes. which according to jimin, ‘isn’t anytime soon - they let the bigger teams go first’.

but then jimin knowing jimin, that probably meant soon enough.

when you’re finally on the front of the line, crumpled up ticket in hand, eugene gives you a once over and nods at his not-as-burly-but-just-as-scary-looking friend.

“follow me,” and with that, she struts in through the door but instead of going down the hallway like the ones before you did before they disappear from eyesight in the corner, she takes a sharp turn to the right until she stops in front of an elevator.

her deep violet hair brushes against her cheekbones as she nods at the empty box with mirrors all around.

yeesh, guess everyone expresses themselves with their bodies here.

the numbers constantly change from ground level to 1 to 2 and finally stops at the 3rd floor where the blare of the music seems to come from. and that’s when you see the black haired boy who has his forearms leaned against the railing as he grins at something on the bottom floor where the shouts and cheers seem to erupt from. but before you can make a sharp 180 to go back down where jimin said you’d only need to follow the hallway and take the turn around the corner like the people before you did, jeongguk looks up as if sensing the heat of your gaze drilling holes inside his head. with one hand raised, he beckons you over.

“your majesty,” you drop into a bow once you reach him, “this humble servant thanks you for bringing her here but,” pointing your thumb over your shoulder at the hallway you just came from you continue, “i think i’m on the wrong floor because all i can see here is flocks of hair - an oh, shiny scalp from that guy - arms flailing around. takes away the magic of dance, you feel?”

“so you’re here for jimin.” it doesn’t sound like a question - so it must not be. a ponderous hum vibrate from his chest as you shoot him an arched brow whilst your insides burst like fireworks at the way his darkened eyes traces down your body and back up after he’s done with what seems to be a scout’s assessment.

“no leather pants and no best friend or heartbreak boy hovering around like a lost puppy - let me guess, he did something that made you mad, the best friend backed him up and now you’re mad at both of them?” he raises his own brow, lips curling into an assured smirk, “oh and jimin here’s probably taking a neutral stance because it ‘doesn’t concern’ him.”

you don’t know if you want to run away or grab the neck of his shirt and smack your lips on his.

so you settle with handguns pointed in his face, “alright, catch you never.”

but before you can even take a step to where you came from, jeongguk’s laying out his card on the table, “you sure bout that? it’s bulleproof boys’ turn - it’s jimin’s teams name, in case you’re wondering and judging by who they’re going against, it might be their first and last performance for the night.”

“i knew that,” respectfully, you had no idea that the teams have specific names besides the alphabetical letters given to them upon registration.

jimin’s only mentioned dance match once and that he’s in team c that’ll go against team d.

so you stick around, watching from all the way on the third floor where the lest people are gathered, cheering out names of teams that are alien to your ears which seem to be the team jimin is going against. but the fact that jimin could dance with such precision and grace is magnifying enough. he’s mostly posed on either sides of the formation, switching from the front left to the furthest back line on the right side as the beat drops.

jimin’s name pours out of your mouth in cheers but it’s swallowed by the other cheers before it can even reach him. in the end, jimin’s team loses. they still go up to their opponent and share handshakes and sidehugs before moving away from the dance floor.

he’s not smiling nor is he frowning as he stands in the crowd after the prelims but his lips curl and eyes disappear into crescents when he sees you.

“hey!” his arms open up into a hug, only to stop halfway in hesitation but by then you’re already wrapping yours around his neck with a “you were so cool!”

and just like that, the awkwardness in the air dissipates.

“i didn’t see you in the crowd.”

“so what? you thought i left?” a light smack lands on his arm, “by the way, you didn’t tell me it was this intense - i can feel the tension from all the way...” you pause for the briefest moment, “...in the audience.”

“everyone here just likes to dance so it gets competitive at some point but at the end of the day, it’s important to have fun,” he shrugs, a shy smile plastered to his face.

“either way you did great,” you bump his elbow with yours, and he shifts his weight to his left foot.

“we lost but it was a fair match the bts people were too good,” a mixture of regret and contentedness crosses his face as he nods to himself, as if admitting the difference in skills.

“let’s get a drink later, i’m buying,” you propose and jimin looks like a kid who just received his favorite candy.

well, that was the plan for the rest of the night up until the winner was announced. then a boy no older than you and jimin came up to the latter, arms slung over his shoulders, “dude, beyond the scene just asked if we wanna join them at the afterparty. can you believe it?”

“dude, you capping - don’t fucking joke with men man, i was about to shit my pants-” jimin attempts to shove the guy away half-heartedly which does nothing as his friend - teammate, cuts him off.

“i’m not fucking joking, man, behind the scenes literally asked if we wanna chill with them!”

the two boys are basically shoving each other back and forth before they start slapping each other on the face once to wake the other up. whoever this behind the scenes guys, they seem like a pretty big deal if two grown adults are fanboying this hard about them.

only after they’re sporting the faintest shade of pink on their right cheeks, do they finally realize that they weren’t squeal-whispering by themselves. he introduces himself as kai - “jimin’s best friend and mentor.”

“he likes to say that because i got into dance because of him,” jimin adds, debunking the mentor myth.

you’re about to wave the two goodbye and call it a night since it’s pretty clear that the behind the scenes guys only invited them and not their friends.

“come with us,” kai announces as the three of you walk down the back entrance where it’s less crowded and meant for the participants to use, “baekhyun can’t make it so we’ll still be five people.”

“i really should go- it’s getting late and my place is in seoul-”

and so begin your war of apologies and ‘no, you’s.

“oh shit, i forgot.” jimin’s usually almond-shaped eyes turn round and wide, “you used the subway-”

“yeah, but i can still catch the last train home-” you try to assure.

“i’ll accompany you back-”

“no, no - you should go with them-”

“no, i made you come to watch-”

and it would have gone on until morning if you and jimin were left to argue on who should do what if kai didn’t clap his hands together and put an end to the long debate, “okay, okay, break it up.”

he looks between the blonde haired best friend and then to you, “jimin came with me so i’m gonna drive him back anyway and i could drop you off too after chilling with bts - it’s nothing you’re not used to, beers and games and shits, you know? plus it’ll be like, less than 20 people there - bts never invites other groups into their circle - who knows, maybe you’ll find your true way like jimin did,” he pats the aforementioned man on his shoulder whilst jimin rolls his eyes at the way best friends who’ve heard their best friend boast about an-untruth for the umpteenth time.

and because you basically made another friend and that means you’ll have at least 2 people to hang out with if the rest turns out not to be your kind of people - so you cave in, “okay, sure, why not?”

x

'why not’s are subjective - or so you’d like to think.

like when you’re not particularly into americano and prefer latte but wouldn’t say no to having the first if jennie mixed up your order and bought you your not-so-favored but also not-so-hated drink.

but jennie’s known you since she shoved you off the swings at five after you outran her only to get to the swings faster because only one was vacant and the other kid was already in the other one.

so she’d know your preferred drinks.

but in the event she suddenly has amnesia or anything and got you and americano, that’s when you’ll go, “why not?”

but that and finding out that jeongguk used to be part of bts until he hurt his during practice, having to have 2 major surgeries because of it, rendering him no longer able to dance so he’s only going to the dance offs to cheer for his friends which was how he met you at the entrance and now you’re handcuffed together (and yes, again) in the middle of the forest - are two disparate things altogether.

hoseok, the most outgoing and friendliest of the bunch, suggested for the ice breaking to be in a form of 2 beer bottles and a sort of rope or chain tying people from bts and the bulletproof people together to talk for five minutes. they only have 2 pairs of cuffs so the others that lack them have to make do with bandanas and you think a seokjin got harassed into taking off his shirt and using it as him and his designated partner’s pseudo handcuff.

yours and jeongguk’s are - you’re not sure if it’s a fortunate or unfortunate thing - real ones (you’re not sure if you want to know why and how seulgi easily pulls out a pair of fluffy pink handcuffs and a normal-looking one - out of the blue).

but you’re almost sure that you’re leaning on the side of the internal argument of this - this, right here - is why not.

“why didn’t you text me back?” jeongguk is in the middle of asking as you take a big chug of the alcoholic beverage.

"oh my god,” you let a pleased smile tug at your lips as you feel the buzz of the alcohol coursing through your system, “i was just gonna talk to you about that - jennie said i was being a ghosting b because you only said facts and i got like, offended without a reason but i agree that people can be wrong sometimes and that was her time... i just...” you shrug, “i just didn’t want to text you back so i didn’t,” you look at him with a new found familiarity, “anyways, how was your week?”

by the end of it, jeongguk’s nodding and poorly suppressing his smirk.

“well, let me start first,” you begin before he can even say anything, listing down the happenings in a chronological order which may or may have not confirmed his initial assumption on why you’re here alone “...i mean, was it my fault though? between you and me, i think jennie and i need to sit down and actually talk about accountabilities first, you know? but anyway, that’s how my week went! how about you, how was your week?”

to say that your turmoil of a week is anything close to a laugh-worthy joke, would be a lie but for some reason, trickles of laughter are escaping jeongguk’s lips and into the night air as he leans back, holding his stomach. he would’ve hit the ground if you’d poke him.

“wow,” you slowly nod, “that’s... that’s very... flattering that you think my somewhat a quarter life crisis is amusing,” a grin stretches across your face but your eyes drill holes into the boy’s skull, “maybe i should just quit uni altogether. that’d be... exciting, right? just... quit uni and live a life as a comedian because look at how much i’m cracking you up right now!”

and it goes on for another minute of jeongguk’s laughter filling the air as you threaten him to stop in the guise of encouragement besides the cracking of the branches as it gets swallowed up by the fire in the barrel not too far away from where everyone’s scattered.

“god,” when he’s finally reduced to chuckles and wiping invisible tears off the corner of his eyes, you’re about halfway done with your bottle.

“and he’s back,” you announce, “welcome back. can’t say i missed you though but glad that you’re back with us.”

but before jeongguk can get a word out about his own week which you’d asked, if only to be polite, hoseok is already summoning everyone to gather around the barrel as he raises a bottle in the air to - “new groupship and friends!”

or so you think he said.

you’re not too sure because you’re too busy demanding jeongguk to - “uncuff me right now, jeon - was that too pushy? let me try again,” you pause, clearing your throat, “can you please, please, please, uncuff me so i can go back to my friends and not have to stay here a minute longer?”

“don’t act like you don’t enjoy my company,” he offers you one of his self-assured smirks before addressing your concern, “i’m trying,” he says simply, free hand patting around the pocket on the side of his jeans before groping his own ass.

“um, maybe try harder?” you suggest, smiling sweetly but it downturns into a frown not even a minute later when he declares, “i can’t find it.”

“you... can’t find it?” you echo his words.

“it’s not on me,” he states.

“well, did seulgi give it to you at all or...” you trail off only to be met by a devious smirk which doesn’t exactly help his case.

“guess you’re stuck with me,” he shrugs ever so easily.

“oh, hell nah,” and that’s when you latch onto to smirking boy’s body - on your hands at least, and since his left hand and your right hand are cuffed together, it doesn’t allow much room for your physical inspection which is how using your only free hand to get to the side of his pocket that’s farthest from you - may appear suspicious to others.

you only notice that you’re fully facing jeongguk and having your back turned to everyone else when hoseok’s voice cuts through the air, “yo hold up, hold up, hold up - this is bonfire and chill, not netflix and chill.”

your jaws hurt from hanging a bit too low as you meet each and everyone’s eyes, their giggling and laughing already telling enough of what the majority thinks - everyone except jimin, that is.

but you’re a bit too preoccupied with trying to clear the supposed air of you and jeongguk getting it on in the middle of the forest with both your friends and his around, “aha,” you force out, “i know this,” free hand waving between the chain linking your wrists and the open air which isn’t helping your case because jeongguk’s poor attempt at subduing his smirk is well, poor, “might look sus to you but it isn’t - jeongguk lost the key and if someone could help us find it, it’d-”

“oh, don’t worry, i have a spare at home,” seulgi chirps up, hand waving her illuminated phone, “i’ll text my girlfriend to bring it here.”

well, that explains the fluffy cuffs.

