#i almost didn’t post this because I wanted to draw all three of them and post them

[meiplays]

“Fury burns bright, love burns brighter”

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Word Count: ~700

Warnings: Angry arguing, intense unresolved tension, rough makeout, suggestive/steamy (SFW), emotionally charged, swearing, lots of car and jealousy metaphors.

Setting: Post-hunt, in the Impala and outside the bunker

The hunt had gone sideways. Blood on her jacket, a graze on Dean’s jaw, Sam’s hand still wrapped around a soaked bandage. The three of them sat in silence as Baby purred down the highway—except it wasn’t silence. Not really.

It was thick. Suffocating.

Dean’s knuckles were white around the steering wheel.

Reader sat beside him, arms crossed so tight across her chest she felt like she could fold in on herself. Sam sat up front too, passenger side, for once. Dean had barked for him to ride shotgun without explanation. That alone had set the tone.

"You should’ve waited," Dean finally muttered, jaw clenched like a trap.

"Yeah?" she shot back, bitter. "Well maybe if someone had covered the back like they said—"

"Don’t even try to put this on me."

Sam blinked between them. “Guys—”

"Shut up, Sam," they snapped in unison.

Dean’s jaw twitched. She could see the blood still drying on his collarbone. Her eyes lingered there—because it meant he almost died. Because she almost watched him die.

Because he’s too goddamn reckless when she’s involved.

They didn’t say anything the rest of the ride. Not a word. Just tension coiled in silence, rattling like a snake under skin.

The moment Dean pulled into the bunker’s garage, she flung open the door and slammed it behind her with a furious snap of steel.

A pause. Then—

"Are you freakin’ kidding me?!"

Dean’s voice thundered behind her, boots heavy and fast on the concrete. She turned just in time for him to storm around Baby, eyes blazing.

“You slam my damn door?”

“Oh, now you care? You didn’t care two hours ago when you let that ghoul nearly gut me!"

"I care too goddamn much! That’s the problem!”

His voice broke like glass and she stepped back—just once. Just enough to register the storm behind his eyes. But he didn’t give her room. Not this time.

Dean grabbed her wrist—gently, but firm—and shoved her back, spine hitting the bunker’s door with a thud. She sucked in a breath, eyes locked on his.

“Don’t—” she growled, shoving his chest. “Don’t touch me when you’re mad.”

“I’m not just mad,” he gritted out. “I’m scared. I’m—”

He cut himself off with a growl, slamming his palm flat beside her head against the door, trapping her there. The heat off him was boiling. Rage, guilt, want—it all pulsed off his skin like wildfire.

“That thing almost ripped your throat out. You think I give a shit about the car? I care about you.”

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” she spat, breath hitching as he leaned closer.

Dean’s eyes burned into hers. “I was losing my goddamn mind watching you bleed.”

And then—just like that—the fury combusted.

He grabbed her face roughly, pulled her up into his mouth like he was dying without it. Their lips crashed together in a brutal mess of spit, breath, and desperation. Tongues battled, teeth scraped. Her fingers fisted his flannel, his hands tangled in her hair. His hips pinned her to the bunker door and she gasped against his mouth, fire licking every inch of her.

“You pissed me off so bad,” he hissed against her lips, voice ragged. “I wanted to throw you over my shoulder and lock you in a safe.”

She bit his bottom lip in response, hard enough to draw a groan from deep in his chest.

“I’m not something you can lock up, Winchester.”

“Yeah?” he growled, panting against her jaw as he kissed down it. “Then stop making me feel like I’m gonna lose you every damn hunt.”

She yanked his belt loop, pulled him even closer, until there was no space left between them—just burning skin, heavy breath, hearts pounding in sync.

They kissed like it would solve something.

They kissed like it never would.

Behind them, Baby sat quiet and forgotten.

And somewhere up in the war room, Sam decided he'd give them twenty minutes. Maybe thirty.

[ilovejb]

| Shattered Glass |

Pairings: Bob Reynolds x female!wife!reader

Summary: They were already falling apart — this was just the night it broke loud enough to hear.

Warnings: Drug use (meth),domestic violence (non-graphic physical and emotional abuse).Alcohol abuse, shouting, glass breaking, verbal arguments. Emotional neglect and trauma (child present during conflict)

Authors note: requested by @horrormovielover2000 (Can be read as a sequel to Second Chance or as a standalone piece )

It starts like any other night.

Your daughter hums in her room with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, legs crossed on the floor. Crayons scattered everywhere — dragons with flower crowns, purple stars, green volcanoes, a planet with a smiling face. She’s talking to herself quietly, making up stories as she draws, like she always does when she’s anxious but pretending she’s not.

And you?

You’re in the kitchen, still in your work clothes, heating up leftovers that neither of you really want. You’ve texted Bob three times — one got left on read, the rest ignored. But you already know.

You knew the second he didn’t come home before sunset.

You knew the second you opened the liquor cabinet to grab cooking wine and saw the bottle of bourbon half gone.

You knew the second your daughter asked, too carefully, “Is Daddy still at the gym?”

Because she’s been keeping track. Just like you have.

You hear her giggle softly from the next room, scribbling stars onto a sheet of printer paper like they’re real, like if she draws enough of them, he’ll show up clean and soft-spoken like he did a few months ago. Post-rehab Bob. The one who tried. The one who tried so hard.

And you can feel it coming.

Like a storm on the edge of town.

It’s almost 10PM when the front door slams open so hard it bounces off the wall. You freeze in the hallway, your hand on the light switch.

“Hey—hey, babe?” Bob’s voice, slurred. Sloppy. The way you haven’t heard it in months. “Where’s—where’s my girls?”

You don’t answer right away.

You just breathe.

One second. Two.

Then your voice, flat: “She’s in her room. Drawing.”

You turn the corner slowly, and there he is.

Bob Reynolds. Your husband. Father of your child. Standing in the foyer with bloodshot eyes, pupils blown wide, and a lazy grin that doesn’t reach past his teeth.

His shirt is half untucked. There’s glitter on his forearms — not the kind your daughter uses. The club kind. His hands are trembling.

And his breath…

His breath stinks of vodka and meth sweat.

“Did you—did you miss me?” he grins, like it’s a joke. Like you’re going to laugh. Like this is normal.

Your nails dig into your palm.

“Go wash your face,” you say quietly.

He stumbles forward instead, kicking his shoes off so hard one flies into the wall. It thunks and your daughter’s voice calls out faintly:

“Mommy? Was that Daddy?”

You force yourself to keep your tone steady. “It’s okay, baby. Just stay in your room for now.”

“I drew a new dragon,” she says softly.

You shut your eyes. “I can’t wait to see it.”

When you turn back around, Bob’s in the kitchen, swaying slightly, staring into the open fridge like he forgot what food looks like.

“Don’t do this,” you say low. “Not in front of her.”

He laughs — that weird, hiccupy laugh that’s more mouth than voice.

“Oh, come on. I missed dinner, that’s all. I didn’t—I didn’t mean to be late.” He pulls out a half-empty can of beer from god-knows-where and pops it open like it’s nothing.

“Don’t drink that in front of her,” you snap. “Put it down.”

“Jesus, relax.” He takes a long swig, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s not like I’m—what? Gonna crash the house into a tree?”

“Bob—” You raise your voice without meaning to. “She’s six. She can hear you.”

He scoffs, louder now. “She’s drawing in her little fantasy castle. She doesn’t give a damn what I do.”

The words hit you harder than you expect.

“Don’t you dare say that,” you hiss.

He’s already pacing.

You know this dance. You’ve lived this cycle. He’s not even fully here — chemically scattered, skin buzzing under sweat and guilt. You can feel the fight coming like a train and you want to stop it.

But you’re so tired of swallowing the silence.

So you say it.

“Were you with her?”

That stops him. Just for a second.

His face flinches. Then hardens.

“Don’t start with that paranoid jealous wife bullshit,” he spits.

“I’m not jealous. I’m angry. And terrified. You came home high, Bob. Drunk. After weeks of pretending—promising—you were done.”

“It was one night.”

“It’s never one night!”

The bottle slips out of his hand.

CRASH.

It shatters across the tile.

You both freeze.

From her room: silence. Then the softest voice.

“Mommy?”

Your eyes sting. “It’s okay, sweetie. Just something fell.”

“I’ll draw you a flower,” she says quietly.

You clench your fists.

Bob stares at the broken glass, swaying. “See what you made me do.”

You spin. “What I made you do? Are you kidding me?”

“You push and push and—” His voice cracks. “I’m trying.”

“No, you’re not,” you snap. “You tried. Past tense. Then you stopped. You walked back into hell and dragged us with you.”

His hands go to his hair. “I didn’t mean to.”

“You never mean to. But I’m the one cleaning up the mess. I’m the one checking on her in the night when she cries because Daddy didn’t kiss her goodnight. I’m the one who—who—”

You have to stop. Your throat tightens.

“You’re a superpowered god,” you whisper. “But you can’t even pick up a goddamn crayon and sit with your daughter for five minutes.”

That one hits.

He turns away like he’s been slapped.

Silence.

A beat.

Then, from the hallway, soft footsteps.

You both turn.

She’s there — standing in her pajamas, holding a drawing in both hands.

A planet with dragon wings. Flowers blooming across its surface. Stars smiling above it.

“I made this for you, Daddy,” she says quietly. “In case you were sad.” Bob opens his mouth. No words come. He sinks to his knees.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so, so sorry.”

You tuck her back into bed ten minutes later.

Bob doesn’t help. He doesn’t follow. He just stands in the hallway like a ghost while you kneel beside your daughter’s little bed, gently brushing her curls back behind her ear.

She’s still holding the drawing. She won’t let it go.

You whisper, “It’s beautiful, baby,” and she nods. “He’s just really tired tonight, okay? He’s… not feeling like himself.”

“Is he sick?” she asks, voice small.

You hesitate. “A little. Grown-up sick. It’s not your fault.”

She doesn’t ask any more questions. She doesn’t cry. That’s what worries you most.

She just pulls the blanket up to her chin and says, “I can draw him another one tomorrow.”

Your chest feels like it’s caving in.

You kiss her forehead and close the door gently behind you. The moment it clicks shut, the weight shifts from your chest to your fists.

You walk down the hall and there he is.

Still swaying slightly. Still reeking of chemicals and bourbon and mistakes.

“She saw,” you say.

Bob doesn’t answer.

“She saw everything.”

He runs a hand through his hair like he’s trying to wake up from something, but he isn’t asleep. He’s wide awake in the worst version of himself.

You shake your head. “What did you take?”

He doesn’t lie.

“Meth,” he mutters. “Just a little. Just… I wasn’t gonna go full spiral again.”

“Do you hear yourself?” Your voice cracks on the last word.

He turns away. “I needed it. Just for one night. You don’t know what it’s like in here.” He taps his temple hard. “I’m stuck in my own f***ing head all the time.”

You step closer.

“And I’m stuck in the wreckage. Picking up every broken thing you leave behind. Including her.”

Bob flinches.

“I know,” he says quietly. “I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t say you didn’t mean to,” you snap. “You chose this. You walked back into it. You lied to me. You lied to her. You promised.”

“I know,” he says again, and it’s weaker this time. “I f***ing know, okay?”

You’re not even yelling anymore. You’re too drained for that.

You walk past him into the kitchen where the broken glass still glints in the dim light. You grab the broom. Sweep. One shard slices your palm as you dump the pieces into the trash. You don’t flinch. You just let it bleed.

Bob watches from the doorway. Pathetic. Hollow.

“Don’t just stand there,” you mutter.

He doesn’t move.

“I don’t know what you want me to do.”

You turn, eyes sharp.

“I wanted you to stay clean.”

Silence.

Then—

“I’m not good at this,” he says. “Being normal. Being domestic. It doesn’t feel real. I wake up and I feel like I’m still some… broken thing with a kill switch. Like one bad day and it all resets.”

“You think I’m not scared?” You drop the broom. “You think I’m not terrified every time I hear a siren or get a phone call at midnight?”

He closes his eyes.

“Don’t you dare use your powers as an excuse. This isn’t about being Sentry. This is about being a father.”

His voice is barely above a whisper: “I’m trying.”

You stare at him, eyes burning.

“No. You tried. Then you gave up. And you didn’t even look back.”

That’s when the yelling starts again.

He pushes away from the doorway. You don’t remember exactly what sets it off — maybe a look, maybe a word, maybe the sheer tension of too much truth in one room. But then the volume spikes.

“You don’t know what it’s like living with this kind of pressure—!”

“I live with you, Bob. That’s pressure enough.”

“You make me feel like I’m never doing enough!”

“Because you’re not! You disappear for hours, days—!”

“I come back, don’t I?!”

“Do you? Because this—” You gesture to his bloodshot eyes, his shaking hands, the reek of his clothes. “—this isn’t you coming back. This is you dragging the grave with you.”

He grabs a glass off the counter. Throws it. It hits the wall and shatters.

You both freeze again.

No voice this time. No question from the hallway.

Just silence.

That hurts worse.

“She didn’t even ask if we’re okay,” you whisper. “She’s used to this.”

Bob sinks to the floor slowly, like his legs give out.

His hands tremble.

“I never wanted this,” he whispers. “I wanted to be better.”

“Then why the hell aren’t you?”

He doesn’t answer.

You stand over him.

“Fix this,” you say coldly. “Fix it, Bob. Or don’t come back next time.”

He looks up at you, eyes glossy and desperate.

“You don’t mean that.”

You stare down at him, throat tight.

And you don’t say a word.

You don’t sleep.

You lie awake on the edge of the bed with your back turned, eyes fixed on the crack in the ceiling paint. It’s from that one storm last year. Bob swore he’d fix it.

Like everything else.

You hear him in the kitchen again sometime around 3 a.m. — not sneaking, not quiet. Just loud enough for you to know he wants to be heard. Like he wants you to get up and find him. Make it okay. Clean up the mess again.

You don’t move.

Instead, you listen to the fridge door open. Then close. Then open again. Bottles clinking.

God, please let it be water this time.

A few minutes later, the front door creaks. A light step. Lighter than it should be.

He’s leaving again.

No note.

By the time the sun rises, your daughter is in the kitchen with a blanket over her shoulders and her planet drawing taped to the fridge.

You pour her cereal, make her chocolate milk the way she likes — three swirls of syrup, stir counterclockwise, not clockwise — and try to smile when she shows you the flower she drew on the back of her dragon page.

“He didn’t like the dragon, I think,” she mumbles.

“Daddy had something going on in his head,” you say softly. “It wasn’t about the dragon, sweetheart.”

She nods, like she understands, but she shouldn’t have to.

You pack her backpack. Kiss her forehead. Walk her to the bus. Wave until the yellow doors close.

Then you go back inside and sit on the couch.

The quiet is unbearable.

He shows up again at noon.

You don’t even hear the key in the lock — just the sound of the door closing too softly, like he knows he shouldn’t be here.

You don’t look at him.

Bob’s a wreck. His hoodie’s stained, there’s a fresh cut over his knuckle, and the shadows under his eyes look like they’ve taken root.

“I went walking,” he says, like you care.

You pick up the remote. Click the volume up one notch. Don’t speak.

He runs a hand through his hair. “I didn’t use again.”

You finally glance at him. “Congrats.”

The sarcasm hits harder than any punch. He winces, but doesn’t argue.

