#he went from someone who only cared about himself/money to someone who cared about children and making people happy

[weallpartyatybcpatricksfuneral]

my full time job is encouraging people to read the jurassic park books

[misstycloud]

[Yandere.Rich man x ballerina reader]

(I don’t actually know much about ballet so forgive me if things are incorrect!)

—————

Rich. Yandere who was pestered by his friend and his wife to join them at the opera house and enjoy a performance. The couple had asked him numerous times before but he’d always declined. He was a workaholic and didn’t have any other commitments, so there was no need to break his routine. Although he would never admit it to anyone- he barely does to himself- he often find himself imagining a different life; one where he had a wife to welcome him home every evening. Perhaps a few children too. There was no sound besides himself and the staff in his home, it would be so very nice to hear the noise of running feet and happy chatter echo through the empty halls.

Rich. Yandere who is lonely above all else. His family is dead and he has next to no friends- the only one he has is married and devote all his time to keep him company. He knows that he doesn’t have the best track-record of being the kindest person in the world, and he might not be the friendliest or the most out-going, still, doesn’t he deserve some love too?

Rich. Yandere who eventually give into his friends demand and goes with them to the opera. As they took their seats- the expensive and best ones, of course- his friends wife babble on about her favourite dancer. They were regulars there and had seen many performances. He simply sighed and leaned back into his seat, waiting for the show to begin. He could only hope that it’ll be somewhat enjoyable since he doesn’t like wasting his time.

Rich. Yandere who was prepared for it to be a dreadful 3 hours, rubbing his eyes and suffering from lack of blood-flow in his legs. Oh how wrong he was. Instantly his gaze zoomed into you as soon as you stepped forward from behind the curtain. You were so beautiful and you moved your body gracefully to the music. It was magical. While he knew close to nothing about ballet, he knew that the point of it were for the women to look like they’re floating, and it’s exactly what you were doing.

Rich. Yandere who is instantly enamoured with you. As someone who’s never felt love this was all a brand new experience for him. He asked his friend and his wife if they knew who you were, since they frequent the opera so much. And turns out the wife did know who you were; you were her favourite after all. Rich. Yandere was never close with her or particularly liked her even, but he had to give it to her: she has excellent taste in performers.

Rich. Yandere who starts looking up information regarding you. It’s be your name, age, background, family, where you went to school and where you live. Everything. He also begins donating a lot of money to the opera house. In a short amount of time he’s become their nr.1 funder. The managers and owners are ecstatic at the news! They ask why he’s so generous and he simply answers that he loves culture and thinks it’s important it doesn’t disappear. Then, they wonder if there is anything they can do for him return, to which he smiles in response.

“Well, I do suppose there is one dancer I would be delighted to meet in person.”

Rich. Yandere who you feel uncomfortable around. He is so strange. You were just a normal ballerina, a dancer, no better or worse than anyone before your time. That’s why you can’t fathom the interest this wealthy man has taken in you. You two came form completely different worlds! But what can you do when your bosses not-so-gently urge you to see this man alone? You dont have any other skills and can’t apply to another job if you get fired.

Rich. Yandere who is determined to make you fall for him the way he has fallen for you. He’ll take care of you, love you and protect you. You don’t have to worry about a thing. He will do anything for his love.

“Don’t be scared, just keep on dancing, my little dancer.”

[lovelytsunoda]

sweet sounds of heaven | logan sargeant

summary: for two rival bookstore employees vying for promotion, a freak snowstorm trapping them inside the small bookstore may just show them that instead of screwing each other over, maybe they should just be . . . screwing.

pairing: college!logan sargeant x college!female reader

warnings: 18+ for smut, rivals to lovers, sex in a book store, freak weather event or act of god? im a sucker for stories about adorable nerdy girls getting (lovingly) railed by equally sexy nerdy guys. there may or may not be inappropriate use of a wool scarf (read it and find out!)

the cozy store was calm and empty, snow falling rapidly outside. the radio was humming the old bing crosby version of 'white christmas' and the fire in the reading room was pleasantly roaring. she watched the last few customers leave , closing and locking the front door behind them. after flipping the sign from open to closed, she set off towards the break room, knocking on the locked door.

"logan, you better not be vaping in there! not only is it a fire hazard, it will piss mrs. christodolou off to no end. you should be out here helping me clean up after story time."

inside the break room, logan rolled his eyes, exhaling a cloud of passionfruit vape smoke. "gimme a second, hot stuff. someone left their mug full of caked on hot cocoa in the sink."

he'd gotten the mug clean ten minutes ago, and now it was sitting on the drying rack. truthfully, logan just wanted to watch her squirm.

"fine, sargeant. don't help. see if i care."

the pair had been at each other's throats since they'd started working for helen christodolou. the elderly greek woman ran a thriving independant bookstore, which she had started back in the eighties as a horror bookshop and pulp fiction retailer. over the years, it had morphed and changed, becoming the cosy little discount bookseller that y/n knew and loved.

logan had come later, likely because he knew someone who knew someone and really needed a job. he was a slacker, and spent mroe time vaping in the break room than he did helping. but alas, they were the only two full-time employees, and with a promotion on the horizon in the new year, she felt the need to prove that she was better than some blonde trust fund boy who was probably only employed here to keep him out of trouble.

brenda lee was playing now, and y/n was tempted to shout 'bah humbug' and turn the whole thing off. there was only so much christmas music she could take before she needed to listen to something of substance again.

after gathering the broken, dull and smeared crayola crayons off the small craft table that had been set up for children to decorate ornaments, cards and coloring pages at, she unceremoniously threw them into the clear plastic storage tote they came from, and went behind the desk to the desktop that controlled the music. she signed in to her spotify account, navigating over to her winter playlist rather than the compilation currently playing from youtube.

the calming classic rock took over the speakers, but did little to ease her irritation as she continued to clear up the table. the snow was falling harder outside, and she hoped she'd be able to hit the road and be most of the way home before it got any worse.

she heard the break room door open and close, creaking on it's old hinges as logan exited the room, his appearance announced by the lynx deodorant that seemed to follow him everywhere.

you would think that a boy with as much money as he had would make and effort to smell better.

"of course you show up now, when all the work is mostly done."

logan rolled his eyes, grabbing some forgotten books from the shelving cart and putting himself to work at refiling them. "it's not a big deal, y/n. everybody knows helen is giving you the job. its like i'm not even here."

"maybe if you did something other than suck on your fucking flavoured air all day and contributed to the day to day operations of this place, you'd have a shot at that job as well." she scowled up at him, closing cheap coloring books and stacking them on top of the storage tote.

"hey, i suck other things too! things that would make you feel fucking euphoric, if you catch my drift." logan winked from behind a chest-height bookcase housing sci-fi releases.

"i don't want to hear how good you are at giving head, logan. its been a long fucking day, and i just want to go home. so if you could please help me out here, it would be much appreciated."

all the fight was out of her voice now, and logan felt bad. this was no longer the banter that he looked forward to every morning, and the smile he enjoyed seeing was no longer mapped out on her face. instead she looked weathered and sleepy, like a day of working retail and listening to christmas carols had sucked all of the energy out of her.

logan stayed quiet, but y/n noticed the marked effort he made at helping her get the store in closing order, especially when it came to shutting down the point of sale system (which unfortunately cut out the music right in the middle of an inxs song that logan didn't want to admit he was enjoying).

"i'm sorry for being so hard on you." y/n sighed, pulling on her scarf. her tote bag was half packed, resting on the counter behind her. "i'm always in a sour mood once it starts getting darker earlier. something about the end of the year coming up this quickly is making me rethink every choice i've ever made." she tried to smile at logan, let him know she was fine, but her smile didn't quite meet her eyes.

after all, she would just be going home to an empty apartment, with a small and sad looking christmas tree that she bought at a charity store sitting on her side table.

"don't worry about it. i was being a dick for no reason. you didn't deserve it." logan said gently, patting her on the shoulder. "go home and get some rest, i can lock up here."

"thank you." she fished in her bag for the keys to her kia, excitedly walking towards the door. at this rate, she'd be home with enough time to make a small pot of pasta and watch a few episodes of santa clarita diet before she went to bed and slept through her alarm this morning.

except for the fact that she could hear the wind rattling the windowpanes. she couldn't even see out of the side door to where the employee parking lot was, her kia rio a dark cloud behind the wall of snow. she paused, hand on the doorknob as she looked outside. the wind rustled up a forgotten newspaper on the sidewalk, plastering it against the window in the door.

"i just got a message from kyle," logan shouted from behind her. "they've sent out a weather alert, and people have been advised not to leave their homes. i hate to break it to you, but you're better off staying here with me tonight."

"fuck." she cursed, throwing her tote bag at a display of christmas romance books, each looking like it stepped out of the hallmark studio head offices.

from his place behind the counter, logan winced. "i'm really sorry. but i don't think you should be driving right now."

"no, you're probably right about that." she said it calmly, but the more she sat there, the more she seethed with rage. "you know what, if you had gotten off your ass and actually helped me sooner, i could have been home right now!"

"don't get mad at me, please. i had a fight with my dad this morning and i really don't have the energy to fight with another person i love today."

she paused, some of the tightness leaving her chest. another person logan loved? did he really mean her? "i'm sorry." she said softly. "i didn't know."

"he was mad at me because i took my name out of contention for the promotion." logan announced, coming to sit in the doorway with her. his back was against the wall across from her, their feet almost touching.

"why did you do that?"

"because i don't deserve it." logan shrugged, broad shiulders shifting under his cable knit sweater. "i'm just here to prove to my parents that i'm responsible, and i can't even really do that right. you deserve that promotion more than i do. i talked to helen this morning. its yours as long as you still want it."

she smiled at him, nudging his foot with her own. "so there is a heart under there."

"its always been here, y/n. just for you. but you've ignored it, or you've mistaken it for arrogance." he sighed, messing with his collar. "but i guess i deserved it."

she laughed, head tilted back. logan loved that sound, and he swore that he would do anything to hear that sound again. "yeah, you did. but you're really pretty, and it wasn't bothering me half as much as i let on. a little bit of rivals to lovers never hurt anybody, right?"

"we could have been lovers a lot sooner if i'd been honest with you sooner. i really like you, y/n. i think you're fantastic. i love seeing your face light up when you're running activities with the kids, or watching the cute little faces you make when you're reading on break. and don't get me started on your reading glasses," logan gushed, a blush rising on his neck. "which i have had some very impure thoughts about-"

"logan? stop talking."

she leaned across the tile floor, pressing her lips against his as she basically crawled into logan's lap. he pulled her closer as she deepened the kiss, biting gently on his bottom lip.

"what if i told you i fantasized about this?" logan blushed. "hooking up with a sexy librarian after hours." he bit his lip, tugging it between his teeth before i could blurt out that eventually, that librarian had morphed to have y/n's face.

"and what if i told you that i had a fantasy about being fucked by a sexy, blond, muscular librarian?"

"then i would say that we're at an impasse. we can't both be the sexy librarian."

"you don't even read. it's no contest." she giggled, kissing him again, shifting so that she was straddling his lap instead of sitting side-saddle over his cock. "but i can't do this if i'm not absolutely certain that you can see a future with me. that you're not just trying to get in my pants."

logan's face softened, one of his warm, soft hands coming up to cup her face. she looked scared, and a little vulnerable. he wasn't sure if it was the nightmarish weather outside that was doing it, or if it was the shifting of their professional relationship.

"y/n. i have loved you since the first month we started working here. i was just too chickenshit to tell you. and if you won't listen to me tell you how incredible you are, and how much you make my world go around, then please, i am begging you, let me show you."

she sucked in a deep breath, chest rising and falling underneath her tight knit sweater. logan was looking at her with a tender face, a soft expression.

one that somehow reassured her that he was all in. that he didn't think she was weird, or beneath him like so many jocks tended to think. and maybe he wasn't too far out of her league after all. it still felt almost too good to be true. boys like logan sargeant never looked at girls like her.

but with the way he was looking at her now, she deserved to treat herself. to stop playing it safe for once.

her hands found the lapels of her trench coat, gently sliding it off her shoulders. the silence was deafening as it fell to the floor. she reached for her scarf, but logan's gentle hands over hers put a stop to it. carefully wrapping the ends of the scarf around his large hands, logan used the wool to pull her closer, placing a few kisses on her jaw before moving to her lips, relishing in the way her body responded to him.

he tucked his hands under her stockinged thighs, gently rising to his feet. she buried her head in his neck, gently nipping at the skin on his neck.

"easy does it, pretty girl. we're just getting started." logan breathed with a gentle laugh, voice husky. she was clinging to him like a koala, and he used that opportunity to move one of his hands from her thigh to her ass, giving it a gentle slap. her breath caught, and from where her crotch was pressed against his, logan could feel her getting wet. testing a theory, logan smacked her ass again, grinning as her hips bucked forward and against him.

"someone likes that, huh?" he whispered in her ear, sucking on her earlobe before kissing the skin behind her ear, and placing her down on the wingback chair by the electric fireplace.

he sunk to the floor, his knees against the scratchy rug in the reading corner, tugging his tommy hilfiger shirt over his head. he tugged at her scarf, letting it fall to the floor. hestiantly, she rested her legs on his shoulders, slowly undoing the zipper on her sweater, exposing the seafoam green cups of the lace bra she was wearing.

"i didn't expect to get laid today." she blushed, averting her eyes.

logan reached up to caress her face, using her chin to guide her eyes back to him. "look at me, princess. you're beautiful. just as you are." he pressed closer, lips brushing against her stomach twice before he placed an open-mouthed kiss right above her navel. "the other day, when you were explaining how the micheal connelly literary unvierse is all connected, it turned me on so much, pretty girl. i just wanted to bend you over the checkout desk and show you just how insane you make me."

he continued to kiss up her stomach, loving the way she squirmed and arched into him.

"on a scale of one to ten, how attached are you to these tights?"

"like a four, they've already got a run in the crotch, wh-"

she didn't get a chance to finish her sentence before the sound of tearing nylon made her eyes fly open. she stared down at logan in shock. the blond between her legs looked at her with a sheepish grin as he attempted to pull her torn pantyhose off her legs. "i've always wanted to do that. i'll buy you a nicer pair."

"they'll get stuck on my boots, jackass."

"no they won't." logan insisted, reaching for the zipper on the side of her winter boot, before pulling the whole thing off and dropping it on the floor next to him. "see?" he grinned, kissing her ankle. "not an issue."

the blond kissed up her leg, slowly stripping off what remained of her tights as he went. his lips were warm against her cool flesh, and as his head dipped under her skirt, he could feel the warmth radiating from her warm, hot center.

he gently nuzzled his nose against the wet spot forming on her cotton panties, relishing in the sweet, gentle moan she let out.

"logan." she breathed.

"i know, darlin'. i know."

he slipped one finger under the seat of her panties, pushing them aside before his tongue darted out to get a taste. he audibly groaned as he got that first taste of her slick, cock standing to attention. he dove back in, kitten licking at her slit as he pushed her legs wider.

"oh my god, logan." she whined, hips rutting against his face, coating the bottom half of his features in arousal.

his nose nudged against her clit, sending her nerve endings into overdrive. she writhed against the chair, both hands above her to grip the backrest. logan's tongue darted inside of her opening, and he flicked up and down a few times before quickly withdrawing.

"you taste so fucking good, pretty girl. i could come right here, right now, without even touching myself. just from eating you out."

she looked down at logan, who's eyes were closed in bliss as he continued to grip her thighs, head buried between them. he was so close, yet still felt too far away.

because what was the point of it all if not to find a way to be as close as physically possible to another person?

not really sure what she was thinking, she hooked the middle of her scarf around the back of logan's head, and still gripping either end, she used it to pull his head closer against her sweet pussy, moaning heartily as his tongue dove into her center again.

"jesus christ! yes, right there, yes!" she arched her back off the chair, feeling her hard nipples press against the lace of her bra. sweat was forming on her skin, and her chest was heaving.

"that's it, sweet girl." logan's voice was muffled. "keep making those pretty little noises for me, love."

her knuckles were starting to ache from how tightly she was clutching the scarf, the muscles in her arms sizing from the effort of continuously pulling him closer with the woolen fabric.

he raised his head, meeting her eyes and winking at her before ducking under her plaid skirt again to suck at her puffy clit. he slipped his pointer finger inside her opening, finger-fucking her as he pleasured her bundle of nerves. she was falling apart above him, crying out his name as tears of pleasure pricked the corners of her eyes.

"logan, i think i'm gonna-"

"do it, baby. make a mess for me, love."

she came with a cry, a few stray tears creating a bit of moisture around her eyes, slick spilling out over logan's fingers, hand and wrist. her own hands went slack, the scarf falling out of her grip as she fell back against the chair. she could still feel logan's lips on her, leaving gentle kisses along her thigh, his fingers running up and down her calves to help bring her down to earth.

"logan?" she hummed, looking down at him while she carded her fingers through his silken hair.

"yes, my love?"

"i want you to fuck me now."

logan slowly got to his feet, discarding the scarf and scooping her out of the chair in bridal style. he kissed her again, softer this time, and she could taste herself on his tongue. it was a sweet taste, something that had her moaning so sweetly into her lover's mouth.

he sat her down on the edge of one of the display tables, and she watched as he shoved an entire table's worth of christmas romances to the tiled floor. giggling at logan's enthusiasm, she stripped out of her sweater before reaching for the half-zip on his. getting the hint, logan took of his cable knit, revealing a sculpted chest that was still half hidden behind a white wife-beater tank top that was tucked into his jeans, his cock straining against his crotch.

she pulled him into her arms, hooking her legs and arms around him as he began to softly kiss and nibble at her neck. she hummed in contentment, resting her head against his shoulder. she couldn't deny the throbbing between her legs. she was raring to go again, but wanted to enjoy the quiet intimacy before she allowed him to bend her over the table and make her see stars.

his lips were soft against her skin, his hands large and comforting.

"you ready, baby? we don't have to do more if you don't want to." his voice was gravelly and soft, his breath heavy against the shell of her ear. he pulled back, searching her eyes for any signs of hesitation.

"i'm ready, logan. you don't need to worry about me."

she slipped off the edge of the table, gently turning around. she sighed into logan's arms, his warm hands ghosting over her stomach, his lips along her shoulders.

and then she slowly bent over the table, hoping she appeared seductive as she curved her spine, brushing her clothed core against logan's bulge, her plaid skirt riding up enough that he would be able to peek at her panties.

all that could be heard was the roar of the wind outside and the reverence in logan's voice as he ran his fingers along her naked back, deftly unclipping her bra. her trailed open-mouthed kisses down her back, and she felt her heart swell with love and threaten to burst out of her chest at how gently he was handling her.

"you're so fucking beautiful. now that i've gotten a taste, darling, i'm very reluctant to let another man do the same, even though i know i have no say in the matter."

he gently slipped her panties down her legs, watching them pool around her feet on the floor. his large hands undid the top button and zipper on his jeans, and she couldn't resist a look behind her to watch his dick spring to attention.

"jesus, mary mother of god." she mumbled under her breath, only vaguely conscious of what her aunt would refer to as sacrilege.

logan beamed down at her. "like what you see, pretty girl?"

"of course i do. now put it in me, please."

chuckling, logan pushed her skirt up with one hand, guiding her body back towards the table with the other. "your wish is my command."

logan slipped inside slowly, inch by aching inch as her opening widened to welcome him home. he bit his lip, head thrown back and eyes sewn shut in pleasure. she felt like heaven around him, and he had to count to ten to make sure he didn't come prematurely.

"you good, baby?"

"perfect." she purred underneath him, bucking her hips back. "take me, librarian."

"technically not a librarian. just a humble bookseller." he laughed, drawing out and thrusting his cock back in again. "but its not like that matters when i'm making you feel this good, does it?"

he loved watching the way she moved as he hammered his rock-hard cock inside of her sweet hole. the way her spine rippled under her skin, beautiful and strong. hearing the way she breathed and gasped and whined his name, small hand reaching to grasp his behind her back, fingers interlaced as he pounded her against the table.

"you feel so fucking good, baby. you're taking my fucking cock so well." he praised, vaguely aware of the table legs creaking as it jutted forward with each thrust. "so good for me."

"fuck, logan. i feel so full." she attempted a weak laugh, too overcome with how he was making her feel. "so good." the hand that wasn't squeezing the life out of logan's lurched forward to find purchase on the underside of the table as a particularly hard thrust pitched her forward. "jesus, right there! yes, yes!"

"that's it, baby. don't be afraid to tell me exactly what you want. let me make every dirty thought in your mind come true. anything you've ever read in one of those smutty little books of yours, just tell me, i'm your guy. i'll fuck you on the rolling ladder, eat your pretty fucking pussy between stacks of books. anything you want me to."

"logan, i'm coming-"

"that's it, baby. you can do it. give me another one. good girl, that's it." logan stuttered, feeling his own release draw closer, triggered by the feeling of her come all over his bare cock. "christ!" he blurted, pulling out as quick as he could, watching his release spill all over her plush ass, even seeping below the hem of her skirt. "motherfucker." he furiously pumped his cock, trying to squeeze out the last few stubborn drops before slumping against her body, reconnecting his hand with hers.

"i'll clean that up." he mumbled. "sorry about the mess."

"don't worry about it. i have a good shower at home." she giggled lazily, spent and content. she felt the table rock beneath her, and turned to face logan. "log-"

she didn't get a chance to finish her sentence before she felt the table give out underneath her. she spat out a curse as she hit the ground, feeling all of the wind get knocked form her lungs (along with her bra off her chest).

"shit, are you okay?" logan laughed, trying to do up his jeans as he sat up. "give me your hand, let me help."

"can i put my bra on first?"

"i mean, i wouldn't mind if you didn't, but it is kinda cold in here. let me grab your sweater."

getting to her feet and on slightly shaky legs, she managed to laugh at him. "what a gentleman."

logan shrugged, draping the sweater over her bare shoulders. "it's the least i can do after i tore your nylons to shreds and came on your ass. you really should let me clean that up. i don't want to stain your skirt."

she cut him off with a soft kiss, her underwear stuck somewhere underneath the fallen table. "logan, stop talking. what are we going to do about the table?"

"run away and blame the weather?"

[chrollohearttags]

CHARACTER ANALYSIS: EREN JAEGER AKA EJ THE DON

so in honor of me finally reviving Reverb, I decided to do some character analyses and info cards, if you will. These were so much fun (and a lot of work) to make and I really hope y’all like them. I was heavily inspired by a wonderful, talented mutual of mine and her amazing character analysis she did for her series a while back! As always, y’all know reblogs and comments are appreciated!! (Fair warning, this is a long read but it’s been in the works since last year and I hope y’all enjoy)

╔═*.·:·.✧ ✦✧.·:·.*═╗ ╔═*.·:·.✧ ✦✧.·:·.*═╗ ╔═*.·:·.✧ ✦✧. ✦✧.

name: Eren Michael Jaeger | date of birth + sign: March 31st, 1998 (aries sun) | age: 26 | aliases/nickname: EJ, Eren, EJ The Don, The Underground God, Rennie | pronouns: he/him/his | sexuality: straight (but a bit bi-curious) | race/ethnicity: white, italian/turkish + german

song in the video: ChainSwang - BONES (slowed and reverb ver.)

biography and early life: Eren was born in Montclair, New Jersey to his mother Carla and father, Dr. Grisha Jaeger. The couple met while Carla was working as a bottle girl at a gentleman’s club called Starlets in New York, when she was nineteen years old. (age gap oops)

Grisha, who was working at Mount Sinai as part of his residency, was twenty seven at the time and married to (but separated from) socialite and heiress, Dina Fritz. The two were a classic case of opposites attracting and it didn’t take long for their bond to flourish from a one night fling to something far more. A year into their relationship, Carla learned that she was pregnant and Grisha, who had annulled his first marriage some months prior, proposed right away and the couple settled in the suburbia township to raise their newborn son. Eren was described as a ‘very enigmatic and unique child’. Growing up, he was said to have always had a natural inclination towards music. From playing on toy keyboards to babbling songs into his Spider-Man karaoke machine at just three years old, it seemed that early on, the young prodigy was shaping his destiny. Eren attended the Montclair Township Charter Elementary, alongside his childhood best friends, Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Artlert, who were among many of the children of affluent families. He was extremely intelligent and schoolwork was a breeze. The problem was that he could be less interested! Eren struggled to focus and with maintaining relationships, which worried his mom. She took him to therapists, sought counseling and even considered moving him to alternative school when he began getting into trouble.

She worried what would happen to him…but luckily, her fears were for nothing because soon, Eren would show her and the entire world his true purpose. When he was ten years old, Carla enrolled her son in lessons for piano and guitar. During this time, he began to really hone his musical talent, and needless to say, he was a prodigy. All but mastering everyone he picked up. This seemed to be the area that little EJ most thrived in. Even his friendships began to grown. Having left New Jersey before they went to middle school, Mikasa and Armin were the only two people he'd bonded with. But eventually, Eren found companionship in several people from all walks of life and other areas of town. He didn't care about how much money someone had or what they looked like, he just enjoyed like minded people. Finding himself hanging out, playing basketball, skating and of course, making music. However, his father was less than pleased with his academic performance and new group of comrades. As the son of a prestigious doctor, Eren knew that his father wouldn’t approve of his hobbies if his grades weren’t up to par but he never expected that the catalyst for his dreams would be their falling out..when Eren was 15 years old, he made the decision to leave home and emancipate himself from his parents after a horrendous fallout with his dad.

It came as a shock to his friends, who felt that his life was objectively better than their own. However, it was the principle and anyone who truly knew the situation..knew that it was a long time coming and much deserved. Years of being put down or not acknowledged for refusing to follow in his footsteps and the final straw came when his father's cowardice and lying caused him to lose someone very important to him. Something that Eren could not forgive (explaining this later in the story!) After receiving $300 from his older half brother, young EJ boarded a bus to Miami, not looking back once. And he was fully prepared to make a life for himself, one not attached to his dad's name..no matter the cost. After arriving in Florida, Eren would work odd jobs to provide for himself and found housing at a local boys home in the Northside area. Just two blocks from Ocean Shore High School, where he finished out the remainder of his junior and senior years. It was then that he met fellow classmates and future group members Connie Springer and Onyakopon 'Ony' Baptiste (he doesn't canonically have a last name that I am aware of so I gave him one and I will explain it in his own backstory). The three of them immediately bonded and only grew closer when they played on the varsity basketball team together and began working at a local shoe store in the Aventura Mall. This would be the first time that the world would get a glimpse into Eren's musical talents when his friends would record him singing Miguel's "Sure Thing' in the backroom of the store and posted it online.

career: After going viral, Eren began to take his craft even more serious. Going from penning rhymes in his notebook between periods to doing makeshift recording sessions in the chorus classroom, he would post covers and original songs to a YouTube channel as well his Sound Cloud. He would save a portion of his paychecks and do yard, mechanic and janitorial work for neighbors to procure studio time. He eventually saved up and purchased a MacBook, and began making instrumentals. It was during this time that he began working a temp job for a local underground club, where artists like Denzel Curry, Ice Billion Berg and Pouya got their starts. Hired to clean up after sets and during closing, Eren would listen in on the performances, watching, studying and observing the rappers' movements. Having never done an official performance, it was an area he had no experience in. But during an open mic night at the club, he got an opportunity and didn't miss! Debuting one of his now infamous tracks, First Degree, Eren once again shocked everyone with how talented and charismatic he was. It was almost as if rapping and singing came as naturally as speaking did. Now 18 years old, graduated from high school and riding the momentum of his first stage set, Eren continued to grind. Working by day and recording and writing by night. It was then that he began going by the name EJ the Don after Ony joked about his New Jersey and Italian origins, implying that he must have 'mafia ties' because he assimilated into life in this rough area so well. His image and brand slowly came together afterwards..embracing the dark, edgy aesthetic coupled with his buttery smooth voice and unique lyricism, Eren was in a league all on his own.