“sick,” jeongguk nods over to the girl to which she holds up an ‘okay’ sign and a meaningful smile to him which shouldn’t be ominous but is.

so you fix him a stare when hoseok goes to say something along the line of ‘great’ and ‘lifesaver’ to seulgi.

which the boy only asks back with a “what?”

“i have something to say but i’m not gonna so i’m just gonna keep quiet but just know that i’m watching you,” but the warning doesn’t exactly bring out the intimidating aspect that you hoped for.

“watch all you want, i’m yours for tonight,” the velvety sound of his chuckles is awfully distracting because you don’t even notice the chain clinking until his fingers interlock yours before he brings them up in the air - as if to emphasize on the technicality of his titillating claim.

the night goes on with bottles of beers scattering over the ground, faint smoke dissipating into the air as the scent of something sweet and fruity wafts around whilst the juul gets passed around.

once in a while someone’s laugh echoes between the gaps of the trees and into the night, amidst the sound of woodland creatures. you’ve downed one and a half bottle of henny whilst jeongguk doesn’t seem to have gone past even half of his first bottle. but he’s chuckling and laughing at something someone said which, for the most part, is funny or warrant a jaw-dropping, pin-drop-silence kind of reaction just like now as seulgi confesses to-

“never have i ever slept with my mom’s boyfriend at 19.”

“and that’s on mommy issues,” you hold up a beer in a ‘cheers’ manner at her whilst she mimics your action before you both tilt your head up and take a chug out of your individual beers at the same time.

“what about you?” jeongguk asks and for a moment, you forget that there are people around because jeongguk’s eyes look like someone reached up the sky and handpicked two stars each for his irises and trap them in there like a class case.

but you’d like to believe it’s the alcohol doing its rightful work in your system because you’re back on the ground with an unrelenting itch on your ankle where it’s brushing against the blades of grass.

“yea, what’s your never-have-i-ever mommy issues edition?” kai speaks up.

“nah, it’s wack,” you wave a dismissive hand but end up agreeing to spill the beans when a bout of protest spreads across your ever so faithful audience.

“okay, okay, never have i ever fucked my biological mom’s husband who isn’t my dad,” you say which earns a bout of cheers and ‘that’s messed up’s before seokjin claps his hands together.

“never have i ever...” he pauses, grinning as an added suspense before he goes on, “fucked my brother’s boyfriend.”

the game doesn’t last for long when everyone collectively agree to take the atmosphere up a notch and play strip truth or dare. but before your turn came, seulgi announces her girlfriend’s arrival concurrently with her having to leave for the night because she’s her ride home. and because you and jeongguk are both of the same mind that you’re the ones that should be following after her to get yourselves uncuffed, you do just that. 

yeri is a sweetheart and matches seulgi’s playful yet reserved nature. they take the cuffs with them and seulgi waves you two goodbye with the same, meaningful smile directed to jeongguk - but if that’s not enough, the ‘good luck’ thumbs up is a screaming red button for you.

but before you can even call him out for his possible hand in convincing his dance friends to invite jimin’s and consequently you to the forest after the match - he beats you to it.

“you okay?” this time, his features are lacking the smirk.

“yea, why wouldn’t i be?” you say, hopping on the rail of the train track that’ll lead to the spot where the others are - so far, you’re doing a good job not falling to your demise.

“i don’t know,” the scraping sound of his soul kicking against the pebbly ground fills the air as he walks next to you, hands in his pocket, “you’ve been pretty quiet after that thing about your mom.”

“you think what i did was messed up?” you inquire, resisting the urge to steal a glance at him to see what kind of emotion he’s making - whether it’s contorted with disgust or whether his nose is crinkling at an attempt to appear unbothered or whether there really isn’t any judgments being passed and he’s just downcasting his eyes because he’s looking out for possible sharp objects protruding from the ground.

“everyone’s a little messed up,” his shoulderline shakes as he shrugs, “it’s the why behind it that counts.”

“nah,” your hair tickles your face as you shake your head in blatant refutation, “i didn’t have a reason.”

and just when you expect a disgusted scoff to erupt from jeongguk’s pink lips... it doesn’t.

“that works too.”

silence follows his words for the longest moment with you trying placing one foot in front of the other, pretending like teetering on that tightrope you’re stuck on with kim taehyung at the end of it, not even waiting for you but just happen to be there.

so you break the silence, “i finally found her last year - flew all the way to jeju  because my biological aunt saw my the post i put up on facebook in a last ditch attempt before i hire a private investigator like my dads suggested. she set us up to meet,” the picture of a woman who’s so similar yet dissimilar to you flashes at the back of your head, a biscoff cheesecake slice lying untouched on the table and someone screaming at the top of their lungs right in front of your ears, “my biological mom didn’t know anything about it, flipped out and told me to never bother her again so i looked up where her husband worked and slept with him and sent the video to her.”

jeongguk doesn’t say anything, only nodding in your periphery before a soothing kind of silence lapses between you.

“what’s your story?” you ask a moment later.

“hm?” he glances at you, the moonlight shining over that smirk that you’ve come to miss in the course of the five minutes it went missing, skin painted a creamy white.

“if you don’t wanna tell, that’s fine too but like, you basically tore down my walls and i’m naked as hell - figuratively -” you add as soon as his eyes light up, “right now.” 

but then he tries to bargain, “promise you’ll text me back and i’ll tell.”

and you try to teeter in the grey area between words and its meanings, “alright, promise... i won’t leave you on read.”

“nah, you gotta promise to text back,” his half curls sway as he shakes his head - your end of the bargain not sufficiently satisfying.

it’s a few moments after your surrendering, “you know what? keep your skeletons in your closet - i’m good,” that he finally says something.

“i used to do tracks, lucked out with a sports scholarship but by freshman year in college, realized i didn’t even like tracks and dropped out...”

jeongguk’s parents weren’t happy about it - didn’t exactly welcome him when he came back with a suitcase and a letter from his unversity claiming the outstanding balance of his first two semesters. but he wasn’t happy at home either. 

so he packed his bags one more time and took the first train to seoul where he worked part time at a restaurant and occasionally at the dance off’s, before he found the beyond the scene people and subsequently found dance. that was amidst of a developer of the game he was playing approaching him through the game’s chat server and offering him a job to test out their games with the condition that he gets a degree in computer science which they paid for on the company’s scholarship fund.

and so it was obvious that jeon jeongguk, wherever he chooses to go and stop at, blooms like a wildflower that strives in any condition thrown in his face whether it be a storm, a hurricane or a sunny weather that barely allows any rain to cover the soil he’s rooted in.

and because he’s true to himself, it isn’t as unbelievable, when almost everyone - from every layer of backgrounds, flock around him like honeybees in spring - allured, magnified and bewitched by jeon jeongguk that makes him... well, him.

to say you understand him a little bit better may be an overstatement but maybe you’re less suspicious of his keen intuition and uncanny prognosis of what happened in your relationships, both with your friend and your not-so-friendly crush.

jeongguk jests that his leg “doesn’t work like it used to but-” - he’s been to places. seen people.

“so why are you obsessed with me?” you question into the night in a light hearted joke, “i mean, i can possibly see why because well, i’m... me and i’m amazing but you know, it’s not healthy to be this obsessed with people.”

his chuckles sounds like wind chimes on a spring day, "besides the fact that i was too busy being a tracks nerd for most of my life so i have zero flirting skills and decided to make all the calls that seem to irritate the one person i want to get to know? it’s because you looked like you were head over heels with the guy you were putting in place but still managed to not make it personal.”

it takes a moment for you to digest what he just said, and even then, you’re nodding in complete disagreement as you blurt out, “pretty sure some parts were personal,” and you turn to him with a smile stretched over your face, “but glad that you don’t think i’m the impostor.”

so you stop twenty steps away from where you can see the fire in the barrel and hoshi, one of the guys from bulletproof boys, standing in boxers and shouting an oath before gulping down a bottle of henny at an alarming rate.

“everyone’s a little sus now and then,” he refutes, nose crinkling as a grin spread across his moon-kissed features as he offers you his hand and you take it, hopping off your tightrope journey and onto grounding earth.

x

when morning comes, you wake up to the familiar but not-very-welcomed sound of cars honking from outside your window and the light piercing through your eyelids, so much so, you surrender to the start of the day. arms stretched over your head and a guttural sound vibrating within your chest as a sign of protest before your vision finally gets used to the bright sunny rays.

and that’s when you freeze. arms stretched and all.

“after all this, you can’t say no to a date with me,” jeon jeongguk is lying right next to you, in your one-person bed which you could never imagine would fit more than your need-for-maximum-space self when you sleep but there he is, in yesterday’s clothes, hugging your light pink alpaca plushie on his stomach whilst his elbow which you don’t notice before is poking into your rib.

the events of last night untangle in a web of hazed memory coming to high definition as each passing second pass by.

you and jimin live on the opposite ends of the city which made you reluctant in having kai drive you back at all, so jeongguk offered to split the uber bills with you because apparently, “oh, hey, we live in the same area!”

which later turned out you didn’t and it would’ve made more sense for him to hitch a ride with kai and jimin. but you didn’t even need to ask why he did what he did.

because by the time you and jeongguk returned, it’d been a set-in-stones assumption that you were off making out somewhere under a tree and everyone cheered you and him for it upon your return.

well, except jimin.

so you pulled jeongguk to the side once the attention was directed to hoseok whose dare was to lick the grass he was stepping on.

“is that thing about jimin liking me true because he’s been like, avoiding my eyes the whole night and now he’s acting like i don’t exist and i’m pretty concerned because his friend is my ride home,” you whispered underneath your beath.

jeongguk threw one, confirming glance at the aforementioned man before nodding casually, “he’s jealous as fuck because he thinks we did the do - cross my heart and hope to die.”

so you ended up offering jeongguk to sleep in your bed because it was already late and it felt like a waste to spend another thirty bucks to go back to a place where nobody was waiting for him anyway.

you were so beat, you’d fallen asleep as soon as jeongguk pulled your protesting self off the futon-splayed floor and held you captive in your own bed.

“you know what? i might as well,” you say, legs thrown off the bed and stretching some more before looking down at the smiling, plushie-holding, grown ass person in your bed, “now we need to figure out how to sneak you out because this is a girls-only dorm and if they found out i have a guy over, i might get expelled.”

but before you can even start brainstorming the best possible route for jeongguk to sneak out without being detected, an obnoxious rapping reverberates against your door. the look of pure horror settling in as jeongguk’s smile melts into a wide-eyed, panicked face would have been adorable if you’re not in the middle of shoving him into your “quick, in the closest!” which he needs to hunch his shoulders to become as small as possible before you can close it whilst you yelp out a “just a minute!”

by the time you manage to school a smile on your face, jennie’s is already sprinkled with a dust of red as her brows come together, judging your choice of outfit and the events that went down last night.

“hey, girl,” you drag out the first word in idle panic, body leaning against the doorframe a little too defensively, “what’s...” you can’t even find the right words as you tap your fingers against the doorframe before finally saying, “what’s good?”

but one questioning look from her and you’re stepping out of the way, left to stand at attention like a cadet in the presence of the general whilst said general struts into your room and scans it once before turning to you.