He slinks further inside like he’s testing how close you’ll let him come before you snap. You don’t say stop. Not yet.

“I slept behind the old theater,” he says. “No cops. Just rats.”

You snort, bitter. “And that’s supposed to make me feel sorry for you?”

He sits on the edge of the coffee table, hands clasped like he’s in a confession booth.

“I’m not trying to win points. I just didn’t want to go somewhere worse.”

You finally meet his eyes.

“Bob, you are the worst place.”

The air shifts.

He lets out a low, hollow laugh. “Yeah. I figured.”

You lean forward, elbows on your knees.

“You’ve got a daughter. A daughter who thinks she needs to draw you pictures to make you happy.”

He nods slowly. “I know.”

“You think this is about meth? Or booze? It’s not. It’s about the fact that you come home and look right through us like we’re ghosts in your house.”

“I don’t mean to,” he whispers.

“But you do it anyway.”

Bob’s face crumples a little. “I don’t know how to be here without f***ing it up.”

“Then leave.”

Silence.

You press harder. “No more in and out. No more maybe-I’ll-try-again. If you’re going to rot, do it somewhere else. You don’t get to take us down with you.”

You can see it in his eyes — that flicker of panic, like maybe this is the one time you mean it.

“You want me gone?” he asks.

You shrug. “You already are.”

He sits back like you slapped him.

You wish you had. Maybe a bruise would make the pain real to him.

He gets up. Paces. His hands start twitching.

“I thought you wanted to fix things,” he says.

You snap your head toward him.

“I wanted a husband. I got a f***ing ghost with a death wish.”

He knocks a lamp off the end table. It crashes, shatters.

This time, you don’t even flinch.

“You think I asked for this life?” he shouts. “You think I wanted to turn into someone you’re ashamed to love?!”

You rise to your feet.

“You didn’t want to turn into it. You let it happen.”

You’re nose to nose now, breathing the same poisonous air.

“I have begged,” you say. “I have cried and screamed and pleaded with you to choose us. And every time, you’ve picked the thing that kills you faster.”

His voice breaks. “Because I don’t know how to survive happiness.” “Then don’t drag us down into your misery.”You step back. Point at the door.

“If you don’t have a reason to stay clean, then go. Because I won’t let our daughter grow up thinking love means pain.”

He doesn’t move. For once, he doesn’t argue. Doesn’t break anything else. He just looks at you like a man drowning for the last time.

And then?

He leaves.

The door doesn’t slam.

It clicks.

Soft.

Final.

You don’t know what time it is.

You just know it’s dark, and cold, and your daughter’s bedroom door is closed with a towel shoved under it to keep the smoke out.

You’re barefoot, standing in the hallway with a shattered picture frame at your feet.

And Bob is in the kitchen again — slamming cabinets, muttering to himself, breaking things he probably doesn’t even realize he’s breaking.

You told him not to come back.

But junkies always come back. Especially when they think they’re owed something.

You hear the fridge door open. Another bottle. You feel it before you hear it — the slow drag of him pulling out a chair, sitting down like this is his house, his family, like the last three days didn’t happen.

And something in you snaps.

You walk into the kitchen and grab the bottle from his hand. Whiskey, half gone.

“What the f***—” he starts, reaching for it.

You pull it away. “You don’t get to sit here and drink like this is normal.”

His eyes are bloodshot, his hands twitchy. “Don’t start.”

“Oh, I’ve already started.”

You slam the bottle down on the counter, just hard enough to make him flinch.

“You show up at 1 a.m. reeking of pills and bourbon and you think you can just sit at my kitchen table like this is fine?”

He glares at you, mouth twisted.

“I live here.”

You laugh. “No, Bob. You exist here. You haunt this place. You ruin it.”

He stands. Too fast. The chair screeches.

“I work my ass off not to disappear completely, and all you do is tear me down!”

“You hit rock bottom and then keep digging,” you scream. “What the hell do you expect me to do?! Applaud you?!”

His fist slams the countertop. “You don’t see me! You don’t f***ing care!”

Your chest tightens. You take one step closer. “I saw you when no one else did. I loved you when you were already rotting. But I won’t let our daughter grow up thinking this is love.”

He stumbles forward, unsteady. “Don’t bring her into this.”

You shove him back.

“Why? Scared she might actually realize her dad is a goddamn coward?”

That’s when it happens.

It’s not cinematic. Not slow motion.

It’s fast. Fast and ugly.

His hand comes up before he knows what it’s doing. Open palm, reckless swing.

You feel it before you process it — the sting on your cheek, the burn in your jaw, the sudden stillness that crashes over everything like a glass wall shattering in your chest.

Your head turns with the hit. The whiskey bottle falls and smashes on the tile, spilling amber and shards across your bare feet.

Silence.

Bob steps back, hand frozen mid-air, eyes wide.

“I—I didn’t—”

You don’t speak.

You don’t cry.

You don’t scream.

You just stand there, breath shallow, and stare at him like he’s a stranger who broke in.

And in that second — he is.

Your voice comes out steady. Cold.

“If you ever touch me again, I swear to God—”

“Wait, I didn’t mean to—baby—please, I—”

You shove him. Hard.

He stumbles into the broken glass.

Your voice doesn’t shake. “You’re leaving.”

He looks panicked. “No. No, I just—I lost control, just for a second, I swear—”

“You lost me,” you spit. “You lost your family.”

Your daughter’s bedroom door opens quietly down the hall. A little face peeks out.

“Mom?”

You snap your head toward her, instantly soft. “Stay in your room, sweetheart.”

She doesn’t listen. She walks down the hall, dragging her blanket, blinking at the mess.

You kneel and block her view of the kitchen, your body between her and her father.

“Go back in your room. I’ll be there in a second.”

She sees the red on your cheek.

“Did Daddy hurt you?”

Your throat tightens. “Just go. Please.”

She obeys.

Because she knows when someone means it.

Bob starts crying. Loud, disgusting sobs.

You don’t care.

You get up. Grab his keys from the hook by the door.

You shove them at his chest. “Go.”

He doesn’t move.

“GO!”

You scream it so hard your voice breaks.

He finally turns.

He walks out barefoot, still crying, still muttering apologies that disappear with every step.

You close the door behind him.

Lock it.

And then you slide down against it, head in your hands, and let yourself fall apart.

That night, you sleep in your daughter’s bed.

She draws you a dragon with big wings.

It’s breathing fire on a man with black eyes and a small heart.

You kiss her forehead, curl up beside her, and promise yourself you’ll never let her grow up thinking this is what love looks like.

[prodagustd]

the road not taken 07 | myg

part seven: old wounds

Summary: You really, really tried to ignore Yoongi. But once again, you failed.

<part six part eight>

—pairing: lawyer!yoongi x actress!oc

—rating: +18

—genre: brother's best friend, one sided pinning (or both?), slow burn

—warnings/tags: slow burn, angst, fluff.

—words: 9.7k

—a/note: hi friends!! can't even begin to describe the amount of mental breakdowns i had writing this but here is it!! i doubted myself too many times before posting this one (still am), idk why it was so hard to finish but i'm glad it's here, i hope you enjoy and as always, you're welcomed to discuss this part in the asks!!

series masterlist | teaser | playlist

Present

It was such a mistake to even insinuate that the years that had passed had made you wiser, or that the hurt and heartbreak had made you stronger, more decisive, or less stubborn. If anything, you continued to make the same mistakes, you were ten times more sensitive and you had developed a level of stubbornness that was almost impossible to shake. You had spent years consumed by bitterness, only to learn nothing from it, and still, you wanted to trust yourself and stop doubting every decision you made, but it was hard considering you were the same person who led yourself here. 

A few days ago, when Minnie said she just wanted to show you a few ideas to help The Alley, what she really meant was that she had already mapped out a full schedule for you long before you even knew what was going on. You assumed she might want your help with organizing things—selling tickets on movie nights to show your face for a few seconds and draw in more people, painting a few walls, or changing some light bulbs—but you couldn’t have been more wrong.

As she turned the pages of her diary, you tried to make sense of every word she was saying, remaining silent as you patiently waited for her to finish so you could finally get a chance to speak. 

“You want me to direct the end-of-year play?” you asked, needing to confirm what she had just said. “In only three months?”

Your redhead friend slowly nodded, looking you straight in the eye as if she just hadn’t gone completely crazy. 

“That’s plenty of time.”

You shook your head in disbelief. “You and I both know that’s not remotely—that’s not even half the time I would need.”

Minnie rolled her eyes and stood up, walking over to the large board behind her. It was a chaotic collage of crumpled pieces of paper, faded photographs, and yellowed old letters, all pinned in a disorganized frenzy that seemed to mirror the whirlwind of her thoughts. 

“Bullshit. You’re like… Broadway trained or something. You’re the only person who can pull it off.�� 

You sit back against the chair, sighing. You wanted to help Minnie, not only because she was your best friend but because this was the place you grew up in. Yet, despite your best intentions, a wave of overwhelm crept in, making it hard to ignore. Deep down, or maybe not so deep down, you knew that the time wouldn’t be a problem, that directing was one of your secret passions and wouldn't be a burden at all, but the real problem was that you still didn’t feel prepared to show your face around.

Here was the catch: you couldn’t say no. You knew Minnie, you could make thousands of excuses and she would find a solution for each one of them, so you had two options: say yes right away, or say no until she finally made you say yes. 

“And it’s an original play, you say? Written by one of the kids?” You asked, already knowing which option would be easier. 

“Yes...” She replied softly. “You know, like the ones you used to write when you were a kid…”

You tried not to roll your eyes. Classic Minnie, guilt-tripping you until you had no choice but to agree. 

You chuckled bitterly, suddenly remembering that six months ago, you had told your therapist that you were asking for an opportunity like this—a chance to redeem yourself, something close to a miracle. Yet now, with it right in front of you, you were hesitant to take it. You had to suppress the urge to call her without notice to ask her opinion about everything. Agnes, who always seemed to be at the end of her patience with your self-sabotaging tendencies, would be sitting in her office back in the city, she would pick up your call and tell you that this could be the perfect chance to reconnect—not only with your hometown and your friends but with your old self as well. She would say this was exactly why you had decided to come back home, and you would’ve hated hearing it. You would’ve hated admitting she might be right.

You straightened up, trying to look serious. “Let me read it first,” you said. “Then we can talk about it.” 

“Mmmm… I have a better proposition.” She argued, “You read it and start tomorrow.” 

“You’re kidding,” You replied, incredulous.

She clapped her hands, sealing the deal with a finality that made it clear she wasn’t joking. “Of course I’m not. We can’t afford to waste time,” she said matter-of-factly. “We need to call the kids, arrange the theater—which, by the way, is under maintenance, but that won’t be an issue. The lights will be fixed by morning, and you can start in the afternoon. And oh, you’ll need to…”

“Minnie!” You yelled, making her stop abruptly “Stop talking and give me a second, Christ…” 

Your friend nodded, a bit embarrassed of her sudden excitement. She sat back in her chair, quietly observing you as you tried to make up a plan in your head. 

“Okay, I’ll read the play tonight, and tomorrow morning I would need to talk with the person who wrote it. Then, we’ll see if we start in the afternoon.” You stated. She nodded in contentment, but you knew she was holding back.  “C’mon, don’t look at me like that…”

“Like what?” She huffed. 

“Like a lost puppy.” You rolled your eyes “I said I will help, right?” 

“You said that, yes…” She trailed off “But I don’t want you to just help, you know? If it’s not too much to ask, I would like you to put your heart to it.” 

You chuckled, knowing that she meant every word. “I know that.” 

“Well, I hope you do.” She sighed “These kids… they were so disappointed when they found out we couldn’t pay the last teacher anymore. It’s not just about the play, it’s about everything, this place is like a second home. Hell, for most of them it’s like the first one… I just want to make it count.” 

Minnie looked at you like she could read every thought in your mind. 

“I know.” You said, feeling like a fourteen year old all over again “I understand.” 

“I know you do.” She nodded, smiling with her eyes. “Of course you do.”

You couldn’t fully believe in fate. Or in irony, or the universe having some big plan, and yet when you finished reading the script for the play you thought it was written just to fuck with you. 

The play was about some girl, June, growing up in The Alley as she tried to find herself. That was the story, that was the big dramatic theme of the play you somehow agreed to direct. How groundbreaking, how deeply, earth-shattering not cliché. And still, something about it got under your skin. Not exactly in a bad way, it felt… familiar. The kind of familiarity that made you shift in your seat, like when someone says something uncomfortably true about you, but you couldn’t argue because they were right. 

The whole who am I, where do I belong thing—hasn’t that been done a million times before? Haven’t you seen it, loved it, run away from it? Maybe that’s why it bothered you. Because it was too easy to see yourself in it.

Not that you’d admit that.

That Saturday morning you were meeting Harriet, the writer of the play that gave you nightmares last night, to discuss the script, offer a few pointers, and try to organize the first rehearsal. You exhaled sharply, it was just a play, nothing more. You tried not to overthink it, but Minnie thought otherwise. 

“So?” Minnie asked as she organized her bag. You looked up to her from your coffee, sitting at the end of her table. “Did you like the play?”

You shrugged, with eyes barely open.  “It’s good.” 

Minnie narrowed her eyes, sitting next to you. “Good?” She snorted, “C’mon, you liked it.”

“Sure, I liked it,” you said, taking a sip of your coffee. “The dialogue’s good, the pacing is solid. It’s relatable, I guess.”

“Mhm…” Minnie drummed her fingers lightly against the edge of the table. She was quiet for a beat, clearly waiting for you to say more. When you didn’t, she tilted her head, smirking like she knew exactly where this was going. “You don’t see it, then?”

You raised an eyebrow. “See what?”

“Yourself?”

God. Of course.

Here we go again. You should’ve known better than to think you’d get through a full conversation without her dragging you into some self-reflection trap.

You let out a soft scoff, lowering your cup. “What do you mean?”

“You do see it.” Minnie grinned, all too satisfied. “It’s like a therapy session in script format.”

You rolled your eyes.  “An angsty teenager who’s angry at the world, fighting her way into adulthood? Isn’t that the story of every single kid in that place?” You said, recalling the script—though you refused to admit it sounded a little too familiar.

“No, not like this,” she insisted. “It’s different. It reminded me of you.”

You sighed, leaning back in your chair. “You always say that.”

“Because every time I say it, it’s true,” she replied, unbothered. “You know I know you like the back of my hand, right? Inside and out. You can’t hide anything from me.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Well, I know you too—and right now, I know you’re being very, very annoying.”

Minnie rolled her eyes so dramatically it made you laugh.

“You really don’t see it?” she asked again, gentler this time.

You looked away, pretending to be way too interested in the last sip of your coffee. “I see a lot of things,” you said, vaguely.

She let out a quiet breath through her nose, like she wanted to keep poking but decided against it.

“Fine.” She sighed, finally letting it go—for now—as she stood up and grabbed her empty mug. “You’re meeting Harriet today, right?”

You nodded.

“Don’t be mean to her.”

“I’m never mean.”

“You terrify people.”

“Only the weak,” you replied, standing as well. “And if she’s anything like me, she’ll be fine.”

The hallway to the main theater was dim, almost dark. Anyone walking in for the first time might assume it was just another maintenance issue—one of the many The Alley was always plagued with—but you knew better. It had always been like this. The lights flickered sometimes, the floor creaked in all the right places, and the smell of paint never really left the walls. 