And it didn't take long for the rising star to catch the attention of some big names in the industry, including renowned Neo-Soul artist and five time Grammy winner Vivian James. Who was not only doing a show at the Miami Amphitheater for a music festival but scouting prospects for the talent agency giant, Ackerman Management Group. Known for catapulting the careers of some of the biggest names in music, modeling and acting. Still building his reputation, EJ got the chance of a lifetime when he not only received a job request but an invitation from Vivian herself, looking for a backup vocalist and pianist. Naturally, being a huge fan on top of a starving artist, Eren immediately accepted and the rest was history! Vivian was blown away that he was able to recite the songs verbatim and so perfectly on such a short notice..so much so, she gave Eren an offer he couldn't refuse: an audition with AMG on the condition that he would work as her protege regardless and it was a no brainer. Two days after his nineteenth birthday, EJ the Don officially signed with Ackerman Management Group, the family business of his old childhood friend, Mikasa. Who was going by the stage name Mika ASH. But it wasn't smooth sailing for the new rap sensation..although he was Vivian's protege, he captured the attention of other executives who was interested in more than his music. Unfortunately, it caused them to try and take advantage of him, both career wise and physically. Eren persevered and focused on what his goal truly was and that was sharing his gift with the world. Six months after being signed, he released his first EP, Living Dead Boy. He went on tour shortly after and released Living Dead Boy II: The Casket Chronicles a year later. Fast forward and Eren took the 'horrorcore' rap scene and the internet by storm, with his gritty wordplay and captivating visuals. Ten years later, he is hailed as the Underground God and widely credited for reshaping the genre as a whole.

musical muses: BONES (the character playlist can be found here), $uicideBoys, August Alsina, Jon Dretto

notable achievements: LivingDeadBoy I sold 50,000 units its first week and debuted number seven on the charts. But his debut single, First Degree was number two on the charts and widely viral on social media. LivingDeadBoy II: The Casket Chronicles sold five times with 250,000 units and at just 20 years old, EJ had his first sold out tour in North America. His debut album was very successful and received two Grammy nominations. (even though he doesn't give a shit about awards and accolades) EJ the Don has released over ten EP's and five mixtapes, as well as three studio albums, one being a visual series. He has gone on to produce, write with and direct for several other artists, including Prince Cee + Ony the God, his high school friends and fellow musicians. He has earned 2 VMA's and appeared in a BET Hip Hop Awards cypher. He has headlined two North American tours seperately and three international ones alongside his groupmates. EJ has made many accomplishments in his ten year rap reign and is far from done.

personality traits, flaws, etc: Eren can be described as very emotional by some yet stoic in the same breath. He can be temperamental, not thinking hostile actions through sometimes. He acts of his own accord without considering other peoples’ feelings. He’s very blunt, and won’t hesitate to speak his mind. He CANNOT hide his true feelings for shit (if his mouth doesn’t say it, his face surely will.) There are times when he’ll go days without answering his phone or making contact with anyone because he loves being in his own little world. Friendships, partners..it honestly doesn’t make a difference if you’re around or not. Especially when he’s locked in, working on important projects. He shuts down when he doesn’t want to deal with something and you’ll have better luck catching a pig flying than him apologizing or doing what he’s told! In the same vein, Eren can be very emotional..it’s almost like a dam breaking. When he finally cracks, it’s hard to control the flood with him. He gets really intense, whether he’s crying, laughing or angry. He’s very passionate when he cares about something and he’ll let it be known. Behind that rough exterior is a gentle, sweetheart of a man that just throws his all into whatever or whoever he loves.

relationship status: Eren is currently seeing the influencer and rising star of pole dancing, (Y/N) (L/N). The pair has been in a low key relationship for some months now, taking it slow and really getting to know one another. Although they started with a hot and steamy romance, sprouting from years of loneliness and celibacy from them both, they’ve really grown to care deeply for one another. He puts a lot of effort into making sure he contacts her regularly bc it is not easy to keep his attention and always gifts her the most expensive and thoughtful things. He never seen himself as the lovey dovey type, but anyone that knows EJ..will tell you that he’s fallen head over heels for miss (L/N)!

physical descriptors: EJ is 6’3, just barely 195 pounds with a slender but toned frame. He’s been working out quite a bit since his last project and tour so he’s a little more jacked than before. He has several tattoos including full sleeves with various pieces he’s been getting since he was 16 years old. A few of his most notorious being the serpent and chain going around his hand all the way to his shoulder, the pink rose with the name ‘Ma’Kiya’ tattooed in one of the petals on his back (🌚) and his mom’s name. He has dark green eyes, brownish black hair that he wears in a half up-half down style most of the time. Occasionally though, he’ll wear it down and grow out facial hair. He’s always wearing some sort of jewelry..his infamous ‘The Don’ chain, as well as his bottom silver grills. His fashion sense varies on his mood.

hobbies + interests: when he’s not in the booth, Eren is somewhere tinkering with cars! He particularly loves older model vehicles and will spend days working to fix them. He loves going to the racetrack, sitting in the skybox like a little kid and watching drag cars and motorcycles go down the strip. He also loves to paint and draw, even designing a majority of his tattoos. (fun fact: he gifted (Y/N) a portrait of one of his favorite photos of her on her birthday.) and of course, he’s a huge gamer. His fans look forward to seeing him on Twitch, being stressed out by whatever franchise he’s delving to at the moment. Especially when he’s with his friends or (Y/N).

@violetxxvenom @shamelesshoefairy @shawtuzi

[linkspooky]

CHIHIRO IS NOT A HERO

So once again it's time to make a post where it seems like I'm hating on everyone's favorite character. Chihiro is a pretty unique main character, and unlike the main characters of most revenge centered storylines a lot of time goes to developing Chihiro's soft side. He spends the first arc trying to protect a child, in the auction arc he gives up the tool of his revenge to protect Hakuri and even goes out of his way to lecture Hakuri's father for abusing his son. There is a lot of humanity and depth to Chihiro's character and a lot of people use that to ignore the darker parts of his character.

At the same time Chihiro is a mass murderer with a body count in the hundreds at this point. One redditor has the count at about 203 people and it's probably only grown since then.

Chihiro slaughters people en masse without the slightest hint of hesitation or remorse. They're all crimminals yes, low level mooks for the Samura organization or servants of the Sazanami family or whoever Chihiro is fighting this week but that's still 200 human lives. And I'm pretty sure not every single one of the people Chihiro killed kicked puppies every single morning, drank, then went home to beat their wives and children.

Over two hundred people who could have turned a new leaf and done some good for the world if they had lived, who probably had family members or loved ones are all dead and the only reason that we don't really feel this number is the story never really stops to dwell on them. Imagine if Chihiro beheaded one of these guys and then it launched into a five chapter flashback about how this man was just hard on money because he went through so much misfortune in life and he needed money to pay for his wife's cancer treatments, and then in the last chapter of the flashback as the man dies it cuts to the doctor pulling the plug and letting the man's wife die because he wasn't there to make the payment.

If we got to see the story from any of the hundreds of faceless people that Chihiro killed, then Chihiro would kind of come off looking like an asshole but we don't really see that because the story is mostly centered on Chihiro. This is what I mean when I use the term "Protagonist-centered Morality", it's always good to try to pay attention to the way that the story uses framing to support or question the protagonist's actions.

One of the first secnes in Kill Bill is the Bride killing a little girl's mother in front of her, as revenge for what the mother Copperhead did to her years ago. If the story were told from the point of view of the little girl rather than the Bride, the daughter wouldn't care about the Bride's motivation she'd only be focused on avenging the death of her mother. The same way that the Bride can't see that she is actively creating a new victim by depriving a child of a mother, to pursue her own path of revenge.

"Protagonist-Centered Morality" is a term I use when a story wants us not to question the morals of a protagonist, so they tend to cheat using perspective or framing to make it so the protagonist is always in the right. In the example above, you don't really question the Bride's action of killing Coppheread because her daughter never shows up again.

However, I think Kagurabachi is aware of protagonist centered morality and has been trying to subvert it from the get go. The narrative is just attempting to use subtler methods to call out the fact that Chihiro's revenge is not moral or just, and also is incredibly short sighted.

This begins even in the first arc of the story, where Chihiro is forced to acknowledge that while he believed his father created the enchanted blades as tools used to protect others, someone else could interpret those swords as just tools for death and destruction.

The fight ends with Chihiro being forced to agree with the remorseless killer that yes, these swords which Chihiro had always told himself his father created to protect others and defeat evil are ultimately just killing tools.

Chihiro has to accept a point of view that is contrary to his own, and has to conclude that their point of view is equally as valid because despite the fact that Chihiro personally knew his father and knew his father's intentions in creating the swords what he created were nonetheless weapons of mass destruction and it's easy to see how a complete outsider can only see these weapons as what they were created to be... you know... weapons.

Chihiro until this point didn't want to deal with the morality that if you are going to make a weapon, you usually intend for that weapon to be used to kill someone else. Which is something his father even tried to stress upon him up until he died.

The story doesn't have a problem with protagonist centered morality, in fact as I'm highlighting above the very first arc the story is asking the question "How are you any different from this remorseless mass murderer, huh Chihiro?" However, Chihiro himself suffers from a case of protagonist centered morality. Or you could call it egocentrism. Or just plain old fashioned self-righteousness.

Regardless, Chihiro despite being a character who exists in a morally gray place, killing hundreds of people to get his hands on the magical swords so they won't be used to hurt even more people - Chihiro himself has a very black and white sense of morality. In spite of the fact Chihiro is using these powerful swords to rip hundreds of people limb from limb in the most brutal fashion possible, he answers with a simple "These swords exist to defeat evil and protect the weak."

I will give credit never does Chihiro see himself as aligned on the side of good. From the first chapter onward he aligns himself on the side of the monsters, he is an insane person, he is an evil fighting a greater evil.

At no point does Chihiro ever claim that his actions are good, but he does think they are justified. Which are two different things. Chihiro is never on the side of angels, he says multiple times he believes he will be going to hell after all of this is done, however despite knowing what he is doing is wrong he can willfully justify all the people he has killed to himself. He believes deep down that his actions still fall in line with defeating evil, and protecting the weak.

The moments that Chihiro hesitates are when he is not able to see his enemies as an absolute evil to be slaughtered. Chihiro chides himself for feeling empathy for the other members of the Sazanami family and hesitating because he could understand how much they desired to live up to the expectations of their father.

This is a good thing, it's Chihiro's empathy that leads him to occasionally put his revenge aside to help people like the little girl in the first arc and Hakuri. It's this humanity that the story stresses over and over again that makes him a likable character, but for Chihiro seeing any humanity in his enemies is a problem because he needs to be able to do whatever is necessary in order to destroy evil.

Which means Chihiro can't fight unless he sees his enemy as an absolute evil that needs to be exterminated.

This is of course something which the story the story challenges Chihiro on in every successive arc, but it is also his central and most damning flaw. Chihiro narratives his pain in order to cope. He grew up on hearing the story of his father and the men who fought the war wielding the enchanted blades as heroes. He immortalizes his dead father in those stories.

This has led Chihiro to construct a story where he is the protagonist, fighting evil. He may not be the good guy, but the guys he is fighting are still an unquestionable evil that needs to be exterminated for the good of everyone. In spite of the fact that Chihiro is one mass murderer, hunting down other mass murderers Chihiro still tries to divide the world into good and evil, the innocent and the guilty. If he can justify what he's doing as fighting evil then he doesn't have to stop and question his own actions and keep following his revenge story right to the end.

There's a scene in the new Daredevil show where the Punisher, famed revenge based Marvel anti-hero is surprised that the cops are a huge fan of him and have started shooting performing executions of criminals in his name. Despite the fact that the Punisher's entire character and motive revolves around him dubbing himself judge, jury and executioner of whatever criminal he has decided to kill he is surprised that the cops would take after his example. That's basically Chihiro's entire character in a nut shell.

Chihiro does step by step accept other people's points of view even when they contradict with his own all the way from the first arc, but it also always ends with: "Yeah, but I'm gonna kill you anyway."

Even when Chihiro acknowledges the humanity of the people he's fighting against, the only way he knows how to deal with the situation is to cut them down with thicker bloodlust. There's no peaceful resolution or de-escalation in Chihiro's world, he is trying to break the cycle of violence with even more violence.

It reminds me of one of my quotes from Critical Role.

My friends, I have just taken an audience with the Raven Queen who has snuffed any hope of my redemption, for which I am truly grateful. With new clarity, I can finally see my life as a series of compounding, poor choices. There was nothing I could've done to save my family, yet I still sold my soul in search of vengeance. Later I allowed Ripley to leave, knowing full well she was a greater threat to the world than the Briarwoods would ever be. I traded the world's safety for the belief that I could murder my way to peace; that if I could be a greater horror, it would bring my family back. Once this lie was shattered I scrambled to find a solution, to make a deal, to undo my mistakes and balance the scales. I now understand that there are no scales, there is no redemption, and no ledger that judges me good or evil. I am free to simply be myself and live with the terrible mistakes I've made.

Chihiro believes the lie that he can murder his way to peace and mind, that if he can be a greater horror than the horror he's experienced then he can somehow right the wrong of his father's death.

Chihiro does entertain the idea that he is not much different than the enemies he's fighting over and over again, but he always falls back on a similiar justification.

Hiruhiko is the opposite of Chihiro in a way. Chihiro was raised by a loving father with stories of his father's heroism in order to give him ideals to aspire to. Hiruhiko is a child assassin, who committed his first murder at a young age raised with absolutely nothing else, just a tool who sees no meaning in life or death.

Yet, at the same time they are both children who's childhoods were taken away from them. They are children who were once innocent but have been now groomed into murderers. They are children who experienced a horrific violence at a young age that make it impossible for them to go back to a normal life. They are children who don't even know what it means to go to school, or to hang out with friends.

Hiruhiko can see this similarity between them while Chihiro doesn't, because again of the way they are inversions of one another. Hiruhiko has nothing, no ideals, no close friends, so he seeks them out. He wants friendship because he's never experienced that before in his life. He seeks out something other than death and destruction, connection with a human being even if he can only understand it through the lens of death because that's all he knows.

On the other hand Chihiro is someone how has friendship, and connections to other people, he has love in his life that he deliberately chooses to ignore in his pursuit of revenge. Chihiro has that love and throws it away because it makes him a better killer, and that is why they are opposites. We all make fun of the "every day I wake up with fresh hatred" quote, but that is literally what he is doing. Chihiro is deliberately stamping out any empathy he might feel for his enemies at every opportunity so he can continue cutting them up into hundreds of pieces.

It's all the more alarming because Chihiro is willing to amend his viewpoints. He is starting to question on some level that maybe the people he thought were heroes weren't heroes after all, and he is listening to Samura who says that no matter what his actions are he's going to hell because killing is an absolute wrong. In fact what he respects about Samura is that he was willing to go to hell in order to do the right thing and protect other people.

However, the point remains that Chihiro doesn't really know any way to peace other than slaughtering his enemies. The thought of de-escalation, or healing never even occurs to him. Even Chihiro's respect for Samura's resolve to go to hell for his sins ignores the fact that maybe Samura can be forgiven. Maybe he can turn over another leaf and work to right his wrongs rather than just going to hell forever and being tortured for his sins. Chihiro is so wrapped up in this narrative of justice and punishment for both himself and others he's completely forgotten that forgiveness and healing exists.

Even Chihiro's current stance that he knows that he is a bad guy and will be going to hell for his murders but he intends to take the rest of the bad guy's with him is incredibly toxic and paralleled by Samura himself.

Chihiro's morality is probably the closest to Samura's right now, the man willing to sacrifice both himself and the other sword wielders for the greater good of preventing another nuke from dropping. However, as righteous as Samura is he is also literally blind.

Samura's belief that if he kills all of the sword wielders and then dies himself, going to hell with the Hishaku will be the utlimate good he can achieve with his life ignores the feelings of his daughter. Samura walked all over his daughter's desire to stay with him, deliberately abandoning her and then erasing all memory that he ever existed from her.

It underlines what I'm trying to get at, there may be a certain amount of selflessness in Chihiro and Samura choosing to walk to hell in order to punish the evil of the world but there's no love or empathy on that path. If you choose the path of revenge, then there's no redemption for you or your enemy.

While Chihiro's line of thinking has progressed to Samura's thinking, that he is not a hero, that murder is evil and what he's ultimately doing is evil to serve a perceived greater good he still does not see any alternative pathway he could take besides walking the road to hell.

However, even if Chihiro and Samura were able to accomplish their goals and the only people they sacrificed in the end were themselves that still wouldn't be a good thing because you can't end the cycle of revenge with more revenge. That cycle is just going to keep cycling. You can't murder your way to peace.

This is shown to us in the horrible secret of the war that Samura was made aware of but Chihiro has not yet.

The the people who invaded japan weren't actually monsters to be eliminated but a nation full of people who surrendered, and who were then mass murdered after signing a peace treaty.

This is the extreme to where Samura and Chihiro's logic of becoming evil to fight evil leads. If there's no surrender no chance for a peaceful reconcilitation or an understanding of both sides, then the conflict is just going to keep escalating until one side completely wipes out the other.

And this is where I'm going to use my famous powers of clairyvoyance for a prediction.

This kid right here who's shown cowering in his mother's arms right before the peace treaties were signed. I am goign to bet that this kid is still alive and that he's actually Yura. The big twist we're going to build up to during the confrontation between Yura and Chihiro is that Yura is the last surviving member of that island nation that was wiped out, and his current plans are revenge for what happened to his people.

At that point whose revenge is right? Or maybe, just maybe... the point is revenge is never right.

[minastras]

the poet and the rosarian // changmin

With his million watt smile and magnetic presence, Ji Changmin has had a lifelong 100% adoration rating. You would know: you’ve been attached at the hip since you were three years old. He’s always been obsessed with the idea of falling in love, chasing relationship after relationship in search of his soulmate. You think you’ve already found yours, but you’d never be good enough for him.

at a glance: university au, childhood best friends to lovers, secretly in love x oblivious idiot trope, fluff and angst but i hope it’s comforting above all, PINING, gender neutral reader, ft. 98z

words: 14.5k

warnings: alcohol consumption, minor death mention

notes: this is my favourite fic i’ve ever written so please look upon it kindly <3 (also spin-off for juyeon in the works so stay tuned!)

edit: spin-off completed! find it here xx

——————————

i. some people turn sad awfully young.

You were generally a well-behaved kid growing up with one exception: you weren’t with Ji Changmin, the neighbourhood menace and your best friend. Some (your parents) called him a terrible influence. Others (Ji Changmin) argued he helped bring you out of your shell, throwing a rope around your waist and dragging you kicking and screaming behind him.

Alone you were serious and withdrawn, but with him you were a handful. He was the one who forced you to talk to the other kids on the playground instead of hiding behind him and letting him do the talking for you. The only time you weren’t trying to set people’s rubbish bins on fire or doing dangerous flips off the playground monkey bars was when you were at the house at the end of the street.

You and Changmin went there often; the elderly man Mr. Lee there lived alone and welcomed the company. He’d give you both chores to do to keep you out of trouble and paid you for your efforts. Changmin took care of his rose bushes, and you dusted the bookshelves.

One day, Mr. Lee asked Changmin to harvest twelve red roses while he supervised his work with a watchful eye. You sat at the kitchen counter while he carefully arranged the roses in a tall glass vase, enraptured by the deftness of his usually shaky and frail hands.

“Who are those for?” Changmin asked.

Mr. Lee smiled, the type of syrup-sweet smile adults only gave to children. “It’s my wife’s death anniversary.”

You pointed to a small, black-and-white photograph of a woman sitting neatly in a silver frame on the TV cabinet. “Is that her?”

“Yes. We were high school sweethearts,” Mr. Lee began, smiling wistfully. “I lost her four years ago, and I miss her more and more everyday.”

You sat and listened politely as he told you about her illness, hands resting on your knees, thinking you should make an effort to visit him more often. Beside you Changmin was tearing up, his bottom lip trembling in the way little kids’ lips always did when they tried not to cry.

“Don’t be upset,” Mr. Lee chuckled, ruffling Changmin’s hair. “Everyone returns to the universe eventually. Here you go.”

He pulled his wallet out of his pocket, dropped a small pile of coins into yours and Changmin’s outstretched hands, and sent you on your way.

The walk from Mr. Lee’s house to the corner shop wasn’t a long one. He meant to teach you about the value of money, but being the children you were, you two always blew all your earnings immediately on sweets.

Changmin usually talked on the way there, but that day he was strangely quiet.

“I wonder when I’ll find my soulmate,” he mumbled after a long silence. “When I grow up I’m going to love someone as much as Mr. Lee loves his wife.”

——————————

It very quickly became clear as the two of you grew up that Changmin was everything you were not. He was a forever-smiling boy who attracted people to him like iron to a magnet. Every adult in the neighbourhood doted on him, and everyone at school wanted to be his friend.

Why wouldn’t they? He was one of those people who sucked the marrow out of life, who gave all of himself to anyone who asked. He loved life so much he was overflowing with it.

But he never left you behind, despite kids far cooler and more popular than you vying for his attention. On weekends, instead of going to the parties he was constantly being invited to, he went to Mr. Lee’s house with you to take care of the elderly man’s rose bushes.

After school, too old and proud for the playground but too nostalgic to let it go, you sat together on the curb and watched the cars fly by. He would point out the ones he liked, saying, “I’ll buy that one for my mom someday.”

You’d smile. “You and what money?”

And then he’d shove you and call you a cynic.

In your binary star system, he was the sentimental one, crying on Saturday movie nights and writing you birthday cards that got longer and sappier by the year. While you loved him with all your heart and had no doubt he knew that too, you could never find a way to show him that. And you were certain that someone like him, who felt so deeply and loved so freely, would get fed up eventually.

“Come sit with us, Changmin,” the star football player of school offered to him during lunch once when you were fourteen, staring at you with disdain. Behind him, the entire cafeteria was watching. Changmin reached for your hand and laced his fingers with yours.

“No thank you,” he said sweetly, with his trademark dimpled smile that blinded you every time you saw it.

Perhaps you weren’t binary stars at all. Perhaps he was the only star — pure and golden and dazzling — and you were his planet, illuminated by him only insofar as you were in his orbit. You didn’t mind, though. Comets couldn’t have bright tails without debris around them to ignite. Not everybody could be special.

“I’m so nervous,” Changmin whined, grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking you vigorously. You were fifteen, standing with him in the corridor as he clutched a bouquet of six red roses to his chest, courtesy of Mr. Lee.

“You’ll be fine,” you assured him.

The soon-to-be recipient of the bouquet, Dain, emerged from around the corner. Dain was one of the prettiest girls in school and the apple of Changmin’s eye for the last month. He’d told Mr. Lee about her and asked him if he, too, became giddy when he looked at his wife back when they were teenagers.

“Here I go,” he declared, his hands shaking. You had no doubt in your mind that Dain would accept the flowers; it was Ji Changmin, after all.

It took you far too long to realise you were hopelessly in love with your best friend. You were sixteen. It wasn’t a grand bold declaration that he was choosing you over the popular kids in front of the entire school, or a green-eyed epiphany from one of his sappy romantic gestures to whoever he was in love with at the time.

No, it was one of your Saturday movie night sleepovers. It was his turn to choose the film, so of course you were watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As usual, he laughed throughout the film while you sat frozen in fear under the blanket.

That night, after you retreated to your bedroom to try and sleep despite still reeling from the movie, Changmin opened your door. You screamed, jumping out of your skin.

“Sorry. I came to check on you,” he said softly.

You sighed, heart still racing, and closed your eyes to regain your composure. “I thought you were Leatherface,” you groaned, throwing the orange stuffed octopus he gave you for your twelfth birthday at him.

He giggled, caught the octopus, and walked over to your bed. “Okay, move over.”

“Why?” you frowned.

“Move over. I’ll keep you safe,” he promised.

That was the moment, when he climbed into bed with you and tucked your octopus back into your arms and pulled your head against his chest.

The thing about crushing on someone you’d known for so long was that he didn’t make you nervous like other crushes did, not really. He wasn’t a source of anxiety; he was a sedative. You stopped thinking about the movie and relaxed into his touch, burying your face into his soft maroon hoodie that smelt like fabric softener.

“I’m here now. He can’t get you,” he whispered, running his fingers through your hair.

His presence seemed to make everything go away — the faint knocks you kept hearing outside your window, the dark shadows you kept spotting as your paranoid eyes played tricks on you.

You never told him, obviously. You shared every other aspect of your life with him, but this you had to keep to yourself. Through his dozens of crushes and relationships, through the piles of chocolates he received every Valentine’s Day, you gritted your teeth and never said a word. Such was the condemnation of a one-sided love.

——————————

Changmin liked giving roses to people; it was his thing. It started when he was eleven and gave a red rose to his crush at the time. A single flower became a handful, and a handful became a deliberately arranged bouquet wrapped in gauzy tissue and matching ribbons. Mr. Lee was always happy to let him nick a few roses from his garden whenever he wanted — it was for love, after all.

The habit continued all the way into the end of high school. Changmin swung past Mr. Lee’s house after school that day with you to pick up some roses. It was the day before his then-girlfriend Mikyoung’s birthday, and he wanted to surprise her.

He still vividly remembered that night. He was almost eighteen, standing outside the girls’ track team’s locker room waiting for Mikyoung to emerge after her training. You were stationed down the corridor with his phone in your hand, ready to film the surprise.

“I thought you were dumping Changmin today.”

Mikyoung’s voice was light and breathy. “Oh, yeah, I forgot. I’ll do it soon.”

“Why the rush? He’s cute.”

“He’s too clingy. I thought he’d be cooler, with the way everyone talks about him,” Mikyoung answered. “Whatever, I got what I wanted. I was never gonna keep him around, anyway.”

Changmin froze. Surely things like this didn’t happen in real life. Surely people this cruel didn’t actually exist.

He was vaguely aware of a presence behind him, but he couldn’t make himself turn around until you actually called his name.

“Min? What’s wrong?” you asked, only for your attention to be drawn away by the voices inside the locker room.

“Yeah, you made it, girl. You dated the Ji Changmin.”

“You better break up with him soon. It’s my turn next, remember?”

Changmin didn’t notice his grip on the bouquet getting progressively tighter and tighter until the thorns of the roses pierced through the wrapping paper and into the flesh of his palm, the stalks crushing in his hand.