“’what’s good?’” jennie echoes and you know from the way her head does the slightest of movements according to her enunciation, “imagine seeing your best friend on some mutual friend’s snapchat story which mind you, said mutual friend isn’t anywhere close to either of you and the time in the snap says a big whooping 4:03 am while you’re here feeling bad for hurting her feelings with your words words. but does she feel bad? well, it doesn’t flipping look like she even gave any thoughts about you, did it?”

and that’s when the closet decides that it’s had enough of storing a full grown human in its belly and slowly, but surely swings the door open with thunderous creak in the midst of the calm before the storm. and lo and behold, a jeon jeongguk, still hugging your alpaca tightly, keeping his eyes closed as if it’ll make him invisible before he gradually screws one eye open to the sight of a raging but confused  jennie kim and a mortified you turning to said girl.

so much for keeping skeletons in closets.

“i-i can explain.”

x

it turns out all it takes for jennie’s anger to subside is for her to find a boy in your room. namely the boy she’s been blatantly shipping you with even though you barely knew each other then.

“i have a wig in my room,” she suggests after you’ve exhausted all options - jeongguk can’t climb through the window and jump down from the second floor.

“well, he can but there’s no guarantee he’ll be able to leave without one of his limbs intact,” you’d added, shrugging.

he’s sitting crossed leg on your bed, alpaca in his lap and looking cute as hell as his eyes go round at the mention of a wig and five minutes prior, crossdressing.  the plan is for you and jennie will walk him out once he’s all dresed up like you’re just three - well, one is kind of buffed up but still pretty - best friends who had a girls’ night and crashed in your room.

he whistles lowly, head lulling to the side as he stares at the door before turning to you with a playful smile, “i’ve always wanted to wear a skirt.”

and so it goes, jennie kim’s squealing and making a short trip to her room and returning with a bag full of wig, stretchable sweaters and lycra skirts whilst she scours through your closet for clothes that you have but don’t even remember. the oversized sweater that’s a few more inches too big for you wraps around his body tightly and the skirt is a tad bit too short for him, going down to a few inches above the knee. but the head turner is the way the curly brown wig gracefully frames his face and softens his jawline, giving an illusion of how his half-ringlet would have looked if he grew them out.

you apply the soft pink lipgloss on his already rosy lips as a joke in a guise of a final touch, heart skipping as his lips curl whilst he gazes at you the whole time you’re putting on the glimmering liquid.

“okay, i feel bad,” you confess, shoulder line falling, “i thought you’d hate the lipgloss and i was going say it’s important to make the look work if you said no but you’re not saying no and you’re looking at me like you’d trust me with your life...” a sigh rolls off your lips at the end of it.

“you feel bad?” he echoes, glossed lips looking kissable as hell - it doesn’t even matter that he’s smirking like it was part of his plan all along to manipulate your conscience into confessing your ulterior motive.

so you nod.

“good,” he states simply.

“you saying good like you’re satisfied that you managed to pick on my guilty conscience is making me feel less guilty,” you narrow your eyes, not even bothering to hide the smile creeping on your lips.

“oh my god, my ship is sailing!” jennie’s whispered squeal cuts through the air before she reverts to her deadpanned self, “okay but seriously, if you’re done sprinkling sugar cubes all over the place, i think we should get jeongguk out before miss snitchery sonyeon next door sniffs the man in jeongguk and snitch on us.”

sonyeon has been known for reporting 2 boy-sneaking activities that went on last year which would have been justified if the girls that brought the boys into their room was doing questionable things and loudly at that but the first incident was with a late enrolled newbie that just moved in and didn’t know that boys weren’t allowed inside and though the other girl did sneak her boyfriend in, it was only because he was bleeding profusely and needed first aid treatment which she stored in her room.

you’re just about a few feet away from the double doors when a familiar but disembodied voice drums in your ears.

“you three, stop right there.”

you think your heart stops working for the briefest moment as time freezes and you’re craning your head to look at jennie whose fear-stricken face mimics yours and then jeongguk whom you don’t expect to wear such ceases in his forehead.

so you do the one thing that you think of-

“run.” you whisper.

all of a sudden, the wind is in your face and a few heads turn your way - but you doubt that it has more to do with how unfairly gorgeous jeongguk looks than the fact that the ra is on your tail, her pitched demands for ‘someone stop them!’ whilst. you’re not sure if someone did try to chase after you or if the adrenaline pumping in your system is what helps you sprint faster than a cheetah but when you finally slow down, almost skidding to a stop on the grass somewhere on campus grounds instead of the dormitory area - it’s because jennie is dramatically breathing through her mouth and found herself a bench to put on an act of dying whale.

“you guys... go on... leave me be...” she croaks out in between breaths, hand reaching out to the air.

“dude, tell me if you’re gonna stop so we can stop and get caught together,” you guff, plopping down, your state no better than jennie’s while jeongguk shakes his head at the two of you.

not even a beat of sweat or heaved breathing coming from him - not to mention that-

“how are you the fastest-” you suck in a much needed breath, “-when your leg doesn’t work as good anymore?”

“yea, didn’t say i can’t run,” he grins.

“jen, let’s go,” you say, tapping the dying whale on her shoulder as she starts wailing words of saddened goodbyes.

“forsake me! save yourselves!” she wheezes, staring into nothingness before waving a dismissive hand, “no for real, i don’t think they’re gonna chase us all the way here. you guys go, i have a date anyway, i’ll text kim,” it’s the name you coined for namjoon whenever you talk about him in public, “to pick me up here.”

a year ago, you would have called her a brave fool for having her boyfriend slash professor that’s teaching at the same university - pick her up in plain sight. but once you saw the unfamiliar ferrari roll to a stop in front of the dorms with tinted black windows, you understand why they can be as free and uncaring as they are.

“you sure? what if they saw you here?” you question, needles of doubt still deeply pierced into your racing heart.

but when she looks at you with arched brows and a familiar couldn’t-care-less attitude, you know nothing you say can change her mind which helps ease the knots in your stomach by a lot.

so you cave in, waving her goodbye - but not before the scarring ‘we still need to talk though’ reminder - and going back to the tall, brown haired person who’s holding his left hand midair and wiggling his fingers about in what you think is a parodic depiction of how girls wave at each other while mouthing a nasally, higher-pitched “thank you so much for helping us.” 

one minute into the walk, you stop in front of the cafe you’re used to having lunch at with your group of 4 - if there’s even any group left after this, “so this kim guy - he’s way older isn’t he?” 

“if you’re all knowing, you wouldn’t end that sentence with a question,” you assert, “so i’m not gonna say anything.”

“that’s a yes then,” he nods. 

“i think we lost them,” you say, a tad too late but pretend to look around anyway like you’re not 200% sure of that fact.

to any outsiders, you’ll probably look like two girls standing three feet apart from each other, looking out in a distance.

“nice,” jeongguk nods, joining in your scouting party before he squints his eyes at something in the most casual manner before suggesting, “so... you wanna go on a date?”

x

“you think we lost them?” you whisper under your breath, worry filling your chest as you throw your gaze over somewhere at the end of the alleyway where flashes of red and blue lights passed by.

but before the black cladded boy can say anything, his lips smack together as he and you both press yourselves flat to the wall as the sound of radio static bounces into the narrow space you’ve found yourselves in. six months after your first date, which involves a crossdressing jeongguk and a day at a park that had you returning to the dorm with a giant teddy bear and a strip of photo you took from the booth comprising the multiple personalities embodied in one person from sassy to stare-into-the camera-intimidating face to him looking down and shyly peeking through his pushed back curls - you’ve gone on multiple other dates.

none of which can be considered normal because you’ll always end up in a sticky situation like you are now.

on your second month, you found out that jeon jeongguk not only has a stable  income for literally playing games while trying to balance out his education but he also paints and draws.

on your third month, you go on your first mural-painting-in-the-middle-of-the-night-dressed-as-robbers date to which ended pretty well with the two of you getting hungry and having ramen at a 24 hour convenience store. so the mural painting becomes a monthly routine.

jimin finds out about it somewhere down the line and broke out into the most heartwarming smile while teasing you about how “the singles lost another one,” as he shook his head in dismay. but things went back to normal for the most parts. taehyung talks to you more now. he apologized for having only treated you like someone useful to him when he needed something and found that you have more in common than you think.

like how you’re decently informed about the greatest artists of all time - all because jeongguk was telling you about them whilst you chill at his place on days you don’t feel like going out but still want to spend time together. jeongguk, later found out that his supply of artistic information was what led to you and taehyung’s improving friendship and offers to become your spokesperson by having you invite taehyung to a cafe so he can pour his abundance of knowledge in the fine arts of painting - “since he’s so interested in van gogh, you know what i mean?”

he even finished it with a tilt of his head and an sassy ‘ugh.”

“i think we gotta run,” jeongguk’s declarations doesn’t have you arching your eyebrows and looking at him in an ‘are you for real?’ kind of manner.

it could be because you’re so used to running from law enforcement now.

or maybe because jeongguk showed you the world through his eyes. doesn’t mean it’s any less terrifying - the thought of being caught and shoved behind the bars whilst they included it in your records. but hey, at least, you’re no strangers to handcuffs.

“on one,” you say and he nods, hand squeezing yours as if saying i’ll never let them get you.

“three,” you begin, eyes fixed on the stars in jeongguk’s gaze, “two,” jeongguk breathes in deeply, “one.”

run.

x

note. i hope you guys enjoyed reading!! and if you want anything similar to this kind of style, i have one more college au. the second part of that one is my pinned post which also has a link to the first part. if you’re curious why i’m not gonna link or name it is because i’m convinced that tumblr literally makes anything that’s linked or mentioned it blocked for some reason idk.

but anyways, thank you for reading!!

[felassan]

Highlights and insights from the N7 Day cast & crew reunion panel

[Rewatch link]

In case a text format is better for anyone. There are some NSFW references. Cut for length.

(Some paraphrasing.)

“Some of us are inebriated”

“Patrick Weekes, the killer of man and beasts, the breaker of hearts”

JHale put the whole thing together, it’s the biggest ME cast reunion to date

The cast had no idea that the remaster was a thing

Lots of ace discussion about what the magic of the MET is (“it captured lightning in a bottle”)

Lots of warm fuzzies between the cast, crew and community, and lots of fun behind-the-scenes anecdotes

Lots of great discussion on the diversity and inclusion in ME: on gender, sexuality, representation, empowerment, the core message in the MET that “we’re all in this together or we’re screwed”, the progress made in the portrayal of female characters in gaming, etc. “Everything behind what went into these characters was authentic, we [the VAs] could tell that so much research, texture, authenticity etc had gone into them. It really made a difference”. JHale: “I’ve spent my career kicking down ceilings [barriers and so on women actors experience] with my steel-toed boot. To get to be a part of this game that has now created the expectation that there now be a female PC, ‘duh’, is once of the great things of my life. BioWare listened and put her on the box. The first time someone dropped the box in front of me I held it over my head and screamed over the crowd, ‘Casey Hudson, thank youuu!!’ It was a divine moment. This game was the moment the boot finally crashed through the glass, pushed by millions of women.”