Cork boards lined the walls, cluttered with wrinkled flyers and announcements for local events. Above them, big framed photos of past theater productions hung in no particular order—some crooked, most dusty. No one ever fixed them, but they had their charm.

The place was still quiet and empty, almost peaceful. Only your footsteps echoed softly as you walked, your script folded under one arm. Minnie was beside you, phone in one hand, her second coffee of the day in the other, talking nonstop about everything she had to deal with before noon.

“…and we’re out of paper towels again, and someone stole the good extension cord, so now I’m down to that weird one from the lost and found that sparks if you look at it wrong. Also, we’re probably getting fined if we don’t fix the exit sign by Friday, and—”

You let her talk. It helped you focus. Or, at least, pretend you were focusing.

Minnie knew you like no other person, but still couldn’t remember one core fact of your existence: you were not, by any stretch of the imagination, a morning person. 

And today, it turned out, that wasn’t the only thing she forgot.

You were just approaching the theater doors, head slightly bowed, mentally rehearsing the day ahead, when you heard it.

A low laugh, soft and achingly familiar. 

You turned your head slowly, as if giving yourself time to be wrong. But of course you weren’t.

Because somehow, Minnie forgot to tell you that the person handling repairs today was none other than Yoongi.

Your eyes moved on instinct. You didn’t mean to look—you just did. And there he was.

The man in question was perched on a ladder, with his sleeves rolled up and a screwdriver in hand fixing a reflector, while a tall boy held it steady, laughing as he jokingly threatened to shake it. A flicker of irritation sparked in your chest. Of course he was the one handling the repairs, of course Minnie casually forgot to mention that to you.

You turned around to shoot your friend a threatening look, but she just pushed you forward, forcing you to keep walking.

You made your way towards the center of the room, trying not to pay attention to the scene, but as the sounds of your steps filled the room. You didn’t have to look to know both of them had stopped laughing. You didn’t have to guess to feel their eyes following you across the stage like the past itself had stepped into the room and sat down beside them.

“Good morning guys.” Minnie said, dropping her bags on one of the seats. “My friend right here is going to help us with the play this morning. I think you know her, Jungkook?”

You turned around just in time to see the boy abandon the ladder and bolt towards you at full speed, while Yoongi, left stranded at the top, clung to it, visibly irritated. 

He murmured something under his breath, too quiet to catch, but your attention had already shifted to Jungkook, who was practically vibrating with excitement as he extended a tattooed hand toward you.

“Oh—yeah, of course! Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” He blurted, voice a little too eager.

You couldn’t help but smile as you shook his hand.

“Jungkook is a big fan, by the way,” Minnie added casually, completely unfazed by the way his face turned an alarming shade of red.

“Well, thanks. Pleased to meet you, too,” you said, amused. “Are you fixing the stage lights today, Jungkook?”

Jungkook froze for a second, his eyes widening slightly—stunned that you knew his name, as if he hadn’t just heard Minnie say it two seconds ago.

“Well—not me,” he managed to stammer. “I mean—yes! Me. And… Yoongi. He’s, uh, kind of the boss around here.”

Your smile didn’t drop, but you raised your eyebrows in surprise. You glance towards the ladder again, watching Yoongi descend like he had all the time in the world. You looked at him, and for the shortest of seconds, he looked at you too. 

“Is he?” You asked, turning to your friend for some kind of explanation. 

Minnie shook her head, don’t start, she wanted to say, but it was too late. You’ve already started.

“Just the boss of him, maybe.” appearing beside Jungkook and giving him a pat on the back maybe a little too hard.

Something burned inside your chest, but you were not supposed to be mad anymore. You were not supposed to be angry, you were supposed to be a functioning adult, a mature person who was able to let things go and act accordingly, but without fail, every time you were in front of him you felt like a kid throwing a tantrum all over again. 

“I must’ve been gone for too long.” You said, nonchalantly. “I didn’t know you were the one calling the shots now.” 

It was encrypted in your code, you weren’t used to biting your tongue, it was stronger than you. You told yourself you didn’t want anything to do with Yoongi, but you still desperately needed to know what was he doing here, what was that tied him to this place when he didn’t even know its name a few years ago. 

The room suddenly fell silent and you knew it was your fault but you couldn’t find the will to regret it. 

He locked eyes with you, there was a hard weight on his gaze, but it gave nothing away, like a locked door with no key, totally indecipherable. 

“I’m not.” He simply said. If what you wanted was an explanation, you weren’t going to get it. “I’m just helping around.” His words hung in the air for a moment, met with a brief silence. 

Minnie cleared her throat, interrupting the hostile staring competition you and Yoongi were having. “Yoongi and Jungkook are helping with the stage lights, but they are missing a few guys today.” She carefully mentioned, her eyes going from Yoongi to you and back. “So they are going to take more time than usual.”

“I can work in the other room, if you’d like.” You offered, looking at Jungkook. 

“No!” Jungkook was quick to say “That won’t be necessary, I mean—we won’t be a problem at all.”

“Really?” You said “I mean, I could. What would the boss say?” 

Yoongi turned to you then, and you could tell he knew exactly what you were doing. The corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smirk, not quite a frown, just the ghost of something caught between amusement and exasperation. 

He exhaled quietly, like he was reminding himself not to be annoyed, because it was you. “You know it’s okay.” He said, his voice smooth, but you caught the tiniest flicker in his eyes, that slight tension in his shoulders. 

After all these years, that connection between you still remained, woven into the spaces between words, into the way you could read each other with nothing but a glance. You could still have silent conversation in crowded rooms just by looking at each other, it was not a surprise, but it pissed you off anyway.

“Let’s get to work, then,” You muttered, sharper than intended. You didn’t look at him, but you knew he’d heard everything you didn’t say.

Last week you wouldn’t have expected to end up right here, in the middle of the stage of The Alley as you were waiting for some sixteen year old to pitch you her story, and yet, you were there. The goal for today was almost too simple to fulfill, the only obstacle was that it required all the patience you knew you never had, but you were willing to try. 

The sound of the door swinging open let you know that the day started. Suddenly, Minnie and a girl who you thought to be Harriet stepped into the room. You recognized who she was immediately, wrapped in a big baby blue puffer jacket, a long purple skirt brushing against her ankles and a red hat over her dark curls,—she was impossible to mistake.

Despite the bright color and the glowing description of her that Minnie gave you earlier, Harriet kept her eyes down as she listened to your friend speak beside her, only glancing up briefly when Yoongi and Jungkook greeted her. She mumbled a quick hello, then scanned the room—until her gaze landed on you.

Her shoulders tensed the moment her eyes met yours, but she didn’t hesitate. Adjusting the strap of her bag, she followed your friend as she walked towards the stage with steady steps.

“Well, hello girls.” You got down from your seat to greet her, offering a smile. “You must be Harriet.”

Harriet nodded. “Hi,” she said quickly, like it slipped out before she had time to overthink it.

“Harriet, this is your very cool, very last-minute new director slash teacher. Sweetie, this is your brilliant teen-playwright.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Brilliant, huh?”

Harriet gave Minnie a look. “You’re embarrassing me.”

Minnie rolled her eyes, as though she was used to this kind of teen behavior.

“I’m only telling the truth,” she huffed. “We all read the script.”

You turned your attention back to Harriet, smiling as you gestured towards the desk. “I read it too. Last night, actually. I hope you don’t mind that I’m a bit unprepared. I got the job yesterday.”

Harriet shook her head quickly. “Oh no, of course not. I mean—I wasn’t expecting anyone to take over. I thought we’d just… I don’t know, keep going until the roof collapsed.”

You let out a short laugh. “That still might happen.”

“I wouldn’t even be mad,” she said, tucking a curl behind her ear. “It’d be on theme.”

“C’mon, no roof is going to collapse today.” Minnie waved off. “We have the boys on our side.”

You took a quick look towards the back of the room, where Jungkook was halfway up the ladder, the screwdriver in one hand and a sandwich clamped between his teeth like a man with very specific priorities. Yoongi stood below, holding the toolbox open, glancing between the manual in his hand and the wires poking out of the wall. He looked focused, but the slight frown on his face gave away how confused he was.

“Well, that’s exactly why I’m afraid.” You reached for the script, handing it back to her. If the roof was going to collapse, or the electricity was going to cut out, it wasn’t going to be because of you. You were seventy percent sure of that. “I scribbled a bunch of notes in the margins like a true professional. We can talk through them during rehearsal.”

“Oh, I love margin notes.” She said, her eyes sparkling as she saw your handwriting on the pages. “Especially the brutally honest kind.” 

“Oh, you’re gonna love me, then.”

Minnie perched on the edge of the stage, watching the two of you with a smug expression that screamed told you so without having to say a word. You still refused to see how you and the girl next to you were anything alike. At first glance, Harriet’s personality came through loud and clear—her clothes were colorful, her tone enthusiastic, and her writing nothing like yours had been back in the day. You used to dress in black from head to toe and only talked to people when absolutely necessary. The only thing you seemed to have in common was your love for this place.

“Minnie told me you’re like… a purebred Alley or something like that.” You joked, giving her a small grin. “It shows, I think.”

“Really?” she asked, her eyes catching the dim light of the barely functioning reflectors.

You nodded “You wrote about this place like someone who grew up here.” You said “It’s been a while since I’ve been around, but I can recognize it. It’s not something you make up.”

A small smile tugged at Harriet’s lips. “I didn’t have to make it up.” 

“I could tell,” you said, glancing around. “I’m from… a completely different generation, but when I come back, I can tell that things are still the same.” Suddenly, a loud clang echoed through the room as a heavy tool hit the floor, making you flinch. You looked up to see Yoongi mouthing a dramatic “Sorry.”

Harriet laughed under her breath, shaking her head. “Well—maybe most things, at least,” you added, raising an eyebrow. “What I mean is that… It’s important to say that, right? The years passed but the place has the same heart.”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to say.” She nodded, like you just read her mind. “I know it’s all kind of falling apart,” she said, her eyes sweeping over the dim lights and creaky walls, “but it still feels like the only place that ever made sense.”

That made your heart clench. You had your chance to run away forever and you took it without thinking twice, but for people like Harriet, there only existed places like The Alley, and the idea that it could disappear was gut wrenching. 

“I know.” You murmured, glancing at the seats in front of you, replaying memories you tried to forget so many times. “It’s like this place gets into your blood or something.” 

There was a quiet beat, both of you sitting in that shared understanding.

Then Harriet added, voice a little softer, “That’s why I wrote it. The play, I mean. It was just… my way of trying to keep it alive. Even if it’s just a story.”

You glanced over at her, your fingers drumming lightly on the edge of the script. “You did more than that. You captured the heart of it. That’s not easy.”

Her cheeks flushed, but she held your gaze. “Thanks. That means a lot, coming from you.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Me?”

Harriet let out a soft, slightly nervous laugh. “Well, Minnie talks about you like you are linked to this place, but you know… like, you’re spiritually bonded or something. Everybody kind of knows that.” 

You blinked. Not expecting that. Not at all. 

Maybe you were. There was a time where you felt it more than ever, back when you spent your afternoons in this building instead of studying for exams you never cared about, back when the air smelled like incense and acrylic paint and some band played the same Beatles song over and over again in the other room, interrupting all your theater classes. The feeling clinging in your bones, your hand holding onto it like it was about to slip away.

But you left, more than once. First, you trade it for the chance of becoming someone else. You failed at that. Came back here, got your heart shattered and left again. And yet somehow, every time you drifted, The Alley stayed the same. Waiting.

You weren’t sure if that made you loyal or pathetic. Maybe both. 

You didn’t come back for this place, you weren’t even thinking of stepping foot here. You came back because you had nowhere else to go, because you needed something familiar to put you up on your feet and snap out of everything. But maybe this place knew better than you did. Maybe it was always supposed to pull you home.  

You sighed, feeling your chest tightened. “Like I said, it gets into your blood.” You sat back, holding the script in your hands. It was too early to think about all that. You tried to shake off all those thoughts, remembering why you were there in the first place. “But let’s not get dramatic, at least not more than necessary. I got tricked into directing your play.”

Harriet grinned. “Still counts.”

You let out a breath, shaking your head fondly as you flipped open the script again. There wasn’t time to sit in feelings. Not when you had a job to do.

“Alright,” you said, your tone shifting into something drier. “Let’s talk about the notes.”

“Yeah, right,” she said, nodding. “Shoot.”

There was a brief silence, just long enough for Harriet to hold her breath and for you to find the right page. The air shifted—calm, but expectant. “Your protagonist is stubborn as hell,” you said, not bothering to sugarcoat it. “Which I respect, totally. But the pacing in the second act drags.”

Harriet blinked. “I—I was trying to show her spiraling.”

“There are other ways to show her spiraling.” You tapped the script, flipping to your notes. “Don’t write her like she’s in a coma. You had her throwing punches in Act One, then suddenly she’s trying to hold back.”

Harriet frowned, thoughtful now. “Huh. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense.”

You caught Minnie smirking from the corner of your eye, clearly enjoying herself.

“For example,” you continued, pointing at a line, “this monologue? I liked it. She’s trying to save The Alley, she’s emotional and messy—she should stay that way the whole play, even if she’s overthinking. But in the next four pages, you wrote her like she’s afraid to raise her voice.”

“She’s not afraid,” Harriet said quickly. “She just—she masks it. Like she doesn’t want people to know how much she cares.”

You tilted your head. “Alright now, does she care or she does not? Let’s make up our minds.”

Minnie snorted.

Harriet looked around like she was hoping someone else might answer for her. Her pupils flicked nervously. “I guess… she does.”

“Exactly. So should she try to mask it?”

She bit her lip, then shook her head. “I guess she shouldn’t.”

“Okay, let’s keep her that way.” You nodded, flipping through the pages again. “Write the ugly. The parts that don’t fit into a speech. You’re sixteen, not a board of directors. Don’t try to be polite in art. You’ll bore people to death.”

Harriet nodded, eyes shining a little brighter now. “That’s really good advice.”

“Don’t get used to it,” you said, clicking your pen shut. “Most days I’m a bitch, that’s what I’ve heard of.”

You heard a squeaky sound coming from seats, catching both of your attentions. You tilted your head to look at your best friend, trying not to laugh too loud. You adjusted your reading glasses to look at her better.  “Don’t you have work to do, Minnie?” 

She smiled, not ashamed at all. “Yeah, I do, but this is more exciting.” She confessed “You two are opposite ends of the same storm. This should be fun.” 

Your gaze drifted back to Harriet, and just for a second, you saw it—something in her that echoed back to you. Maybe you weren’t so different after all.

There was no need to point out that everyone in your life seemed to know exactly how to avoid setting you off. Like when you were a kid and Simon handed you the TV remote just before you started screaming, or when Ian knew the exact moment to agree with you in the middle of a discussion—right before your frown appeared. It was like an unspoken rule: when you were mad, hell broke loose. And Yoongi knew it better than anyone. 

Which was probably why he’d barely said a word since the morning started. 

The room wasn’t particularly big, but his presence, sticking to the far side like there was some invisible line between you, made it feel that way. You were focused on other things now, but the memories this room held were almost palpable and impossible to miss, at least to you. There, in the center of the room, stood the same two chairs you’d sat in when Yoongi invited you to the Christmas movie night. You couldn’t help but wonder if he felt the same. It was a twisted thought—one of those you’d buried long ago and forbidden from resurfacing—but this time, you couldn’t stop it. You couldn’t help but wonder if, when he looked at the seats or stepped onto the stage, when he walked through the hallway or passed the room next door, he caught even the faintest echo of the memory of his fingertips against your skin.