“How do you even know he’ll like you?”

“Please, he’s a serial monopolist. I just need to bat my eyelashes and call him babe and he’ll be mine.”

“You mean monogamist, you moron,” you muttered to the girl you couldn’t even see. He would’ve laughed at that — it wasn’t often that you spoke so bluntly and with so much contempt — but there were other things on his mind.

“I want to go home,” he said quietly, not to be heard by anyone but you.

You looked ready to burst into the locker room and give Mikyoung a piece of your mind, with a quiet rage blazing in your eyes he wasn’t used to seeing from you, but the second you heard him it dissipated.

“Okay,” you nodded, taking his free hand, “let’s go.”

It was a short and silent bus ride back to his house; Changmin hated talking when he was upset and you were the only person on the planet who never forced him to. Nor did you say anything when he aggressively acted as though everything was normal, bringing an armful of snacks up to his bedroom and turning his speakers on to play music as he usually did whenever you two hung out.

He tossed the bouquet carelessly onto his bedside table and shut the door behind him, not wanting his parents to see it and ask questions.

“What happened to your hand?” you asked. “Come here, I’ll help you.”

There were superficial cuts on the heel of his palm from the roses’ thorns, though none were deep enough to bleed and most barely broke the skin.

Changmin said nothing, only sitting cross-legged on his bed with you and letting you brush liquid bandage over the cuts. You hummed along to his playlist as you did, even though he knew you didn’t like this song.

“Why would she do that to me?” he finally said, fighting off the ache behind his eyes he hadn’t felt in a long time.

You sighed sympathetically. “I don’t know. Min. I’m sorry.”

He never understood why people said they were sorry for things they had nothing to do with. If it had been anyone else he might have gotten annoyed, but he could never get annoyed at you.

“Don’t say that,” he mumbled, the ache now too much to bear. He palmed away his tears and sniffed. “You always apologise when other people hurt me.”

At last, you looked up at him and smiled, although your eyes stayed sad. “Do I?”

Changmin took the bottle to put it back into his drawer, blinking rapidly, trying to hide his face from you.

“You were right to not like her,” he admitted, hoping his voice didn’t waver.

“I never said I didn’t like her,” you said.

“You didn’t have to. I knew the minute I told you I asked her out,” he told you, still holding back tears. Then, he broke into a soft smile and poked your cheek. “You’re a bad liar.”

The air in his bedroom was stifling. You walked out to the convenience store two streets over for instant ramen like you usually did on nights like this, bringing your food to the playground where you used to play as kids.

The playground was always empty at night, quiet and peaceful. It made him nostalgic, as lots of things did these days. Just a few years ago he used to run through these deserted streets with you almost every night, filling the cold air with laughs and giggles, basking in moonlight and the glow of adventure. You sat at the bottom of the blue plastic slide, and he chose one end of the wooden seesaw.

“Why did you bring those along?” you asked, pointing to the roses in his lap.

He held them out to you. “For you.”

It was a dark night, with thick clouds obscuring what would have been a full moon and one of the playground lights not working, but he could still see your smile as you took the bouquet.

“Are you going to text Mikyoung?” you asked with a cautious glance, ready to change the topic the second you detected any discomfort on his face.

“I’ll confront her tomorrow. I want to do it in front of everyone. On her birthday,” he replied.

He was a more vengeful person than he liked to admit, but he had hurt burning in his ribcage and it needed to go somewhere. It was clear from the look in your eyes that you disapproved of this plan, although you said nothing. You’d always been the magnanimous one.

He knew how people saw you, although he never knew how to fix it, or if you wanted him to fix it at all. You were ‘Changmin’s friend’: his saturnine, slightly cold, aloof sidekick, notable only because of him.

He didn’t care for popularity, nor what everyone else thought of you. But as much as he pretended to be above these labels, there was something about your reputation that made him feel incredibly special, that he was the only person with the luxury of truly knowing you.

The silence between you two was thin, airy. He’d never once felt awkward with you, even when your silences dragged on. Your eyes met his again for a split second.

“Do you ever think I’ll find my soulmate?” he mused.

“I think we’re too young to be thinking about that,” you answered, which wasn’t the first time you had expressed this sentiment. But you always entertained him.

“Don’t you want that, too?” he asked. He’d asked you this before, but you had never given him a straight answer.

“I don’t know. I’m scared,” you said.

“Scared? How can you be scared of love?”

You bit your lip in thought, always so measured in conversations like these, carefully thinking over each response before you spoke, never saying anything you didn’t mean. Unlike him — impulsive, reactive.

“I wouldn’t know what to do with myself,” you eventually replied.

In a strange way, he felt like he knew what you meant.

——————————

ii. hiding in the belltower.

Despite having a happy childhood, you had never been a happy child. You had loving parents, a roof over your head, and the best best friend you could’ve asked for, so why did you always feel like there was an emptiness within you that was destined to never be filled?

The night before you were set to board a bus that would take you to your new city and close the door on all you’d ever known, you and Changmin were lying on the side of the hill near your house, staring up at the night sky. It was a remarkably clear night, cloudless, brimming with stars.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“How I didn’t think leaving would be this hard,” you said after a lengthy pause.

Changmin rolled onto his side to face you, making you turn to him too. “Me neither.”

Your breath hitched in your throat when you came face-to-face with him. His eyes, warm and brown as they always were, felt like they pierced through you. He had the kind of eyes that could make anyone feel special, that he liked you just a little more than anyone else.

As scared as you were, you’d made your marks on the small canvas of your tiny hometown, done and seen all there was to do and see, and you were ready to leave. You had your sights set on the top fine arts programme in the country and he enrolled in the very same one. We’re a team, he said. But you knew he had a longing to leave, too.

It didn’t take long for Changmin to acclimate; he made friends quickly and easily, to whom he soon introduced you — the performance major Juyeon and the fashion major Chanhee.

“If you gave them a chance I think you’d like them,” Changmin said to you one evening, lying on your bed while you were hunched over your desk, studying. He’d just asked you to come along with him to dinner at Chanhee’s apartment (who was lucky enough to live off campus, unlike the rest of you), and you declined.

“I do like them,” you said.

Everything always seemed so easy for him — the way he fit in everywhere, adapted to anything. You hadn’t belonged in your hometown and you didn’t feel like you belonged in this one, either. Maybe there was no place for you, anywhere.

He kicked your desk chair, like he did whenever he wanted you to pay attention to him. “So why aren’t you coming?”

“I don’t want to intrude,” you answered.

You and Changmin could have two conversations at the same time: what was being said and what each of you really meant. He was the only person in the world who heard the words you crossed out in your mind before they were spoken. In this case, they were, what if they don’t like me?

“Don’t be stupid. You’re not intruding,” he scoffed. Why wouldn’t they? I like you.

“Are you sure?” But they’re not you.

He threw your stuffed octopus at your face. It was one of the few keepsakes you’d brought with you from home.

“They asked me to bring you, idiot.” Anyone would like you if you let them see what I see.

So you joined them for dinner. And every dinner after that.

You studied with Chanhee in the library a lot — more than you did with Changmin, even — because he was the only one who didn’t distract you when you needed to get work done. And you sought refuge in the café where Juyeon worked when the air conditioning in your dorm room broke, which was often.

If you weren’t in the library, Juyeon’s café, or your room, you were in Changmin’s. It was only natural that the group coalesced around Changmin, that his dorm room almost immediately became your base of operations.

You sat on his bed one day, your back against the wall and your laptop on your lap while he lay beside you scrolling idly on his phone. Juyeon and Chanhee were on the floor building a Lego spaceship.

“You’re typing very angrily,” Chanhee said to you. “What are you doing?”

You looked up from your laptop screen, realising that you had, in fact, been hammering away at the keys.

“I’m writing a story for my creative writing class,” you replied.

“It’s about soulmates,” Changmin added, waving his hand around with a theatrical flourish.

“Ew,” Juyeon said.

Changmin swung his leg off the bed to kick Juyeon, but ended up hitting Chanhee on the back of his head.

“Ow!”

“It’s a cute story!” Changmin scolded, ignoring Chanhee’s yelp of pain. “It’s about how our neighbour met his wife.”

You sat in silence, listening to Changmin recount Mr. Lee’s entire backstory in excruciating detail. Under normal circumstances anyone would have swiftly lost interest, but he had a knack for holding onto people’s attention.

He’d never really been the same after that night with Mikyoung in high school. He didn’t fall head over heels anymore, didn’t ramble on about his crushes with sparkles in his eyes, didn’t give his partners flowers. But even then, he still often spoke of falling in love. It seemed like no amount of heartbreak could quell his desire for it.

Juyeon turned to you. “Can I read it?”

“No,” you answered.

“They won’t even let me read it,” Changmin whined.

Chanhee gasped dramatically. “Not even Changmin? But you two are basically one organism!”

You had spent the better part of the last few years fighting to purge your unrequited love. Pushing your feelings away got easier over time, although the green light at the end of the dock never fully went away. Initial hopes that it was just a sandbox love failed to materialise, and you were starting to think you had to live with it your whole life — an ache you couldn’t outpace.

Changmin slammed the lid of your laptop shut to get your attention, staring intensely at you in faux anger, with his trademark dimpled smile you could never look away from. “See? You should let me read it!”

“You should submit it to the student filmmaking guild,” Juyeon suggested. “They’re always looking for scripts.”

You instinctively shook your head without really hearing what he said, because the mere thought of serving up any part of you on a silver platter for others to see was enough to make you recoil.

“Submit it! Submit it!” Changmin chanted, slapping your knee with each word. “They’ll definitely choose it.”

“You haven’t even read it,” you said, messing up his hair in retaliation.

Changmin stopped hitting you and pouted. “I’m sure it’s good; everything you do is.”

Sometimes you wondered if it would be easier to get over your feelings if he wasn’t so sweet to you. Part of you wanted him to betray you or ruin your life — anything to let you hate him. 

Because people of his calibre fell for the glamorous girls with perpetually bouncy hair and all matching jewellery, the charismatic boys with broad shoulders and bewitching eyes. Those with a dazzling history of attractive ex-boyfriends and girlfriends, the girls with DMs full of messages and the boys with ins into all the hottest clubs. People like him didn’t fall in love with people like you.

——————————

The approaching end of your first semester caused you to go into a bit of a tailspin; you thought you’d be happy by now. You were in your dream city and your dream programme, with a generous scholarship and new friends. It was all you ever wanted, and yet the misery remained. Perhaps happiness was not made for you. 

“You’re really not coming?” Juyeon asked, pleading. He and Changmin were leaving for a party, while you and Chanhee were staying in for the night at his apartment to study.

Chanhee gestured to himself, swaddled in a hoodie and bundled up under the blanket on his sofa. “Do we look like we’re coming?”

Changmin was already halfway out the door, stomping his foot and nagging Juyeon to hurry up as you were talking. Juyeon shoved his feet into his boots and clumsily tumbled out of the door with a hurried goodbye.

“I thought Changmin was an introvert,” Chanhee griped under his breath once they’d left, returning to his laptop.

You laughed and sat down on the other end of his sofa, your notebook perched on your knees. A good full hour went by before either of you broke the silence, when Chanhee glanced up at you over the top of his laptop screen.

“Why aren’t you going home with Changmin for the mid-year break?” he asked.

“I have a lot of assignments due,” you said. Chanhee wrinkled his nose in disapproval of your obvious lie. You sighed, “Fine. I don’t want to go home.”

“Do you not miss your family?” he asked.

“I do, that’s why I can’t go. I don’t want to be happy for two weeks and then get homesick all over again when I come back,” you said. “It’ll be harder to leave the second time.”

Chanhee stared intently at you with his chin resting on his palm. “If you visit often enough it won’t feel so crushing,” he pointed out after a brief silence. “Does Changmin know?”

“I told him I had too much work to do,” you said.

“I’m pretty sure he knows you were lying,” Chanhee said with a bemused smile. But he kindly dropped the topic after that, turning back to his work with a pat of your knee.

——————————

Changmin had always had a clear mental picture of each major milestone ahead of him: moving out for university, meeting his soulmate, proposing, buying a house with them, settling down…

His first year hadn’t even ended yet and he was already getting anxious. He’d dated three (Juyeon would’ve said two and a half) people in university so far and none of them had lasted more than two months. He’d long since moved on from Mikyoung, but the precision strike to his heart was harder to let go. It sat in the back of his mind on every first date, every time he asked someone to be his partner, after every break-up.

He was thinking all of this because his mom had just called to tell him Mr. Lee had passed away.

Mr. Lee had been old the entire time Changmin knew him, but the thought of his mortality somehow never crossed his mind. He knew it crossed yours, because you’d mentioned the possibility of this precise scenario twice.

The news didn’t upset him that much, which in itself was more upsetting. Granted, as you and him got older you stopped going round to Mr. Lee’s house as often, but Changmin was disturbed by how quickly his brain had warped a man’s death into selfish thoughts of his own coming-of-age.

He stayed in the dance studio for a couple more hours after getting off the phone with his mom before he couldn’t take it anymore. He had to go see you. His feet seemed to move on their own, taking him straight to the minimart and then to your dorm room.

“Come in,” you called, hearing his signature knock.

He keyed your PIN into your door lock, a pattern burned into his muscle memory, and let himself in. You were seated at your desk with books strewn everywhere and your laptop balanced precariously in the middle of the chaos.

“Hi,” you greeted, noticing the single white rose in his hand. “What’s the occasion?”

Your tone of voice was flat, but he could tell you knew why he was there. It was so obvious to him — the distance in your eyes. He chose not to even acknowledge your pretence, closing your door behind him and handing you the rose.

Buying it was a strange experience. He’d walked into the mart not really knowing what he wanted to get for you, only that he wanted to bring you something, when he saw the flower display stand in the back of the store. He’d picked the largest, brightest, whitest rose for you, a single long-stemmed flower wrapped in clear cellophane rather than the shorter bundles clipped from Mr. Lee’s rose bushes he was used to dealing with.

“Are you okay?” he asked. You took it, fingers curling around the single stalk. 

“How did you know I knew?” you asked, looking down at the rose instead of at him, all but confirming his conclusions.

Changmin sat down on your bed, hooked his foot under the leg of your desk chair, and yanked you towards him and away from your desk. You were so transparent.

“You’ve been listening to the Mario Kart Wii soundtrack for the last three hours,” he sighed. “You should turn off your Spotify activity.”

You laughed, but it was an empty laugh, and nudged his knee with yours. A few seconds passed before you looked up, studying his face carefully.

“Are you okay?” you asked, echoing his earlier question.

“I asked you first,” he pointed out, stubborn.

At that, you finally stopped pretending. He didn’t know why you bothered — it was impossible for you to hide from him — but you always tried anyway.

“I wish we could go to the funeral,” you said quietly. It was an admission of sorts, in your own roundabout manner, that you were in fact not okay.

“Me too,” he said, which wasn’t a lie, but the words had come out by rote and not because he actively wanted to say them. He knew you would never judge him; he’d made lots of idiotic choices and not once had you ever criticised him unfairly. It was this that compelled him to continue, “Is it bad that I don’t really feel anything?”

You turned the rose over in your hands, pausing to think.

“I don’t think scrutinising the validity of your emotions is something you should be doing,” you said after a while. It wasn’t the first time you’d told him that, that trying to moralise the way he felt was never a worthwhile endeavour.

And he knew you were right; you always were. He watched as you set the rose on your bedside table and immediately started picking at your nails, a tic of yours that kicked in whenever your hands were empty.

“I should have gone home with you,” you muttered, eyes shining with tears, “I should have gone to see him.”

He frowned, reaching out to take your hand. “Hey, don’t say that.”

From the very beginning he’d never been as perceptive as you were. He hardly ever knew what to say when you were upset, although you always did when the roles were reversed. It was one of his greatest regrets, but he liked that you chose him to take care of you regardless.

“Come here,” he said, beckoning you forward and lying down on your bed. You complied and lay down beside him, letting him thread his arm around your shoulder.

He hated all your mattresses. They were far too soft for him — truthfully he didn’t understand how you could still sit up straight. Every childhood sleepover at your house netted him a two-day long backache at minimum, but he never had the heart to tell you no when you asked him to spend the night.

“Thanks for being here,” you mumbled into his hoodie, your cheek pressed against the fabric.

“Of course,” he said. 

Changmin spent last night at Myungseo’s place, the girl he’d been casually dating for the last month. This morning, he told her they should see other people. Why? Because he caught her rolling her eyes at him when he laughed at a TikTok on his phone. She did that often; like his happiness was a blight on the earth.

He felt like an idiot, being upset about something so banal while you were grieving a death. The worst part was that he didn’t even like Myungseo that much, not really, and yet his heart was so easily bruised.

“Is my laugh annoying?” Changmin asked (his back was already starting to hurt).

“No. Why would you say that?”

He shook his head instead of answering you, and you didn’t press him further.

“We should move in together. Let’s get an apartment,” he said suddenly.

You craned your neck to look up at him, frowning, as if this was somehow a ludicrous suggestion. Both your dorm leases were up at the end of the year and there was no way either of you could afford to live alone, so it surely just made sense. But you’d never once brought up the possibility to him, probably because you knew he was looking for his next serious partner to move in with. The idea that you could have been holding that back just for him made him feel guilty. Lots of things made him feel guilty, it seemed.

As he got older a sinking feeling in his chest had begun to develop, a deep fear that seeped all the way into his bones. You used to keep a notebook of quotes or lines of poetry you liked which he flipped through on occasion out of curiosity — you still had it, although you didn’t add to it anymore these days because you called the concept of it pretentious and your teenage self insufferable.

Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you.

That was the only quote he remembered (and to be honest, the only one he liked) from your notebook, and he knew it word-for-word. It was that quote that sat in his bones, he thought. Maybe he was doomed to bear it for the rest of his life.

——————————

iii. how did i forget to live before i lived at all?

A couple of weeks before his second year began, Changmin signed his first lease with you. He couldn’t help but be slightly upset at how it all turned out — he’d always imagined he’d move into his first apartment with a partner — but he would obviously never say that out loud. The guilt of knowing he was treating you like an inferior replacement to a relationship was crushing enough.

Moving into his first apartment was too big a milestone to feel real, at least not immediately. Even when he went to Ikea with you it didn’t feel real; perhaps that was because you found Ikea strangely entertaining as children and went there far too often. You used to go to the kitchen timers section, set all of them to go off in a minute, then run away and watch the ear-splitting chaos from afar.

“We should get a wine rack,” you said, your arms full of stupid knick-knacks you definitely didn’t need. “Juyeon gave us that nice dry riesling.”

The second you collected your keys for your new apartment last week, you invited your friends over, ordered pizza, and ate dinner on the floor in your padded jackets because you had neither furniture nor heating. As housewarming gifts, Juyeon brought the riesling and Chanhee brought a sizable stack of polaroid pictures of your little friend group. You put them all up on the living room wall together.

Changmin knew you well enough to know you only suggested the wine rack because he liked wine, but you never wanted the kind things you did for him to be obvious. He grabbed a wine rack.

“When I eventually move in with someone, I’m gonna buy those fake leaf garlands,” he pouted, still sulking a little. You’d vetoed them a few minutes ago, arguing they would get unbelievably dusty and annoying to clean.

“Someone? You mean Serim,” you said, clearly distracted for reasons unknown to him. He could tell by the shallow dimple in your chin that formed whenever you pursed your lips in thought. Serim was his new girlfriend of a few months.

He hummed, looking at a set of wine glasses. “Maybe not. I don’t think she’s right for me.” Serim had a way of making him feel small, dumb, breaking off bits of him to feed her own ego.

You looked up from the crescent moon-shaped vase in your head. “Are you going to break up with her?”

“Probably. Eventually,” he sighed.

Two more trips to Ikea and a week later, the apartment was finally coming together. You both dedicated that weekend to putting together the non-essential furniture — he worked on a shelf while you assembled a shoe rack.

“Oh, we still need to get rid of the old TV cabinet,” he noted, remembering the hideous green thing blocking the entryway. 

“I can do it tomorrow while you’re in class. Juyeon said he’ll help me take it downstairs,” you told him.

Changmin squinted at his own instructional manual. “You and Juyeon have gotten pretty close,” he observed, one of those things he said without thinking just because he wanted to talk to you.

You only half-heard him, searching for your allen wrench. “Hm? Yeah, I guess,” you said.

That made him jealous, even though he knew it shouldn’t have. He was too used to being the only person who got to be close to you — to the point that Juyeon and Chanhee being unable to make it for your regularly scheduled Saturday night dinner felt like a return to form for him.

The two of you had dinner out on the balcony that night, the crown jewel of your apartment and the main reason you’d picked it in the first place. You opened Juyeon’s riesling for the occasion: your first Saturday night dinner in your new home.

“It’ll be nice to have breakfast here,” you mused, filling his glass before your own.

That turned out to be true. He spent many a morning doing just that with you, mornings of sunny side ups and secondhand smoke from your neighbours downstairs. Mornings were easier for him; nights always seemed to cut through him like a knife.

Changmin tapped his wine glass against yours with a smile, and the clink felt like a christening.

“We should give Juyeon and Chanhee some roses,” he suggested, nodding to the plant pots behind you on the balcony. The main reason Changmin had insisted so vehemently on finding an apartment with a balcony was so that he could grow roses. It felt like the right thing to do; Mr. Lee would’ve wanted him to continue the tradition.

“It’s been a while since you gave someone roses, rose boy,” you teased, peering at him over the rim of your wine glass.

“I gave you one a few months ago!” he refuted.

You waved this away. “I don’t count.”

He rolled his eyes and sipped his wine.

Yes, nights weren’t so difficult anymore. Changmin liked walking home after dark and looking up to see a warm square of yellow in the window, telling him you’d gotten in before him. He liked the idea of carving a little soft world out of the big cold one just for him and his favourite person. He liked being able to take the weight off your shoulders each day when you walked through the front door.

——————————

You did listen to Juyeon, in the end. The students film guild put out their yearly call for script submissions just as you finished your assignment, and you turned it in. You weren’t quite sure why — it was a decision entirely incongruous to the way you lived your life — but you did.

Changmin was the only person you told, because you weren’t sure you could take the embarrassment of the others knowing if your script was rejected. When you made it past shortlisting, you kept it to yourself. There were other more pressing matters at hand.

He broke up with his girlfriend of five months, Jinah, right around the same time and it hit him hard. Normally you would have attributed this to him being too nice, too trusting, too willing to jump into relationships. Many people just wanted the opportunity to declare they had dated him, like he was a video game achievement. But Jinah was not one of them. She treated him well and genuinely liked him — life just had a way of breaking hearts.

“This one seems different,” Chanhee whispered to you over the café booth, as if the not-present Changmin could hear him. “Jinah was actually nice, too.”

“It was his most serious relationship in a while,” you agreed, glancing at your phone. Changmin had promised to join you both at Juyeon’s café, but he hadn’t shown up nor answered any of your calls.

Juyeon walked over during a lull in customers and placed a fruit tart and a caramel slice on the table. On the house, as usual. 

“Is he okay?” Juyeon asked.

Chanhee shrugged. You shook your head.

“You don’t look okay either,” Juyeon said to you, unsubtly nudging the caramel slice towards you. It had become a habit of yours to get one whenever you were having a bad day.

“I’m fine, just tired,” you said, which was for once the truth, but you took the caramel slice anyway. “Changmin’s been having a lot of people over. I didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Ah, rebounds,” Chanhee sighed, his chin propped up on the palm of his hand. “We should do a movie night or something. To cheer him up.”

The bells hung above the café doors rang as they opened, but it wasn’t Changmin. You deflated slightly, glancing over at your phone yet again.

“I think he just wants to be left alone for now,” you said. “But I’ll ask him.”

Over the next couple of weeks the frequency of Changmin’s hookups slowed, he started hanging out with the rest of you again, and he stopped playing exclusively breakup songs around the house. You were busy relaying this intel to Juyeon at his café one day when you got an email from the film guild, subject line: Congratulations!

You didn’t even bother opening it to read the rest, simply throwing your stuff into your tote bag and tumbling out of the café with a cursory goodbye to Juyeon cast over your shoulder. You raced home to tell Changmin, bursting at the seams with excitement as you swung the front door open.

“Changmi-” You stopped in your tracks, face falling. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you had someone over.”

There was a girl on the sofa beside him, kissing his neck, and he had his hand in her lap. She glared at you, clearly not pleased with your interruption.

“What is it?” Changmin asked, not-so-gently pushing her away.

“Nothing. It’s not important. It can wait,” you answered, backtracking. You were a terrible liar; you could not deny your feelings for him to save your life. The only thing that kept you from discovery was him never asking the right questions.

He sat up and combed through his hair with his hands, frowning. “Are you okay?”

It was unbearable sometimes, the way his voice became so soft and tender whenever he could tell you needed him. Of course, you could never hide from him. He knew if you were upset by how you opened the door.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll tell you about it later,” you said.

With that, you hurried into your bedroom and closed the door behind you.

Your heart had been hardened with practice over the years, or so you’d thought. Maybe it was just an off-day, or maybe you could only keep up the charade for so long.

It wasn’t until you heard Changmin and his date move to his bedroom — their whispering and giggling and him slamming the door shut — that you cracked and reached for your phone.

“Hi, what’s up?” Juyeon greeted, picking up almost immediately despite being at work.

“I’m in love with Changmin,” you blurted out.

That was exactly it. You didn’t love him, you were in love with him. It had consumed you for so much of your life. It made you sick.

There was nothing but stunned silence on the other end, your shocking revelation rendering Juyeon speechless. Even without being able to see him you could picture his expression, jaw dropped and eyes round and blinking.

“O-okay… When did…?” he asked, pausing after each word.

“Since we were sixteen,” you replied.

He sighed loudly. “Oh, you’re one of those.”

Juyeon, at least when it came to love, was Changmin’s polar opposite. He avoided romance at all costs, called it humanity’s greatest scam, and thought it was a supreme waste of time.

“Hey, I called you in my time of need,” you retorted, forcing some lightness back into your voice. That was noteworthy in its own right, that after so many years you had finally admitted your feelings to someone other than yourself.

Juyeon coughed. “Right. Sorry. Did something happen?”

“No, I just… he brought a girl home and-” you paused, “I’m normally better at coping with these things.”

“What changed?” Juyeon asked.

You didn’t know. All you knew was that this had been chipping away at your heart piece by piece for years, and you were running out of pieces.

When you didn’t answer, Juyeon continued, “You won’t tell him, right?”

“God, no,” you said.

“Good. It’s not worth ruining your friendship for love,” he lectured, despite you already agreeing with him. 

Maybe that was why you decided to call him — you knew he would understand. Chanhee might have tried to convince you to take a leap of faith, but a cynical anti-romantic like Juyeon would recognise your fate for what it was: a tragicomedy of epic proportions.

You took a deep breath and let his words percolate. It was one thing to realise the sentiment, but another thing entirely to hear it from someone else.

“I did what you suggested,” you said, the compulsion to change the topic and forget what you’d just admitted to overwhelming you in that moment. “I submitted my script. It was chosen.”

Juyeon screamed. You winced and moved your phone away from your ear.