The panel received many messages from the question submission from fans expressing that MET really helped them through very dark places and periods in their lives. The cast have had a lot of interactions with fans over the years where the fans expressed similar sentiments to them

ME was one of the first games Keythe Farley (Thane) acted for that had branching dialogue/dialogue choices, and when he saw the script with that when he went in, he was like “wow”. ME was the second big game D. C. Douglas (Legion) ever did. In his first audition he didn’t know it was for a robot-type character as it was disguised as something else with a military-feel. The second time it was to do a speech/lament at someone’s funeral and he knew it was for a robot. He said playing Legion for him was a case of “wake up, drink some coffee and go to work”

Jack was really special to her VA Courtenay Taylor because she relates to her so much and had a lot of similar emotional problems and personal troubles in her past. Jack helped her become who she has became. The host added that in his interactions with Courtenay over the years, he realized very quickly that she is very much like Jack

AWR has two moms, something which she hasn’t talked about/expressly said publicly before. Talking about recording lines between Sam and Femshep made her tear up. She said that being raised by two moms in the 80s was tough due to societal attitudes at the time, and so to see a loving relationship between two women depicted in a game was a big deal for her. When recording the white picket fence conversation, she was actually crying (“and then I’m crying because of the lesbians”). It was a huge moment for her to represent her moms’ journey. When she went home she told them all about how her character is gay and wants a white picket fence and everything “just like we had”.

When PW was working on Sam’s arc, one of the things they did was show it to one of their colleagues, who is a lesbian, asking what things she’d like to see in an arc like that and what things she felt were missing from it. The white picket fence conversation came from the colleague’s feedback (“we wanna see the nice, healthy, happy domestic stuff”, as it’s often missing in portrayals of wlw relationships)

As the VAs got more into their characters, they sometimes had feedback and input to the process to offer, like “I don’t think she’d say [this] like [that]”. Sometimes they knew their characters even better than the crew did sometimes. JHale waxed lyrical about Caroline Livingstone’s awesome direction, with the host adding that he has interviewed a lot of the VAs over the years and they all talk about Caroline like she’s Gandalf the White coming to the rescue in LotR. AWR expressed that Caroline is really funny (“don’t worry it’s not you, PW was sick when they wrote this line that’s why”) and emotionally in-tune with them and this makes long hard sessions with her a joy

When Mark went into record for the Citadel DLC one day he asked Caroline “wouldn’t be great if Shepard’s clone had been made to be the opposite gender? Then the two Shepards could fight each other!”

William Salyers (Mordin) likes the way Mordin’s story ended and felt that it was wonderful to be able to play that. He feels like the luckiest person because as he wasn’t the original VA of Mordin, he got to come in late to something that was amazing. “Caroline helped me get to where I needed to be emotionally to play that final scene. It was one of the most moving things I’ve ever gotten to do personally for a piece of interactive art”. PW related that with Mordin’s writing, they didn’t realize how much they were asking for. They thought William was amazing doing all the science-speak/technobabble, as they themselves didn’t know what it meant, and then suddenly having to deliver emotional heartbreaking lines. William’s always been a secret science nerd and so he loved that fact about Mordin. “It was a real treat to say your words”

Karin: “I always claim credit for the Scientist Salarian song even though I had nothing to do with it. I opened that door for PW”

Steve Blum (Grunt) found it a real treat playing Grunt as Grunt is a tough soldier on the outside but a [babey] on the inside, while he is more the other way around (softer on the outside, fight-y inside). He isn’t a gamer and so didn’t know what to expect or what he was getting into. There was the big pile of words, they showed him the picture of Grunt, and he just ran with it. “Grunt was kind of a perfect character for me in that respect”. Side note: his wry comments throughout the panel were hilarious

“Casey Hudson, our glorious loving overlord”

Courtenay jokes about “interspecies snorkeling”

The women Courtenay met working on this game are her friends for life. Ali Hillis (Liara) gave her her number the night of the ME3 drop and was like “let’s hang out!!” “JHale is the shit. I go to England and there’s AWR and I have this friend for life”.

“We’re a family”. The host comments that you don’t see this kind of closeness between the people on a lot of projects

Kimberley Brooks (Ashley) thinks things have and are changing for the better in terms of roles for women, and roles for brown and black women. This year she has noticed increasing awareness of inclusion and of where it’s lacking. “The copies I’m being sent for auditions, it’s drastically changing, I’m seeing it change before my eyes. It’s really exciting, there’s more and more roles for me.” “Ash is such a strong character and I felt very badass playing her, it was life-changing”. She’s excited that the remaster is going to be a new way to see these characters that they’ve been so lucky to voice. Kimberley/Ash was the first female character Karin saw in the studio, when she saw her she was like “Wow, she’s so kickass and inspiring”. At this point Karin hadn’t been working at BioWare for all that long, and she wanted to thank Kimberley, because she saw her and heard her voice and had a personal ‘this changes everything’ moment

Raphael Sbarge (Kaidan) finds it very moving how many women were encouraged into gaming due to ME

Raphael: “Everyone here has awesome varied careers, but because ME was so collaborative [and so on], [it was something really rare and special]. Nothing else I’ve done has been so important or impassioned, it has almost a religious experience to it, which you can see from tears in fans’ eyes and tattoos and people talking about it 10 years later”. “I’m so grateful for it.” “Clearly we’re going to do this again next year! :D” D. C. added that it’s going to follow him for the rest of his career. Courtenay says it has catapulted her career

PW talked about how it’s great that the female chars in ME were allowed to have real, realistic flaws and dark periods (as opposed to nonsense stuff like ‘her flaw is that she’s clumsy’)

Having the male and female PC be voiced was a big, expensive commitment for the studio. Karin commented that at the time, it was a risk that the pretty-much almost entirely-male leadership of BioWare at the time decided was important to take, and so she was happy that these were the values her colleagues had

PW was “the junior baby writer on ME1. I’d just gotten to the studio and Mac Walters fell down a flight of stairs and hurt his back, and they pulled me in while he was healing”. Karin: “Mac was very understanding when PW fell on the ice and hurt themselves during ME2.” PW: “My job in ME1 was to come up with conversations between followers to pass the time in the elevator loading times. I was throwing stuff at the wall to see what would stick”

Steve turning his volume down before he shouts classic Grunt quotes down the mic

Caroline: “Do you know how many tears were shed in the booth? How many times have we all cried in the booth...” JHale: “We were recording the end of ME3, which I never call the end, because I’m always like I’M HERE! [wink] The goodbye Garrus lines” - these lines got right under her skin and when she went to say her lines she couldn’t speak because she’d burst into tears. “It was all I could do to say those words... and then there was silence... [and Caroline had gotten choked up too].” This was one of the last sessions they did. PW: “John Dombrow wrote Garrus in ME3 and I’m gonna tell him that he got you both to break.”

Caroline was also really teary during Keith David’s (Anderson)’s performance where he tells Shepard she’s like his daughter. This moment was one of JHale’s favorites to act

BioWare came up with a proprietary VA recording system which JHale describes as a secret sauce as-yet not widely-used in the industry

Lots of fun in the line-reading portion at the end. The lines/scenes were sent in by fans. This starts around timestamp 1 hour 50 mins. There’s a break where they discuss more anecdotes after a bit then some line-reading resumes at 1 hour 59 mins 18 secs

"Salarian Vorcha Conrad Verner simmering sexual tension scene”

One of PW’s fondest memories is of ME3 when JHale and Mark got to play off each other (which they naturally didn’t get to do very much), when PW had shoved the entire script of the Blasto movie into random ambience throughout the Citadel. They knew Mark was going to be Blasto as he voiced most of the hanar. PW: “We had to have Blasto’s elcor partner’s hot sister... And I was like could it be JHale?? Because they hardly ever get to talk to each other. It was one of my proudest moments”. Mark: “Not only that, we had a romance.” JHale: “Yeah, it was hot”.

“Think of the poor cold freezing Edmontonian hanar”

PW’s story about Sam’s toothbrush: They wrote it as a throwaway line but AWR did it so well that PW wanted to bring it back in the Citadel DLC, as that DLC was the action-comedy one. So they decided the toothbrush was going to save the Normandy. The art director at the time was in an early playthrough of the scene and in that version of the scene Sam held up her empty hand. The director was like “We gotta make the toothbrush? Really? It’s gonna be thousands of dollars to render the toothbrush.” It then got to the next few lines and the director deadpanned at PW “Okay that’s pretty good, we’ll make the toothbrush.” PW: “Good, I got my toothbrush.”

It was John’s idea that we find out that Mordin had been working on a crime noir novel. There was a period in the development of the Citadel DLC where PW was feeling like “Mordin’s gone, he had his big moment, I want to respect and honor that” and the entire team were like “I think Mordin needs a couple more songs dude”. “Well alright!” By that point William had shown them he could deliver literally any line

“Oh I need a shower that was so steamy hot”

PW got in trouble with Localization over Jack’s “Save some of your energy, we’re gonna do it on the pool table” exchange. Localization were like “Um could you explain what Jack means by this??” These lines were PW’s, Karin as an editor got the question about it and passed it on to PW like “nope this is your fault”. “The best part is it was France that needed PW to explain the joke while apparently Germany were like ‘Yes please confirm that this is regarding the possibility of oral sex-’”

Keythe on voicing Thane: “Thane was a real lesson in opening up to the character, allowing this beautifully conflicted character to exist. Each character in the MET has conflicts within themselves and a tragic flaw that is revealed through the course of conflict.” He also waxed lyrical about how the MET was akin to Star Wars and Citizen Kane, and about the interconnectedness and representation in it

D. C.: “I have a question for you guys. Was it a conscious decision to not have Legion as a romance? Because there are a lot of upset people out there!!” “Voltage problems.” “A lot of creative reuses of ‘There was a hole.’” PW: “It was a process of us figuring out what we wanted to do. If we had known... The number of people who were like ‘I don’t know, are people gonna wanna romance Garrus? Liara? She’s blue and has no hair. Are people gonna be okay with that?” Karin: “We were young and naïve, now we know BioWare fans are thirsty.”

Derek brought in the first picture of Thane to show Caroline and she was like “He’s really hot, that’s gonna be a killer character. People are gonna want to romance that gentleman”

Raphael asked the BioWare team if there’s ever been a point where they thought about doing more DLC content or some kind of revival. “Has that ever come up?” “We’re legally obligated not to say, sorry, we’re going through a tunnel right now, bad reception!!”

D. C.: “Does this country have a soul?” “It does.”

“An N7 Day to remember! Go forth and heal.”

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 61

I remember the first days I left school as a sort of blur, but at the same time – had a clarity to them. I no longer was burdened with the aching feeling that I had to be anywhere, or that I was failing some class, or I had to worry about someone seeing me in a negative light. I was free now. In a way at least. I wasn't the ball of fire I had promised myself it would be. That I found out pretty quickly. I didn't ambitiously start the rock band or get famous. But I slept when I wanted to – and was finally able to get enough sleep (I had been averaging four hours a night on school days for the last six years), and I got up when I wanted to. There was an ease off my shoulders. I felt like I was experiencing things for the first time.

It was raining for days on end I remember. And despite the alleviated feeling, I also felt this tremendous sadness. Perhaps I would not have been so sad had my leaving school had happened under my own terms. Because as it was, I did honestly feel forgotten about. I would look out the window sometimes and see my classmates, books still in hand. And I knew they all had some kind of future lined out. They were going to college, or getting married or taking on the family business. They had some kind of support. I was some kind of forgotten person hiding away in my father's old home, looking down from the second story onto the street. I felt a bit like Quasi Moto alienated and separate from the rest. Sarah left a day or two later for Texas, and she would not be moving back for three very long years. It was a sad goodbye – but oddly mundane. There is no way to truly know how to say goodbye to someone. So we said it much like one of us were going to be gone for only a week. It was probably the only way we knew how to communicate. Neither of us would know what would be coming next.