You knew it was silly, and there was no point in even thinking about it, but something sparked in your chest when you did. 

You shook your head, annoyed with yourself. Thinking like that was dangerous. It didn’t matter. It was in the past. But still—how could he be here and not think of you?

You let out a heavy sigh, knowing you couldn’t do anything about it. Either way, he was here, and that was enough to keep your irritation on a slow burn.

Lucky for you, you had enough things to do to keep yourself entertained, it wasn’t long before your actual appointment arrived.

One by one, then in pairs, then all at once, exactly fourteen teenagers trickled into the room, dragging backpacks and half-eaten snacks, tossing jackets onto the backs of chairs like they owned the place. Within minutes, the room was a mess of voices and overlapping conversations.

You stayed seated at the desk Jungkook had kindly set up onstage so you could work more comfortably, going over notes in the script with Harriet and letting the noise build around you. You didn’t know exactly what Minnie had told them to get them to come back to rehearsals, but the fact that no one seemed to notice you yet led you to believe she hadn’t mentioned your name at all. 

“Wait, is that—”

You didn’t look up right away, but you felt the shift in the room, the quiet whispers. Then, someone dropped their water bottle, the loud metallic sound echoing through the room.

Someone else whispered “No way,” in the most dramatic whisper known to man.

Harriet sighed beside you, muttering under her breath as she tried to contain her excitement “Here we go.”

You glance up from the script. “Are we all ready?” You asked, making a few of them share glances between each other, stunned. Setting the script down, you stood up from your seat. “Hi, by the way. I’m Y/N. Minnie’s friend.”

There was a short pause before the room exploded in whispers again.

“Wait, seriously?”

“That’s her?”

“Dude. She’s literally famous.”

“No way.”

You felt the weight of their stares all at once—curious, excited, wide-eyed. It wasn’t the worst kind of attention, but it still made your skin crawl a little.

You cleared your throat. “For those who don’t know me, I’m an actress. You might’ve seen me in one or two movies. Or—more recently—on the internet, for entirely different reasons. It’s been... a fun week.”

That got a few chuckles. Someone covered their mouth, like they weren’t sure if they were allowed to laugh.

“I grew up around here. Born and raised. Went to school a few blocks away, smoked my first cigarette in the park across the street—decided pretty fast that wasn’t for me.” You gave a small shrug. “I also used to take theater classes in this exact room. A long time ago... or maybe not that long ago. Honestly, it kind of feels like time never passed at all.”

Your eyes swept the space, a faint smirk tugging at your lips. “That’s how I met Minnie, actually. She’s been my best friend ever since.”

You leaned against the desk. “So when she asked if I could do her a favor and step in to help direct this thing, I said yes. Mostly because she’s annoyingly persuasive. But also… because I owe this place a lot.”

You rubbed the back of your neck. “So no, I’m not here to give some big inspirational speech or anything. I don’t want this to be more dramatic than it’s already gonna be. I heard it’s been kind of rough around here lately, and I wanted to help.”

You gave a small shrug. “I’ve always loved this place—and I’m guessing you do too. I know what it’s like to start with nothing. No time, no budget, too many opinions. I’ve been in this room. And hey, if we’re lucky, we might actually make something cool.”

You paused, the silence stretching just enough to make you aware of all the pair of eyes looking at you, expectantly, like they were waiting for you to say something to make  all of this sense. God this was awkward. You hated introductions. 

Just as you were about to move on, a boy sitting cross-legged near the corner raised his hand hesitantly.

“Uh—sorry. I was just wondering… is this, like, for a documentary or something?”

You blinked at him, caught off guard “A documentary?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. You’re famous, and now you’re here, so I thought maybe there were cameras or—like, a redemption arc thing?”

A few kids laughed nervously. You stared at him for a beat.

“Okay, first of all, if this is a redemption arc, someone forgot to write a better opening scene.” That got a few chuckles. “Second of all, there are no cameras. And there will not be cameras either, so if any of you leak behind-the-scenes footage of me yelling at the lighting cues, I will sue you.” 

The room broke into laughter. The boy held up his hands in surrender. 

Then, a girl piped up from the back. “So… you’re really staying?”

You looked around at their faces and let out a breath that felt more like a decision than an answer.

You nodded. “Yes. So stop asking before I change my mind.”

A beat passed.

Then you clapped your hands once. “Alright. Let’s do something terrible before it gets good.” You turned to Harriet and handed her the script. “You’re on book duty. Anyone needs a line, go to her.”

Harriet gave you a look like she was trying very hard not to smile.

Soon enough, the whole room was in chaos. Kids dragging chairs across the floor, bumping into each other, laughing too loud, slipping into exaggerated accents for no reason. 

The cast had been picked, most of them by Harriet who ran the auditions just before everything turned into a mess a few weeks ago. They more or less knew the script, at least the parts they were in. It wasn’t a full read-through kind of day anyway. You were mostly blocking a few key scenes, trying to see who could remember their lines under pressure and who needed their cues whispered from behind a prop table.

Someone tried entering from the wrong side of the stage, again. Two kids were arguing about the new Wicked movie. A pair of best friends were giggling so hard in the background that you had to separate them like a school teacher.

You were trying to give notes in between all of it—shouting directions, answering five questions at once, adjusting someone's posture, trying not to lose your mind when the stage lights began flickering, or when the sound of the mic started to cut out. 

You sighed, knowing that you were the one who agreed to work in the same room as Yoongi. And yet, here you were, one lighting fixture away from snapping.

Yoongi was still on that damn ladder, this time closer to the stage, adjusting wires like he had all the time in the world, tossing instructions down to Jungkook, who was elbow-deep in the breaker box near the exit. They weren’t trying to interrupt rehearsal—but they were interrupting rehearsal.

You and Harriet were talking to Theo and Poly, who’d been cast as Ethan—June’s best friend and love interest—and June herself. Theo hadn’t stopped asking questions about his character since rehearsal started, and Poly just stood there, frowning at each one of them.

“So,” Theo said, squinting at his script like it held ancient secrets, “is Ethan supposed to represent the building? Or is the building a metaphor for Ethan?”

Poly pursed her lips. “I don’t think that’s…”

You blinked. “Uh…”

Harriet jumped in before you could finish. “I think the building represents June, actually,” she said thoughtfully. “And everything inside it kind of symbolizes parts of her. Including Ethan.”

You nodded slowly, doing your best not to sound confused. “Yeah. That’s… exactly what I was going to say.”

“But what if Ethan is the building? Like, metaphorically. But also kind of spiritually.”

You paused, wondering how he came up with that thought at all. “Theo...”

He perked up like you were about to confirm his theory.

“You’re not a building,” you said, deadpan. “You’re just a boy who likes a girl who is a building. Emotionally.”

Harriet nodded, hoping everything was clearer now, but the frown on Theo’s face said otherwise. “How is she… a building?” He asked. 

You opened your mouth to answer, but then, the harsh whine of a drill tore through the room, sharp enough to make a few kids flinch.

Your head snapped towards the back, where Yoongi was crouched by the lighting rig, focused on screwing something into a wooden panel. Oblivious. Or pretending to be.

You forced a smile, teeth clenched. “Love that for us,” you muttered.

Yoongi didn’t look up.

You reminded yourself that you agreed to work in the same room as him, but you still couldn’t find it in yourself not to complain. 

He finally glanced over, one brow raised. “Just fixing the lights.”

“Sure,” you muttered, trying to regain control of the room. “Maybe next time, though, you could fix the sound system while you’re at it. You know, keep things interesting.”

The kids snickered nervously, clearly unsure whether to laugh or stay out of it.

Yoongi gave a small, unreadable smile, “That’s next.” 

You blinked, then raised an eyebrow. “Great. Just give me a heads-up before you demolish the stage—we would love to watch the show.” You heard a couple kids laughing under their breaths, but Yoongi just smirked and came back to drilling. “Okay, where were we? Right, Theo, June is bonded with the building, they have many similarities...”

You managed to move on, with the help of Harriet, who tried to explain how June and The Alley had similar stories to everyone in the cast so she wouldn’t answer the same questions over and over again.

For a moment, it worked. The rehearsal went slow but chaotic, but it was nothing that you weren’t expecting. The line delivery was still bad, cues were missed and someone kept knocking over a prop chair no matter how many times you moved it out of the way. The sound glitched every now and then, cutting off halfway through a cue, making someone lose their timing, most probably Theo. The lights kept flickering, but you told yourself it was alright. 

There was something about it that made your heart warm. The kids were messy, overly passionate, but they were trying, and that counted for something. Harriet hovered by your side, notebook in hand, whispering little adjustments to you between scenes. You corrected blocking, gave line notes and reassured Poly when she forgot her monologue. It was the kind of chaos that made your head hurt, but also reminded you why you were there.

And for a little while, you forgot about a certain demonic presence in the room. Almost.

Then, another interruption, but this time you couldn’t ignore it like you were planning to do. This time, it wasn’t the sound system or that annoying drilling sound, it was his voice. 

“That panel shouldn’t be used,” he said from the back, voice deep and arms crossed as he nodded towards one of the wood panels the kids had dragged to the stage. 

You turned around to see him, giving the most lethal look you could give to anyone. He didn’t flinch. “Why is that?” You asked, impatiently. 

“It’s flagged and marked for disposal.” He explained, as he continued to work “If we use it and someone gets hurt, the insurance won’t cover it. That kind of negligence puts the theater at legal risk.”

You nodded, jaw tight, trying to remind yourself that he wasn’t doing this to be annoying—even if that was exactly how it felt. “Right. Thanks for the thrilling legal insight.”

“I am the lawyer here,” He said, like you could’ve possibly forgotten.

A few of the kids glanced between you, sensing the tension and trying very hard not to smile. Including Jungkook. 

You gave him a smile. “Yes, and our part time set designer, noise machine, and safety police. We didn’t forget.”

He snorted. “Multitasking. You should try it sometime.”

Harriet let out a gasp and then covered her mouth, pretending to cough. 

You clapped your hands. “Alright, listen up. We’re not using the panels, you heard our lawyer here. If you have any legal questions, I’m sure he’ll be happy to answer. Now come back to your positions before our legal team shut us down.” 

You turned back to the stage, feeling your pulse in your ears. God, this was stupid. You couldn’t react this way every time he opened his mouth, you couldn’t let him get under your skin, not when he was not even trying. 

You turned back to the stage, jaw tight. Let it go. He was right. Technically. And that was the worst part, he always had a way of being technically right. You should be used to it by now.

You didn’t have time for this. Not now.

Everyone kept going. You checked the time on your phone and realized there were only forty-five minutes left of class. After that, you could finally do what you actually came here to do: nothing, and you were genuinely excited about it.

You had your whole day planned: eat with your mom and Phil, take the longest nap imaginable, then wake up and lie in bed with Minnie’s cat until you got hungry enough to drag yourself up and find something to eat.

You thought nothing—not even Yoongi— could ruin it, even if he seemed to be trying really hard to do it.

But, as if he was on cue, his voice echoed through the stage like he was part of the cast himself. 

“Okay, the scene was good, but still rough around the edges. We have time to fix it, don’t worry.” You said, turning to the cast “Poly, I liked the pauses, you have great timing. Just remember that she is not trying to hold back, she’s all-in from the start, speak louder next time.”

Poly hummed, eyes on her script as she quietly mouthed her lines again.

The room went quiet, ready to dive in into the scene again, when the heavy doors creaked open drawing everyone’s attention—everyone except you, whose attention was fixed on the man standing below the stage, who happened to open his mouth again.

“You know, technically, she couldn’t just file a petition like that without legal standing.” He said nonchalantly, making you snap your head towards him.

You paused, confused. “Wait, what?”

Being completely clueless that he wasn’t being welcomed by you, he tried to explain himself “She needs to be a leaseholder, or at least have legal representation,” He said. “If not, that whole scene about the petition is pretty off.”

You weren’t sure what he was doing now. Wasn’t there an unspoken agreement between you two? Some silent rule you both were supposed to obey whenever you happened to breathe the same air. Something along the lines of no talking, no staring, no getting too close.

At least, that was the rule you’ve been following for the past four years. You thought he understood that. You thought he felt it too.

You stared at him. “Is that… really the note you felt we needed right now?”

He shrugged, like this was just helpful feedback. “If the goal is to be convincing—”

“Right. Thank you. Because legal accuracy is something essential in community theater.”

Yoongi tilted his head, still annoyingly calm. “You’re the one who said it needed to feel real.”

You didn’t even try to smile. “Yeah. Emotionally. Not in a way that’s going to put people to sleep.”

He opened his mouth again, but you cut him off. “Unless you want to audition for Guy Who Shouts Legal Objections From the Back of the Room, maybe let me direct?”

He paused, his brows lifting ever so slightly. You weren’t sure if he was about to keep pushing or finally let it go.

“Sure. You’re in charge,” he said, backing off.

You already had a sharp retort loaded on your tongue before he even opened his mouth, but as your gaze drifted towards the seats, you caught sight of Minnie, who had just slipped into the theater.

She was staring straight at you, arms crossed and eyebrows raised in that quiet, deadly way of hers. Okay, you got it, that was it. You decided to save it for now. 

It was always safest to assume that every man who had ever lived knew the first universal rule of a girl’s handbook: best friends told each other everything.

You were surprised when you came across men who didn’t know about it—like when you had a fight with Ian, and he would get annoyed when you ran to tell Minnie everything about it. Minnie would laugh and say that it was his fault for thinking that you would keep a secret from the person who has been your only confidant for most of your life.

Thinking about it now, Minnie was a nightmare to have as your girlfriend’s best friend. She wanted to know everything, every single detail, every word exactly as it was spoken, as if she had been in the room when you fought with your boyfriend. And you were probably a nightmare to have as a girlfriend, too, because you told her everything.

It was the first rule in a girl’s handbook: best friends told each other everything. As class came to an end and the room filled with overlapping voices, kids repeating lines as they hopped off the stage and chairs being dragged noisily back into place, you glanced at Yoongi, his hair a mess and hands still smudged with dust, and wondered if he’d ever heard of that rule. If not, Minnie made sure he did by the end of the morning.

She stayed to watch the end of the class, saying goodbye to every single kid as they left. When the door closed behind the last of them, the room suddenly fell silent, the only sounds were the distant voices of Yoongi and Jungkook, and Minnie’s steady step as she made her way towards you. 

You were zipping up your backpack when she spoke.

“You,” she said, making you look up. “And you.”

She pointed at you, then at the man standing in the back of the room.

“Mind joining me in my office?” she said, voice calm, but carrying enough weight to make it clear it wasn’t really a question. For a second, you and Yoongi exchanged glances, like two kids getting caught sharing notes in the middle of class.

God, it was your first day and you already screwed it up. You couldn’t even blame it on someone else. 

Yoongi exhaled slowly, and you could already feel the tension in your shoulders returning. You threw a quick, weary glance at him before following Minnie’s lead.

You walked towards the office, Yoongi trailing behind you. The building was quieter now, the murmur of the rehearsal fading into the distance. Once inside, Minnie closed the door behind you.