“Congrats! You deserve it!” he shouted down the line, clapping wildly.

“Thanks, Juyeon.” You were grateful he couldn’t see how weak your smile was, although you were sure it seeped into your voice. There was a reason you called him instead of FaceTiming.

“Do you want to come over tonight?” he asked. “We can order food. Chanhee’s coming too. Get your mind off him.”

Neither of you could bear to say his name.

The old you would have turned down his offer without a second thought, choosing instead to trap yourself in a despairing fortress of your own making with no one but yourself privy to your thoughts.

“Okay. Thank you,” you said quietly, hoping he would be able to read between all your layers of gratitude.

——————————

A few days had passed since that night, and you still hadn’t brought up what you’d wanted to talk to Changmin about. He knew something was up with you, but he couldn’t tell what. Maybe you were annoyed with him. You always said you didn’t mind him bringing people over, but he also wasn’t sure you’d tell him if you did.

“I have news,” you announced as soon as he walked through the front door, holding something behind your back. There was a weight to your words, an unusual heft that immediately made him concerned.

“What is it? Are you okay?” he asked.

You handed him a stapled sheaf of papers, twiddling your thumbs. If he didn’t know you he’d think that was just a figure of speech, but you did literally twiddle your thumbs when you were anxious and he teased you about it constantly. It was an adorable habit, like how you tied rubber bands around all the jars you struggled to open to make them easier to grip onto.

“Remember my creative writing assignment?” you began, with a tentative edge in your voice he wasn’t used to hearing. “I submitted it to the film guild, and it was chosen.”

Changmin let out a high-pitched screech, grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking you vigorously, jumping around. “Really? Really? That’s amazing! I knew it!” he giggled. His heart swelled with pride, more pride than he knew what to do with.

You joined him in his celebrations, laughing along with him, but there was still something you were nervous about.

“Is this a secret? Does anyone else know?” he asked, clutching the script to his chest.

You shook your head. “Only Juyeon.”

Changmin’s face fell. That didn’t seem right. That went against the laws of the universe, against life as he knew it. How could you tell Juyeon first?

“Oh,” he said, not even trying to hide his dejection. “You told him before you told me? Why?”

He was self-aware enough to realise he was turning your success into a story of his own heartbreak, to feel repulsed by his narcissism and disgusted by his jealousy. But he couldn’t help it, because it was you. It was written in the stars that you were supposed to put him before anyone else, and he was supposed to do the same.

Your eyes softened, instantly filling with regret, and you reached out to take his hands between yours. It stung more precisely because he knew how tightly you held your cards to your chest.

“Because I was worried,” you answered.

He frowned. “About what?”

“That you wouldn’t like it.”

The absurdity of him not liking something you did wasn’t lost on him, but some part of him understood what you meant. To him, there was no question more intimate than: do you like it? It revealed what you cared about, showed another’s importance to you, opened a direct line to one’s heart.

“You’re the first to read it,” you assured him, squeezing his hands, probably mistaking his silence for more hurt. “I’m not letting anyone else read it but you.”

He glanced down at the script in his arms. The apology clear in your tone made the guilt of his response settle in now.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “Who you told first isn’t important. I’m proud of you.”

You beamed, bright and dazzling; your parents always commented on how you only lit up like that when he was with you.

——————————

iv. you are the knife i turn inside myself.

It surprised you how quickly the novelty of living with Changmin wore off, because within months it felt like this had always been your life; you had always lived in this apartment with this schedule and these friends. You’d always had Chanhee’s polaroids on the living room wall and caramel slices from Juyeon’s cafe in the kitchen and Changmin’s weekly bouquet of roses harvested from the balcony sitting on the dining table.

“Who’s directing your film?” Changmin asked one night on the sofa, peeling an orange for you two to share.

“Kevin Moon,” you said. “I think he’s an art student. Chanhee knows him.”

“Will you get to meet him?” Changmin asked, shoving an orange carpel into your mouth with great inelegance.

You shrugged, your mouth too full to speak, and he waited for you to finish eating with a bemused smile. “Maybe. He invited me to the start of production party, but I’m not going.”

“But you have to go,” Changmin whined, throwing a piece of orange peel at you.

“No,” you shook your head, baulking at his comment. “I won’t know anyone there. I already told Kevin I was busy-”

Just like that, Changmin plucked your phone from your unsuspecting hand and sprinted away, cackling and shrieking.

“Hey!” you shouted, running after him. But he was faster than you and always had been. You chased him around the living room a couple of times, only barely catching up to him even though he was furiously typing away on your phone while he ran, jumping on his back to tackle him to the floor.

“This is assault!” he screamed, a high-pitched whistle that made your ears ring, wildly batting your hands away.

Finally, you managed to wrestle your phone back from him (or, more likely, he finally let you win).

“What did you do?” you groaned, scrambling to your feet when you saw your chat with Kevin pulled up on the screen. You (Changmin) had just eagerly announced you wanted to attend after all, and, of course, Kevin responded with equal enthusiasm.

Changmin threw his arm around your shoulder and pulled you in for a side hug, giggling and ruffling your hair. You were still staring at your phone screen, too dumbfounded to even register his hold on you.

“That’s not how I text,” you finally managed to get out.

He looked at you, confused. “It’s how you text me.”

You bit your tongue and pushed his hand away, sighing as you reread the texts. He had reacted to Kevin’s final message with a heart, something you never did with anyone but Changmin himself.

“I’ll come with you! I’m your plus one,” he declared proudly, beaming. Even after all these years, you never understood how he could be both so obnoxious and so endearing.

So there you were walking into director Kevin Moon’s apartment, Changmin in tow, wanting to crawl out of your own skin. The apartment was small and clean but buzzing with activity, although the music was soft and the crowd was thin. You were relieved to find it less of a university rager and more of an understated hang out. There was a neatly set up drinks table void of any hard liquor by the kitchen archway that looked barely touched.

Changmin squeezed your hand (because of course he was holding your hand) and smiled at you, the very smile of his that made the constant buzzing anxiety in your head fade.

“See? This isn’t so bad,” he said.

You would never admit it, but he was right.

“I just need to say hi to Kevin, then we can go,” you said. 

Right on cue, a black-haired crescent-eyed man strode over to you.

“Y/N? I’m Kevin, the director,” he greeted with a wide smile. “Glad you could make it.”

“Thanks for inviting me,” you said. “This is Changmin.”

“Hi,” Changmin beamed.

Kevin returned the greeting before turning to you. “We were actually just about to start the speeches. Would you like to give one? You are the writer, after all.”

What kind of university party had speeches? A film kid’s party, you supposed.

“I’m not great at public speaking,” you replied, shy.

Changmin let go of your hand to sling his arm around your shoulder, grinning mischievously. “Can I give a speech for them?”

You looked at him in horror, but he pretended not to see it.

“Uh, sure. I’ll gather the cast and crew,” Kevin agreed, politely downplaying his surprise.

Changmin skipped after Kevin and jumped right onto the coffee table, grabbing the TV remote and holding it up to his mouth like a microphone. He held out his free hand to you. You wanted nothing more than to dig a hole in the ground and bury yourself in it, not least because seemingly everyone in attendance at this party was now filing into the living room at Kevin’s request.

But Changmin looked down at you, his eyes pleading, the softest of smiles on his face. You sighed, took his hand, and he pulled you up onto the coffee table. Even after you found your footing on the glass (which you had serious doubts was sturdy enough to support both your weights), he didn’t let go.

“Everyone,” he began, talking into the remote. You suppressed a smile.

Of course, being the person he was, he captured the attention of the room with just one word. The crowd fell silent instantaneously.

“Everyone, please give it up for your screenwriter, Y/N!” he shouted, spawning a confused rumble of applause that only made you more anxious. You were standing on a coffee table in a stranger’s house, surrounded by more strangers, holding hands with the most attention-grabbing person alive. When your hand started to shake, he squeezed it.

“Y/N will never admit this, but this script means a lot to them,” Changmin began, swinging your joined hands back and forth. “It’s a very important story to us both, and I’m so excited for it to be told.”

He hadn’t even introduced himself, you realised belatedly, like the only thing on his mind was giving this stupid speech for you. He paused, taking a deep breath and turning to you. All his showmanship melted away, the persona he put on in situations like this. He was still using the remote as a microphone, but even that didn’t undercut his words. Despite all the attention on him, his gaze never wavered from you. But this was how he was — in a room full of people his eyes always found yours first.

“You’re so smart and talented, and now people will finally get to see it,” he said, running his thumb over your knuckles. “I’m so proud of you, really. Not just for your script, but for putting yourself out there.”

You weren’t sure at what point in your life feeling shame when people praised you, or even paid attention to you, became your modus operandi. You felt that shame now, so strong it was almost unbearable. But Changmin wasn’t done.

“You’re a star, okay?” he said, more insistent now. He shook your hand urgently like he could tell he was losing you to the room, training your attention back onto him. “You’re my star. I hope you can see yourself the way I see you.”

It was when you forced yourself to meet his gaze that you noticed he was tearing up. You hadn’t seen this side of him in a long time; it came out less and less frequently as he got older. But this was who he was deep down, the type of person who felt so freely and deeply that he got drunk on life, intoxicating everyone around him and wrapping them up in his whirlwind.

“I’ll be in the audience of every show,” he promised, smiling through the glassiness of his eyes. “I’ll be your fan until the day I die.”

When you were sixteen Changmin had quite dramatically broken up with his girlfriend at that time because he found out she and her friends were mocking you on her private Instagram stories. He did this in front of your entire class before walking right up to you, grabbing your hand, and skipping off.This didn’t feel like that. He wasn’t getting back at anyone; he wasn’t proving a point about moral integrity or kindness. He was just talking to you, private despite his audience, like you were hiding yourselves within yourselves.

——————————

As soon as you and Changmin got down from the coffee table you sequestered yourself in the corner of the kitchen. He very graciously and loyally stayed by your side instead of mingling like you knew he wanted to.

“Wasn’t that a good speech? Did you like it?” he giggled, hopping around and slapping your shoulder in giddy excitement.

He did that a lot, which was fine when you were kids but problematic when he was a fully grown man who didn’t quite seem to grasp his own strength. It started hurting around the time you turned fourteen, although you never had the heart to tell him to stop. He smiled so brightly when he did it, after all.

“It was a great speech,” you admitted, although your heart was still bleeding into the cavity of your chest. The pain came not from the knife that had been lodged between your ribs for years, but from Changmin grabbing the handle and twisting it as he spoke.

Across the room, Kevin waved to you. You waved back awkwardly, which Changmin of course noticed.

“You should go talk to him,” Changmin said, pushing you towards the director so forcefully you nearly tripped and fell flat on your face. By the time you regained your balance, he was gone and Kevin was standing right in front of you.

“Hey, I meant to say this earlier,” Kevin prefaced. “I just wanted to tell you I loved your script and I’m really excited to bring it to life with you.”

At his gentle disposition, you relaxed. You needed to stop reacting like a spooked deer every time someone other than Changmin (or by now, Juyeon or Chanhee, you supposed) talked to you.

“Thank you,” you forced yourself to answer. Your whole life you’d felt like a puppet jerked around by invisible strings, carrying out every expected perfunctory action without anyone noticing how practised your motions were. “And thank you for picking my script.”

Kevin waved this away with a smile. “You’re welcome to drop in on table reads or filming sessions whenever you want,” he offered, gesturing behind you. “As is your boyfriend.”

You paused for a moment before the realisation hit you, turning around to see what he was pointing at.

Changmin was standing in the middle of the room (of course, because he was a middle-of-the-room person) talking to one of the main cast members, the male lead. He caught your eye earlier — tall, charismatic, and strikingly handsome. You swallowed the familiar bitter taste of inadequacy and turned back to Kevin.

“We’re just friends,” you recited, a practised phrase, each word a sharp blade slicing your tongue and making it bleed. Just, as if friendship was somehow less than. You felt the marionette strings around your wrists and ankles tighten.

“Oh, I misinterpreted,” Kevin said politely. It was a reasonable interpretation, with the ‘plus one’ text and the hand-holding and the tooth-rotting sweetness of Changmin’s speech. “But, hey, feel free to bring him along regardless.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it, really,” you said, just barely having enough time to get your sentiment across before the stage manager came to drag him away to another more important conversation.

Someone tapped you on the shoulder and you turned around. It was Juyeon. He had signed up as a crew member in secret right after he found out about the film and was brought on as a boom operator (because he was tall, you guessed). So had Chanhee, in costumes and makeup. You learnt that only when Kevin posted the cast and crew roll online.

“You good?” Juyeon asked, empathetic, his brows drawing together in concern. “That speech was… wow.”

“I think Kevin can tell and it’s stressing me out,” you blurted out, not answering his question.

“Kevin can tell what?” Juyeon asked, before taking one look at your face and realising what you meant. Rather unsubtly, his gaze flitted over to where Changmin was.

You groaned and buried your face in your hands. “Why did I submit this script?”

“Because you were brave and took a leap of faith,” he said, swatting your shoulder as if to punch out your self-doubt. “You still haven’t told Chanhee about you… being in love?”

At that, you looked up in alarm. “No. Did you tell him?”

Juyeon calmly shook his head, not registering your panic. “Was I supposed to?”

“No, just checking,” you breathed out, relieved. He seemed slightly proud that only he knew.

“Good. Chanhee’s one of the suckers. I’m sure he’d tell you to shoot your shot,” he said. “You people are so annoying.” You were about to retort that you weren’t one of them — a Changmin-esque hopeless romantic — but why else would you be in love with the same person for years? Perhaps you just didn’t know how to hold love, or let it hold you, without its thorns ripping holes in your skin.

——————————

Changmin always thought you spent far too much time on eBay (and Facebook marketplace, and GMarket, et cetera), but even he had to concede that your secondhand shopping habit made the apartment his favourite place to be. You procured the best furniture and decor, and he styled it to perfection.

You and him picked up a new shelf yesterday from a creepy old man’s creepy old house. Getting murdered over a shelf wasn’t his preferred way to go, but he wasn’t going to let you go alone.

The shelf was soon filled with your most prized possessions and all the stupid trinkets that had been consigned to the junk drawer since you moved into the apartment. Random bits of sea glass collected from some school trip or other, dance competition trophies and chess tournament medals, the orange stuffed octopus he’d won for you from a claw machine when you were twelve. Your mementoes were so intertwined he could barely tell them apart — a shrine to the double helix of your souls.

“Hey, new shelf,” Juyeon said when he and Chanhee came over for dinner the next day.

“Pretty, right? Y/N chose it, and I picked the wood stain,” Changmin beamed.

“Where is Y/N?” Chanhee asked.

“At class. They’ll be home soon,” Changmin replied.

Then he shrieked, remembering something. Chanhee jumped, but only slightly, considering how loud the sound was, and Juyeon barely reacted.

“I have to show you something!” Changmin yelled, sprinting into his bedroom and reemerging with a thin book with a leather cover.

He held up the book with a proud grin. “Isn’t it cool? I printed Y/N’s script and got it leather-bound. Look, the title is embossed. Their name, too.”

Chanhee reached for the book, running his fingers over the indented letters on the front cover. The leather was soft, glossy, and clearly not cheap, with a beautiful patina.

“What’s the occasion?” Chanhee asked, flipping through the pages.

“Was it expensive?” Juyeon asked. Different priorities, these two.

Changmin rolled his eyes. “It’s for the wrapping of the short film, and yes.”

He didn’t usually spend much money on you, nor did you on him. The most either of you ever dropped on each other was a fancy meal here or there, perhaps a nice sweater or jacket if one of you saw something in a shop you knew the other would like. This book was the most expensive gift he’d ever gotten you.

“Do you think it’s too much?” Changmin asked, watching Juyeon inspect the bespoke craftsmanship of the binding on the book’s spine.

Chanhee smiled, not teasing him for the first time ever. “No. I think they’ll love it.”

Changmin left not long after that to pick you up from class, because it started raining and you didn’t pack your umbrella that morning. He waited outside your lecture theatre, watching a stream of your classmates trickle out the doors. You were usually one of the first to leave.

Finally, you emerged, your eyes lighting up the second you spotted him.

“Hi,” you breathed. “What are you doing here?”

Changmin waved his umbrella around in answer. “You forgot yours.”

In hindsight, he probably should’ve just brought yours. Yours was sturdier and his had two broken ribs. 

“And you didn’t wear your coat today,” he added, holding out the hoodie in his other hand. You smiled and put it on.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. I bumped into Kevin,” you said.

His ears perked up. “Kevin? What did he want?”

“Nothing. He just showed me his concept boards and asked me what I thought,” you answered.

Changmin forced his broken umbrella open. It would have to do — at least the rain wasn’t too heavy. You and him quickly fell into step side-by-side on the narrow pavement.

“He seems to talk to you a lot.”

“I think he’s just trying to include me,” you said, in neither agreement nor refutation.

“Maybe you should ask him out,” he suggested with a teasing lilt. “You have a lot in common.”

You simply smiled and shook your head.

He had never quite understood your reluctance to date. You said no to every single person who tried to ask you out, which never grew less bewildering with time. Even at Kevin’s start-of-production party it was instantly obvious, at least to Changmin, that Kevin wanted to talk to you — but you didn’t notice in the slightest.

It was a quiet night, dark and chilly with only the sounds of raindrops hitting concrete to fill the silence. It was exactly the kind of night that made him painfully aware of his own melancholy. You stumbled, slipping on the wet pavement, and he grabbed your elbow to steady you.

“Are you going to Yuri’s tomorrow?” you asked.

Yuri was a classmate Changmin had been seeing for the last month. It wasn’t serious yet, but he was already getting the feeling she was tiring of him. As always, he could not keep people from slipping through his fingers.

“Probably not,” he replied. “We fought. She said I’m moving too slowly. So I guess I’m supposed to have asked her to be my girlfriend by now.”

You looked at him curiously, perhaps wondering when he’d become so bitter. He wondered that too, more and more these days, in fact. But you remained silent, somehow sensing his arm was starting to ache and taking the umbrella from him.

“Do you ever feel like no one actually sees you?” he asked, rain pelting down around him. “They want to be your friend or they fall in love with you, but it’s not actually you?”

“Sort of,” you said, in a tone that implied you knew how you answered wasn’t really that important.

“That once people crack you open they realise there isn’t anything inside you and move on? You’re just empty with nothing to offer anyone?” Changmin said. He wasn’t talking about Yuri anymore.

You’d reached your apartment building. He looked up at the warm yellow square. He could see Juyeon and Chanhee’s silhouettes in the window — the former standing still while the latter appeared to be draping fabric over him. Working on costumes for the short film, he presumed.

“You have yourself to offer,” you answered after a long pause. “That’s not nothing.”

Changmin remembered reading about false front architecture as a kid, when he was in his cowboy phase. Those Wild West buildings in America with elaborate front facądes to hide how plainly and shoddily they were built by White colonists. He felt a strange affinity for them even back then, when he was just eight or nine, however odd it was to see oneself in a building.

“Thanks for coming to get me, Min,” you said, ushering him inside the lobby ahead of you.

He watched with a smile as you shook the water off his umbrella with more force than was probably necessary and battled with the broken ribs to get it to close. Your right shoulder was soaked, evidently a result of you shielding him from the rain over yourself.

“Of course.”

——————————

v. wishing, wanting, yours for the taking.

To celebrate the wrapping of Kevin’s short film, your friends were throwing you a surprise party at your regular Saturday night dinner. Well, it was no longer a surprise to you — a result of their total inability to lie — but you appreciated the thought nonetheless.

Changmin sent you and Juyeon to the supermarket to ‘pick up a few things’, none of which were necessary for what he and Chanhee were cooking for dinner, to get you out of the house for an hour or so. You worked your way through the bogus shopping list anyway, humouring them.

“Y/N?”

You turned around at the sound of a vaguely familiar voice.

“Hi, Jinah,” you greeted, nudging Juyeon to get his attention. He waved politely, although he seemed to only recognise her after you said her name.

“Hi! It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Jinah smiled. “How’s Changmin?”

Her question took you aback. You paused, and even Juyeon raised an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry. That was so rude,” Jinah blurted out, embarrassed. “How are you?”

“It’s fine. I’m alright, and you?” There you went, feeling like a marionette all over again.

Jinah was unbelievably pretty, the sort of face that belonged on the silver screen or in luxury advertisements rather than in your neighbourhood supermarket’s snacks aisle, the sort of person Changmin dated. You understood why he took so long to get over her.

“Yeah, I’m well!” she answered, bubbly and cheerful, before she hesitated. “I’m really sorry about that. I just- I guess I shouldn’t be burdening you with this.”

Juyeon was beginning to fidget next to you, shifting his weight from foot to foot and awkwardly poking at the food in the shopping basket on his arm. You just smiled and waited for her to continue.

“How is he? Is he- I mean-” Jinah cut herself off with a sigh, upset with herself for even trying to ask you that. “It doesn’t matter. We didn’t work out.”

“I’m sorry. It must’ve been difficult,” you said.

She forced herself to smile. “I guess he was the one who got away. We’ve all got one of those, right?”

You bit your lip. “Right. We do.”

“Well,” Juyeon interjected, far too loud, clearly having been waiting for his chance to jump into the conversation for a while. You suppressed a laugh. “We should probably get going.”

“Ah, yes. I didn’t mean to bother you,” Jinah said. “I’ll- I’ll see you guys around.”

Juyeon hurried you to the self-checkout the second she was out of earshot.

“You handled that well,” he observed, on scanning duty as usual. “I was half-expecting you to offer to put her back in touch with Changmin.”

You looked at him, baffled. “Why would I do that?”

“Because you like shooting yourself in the foot,” Juyeon answered. “Because you don’t think you deserve love.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in love at all,” you countered, mainly because you didn’t want to let his last statement just sit in the air like that.

But the whole walk home, up until your hand was on the front door knob, his words swirled incessantly in your mind.

You opened the door to a shower of pink confetti.

“Surprise!” Changmin, Chanhee, and Juyeon shouted in near-perfect unison.

Changmin jumped on your back and ruffled your hair with a giggle. “Why aren’t you surprised? Did Juyeon spoil it?”

“You all did,” you laughed, looking around the apartment.

The table was set, food all cooked and ready, with a fresh bouquet of roses as the centrepiece. Chanhee (you presumed) had hung string lights all around the living room and dimmed everything else, lending the apartment a warm, intimate glow. Golden foil balloons spelt out ‘congratu’, which Juyeon would later explain was because he ran out of money and hadn’t thought to just commit to ‘congrats’.

“Look!” Changmin exclaimed, jumping off your back and shoving a helium balloon in your face. It read: it’s a boy film! He did the same thing when you made the dean’s list in your first year of university, with a happy birthday dean’s list! balloon, crossed out and scrawled over in black marker.

“Ah, the food’s getting cold!” Chanhee whined, pushing you all towards the table.

You obediently sat down, Changmin lit the decorative pillar candles, Juyeon poured the champagne, and Chanhee started shovelling ridiculous amounts of food onto your plate.

“We bumped into Jinah earlier,” Juyeon told Changmin. You turned to the former in surprise, having expected him to keep it a secret. “I don’t think she’s over you.”

Changmin looked up from the ladleful of soup he had precariously hovering over your bowl, his expression inscrutable. Being unable to read him was not an experience you were used to.

“Isn’t that such a rom-com trope?” Chanhee teased. “The old flame, the lingering feelings, the reconnection-”

“I don’t believe in that stuff,” Changmin said, laughing slightly.

You looked at him — at his slight smile and the flickering candlelight making his skin glow — and then at the vase full of red and pink roses he’d harvested and arranged that morning. The extra care he’d put into them had been your first clue that he was planning something.

“Since when?” Chanhee asked in shock.

Changmin laughed, saying nothing, pouring your soup. Then, he cleared his throat and raised his champagne flute. You and him had found the set of four in a secondhand shop, and he always gave you the glass without any chips or scratches.

“This is Y/N’s party,” he said, changing the subject. “To Y/N!”

——————————

Changmin and Chanhee did a good job with the decor, if he did say so himself. His bouquet was even better than usual, as was his food. Chanhee matched the red candles to the red roses and found the perfect combination of string lights and lamps to lend the whole apartment a dreamy orange glow.

“What?” you asked over a spoonful of soup when you spotted Changmin staring at you out of the corner of your eye. You were eating heartily — you seemed to only eat that well when he cooked for you — your cheeks stuffed with his tofu stew.

He smiled fondly and shook his head. “Nothing. Is it good?”

“Yeah, it’s always good,” you replied.

Changmin wondered what a stranger would think if they looked up at your apartment window from the street below, at the square warmer and dimmer than usual. They couldn’t possibly hear Juyeon and Chanhee fighting over whose turn it was to pick the dinner playlist or see the balloons on the wall next to the TV. But maybe they could make out the silhouettes of four friends gathered around the dinner table, feel the love held in the space.

“I have another surprise,” Changmin announced, producing the leather-bound book from a bag stashed under his chair and handing it to you.

You took it carefully, breaking into a wide smile when you saw the title of the short film and your name embossed in the brown leather. In awe, you held the book up to the candlelight, marveling at the masterful stitching of the perfectly bound spine.

“This is beautiful,” you said. “Thank you.”

He threw his arm around your shoulder, excited. “Open it, open it.”

The very first page held an inscription he’d agonised over for hours. You read it aloud.

“To Y/N, my past and present and future —

I’m so proud of you and so lucky to know you. Let’s stay together for a long time.

I hope I get to grow old without ever letting go of your hand.

Love,

Changmin.”

Even in the relatively dim glow of the candles and the string lights, Changmin could see your eyes shining with tears. When was the last time he saw you cry — when Mr. Lee passed away? He pulled you into his side, patting your shoulder.

“Thank you, Min,” you breathed, running your fingertips over the neat blocks of his handwriting. “I love it.”

“Aww,” Juyeon cooed. Sitting beside him, Chanhee had his phone out, filming the moment dutifully as always.

——————————

It was well past your bedtimes when Juyeon and Chanhee finally headed home for the night, but both of you were still far too wired to sleep. Changmin curled up on the sofa beside you with a cup of chamomile tea in his hands.

“Thank you for doing all this, Min,” you said, leaning against him with your back to his chest and his arm around your shoulder.

“Of course.” He picked a stray sliver of pink confetti out of your hair. “I really am proud of you, you know?”

“It’s just a student production,” you mumbled, shaking your head at the fondness in his words. Even though he couldn’t see your face, he could hear your embarrassed smile. You used that word a lot, just, and often you used it against yourself. It made him sad.

He sipped his tea, humming along to your playlist under his breath. It’d been a while since you moved into this apartment. Maybe it was time for him to buy better Bluetooth speakers than the cheap ones he brought with him from home when he first moved here.

“You know how Mr. Lee and his wife broke up after high school, then got back together after six years apart?” Changmin asked after a long silence.

“They met again at a funeral when their old classmate died tragically young,” you recited obediently, a story Mr. Lee had told you both many times. Seemingly able to sense he had something important to say, you sat up and turned to face him.

He pursed his lips, pensive, not really wanting you to shift away from him. “When Juyeon brought up Jinah, part of me was hoping I’d be happy. But I didn’t feel anything.”