My notion of time changed considerably. In a way it was good. School had indeed stifled my creativity, pickled me in self doubt and incessant anxiety that spun me in circles. As soon as I left school for instance, my complexion cleared up entirely. I would never know myself in that environment – for when I was in school a great many of my thoughts were reactionary and based on panic and self loathing. Stepping out of it, and knowing that I would never be going back changed the way I saw what living was meant to be, and my place in it – or not in it so to speak. I would sometimes just sit quietly and listen to the sound of cars, of things dripping around me, to my own heartbeat. Somewhere along the lines between age five and seventeen, I had lost something subtle but all encompassing. I had lost the ability to really appreciate minute details. And I no longer saw myself as the center of the universe.

The depression I felt caused me to sleep a lot. I spent a lot of time sitting on the floor, wrapped in blankets, sleeping, eating and reading. I remember I would listen to Beck's Sea Change, sometimes skipping to 'Lost Cause'. Or I would listen to Mark Lanegan's The Winding Sheet. Before Alex left, I had listened to John Lennon's 'Plastic Ono Band', and I had instantly loved that album, so I scraped the money together to buy it. Working Class Hero was now my favorite song. That or God, or Love. That album defined a lot of what I felt and thought about. I just laid there on the floor coming to terms with this new reality for myself. There was nowhere for me to be, nobody who wanted to see me, and no where for me to go. I lived inside my own mind. And what was I? I took walks at night on occasion. I didn't really want people in town to see me. Everything in town was totally closed by six or seven at night. Allison and David would come  home from school to tell me about their days at school in a lively fashion – which usually involved teachers being ridiculous and mean towards the both of them, some of it stuff I had gone through, and some of it their own stuff that I could not directly relate to. I would listen intently and try to make sense of it all in a way I had wished someone had done with me when I had been their ages. We played card games on the floor, mostly rummy, me in my ball of blankets on the floor with a cd playing, as it rained outside and we tended to the fire in the fireplace.

My father received money from insurance to fix his sports car after the car crash he had in Spokane. Tanya and my father split up soon after – which, given how often these split ups were beginning to happen I wondered if it really meant all that much to him – he seemed upset, but it wasn't like he had been with Patti. It was far more like his pride was hurt. He bragged a lot about how much he didn't need a girlfriend, but still spent hours a day talking to women he met online. He never went more than a week after one break up before going to the next. Most of them I wouldn't even call break ups since they never met. They would just talk on the phone for a few hours a night for four months and then it would immediately stop. Obviously my father wasn't dealing with anything. Something in life had greatly disappointed him and he wanted a quick fix. He wasn't mentally stable and it made me nervous. Not that anything truly terrible happened towards me like it had when I was fourteen. It mostly made you feel kind of sick if you saw the thing happening for what it was. And it might have been just me in that camp. I am the only person who really knows my father – and I know he had this well of misery that he would do anything to not have to look at.

My father decided on changing the car's original color of white, to black instead. Though, this put him over the money he had gotten back - so he decided to try painting the car himself instead as it would be a lot cheaper that way, and he asked me to help him. He knew only a minimal amount about how to paint cars, and obviously I knew nothing. He borrowed this guy's garage at the end of town. It was cliché fall. There were orange leaves all over the sidewalk. It felt good to be outdoors doing stuff. We both spent the day masking the car, around the windows and so forth. The Arctic Monkeys had just come out with 'I Bet You Look Good On the Dance Floor' which played every hour, and I guess at the time I hated it. We laughed about things. It was for the most part, one of my more positive memories of him.

The problem we ran into when painting the car was that, in North Idaho (I don't know if this happens elsewhere), there is about a five day period when the world as we know it is awash with these tiny gnats. They aren't born with mouths – as their lifespans are so short there is no point in them evolving to eat. They just bump into each other, mate and die and the birds eat them. There are so many of them that it's hard to walk around outside. They end up dying in these piles by the trees, and then the birds come and gobble them up. There is no escape. If you walk out there, they get caught in your hair. You most likely end up swallowing them if you open your mouth to speak. And of course, they landed on the painted car. We managed to sort of keep them off the drying paint, but it was no easy task, and for that reason there were occasional bumps here and there in the paint job that would otherwise have been so-so.

I watched this very good movie by the director Jim Jarmusch called Broken Flowers, which is a brilliant film, and there is a song by Holly Golightly called 'There Is An End' that is featured in the movie that is no less brilliant. It played in my thoughts a lot. It's still a great song. There was something about the feeling of autumn 07' that to me was encompassed in the feeling of that tune that brings me back. That, and Peggy Sue by Buddy Holly. For three days, I had Peggy Sue stuck in my head.

I seemed to find myself on MySpace more and more. It had grown on me in the half of a year I had an account. It was beginning to be almost like a place where I lived in some ways. I loved working on my page to make it look decent. I spent hours finding good backgrounds, picking out good fonts, organizing my lists of interests. I loved searching through other people's pages, realizing how many interesting people in the world existed who had lives out there somewhere, and even more interesting, how everyone is linked. I spent one night clicking on friends of friends of friends. This onward march through people lead me to places in Africa, to Russia, to South America. And eventually, it lead to someone who lived in the small town about ten miles away from where I lived. This really got me to thinking about how everyone coexisted with one another. In some ways I felt incredibly alienated and lonely, but in other ways, I could say it was the firs time I ever felt a 'part' of the world. I lived in. And everyone had something to say, something to show me. Everyone was able to define and express themselves.

I started 'friending' people and I found myself confronted with countercultures I had never even known existed that opened my mind about how I thought about things. I discovered the beatnik generation through MySpace. I discovered the dadaist movements, I discovered communists, drag queens and countless other options of thinking I hadn't even understood were options. I found every outsider group there was. I even sifted through and found the creeps that would end up being the alt-right. Back then the group was smaller, but it was growing. And I started comparing people and ideas in a way I hadn't been able to do. It was because I was exposed to these different people that I found Charles Bukowski. It was due to people on MySpace that I grew to realize that being gay was not a choice, and that denying two people who love each other the right to marry was fucked up. It drastically changed my opinion on a lot of ideas that I had. Probably just as much as school did. And I was able to get a lot of feedback from my art. I got more feedback from MySpace than I did from tumblr and deviantart combined. Of course, none of these people were true friends because we never spoke outside the website. A few years later, MySpace died and facebook took over – which gave me more exposure to my extended family, but did very little for connecting me to anyone. A lot of these encouraging pals and online audience of mine whom I relied on disappeared – though I had a sneaking suspicion that I now probably follow some of them on tumblr. I had at my peak, close to 100,000 'friends.'

I was technically very stuck in Kendrick as I couldn't drive and no longer had any tangible friendships. But having this exposure to all these ideas and people from all over the world really opened things up for me. It really amazed me that all of these accounts were more or less ran by individuals. They were real people who were searching for the same things in life that I was. Someone living in Ohio, or even somewhere like South Africa was no longer thousands of miles away. There was a way to reach out and connect with them – to share ideas and such. What's more, I didn't have to shake hands or be a bucket of charm in order to get people to like me. I could express myself with my poetry, my ability to correlate information, and my aesthetic eye for coordinating artwork and showing my own. I could write them. And there was a sort of high to it for me, and it's a high I don't exactly feel all that ashamed of. Every morning I would wake up and have new messages and I would feel a thrill in seeing that there were new messages under everything I did. It became a high point of my day. For someone like me who always felt overpowered and overshadowed, or if I did manage to stand out to people I was a spectacle more than a person, it was relieving to finally feel acknowledged and understood. Of course half of them were 'CHECK OUT MY NEW BAND!!' but some of them were people who had read and really thought about what I had to say and wanted to express their ability to relate to me.

I started gravitating towards philosophy. Overtime, it became my primary interest, because it seemed to encompass everything in the world, and the essence of what I enjoyed and thought about. I wanted to reach some kind of higher state of truth. At night, when everyone else had eaten dinner watched a movie and went to bed, I would sneak down to the computer and begin reading wikipedia pages. I would click on everything I didn't know about. I did this every night for about a year straight. For this reason, I have a strange sort of understanding of philosophy in some ways, while in other ways I do not. Having a teacher can really help break complex ideas down in a way that is easier to apply to life. A lot of the writing was over my head. However, I took what I could from it, and I read and read anyway as the essence of these debates mattered so much to me. So in some strange way, I do have a familiarity with a  lot of academic philosophical concepts and ideas as well as some of the basic arguments for and against, but in another way, I am severely lacking. YouTube has been helpful in filling in my misunderstandings in more recent years. Secretly, I really wanted a philosophy degree at the time, but I didn't like the idea of going back to school. I also didn't like the idea of being a teacher. And then there was the fact that both my father and mom seemed to very much discourage me from getting a degree in philosophy. My father implied that if I was going out to pursue that, then he was not going to support me. My dad outright didn't like philosophy. He didn't see how the scientific method pertained to concepts that you couldn't physically touch, and he equated philosophy to religion and thought of me as being some kind of religious quack. It kind of disappoints me a little bit that I didn't end up going to school at seventeen and trying for a degree anyway. My life might have gone a lot differently. I would have that degree now, and I could have gone on and got another one. It would have helped me in the long run, and it was a passion of mine that I wish I had not been shamed into thinking was pointless. Life is fleeting and we should fill it with what matters to us.

I ended up buying philosophy books when I could. I got this book that had a collection of existentialist writings, and I guess at the time I naively saw myself as an existentialist – but I think that was mostly because it was one of the few books I had. I really liked the concept of free will, and I felt myself twisting with a bias towards wanting to believe that 100% free will existed. Free will is actually a very difficult thing to provide evidence for scientifically, philosophically, and psychologically. So to a degree, with the mounting arguments against free will, I started clinging to it defensively, and was actively seeking some means of not getting rid of this preconceived notion. Existentialism lays some of it's groundwork in the idea of libertarian free will (not the political libertarian), at least some of the thinkers who wrote existentialist writing seemed to have the notion that free will existed (not all), and for that reason too, considering myself an existentialist was favorable. Which obviously wasn't very straightforward but meant something about me and how I operated back then. Sometimes as well, I would call myself an absurdist when I was feeling cynical about life. I felt like I was sifting through so much philosophy that in the end none of it was definitive, and it was hard to feel like little old me was even capable of truly knowing anything. It's very easy in the modern era to have an absurdist mentality. Back in the dark ages, truth seemed very simple and obvious. God and Satan were real and everywhere. Death was always around the corner. It all made sense in this strange – what I now see as psychotic- sort of way. It's hard to make sense of the postmodern era.

I found Zack's sister Whitney online. She was still dating Melissa's (Zack's ex) older brother Josh. I felt this kinship with her, though I seldom reached out to her at all. I noticed that when I got into something, sort of specific, she was into the same things as well. I began calling myself an existentialist, and at the same time she was reading Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness. She loved Bob Dylan as much as me. She painted these GLORIOUS murals. I do not capitalize lightly. Her art was amazing. It stretched my imagination. It was psychedelic in many ways. She had this painting, I think she called it 'When the Sky Makes Love to the Sea.' It really felt like this epic gorgeous intangible ethereal reality of being in love. She was sort of a surrealist, but it was more broken up than that. She often times would make these swirling complex designs that encompassed reality. She clearly saw colors in much the same way I did – but in a lot of ways for more. I was jealous. Not in a resentful way or in a defeated kind of way, but in a way that I clearly saw that she had gotten to a way of expressing herself that I did not possess. Obviously I had more work to do. She seemed unaffected by the world around her. She was also gorgeous. I wanted to become her friend.