You searched your best friend’s eyes for a moment, looking for some kind of reassurance—but she didn’t look at you. She didn’t seem angry, not exactly, but she wasn’t happy either. Honestly, she had every right not to be. You could admit that much, at least.

“Okay, can you, uh… explain what that was?” she asked, settling into the chair in front of you. Neither of you knew what the right move was, but apparently, standing there looking dumb was it. Minnie shook her head, already regretting the question. “Actually, no. Don’t even bother. I already know.”

You gulped, suddenly nervous. You definitely weren’t expecting to get scolded by your best friend today.

“Okay, I don’t know how to say this the right way.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m well aware the two of you aren’t exactly on speaking terms. But I did think you could be in the same room without trying to rip each other’s throats out.” She looked up at you then, gaze soft but pointed. “You promised me you had no problem with him being around here.”

You felt your face heat up immediately. Your eyes widened just a little. “Minnie, I—”

“And you.” She interrupted, pointing at the man standing beside you with crossed arms. “I certainly wasn’t expecting you to behave like another teenager, Yoongi.”

Yoongi shifted his weight. You didn’t look at him, but you could hear the quiet sigh before he tried to speak.

“Minnie…” He started, voice low.

“Sorry. I’m not in the mood to hear any of this.” She raised a hand, cutting him off before he could go further. “I don’t care who started it, or what the hell it was even about. Whatever happened between the two of you in the past is none of my business. In fact—” She gestured vaguely toward the hallway. “Kill each other off if you must. But do it in the parking lot, or the park across the street. Not here. Not in front of the kids.”

Silence followed.

You stood still, realizing it was the first time someone had brought up what happened between you and Yoongi in a very long time. And it made your skin crawl. 

Yoongi stayed quiet too. You could feel his presence beside you, the way he slightly shifted, the sound of his fingers tapping once against his arm. It wasn’t much, but it told you he was biting something back. 

Minnie let out a long sigh and dropped into her chair again. For a moment, the only sound was the faint creak of the seat and the tension still thick in the room.

Then her voice softened.

“Listen, I don’t want to be a dick,” she muttered, rubbing her forehead. “If I could put you in separate rooms so you never had to see each other again, I would. Gladly.”

She looked between you, then leaned forward a little.

“But Yoongi’s working on the theater for the next month. So are you. Unless we want this place to burn to the ground before December, you’re gonna have to see each other. Even on weekdays. Even when it sucks.”

She exhaled “I’ve got a lot of shit going on right now, so can we please—please, pretty please, just try to get along? For the sake of this place and my mental health?”

You shifted your weight, arms crossed loosely in front of you as you stared at the floor. Minnie's words weren’t wrong. In fact, they hit a little too close to the truth.

“Yeah,” you said finally, your voice quiet but steady. “Okay.”

It was the best you could do without sounding defensive. Or worse, emotional.

You didn’t dare look at Yoongi. Just the idea of meeting his eyes in that moment made your stomach turn, but you heard him humming in response, quietly agreeing, too. 

“Good,” Minnie said, still firm but less sharp now. “Because I can’t babysit you two. I’ve already got a dozen kids to look after. Don’t make me regret trusting you with this.”

You both nodded, like students after detention. You glanced at Yoongi—brief, instinctive—and to your surprise, he didn’t look back either.

Minnie waved a hand toward the door with a final sigh.

“Alright. Go.”

You mumbled a quiet goodbye and turned around, being the first to leave. Your steps were quick, almost impatient, as if putting distance between you and that office might somehow erase the last five minutes from existence.

You gripped the strap of your bag tighter, nails digging into the fabric. Once you were past the main doors, you shut your eyes for a moment and exhaled sharply. 

God, you felt like such a fool. 

You were supposed to be past this. Supposed to be past him. Why couldn’t you just ignore him? Why was he so impossible to avoid? 

You shook your head and started walking again, hoping it might clear your thoughts. But the images from two minutes ago clung stubbornly inside of your mind, replaying in loop.

Then, you felt it. A hand brushing your shoulder.

You flinched and turned around, pulse jumping.

Yoongi stood there. Of course he did.

You hadn’t even noticed he’d followed you out. 

With dirty clothes, dirty hands and hair all messy, he searched for your eyes, soft but filled with concern, biting his lower lip before speaking. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you to leave yet.”

You blinked, confused. “What?”

“Please…” he said, his voice low and hesitant. “Let’s talk.”

It wasn’t the words so much as the way he said them—quiet, and so soft it made your heart clench. 

You glanced around, suddenly aware of where you were. It was the same place you were that December night four years ago when you were waiting in line to watch the movie, cold and nervous and stupidly in love.  

You crossed your arms, swallowing the memory like a pill. “I’m not sure I want to talk right now.” Or ever.

Yoongi didn’t flinch. He flexed his jaw a little, and nodded because he knew you were right.  “Yeah,” he said, eyes dropping to the pavement for a second. “I figured.”

The wind tugged at both your clothes, making him shiver, he wasn’t wearing a coat, just that smudged white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. There, in the early afternoon sunlight, you had the chance to look at him, to really look at him after four long years. You hadn’t realized how much he’d changed, how much longer his hair was now, how he only wore one pair of earrings, how his lips looked slightly pinker. He looked older, of course he did. The years had passed, and he couldn’t help but change. He didn’t look like a boy anymore, but like a man—and for some reason, that hurt

He dragged a hand through his hair, sighing. “It’s just… I want to fix this. Not now, if that’s not what you want. But eventually. Just… let me try.”

You stared at him, unsure if you wanted to laugh or scream. “How?”

He let out a breathy, half-laugh, frustrated. “Honestly? I have no fucking idea. But I’ll think of something.”

You gave him a bitter little scoff.

“I’m serious,” he said, stepping forward just slightly, but not too close. “I will.” 

“I’ll need something better than that, Yoongi.”

“I know,” he said, voice low. “I do.”

He hesitated, glancing away for a moment. Then he scratched the back of his neck, a little unsure, a little boyish in the most disarming way. “My mom… she asked me to invite you to dinner one of these days. What if we start there?”

You narrowed your eyes. “Using your mom is cheating.”

That actually got a real smile out of him. Soft and crooked, it made your stomach turn. “I know that too.”

God, you hated how easy it was to remember what that smile did to you.

And yet, somehow, you also knew you were about to say yes.

You hesitated, your fingers fidgeting with the strap of your bag, eyes fixed on a crack in the pavement like it held the answer you couldn’t find inside yourself. Just say no. Walk away. But the words never came.

You sighed, voice low and reluctant. “God, Yoongi… if you piss me off, I swear—”

“I’ll try not to,” he said quickly, biting back a smile. 

You gave him a look over your shoulder, narrowing your eyes. “That doesn’t sound very promising.”

But still—you were already walking.

taglist: @kingofbodyrolls, @overtherainbow35, @namin13 , @p34rluv, @moonchild1, @yoongisoftface , @namgihours @idkjustlovingbts , @yoongisducky , @bangtansmauyeondan , @tarahardcore @wobblewobble822 @secfir @ot72025 @baechugff @heroinanne @mortal-body-timelesssoul @hiii-priestess @wii-wii @jungkookies1002 @busanbby-jjk @acquiescence804 @yoongibaybee @hsbongwater @ot7stansthings @curiouslioncutie @jalexad @lynnibear @benyhime

[serensama]

Thursday Bangers: Dr, Who?

My many thanks to the amazing @woundedsoul12 who runs this fabulous game - it's too much fun to miss out on every week darling, thank you! Special shoutout to @davrinsleftpectoral who is just the cutest and @kabsey for being such a little cheerleader, much love lovelies <3

This one got super away from me and sits at around 3.6k so ... yeah. That's a thing now. My dumbass does not know what a blurb is TT__TT;

Rules for your Copy and Paste: Free form a blurb or drawing based on the weekly lyrics prompt. It doesn't have to include the prompt just whatever you're inspired to write, write it! Then tag some friends so they can play as well. It doesn't have to be finished on Thursday just post it whenever you can (you have a whole week between Thursdays).

This week's Banger just really jumped out and spoke to me so I hope it does the same for you. I am getting suggestions for weekly bangers and I love that and am adding them to the request line.

No matter what happens, he cannot come between us again I know we're better than friends- Million Dollar Baby by Tommy Richman

--- She had to ask herself again if she was heading down a self-sabotaging spiral. She had spent an embarrassing amount of time getting herself ready and choosing between which little black dress didn’t scream out ‘desperate’ but also didn’t say ‘prude’- and settled for the fitted mid-length, off the shoulder satin number, with a noticeable slit on the front of her thigh. Enough to tell people she was happy for them to look, but she wasn't going to provide the whole show without a little bit of effort from them. 

Lilya almost changed her mind three times on her way there, but she knew if she didn’t actively do something about her needs, she’d be compelled to do something stupid. She was a proponent of the phrase ‘physician, heal thyself,' and she wanted to believe that by tackling the problem head-on, it would finally get her back on track and leave the past behind her. She could call this foray into questionable decisions a part of her self-care regime, that finding someone willing to indulge her in a night of frivolity and hedonism, with no questions asked and no strings attached, would be a cure-all to her unending fantasies about a certain Casanova. 

The Diamond was infinitely busier than the last time she came with Teia. Bodies were pressed up against each other as the crowd tried to move to and from the dance floor and the bar; the bass of the song thumping so hard that she almost mistook it for her own heartbeat.

Lilya surveyed the club and managed to make out the familiar silhouette of her best friend at the corner of the bar, the bright lights that illuminated the benchtops, accentuating her sharp jaw and highlighting the white of her shirt. She giggled when she noticed she had also worn a fabulous (but ridiculous) fascinator to the club. Bless her.  Neve, astute as always, turned just in time to see her across the room and raised her eyebrows in a subtle greeting. Lilya moved through the people and suddenly remembered why she had stopped going to places like this in her 30s. It was because she detested large groups of people. Add copious amounts of alcohol, lust and drugs, and they were a horde of mindless beasts looking for another creature to rut upon. She paused when she realised that was also precisely what she had intended to do that night. Minus the excessive drugs and alcohol. Was that any better? Is being a carnally charged animal better when one wasn’t wasted? In her professional opinion?... Oh screw her professional opinion. She wasn’t out as Dr de Riva. She was just Lilya there. After one more ‘excuse me!’, she was able to find herself next to Neve, who quickly passed a shot glass that she downed without hesitation, causing her friend’s mouth to quirk into a sly smirk. “I could have slipped something in that, you know.” “As if you’d need it to get me into bed.” “Touché.” 

“So, who were you meant to be meeting?” “Already met him. He’s an informant of mine; he said he’d only meet here as he had some business to attend to, and I had to work around his schedule. Criminals these days, no bloody manners.” Lilya stole the bottle of liquor Neve held and poured herself another shot, nursing the liquid in small sips. “And you thought dragging your poor defenceless civilian friend along was a great idea?” Neve smirked, toying with her cigarette holder between her fingers, Lilya knowing her friend was probably itching for a smoke as she always did whenever she drank. “You? Defenceless? Miss ‘My brother is probably having me tailed’?” Lilya groaned. Her stepbrother was the paranoid type, and ever since he took over the family business, he had become even more wary of the people she associated with. Telling her at every chance to be more cautious, to stop being so trusting, and to make sure to take tester kits wherever she went, to ensure the water they served wasn't poisoned. 

“He stopped doing that years ago.” “He did?” “Mhmm. I made one of his little spies cry and sent him back home with his tail between his legs. I told him I would do that to each and every person he sent.”  “Fantastic. I’ll drink to that!” “You’d drink to me just blinking.” “And it wouldn’t even be the first time I did,” the detective smirked and raised her glass to her, rolling it along her cheek with the palm of her hand before deftly pouring the alcohol into her mouth. Neve tapped on the bar and pointed to both the ladies’ and smokers’ rooms, only waiting a moment for Lilya to shake her head before effortlessly disappearing into the crowd. She poured herself the last of the Gran Patròn and smiled to herself. Neve was not one to normally spend so frivolously; even on a detective’s salary, she fed most of her money back into her community. This bottle alone would have cost her at least $700, and she had known this woman since university; that $700 was better served in Dock Town, not in the bottom of a toilet bowl after a night of binge drinking. Whoever her informant was, they were generous with both their intel and their money. 

Lilya turned around and leant against the bar, resorting to what she did whenever she was alone in public. She people-watched. She smiled at the group of young women out celebrating a bachelorette party. A lovely thing in the middle was dressed in white, wearing a plastic bejewelled tiara on her head and a satin sash across her body, with “bride to be” written in bright pink lettering. There was a large group of finance bros or lawyer types, all suited up and congratulating themselves on the deals they had closed, vying to be the most lavish amongst each other to prove something about the size of their bank accounts. Then she happened to look across to where some of the semi-private booths were, and there was a man watching her intently, his shot glass halfway to his mouth. He smirked at her and raised his arm in a toast, and she joined him, about to drink, when he motioned for her to stop abruptly. She laughed and waited as the mysterious man had asked, doing her best to look quizzically at him, silently asking for permission to drink. He shook his head and wiggled the index finger of his free hand to her, Lilya almost hearing him tut at her. 

He stood up, to the disappointed cries of the party around him, and he waved them off, shouting back what she could only assume were obscenities for his friends to shut up. He made his way to her, with all the confidence and swagger of someone she knew she would be attracted to… then as he drew closer to her, his features became clearer under the brighter lights. 

He could have passed as another bloody Dellamorte. Same high cheekbones, a strong nose, and thick, dark, lustrous hair. He was bloody gorgeous. The sharp ring of their glasses snapped her out of her daze, to find him thoroughly enjoying having her undivided attention. 

“Sorry, it seemed a shame to miss an opportunity to share a toast with a beautiful woman,” he said, clinking his glass against hers once more. Lilya sat up straighter, trying to think if she should entertain the wicked idea forming in her head. If she could not be with Illario Dellamorte, perhaps she could scratch the itch with someone who kinda - kinda really - looked like him and simulate some sort of closure that way. Was it healthy? Was it something she would recommend to one of her patients? Of course bloody not. But she was not her patient, and she was still human and fallible. There was nothing unethical about her sleeping with someone who looked like her former-patient’s cousin… if there was, god damn it, the ethics committees these days needed to get laid too. 

“Oh, you wanted a beautiful woman? You just missed her; she just went to the bathroom. But she’ll be back soon if you want to wait. Until then, you’re welcome to put up with the likes of me,” she smiled, gesturing to the empty seat next to her. The stranger chuckled and shook his head, pointing at her cheekily. “Ah, you caught onto my game, I am so ashamed. I guess I should do the honourable thing and talk to you and get to know you, maybe even buy you a drink or two to make up for my terrible behaviour… Miss-?” Lilya took a second to think about what she was about to do, weighing up the pros and cons of following through with her hormone-fuelled plan. “Lilya,” she replied, her smile growing as his widened at learning her name. “And yes, a drink, or two, would be the very least you could do after humiliating me like that, Mister?” “Another bottle of what she’s having,” he said offside to the bartender, who merely nodded dutifully. “And it’s Elek, pleasure to meet you, Lilya. Whatever you have in mind for me to undertake as an act of contrition, I would be more than happy to do,” he answered with such a honeyed tone she was already tempted to lick the side of his mouth to see if he tasted as sweet. “Buy you dinner? Achieve world peace? Cure cancer? Worship at your feet until you saw fit to let me stand again.” He poured her a glass. “Name it.” He was probably a long-lost cousin of theirs. Their flirtier, wisecracking long-lost cousin. 