You placed your hand over his. Whenever he got like this, there was a pillowy sadness in your eyes. You were always there to take his pain and despair and press it into your own heart, so they were not his to bear alone. He didn’t know how or why you put up with him for so long, sure that if he showed this side of him to anyone else they’d be gone in an instant.

“I guess I was waiting to see if I’d magically fall back in love with her when I heard her name again,” he admitted with a self-deprecating laugh. “What’s wrong with me? Why does everyone else have someone made just for them, and I don’t? Am I a bad person?”

You ran your thumb over his knuckles, your voice warm and tender. “You’re not a bad person, Min.”

He had never been a stranger to this shame, this limitless regret, and yet, he was unable to stop it from slicing him open. It lingered in his bones.

“And for what it’s worth, I don’t think anyone has anyone made just for them,” you added.

“I know, I know, soulmates aren’t real,” he mumbled, just barely cracking a smile now. “You’re becoming just like Juyeon.”

But you had a point. Everyone he dated cast a gold idol in his image, only to smash it to pieces and melt it back down the second they realised he was just a person like anyone else. How many people had ever seen him as he really was, and not as an idea?

“Well, say soulmates are real — the red thread and all that,” you posited thoughtfully, reaching out to swipe away a tear from his cheek he hadn’t even noticed was there. “Of the people you dated, why did you choose them?”

He looked at you, holding your hands between his, sitting cross-legged on the sofa. “I didn’t. They chose me.”

You smiled, shaking your head and leaning forward. “But what do you want in a soulmate? What makes you happy?”

“You, mainly,” he replied, with no hesitation. “Juyeon and Chanhee. Our apartment.”

That same sadness in your eyes was back, even though you were smiling. He remembered that look from Kevin’s party, when you were both up on the coffee table together. It was there that night in the playground when Mikyoung broke his heart and he gave you the roses intended for her. He always recognised it, but he never knew what to make of it.

”Why?” you asked.

“Because you’re kind. And you actually see me,” Changmin said.

Why did you make him happy? He was happy seeing you smile like you were now, your cheeks raised and your eyes crinkling at the sides, feeling you play with the silver rings on his fingers in this space you’d made for each other.

“Everything just makes more sense when you’re around,” he told you, an unfamiliar warmth blooming in his chest. “Nights are less lonely. Washing dishes is more fun.”

You didn’t take your eyes off of him, nor pull your hands out of his grasp. It hit him in that moment — an overwhelming wave that crashed down around him, cleaving at his heart and clawing at his soul — why the stars always shone brighter around you.

Something in his face must have shifted, because your expression changed without him having to say a word. Your eyes widened, your shoulders rose as you held your breath.

“Oh,” he whispered.

Your pillowy sadness at last gave way to shy trepidation. How long had you waited for him to meet you here?

“I’m yours, Min,” you said, so soft as to be almost inaudible, squeezing his hand. He could feel a tremor in your fingers. “You know it.”

He’d spent a lifetime chasing this elusive concept, magical and abstract and surreal, trapping himself in an impossible quest to disguise the depth of his want. But he didn’t regret it, not really, because everything in his life had led him to you. Every mistake, every heartbreak, every laugh and every tear.

Changmin leant forward and brushed a stray strand of hair from your face. His heart hammered wildly in his chest, but there was a stillness in the room nonetheless. Maybe it was you, grounding him, making it bearable.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked, his breath catching in his throat.

“Please,” you whispered.

Slowly, he closed the distance between you, your lips meeting, hesitant and careful at first, before you kissed him back, making him come alive. He cupped your face gently, fingers trembling on his skin, and your palms rested on his chest. You could probably feel his heart racing through his clothes. You tasted like red wine and black cherry lip balm.

He pulled away and rested his forehead against yours, brushing his thumb across your cheek. Your fingers traced the outline of his jaw, warm on his skin.

“I love you,” he mumbled, unable to stop the corners of his mouth from lifting.

Suddenly, it didn’t seem so terrifying anymore. He wondered if you remembered that quote too, if you carved it into your bones the way he did.

“I love you,” you echoed.

Changmin pulled you into his arms, hiding you from the world. You were two halves of a whole, held up to the light, unmasking each other.

Love was in the rose bouquets he arranged with you, not to gift to you but just to spend time with you. Love was in the way you held his hand and the way he tucked you in when you fell asleep on the sofa. Love was at the dinner table and out on the balcony and under his umbrella with two of the ribs broken.

——————————

thank you for reading!

-minastras <3

[sailornymph]

Could you do more Madara as big brother stuff! Like a part 2 of how he’d (or even the other Uchiha) would react if reader doesn’t want to marry who the clan chose for them (like arranged marriage) thanks!!

rumor has it; uchiha men

synopsis — when their sister is being forced into an arranged marriage

content warning — arranged marriage, platonic yandere behavior

a/n — more requests are on the way throughout the week as i continue editing and writing. thank you for those who have been patient. i work at a hospital and am a nursing student, so i do not have too much time to just sit all day answering requests immediately. also, if the person who asked about the suguru sees this, please elaborate more because i have been confused.

♡ madara uchiha

— he feels 50/50 about the situation and it all boils down to one thing: strength

— wether the chosen suitor agrees to it or not, madara will put him through a series of situations, trials if you will, to see if they are worthy of your hand

— if they fail, then he will reject the proposal in disgust, while if he passes then he will approve

— however, if you are very adamant of not marrying the suitor, despite how he seems, he will agree with your wishes

— while he cares about the order within his clan, his immediate family will always come first to him

“lord madara”

“what is it?” madara groaned, he had been trying to finish up with the scrolls, but it seemed like someone wanted his attention every few minutes.

“it is your sister, my lord,” the shinobi said awkwardly.

“let her in,” he said immediately, his eyes softening as you entered, your face puffy from crying.

“you approved the marriage”

“hizako has proven himself worthy-

“what about what i want?” you cried.

“what do you want?”

“to keep getting stronger with you and zuna,” you sniffled.

“y/n, you need security, someone i know can protect you”

“i already know two men who can do that,” you said, making his eyes widened.

“who-

“my older brothers,” you said, wiping your eyes, while he smiled.

“i’ll postpone it for six months and if you’re still uninterested, then i will call it off”

“you’re the best”

“i know”

♡ itachi uchiha

— no matter if he chooses to make you stay with sasuke or brings you along with him if you don’t want to marry the person, he’s not allowing it

— if you went with him, things will play out differently. the akatsuki is not meant for someone like you and he doesn’t want you to focus on getting stronger like sasuke. instead, he brings you to a village close to where he is staying, visiting on occasion

— as you get older and locals realize you are one of the last uchiha people left, everyone is offering up their children for marriage with you. while you initially decline, you notice a bit of passive aggressiveness on their end and all it takes is whining to itachi, during his next visit and you’ll wake to him carrying you to your new home after he tortured those from the village you once lived in

— if you stay with sasuke, he expects sasuke to watch over you, and he does for the most part, until he decides to leave you too. with no one there, many older people begin to discuss an arranged marriage for you. not only would it dilute the uchiha blood, but potentially spread the sharingan to many

— itachi watches from the shadows as you cry about the unfairness of it all and how you missed your brothers. suddenly the s-rank criminal shows up in konoha paying his sister and these elders a visit

“are you sure you’re okay, y/n?” hinata asked, watching your saddened state. you sat in front of your bowl of ramen and you hadn’t touched it yet.

“are they still looking?” you said, as hinata turned towards the elders who were scowling at you.

“yes”

“i’m leaving,” you sat your money on the counter, turning to leave, when there was a gust of wind.

“s-sasuke’s brother,” hinata gasped, watching as you stood frozen.

you didn’t want to turn around, you couldn’t. itachi was your everything, the best big brother anyone could ask for. you slept peacefully throughout that night, only to find sasuke a crying mess, and that your sleep had been induced. you didn’t want to accept the fact that itachi would do what he had done, but there was no denying it. yet after all these years, he stood here, behind you, his arm loosely around you. loose, yet you could feel the protectiveness within it.

“brother?” you felt the tears running down your face, as kakashi sensei appeared.

“turn and face me,” he said, his voice still as mellow as ever. gulping you turned, and your hand went to your mouth to hold back your cries.

“you will not marry anyone you don’t want to be with, i’ll make sure of it,” he told you, reaching to wipe your eyes.

“itachi, get away from her,” kakashi said

“sasuke has failed you, but i will always make sure that won’t happen again,” he told you, his dark eyes peering into your own.

“big brother, why did you do it? i know you, there was a reason-

“i am only here about you”

“then let me come with you”

“and make you a criminal? you can’t even beat sasuke and he’s still weak. you’re better off here, my cute baby sister,” he told you, patting your head, before walking away.

“take care of yourself, my y/n,” he continued to himself.

looking towards the crowd of elders, they gasped at his sharingan. he didn’t have to say anything to them, a simple gaze was enough to make them understand what he was saying. they were going to leave you alone, or he’d simply make them.

♡ indra ōtsutsuki

— indra, much like madara is 50/50, before different reasons. it more so has to do with if you’re closer with him or asura

— if you’re closer with asura, he doesn’t care too much, when he gets the news. not saying that he doesn’t care at all, because he’ll probably talk asura or a few of his friends into “checking” to see if this person is even strong enough to protect his sister

— if the person or the clan prove to be worthy, he kind of backs off about the matter, but he will still watch from afar as everything falls into place

— if you’re close with him, especially after asura was chosen, i feel that he will be borderline yandere. you’re his baby sister. also! you’re the only person that feels like he is doing perfectly fine, that he deserved what was given to asura. he wouldn’t give you away so easily, especially when you didn’t want to marry this person anyway

— he’ll intimidate the hell out of them, he might even fight them. he doesn’t care if they are forced into the arranged marriage too, he wants them to back out because they are not worthy to even be in your presence

“y/n is one of the best fighters in the clan, she was trained by my eldest, indra,” hagoromo said, as the parents of your potential suitor sat in front of you.

“hold your head up dear, i’d love to see your beautiful eyes”

“she inherited them from my mother,” hagoromo said.

“absolutely wonderful, what do you think of her son-

before the young man could speak, the door slid open roughly. indra glared at the family as he slowly sauntered to the group, before sitting next to you.

“indra-

“what?” indra turned to his father, his sharingan activated.

“this meeting is only about y/n-

“she's lived with me for the last year, i should know be here with her,” indra scoffed. your rigid form relaxed as he interlocked his fingers with your own.

“tell her son,” the boy’s father continued.

“you’re very beautiful,” the boy blurted, his face burning with embarrassment.

“she is, the two of you would make very lovely heirs with your-

“byakugan,” you answered. squeezing indra’s hand, all he could think of his the previous night. he attempted to surprise you with a sweet treat, but accidentally interrupted you crying your eyes out. father was trying to set up an arranged marriage and he was trying to keep it a secret because he knew indra would he angry about it.

“yes, the byakugan, those eyes could be passed on for generations,” his mother smiled.

“do you think i’m letting my sister marry your pathetic son,” indra suddenly spoke up.

“indra, stop this-

“how about you beat me in a match, if i lose we’ll see about it, but if i win, find someone else,” indra said stoically, as he stared unblinking at the parents, before facing the boy.

“this really isn’t necessary-

“oh but it is, you see my sister is very precious to me, so much that i cannot allow my father to marry her off to a shrimp like your son, who can’t even stand up against me. so your arrangement is officially rejected,” indra said, taking your hand, and walking away with you.

hagoromo was too busy trying to calm them down to stop the two of you, letting you leave the main house. once outside, you hugged indra tightly, thanking him for stepping in.

“don’t thank me, it’s my duty as your brother. if it were up to me you would never get married, but i know the day will come. when that day does come, i’ll make sure it’s someone you want to be with,” he patted your head, before the two of you began to walk away.

♡ obito uchiha

— he wants his only sibling to live a life separate from the path he’s on. he occasionally visits, but tries to not show up too much to interrupt the peaceful little life you have for yourself

— however, when he shows up, he can see from a distance, the unfamiliar clan members leaving your home, he can see how puffy your face looked. you had clearly been crying

— he waits a few minutes before knocking, acting as if he just showed up, before pointing out that you look as if you had been crying. he couldn’t hide too well how much it hurt him, when you lied about the reason, blaming the weather

— once he leaves, he begins investigating when he finds out about the clan. they’d noticed you and decided that you would be perfect for the heir of the main family. with no family around they began to push until you would finally give in. from your tears he knew this wasn’t something you wanted. but you didn’t have to worry because your big brother would take care of everything

— after the terrible “freak accident” leading to the death of the main family, the clan calls off any further arrangements. you are left alone to continue living your happy little life, and while you are suspicious of obito, he would never admit to what he did

opening the door as obito approached, your eyes softened at his distant expression. he seemed to be in his head. walking to him you wrapped your arms around him, sighing as he followed, embracing you.

“thank you, big brother”

“what are you thanking me for,” he glanced at you.

“the clan, was it not you?”

“i don't know what we're talking about, but i love you too,” he said, as he began to walk past you into your home.

“also…y/n”

“yes?”

“you know if you need me i’ll always come to you, right?” he asked.

“yes, of course”

“then write me back more, i never hear from you kid,” he said, getting comfortable.

♡ sasuke uchiha

— he doesn’t pay the clan members any mind, initially. every time they showed up at your shared apartment, he slammed the door in their face. when they stared at the two of you, he didn’t care

— it wasn’t until he was walking to pick you up from school, that he noticed the elders speaking to you, as you held your head down. approaching them, he demands to know what’s going on, leading to them telling him plainly about the arranged marriage

— when they leave, he expresses his anger at you and the situation. it was supposed to be the two of you against the world, but here you were agreeing to marriages with people you didn’t even know

— he gives you the silent treatment for days until an argument happens. he was progressing in strength while you would not pursue the life of a shinobi, with him away all the time on missions it became easy for the clan to become pushy about the marriage, and so you were giving in with no other solutions

— storming away, he goes and picks a fight with the potential suitor, dragging him back to the apartment and forcing him to call off the arrangement. it gets him into a lot of trouble that kakashi struggles to get him out of, but it is worth it because the two of you end up making up

“excuse you, geez,” you whined, as he bumped your shoulder.

“i pay the bills around here, if you have a problem with where i walk, move in with your future husband”

“seriously”

“tell me again, why you agreed to this? what would are parents think? you just go and marry a stranger. what about school? what about us, itachi left us, it’s just you and me-

“stop saying that when it isn’t true, you asshole,” you screamed, making him stop, you had never spoken to him that way before.

“you are not alone, no matter how much you think you are. you have naruto, kakashi, and sakura. everyone either wants to be your friend or be with you. you’re one of the strongest in your class. and where does that leave me? the youngest sibling who ended up not being a shinobi. no special abilities, a nobody compared to you. if these people think i am worthy to be with their son, i’ll do it, even if i don’t want this for myself-

“why would you think i would accept this-

“does it matter, you’re always away anyway, all you want is to kill itachi and power, so don’t act like you care,” you scoffed, wiping your tears.

“i don’t care, are you serious?” he raised his voice suddenly, making you jump.

turning away he stormed out of the apartment into the rain. hearing the distant thunder you became worried. for nearly twenty minutes, you anxiously sat, until the door began to open. standing up, your heart dropped, as sasuke dragged the beaten-up guy into the room, by his shirt.

“tell her”

“t-the arrangement is off”

“your clan will leave her alone”

“yes, they will,” he nodded, flinching.

“apologize for harassing her”

“i’m sorry, miss, forgive me,” he cried.

“now get out,” sasuke shoved him towards the door, watching as the tears fell from your eyes. slow approaching, he forced you into a hug.

“don’t ever think that you are alone. that’s my job. even if i am miles away, I won’t allow you to go through something like marrying someone out of convenience. you are an uchiha and my baby sister, it’s not happening, as long as i’m here,” he glared at you, but his eyes softened as you went to hug them, thanking him.

“sasuke?”

“hm?”

“since we’ve made up, could you cook tomorrow, i’m tired of ramen”

“fine”

[camillomea]

Red robin and rouges gallery: riddler was Not a killer

Riddler always proudly described himself as more rational than the other rouges. He was in and out of Arkham regularly, but he rarely had to escape. He would just wait until his time was over to create more puzzles. He was one of the rouges who discovered Batman's identity. But those who discovered him usually didn't care about his identity, so they never got the two identities mixed up. And he didn't tell anyone else. The only reason batman know he knew Batman's identity was because of his little red. When he met little red, red was only 10 years old. He was a very small child for his age with bright blue eyes. A curious little boy living on the streets of Crime Alley. He kept seeing him over and over again. Each time, he got thinner and lost more of the spark in his eyes. Eddie made it his mission to bring the boy back to life after that. He decided to delay getting into trouble before he went back to Arkham. He would give him little puzzles every day, hiding little treats and such. They were small but effective gifts. Seeing the boy smile again would make him keep doing it. The only person he had mentioned this to was Oswald. Things were just starting to happen between them at that time. Oswald had taken an interest in the boy. And he had said that if he was in Arkham and he was out, he would look after little Red instead. The boy had even started calling him Uncle Eddie. Eddie was the one who had introduced him to Doctor Throne. He knew that he would look after the boy. Even though he acted grumpy for introducing him. Yes, the Riddler was not a killer, but he knew how to kill someone too. Oswald's gift was a small gun that fit in the palm of his hand. Eddie was not a man of fighting, and Oswald had given it to him because he was worried about his safety. The gun was effective enough. Yes, he was not a killer, but he was the best bomb maker in Gotham. He could make bombs from the smallest to the largest, from the lightest to the most powerful bombs that could blow up a whole city. Eddie never liked anyone who hurt children. He had a special grudge against them. Yes, he was not a killer, but when he left Arkham and went to see little Red, he saw the human trafficker who tried to kidnap her. He hadn't even blinked before shooting him. Yes, he wasn't a murderer, but no one would ever touch a child in front of him, especially his own. He had taken the unconscious child to the doctor throne and then called Oswald. The body wasn't there in the morning. And no one had heard of the murder.

***

Riddler was at dinner when his wristwatch started beeping loudly. It was a quiet little restaurant. He was getting strange looks from everyone because of his identity, but he had just left Arkham. He hadn't come running. So he was comfortable. He had stiffened when the alarm went off. He knew very well what the alarm meant. He felt a shiver run down his spine. Eddie had jumped to his feet immediately. He took his wallet out of his pocket and left the appropriate amount of money on the table. He said, "Sorry, if there is an emergency, I'll be back to leave the rest later." He had rushed out of the restaurant and ran to the car in a hurry. His hands were shaking with panic, trying to figure out the location on his phone. When he found it, he started the car and sped off at full speed. Anxiety filled his eyes. When he finally arrived, he had entered the warehouse with his gun in his hand. The sight he saw filled his blood. When he saw his precious little red covered in blood on the ground, his heart skipped a beat and a deep, endless anger filled him. Yes, the Riddler was not a murderer. Everyone knew that. But there was something else the Rouges knew. No one would touch a child around Edward Nygma, especially his child, otherwise if they were lucky, their existence would simply be erased from Gotham. But if they were unlucky, everyone would suffer for it to the end, and the whole of Gotham would turn into a bloodbath.

[fandoms-x-reader]

Role Model

Requested By: @mikudreamland

Oneshot

Summary: MC is a child who takes Mammon's tsundere nature at face value and believes he hates them. Mammon x Child!MC (platonically) Word Count: 945

Social cues were not something that children had a perfect grasp on. 

That was something that Mammon didn’t understand.

You were just a child. You didn’t know that when Mammon was putting on a tough act and calling you names there was a hidden message behind his words.

You had heard the others call him a “tsundere” but you weren’t even sure what that meant.

So, in your mind, you truly believed that Mammon hated you.

Mammon was desperate to be accepted by others and yet he refused to let others see him give the slightest bit of compassion.

Maybe he was afraid of looking weak. Maybe he was scared that the others would tease him for being kind.

After all, he was a demon.

What book or movie demonstrated a demon being a kind and caring creature?

He wouldn’t allow anyone to see the side of him that so desperately wanted to be exposed.

There were countless things done behind the scenes that he declined to take credit for.

Moments where his brothers would question his involvement, genuinely touched by the matter. But, Mammon would deny having any part of it.

And nothing changed when it came to you. 

As far as Mammon was concerned, this was how he always showed his affection for others. By doing things on the side and never letting his true feelings see the light of day.

You had been asking for a really special gift for a while now and Mammon had finally saved up enough money to buy it for you.

Yet, when you found it in your room one day, he claimed he had no idea how that wound up there and that you should ask Lucifer or Diavolo, doing his best to remove himself as a suspect from your mind.

Things like that tended to happen more often around you as Mammon tried to compete with his brothers to be your favorite role model.

But, because he never admitted to being kind to you, the only thing you saw was the way he teased you and called you things like “dummy”.

The way he claimed that he wouldn’t want to hang out with you and that the only reason he was doing so was because he would be in trouble with Lucifer if something bad happened to you when he was supposed to be watching you.

And it caused you to want to spend more time with his other brothers instead.

It was hard for you to think that Mammon didn’t like you because you really looked up to him.

Sure, he was awful with money and was always finding himself in trouble.

So, to believe that someone you looked up to so much couldn’t stand you made you feel really sad. 

But, he also was very laid-back and knew how to have fun.

He was light-hearted and while others would consider his tendency to not take things seriously annoying, it was perfect when spending time with a child.

And, with nowhere else to go, you ended up expressing those feelings to the other brothers.

They, of course, knew Mammon’s true feelings and attempted to explain his behavior to you. After all, they had a whole lifetime to adjust to him being a tsundere.

But, their words went in one ear and out the other.

How could you believe their claims about Mammon when you had never seen anything from him to back it up?

It wasn’t until Mammon saw how much closer you had grown to his other brothers that he realized something was wrong.

He tried to get you a gift to possibly persuade you away from his brothers, but you were completely uninterested in it. 

Mammon was truly at a loss for what to do.

He ended up sulking the next few days and when his brothers finally grew tired of it, they held an intervention during which they all but stated that Mammon was acting like a fool.

Satan explained that though they could see past his neutral facade, you were just a child who took his actions and words at face value.

Mammon was devastated by the news. He didn’t hate you or actually think that you were stupid.

It was a refreshing thing for Mammon - to feel accepted by someone. 

All of his brothers looked at him with disdain for his small flaws and sin.

But your innocence allowed you to look past all of that and see the person that he actually was.

And now he had ruined it because he hadn’t realized he was pushing you away.

After that conversation, he was determined to fix things and be your favorite role model.

It was a slow process, full of Mammon trying to completely change the way he went about things.

He would still buy you gifts, but he would own up to them, more afraid of you hating them than he was of anyone else judging them.

He would congratulate you for doing a good job on your school work and he would even offer to take you out for a treat as a reward.

As Mammon repaired the bond and the two of you got closer, the other brothers noticed that you really started to blossom.

For once in his life, Mammon felt responsible for someone’s life other than his own and he accepted that responsibility with open arms.

And in return, you also started to change Mammon.

He had gone to the casino less and less and even tried to pay off some debts to get out of some of the witches’ grasps.

When he put his mind to it, Mammon was an excellent role model.

[lazycats-stuff]

Ummm hi I just wanted to ask if you know the Netflix series called The Queen's Gambit? If you know, can you make a story where the reader is Bruce's son Is a chest master. Where he beats everyone in his chess game. Well I would love it if you retained the Queen's Gambit title but if not that's fine too🤣.But in the middle of the story he was angry because someone had managed to beat him in his match so he became annoyed and locked himself in a room to find a strategy.To defeat the person who defeated him. If possible, the one that will distract the reader is the OC. Thank you. Sorry if there are too many requests hehe

Oh I heard about, saw a few clips and all, but never watched it. But I know about it so no problem. I absolutely can do it. Also, I know nothing about chess. If there are people who play chess reading this, I don't know chess.

Summary: (Y/N) is a chess master. Until someone takes the title away.

Warnings:

All of his children were smart and had their specialties, so to speak. And Bruce was more than happy to help them explore that. Bruce wanted all of their sons to be explore their potentials. Why not? He had money and resources to help them out. That's also what he did to (Y/N), since (Y/N) was very interested in chess, since he was a small child.

Often asking Alfred to play chess with him. Which is ironic since Bruce taught him the rules for it, but hey. (Y/N) was happy whenever he played chess and since he was the youngest out of the 5 of them, he had 4 people to play with. Damian was more than happy to play, since his grandfather taught him.

Damian couldn't beat him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't. That made him even more stubborn, making it a life long mission to beat his younger brother. And if it's the last thing he does, then so be it.

Tim was also good in chess, but couldn't beat (Y/N) as well. He has tried every single strategy he could find and think of. But nothing. (Y/N) could not be beaten. Not in the slightest. Just like Damian, he swore to beat him one day, even if it's the last thing he ever does in his life. Until then, he was going to research every single strategy and make sure he takes the honor of beating his brother.

Dick simply enjoyed playing chess, even though he always lost against (Y/N). He didn't mind it, he has always liked spending time with his youngest brother, although he always lost. He always allowed (Y/N) to use different strategies during their plays. Had it been Damian, he might have exploded.

And Jason?

Jason isn't well versed in chess, but that didn't stop (Y/N). He was patient when teaching Jason, explaining the different pieces and the way they moved. Jason felt frustrated, wanting to sometimes flip the table. But (Y/N) was patient, knowing that not everyone liked chess and he liked the fact that Jason didn't kill him yet.

So all in all, (Y/N) was happy whenever he played chess. Whether it be at home or at tournaments.

And once Netflix aired its Queen's Gambit, that was his nickname from that point forward. (Y/N) hated it at first, but then he didn't care. He could deal with it, since it was in reference to Beth Harmon, although a fictional character, but still one hell of a chess player.

And yes, (Y/N) was participating in many tournaments. He got the title of chess master, since he beat a lot of amateurs, but he wanted to have the title of grandmaster. He wanted to be the best. He wanted to be respected doing something he loved more than anything in his world.

(Y/N) came into the manor like a bat out of hell. He stomped upstairs, slamming the doors of his room. Bruce was confused as to what has happened, but knowing (Y/N), talking to him while upset would do him no good. (Y/N) would only snap back at him.

Teens need some space to cool off and collect their thoughts.

The only thing that could happen to upset (Y/N) is losing at chess. So Bruce went to his detective work and sure enough, (Y/N) lost in a tournament. Bruce sighed. Losses are a normal part of life, because you need to know how to deal with set backs in life. Bruce made sure to teach (Y/N) how to lose gracefully.

And his opponent is a known chess player too. And Bruce has decided to check the clip too, just to make sure that he wasn't a sore loser. Because he didn't raise his boy like that. Thankfully, (Y/N) was polite, smiled at his opponent and shook hands, congratulating him.

Bruce sighed in relief as he saw it. He would have been disappointed if he didn't lose gracefully. But holing up in your own room is not a healthy coping mechanism. Hopefully food will coax him out of hiding and make him talk about his feelings.

(Y/N) is a growing boy and needs to eat.