The problem though with wanting to become her friend was that, even though it seemed like we had a lot in common, she did a lot of drugs. Her life seemed mostly centered on whoever she was dating – which seemed to change every three months or so. She would date Josh for awhile. Then she would seem obsessed with some other guy, and then suddenly that guy would be gone again and it was Josh. Furthermore, she had friends, and they all drank and smoked weed all day. It wasn't something I necessarily wanted to do, or could do. I knew that if I started using drugs that my father would disown me. I needed to stay grounded, else I wouldn't be there for Allison and David. Furthermore, the prospect of reaching out and asking if I could hang out with her was very stress inducing for me. I couldn't find the words to say much beyond a compliment of a painting of hers or two. I felt like I was stalking, and I guess I probably was. I would go to her boyfriend's MySpace page a lot too, Josh. He mostly seemed to like talking cryptically. He quoted Robert Anton Wilson and had a chaos symbol as his picture. In real life, he was on the smallish side, dressed casually but wore an occasional button up, had wavy brown hair that he kept relatively short. He wore thick glasses. I put many of the books he claimed to read on my reading list. He seemed to like Chuck Palahniuk quite a bit. He seemed like someone you wouldn't notice at a grocery store at first glance, but if you looked in his eyes there was something quite a bit different about him compared to other people. I had never seen him in person. I had only these pictures – but I could tell there was something very intriguing about him.

I learned by stalking Whitney's MySpace with dismay that Zack had started dating this girl Valerie. It seems like shortly after he had tried to reach out to me, he had started to date her instead. She had been the other girl who Zack had his arm wrapped around back in the summer of 03' on the benches outside of the grocery store the day before school. How fitting. I had no reason to dislike Valerie. She had never done anything wrong to me. She seemed rather simple in a lot of ways. It was strange, because she almost looked like Zack, super blonde, a very elegant and plain face. A simple and thin body frame. They matched one another. Sometimes I saw Valerie out by the bike path taking a jog. I never saw Zack with her on her jogs. It seemed weird to see her out there in the distance jogging – she was around Zack quite a bit. And somehow I never got to see him.

I was always caught in this in between state. Was I waiting for Zack to someday come back to me? Hadn't he sort of promised in this weird way? What had his letter said that I never received.? I felt cheated, and partially I had cheated myself by not allowing myself to feel my real feelings. I felt tired of living a lie. I felt that part of my problem had been holding onto this secret that I was still in love with Zack. So I decided to come clean to Sarah. It would be easier, since she was now adjusting to her life in Texas, and I wouldn't have to look her in the face and tell her. So I wrote her this letter, and told her the truth. That I had never actually stopped loving Zack at all. I had just hid it from her. She took awhile to write me back. Several days in fact, which was strange. She didn't have a job yet – and I knew she read all my letters. When she finally did respond, she sort of shrugged it off. She said something along the lines that what I said was weird, and then proceeded to not talk about it – which was strange. She sidestepped my entire letter, which I had personally seen as being quite confessional and serious to me. I had fully expected her to be surprised and have a lot of questions, but instead she seemed inclined to almost pretend I had not said anything. I was slightly embarrassed to have told her, so I didn't say anything more about it for quite some time.

I hadn't had my period in over a year, and I had gained a lot of weight that summer. I guess it must have been related to the stress of having an ear infection. I know I hadn't really enjoyed much of what I had eaten. I told my dad about me not having a period, and so I got an appointment to go back to the doctor in relation to my lack of a normal cycle and the weight gain. I was of course hesitant to go, but the doctor I had seen the previous year had left the hospital, and the new doctor was this younger woman. I really liked her. I've never had a doctor who made me feel as though my health mattered as much as her. She asked me for some of my symptoms. I told her what I normally ate. Furthermore, I got my blood drawn. I not only didn't eat for the time that you aren't supposed to eat when you are getting your blood checked, but I didn't eat for an additional day, and when I did, it was a bunch of lightly steamed vegetables and plain fish. I believe my father didn't want me to have anything wrong with my blood sugar levels.

But even with that additional day of starvation, drinking only water, and the super plain healthy meal I had had a day and a half before the check up, my blood sugar was incredibly high. It didn't make very much sense to me. I had insulin resistance according to my doctor with a high likelihood of getting diabetes, and she sat down and explained to me what it was. Having answered all of her questions, she told me what she thought. She said she strongly suspected that I had PCOS. She didn't judge me, and actually seemed like she really wanted to help me get the diagnosis that I needed. She rolled her eyes when I told her what the other doctors had said about me. She seemed to fully grasp why losing weight for me was so much harder than it was for other people. You can look it up, but basically there is something wrong with my ovaries, and my endocrine system, and the hormones in my body weren't even and it causes people to lose weight and is associated with mental illness, and a number of other symptoms. It really is more or less a collection of symptoms. To be sure, I had to go get an ultrasound, which showed that I indeed had a bunch of tiny cysts all over my ovaries.

I had one more doctor's appointment where they needed to do more tests on me. Then she was going to get me on some pills that helped with a great deal of the symptoms. I remember my doctor taking my father to the hallway for the conversation about my health and about the outcome of the tests. I didn't hear them talking. After that was all through, and I was dressed and such, we quietly left the building. As we were driving home from the hospital, my father was very quiet. He eventually started talking. Basically, he told me that this condition I had was too expensive for him. He felt that what the doctors were doing was some kind of racket. Then he started talking to me in this strange voice. He told me that according to the tests results, the doctor didn't want to tell me this, but there was nothing they could do for me anyway. I was just unlucky. He told me I was going to get fatter and fatter, sicker and sicker. And I would most likely be dead before I hit age forty.

Looking back, I think my father was lying about most of this. PCOS is not a condition that can be treated and recovered from, however there is a lot that people can do to offset the outcome, particularly when it is caught early like mine was. Doctors cannot just predict your death like that though for this condition. It's not how it works. I think my father was being selfish – he didn't want to pay to be diagnosed, he didn't want to be responsible for getting me medication – one of them being birth control – which he always frowned on in this right wing kind of way, and I site this situation as the worst thing he has ever done to me. I never got the help I needed. This also gave him the opportunity to use my weakness against me. He wanted me to believe I was going to die so that I never left. He was really particular about me never being independent. Sometimes he would scream at me in the coming years for being pathetic, not having a job and so forth. For a few weeks at a time he would occasionally give me the impression he was going to help me learn to drive, or get a job. But then he would stop helping me and it would all fall apart.

He wanted me to give up hope. And it sort of worked. It sort of made me crazy too. Because for the next two or three years, I thoroughly believed I was going to die, no matter what I did. I had nobody, and whatever I did was mostly pointless. I soon gave up ever truly believing I was going to leave. I was trapped. Trapped in a body that had turned against me with a particularly short expiration date. I was trapped in the house, trapped in Kendrick. This had a huge impact on me. I knew in my mind that I would never experience what it meant to be in love, or to go many places. There was always MySpace, but that would be as far as it went. Sometimes I would let myself forget about this whole issue for a month of two. I called Sarah, but she was distant. I think to her, forty was still a long ways. She tried to act like it was fine since I was still technically a teenager and she couldn't imagine being forty, so it didn't matter. She wasn't really ready emotionally or maturity wise to help me face that reality, so I did so alone. She was far off in another place, and she had her own life to contend with.

I stopped crying. I didn't cry for years. I lived through books, and through the lives of my younger brother and sister. I would often read about three novels a week. I became a communist, but I didn't tell anyone – so I thought about the social order of the world along those terms. It was my only defense mechanism from having to think about myself. To my younger brother and sister, I was their fat older sister who was always home – and without consciously realizing it, they saw my existence as a sort of homeostasis for the family. Nobody questioned what I was doing with my life, or why I had no goals. Nobody asked me how I felt, or anything about myself. I learned to mold myself into whatever other people wanted me to be, as self defense. It didn't seem particularly meaningful for me to have goals for myself, seeing as my life was going to be short and painful and my father would most likely dangle the carrot without letting me actually get ahead anyway. At best, it was humbling as I was basically living the opposite life to what most people my age were doing. Most of them were out driving around, feeling young and alive. Partying, sleeping around, exploring the world in this dynamic way that I could never be apart of. And here I was, contemplating man's place in the universe, the social order and society as a whole, and the inevitability of death. I saw myself as extremely impermanent.

What mattered more was always the big picture for humanity as a whole – things that mattered long after people came and went. It hurt to even think in terms of myself in the first person. I stopped even thinking the word I or me. It's very hard for me to explain what that is like, to just not consider yourself in your own thought process. Plus, with my parents ego, and all the competing egos of my family, I didn't feel like there was a lot of room for my own. Because if I dusted it off, and I decided to act like they did, I knew it would be destructive. Occasionally it happened, and it never worked out in my favor. So I withdrew into a sort of shell, and I stayed that way for a long time. Secretly though, I held onto these weird little hopes. When I was by myself, I occasionally had images of myself as thin and beautiful and happy. I imagined Zack would someday come back, and there would be this day someday down the road where my troubles would be over and I would have friends again. That hope hid between the lines of the books I read. It was in the romances of the characters in books, the bravery. Reading was a way for me to both escape, and to find the words to express what I was feeling. But I rarely let myself have hope. Hope meant getting hurt. And I didn't want my anyone, including myself knowing I still had hope.

PART 60 - https://tinyurl.com/y8qqo2tk

PART 59 - https://tinyurl.com/yd79nbcs

PART 58 - https://tinyurl.com/yc3zzr5k

PART 57 - https://tinyurl.com/y9slhq2w

PART 56 - http://tinyurl.com/y7v9kbn2

PART 55 - http://tinyurl.com/y8fy3uew

PART 54 - http://tinyurl.com/yb8nlwvh

PART 53 - http://tinyurl.com/yae9wgbj

PART 52 - http://tinyurl.com/ybwft2g6

PART 51 - http://tinyurl.com/y9gsjg4j

PART 50 - http://tinyurl.com/y7729d45

Part 49 - http://tinyurl.com/ydbpgkqw

PART 48 - http://tinyurl.com/ydcn5uuu

PART 47 - http://tinyurl.com/y8xyogl9

PART 46 - http://tinyurl.com/ybqoxned

PART 45 - http://tinyurl.com/y94784tz

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PART 43 - http://tinyurl.com/yckvswd7

PART 42 - http://tinyurl.com/ycnng83q

PART 41 - http://tinyurl.com/y84kmttv

PART 40 - http://tinyurl.com/y8aj6kmq

PART 39 - http://tinyurl.com/y97vprft

PART 38 - http://tinyurl.com/ycr7la8q

PART 37 - http://tinyurl.com/y8trssqd

PART 36 - http://tinyurl.com/y9ygq9q8

PART 35 - http://tinyurl.com/ya5xhe2f

PART 34 - http://tinyurl.com/yc6y4p69

PART 33 - http://tinyurl.com/y87449dz

PART 32 - http://tinyurl.com/ycetanep

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PART 28 - http://tinyurl.com/yagdlo47

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PART 25 -  http://tinyurl.com/y6v6pgoj

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PART 23 - http://tinyurl.com/yac6sk3g

PART 22 -  http://tinyurl.com/yat6cfnw

PART 21 -  http://tinyurl.com/y783egno

PART 20 - http://tinyurl.com/y8jskymt

PART 19 - http://tinyurl.com/rfhbms8

PART 18 - http://tinyurl.com/ycrznrwk

PART 17 - http://tinyurl.com/y77unlng

PART 16 - http://tinyurl.com/yadpsv8c

PART 15 - http://tinyurl.com/yb3lt6k5

PART 14 - http://tinyurl.com/yb4cfedq

PART 13 - http://tinyurl.com/yalanq9s

PART 12 - http://tinyurl.com/yc79mw94

PART 11 - http://tinyurl.com/yc9qhj84

PART 10 - http://tinyurl.com/yb734w24

PART 9 - http://tinyurl.com/yc2t6vfw  

PART 8 - http://tinyurl.com/ybl37utq

PART 7 - http://tinyurl.com/ybvo283g

PART 6 - http://tinyurl.com/kbc9dwu

PART 5 - http://tinyurl.com/msnz4am

PART 4 - http://tinyurl.com/k9x8esg

PART 3 - http://tinyurl.com/mwp9atx

PART 2 - http://tinyurl.com/lbt6xq2

PART 1 - http://tinyurl.com/l8xbvg8

[femslashrevolution]

Femslash and Community

This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.