“And if I choose to never let you up from the floor? What then?” she asked teasingly, letting her eyes run up and down his body provocatively, leaving no room for interpretation of what she meant. 

It was his turn to pause as a light dusting of pink spread through his cheeks, which she knew had nothing to do with the amount of liquor he had imbibed that evening. “Well then,” he began, tipping his glass back faster than he should have to savour the taste of the sipping tequila. “I would hope that you would have mercy on me… and at least give me a pillow for my knees. I may look young, but these joints just aren’t what they used to be. I would hate for you to be distracted by the sound of them cracking. I’d have to start my apology all over again.” 

Lilya burst out laughing and took a sip from her glass. 

“Alright Elek, you have my attention. Tell me about yourself,” she smiled. 

— 

Illario winced when a dull pain radiated through his cheek, the bruise slowly starting to darken from the pink it was earlier that day. If it were up to him, he’d be at home icing up his damn injury but once his grandmother had told him she had taken the liberty of rescheduling the meeting he had been in charge of - he wanted to scream. He stupidly thought for a second that she had done it out of concern for his well-being, wanting her grandson to get thoroughly checked out and ensure he was fine. But no, she wanted to be certain that he couldn’t potentially ruin the merger because he wasn’t of sound mind due to his injury and/or incompetence. Old witch probably assumed that he was going to go insane over seeing Zara again. He was half tempted to tell her to do it herself or wrangle his cousin to do it instead - but he bit his tongue. As they all did when it came to Caterina. 

“If you are so eager, go see Teia yourself. She told me in passing that she will be at The Diamond sometime tonight.” 

The last thing he wanted to do was go to the same damn club he met Lilya in, not when she was literally in his hands just 12 hours earlier. It would be like an exercise of torture, and as masochistic as he could get, even he wanted no part of it, given his current foul mood.

Illario moved easily past security and was instantly assaulted by the smell of harsh colognes and too-sweet perfumes, the din of too many people talking at once, and the pulsing lights threatening to trigger a migraine when combined with his smarting cheek. He didn’t even know if Teia was there yet; he was just forced to go and wait until she appeared. Thankfully, his EA had the presence of mind to call ahead and secure a private room for him to wait in and to be advised when she would arrive. He was about to be led through the club when he picked up a familiar laugh, cutting through the brief moment of silence between tracks being played, and after only hearing it that day, he could have placed it anywhere. 

He turned his head to the sound and craned his neck, dodging around the people walking between them.  She was there. Laughing. 

With another man. 

She leaned in a little too closely, her right arm upon the bar to support her, the man’s arm slung low around her waist. He watched as the cocky little shit pulled her closer and whispered something in her ear which made her laugh even harder, the psychiatrist almost falling backward. Thankfully, the idiot at least had decent reflexes and caught her, taking full advantage of the situation to press her against him. Illario could feel his stomach turn, his teeth clenching at the sight. He didn’t want to see this. Didn’t want to see her from the sidelines as some other guy was lucky enough to hold her and steal a kiss from her lips, when he knew it should have been him in his place. Illario keenly observed the couple in their not-so-private moment, fighting against himself as to whether he wanted to retch at them deepening their kiss or if he wanted to go over and smash the man’s head into the bar… and then retch on him for good measure. From his vantage point, he could see her pull back, her lips slightly swollen and her cheeks flushed with colour. Lilya said something to her companion, and he nodded, taking her hand and guiding her onto the dance floor. His feet followed them without realising, the surprised voice of the club manager fading off into obscurity as he walked away from her, to see where that man had taken his favourite physician. 

The man had chosen a free space in the middle of the floor, surrounded by so many others moving to the rhythm. He lifted her hand and encouraged her to spin, circling his arms around her to stop her, both laughing heartily. With a move so smooth even Illario had to give him props, he spun her again so her back rested against his chest, the two just swaying to the music. Illario could feel himself sneer as the man trailed his nose down the line of her neck, and he could see her enjoying it; Illario could almost hear her breathy sighs in his ears. He fumed at the hands that weren’t his, exploring the curve of Lilya’s hips and thighs as he continued to whisper things to her she obviously approved of. Illario felt himself mirror her actions, biting his lip whenever she bit hers. 

He was screaming at himself for just gawking at them, even at his lowest, he would never stoop to being voyeuristic without the other person’s knowledge – yes, he was kinky, but he wasn’t a creep - when another woman came and tapped the man on the shoulder. She was as gorgeous as she was furious; even from where he stood, he could feel the ire emitting from her. Lilya’s dance partner said his quick goodbyes and obediently followed the woman off into a dark corner, where she had taken the man by the collar and was tearing into him quite obviously. He didn’t have to hear the conversation to know the woman was warning the man never to stray close to Lilya-or perhaps any other woman-again.  The cheating bastard should have known better. 

Lilya chuckled to herself and looked around, embarrassed, her expression unsure if she should stay dancing by herself or head back to the bar. Illario watched her enraptured as her thoughts crossed over her face for him to see, her bright eyes closing as she allowed herself to get back into the beat of the song, uncaring that she no longer had a partner to join her, just happy to dance on her own until someone else stepped in. Her hips rocked from side to side as her arms went up above her head as she bounced to the music, happily carving out her own little niche on the floor until her pretty eyes opened and landed directly on him. 

---

Lilya paused, frozen to the spot as the realisation of who she was looking at dawned on her. That was not Elek. Nor was it another man who merely resembled the one who had plagued her thoughts for the last three months. It was actually him. Somehow, he had known exactly where to find her, and he was looking at her as if she were his prey. She did not move as he stalked his way over to her, all fluid lines and smooth motions like the perfect predator. 

“You look like you’re about to leap on me, Mr Dellamorte. I don’t see any errant exes lurking here in the shadows you need saving from,” she teased when he was within earshot. “Have you managed to turn into some sort of animal in our hours apart? Have you come here on the prowl as the big bad wolf?” 

Maker, she was never going to drink again. She was a bloody menace to society. 

“Well, I’m certainly not your grandmother,” he said, with the same glint in his eye that fascinated her the first time they met. 

“I’d hope not. Otherwise, I’d have to ask how you managed to get your eyesight back, Abuelita- and that might make it weird,” Lilya smiled, her hand rubbing at his chest.  Illario could not help but break into a grin when she did not pull away from him. “All the better to see you from across the room, my dear.”  

Feeling emboldened, he closed the distance between them so they almost touched and allowed his fingers to skim up her arms, unable to conceal his delight at the way she swallowed instinctively, goosebumps rising along the path he’d travelled. He could tell she was having another internal struggle, being so close to him, torn between what she should do and what she wanted to do. His hands somehow found themselves around her waist, thumbs lightly kneading into her, her eyes darkening as they focused on his mouth. 

“What… what large hands you have.” 

“All the better to feel more of you with… My dear,” Illario played along, chuckling amusedly. He could feel her relax in his hold, and he pressed his forehead to hers, relishing the physical closeness he seemed to share so easily with her - a force of chemistry or connection he had never felt with anyone. Lilya pulled back to scan over his features, her hands ghosting over his face, fingers tracing the shape of his lips until they pulled back into a wolfish grin. 

She licked her lips. So did he. Illario could feel her breathing pick up, shallow and fast. 

“My, my,” she whispered, her mouth slyly evading his whenever he tried to kiss her again, giggling softly as he growled with every missed attempt. “What big teeth you have.” 

Illario laughed so loudly that some of the other revellers turned around at the sound. His hands shifted to cradle her face, and he pressed a kiss to her hairline, tipping his mouth toward the shell of her ear to ensure his lips feathered against the delicate skin there. “Now, now, darling Lilya. You must remember just how well I can eat you… And if you don’t… I look forward to the chance to remind you.” 

Her eyebrows softly curved upward with want, a gasp falling from her lips as her desire took over her, and he waited. They were barely a whisper apart, and if she allowed it, he would be able to kiss her without any other pretence than simply wanting to. 

She nodded. 

Illario could feel her warm breath on him, eager to taste her lips again- 

“Honestly, Lilya. I leave you alone for ten minutes, and you manage to entangle yourself with not one, but two strange men? I don’t know if I should be worried, envious or proud?” 

Lilya was released from her wayward longing the moment she heard the other woman's voice and quickly stepped away from Illario; the club was still stifling, but the air around them had turned sharp, almost glacial by contrast. She muttered her apologies and used words like ‘inappropriate’, ‘inebriated’, ‘foolish’ and 'never again' before tottering away and linking arms with her friend, the latter giving him a long but entertained look as she led them out. 

Illario shoved his fists deeply into his pockets, unsure if he’d hit someone with how wound up he felt. He counted to ten and breathed, and then did it again before letting his hands fall to his sides and walking out of the club. He couldn’t sit there and mull over what had just happened; he’d drive himself insane. Lilya’s little retreat only poured fuel on the fire already raging inside him. Whatever it was they shared, it wasn’t one-sided. It wasn’t imagined. She wanted him just as much; he felt it in every look and every breath between them. His need for her grew into something fiercer, even more consuming. He had just been chasing her before. Now, she would feel what it meant to be truly hunted by him.

Softly tagging: @jenn2d2 @rookamell @gingervitus @hedwigoprah @trash-nerd @cocoboots @thedissonantverses @ofcrowsanddragons @apothe-cary @serstolas @selennes @brennacedria @basedonconjecture @mythals-whore @seaglassmelody @hightowerqueen @skullypettibone @feaches @the-sparrohawk @nimblefox66 @introvertedfangrl and anyone else who wants to play!

[daryl-dixon-daydreams]

Words: 3,593 Pairing: Negan Smith x Reader Reader pronouns: not really specified, but Negan calls you "doll" and "darlin'" often Warnings: language (the usual), some flirty!Negan Era: Alexandria, post-Negan Summary: Negan and the reader must weather the storm and the horde overnight and find someway to get back to Alexandria. A/N: Sorry this came later than I hoped to get it out. This is why I try to 1.) never write two series at once and 2.) never make a posting schedule because I usually can't adhere to it haha some parts just take longer to get right... so thanks for your patience and HAPPY WICKED WEDNESDAY! Previous part - Part 3

The storm overhead was still raging. Tucked away in the basement mostly underground you heard it only as a dull roar. The wind occasionally whistled and howled lending a haunting soundtrack to your sheltering.

Negan had dug out a couple sleeping bags and used one to cushion his seat on another box of supplies, his back leaned up against the wall and his long legs kicked out toward you.

“Can I have that?” you asked, gesturing to the other bag. You were sitting on the floor and the concrete was cold. He tossed it over to you and you folded it and placed it underneath yourself, sitting down in more comfort. You sighed and leaned back against the wall behind you, shutting your eyes for a moment. You could feel Negan looking at you.

“You’re really not going to tell me anything about you?” You cracked one eye open and looked at him, drawing a laugh from deep in his chest. It was resonant and warm, like the sound from a rosewood guitar. “We’ve been doing this for—I don’t know, three months now and I don’t know a damn thing besides your name,” Negan said, twirling the fireplace poker in his hand.

You sighed and sat up again. “What do you want to know?”

“What’d you do before all this?”

“Before the outbreak?”

“Yeah. Before everything went to shit.”

“Uhh… actually, I was a stripper.”

Negan froze, a shit-eating grin growing on his face. “Really?”

“No!” you laughed. “But it seems like you were hoping for something juicy like that,” you said with a self-satisfied smirk. “God, it’s so easy it’s not even fun!”

He laughed heartily. “Alright, smartass… But can you blame me? Shit, I was about to ask for a private performance.”

“I’m sure you were,” you retorted.

“I noticed that you still didn’t answer the question,” Negan said.

“Oh, that’s funny,” you said with a smile. It crinkled the corners of your eyes and Negan found himself suddenly gulping, nervous. He was nervous? “You know, it’s not like I really know a ton about you either.”

“Well, you know about my Savior days. That’s more than I know about you.”

“Is it?” you asked, one of your eyebrows arching.

Negan felt as if a continent shifted inside him when you looked at him like that; inquiring and graceful and steady. “What do you mean?”

You shrugged. “I think—and this is just my opinion, but I think that was a mask,” you said. “It’s almost as if you were playacting. But maybe you convinced yourself that it was the real you or maybe it was in some ways, for a time, and so everyone else around you believed it. It was convincing to watch.”

Negan gulped. He had that same sensation again, as if you were seeing into his core, his true center. “Jesus, doll, maybe fucking warn me before you say some shit like that again.” But there was no trace of jest or sarcasm in his voice and his expression was sincere as he stared back at you. His hazel eyes looked like there was a glow in them that was shifting like the heat moving over the coals of a fire. Was it turmoil? He drew in a deep breath. “Well, what’s the difference, if I was pretending or not? I still did what I did.”

“It matters,” you replied softly. “First of all, because it’s painful to not be seen, to not have your true self perceived, to be invisible in a way. And—when you’ve been hiding in any kind of shadow for a long time, like behind a mask, it’s all the more painful to—to seek out the light, to feel. To be awake. It’s easier to just—pretend.”

Negan’s brow furrowed heavily as you spoke and his hands were still on the iron rod, fingers curled around the chill of the metal. “You’re talking as if you know something about that,” he replied.

You smiled at him vaguely, sighing a little and leaning your head back against the wall again. “Maybe I’m just observant.”

“Alright,” he nodded. His tongue swept out over his bottom lip. “Well, you know about Savior Negan, whether it was a mask or not… and you know that I was a high school gym teacher and coach, and I still know absolutely fuck-all about you,” he said.

“Correct,” you replied.

Negan sighed, looking disappointed. He stared around the room aimlessly for a moment, clicking his tongue thoughtfully and spinning the iron rod in his hand. “What’s your favorite color?” he asked suddenly.

You laughed. “So, you’re switching to small talk now?”

He shrugged. “What the hell else are we gonna do?”

It seemed harmless enough. “Green,” you said.

“Green,” he nodded. “Hmm. Favorite food?”

You shot him an amused look. “Is this even entertaining?”

He only shrugged again and smiled at you expectantly.

“Raspberries,” you said.

“That’s lucky,” he said, scratching at his beard. “You can still get those. In fact, aren’t there a bunch of raspberry plants back home?”

Your eyebrows lifted. “Did you just say back home?” you asked.

“Oh. Shit! Fuck me sideways, doll, I think I did,” he laughed, looking stunned himself. He let out a scoff and shook his head.

“That was… unexpected,” you replied.

“Well, how long do you have to live someplace before you call it home? Even in a cell, I guess time matters.”

“I don’t know. Home has always been a feeling for me, more than a place,” you said.

“Hmm. That seems like it could be telling,” Negan said, absently rubbing a hand over his beard again.

You rolled your eyes. “Now who sounds like a shrink?” you retorted. He laughed a little and shrugged.

“Alright. Green. Raspberries. Got it. Next question…”

“Negan…” you laughed, rubbing a hand over your face, feeling suddenly bashful at his probing and focused interest in you.

“Come on, doll. Just humor me.” He sighed and stretched, thinking. “Favorite season?”

“I can’t choose a favorite. I like different things about all of them.” Then, you paused thoughtfully. “But fuck southern summers.”

Negan smiled widely. “I can agree to that. What was your first car?”