Soon enough, (Y/N)'s brother's caught wind of it and tried to help (Y/N) out, trying to coax him out with food and talk. (Y/N) took the food like a goblin and went to investigating different strategies on how to beat him opponent. He said to them all that he'll beat his opponent, no matter how long it took him.

Bruce wasn't sure how to feel about that. (Y/N) needs a distraction. Bruce is slowly but surely out of options. He doesn't know how to pull his son out of the slump.

Jason had the idea to call (Y/N)'s friend, Simon Moore. Simon Moore is a good friend of his and Bruce suspects something more, but he still didn't ask about, thinking that (Y/N) isn't ready to come out yet. Either way, (Y/N) needs help.

" Simon is here. " Jason walked in with him, a tall blond boy with blue eyes.

" Hello everyone. (Y/N) lost a match and won't come out? " Simon asked and Bruce nodded.

" Alright. Just to warn you, if you hear yelling, don't be worried. " Simon walked up the stairs and Jason smirked to himself.

" (Y/N) is going to blow a fuse. "

Bruce sipped his coffee as he heard the door being kicked in. (Y/N) would have never opened up on his own and Bruce could always pay someone.

Perks of being rich.

" Alright Queen's Gambit, up and at them! " Simon yelled and (Y/N) was yelling back.

" Simon is a friend we all need to be, " Jason stated and Bruce sipped more of his coffee as he listened to the commotion.

" What's going on up there? It sounds like World War 3. " Tim walked in to get some snacks and coffee.

" Simon came by to help (Y/N) out, " Jason explained and Tim nodded as he poured himself some coffee.

" Father, what is going on upstairs? " Damian popped in to get himself some tea, looking through the different flavors in his box.

" Simon dropped by to help. " Jason leaned on the kitchen island and Damian nodded.

" Moore came to help. Good. Are we still in the belief that they are a couple? " Damian put the water to boil and Bruce nodded.

" Nothing is confirmed though, so not a word to (Y/N). " Bruce extended his cup to Damian to refill it for him.

" Is (Y/N) okay up there? " Dick walked in through the back door and Bruce nodded.

" Simon dropped by to help us, " Bruce gave a short explanation and Dick let out an oh.

" Well that explains it. "

Bruce nodded as they listened to the commotion upstairs. Soon enough, everything calmed down and Simon came down.

" (Y/N)'s in the shower, " Simon announced and everyone nodded.

Bruce took his cup of coffee back from Damian and sipped it.

" Does he look like death warmed over? " Damian asked and Simon chuckled quietly.

" Oddly enough, no. But the room stinks a little bit so I opened all the windows. Also, my apologies about the door mister Wayne. " Simon rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly and Bruce smiled and shook his head and wave at his dismissively.

" Oh no worries Simon. Also, don't call me mister Wayne, just Bruce will suffice. "

Simon nodded. " He said that he would come down to get some food too. And he's hungry, let me tell you that. "

" That boy will be the death of me, I swear. Thank you Simon. "

[fuctacles]

A tale as old as time

For @subeddieweek Day 7 | M | 2696 | cw: age gap (about 25-30y difference, Eddie's age is not stated, Steve's aligns with canon) | camboy Eddie, transmasc Eddie, kinda sugar daddy Steve?, modern AU, simp Steve, virgin Eddie, chatfic, pre-anything, gray ace Eddie | Ao3 Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Ao3

"Hawkins High '86? How old is this guy?" Eddie asks himself, his eyebrows raised. There is a letterman in front of him, a gift from one of his top subscribers. Hell, his top subscriber. His number-one fan, who was responsible for about half of his revenue.

He's opened a PO box recently, with no little amount of worry about what kind of stuff he might get. He only gave the address to his top subscribers but he knew that the ones with the most money were usually the most unhinged. He went to the post office with his heart in his throat but all he got was a set of lingerie, a toy, and the letterman he was now holding.

He tried not to think about what kind of people would pay for his content. As long as he was making money he didn't care. But now he got a piece of one of them in his hands. Staring back.

1986.

Meaning the guy must be nearing 60. Double Eddie's age. 

He tries to imagine that. An older guy, with wrinkles, maybe a beer belly, a gross old t-shirt, and his hand permanently in his sweats, beating it to his photos. 

It was gross. And in a way, alluring.

Though someone with so much money to spend on a camboy must have a well-paying job. Some rich asshole, exploiting others to do the work for him. That's a more likely scenario. He tries not to think about big, rough hands on him when he puts on the jacket and takes pics for Shar.

He edits them a bit before sending them, knowing the guy will get a kick from seeing him in his jacket. The appeal of wearing your boyfriend's letterman eluded him in high school, but being claimed like that gave him a heady feeling. The fact that the guy could be his father apparently worked for him too. 

He doesn't put his phone away fast enough and sees the message that pops up.

Shar: So hot. You look like every repressed teen jock's dream

Shar: Definitely like mine

Eddie thinks a moment about his response, channeling the persona he takes on for the camera. 

PuppetOfMasters: Would I be your dirty secret?

PuppetOfMasters: Would you fuck me in the locker room behind your girlfriend's back?

Shar: I'd make YOU my girlfriend

Shar: Wait no

Shar: NOT LIKE THAT

Shar: A girlfriend but in a manly way

Eddie snorts.

You're good, he types. I know what you mean, don't worry.

He wouldn't keep around someone who didn't respect him. Besides, he made it clear he's saving for a transition with his Only Fans.

Thank god, Shar types. I respect who you are 

Shar: In fact, I spend so much money on you because of it. 

Eddie rolls onto his other side, his mood souring. One of those trans fetishists, then. That's fine, as long as he's being respectful and paying... Even if it leaves an unpleasant taste in his mouth. 

Ah, a connoisseur! Well, I hope I'm your favorite tranny, then, he jokes. He waits for an answer, but it doesn't come for a long while, so he flips his phone screen down and turns away, hoping for sleep.

A response is waiting for him when he wakes up. 

Shar: I guess it sounded that way, but I'm not that kind of pervert. You're the only trans sex worker I follow, but not the only trans person I've sent money to.

Eddie sauntered to the bathroom, not taking his eyes off his phone. He wonders if continuing the conversation is even the right move. He's talked to one too many guys who thought sending him a dick pick was okay after ten minutes of small talk between a content creator and a fan.

But he's kind of curious. When he has money to spare, he sends some change to other trans folks to help out, because he knows how hard it is from his own experience. But why Shar, a seemingly loaded old guy, would spend his money on queers instead of, let's say, starving children?

PuppetOfMasters: So you're just an ally with cash? Or is there more to it? I'm curious.

He goes through his morning routine, washing his face, and brushing his teeth, not expecting Shar to get back to him any time soon. So he's surprised when he picks his phone back up and a response is waiting.

Shar: Long story short, I hope my father is rolling in his grave while I spend his inheritance on people he hated so much.

That's not what Eddie expected at all. 

PuppetOfMasters: So I'm a means of rebellion against your bigoted dead father? I'll take that. I hate rich assholes

Shar: Me too

They don't talk for the whole day after that, but when Eddie's done running errands and editing in the evening, he looks back at the letterman hanging on the door of his wardrobe. 

How is sending me your letterman an act of rebellion? he asks. Because he's a curious little shit. 

The response comes fast like the guy is glued to his Only Fans chat. Gross. Eddie wonders briefly if he's talking with other sex workers there.

Shar: A souvenir of his precious high school fetishized on a queer ssex worker? He'd die if he hadn't already

So it is a fetish thing! Eddie smiles triumphantly at his phone.

Shar: Okay, fine

Shar: Sticking it to my father is just a bonus for you being really hot. 

Shar: And I do love seeing you in my letterman, I've jerked off to it three times already

Shar: is that what you wanted to hear?

Eddie grins, rolling on his bed.

PuppetOfMasters: Yes 

Shar: So yeah, I'm an old man who peaked in high school, laugh it up

PuppetOfMasters: I'd rather you peaked in me

Shar: Insufferable

Shar: Menace

Shar: Yeah, I'd love that. A man can dream, right?

Eddie bites his lip. How far is too far? The guy seems genuine and after the amount of creeps that's been chatting him up, he thinks his creep radar is quite good. Tentatively, he starts typing.

PuppetOfMasters: I don't know. I think people would like seeing me get railed by an older guy

Shar: An old guy, you mean

Shar: You'd make a video with me?

PuppetOfMasters: I record most of the sex I have, yes

Shar: Huh. I've never seen one before, then

PuppetOfMasters: warm, warmer

Shar: ... There aren't any?

PuppetOfMasters: din ding ding! ya boy is a virgin

Shar: shit

Shar: fuck

Shar: that's so hot

Shar: you'd let me?

PuppetOfMasters: Would I let my best-paying subscriber be my first time on camera? Probably

Not necessarily to be released but he couldn't lose the possibility of such golden content in case it was watchable. 

Shar: I'd better keep my spot then. Just in case.

PuppetOfMasters: No worries, you seem the most trustworthy so far anyway.

But as he types it, a new notification appears. Shar sent him a hefty tip on one of his photos.

PuppetOfMasters: That's really not necessary

PuppetOfMasters: But I hope your father is kicking and screaming in his coffin

Shar: I fucking hope so

----

It takes Eddie another day to google Hawkins High's yearbook photos. He'd thought about it before but didn't want to break the bubble of anonymity between himself and his fan. But the thoughts of big hands on his hips, and beard rubbing against his neck, took root in his brain and were tainting his mind.

Not fully in tune with his body and distrustful of others, Eddie has been single for most of his life. And now his stupid horny brain was drooling at the thought of losing his virginity to a grandpa on the internet. 

Hoping it would help his thoughts calm down, he looks through the photos from the year 1986, in search of a Harrington. And he finds him.

Steve Harrington. Basketball captain and swim team co-captain. His hairdo was magnificent and his smile was self-confident. Eddie would hate him in high school. Should probably hate him now. So he expands his search further, beyond the Hawkins High memory lane.

He finds one single photo on a LinkedIn profile. 

The current Steve Harrington's hair is no less magnificent, just peppered with silver. He wears glasses now, which accentuate the line of his jaw and make his neatly trimmed facial hair pop out. He's wearing a yellow jacket and a white golf, which should be hideous but weirdly, works for him. Eddie doesn't get to see his eyes, unfortunately. The photo looks like a candid photo shoot take-out after someone told him a joke. His head is tilted down, eyes scrunched and lips pulled in a smile, as a bubbling laugh got immortalized on camera.

Eddie shouldn't be finding a sixty-year-old man this endearing. 

PuppetOfMasters: I like your LinkedIn photo

PuppetOfMasters: Well, I hope it's you. 

PuppetOfMasters: Steve, right?

He can't forget about this for the whole day, not as he budgets his income, and especially not when he records a short video jerking off in the shower. He tries not to look at his phone but it's his only one, so he does while trying to budget in a second one, just for sex work. Maybe then he wouldn't be feeling so insane about not getting a response from a stranger who is an old pervert spending loads of money on him. 

He tries to be normal when a chat notification finally pops up. 

Shar: If you saw the golf and yellow jacket photo, that's me

Shar: though please don't make me type my full name in here.

no worries, Eddie types back so fast he should be embarrassed. It's a good photo.

Shar: Thanks. My best friend took it 

PuppetOfMasters: Your friend has a good eye

Shar: I'll let her know

Shar: I'm surprised it took you this long to search me up

Eddie's surprised too. Usually, his curiosity would take over him sooner.

PuppetOfMasters: I tried not to pry. But I had to in case we were gonna meet up one day

Shar: So you were serious?

Shar: I've been wondering if you sweet-talk all your followers like that 

PuppetOfMasters: Only the ones that don't send me dick pics

Shar: I knew holding back would pay off

Eddie snorts at his phone. 

Though I might need one before we meet up, he types. Gotta know what I'm working with

Shar: Right. Of course

Shar: So how would that work?

Eddie hasn't thought about it this far.

PuppetOfMasters: I need to read about OF's policy on collabs. Never had to before, since I work solo. Would probably have to hire you, well, sign a commission/gig contract or something like that. So it's all legal and shit.

Shar, Steve, doesn't answer for a long while, and it might be the end of his devirginizing journey. Well, if the guy doesn't want to make this legal, put his name on some paperwork, then he isn't trustworthy, and that's the end of it.

It's half an hour later and Eddie's bitten all his nails off trying not to follow up with any messages and focus on anything else when an answer finally comes.

Shar: Sorry my friend was bothering me

Shar: this sounds more complicated than I anticipated. So I would be like, a co-creator, then?

PuppetOfMasters: Precisely

Shar: Holy shit okay

Shar: Thought I'd be you know, less involved

Though you could hit it and quit it, huh? Eddie scrunched his nose. What was he getting himself into? Gods.

Shar: If that's what you wanted I'd take it

Eddie shouldn't be blushing over this one. It's like he's throwing the man scraps and he's licking them up.

PuppetOfMasters: Simp

Shar: I am what I am

Shar: With that said, I'm willing to make it work. Do all the paperwork you need

PuppetOfMasters: Doing paperwork just to fuck me? so romantic

Shar: I suck at paperwork so my friend would be doing it anyway

Shar: If that's okay

PuppetOfMasters: I think it's best if someone looks it over, yeah

Eddie hesitates for a moment.

PuppetOfMasters: That friend doesn't happen to be your wife?

Fuck no, comes the immediate response

Shar: I'm perpetually single and she's as gay as they come. 

PuppetOfMasters: Good. Wouldn't want to be the other girl

Shar: If I had the chance you'd be the only one

PuppetOfMasters: Jesus.

Eddie squeezes his legs together unconsciously.

PuppetOfMasters: Stop sweet talking me, I've already agreed to fuck

Shar: But we haven't signed anything yet. Even then, I'll keep sweet-talking you. It's what you deserve. 

For the first time, Eddie thinks he might not survive their meeting. And not because of the possible killer scenario. Thankfully, Steve gets back to business talk.

Shar: How would this work, legal stuff aside? Do you script this?

PuppetOfMasters: Do I look like I script shit?

Shar: I'm not the one with Only Fans

PuppetOfMasters: Fair. I think we could just set up cameras and do whatever we feel like. Then decide together if the footage will be released or not. 

Shar: Sounds reasonable

Shar:When would you want to do this?

When?

Eddie hasn't thought that far. In fact, he felt like he hadn't been thinking for the past couple of days. 

I'm the sole god of my schedule so I'm open to anything, he types evasively.

Shar: I have some time off next month, could fly to wherever you need me

Next month seemed close. Extremely close. Or maybe it wasn't? He never worked with anyone before. Hell, he didn't even have that many friends to meet up with. 

Next month works I guess, he answers despite his nerves.

Shar: Wanna face time before we start the legal work?

His nerves escalate, making his mouth dry. He reminds himself he's done this before, he's on camera all the time. 

PuppetOfMasters: Like, right now?

Shar: Yeah?

PuppetOfMasters: Ok, give me five minutes.

Eddie shoots up, checks himself in the mirror, and finds a good angle for his phone to set up. He lowkey hopes Steve picks up with his dick in the frame so Eddie can block him with a clear conscience and forget about the whole thing. When six minutes from his last message pass, he hits 'call'.

"Hi," Eddie squeaks when the video connects. Steve Harrington's arms are in the frame, crossed on the desk, and toned where he's leaning on them.

"Hi," he greets him with a dazzling smile. 

It is the guy from the photo, so at least he's not being catfished. And he has none of the creepy simp energy Eddie feared. He's just... a guy. It's both a relief and a disappointment. 

"Well?" the guy asks.

"Well, what?" Eddie frowns. 

"Are you disappointed? Am I too old?"

Eddie looks at him properly. His hair is lighter on the sides, but not grey yet, and the video quality doesn't make any wrinkles stand out to him. Maybe some worry lines, crow's feet if he squints. He looks like he keeps in shape, too. Eddie wouldn't call him old. Mature, maybe. A DILF slowly transforming into a Silver Fox. 

"You look fine. Good. You look good. Attractive," Eddie fumbles with his words and barely stops himself from facepalming. This is why he mostly texts.

Steve smirks at him. And holy shit, a dude twice his age smirking at him shouldn't be doing things to his body.

"You sure? You're not gonna block me after we hang up, are you?"

Eddie shakes his head.

"I stand by our plans. You're passing my creep radar so far, but uh..." He scratches his cheek nervously. "I'd like to keep in touch in case, you know. A red flag pops up. I hope you get it."

Steve nods, his expression growing serious.

"Absolutely. We're strangers, after all."

"Yeah." Eddie nods, relieved. It would give him ample time and opportunities to back out.

On the screen, Steve leans more on his arms, closer to the camera. 

"So I think dick assessment is next on the checklist?"

Eddie might not even survive video calls with this guy, after all. 

[xmalereader]

ID Leon Kennedy x Teacher! Male Reader

—

|| Masterlist ||

—

Authors Note: This sat in my drafts for months and didn’t even finish it properly 😭, but oh well. In order for the ages between Sherry and Leon to make sense it would have been RE4R Leon instead of ID Leon, but fuck it, it doesn’t matter. Enjoy this trashy draft!

Summary: Leon is in need of a teacher for his daughter, Sherry and is recommended one of the best homeschooling teachers.

Warnings: Fluff, mentions of family, slight age gap, Sherry needs parents, single dad leon, language, homesickness, really short, mentions of Hunnigan and the DSO, mentions of Claire and Chris, Infinite Darkness Leon.

Word Count: 3.2K

—

—

He always wanted to be a preschool teacher, teaching young kids and watching them grow. He had a way with kids he knew how to talk to them and interact without making them uncomfortable. He grew up in a household with six sisters, he was the only boy in the family and took majority of his time raising his own sisters while his parents worked to maintain them. He never hated it, he enjoyed taking care of his sisters, learning how to do their hair, take them shopping, finding out which clothes fits best with what shoes.

His sisters knew that his dream was to be a teacher one day and to teach younger students, after he graduated high school he quickly went to college to get his proper degree, spending day and night studying and getting his work done. Passing tests and finally reaching graduation, only for everything to crumble.

He’d applied to many schools and was denied. Not because he wasn’t educated enough but because he was a man who wanted to teach young children which caused many schools to be suspicious about him. He had a clean record and showed no signs of trouble but that didn’t matter to them. His dream of being a teacher came crashing down to the point where he was close to giving up.

It wasn’t until he applied for home schooling, hoping to get something. It took him a few days to receive a call from a family who wished to have a teacher for there kids. After they looked at his records and file they quickly accepted him, giving him the chance to interact with the families kids and educate them. The kids he taught were between eight to ten years old, giving him the chance to teach different levels of education.

He was with the family for a year before the kids were officially sent to a public school, his time spent teaching the kids gave him hope in advancing only for the wife of the family ending up recommending him to one of her co workers. She told him that he was a single parent raising a ten year old daughter.

He didn’t meet up with this new client until a month later, giving him time to prepare for a visit and to meet up properly with his new student and parent. Y/n was given an address of where his new client lived, imagine his surprise when he arrives to a large house, big enough for a large family.

He was confused, checking the address twice to make sure that he was at the right place. Did a single parent really live here? Perhaps the job they worked provided them enough money to afford such a big house. He gives himself some time to allow his anxiety to subside before stepping up to finally knock on the door.

It only took a few minutes for someone to come to the front door, pulling it open to come face to face with the most attractive man he’s ever seen. Y/n can’t help but swallow nervously as he asks in a soft voice. “Mr. Kennedy?” He questions, hoping that this man standing in front of him wasn’t his students father.

“Yes, that’s me.”

Fuck.

“I’m Y/n.” He sticks his hand out for a friendly handshake. “You called about homeschooling your daughter, I believe?” He asks, shaking Kennedy’s hand before he was let inside.

“You were recommended to me by a co worker, she told me that you are good at teaching along with Interacting with kids.” His students father raises a brow, guiding him inside the house, giving Y/n the chance to look around the place.

“Yes! Martha was her name—“ he referred to the mother of his old students. “She told me very little about you, telling me that you are a single parent raising a daughter on your own and looking for a teacher.” The two end up in the living room with Y/n sitting down a little further away from Kennedy. “Mr. Kennedy—“

“Please, call me Leon. Mr. Kennedy sounds a bit weird to me.” He chuckled out.

“Right, Mr—Leon. Can I ask, why not send your daughter to a public school? I’m not saying that I’m a bad teacher I’m simply curious to know.” He didn’t want him to think that he was judging Leons decision of homeschooling his daughter, he was curious to know. Most families had attachments to their kids and weren’t ready to send them to a public school, others were concerned about there safety.

He watched as Leon sighed to himself, siting back in his own seat. “I took sherry out of a bad situation, took her under my wing and signed the adoption papers after everything. Her situation caused her to close up.” Leon began to explain, getting Y/n’s attention. “She’s open around me and a few friends of mine but she’s not great with strangers or kids her own age. I believe that it’s a smart decision to have her homeschooled until she is ready.”

Y/n nods along at his words, taking everything in. He’s never dealt with a child who has been through trauma, but he’s willing to accept a challenge and provide the proper tools to help. “Is there anything I should know about Sherry? Perhaps curtain things she doesn’t feel comfortable with?” His question catches Leon by surprise. He guesses that not people ask about his child’s worries.

“She doesn’t like needles or tight spaces nor the dark.” Leon starts to name off a couple of things. “She doesn’t like shouting, it scares her and sometimes she can freeze up.”

Y/n takes mental note of all of this, making sure that he doesn’t do or say anything that will cause the poor kid to panic. “I will make sure that I don’t put her in a tough position, I always want to make sure that my students are comfortable. I would like to meet with Sherry first, if that’s alright? I usually spend my first day getting to know my students before I officially start their studies.”

Leon was hesitant, eyeing him up and down before coming to a stand, nodding his head. “Yeah, follow me.” With that, Y/n comes to a stand and follows Leon deeper into the house. Guiding him down a hall towards an open door, Y/n makes sure to stay back as Leon steps inside, giving the door a soft knock to get his kids attention.

“Sherry, your new teacher is here to meet with you. Think you’re up to it?” Leon asks as the young girl gives him a nod as she stands from her desk chair, coming to stand by Leon’s side as Y/n enters the room with a soft smile. He makes sure to provide her enough space to feel comfortable with as he stands from afar.

He gives a small wave. “Hello Sherry, I’m Y/n.” He intrudes himself, holding onto the strap of his book bag as he swallows. Leon is watching him closely as he approached her. “Honestly I haven’t heard much about you, all I know is that your dad here wants me to be your teacher—“ his eyes avert towards her desk where he takes notice of a Microscope.

“Do you like science?”

That gets the kids attention.

“I know a thing or two about science, I see that you like doing on hands projects.” He continued. “Perhaps I can teach you a few things, what do you think?”

“Will I see real micro organisms?” Sherry speaks up, her voice high pitched but soft. Y/n smiles with a small chuckle. “Of course, you’ll be able to work on the real stuff. Perhaps we can see how many germs things have?” He suggests.

Sherry is quick to nod, finally opening up to him and claiming that as a victory.

“Do you want to see what I’m working on?” Sherry asks, walking back to her desk to show him her own work that she’s been doing. Leon gives him a reassured nod when he glanced over to him, being granted permission to get closer to her as he stands next to her desk, looking down at the different tools that she had. The material before him is worth hundreds, if Leon was able to afford all of this it made him question what he did for work.

Sherry went on a ramble about her discoveries, showing him everything and pointing out random things that she found. Y/n listens to her and asks a few questions here and there, the child showed high interests in science and it made him question how far up her educational level could be.

After spending a few minutes with Sherry under Leon’s supervision, he is pulled aside by Leon while Sherry is distracted by her own hobbies.

“She’s a good kid, fast learner too.” Y/n says with a smile as he follows Leon out of the room and into the hallway. “I want you to be her permanent teacher.” Leon blurts out getting Y/n’s eyes to widen. “Per—But I usually only teach for a year.”

“And I want you to be Sherry’s teacher. Look, I have met with many teachers and none have made her to open up like you did. She’s usually quiet and doesn’t speak, most of the ones I’ve met so far have given up on her but you haven’t. I saw the way she reacted, she’s comfortable with you and I’d like you to be her teacher. I’ll pay you double and would like it if you moved into our guest bedroom, I spoke to to the agency about your living situation and know that you still live with your family.” Said Leon, catching Y/n by surprise, opening and closing his mouth, not knowing what to say.

“Mr Kennedy—Leon, you don’t have to do that—“

“I insist.” Leon cuts in. “Sherry needs a teacher.” He’s pleading at this point that Y/n can’t resist the offer, sighing to himself he nods in response. “Okay, I—I want to teach Sherry. I just have to get some things packed up before anything else.” He says softly.

“Thank you.” Leon tone is laced with relief once his offer is accepted and is quick to show Y/n the guest bedroom and where he will be staying, letting him know that he’s welcome to come and go as he pleases that he was still free to do so since he was here to teach Sherry.

It felt weird for Y/n.

He was going to be Sherrys teacher that was also going to be living with her and her father, under the same roof. This was new to him and knows that he would have to get adjusted if he is to teach Sherry.

After Leon provides him a key to the place he lets him know that he can move his stuff in whenever he can, giving him the time that he needs with his packing. When Y/n arrives back home to his family he is bombarded with questions from his younger sisters, always wanting to know what kind of kids he will be teaching. Y/n answers his sisters questions with a smile on his face before they leave his side after he was done answering their questions.

His sudden smile faltering and going noticed by his mother who knew that something was wrong the minute he walked through the door.

“Something happen?”

His mother is quick to assume as his father rolls his eyes at her, but Y/n gives off a small shrug. “Well, I got the job but this parent seems persistent to have his daughter learn, he’s had many other teachers see her, but none were to her liking nor was she comfortable with them. She liked me a lot and her father wants me to move into their house until she is ready to go to a public school.”

He can see his mothers face shift into a sad one. “So, you will be leaving?”

Y/n nodded. He couldn’t always going to live with his family he was going to be twenty six soon and affording a place on his own was rough without having a roommate and with Leon’s offer he knew it would be best for him. He was getting paid to live and teach his daughter. This would be the first time he leaves the nest, finally being able to go somewhere that he can provide him the support, not only that but he was being paid double. “I’ll be fine, I can still visit.” He reassured her knowing how worried his mother will be when he leaves the house.

After his discussion with his parents, he gets their help on packing up a few boxes. There’s a lot that he leaves behind for them, letting them know that he already had the necessary stuff back at Leon’s house, not too worried about leaving stuff behind for his sisters to keep. He didn’t have much to pack and is quick to move into the Kennedy household in less than a day.

It felt odd using a key to a strangers house, his stomach filled with knots at the idea of coming home to someone else. His years being sheltered by his parents created anxiety along with fear of change, they were always together and it was finally his time to follow his own path.

His first night there was uncomfortable for him. The silence was new to him for many nights he would hear his sisters gossiping non stop until midnight, falling asleep to their voices and waking up to them arguing about who was going to use the bathroom before school started in order to get ready for the day.

He didn’t hear the sound of his sisters voices in the morning instead he woke up to the sound of silence. Leaving his room and heading to the kitchen where he finds Leon cooking his daughter, Sherry a decent breakfast. Y/n stood frozen, unsure of what to say or do only for Sherry to take notice of his presence and smile at him.

“Morning!” She calls out loudly, getting both Y/n and Leons attention.