I’m really filled with warm fuzzies at having been asked to talk about femslash to the femslash community.  You might know me as writerstealth, or previously as sexghosts, in another lifetime.  So, in the interest of understanding where I’m coming from on this, I am an old, in fandom terms.  I’m 41, I’m married, I have kids, a career, and all that jazz.  Writing femslash is a fun way for me to express my queerness, enjoy the things I love, and get appreciative feedback from an audience that loves the same things I do.  It’s pretty much a no-lose situation for me.

I wish that I’d had the internet and had access to femslash when I was a kid and figuring things out.  I think it’s great that young queer girls now have this wealth of reading material at their fingertips where they can learn about sex and their sexuality and see it as normal, which it should be.  As an older person in fandom though, I also feel like it’s incumbent on me to be supportive of the younger people who are sort of wandering through this world without a guide.  The biggest thing, maybe the most important good that femslash can do, is offer community.

I’ve often made myself available to kids who were struggling with something or wanted advice or were trying to figure themselves out (“I’m not gay, I just really, really like reading porn about lesbians banging.” “Okay, sweetie… let’s talk about this…”).  I think that, for us olds, it’s important that we do that because most of us as young queer kids did not have an older queer person that we could talk to when trying to figure things out.  So, we need to be that person for the young queer kids that we encounter in fandom now.  

Femslash has put me in contact with fans and friends and that’s all awesome, because I need those things to be part of my life.  But it’s also put me in contact with young queer kids who needed advice or a sympathetic ear.  I’ve talked one or two kids off the ledge.  Other friends of mine have similarly counseled fandom kids through some painful things.  And honestly, it’s a joy and a privilege for me to do it, to be the support for other kids that I never had.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what my responsibilities are as an older person in fandom.  Some of you probably read my frustrated rants about the insistence of younger fandom to apply the rather limiting labels of “top” and “bottom” to lesbian relationships and I won’t rehash it here, but one thing that’s been on my mind is what our responsibility is as older writers when we’re putting out erotica.  I probably absorbed my share of dumb, shitty ideas about sex from casing my mom’s romance novels when I was about eleven years old and didn’t have the slightest idea that there was any distinction between fantasy and reality.  I’m not saying we should stop writing our deliciously questionable shit, but we should be available to help when younger people tap us on the shoulder and ask, “Hey, this thing is happening to me, is this normal/OK?”  I’ve even considered putting some kind of tag or up-front note on the really dicey stuff, just to remind enthusiastic young readers that what they’re reading isn’t necessarily a healthy or positive representation of sex.  I haven’t quite worked out what that might look like.  But in general, lately, I’ve moved into writing stuff that really elevates more enthusiastic consent.  We all go through our sexy dubcon thing from time to time, but it’s important, I think, to make it clear that there’s a line between what we’d like to fantasize about and what we’d like to actually do.

But again, it’s less about censoring ourselves, and more about being that safe space where people who are just figuring themselves out can come to talk about things and learn and work through it.  We all have to go through painful learning experiences when we’re figuring out love and relationships and fucking.  As people who dedicate a lot of our free time to writing about those things, I rather think it’s incumbent on us to support those who are learning.

Femslash is a wonderful, flexible medium for exploration, learning, and release.  It’s great for giving you ideas for things to try with your partners.  I know one woman now in her late twenties who was reading femslash as a fourteen year old and had an arsenal of things to try by the time she had sex for the first time two years later.  It’s great for getting your sexual impulses out.  Some people have posited that the act of writing fic in itself is a queer act because you’re writing stuff for other women to get off to, and I’d raise my pint glass and toast to that as well.  I’ve been told by a few friends that a particular piece of my writing has gotten them laid on at least two separate occasions.  Femslash is a playground for all kinds of things, including working through trauma.  I wrote one piece that explored a character from the perspective of viewing her as a sexual trauma victim rather than as a villain as she’s typically viewed, and I got messages from women saying, “Thank you for writing this, I’m a trauma survivor and I’ve struggled to articulate this need to my partner but I was able to show them this and now they understand.”  I race-bent and queered a character in another fic to make her a Palestinian Muslim lesbian and I got a message from a Palestinian Muslim lesbian literally freaking out because she never sees herself represented anywhere.  In so many ways, it’s entertaining at least, and on your best days, you can feel like you’re doing the Lord’s work.

So, I’m honored that I was asked to talk about this.  I love this as a pastime, but most importantly, I love the community that exists around it, which has supported me in my own personal struggles from time to time as well.  Yep, even me.  An old.  I want to remind everyone to nurture and support that community, especially if you are an old and you have a smol seeking you out for advice.  Keep writing femslash.  Keep exploring.  Keep taking chances.

Think of the children.  :)

[jessicakehoe]

How Mina Gerges Went From Being a Viral Meme to a Body Positivity Champion

Mina Gerges has had a rollercoaster few years. Since 2015, when his elaborate Instagram recreations of celebrity red carpet looks went viral, he’s dealt with a fallout with his family, a body image battle, homophobia, and online trolls but has emerged as a body positivity champion and now, one of the faces of Sephora Canada’s new national campaign. Read on for our interview with Gerges about body diversity, LGBTQ representation and more.

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Literally crying in excitement to share that I’m in Sephora’s new national campaign😭 When I was 9 years old, I’d sneak into my mom’s room and wear her red lipstick when she wasn’t home. I went to an all-boys school in Abu Dhabi and had to pretend to be someone I’m not so that I’d fit in and not get bullied more, and I always cherished these moments of joy I felt in my mom’s red lipstick. I think about my younger self, and how much he needed to know that he’d be okay. That there’s nothing wrong with him for being different. That our culture may never understand him, but that he’s so beautiful and nothing’s wrong with him. Fast forward to this monumental campaign – a gay Middle Eastern immigrant as the face of a makeup brand. I’ve been looking at this picture for a week, in awe of the confidence and power that radiate through this image. I see resilience and beauty, shining so bright and unapologetically as an openly gay Middle Eastern man despite belonging to a culture that systemically erases and persecutes our LGBTQ community. Representation matters, and I am grateful to fight for the visibility of our community and share the struggles we face, because we’re still so unrepresented in the media. To think that this can give hope to just one young queer Middle Eastern person that they matter, that they’re seen, and that there’s nothing wrong with them brings me tears. I’m beyond grateful that my first ever campaign is with a brand like Sephora that has always been a safe space for me to explore my gender expression, and that’s so unapologetic and bold about celebrating diversity. To me, beauty is reclaiming my culture from the toxic masculinity that’s so engrained within it, and creating new narratives about what it means to be LGBTQ and Middle Eastern/ North African. To that young, scared, lonely Mina who was always told there’s something wrong with him for being gay, I just want you to know that you’ll be okay, and you’re going to look so beautiful in billboards all over this country one day. Shot by the incredible @leeorwild 🌟@sephoracanada #SephoraPartner

A post shared by MINA GERGES (مينا) (@itsminagerges) on Jul 2, 2019 at 4:01pm PDT

Buzzfeed writing a post about your Instagram account is the sort of thing most teens dream about. But for Mina Gerges, then a 19-year-old student at Western University, it was a bittersweet moment. Yes, his cheeky red carpet recreations suddenly had thousands more likes, his inbox was flooded with emails and interview requests, and he’d even gotten a repost from Katy Perry but that Buzzfeed story had another consequence: it outed him to his conservative Egyptian parents.

“We somehow went eight months without talking about it,” recounts Gerges over black coffee at a Toronto cafe. But unbeknownst to him, his parents were Googling him every day, suddenly privy to the secret life that Gerges had been living for months. They’d seen the tongue-in-cheek recreations he’d been shooting in his bedroom with the help of his sisters (looks that included a dress fashioned out of a garbage bag and tinfoil to echo Jennifer Lopez’s outfit at the 2015 Vanity Fair Oscar party and curtains painstakingly painted to resemble Kim Kardashian’s look for the 2015 Met Gala), the interviews he’d been giving to various media outlets, and even the Arabic news sites that had picked up the story. Finally, several months after that first Buzzfeed post in January 2015, his parents sat him down to talk.

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Yes, those are cheese slices on my head 🧀😂 #MetGala #MinaGerges #RitaOra

A post shared by MINA GERGES (مينا) (@itsminagerges) on May 1, 2017 at 8:06pm PDT

“The language barrier made it so difficult to communicate what I felt or to communicate even what it is [to be gay],” explains Gerges. “At the time the only Arabic word for what it means to be gay, ‘khaneeth,’ directly translated to something negative—it connotes being a pervert, effeminate, and is more commonly used as a way of saying faggot.”

Since then, fuelled by the efforts of LGBTQ activists, the terminology has expanded to include words like ‘mithli’ which translates to “same” or “homo,” but the perception of queer people as being sexually deviant is so ingrained in Middle Eastern culture that no matter how hard Gerges tried to mend the relationship with his parents, nothing worked. Hard as that was—and continues to be—it also gave him the motivation to use his social media presence to change the way the Arab community viewed LGBTQ people, and to give them positive examples to look to.

“A lot of what I do now is informed from what I learned trying to deal with my parents,” he says. “I’m educating myself on what it’s like to be queer in the Middle East and what I can do with my platform to talk about this or to create any kind of change. And I’ve found a community of kids who have felt exactly the way that I have felt. I take that back. Not just kids, but older men and younger men, queer women, trans people from the Middle East, who have found similarities in our stories.”

Photography by Samuel Engelking

Gerges, who grew up between Cairo in Egypt and Abu Dhabi in the UAE, moved to Canada at the age of 12 with his mother and two sisters (his father came later). In both the countries where he grew up, being gay or even acknowledging LGBTQ people or rights was completely missing from the culture. In fact, he had no idea what the word ‘gay’ meant or even that it existed until someone called him that in high school. To be out and proud may not have been something Gerges ever saw growing up, but even after moving to Canada it was a very narrow version of “gay” that his formative understanding of the term was built on.

“The first time I Googled “gay men” all I saw was images of white, muscular, slim men,” he says. “So I thought that that was the norm.”

In trying to fit that mould as a young man grappling with his identity and sexuality, Gerges went down a spiral of eating disorders and body dysmorphia. He became anorexic in his first year of university, a time when he was not only struggling with being accepted in the gay community “as a plus-size man of colour” but also deeply unhappy studying science, something his parents had encouraged him to do. (He later switched to media studies.) When he began his celeb recreation posts in the summer of 2014, he was already suffering from anorexia.

“The people who may have followed me from the very beginning saw a Mina who was anorexic, at 150 lbs. And when I was in recovery shortly after, I started gaining back some weight and I was happy. But it was hard to find that happiness when I went on social media. I was at the height of my creativity where it wasn’t just drag, it was DIY, it was kind of like the golden age of my work. But all that people could comment about was my weight. I was like ‘I just spent eight hours painting this garbage bag so it can look like a million dollar dress and all you have to say is to call me a whale.’ It broke me. It was one of the worst things I’ve experienced in my life.”