“Pfft… the city bus,” you said. “You’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel here on the questions.”

“I’m—working up to the really interesting ones… But really? You never had a car? Not even a rusty shitbox?”

You shook your head. “Nope. In fact, I didn’t even learn to drive until after the outbreak.”

Negan’s eyebrows lifted and his eyes widened. “Fuckin’ hell. That must have been terrifying. Everything shut down and you were just—”

“—stuck,” you finished. You were staring down at your hands and fiddling with a loose string on the hem of your shirt. “Though, most of the roadways were pretty clogged up quickly so it probably didn’t matter all that much. The only people who got out of the cities anyway were the ones who left as soon as there was a whiff of trouble. And then came the riots and the bombings and—”

A shadow darkened Negan’s face. “Fucking hell. You were in a city city when shit went down.”

You suddenly realized what you��d revealed and looked up at him, your breath caught in your throat at the sudden rush of memories unbidden. You gulped at the tightness in your throat and nodded. “Yeah. I was, um—I was in Atlanta.”

“That’s where you found Rick’s group,” Negan said. It wasn’t really a question.

You nodded. “More like they found me,” you said, ducking your eyes again. It wasn’t lost on Negan that you were avoiding his gaze. He sensed that there was still a wound there, unhealed, deep down. Perhaps it was one that would never truly heal. “But it also wasn’t really Rick’s group then. He’d just met all of them too, like the day before. But Daryl, Rick, T-dog, and—and Glenn,” your voice broke when you said Glenn’s name, but it wasn’t just for him that your voice wavered. “They found me. Helped me.” You sighed and closed your eyes for a moment. “Now, it’s just me, Carol, and Daryl left, out of all of us at the beginning.”

There was a soft frown on Negan’s face, creases in his forehead, when you looked back up, but it wasn’t pity. It was just… sympathy and no small amount of guilt. “I’m—sorry,” he said. His deep voice somehow seemed to cut through the air between you and right to the bone. “I know I had a part in that. And I’m truly sorry.” You were startled to see that his eyes were slightly glassy.

“Yeah, well… you don’t owe that apology to me. You owe it to Maggie and her son far more,” you said, shifting on the sleeping bag you were sitting on. A shiver suddenly wracked through you and you hugged your arms around yourself. The fingers of the cold, damp of the cellar seemed to be slowly finding their way in under your clothing. “I thought you were supposed to only be asking me small talk questions? How’d we get here?” you said with a wry laugh.

But Negan wasn’t really listening. He was digging out the jacket he’d shed earlier and tucked into his pack. “Here,” he said. He tossed it over to you.

You caught it, and then fixed your eyes back on him. “Oh. I’m okay,” you tried to argue.

Negan smiled at you, a small one that had his hazel eyes looking bright. “I just saw you shiver. I already think you’re a badass, doll. A little chill isn’t fucking changing that.”

You sighed, and relented. “Alright…” you murmured, pulling on the jacket. It swallowed up your frame, hanging on your shoulders and bunching around your wrists, and Negan couldn’t quite put a name to the feeling that suddenly manifested in between his lungs.

“Thanks,” you murmured, huddling into the fabric.

“Of course. Seems like we’re gonna be here a while,” Negan said. “Actually—” he pulled the top off a bin beside him and grabbed a camping stove and lighter. “We’ve got a stove, water… MREs. You’ve got those tea leaves we foraged on the way in?”

You quirked an eyebrow up at him. “Yeah?”

“Perfect,” he said. “It’s about dinnertime by now. Sit back and relax!”

You laughed a little skeptically at him. “You’re gonna… cook me dinner?”

“I don’t think heating up some MREs and tea qualifies as cooking. You should see me in a real kitchen. It’s a real panty-dropped,” he grinned.

You rolled your eyes. “Jesus…”

He laughed heartily and started setting up the stove. “No, no. You can still call me ‘Negan’,” he quipped, winking at you.

“Okay… don’t ever wink at me again,” you retorted, which only made him laugh harder.

“That is a promise that I am not willing to make. Or keep,” he joked. “Now, hand me some of those raspberry leaves you picked.”

_ _ _ _ _ _

You stretched lazily, your eyes still closed for a moment, before you shot up straight, remembering where you were and the events of the previous day. Your eyes were wide as you realized that at some point over the course of the night, you’d fallen asleep. Part of you expected to see that Negan had somehow gotten ahold of your gun or knife, despite them always being stored securely on your person. But you didn’t have any need to worry. When you looked across the small, dingy space, he was still perched on the same box of supplies he had been the night before, though his long legs were now stretched out and up on another box.

He was smiling at you serenely, the fireplace poker resting across his knees. “Morning, doll.”

You gulped. “I—I fell asleep.”

“You sure did,” he said. You could tell he hadn’t slept at all. His voice was a bit gruff and undeniably tired. He’d kept watch all night. “You snore by the way.”

You hastily smoothed your hair and clothes, staring back at him. “What? I do not!” you argued.

He laughed. “Yeah, you do. But it’s okay. I found it strangely comforting actually. Nearly put me to sleep.”

“Shut up,” you said, standing up and stretching again.

“Don’t flirt,” he retorted, still smiling serenely.

You paced over toward the one narrow window in the basement and looked up at the quality of light filtering through the dirty glass. It was clearly early morning and the storm had passed. More than that, you couldn’t see or hear any of the dead outside. “Seems like the herd moved on.”

“Mhm,” Negan hummed in agreement. “It all got quiet in the early hours of this morning.”

“You stayed awake all night?”

He nodded, standing now too. “Yeah. Somebody else was slacking off after their gourmet meal,” he teased you.

You ground your teeth together, angry at yourself for falling asleep. “You should have woken me up. And ‘gourmet’ seems like a stretch for an expired MRE don’t you think?”

“With locally sourced tea? Come on, people would have paid a pretty fucking penny for that shit in the old world.”

You laughed a little and shook your head, then turned and fixed your eyes on him with a deeply perplexed expression on your face.

“What? That’s quite a look for first thing in the morning,” Negan said. “I can’t have fucked up that bad already!”

“Why—why didn’t you leave?” you said. “As soon as the herd cleared and the storm settled… you could have disappeared, taken some supplies.” The jacket he’d given to you the night before was still hanging on your smaller frame. The sleeves had slipped down over your hands and you hastily pushed them back up. “You know what you’re going back to.”

He just kept smiling back at you, his expression surprisingly soft and genuine, no trace of his usual jest or masking. It was doing something to you, stirring up a whir of fluttering just below your lungs that was impossible to ignore. You gulped, trying to clear the sensation. He paced toward you, stopping within a foot. “Yeah. Maybe that’s why I stayed,” he said.

Your brow only furrowed even more deeply. “You’re a prisoner,” you said plainly.

Negan shrugged. “Am I? I think I’m starting to fucking forget that…” His hazel eyes were flickering over your face, studying your features. You were the one to fell a sudden wave of emotions cresting up within you and you backed away from it.

“We should—see if the coast is clear,” you said softly, ducking your eyes. “Get back to the car. Everyone back home will be worried. They may even have come looking already.”

Negan smiled to himself. He’d felt something in the air profoundly, but he’d also seen how you’d stepped away and the spell was broken. “Okay,” he said simply.

The two of you gathered up your essential gear and headed up the steps cautiously, listening at the barricaded basement door for any noises on the other side. You pounded on the door with your bandaged hand and pressed your ear to the wood. Nothing. Steady silence.

“Okay,” you said, breathing a sigh of relief. “I don’t hear anything. You can hang onto that poker until we know for sure the house is clear, but then you’ll have to leave it behind. Got it?”

Negan agreed, a little hesitantly, but he wasn’t going to argue with you this time.

You unblocked the door, lifting the wooden board you’d secured it with the night before, being careful to avoid the sharp metal brackets this time. The next moment, you slowly pushed it open.

The house was clear and once you’d thoroughly looked out through windows on all sides of the house, he begrudgingly left the iron fireplace poker behind. Stepping outside, the destruction from the storm and the horde were blatantly evident. Most of the windows in the surrounding buildings, including the house you’d sheltered in, were busted or hailed out. There were large branches blown down off trees and the leaves of many were also shredded in the hailstorm and wind. Shingles and scraps of siding and wood were lying in the scraggly patches of grass.

“Good thing we didn’t try to make it out in the car. I’ll be surprised if the windshield is intact when we get back to it,” you said, nudging a shingle with your boot.

“Yeah,” Negan agreed. “What’s the plan? We still have all those supplies to load up.”

“Um… I guess we can try to get the car in here and load them up. That side road didn’t look too bad on the way in.”

The two of you headed that direction immediately, still on guard and wondering where the herd had gone to. Knowing only hours had passed, it was possible they weren’t far at all. But you arrived at the car safely. However, there was another problem.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” you swore, staring at the scene in front of you.

Negan stopped beside you and all he could do was laugh wryly. “Well, shit.”

A huge old cottonwood tree had come down in the storm and the trunk had entirely crushed the car. You sighed and dropped your pack down beside you heaving a huge sigh. “Well… Daryl and Michonne will have noticed by now that we aren’t back. Let’s hope they’re already on their way.” The two of you waited by the car, and luckily it wasn’t long before you saw an approaching vehicle down the old highway. The two of you scrambled into cover, just in case it wasn’t who you were hoping for.

But it was. A truck pulled up and you saw Daryl behind the wheel as it stopped behind your smashed vehicle. Aaron, Rosita, and Daryl piled out and quickly ran to check the car. That’s when the two of you stepped out of cover on the side of the road.

“Hey!” you called out to them. “Can’t tell you how happy I am to see you all,” you said, jogging over. Negan walked over more slowly, his hands stuffed into his pockets. “Hell of a storm,” you said, gesturing at the smashed car.

“Goddamn, ‘m so glad to see ya in one piece,” Daryl said, pulling you quickly into a one-armed hug, his crossbow in the other hand. “We were worried sick, but figured it was the storm. Are ya okay?” he asked, shooting a tense look in Negan’s direction. “What happened to your hand?” he asked, noticing the bandage.

“I’m good. Just cut it while scavenging. It’s fine. How’s Alexandria? Everyone okay after the crazy wind and everything?”

“Yeah, all good. Definitely better than yer car,” he said, looking at the crushed vehicle.

“Thank God you weren’t inside,” Rosita said, slinging her rifle over her back.

“No. Instead we were trapped by a horde in a house,” you explained, crossing your arms.

“A horde?” Aaron repeated. “You’re serious?”

You nodded gravely. “Yeah. I was worried you were going to run into them on the highway to be honest. They moved on overnight.”

Negan was standing nearby, looking out of place. Daryl kept shooting him tense glances.

“We found a pile of supplies though, in a hidden survivalist cellar. I bet we can get a vehicle to the house and load them up, especially with your four-wheel drive vehicle.”

“At least something good came out of your trip then!” Aaron said cheerfully, patting your shoulder. “Glad you’re safe.”

You nodded and you all started back towards their truck. Daryl fell into step beside you. “Hey—” he started in an undertone. “Everything really went okay? Even with him?” he asked.

You nodded and felt your cheeks flushing inexplicably. “Yeah.” You hesitated for a moment, wondering if you should even tell him this… but you did. “I—I didn’t mean to, but I fell asleep overnight. Negan stayed up on watch the whole time, Daryl. He could have—taken my weapons, overpowered me—the herd and storm were clear. He could have left, disappeared. But he didn’t. He stayed,” you explained in a low voice. “I—I don’t understand it.”

“Hmm,” Daryl hummed, his brow furrowed deeply, shadows cast over his blue eyes. He looked up and caught Negan staring in your direction. “’M glad yer safe, especially considerin’ that. But ya gotta be more careful.”

You sighed. “I know. I’m already angry at myself. I just—I don’t understand why he stayed,” you said, hesitating with your hand on the door handle of the truck.

Daryl chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. “‘M startin’ to have an idea.”

[tgmsunmontue]

A picture is worth 1000 words - 15/?

Hangster post-TGM events, Jake and Bradley becoming friends on Instagram through increasingly competitive thirst traps.

ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN TWELVE THIRTEEN FOURTEEN

PART FIFTEEN

                They sit side by side on the ground, still warm from the sun, and he absently pulls long bits of grass out at the roots, thinking about what he wants to say. Because he feels like he should say something. Doesn’t want things to progress without having some sort of conversation first. Wants to at least try and attempt some disaster mitigation.

                “You… I like seeing you with your family.”

                “Yeah? Why’s that?”

                “I… you’re…”

                “I’m what Rooster?” Jake asks, and there’s the edge he recognizes, that has been missing the last twenty-four hours. The fact that Jake spat his callsign, he shakes his head, lets out a quiet breath, thinks about disaster mitigation again. “What?” Jake repeats, and his eyes are narrowed.

                “Jake…” Bradley starts, and he shifts closer in the grass, then decides he’s got nothing to lose and shifts so he’s sitting on Jake’s thighs, not resting his full weight, but definitely there with intent. Jake is surprised, every line of his body and the openness of his eyes and mouth all telling him that he’s shocked him into silence. “You’re someone I could fall in love with.”

                “Oh.”

                “It’s not a bad thing.”

                “Of course it isn’t. I just… I didn’t think you were going to say something like that…”

                “What did you think I was going to say?” Bradley asks, curious, and he doesn’t give in to the urge to pull at the draw strings of Jake’s hoodie, instead lets his hands loop around his neck and he does give in to the urge to run his fingers through the slightly longer hair at Jake’s nape.

                “I dunno. Maybe that…” he shrugs then and Bradley’s eyes narrow. Wonders what Jake has heard said to make him shifty like this.

                “That what? You’re a loving and loyal brother, uncle and friend? Oh. The horror.”

                “Fuck off Bradshaw…” Jake mutters, but he’s ducking to hide a smile, pushing at Bradley’s chest half-heartedly and then letting his hand rest on Bradley’s thigh.

                “Bradley,” Bradley corrects, because he’s been calling him Jake all day, wants to hear Jake say his name.

                “Bradley…” Jake says, and his voice is whisper quiet, the breeze in the grass almost louder and there are only inches between them. The fingers on his thigh flex and he shifts a little, inches closer.

                “Jake…”

                “Yeah?”

                “Please…”

                “Please what?”

                “Please stop being an asshole and kiss me.”

                “You just had to ask…”

                “I think… I think you’ll find… I didn’t ask…”

                “Hmm… Maybe I should stop then.”

                “No.”

                “You being kind of demanding… no manners…”

                “Please Jake… please…”

SIXTEEN

[castiwls]

sharing is caring

Paring; artashi x reader

Summary; part two to this (kinda). Art and Tashi never claimed to be upstanding citizens. Not when their babysitter was doe eyed and looked at them both like they hung the stars. Sure Tashi had got their first but she didn't mind sharing.

warnings; infidelity (but their both kinda into it?), overstim, public Sex (kinda), bad writing overall!

Notes; bets this gets deleted by tonight high. This has been sitting in my drafts since I posted that sugar mommy tashi blurb and I went back and forth but fuck it! smut is the one thing I haven't tried but I guess yolo (it's bad and I am scared<3)

Masterlist

Art and Tashi didn’t expect to get so obsessed with their daughter’s babysitter; it just happened.

Like you just happened to end up on the couch between them one night while she went over his latest match. Art wasn’t dumb - he knew what you and Tashi were doing behind closed doors.