Leon looks up from his cooking and gives him a small greeting. “Sleep well?” He asks while Y/n rounds the table, sitting down next to Sherry who bounced in her seat, excited to have him here. “A bit, I’m used to waking up early with the sound of my sisters arguing.” He chuckled out.

“You have sisters?” Sherry’s voice is laced with curiosity as she stares up at him with wide eyes. “Yep!” Y/n smiles at her. “Six to be exact.”

“Six?!”

Y/n laughs at her small outburst. “That’s a big family.” He hears Leon say, finishing up on the cooking and serving them all their own plate. “I’m the only boy in the family.” He blurts out, taking his own plate of food and thanking Leon, staring down at the nicely well cooked breakfast.

“And you? Any siblings?” He suddenly asks Leon.

“Only child.” Leon answers, sitting across from the two as he focused on eating his food.

“I’m guessing its just you and Sherry right?”

Sherry speaks up before Leon could. “And Aunt Claire and Uncle Chris.”

Y/n knew that Leon didn’t have any siblings, it’s possible that these aunts and uncles of Sherry’s are close friends of Leon’s who he’s claimed as family. “You must love your family, a lot, huh?” He chuckled at Sherry’s bashful smile as she goes back to eating her breakfast, finally giving Y/n and Leon the time to talk.

“Can I ask, if its not a problem, but what do you do for work?” Y/n is quick to shove food in his mouth, keeping himself distracted with something.

“Office work.” He answers with no hesitation, feeling Sherry’s eyes on him, knowing damn well that what the man did was not just any ‘office work’ she knew that his job was dangerous and was lying to keep them safe.

Y/n’s eyebrows raised in surprise, another question coming to mind but keeps his mouth shut, not wanting to bother the man any longer. “Oh? I expected something totally different.” He chucked out nervously, clearing his throat and finishing up his food before rushing to the sink to keep himself distracted with the dishes he is currently washing.

“You don’t have to wash those.”

Leon speaks up from his spot on the dining table but Y/n is quick to cut in. “I want too, besides if I am to be living here to help teach Sherry, I might as well and be decent and do my own dishes. Let alone any chores I have of my own…” He mumbled softly before focusing back on his task in hand and setting the wet dishes aside to dry.

Leon chuckled to himself, knowing that he shouldn’t argue back with his daughters teacher. “Very well,” he states, turning to Sherry and giving her a soft kiss on the head after he finished his own breakfast. “I have to head out.” He announced, getting the young girls attention. “How long will you be gone this time?” She pouts out.

“It’s only for a day, Claire will come by to stay the night.”

“Will uncle Chris be with you too?” She questions.

“Yes, both Chris and I will be out for the day. So, again, Claire will come by tonight after your schooling is done.” Leon promises, watching his daughter frown at his words. He knows that his job is dangerous and is sent on long missions, he’s spoken to Hunnigan about wanting to spend more time at home, which is why she tasked him with the shorter missions. But, even those felt too long for Sherry.

“It’s only for tonight.” Leon reassured Sherry who gave a curt nod, pushing her unfinished plate aside before leaving the dining room. Leon knows how stubborn she becomes when he is needing to leave for a mission, Y/n on the other hand didn’t know how to deal with the situation, the tension building up in the room as he quietly moves around the kitchen, distracting himself from what he witnessed.

Y/n looked around frantically, looking for something to do, something to clean but Leons kitchen was already clean. The man kept it clean for him and his daughter, after cooking breakfast he had cleaned up his own spills and washed the dishes that he’s used all expect the pan that he was rushing to clean in order to run away from the awkwardness that filled the room around them.

Leon had been staring towards the direction that Sherry disappeared too, sighing deeply and standing up straight. “Let me know if she causes any trouble.” He speaks up, getting Y/n’s attention and the teacher nods. “Of course…” He whispers softly and watches Leon leave his own house, giving Y/n the chance to sigh in relief once the tension disappears.

It was only his first day and had no idea how react to this change and instead focused on finishing up his cleaning and get started on Sherry’s schooling.

[ethereal-blossom]

Ikevil in an amusement park!

Includes general headcanons and romantic ones at the end.

General headcanons:

- Victor is the parent. He carries the heaviest and biggest backpack which is truly the emergency kit. Harry is showing withdrawal symptoms due to lack of sugar? Elbert forgot to put on sunscreen and is now at risk of looking like a walking lobster? You forgot your water bottle? No worries, Victor anticipated everything! He knows his beloved children so well.

- He walks with the map as well and if you split into groups, he becomes the one who you need to call if something happens. Also the one who plans where and when to meet, mostly at eating places so you can refill your stomaches together.

- William is the backup parent. He enjoys to mostly silently observe and is quick to notice the things like Harry being low on sugar and Elbert having forgotten to put on sunscreen. If you split up and it's time to meet but a group isn't back yet, his guesses of why are extremely accurate. Like hm, the ride Elbert and Alfons went to is fairly popular so the line must have been long, and isn't there a souvenir shop on its way here? Elbie must have gotten distracted by it.

- Elbert refuses to go in the big roller-coasters. He goes into visual focused rides and will often be seen in the souvenir stores. Does not care about the ridiculously expensive price tags and tires himself out by carrying so much bought stuff. If you happen to be someone who doesn't like roller coasters that much, Elbert is the one to hang around with and he'll surely buy you any souvenir you want.

- Alfons is everywhere and nowhere. One moment he is with Elbie telling him that the mouse ears aren't beautiful but overrated money grabbers, then he is joining Liam in thrilling roller coasters, and at times even Will shrugs when asked where he thinks Al is. Seriously, he has Victor panicking when it's time to go home and Al is nowhere to be found.

- Victor will bother/manipulate/pester/whatever works/does it really matter when you're that attractive Roger into using his ability to see if he can hear his beloved boys and robin from time to time.

- If you like to ride the wildest roller coasters, Liam is your guy. This man has no fear; only curiosity begged to be satisfied. Might actually get high on it and is tempted to use his ability to cut the line. It's his mission to ride the fastest and highest roller coasters this park has to offer.

- Some of the crown members are great at making friends in lines! Liam's enthusiasm is contagious and he's so easy to love. With his charisma and excitement, he easily starts a conversation which is needed with such long lines. Ellis is very gentle and caring, so when he sees someone needs help in the line or appears nervous he does what he can. Victor is a social butterfly with a joyful grin so that man will definitely start small talk. All three would entertain the kids who are in front or behind them if it's a long line, especially when the kids are getting annoying and the parents look tired. Victor is immediately in his element by performing magic tricks, Ellis would play with them, and Liam would start making the kids laugh with his acting. But this makes them immediately beloved by the people around them.

- Imagine Jude in the line with annoying kids who are bumping into him... The only reason he's there is because Victor promised him a good sum of money and he's either getting convinced by Ellis or you to go into rides or it was part of the deal with Victor, and then these kids keep bumping into his back. Doesn't yell at the children but sends a few nasty glances and let out some damn loud tch's directed to the parents who are too busy with their phones before he snaps. Will demand payment from the parents as compensation for this public disturbance.

- William will randomly walk up to people he sees are surpressing their desires to try a ride. Free Willam therapy sessions don't pause for no amusement park.

- Roger isn't interested in the visual rides; he doesn't find them exciting so you'll find him in roller coasters a lot. But also is a little bit like Victor and makes sure everyone stays hydrated and gets to rest when they need to. Like oh I see, the lil' lady wants to go to the next roller coaster even though her legs hurt from standing too long. He threatens to throw you over his shoulder if you don't comply, which he actually does and then sits you on a bench to treat you with a snack despite being a disobedient girl.

- Ellis, Victor, and William are everywhere too. They are in for every ride!

- Harry is the chillest. He mostly follows Liam and makes sure the curious cat takes a break every now and then. He doesn't join Liam in the extreme rides but will grab his Sherlock book and read while waiting. Will ask for a lot of sit breaks.

Romantical headcanons:

- William could not care less what rides you two are riding as long as you want to be in them. He has a fantastic time discovering which rides you prefer and will absolutely convince you to go into ones you want to but are also scared of. Same with finding snacks and good places to eat. It's a wonderful experience where you get to know each other even better, making this amusement trip feel weirdly intimate. I can see Will having a content and happy smile on for the entire day, and when you walk through the park together, I don't think he has his arm wrapped around you but he does have his hand on your farthest shoulder in a way that feels loving, supportive, and encouraging. When buying matching accessories, you both choose each an item after a minute of "What do you want, my little robin?" "I want what you want! " "Oh, what a coincidence. I want what you want" "... Well, I want what you want me to want-"

- It's so chill being with Harry. There are some rides that secretly excite him but he got to say, this amusement park is more amusing with you next to him. He'll complain sometimes about how you're dragging him through the park, but when you ask if that's really how he feels he'll say he doesn't mind (translation: he enjoys it). Whenever you see a food place and it sells something sweet, you two are on it! "Let's get matching accessoires!" "Whatever, if that's what you want" (translation: he's flustered). Harry would like to simply hold your hand and stroll through the park, talking about everything and nothing. So simple but so serene. On the way home you'll ask him how it was to explore the amusement park together to which he answers, "not bad." (translation: he ducking loved it.)

- It really doesn't matter how curious about a roller coaster Liam is, if you don't join him this clingy cat will not go in it either. Being around you calms down his curiosity for thrill a lot. So don't worry if you're not into thrill because there is still so much to be curious about! You'll not be bored for a single second and because of that, his touches are very versatile. One time he'll hold your hand to excitedly lead you to a cool souvenir shop, then he'll wrap his arm around your shoulders as you walk through the park, your waist when it's crowded, your arm during rides... Almost the entirety of your upper body will have been touched by him. Very much in a similar boat as Will when getting matches accessoires so you both choose an item each :)

- Nobody takes matching accessoires as seriously as Elbert. You'll have visited every. single. accessoire store at the end of the day. Your eyes could have lingered on a wristband for one second and your man goes "Do you think that's beautiful? It'll look beautiful on you. I will buy it-" It's so much worse when Alfons makes his cameo cause he'll point at anything and be like "now this, my dear Elbie, this is beautiful" all to tease you. Elbert enjoys going into the visual rides with you! And I bet you could convince him to go into the tamer roller coasters. Has a hand on your lower back the entire time (at one point you guys had too many bags and Elbert was ready to leave three behind purely so he could keep touching you).

- Now Alfons is turning this into a freaking game. He makes you chase him through the entire park, slightly out of your reach but you know he's there. Why he enjoys you stubbornly following him throughout the park? He doesn't even have a clear answer himself... or so he likes to think. But, Al leads you to all places he thinks you will enjoy and he always stay at a place long enough for you to find him and enjoy the ride, shop, café, or whatever he thought you'd like together. During the times Alfons and you walk side by side he'll place his hand on your back which will slowly move lower and lower. Another man who pretents like he doesn't care about matching accesoires but once he wears it he'll randomly touch it with a hard-to-read expression (cat pretending like he's not THAT attached to his owner). Guys I swear this is not me but I'm 99,9% Al will try to finger you in a ride at least once even if it's only to get a reaction out of you no but if a ride scares you he'll definitely try to distract you in whatever way works.

- "Is this ride going to be scary?" "I promise it's not, Lil lady." Spoiler alert: it was scary and now Roger is saying how cute you look with teary eyes. He's not a fan of visual rides but will go into them for you and you know what, turns out he quite likes them because of your reactions and how easy it is to touch your thighs. The type to put his arm around or behind you in roller coasters! He definitely checks up on your heartbeat regularly to see how nervous you are for a roller coaster. If he thinks you got peer pressured into riding a roller coaster he'll get you out of there. Now, Roger's hand is either in your back pocket, on your ass, your hips, or your lower back. Roger didn't think he'd be into matching accessoires but again finds himself quite liking something because it's you. Love makes things glitter.

- Jude will be like "tch, look at how these people are bunched up together and... Lil' birdie where do ya think ya standin'?" *Proceeds to wrap an arm around your hips to pull you into him*. Jude only goes into a ride when you go into it. Literally, he doesn't leave you alone and will follow you everywhere except the bathrooms. You're the only who makes this trip bearable. If another crown member tries to sit next to you in a ride, let alone a stranger, Jude is like I ain't on this ride for nothing except my woman. Move or give me everythin' that's on ya bank account. Especially if it's Victor that bill will be through the roof. Also another man who pretends to not care about matching accessoires but funny how you'd have to rip it off of his dead body. Jude would walk with his hand on your lower back and maybe on your hips or waist.

- Ellis will let you take the lead and often ask what you want to do next. As long as he gets to hold your hand, he's happy. Really, Ellis is going to hold your hand the entire time. Especially when it gets crowded you feel his grip tighten. You two have the biggest fun trying all of the food and you immediately make recommendations for the other guys. "I want what you want" (matching accessories version part 3). Please he'd look so cute in matching accessoires, having a mischievous smile on his face cause he definitely sees this as a way for other people to see you belong together. He feels slightly bad for letting his selfishness get the better of him but that melts like snow in the sun when he sees how happy you are. Also secretly enjoys when you get scared in a ride because he loves it makes you clingy and depending on him, and it's an excuse to hold you tight in his arms.

- If Victor doesn't have an arm around your shoulders he's holding your hand and you'll be skipping to the next ride. He's also very flexible in what you'll be doing but he does like the occasional thrill of a roller coaster! But your comfort is his number one priority. Victor loves to see you so carefree with a child-like spark in your eyes as you explore the park together and he'll do anything to protect it. One time you accidentally bumped into someone and when they turned around annoyed and ready to shoot with words, Victor went "whoopsie daisy! I am so clumsy. Please forgive me." And when you want to tell him he shouldn't have, Victor picks you up and twirls you around, kissing you on the nose and ask what you should do next, unless you have something naughty in mind...? What a dirty mind his darling has, he's obviously talking about eating snacks that'll make your teeth rot with the amount of sugar that's in it. Loves the idea of matching accesoires so much that he can't choose and approaches you with 12 different items; it's a live-or-die situation for him. He dealt with loneliness before he met you and so wearing matching accesoires is a physical sign you're connected. Plus, he loves giving and could not care less about the price tag.

[gatorbites-imagines]

Kinktober day 8

Simon “Ghost” Riley + Gun and/or Knifeplay

I’m so tired, but the grind never stops.

Blood and gore warning, reader is also a mercenary who does everything for money. Also warning for reader not prepping himself, he and Ghost are both kinda pain freaks.

Kinktober 2023 masterlist

You were a mercenary, someone with no specific place to call home and no true loyalty towards any group or organization, you only cared about whoever paid the highest amount. Maybe once you would have cringed and flinched at the thought of killing innocent people, especially children, but after so many years and your past being pretty much erased, you couldn’t care less. After seeing everyone you had ever cared for dead, from your family to your former team in the military, there was nothing that kept you human anymore.

They called you Reaper for this exact reason. You wore a veil, similar to a sniper’s hood, dark clothes and armour, and always carried around more weapons than anyone would be able to spot. You title specifically was given to you after you made a veil out of a piece of fabric with a bleach stain shaped vaguely like a skull. Your ability to kill anything from the weakest to the strongest out there only made the title stick.

So, when you were paid to kill a specific target that clashed with the 141 group, you kitted up and went on your way. You weren’t a small guy, but you were fast and quiet, like the reaper you were named after. The many years of living in a constant state of fight or flight also made it possible for you to notice immediately that you were being watched. But before you could put a bullet between the eyes of whoever was watching you, you were tackled.

Your many years as a coldblooded killer had you grabbing one of your knives, slashing at the other person, someone as large as yourself in mass and muscle, and before you knew it you were both fighting. Armor was ripped off, fabric was torn, your veil was torn at the bottom thanks to a knife slash that came eerily close to your throat.

It was only after you two stepped back to circle each other that you realized who you had run into. Ghost, they called him. You only knew of him because of his past being similar to your own, with losing everybody he had cared for, and the fact that former contracts had jokingly referred to you as Ghost instead of Reaper. He must have recognized you too, or maybe he already knew who you were, as he seemed weary of you as you circled one another.

Neither of you were much for words but at some point, your fighting seemed to brew into something else, as you both ended up on the rough ground, hands tearing at clothes instead of each other. A strangled noise that must have been a moan seemed to tear itself from Ghost as he tore off your jacket and multiple different layers, exposing leather straps tied against your naked torso, covered in different knives and smaller weapons.

His torso was as scarred as your own as you ripped his clothing and armour off his upper body, a hissed noise leaving him as you give his pecs a cruel tight squeeze. You could feel how hard he was under you as you sat in his lap, both of you breathing harder than you had for a while, feeling almost feral as a feeling neither of you had experienced in a long time.

As he tried to reach for you, your instincts jumped and before you knew it, you had a gun pressed against his temple. Instead of widening his eyes seemed to darken with a stronger arousal, his hips grinding up into your ass as he groaned in that deep voice of his. You couldn’t help the entertained huff that left you, of course Ghost would be into violence like that, just as you were.

You must have barked some order for him to stay still, and by some gods will he listened, even as you used one of your many knives to slice open his pants and wish out his member. You had more patience with your own pants, kicking them off enough to free your lower body and pull down your boxers, your own length giving a twitch of adrenaline and want as Ghost groaned under you.

As you sat down on his cock, both of you wheezing and groaning as the burn from the lack of lube and prep sending a flare up your spine, your grip on the gun pressed against his forehead slipped downwards. Ghost must have moved on his own, pushing up the bottom of his balaclava enough to take the barrel of your gun between his lips, slobbering over it like he was sucking someone off, and looking like he enjoyed it just as much if not more than the act he was copying.

You pace was painful, your muscular bulk slamming down on his hips and knocking the breath out of him even as Ghost kept licking and sucking on the barrel of your gun, tonguing at the holes you had drilled in it as a silencer. You wanted to punch him, to break his face until he was unrecognisable, to leave him as a stain on the pavement, but maybe that was just what your body associated with lust these days after years of murder.

Ghost seemed to have a similar thought process, as even as you rode him with little care of comfortability, and your gun shoved against his uvula, he had grabbed one of the knives strapped to your chest, pressing it against the inside of your thigh where you both knew one of the bigger veins ran. Cutting it would kill you, as there was no way to get medical help out here, but if he did you could shoot him dead before you yourself would pass on.

You pace grew rougher, and you both growled and grunted like the animals of death and destruction you were, drooling and bleeding from cuts and bruises as adrenaline petered out little by little, leaving you both shaking and aching in the best way.

Ghosts free hand, the one not holding a knife against your thigh, reached for your dick, gripping it tightly in his still gloved palm, squeezing it like one would a snake about to bite. He couldn’t speak with your gun between his teeth, but the intensity in his eyes told you all you needed to know, and with a few rough strokes you were spurting thick ropes of white across his naked bleeding torso.

On instinct your finger near the trigger of your gun twitched, just barely pressing down on it, enough to tease you actually pulling it but not doing it. It seemed to be what Ghost needed, as his eyes rolled and his hips pushed up roughly against your own, warmth filling you as he groaned louder than before as he came.

There was no aftercare between the two of you, you were not lovers, just tools used in war. So instead you patched up the worst of each other’s cuts and bruises, got dressed to the best of your ability, checked you both had all your weapons, and with a short nod of understanding you both left to go on with your duties, even if your gaits were a little uneven. You both silently hoped to run into the other again some time, as you had both scratched an itch neither of you knew was present, and now that it was scratched it seemed constant.

[natti-ice]

The Truth Will Set You Free- Tom Riddle.

Pairing: Tom riddle x fem!reader

Summary: a mysterious letter reveals Tom’s biggest secret.

Warnings: angst, written in third person (she/her pronouns) (1k words)

Author’s note: this is a reupload, I wrote this a while ago!

Reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated<3

"YOU'RE MARRIED?!?" She yelled at him, watching the color drain from his face gave her the answer. Tom closed the book he had been reading peacefully as he lounged in a plush chair in his dorm room.

"What are you talking about, dear?" He swallowed, he saw Y/N holding a piece of paper in her hand, confusion and anger in her facial expressions. He had no idea how this could have got to her, barely anyone knew about this.

"I received this letter this morning" she started, showing him the paper she had been clutching onto for the past twenty minutes. "I don't know if this is some sick joke or if you've been lying to me this whole time. Tom, is it true?" She didn't know what to think, when she got the letter she thought it was someone trying to play with her. But as the letter went on it seemed too real

"Tom and I were wed the summer before his sixth year. Once he graduates we shall start a family together, I believe you deserve to know since there are talks of your attachment to him. Just know, this is how it has to be, he cannot be yours."

Reading this brought a sharp pain in her chest, she thought she knew the man she loved. She knew he had his secrets, but she wouldn't think he would withhold this from her. Her emotions were all jumbled into one, she didn't know what to feel.

"It's true," he said in a hushed tone, his head hung low like a dog being scolded. "You weren't supposed to find out this way"

"Like this? Or was I not supposed to find out at all?" Okay, it seems her anger has gotten the better of her

"Please let me explain, Y/N" Tom begged. His usual stoic demeanor had completely vanished, he had never let his emotions show this way, it made him feel weak.

"I don't know if I want to hear it, Tom. How could you do this to me?"

"I didn't do it to hurt you" he raised his voice as he became angry at himself "I figured if you knew, you would want nothing to do with me" he admitted

"You're probably right about that" she said sarcastically

"Y/N, please don't joke about this" he warned "if you'd let me, I'll explain to you everything that happened. Only the truth" his eyes met hers he could see the pain in them, that shattered his heart. When he met Y/N he knew he had found the only person in the world he could truly care for. She broke down every wall he tried to put up with ease, there was no way he could let her get away.

"Fine, go ahead" she whispered as she tried to swallow the lump in her throat

He sighed, calming his brain before proceeding to tell her about something that has eaten at him every day for the past two years. "At the end of my fifth year, my mother put me into an arranged marriage. I fought and fought to get out of it, but no matter what I said I couldn't get out. She paired me with some pure-blooded floozy who couldn't last a day without her father's money, the day of the ceremony was the worst day of my life. My mother expects me to have children with that girl and I honestly couldn't care less about that stupid girl." Talking about her put a bad taste in his mouth, he hated her with every ounce of his being.

"I just don't get why you didn't tell me" Y/N said during Tom's pause

"I didn't tell you because it's a part of me that I hate. Having my name attached to someone who I will never love, isn't something I'm proud of. When I met you, it was like that terrible situation was in the past and you were my future. For years I have been trying to find a way out of this marriage. I plan to divorce her as soon as I'm done with school." He felt slight relief as he finally got this off his chest, it always weighed heavy on him.

Y/N stood a foot away from Tom, as he explained his story her heart broke more, she had never seen Tom in such pain before, and it definitely wasn't a good feeling to watch. "What about your mother?" She asked

"I don't care about that woman! She hasn't a motherly bone in her body, once I'm done with school I'll never see her again" His hatred for his mother ran deep, Y/N knew he never liked his mother. She understood why, if she was her mother she'd probably feel the exact same way.

"Y/N" Tom reached for her hand, wrapping both his hands around her, bringing it up to his mouth gently kissing the back. "I am very sorry I never told you about this, I've never been good at telling the truth but that's no excuse. I promise you, you are the only person I will ever love." This is the truest thing to ever leave Tom's mouth

God, he's so beautiful she thought, searching for any trace he was lying to her. Sometimes she felt foolish thinking about how much she loved him, his hold on her was so strong. But she wouldn't change a thing.

"I'm so conflicted right now" she admitted, "but I believe you, you swear you want nothing to do with her?"

"Cross my heart, I would never dream of being with her" he brought his hand up to Y/N's cheek, slowly stroking it with his thumb. "You are the only person I want to marry" he whispered

"Good, because I don't think I'd like a life without you" she slightly grinned

"What if, when we're done at this tragic place, you and I run off together? We won't have to worry about anyone else, it'll just be us living our life together" Tom suggested

"That sounds like a very thought out plan, dear" she smirked "perhaps I might take you up on that offer" she leaned in, slightly pecking his lips

"You really have to get those papers signed, Tom. I am no one's mistress" she half-joked but he knew she was serious.

"Anything for you my dear"

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[lumosandnoxwriting]

Crossed Lines || George Weasley

Title: Crossed Lines Pairing: Single Dad!George x Nanny!Reader Summary: Crossing the line between professional and personal is always a risk, and this time it’s one George is willing to take.  A/N: I love dad!george and you can pry him from my cold dead hands. Feedback is always appreciated! <3

-

George Weasley never imagined his life would turn out this way. 

As a man in his mid-20s, he was living the life most would be envious of. For starters he and his brother started their own company as teenagers, and now several years later they are still their own bosses. Not to mention he’s a single man, living in central London, free to do whatever and whoever he pleases. He gets to do what he loves, makes his own decisions and he makes enough money to do whatever he wants while also saving enough for his future. 

That is until one fateful Tuesday morning, when he answered the door and found a car seat sitting on the welcome mat with the smallest baby girl he’d ever seen tucked inside. Whoever left her there was long gone, and when George brought her inside the note that fluttered to the floor revealed him as the father, with whoever wrote it stating that they weren’t cut out to be a Mother and the baby was George’s problem now. 

Two weeks and one paternity test later, George took full custody of his daughter Remi.

Despite having no real hands-on experience with babies, and having no intentions of having children for at least a decade, the second George held that little girl he knew in his heart that he could never give her up. So in the blink of an eye George Weasley went from a single man to a single dad.

Thankfully his family is the best, and rallied around him as he settled into fatherhood. Fred took on more responsibility at work so George could have a more flexible schedule, and his Mum moved in to help him as he learned how to be a Dad. And of course his siblings were always more than eager to babysit when George needed a break. 

But now that Remi is six months old, four months after she was dropped off at the front of his brownstone, it’s time for his life to resume. He misses work, and while he loves having his Mum around, he’s desperately in need of having his privacy back. Not to mention all the parenting books he’s consumed over the last few months all talk about how important it is for babies to have a routine, and it’s hard getting into one when George’s work schedule is in the air and Remi never knows if it’ll be her grandmother or her dad getting her up from her nap. 

When discussing what childcare arrangements George wanted now that he’d be back at work full time and Molly would be back up North, both Fred and his Mother vetoed his idea to just have Remi at work with him all day. Day care seemed like the obvious solution, but even after touring the best rated facility in London George was hesitant. He hated the idea of dropping his daughter off at some strange building everyday, and wasn’t too keen on the idea of Remi not being the only child someone was looking after. 

So George tasked his Mum with finding him the best Nanny in all of London. 

While more expensive than daycare, George liked the idea that Remi would be at home where she’s most comfortable and she’d have her caretakers undivided attention. Not to mention he liked how easy it would be to stop by and get some time with his baby whenever he could sneak away from work.

He left all of the hiring decisions up to Molly, citing his inexperience with raising a child. Who better to pick the person that will be caring for his child than the woman who raised seven of her own kids? 

And George didn’t regret trusting his mother for a second. 

Well until he answers the door on his Nanny’s first day, only to find the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen standing on his doorstep. 