He took eight months off social media between October 2015 and May 2016. During this hiatus, Gerges took the time to heal, using the distance from people’s hateful comments to learn how to love and accept his body. When he was finally ready to return to social media, he made a promise to himself that things were going to be different.

Photography by Samuel Engelking

“I decided I wasn’t going to FaceTune my body anymore. Instead of hiding it I’m going to be so unapologetic about this body and maybe if people see confidence they will be less likely to say mean things. Honestly something as simple as not FaceTuning out stretch marks felt like such a liberating act of protest. And also reclaiming a platform that I was basically bullied off of.”

And that was the beginning of a new chapter for Gerges’ public persona. In 2018 he posted a shirtless picture of himself along with a lengthy caption about why it was “the scariest yet most empowering post I’ve ever made.”

“The feedback was unlike anything that I had ever experienced. It was a lot of people from the LGBT community, not just men, who were sharing with me very similar stories about their struggles with their body image and experiencing an eating disorder. That’s when it clicked for me. I’d felt so alone when I was 19-20 years old but here I was getting all these messages from people telling me they’d had the exact same journey but were ashamed to talk about it. That’s when I was like ‘this is my calling.’ Let’s shift this conversation.”

Last year, Gerges did a nude photo shoot with NOW Toronto for their annual Body Issue. He posted the nude photos on Instagram when the issue came out and lost 4000 followers.

“You see male models who are thin and muscular pose for pictures just like these, or even more scandalous ones, and those pictures end up in editorials and in ad campaigns for Dolce & Gabbana and Versace.” But when a body like his is nude, he says, the comments move swiftly from praise to criticism. “That double standard is why we need to talk about body positivity and the fact that bodies like mine, which don’t fit into this beauty ideal, experience the world differently and are treated differently because of it. It was crazy to get the backlash for that when thinner, more muscular guys are being praised for the exact same thing.”

Photography by Samuel Engelking

“It was a voice that needed to be heard and a story that needed to be told,” says Samuel Engelking, the photographer who shot the images for the Love Your Body issue. Engelking, who has photographed the likes of Margaret Atwood, Ai Weiwei and MIA, says of working with Gerges, “When we first met on set I was immediately taken by his positive spirit and confidence despite the unusual circumstances of the shoot.”

This newfound confidence is what Gerges’ followers are responding to, and he’s seen a shift in the way they interact with him online, even though the negative and hurtful comments about him, his body and his Middle Eastern identity—even from others in the Arab world—do still keep rolling in.

“Giving up my culture as these, for lack of a better word, these haters would want me to, is not an option,” he says. “I refuse to be shamed out of my culture. It is mine just as much as it is yours. Nothing that you can do will prevent me from embracing being Egyptian and being North African. You cannot take that away from me.”

The post How Mina Gerges Went From Being a Viral Meme to a Body Positivity Champion appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

How Mina Gerges Went From Being a Viral Meme to a Body Positivity Champion published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

[fabulizemag]

Quan Millz talks candidly with Fabulize Magazine

I think I first discovered Quan Millz and his books on Facebook. I kept seeing these outrageous book titles such as, “Crack Hoe Dreams” and “Pregnant By My Mother’s Gay Husband”. I thought the titles were just memes people were making up as jokes but to my surprise, these were actual book titles being sold on Amazon — and Millz has a steadily growing fanbase.

By now, you’ve probably seen his books on various platforms being talked about and the same words are used to describe him and his books; ratchet, ghetto, women-hating, low-class etc. While there are some who can find validity in these critiques, I found it interesting that no one took the time to speak to the author themselves.

Not all black women to read these books but a lot do…Women are 99% of my fan base

Now, urban fiction is not a new genre. Street literature has been around since people were able to publish their own books. For you younger whippersnappers, back in the day, titles like Coldest Winter Ever, The Game, and Black were some of the infamous works from Triple Crown Productions; a publishing company that produced ( that are still available on Amazon) hood novels that were sold on the subways, out of the trunk of cars on the streets and if you were lucky, in black-owned bookstore that was tucked all the way in the back of the shelves. These books and novels have always existed, but with social media being so visible it’s easier for creatives to debut work and go viral off of controversial content and that’s exactly what Quan Millz is doing.

Quan Millz talks candidly with Fabulize Magazine

Millz fanbase and creative team are comprised of mostly black women and if you were to ‘judge a book by its cover’ you might not believe that at first which is the interesting irony from his critics. I’ve been following him on Facebook and black women are his biggest supporters. In fact, I’ve seen numerous black women contribute ideas and give him feedback on the projects he’s working on. This is why Millz doesn’t feel these critiques are fair and feels all the negative press he gets are from people who relish in respectability politics. He also thinks there are other authors that are jealous of his success; after all, he’s been mentioned on The Shade Room and other popular blogs and continues to generate sales. Are his critics overthinking his work, or is Millz pimping out black, stereotypical strife for profit?

I was able to catch up with Millz who took the time out to talk to me about his books, his failures, what inspires him, his future projects and how he views “Wokebook” ( the black social justice warrior side of Facebook).

Do you think your work is misogynistic? Intentionally or unintentionally?

QM: Misogynistic in what way? I think that’s where I am having a hard time trying to understand how I am promoting misogynoir or whatever that means.

Misogynoir means using stereotypes that are used to demean black women in ways that are violent, sexual and or classist. Do you think your work is popular based on how you portray black women even though it’s entertainment?

QM: Ohh! I portray all spectrums of black womanhood and black manhood. In fact, that’s one of my criticisms about contemporary urban lit; it’s too narrow in its scope of the portrayal of black people. Not everyone lives in a housing project or a ghetto, but not everyone lives in a middle class, suburban neighborhood. My stories draw from real life experiences of things that have happened in the news. Now, I will confess there are perhaps some comedic or satirical elements to my writing. But take for instance Crack Hoe Dreams, I wanted to show the pathology of how a woman goes from being normal to a full-on crackhead or drug addict [while explaining] her experiences [and] the evolution of her addiction. Addiction doesn’t happen overnight. I also deal with a lot of colorism in my books. Gutter Hoe Dreams is about an abusive, “light-skinned” aunt who terrorizes her dark-skinned, morbidly obese, supposedly mentally challenged niece. I do play on tropes and certain common storylines/characters but that’s only because these are current, identifiable issues that black people deal with on an everyday basis. I don’t understand why people like to pretend that colorism isn’t still very much rampant in the black community.

Colorism is very real

QM: Yes, also what people need to realize about the street lit/urban fiction genre is that it’s designed to be digestible by the masses. I try to weave in larger social themes, but I also try to still incorporate everyday colloquialisms that resonate with people. None of my books are overly cerebral. I write simple and direct but try to be expressive with language. I think honestly that’s why I have such a popular, growing fan base. So many urban fiction writers love writing over-the-top thug romance stories that in reality fantasize the very pathologies that I try to erase through my characters and have them overcome them. I do not like glorifying drug trade, kingpins, etc. I hate alpha male thug romance stories. But the reality is there is a strong demand for that type of literature and I respect it. I just choose to write the stories I want to write that I feel reflect realities for a lot of black folks who live in the working class and poor neighborhoods. Sorry if I’m rambling I just…ughh. I’m kind of heated because I already have to deal with controversy within the urban fiction writers’ community for my choice of titles. I get it though. But then I don’t like it when these stay woke cultural elitists see it as an opportunity to tear down writers and the readers who write urban fiction and street lit.

What advice would you give to writer and aspiring publishers? How do you build your online community and fanbase?

QM: Write what the fuck you wanna write. If people like it, they’ll continue to read it. But also learn how to write for the market.

How do you come up with plots and storylines? What inspires you? What influences do you have or use to create characters?

QM: I don’t focus on storylines. I focus on characters and the adversities I want them to overcome. That drives the plot. From there, everything else falls into place.

How old were you when you published your first book?

QM:32. I’ve been writing since late 2014. I started after my business and co-author, N’Dia Rae, got me into writing. I started under a different pen name and failed miserably. I had no idea what I was doing. None of those books are on Amazon anymore and I will not reveal to you what the pen name was.

Where are you from? What was your childhood like? Where do you live now? What life experiences have/do you use to write your books?

QM: I was born and raised in Miami, Florida. I graduated from the University of Florida in Gainesville, lived in Atlanta, then moved to Chicago. Now I spend most of my time between Chicago, Los Angeles, and Miami.

How long does it take you to write a book? Depends on if the spirit of creativity.

QM: Sometimes I can write a book in less than a week. Sometimes, it takes damn near three months.

What’s the hardest thing about writing books?

QM: Being able to tell an emotionally gripping story and draw people in from the very beginning.

What’s the biggest complaint /worse feedback you get about your work? What is the best?

QM: I haven’t gotten serious, serious complaints. My readers, for the most part, enjoy my work to the fullest.

Who do you think is your audience?

QM: Describe them in 4 words. Black women. Lol, black men hardly read, unless its nonfiction 48 Laws of Power type shit.

Who are your favorite urban fiction writers? What writers and authors do you admire?

QM: Sista Souljah and K’wan right now are my tops. I tried to get into some other authors, but they primarily write urban romance. Ain’t nobody got time to read about thugs with big dicks. That shit is wack to me.

Do you have any friends and family who feel you are taking their personal lives and turning it into entertainment?

QM: Nope, not at all.

How do you choose your cover titles?

QM: Honestly, they just come to me. And a lot of them reflect common says and aphorisms in the hood.

Do you feel obligated to showcase the black and minority communities in good/positive light?

QM: No, I do not because I am a creative and I write stories that reflect the reality that people live. Only 4% of Black American households are worth more than $200,000 or more. So this whole faux Huxtable narrative that black bourgeois intellectuals and artists like to push onto people is nothing more than rehashed respectability politics.

How do you market your books online? What has worked best for you? What are some mistakes you’ve come across in marketing your books?

QM: I use a variety of methods. Social media advertising works best. I’ve actually developed a very comprehensive launch marketing strategy for my books, but I will not delve into the specifics of that because it’s too detailed and I’d be damned if I am going to give out trade secrets, lol. All I will say is, social media engagement is very important.

What are the topics you refuse to write about?

QM: I’ll write about any and everything so long as it piques my interest and readers find it interesting.

Do you want to expand your empire to tv, film or music? Do you see yourself writing in other genres?

QM: Yes, that is actually the goal to get into television. Although I see myself making films here and there, I actually prefer television. Seems more up my alley as far as being able to stretch out a plot. Don’t see myself ever getting into music. As far as other genres – honestly, no. I prefer the African American Urban Fiction market because it’s gritty and underground. Besides, I like writing for black folks.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

QM: In five years I see myself with a multi-million dollar publishing house. I would also like to get into real estate. Long term, I would like to tone down the writing a bit and focus more on African American urban young adult fiction because a lot of teenagers do read street lit novels. See for me, I love writing cautionary tales – entertaining, cautionary tales.

What’s the difference between cautionary tales and urban lit?

QM: Well, I am saying it’s my style of writing in the context of urban lit meaning, I am writing with the intent to try to weave in some sort of larger social message. Not all of my books are like that, some honestly were just written simply for the sake of making money. I plan on eventually taking those books down.

So you work is limited time only?

QM: No, certain books like My Bad White Bitch.

So are you going to give Quan Millz a chance? What’s your favorite urban lit book?

Urban Fiction Author, Quan Millz Doesn’t Like ‘Stay Woke Cultural Elitists’ That Discredit Street Lit I think I first discovered Quan Millz and his books on Facebook. I kept seeing these outrageous book titles such as, "Crack Hoe Dreams" and "Pregnant By My Mother's Gay Husband".