She smiles up at him brightly, and George curses himself for not at least asking his Mum for a picture of his Nanny. All she had told him was that her name is Y/N and she has a degree in early childhood development. Truthfully, when George thought about having a Nanny, he always pictured an older woman who was looking for work now that her children have grown and flown the nest. Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine someone like Y/N standing on his doorstep. 

“Hi,” she greets awkwardly when George doesn’t say anything. “You must be George, I’m Y/N. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Snapping out of his daydreams, George gives her a nod. “Nice to meet you as well. Come on in.”

He steps aside so Y/N can walk through the door, and he has to suppress a shiver when their bodies brush. She can’t be much younger than him, and the subtle scent of strawberries wafting from her skin is driving him crazy. George shuts the door a little too hard, before motioning for her to follow him into the living room. 

Remi is sitting on the floor supported by some kind of special pillow Fleur bought for him, drool running down her chin as she chews on a toy. George watches as Y/N gets a look at his daughter for the first time, and the smile that takes over her face is breathtaking. 

“Oh my goodness,” Y/N coos as she approaches, crouching down in front of Remi. “And you must be Miss Remi,” she greets, her voice soft and cheery as she reaches out to stroke the baby’s cheek. “Your Granny has told me so much about you, Gorgeous. I’m Y/N and I can’t wait to get to know you better.”

George is a puddle as he watches this woman interact with his child. That little girl is his entire world, and watching people fall in love with her always fills him with pride. Remi giggles as Y/N strokes her tummy and a grin breaks out over George’s face. 

“She likes you.”

“I like her too.”

Remi squeals with joy as George scoops her up in his arms and he presses a kiss to her wet cheek before he places her on his hip. “Let me show you around and get everything sorted before I have to head off to work.”

Y/N follows behind George as he gives a quick tour, taking note of where everything is. Which is harder than it should be, since she’s distracted by the adorable baby and the gorgeous man that’s holding her. Molly had shown Y/N dozens of pictures of Remi during the interview process and talked about her nonstop, but she had been pretty silent when it came to her son. All she said was that George was young and had become a father unexpectedly when Remi’s mother abandoned the two month old on his porch. 

Her heart had broken for the little girl and her father, which made saying yes to Molly’s job offer a piece of cake. And as George points out all of his daughter’s favorite things Y/N is sure in her decision to take this job. It’s clear that George doesn’t know a lot about being a parent, but it’s even more clear that he’s trying his best and he loves his daughter with every fiber of his being. 

Y/N would be lying if she didn’t admit how attractive that is. Seeing this man who so clearly used to live the bachelor life bend over backwards to give his daughter the life she deserves is a major turn on. It doesn’t hurt that he’s extremely good looking either. 

But it’s really in her best interest to push those kinds of thoughts away considering the fact that George is her boss and he’s trusting her to care for his child. Remi is the only Weasley Y/N will allow herself to fall in love with. 

“So as far as a routine goes, Remi doesn’t really have one,” George admits sheepishly as they make their way back into the living room. “When she gets cranky we put her down for a nap and when she cries we feed her. We tried, but with my work schedule always changing and my Mum and I switching on and off, nothing we tried ever really stuck.”

”That’s what I’m here for,” Y/N reassures him with a smile. “It’ll probably take a few days for Remi to settle in from the change and get used to me, but once things settle we’ll start putting a routine in. And I’ll write everything down so you can follow it on the weekends as well.”

“Ugh, you’re amazing,” George gushes, and he doesn’t miss the way Y/N’s cheeks flush. “Okay well I guess that’s everything. I should head out now.” He’s thankful that Y/N turns away, pretending to look at her phone so he can have a private moment with his daughter. 

“I love you Rem-Dog,” George murmurs as he presses his lips to the top of his daughter’s head. “I gotta go to work now, but I’m gonna miss you so much. And you’re gonna have so much fun with Y/N. Okay, baby?”

George kisses his daughter one last time, pressing his nose to the crown of her head and taking a deep inhale of her sweet baby scent before he pulls away and hands Remi off to Y/N. 

“Call if you need anything,” George says as he walks towards the door. “My cell and office number are on the fridge. I should be home by five but I’ll call and let you know if that changes.”

”Sounds good.” Y/N follows George out, picking up Remi’s hand and making her wave. “Say bye to Daddy, Remi. Say don’t worry about me, everything’s going to be okay.” Her voice has that same dreamy quality it did when she first greeted Remi, and it immediately puts George at ease.

Y/N stays on the porch while George climbs in his car, bouncing Remi as she makes the little girl wave. He keeps his eyes on them for as long as possible, sighing when they disappear out of view. 

-

“Well your first full week back is almost over,” Fred starts as he enters George’s office. “How does it feel?”

”Fucking exhausting,” George groans, flipping Fred off when he laughs. 

Truthfully he really has enjoyed being back in the office. Over the past few months he’s been pretty hands off with the business, only coming in for important meetings or for emergencies, and it’s nice to get back working on the actual fun parts of his job. But holy hell is George tired. 

After being at work all day George heads home, and after a quick pass off Y/N also heads out, putting George on Dad duty for the rest of the night. Which he totally loves after being away from Remi all day, but by the time he gets her fed, bathed and settled in for the night he’s absolutely exhausted. It doesn’t help that she’s started some kind of sleep regression since he went back to work, so he’s up a few times to put Remi back down. 

When discussing with his mom what he might want from a nanny, they had discussed whether the position should be a live in one. George had shut that down pretty quickly, adamant that he only wanted someone there when he couldn’t be and that he could handle everything else. But after only one week he’s already considering asking Y/N if she’d be willing to make that change. 

And if part of that is motivated by his craving to spend more time with his nanny it isn’t anyone’s business.

The only time he gets to spend with Y/N is the few minutes before he leaves for work when he hands Remi off, and then the few minutes in the evening before they do it again when he gets home. But seeing the way she lights up when she talks about his daughter has George craving her presence every moment of the day. 

It helps that Remi seems to be just as infatuated with Y/N as he is. When he got home from work last night, Y/N had gushed about how amazing Remi has been, and that she barely seemed to need an adjustment period. She explained that sometimes babies have difficulties getting used to their parents being away and having a stranger in the house, but from that very first day Remi took everything like a champ.

The photo George has on his phone of Remi fast asleep on Y/N’s chest from Monday afternoon is a testament to that. The little girl has formed a bond with her nanny right from the start, and George knows his daughter would be thrilled to have some more time with Y/N.

“And how’s the nanny? Still hot?” Fred asks as he plops down in a chair across from George’s desk.

”Ugh, fuck. I never should have told you that.”

”Don’t worry, dude. I’d never try and screw one of your employees,” Fred assures. “Especially one that you wanna fuck too.”

George throws a pen at Fred in an attempt to knock the stupid grin off of his face. “I don’t wanna fuck Y/N.”

”Oh right, you wanna kiss her and hold her and date her and make love to her,” Fred teases.

”You’re such a fucking prat.” George sighs, shuffling some papers on his desk. “Fuck this. It’s Friday and I’m tired and I wanna see my baby. I’m going home early.”

Fred stands up as George starts to collect his things. “Fine, go back home to your girls. I’ll see you later.”

He’s almost out the door when George registers what he’s said and he whips a pad of post it notes at his brother’s retreating back. “Fucking prick!” He shouts, trying to ignore the bright pink blush on his cheeks. 

-

George’s decision to ask Y/N to move in is solidified the second he comes through the door. 

Remi’s cries echo off the walls, and he barely has the door shut behind him before he’s barrelling down the hall towards his daughter. When he reaches the living room George stops in his tracks. Y/N is slowly swaying back and forth, quietly murmuring to Remi as she rubs her back soothingly. His daughter’s red face is pressed into her nanny’s neck and even from across the room George can see how wet her cheeks are. 

“Is she okay?” George asks as he approaches, his voice frantic. 

Y/N spins around so she’s facing him, an attempt at a grin crossing her face. “Teething,” is her simple reply, and George nods in understanding. 

He vaguely remembers when Victorie, his niece, started teething since Bill often came to hang out with Fred and George when he needed a break. Not that George can blame a baby, if he had something sharp cutting through his gums and had no ability to verbalize the pain and ask for help he’d be screaming his head off too. 

“Yeah, my Mum thought she might be close to cutting one in the front.” Y/N passes Remi to him when he holds his hands out, and he immediately cuddles her close to his chest. “It’s alright, love. Daddy’s here.”

Y/N can practically feel her heart melt as she watches George soothe his daughter, and she silently kicks herself when she realizes how attractive it is watching this big man hold a baby. Of course she’s read those books, the ones where the hot single dad and the nanny end up falling in love and becoming a family. But when she graduated from Uni and decided to go into private care over a day care or teaching she had promised herself she would always remain professional.

Except the moment George Weasley opened his front door that notion went right down the drain. 

Watching this man be a parent makes her ovaries ache, and in a futile attempt to squander any feelings she may have for George, Y/N has tried to keep their interactions to a minimum. She keeps their hand-offs as brief as possible, showing up in the morning with only a few minutes to spare and exiting so quickly in the evening that George barely has his shoes off before she’s out the door. 

The last thing she needs is to fall in love with the man who signs her paychecks. 

It doesn’t help that Remi is probably the best child she’s ever looked after, and considering she started babysitting at 10 that’s a huge compliment. After only a week she already has formed an attachment to the little girl, and it pains her everytime she has to hand her back at the end of the day. Which usually ends up pissing her off, because how could the woman that gave birth to such a beautiful baby just give that all away? 

Apart from today’s teething related meltdown Remi has been nothing but a ray of sunshine. She giggles at everything, and Y/N instantly fell in love with her gummy smile. She’s also learned that Remi is a baby that loves to cuddle, and she spends most of her afternoon laying on the couch, holding the infant close to her chest as she sleeps. 

Sometimes she feels thankful for that horrid woman who gave all of this up, because Y/N is the one who gets to bask in the glow of little Remi. But sometimes those thoughts lead her down the bath of daydreaming what it would be like to be Remi’s Mum, and by extension George’s wife, and she has to shut them down quickly. Lusting after a life she can’t have is not helpful. 

“I put some of her teethers in the freezer,” she explains as George starts to sway back and forth in his own attempt to soothe Remi. “The cold will help soothe and numb the pain, but if you have a hard time getting her to bed you can give her some children’s tylenol.”

Y/N can feel her heart breaking as Remi lets out another wail, hating the fact that she is about to leave when she’s still so upset. She steps closer to George, resting a hand on Remi’s back before she leans in to kiss her tear-stained cheek. 

“Bye, Rem-Dog. I’m going to miss you so much, but you have your dad here with you, yeah? And I know you’re in pain but go easy on him, okay? I can feel the anxiety rolling off him,” she pauses to look at George, giving him a teasing wink before she refocuses her attention on the baby. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

“You got this, George,” Y/N reassures, giving his arm a squeeze. 

She turns to grab her things and head out when a hand closes around her wrist. 

“Wait, Y/N,” George calls, tugging so she turns to look at him. “There’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about, before you go. I was wondering if you’d consider becoming a live-in nanny?” He rushes the question out, clearly nervous.  

“You want me to move in?” Y/N asks, her voice breathy. Immediately she clears her throat, shaking her head to bring her back to reality. This is George asking for more help with his baby, nothing more. 

“I do yeah,” George confirms with a nod. “I'm in way over my head, and I could really use the extra help in the evenings. I can tell how attached Remi is to you already, and I know she’d love to have you around more.” He leaves out the fact that he’d love to have her around more too, figuring that would be anything but helpful to hear. “I’d pay you more, obviously, and you’ll still have the weekends off. If you’re stuck in a lease I can pay to get you out of it, anything you need.”

“I’ll do it,” Y/N agrees without even taking a second to think about it. 

Is moving in with her hot boss and his incredible daughter probably a bad idea? Absolutely. But with the wide grin George is directing at her it’s easy for Y/N to push all of those negative thoughts to the back of her head. 

Besides, living here with George and Remi is a good thing, she’ll probably learn all of George’s annoying habits and whatever feelings are starting to develop will fade just as quickly as they started. 

At least Y/N hopes so.

-

Turns out her plan to use moving in with George as a way to diminish her feelings for him is a failure. An epic, fucking failure. 

Because as it turns out, George has no annoying habits. 

When he wakes up with Remi in the morning he’s quiet, taking extra care to whisper and tiptoe around as to not wake Y/N up before her alarm. When he makes his breakfast he always sets some aside for her as well, and there’s always a fresh pot of coffee waiting. He’s always sure to clean up after himself, to the point where sometimes Y/N forgets he even lives there. And despite the fact that she moved in to help him out more, George is always respectful of her time. When he gets home from work he takes over with Remi, giving Y/N some time for herself. When she takes over again, putting Remi to bed, George always cooks them dinner and they spend the rest of the evening talking and hanging out. 

Everyday it feels less and less like she’s his employee helping him care for his daughter and more like they’re a couple caring for their baby together. 

Which Y/N knows is a bad thing, and there’s constantly a voice in the back of her head telling her she needs to put up boundaries to keep both George and Remi at arms length. But the more time she spends around them the harder it is. She is quickly discovering that she isn’t just attracted to George’s looks and his dedication to being a father, but to his personality as well. He has a great sense of humor and such a kind heart, and Y/N finds herself missing his presence when he’s not around. 

So again, her plan has been an epic failure. 

It certainly doesn’t help that three weeks into her new live in position, Y/N rushes into the nursery one night to comfort a screaming Remi only to find her boss standing in the middle of the room shirtless as he rocks his daughter. 

“Oh,” Y/N gasps as she steps in the room, alerting George to her presence. When he spins to face her it takes all of her willpower to keep her eyes focused on his face and not his naked torso. “I just wanted to check and make sure everything is okay.”

George swallows thickly, reminding himself that he’s got his crying child in his arms and now is not the time to be ogling his nanny. But fuck is it hard. Because Y/N is standing there in the tiniest pair of sleep shorts and the thinnest tank top George has ever seen, her hair still mussed from sleep. 

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” he mumbles once he finds his composure. “I was hoping to get her back to sleep before she woke you, I’m sorry.”

Remi’s been cutting two new teeth this week, and it’s safe to say sleep has not been something happening here in the Weasley house. He and Y/N have been taking shifts during the night, but he could tell that the lack of sleep was starting to wear her down, so when Remi woke him tonight his sole mission was to soothe her back to sleep as quickly as possible.

“And is there a reason why the two of you are half naked?” Y/N teases, and even in the dim light George can see the blush tinting her cheeks.

George shrugs a shoulder, giving her a grin. “I read in a book that skin to skin contact is supposed to help comfort babies.” Truthfully he hadn’t even considered the possibility of Y/N coming to help him, so George hadn’t given it a second thought when he stripped Remi down to her diaper before he pulled his own shirt off. All he wanted to do was soothe his child, but seeing the way Y/N is having a hard time from looking at his bare chest George is thankful for his actions for a totally different reason. 

“I’ll have to keep that in mind,” Y/N responds playfully, and she doesn’t miss the way George’s eyes scan her body. It sends a shiver down her spine, and if there wasn’t a crying baby in his arms she certainly would be throwing herself at him. 

Over the past few weeks Y/N has had an inkling that the feelings she has are not totally one sided, and the way George is looking at her now is confirmation. Clearly they are both trying to keep from crossing into unprofessional territory for Remi’s sake, but she’s not sure how much longer they’ll be able to resist this pull. 

“Go back to bed,” George instructs, his voice low. 

Y/N nods, her stomach fluttering at the command in his voice. Wanting him to be just as affected as she is, she approaches George, maintaining eye contact as she places one hand on his bare shoulder and the other on his abs. She smiles to herself as he tenses under her touch, leaning in to kiss Remi on the forehead. 

“Goodnight, baby girl.”

Just as quickly as she was there Y/N is retreating, looking back over her shoulder at George as she lingers in the doorway. 

“Sweet dreams, George.”

As soon as she’s gone George tosses his head back and groans. “God damnit,” he mumbles. He looks down at Remi, who’s cries have finally started to quiet. “You two girls will be the death of me I swear.”

-

It’s the first sunny day they’ve had in weeks, so when he woke up this fine Saturday morning he decided a picnic in the park was the best way to spend it. Even though it’s technically her day off, after he’d packed up the food, Remi George had stopped by Y/N’s room to see if she wanted to join them. Much to his delight, a yes was coming out of her mouth before he’d really even finished asking. 

And as he watches her push Remi in a swing, both of them giggling like crazy, George knows one thing for certain: he’s fallen for his nanny. It’s something he’s come to terms with in the two weeks it has been since that night in the nursery. After the way she touched and teased him George had an inkling that his feelings for Y/N were mutual, and their interactions these last few weeks have only confirmed it. 

For starters, touching has become a normal part of their relationship. Now when they pass Remi back and forth it’s normal for their hands to brush, lingering just a few seconds too long. When they sit on the couch together in the evenings Y/N takes the spot right next to him, as opposed to sitting on the opposite end like she had previously. It seems like both of them take every opportunity to be close to the other. 

Their conversations seem to have a flirty air to them now too, with both of them taking every opportunity to make the other blush. Not to mention the fact that Y/N is supposed to have the weekends off, and yet she somehow always ends up spending them with George and Remi. 

Sometimes George even forgets that Y/N is his employee, because when the three of them are together it just feels like they’re a family. Much to George’s pleasure it seems that way to others as well, because on at least four different occasions when the three of them have been out together people have complimented them on how adorable their daughter is, and Y/N has been mistaken as his wife at least a handful of times. Even strangers know that they’re meant to be together. 

And George is just waiting for the perfect moment to make it official. 

He grins as Y/N starts to head towards him, holding his arms out for the baby. 

“Dada, dada, dada!” Remi babbles as Y/N places her in his outstretched hands, and it makes his heart burst just like every other time she’s said it. 

“Hi baby,” George coos, settling Remi down on his lap. He shivers when Y/N takes a seat next to him on the blanket, their sides pressed together tightly from how close she chooses to be. “Did you have fun on the swings?”

“Yes I did,” Y/N answers for Remi, her voice morphing into the delicate tone she always uses when talking to the baby. “Y/N is so much fun, Daddy. So much more fun than you,” she teases.

They both let out a laugh when Remi reaches for Y/N, seemingly confirming her words. 

Instead of taking the baby Y/N leans into George’s side, holding out both her hands so Remi and grab on to her pointer fingers. George immediately wraps an arm around her waist, pressing Y/N even closer into his chest. It feels so natural that George has to resist his urge to lean in and kiss her on the forehead. 

Y/N smiles as Remi tries to shove her fingers in her mouth, keeping her attention focused on the baby so she doesn’t get lost in George’s eyes. She can feel his gaze on her, and it’s taking everything in her not to return it. 

She shouldn’t even be here right now. She’d had plans to get brunch with some of her Uni friends, but the second George stopped in the doorway of her room, a stupid smile on his face and his perfect baby in his arms as he invited her on a picnic she couldn’t say no. It’s definitely not normal, the amount of time she spends with George and Remi when she’s off the clock, but Y/N stopped caring about that weeks ago. In reality, George could never pay her another cent and she’d still be sitting right where she is. 

Which should terrify Y/N, but it doesn’t. 

“I can’t believe how big she’s getting,” George comments, pulling Y/N out of her thoughts. 

She hums in agreement. “It’s crazy how fast they grow at this age. I swear some days she grows overnight.”

“She looks so much like her mom.”

Y/N freezes, just watching George stroke his fingers over the dark, wispy hair that covers Remi’s head. He’s never talked about her before, and Y/N would be lying if she said she wasn’t curious about the woman who makes up the other half of Remi’s DNA. 

“Maybe,” Y/N comments, grinning as Remi giggles. “But she has your eyes and your smile.” When all George does is hum in acknowledgement she continues. “What was she like? Remi’s mom?”

George shrugs as best he can with Y/N pressed against him. “I don’t know, really. Which sounds awful. We didn’t really spend too much time talking, if you get what I mean. I had totally forgotten about her until Remi showed up on my doorstep and the note from her fell out onto the ground.”

“I know I probably shouldn’t think ill of someone I don’t know,” Y/N says cautiously. “But it must take an awful person to just abandon their baby. Especially a baby like Remi. I mean, what if you weren’t home? Remi would have just been sitting out there on the porch for who knows how long.” She shudders in horror at the thought. “I just can’t ever imagine leaving her behind.”

The protective tone in her voice drives George crazy in the best way possible. He knows, obviously, that Y/N cares for his daughter, but hearing her be so angry at the woman who abandoned his daughter is something different. 

“I know what you mean. Being a dad was something I never even considered. But the second I held that baby for the first time I knew I could never give her up.” George pauses, considering his next words carefully. “Sometimes I think about what life would be like, if Remi’s mom had come to me when she found out she was pregnant and we had the opportunity to be a family. But I don’t think I would have liked it that much.”

“Oh?” The soft tone of George’s voice is sending goosebumps all over her body. “Why is that?”

“Because then I never would have needed a nanny, and Remi and I wouldn’t have met you.” 

His words take all of the air out of Y/N’s lungs, and her heart feels like it might beat out of her chest. Because she’s had those thoughts too, and as selfish as it is Y/N has always come to the same conclusion as George. Remi will never know her biological mother, and part of Y/N aches for that little girl. But a larger part of her is thankful that Remi will never know the pain of her mother’s abandonment, and she’s thankful that she gets to be the woman in her life. 

“Thanks for coming with us,” George murmurs after a few moments of silence, causing Y/N to finally look up at him. He has the dopiest grin on his face and it makes her heart race. 

“There’s no place I’d rather be,” Y/N responds, and the conviction in her voice lets George know she’s being honest with him. 

George reaches out to tuck a stray piece of hair behind Y/N’s ear, and he grins at the hitch in her breath. “Remi likes spending so much time with you.”

“Just Remi?” she asks teasingly, digging her teeth into her bottom lip. 

“No,” George murmurs honestly, reaching up to trace Y/N’s jaw with his thumb. “Not just Remi.”

-

Things finally come to a head a few days later, and they have to decide whether to end this arrangement all together or finally cross that line. 

-

“Y/N? Remi?”

Y/N grins as George’s voice echoes through the house as the front door clicks shut behind him. “Living room!” she calls back. 

As soon as George comes into view Remi starts babbling, her tiny fists reaching out towards George. “Dada, dada, dada!”

They’re sitting on the floor, with Y/N’s back against the sofa as Remi sits in her lap so they can read a book. But as George comes closer Y/N tosses the book aside, focusing on the man approaching her. Ever since the picnic in the park they’re subtle glances have become more obvious, and she doesn’t shy away from checking George out. 

Because damn that man knows how to wear a suit. 

“Hey Rem-Dog,” George greets, taking a seat on the floor across from Y/N. He opens his arms as Y/N lets Remi go, waiting for her to crawl closer before he swoops in. Picking Remi up under her armpits George hoists her in the air, blowing raspberries against her belly to make her laugh. 

Y/N waits for George to return the giggling baby to his lap before she acknowledges him. “Hi. How was work?”

George shrugs, giving her a smile. “It was okay. Couldn’t wait to get home though.”

The intensity in his gaze makes Y/N blush, and she clears her throat as she looks away. “Well it’s a good thing you’re here now,” she manages to squeak out once she’s calmed down. 

Things have felt so intense between them lately, but Y/N is waiting for George to make the first move. While she’s absolutely sure he feels the same way as she does, she doesn’t want to risk it by being the first one to make a move. Because on the off chance she goes for it and George rejects her, not only will Y/N be humiliated but she’ll lose Remi and that’s not something she’s willing to risk. 

“Yeah, good thing.” George leans down to kiss the top of Remi’s head. “How was she today? Any problems?”

Y/N chuckles at the notion of Remi being anything but a perfect angel. “Nope, she was perfect, as per usual. She tried broccoli for the first time and went down for her nap easily. And every time I’d show her a picture of you she’d reach for it shouting Dada.”

That makes George’s heart melt. “That’s my smart girl,” he coos. 

They both just watch for a minute as Remi squirms on George’s lap, one of her hands fisted in his dress pants while the other smacks his knee. No one says anything, but the silence between them isn’t awkward at all. 

George suddenly takes a deep breath and just as he’s about to open his mouth to say something Remi cuts him off. 

“Mama, mama!” she babbles for the first time, her little arms reaching out towards Y/N as she makes grabby hands. “Mama!”

Tears immediately spring to Y/N’s eyes, and she stands up, turning away from George so he can’t see how affected she is. “Oh. Um. I’ll be right back.”

George watches dumbfounded as Y/N disappears down the hall, presumably into his room. “Shit, shit shit,” he murmurs, standing up to follow after her. He places Remi in her playpen, kissing her quickly on the forehead. “Hang on, baby. Dada has to go check on Mama.”

Y/N’s door is closed when George reaches it, and he gives a tentative knock. “Y/N? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, George!” She calls, but George can hear her sniffling. 

“No, you’re not.” He pauses, grabbing the doorknob. “I’m coming in.”

She’s sitting on the edge of her bed, furiously wiping away tears and George immediately takes two steps into the room before falling to his knees in front of her. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing,” she dismisses, shaking her head. “I don’t even know why I’m crying to be honest. It shouldn’t be a big deal, obviously I’m not Remi’s mom-”

“But you wanna be,” George murmurs, cutting her off. 

“Fuck, I’m so sorry, George,” Y/N apologizes. She wipes away the rest of the tears on her cheeks before she starts to push him away. “Let me just pack my stuff and I’ll be out of here, I’m sorry.”

George grabs Y/N’s wrists, keeping her hands pressed to his chest but keeping her from pushing him away. “What the hell do you have to be sorry for, Y/N?”

“I’m her nanny, George. I’m just supposed to be looking after her while you’re at work or whatever. I’m not supposed to be imagining a life where she’s my child and we’re a family. I crossed a line and you should fire me.”

“Fuck that,” George scoffs. “Look at me, Y/N.” He doesn’t continue until Y/N meets his gaze. “If anyone here crossed a line it was me. The second I saw you on my porch that morning I was fucked, I wanted you in every single way I could have you, Y/N. Hell, I asked you to move in under the guise that I needed more help with Remi when in reality I just wanted an excuse to be closer to you.”

George’s confession shocks her, and a humorless chuckle leaves her lips. “Really?”

“Really,” George confirms. “So if I should fire you for what you did, then you should quit for what I did. And if you really want to leave I will walk away right now. I’ll head back into the living room and sit with Remi while you pack and I’ll let you walk out the front door.”

“And if I don’t want to leave?” Y/N immediately asks. 

“Then I’m going to kiss you, and once I've conveyed to you how much you truly mean to me, we’ll go back out to the living room to spend time with our daughter. Because Y/N, you stopped being just the nanny weeks ago. And I think you know that.” George gives her a pointed look. “The choice is yours.”

Her choice comes in the form of her hands fisting in George’s shirt seconds before she pulls him into a kiss. George’s arms immediately wrap around her waist, and he pulls Y/N off of the bed and into his lap, needing to get her as close as possible. 

“Dada! Mama!”

Remi’s shout breaks their kiss, but George keeps their foreheads pressed together as they chuckle. “I guess we’ll have to wait until Remi goes to bed to cross other lines.”

Y/N shakes her head, playfully smacking George on the side of his head. He can be such an idiot. But at least he’s her idiot, and that’s all that really matters.