He’d seen the way you’d blushed that night when her fingers had disappeared under the blanket - her eyes flicking to his in silent challenge. Would he say anything?

He never did. Even when you barely stifled a moan he’d only frowned. “You okay? You look kinda warm?” Your eyes had widened at his sympathy but Tashi had known.

She’d known he was playing the game. He didn’t care that she currently had her fingers pressed deep inside their daughter’s babysitter while she gave him feedback because he couldn’t deny the way his pants tightened at the sight of you falling apart so easily.

The idea that you’d fall apart the same for him.

It was fucked up. They both knew and didn’t care. She’d felt so good around him tight, warm, perfect - always perfect for him - as she’d slowly rocked her hips words which made him blush falling from her lips until.

“I bet she’d feel even better.” Art had tensed slightly before his eyes had rolled back as Tashi shifted her hips ever so slightly, giving him an ounce of the stimulation he craved. “She looks at you like you hang the fucking stars - she looks at me like that too but I see the way she looks at you.” For the fact that she was two orgasms deep she still looked ethereal, utterly calm compared to his panting and red stained cheeks.

“She’d worship you.” She’d mumbled against his lips before he’d fallen apart under her touch.

He’d never admit how much the idea turned him on. Their whole marriage he’d always been the one starry eyed at his wife but now you were here…and Tashi hadn’t been wrong.

——

You’d let her take you apart - whimpering so pretty while she’d pumped two fingers deep inside you, making you watch him the whole time.

“You want art to fuck you?” She’d cooed, her teeth grazing your neck. You nodded, of course you did, you weren’t blind to how attractive her husband was -

“Words.” Tashi’s voice was like ice her fingers cruelly twisting a nipple between her fingers as your back arched with a cry. “Ye-yes.” You whined eyes glassy as you found her gaze.

Tashi only grinned. “Good girl.” She’d cooed grabbing the wand from her draw. “Such a good girl…”

——

“Ah ah. Eyes open.” Tashi’s voice cut through the fog in your head, your eyes wrenching open with force. All you could see was blue - everything else a blur almost as you tried to focus on something other then the pleasure thrumming under your bones.

She’d made you cum three times. Well she’s watched while her husband had brought you to the edge at her command.

First his mouth. You’d never felt anything like it. It was different to Tashi - more messy and less controlled like art couldn’t control himself. You’d fell apart with a yell and before you’d even caught your breath he was stretching you apart on two fingers.

You hadn’t stood a chance really.

“Is it too much?” Tashi had moved - when had she moved? Her fingers dragged down your stomach, deft fingers pressing her your swollen clit.

“A-ah. Tashi…please. I-I can’t-”

“You can. And you will.”

Art watched in fascination as your body only clenched down harder, your hand scratching yet another mark down his back as he shifted his angle to lean down - his hips slowing down as his lips found your chest.

He slowly kissed up your neck before “you can do it.” He soothed kissing away another sob. “Just one more for us angel.”

One more.

You could do one more.

It wasn’t like you had much of a choice anyways. Tashi’s fingers only sped up as did his hips and before you knew it you were hurtling over the edge missing the grin she shot to her husband.

She was never letting you go.

[readerstories]

When You Touch Me - Wolverine x male reader x Deadpool 10/?

Hello hello! Excited for new chapter, a little more world-building adjacent, hope y'all like! Before I posted this chapter I've also gone back and added some more details (and fixed some grammar/typos whoops), like reader wore gloves a lot of the time, so they wouldn't be able to meet their soulmate(s). (AO3) (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Part 8) (Part 9)

Warnings/tags: male reader, canon-typical violence, enemies to friends to lovers, slow burn

Wordcount: 2569

Summary: You’ve heard many stories about how people met their soulmates. Everyone crazier than the last, ranging from typical meet cutes, meeting with one of them at death's door, in war, meeting at your soulmate's wedding to another, and everything in between and outside of that. You had just never expected to add yours to the crazy list, meeting yours in a fight, only realizing after trying to kill each other for at least half an hour. And you certainly don’t expect to have another.

Yet again, in hindsight, you should have stayed longer. Waited until they were both awake, maybe even slept some more while you waited for them (mostly Wade, since you had apparently woken Logan), and then made more concrete plans. The unplanned movie night and nap had helped, but it still didn’t take it all away, your body still aches as you unlock your apartment door.

Closing it behind you, you lean against the wall for a moment, massaging your head. It feels tender, so you press the heel of your hands over your eyes, groaning. You feel better, but not okay. Part of you wants to go back, to make it even better, but a bigger part of you wants to ignore all this soulmate shit.

So instead of leaving again, you take your shoes off, padding into the kitchen to fix yourself some coffee. It’s getting lighter outside, and it’s technically morning, so you might as well stay up.

While you wait for your coffee machine, you stick your hands in the pockets of your jacket.

There’s a piece of paper in your pocket. 

That definitely wasn’t there before.

Taking it out, it turns out to be a pink post-it note with a phone number and a small chibi drawing of Deadpool holding a gun.

Wade must have slipped it into your pocket while you slept. How deep were you sleeping for him to do that without waking you? You must have been really out of it. Or Wade just has really nimble fingers, a thought you do not let yourself expand on. 

Because, the frustrating thing is, under almost any other circumstance, they would have been your type. Two strong men who are skilled with weapons, and a little insane, you would have gladly taken either or both to bed. But mixing in the soulmate thing? Fuck that.

You crumple up the piece of paper, but throw it into your junk drawer instead of the trash, ignoring the other brief flash pink from Wade’s bandana in there. Your coffee is done, so you take your cup and walk over to the couch, the plan now being to watch some tv before going for a workout.

—---

You last about six hours before you think about the post-it again. In that time you’ve drank three cups of coffee, eaten breakfast, worked out, showered, and started watching some TV.

It’s when you spot a loose thread in your shirt and go to grab a pair of scissors from your junk drawer that you spot the post-it again. You stop, staring at the little piece of pink paper.

You should contact him. Not a call, but text him at least. Start the conversation so you don’t get as bad again. You’ve felt a lot better today, and looked it too, well enough that Dave had told you as much when you ran into him at the gym. (“Hey, look who’s not looking like he’s been chewed on and spit out by some monster! Looking good dude!”)

You spend several minutes crumpling and uncrumpling the little piece of paper, before you’re interrupted by your phone ringing, making you jump. You throw the post-it back into the drawer and slam it shut, grabbing your phone to answer Evelyn.

“Hello.” 

“You busy?”

“Nope.”

“Great, lunch? There’s this new bakery I’ve been dying to try, but Olivia’s busy today even though it’s my day off, so I’m taking you.”

“How dare she. Doesn’t sound like I have much of a choice then.”

“Nope! I’ll text you the address.”

—----

When you turn up at the place, it looks like a cute little spot. Flowers in the windows, and if you didn’t have the address, you could have followed your nose to the place. It smells of freshly baked goods and expensive coffee.

Evelyn arrives less than a minute after you, dragging you inside instantly. You chat about what to get, in the end you get a chicken sandwich, blueberry muffin, and coffee. She gets a green tea, BLT, and a slice of lemon cake.

After getting your orders, you find yourself led to a booth next to a window, where you end up sitting across from her.

“So, what’s up with you?” 

“Not much, why? What about you?”

“Just the usual. But I asked you first.” You furrow your bow as you take a bite of your sandwich, chewing a little before answering around the food in your mouth.

“And I answered.”

“Yeah, but only with ‘not much’.” You squint at her, swallowing and putting your sandwich down.

“What is this really about?” She picks at her sandwich, and takes a deep breath.

“You haven’t been looking real good lately, even avoiding working out with Dave-”

“You told me to avoid it-”

“Not for this long. But now Dave told me you’re better. You still look rough, but better.”

“Thanks.” You snort.

“Are you in some sort of trouble?”

“You’ve stitched me up enough times to know I’m often in trouble.”

“Not like this. Not like lasting trouble.” She looks worried, truly worried, not in the annoyed way she gets when you turn up on her table too soon after you promised her to keep out of anything that would need her help. 

You drag a hand over your face, biting your lip.

“It’s not….. trouble, really. Lasting for sure, but…..”

“Could you be any more non-specific or cryptic?”

“I met someone….”

“Okay…. What does….” She looks down on your gloveless hands, you fight the urge to hide them. “Oh!”

“Yeah.”

“Who? When? Where?”

“Remember the guy who slashed my chest and stomach?” You take a sip of your coffee as Evelyn stares at you with wide eyes.

“The guy you killed? How are you not- How did you not-”

“He got up afterwards. He heals, he’s some kind of mutant.”

“Oh.”

“And while fighting him afterwards, I touched him.”

“Your gloves-”

“Forgot em’.” Evelyn blinks, and after a few seconds, to your surprise, she begins to laugh. It’s quiet, but enough that she needs several tries to take a sip of her tea.

“Figures you met your soulmate when fighting him. Fitting.” She teases. “How did it go?”

“Not well, he ran, and I fucking had to track him down.” She raises an eyebrow, tearing off a piece of her sandwich.

“And how did that go?” She pops the piece in her mouth, chewing while she stares you down, very much letting you know you won’t be spared her full and undivided attention until you answer. She grabs her tea cup next, keeping eye contact.

“Considering my second soulmate tried to slice me too, not great.” She chokes on her tea, wiping her chin with her sleeve, mind too preoccupied by gaping at you to grab some napkins.

“Second?!?” You grimace.

“Yeah.” This time when she laughs, it’s a full on cackle. You feel your face heat up as she’s far from quiet. She draws the attention of quite a few other patrons, but quiets down after you kick her under the table.

“So the universe does have a sense of humor after all.”

“I don’t think it does, I just think it likes to be annoying.”

“Of course you do. But you gotta admit there’s some sort of irony in not wanting soulmates in any form, and then you get two. Do you know if it’s just strictly platonic or not?” You don’t want to answer, already so done with talking about it, but you remind yourself she’s your friend, she’s asking because she cares.

“It’s not.” You leave it at that, she gives a little smirk, though it quickly transforms into a frown.

“But you’ve been looking and feeling like shit for a while. Which…..” She sits up, leaning on her elbows on the table, staring you down. You feel like you’re in the principal’s office after pulling a prank that’s gone too far. “Have you been avoiding them?” She fucking knows you, so of course it’s an easy guess to make. You grind your teeth, but nod. In return you get your full legal name, which is never good.

“You know you should fucking take care of yourself, even if it means doing shit you don’t want.” She doesn’t grab your shoulders and shake you, but you assume she’s not far from doing it. “Are they not your type?”

“Um, well yes, but-”

“Then no buts, they are made for you, and you for them.”

“I’m not made for anyone, I don’t want the universe to decide for me.”

“Or are you just afraid of being seen?”

“I thought you were my friend, not my therapist.”

“I don’t need to be your therapist to know you.” She jokes, her smile slipping into something more fond as she looks at you picking at your nails. “I’m just your friend, and I just want what's best for you.”

“How do you, or the ‘universe’-” Here you do air quotes with a grimace. “-for that matter, know what's good for me?”

“Do you?” Annoyingly she is right. “But you looked like less shit yesterday, even worked out.”

“How did-” You cut yourself off and cross your arms, hiding your bare hands from her view. “Dave, of course.”

“He was worried about you, as we all were. But back to it, you looked less like shit. Which means….” She gestures at you. “You did go see them.”  You look out the window, watching people pass for a few seconds. You wish you were out there, in the throng of people, not talking about something you don’t want to even think about over the minimal needed amount.

“Well, I reached my limit. Felt like someone had thrown me in a cement mixer with rocks, and then tried to cave my skull in, so I went back to their place.” She sips on her tea as you look back at her.

“And…?” She prompts as you keep quiet.

“Not much. They ate, we all watched a Barbie movie which I fell asleep during, then I left.”

“Left or ran like a dog with his tail between his legs?” Oh, how wonderful it is to have friends that know you.

“Something like that.” 

“Did you even plan anything for the future? It clearly didn’t fully stop you feeling and looking like shit-” She gestures to you, you roll your eyes.

“Thanks.”

“How are you even going to contact them again? Just turn up and hope they’re home?”

“We didn’t plan for much, but I did get Wade’s number.”

“So call him and set up a date.”

“Don’t call it that.”

“Meeting then.” She rolls her eyes. “You need to, literally.” You rub your face, pinching your nose.

“I know, believe me, I am very much aware.” You glance up at her, and her gaze softens. She puts her hand out on the table, palm up, you put one of yours in hers. She turns it over, grasping it with both hands, massaging your palm with her thumbs.

“I’m happy for you though.” You don’t voice your disagreement on that, you know she means well even though you’re sure she knows your response without you needing to say it out loud. “Promise you’ll call?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Or else I would have banned you from dinners for three months.” You gasp over-dramatically.

“You bitch!” You take the offering of being able to dissipate the heavy talk, switching to wax poetically about her wife’s cooking instead.

—----

Several hours and a lot of chatting later, you’re home again. 

Your junk drawer still holds the post-it note, the pink paper being easy to spot on top of all sorts of bits and bobs.

You grab it, unfolding it again. Taking a deep breath, you pull out your phone. You decide to just start with a simple ‘Hi’ signed with your name.

Then stare at your phone for ten seconds as it almost instantly starts ringing, Wade’s number shining up at you.

“Fucking hell.” You mutter to yourself. “Hi.” Is what you start with as you answer it.

“Fucking finally, was starting to feel like a prom queen stood up during homecoming, I even wore my good panties!” You have to hold the phone away from your ear, as along with Wade’s words, there’s wind blowing into the speaker, crackling.

“Where the fuck are you?” You put the phone closer, luckily having just a minimal amount of trouble hearing him over the wind.

“Ohhhh, are we doing the fun thing of you picturing me somewhere sexy? I am so down for phone s-”

“No Wade, the audio is just awful.”

“Oh, that’s what happens when you answer a phone while riding a bike.” You rub your forehead, feeling a headache forming as you close your junk drawer.

“Is your handsfree that shitty or are you just holding it normally?”

“Nothing I do is normal, pookie, but don’t worry, Logan is the one driving. Say hello Wolvie.” You don’t hear anything except more wind. “He just told me to fuck off for holding my phone in front of his face, don’t think the phone picked up his sexy rumble.”

“It didn’t pick up shit except wind.” You lean your elbows on the kitchen counter, hearing Wade fumble with the phone.

“Logan, stop for a sec! Yes I know we are- Come on! I’ll blow you for being nice later.” Again you don’t hear if Logan responds, but the wind dies down, and now you can hear a bike rumbling, even more clearly as you’re put on speaker phone.

“There we go! Now you can hear both of our sexy voices!”

“You could have just waited, or just texted.” 

“Texting and driving is dangerous!” 

“Didn’t you just say you weren’t driving? And didn’t you have to have an arm free to answer your phone?” You move away from leaning on the kitchen counter, heading towards the couch instead.

“Yes, but texting would have needed both hands loose, I’m a double thumb texter I’ll have you know, and the fabric of the suit is a bitch to get out road rashed skin.” You hear Logan snort, and then a smack. “Anywho, you reached out. Finally missing us?” Your body certainly is, you wince as you sit down on your couch.

“Not in the slightest, but since we’re kind of stuck together, I thought we should at least set up a specific meeting time instead of a vague plan of once a week.”

“I know you said you would see Logan in a week-,” You’re not sure if you are imagining the brief sour tone in Wade’s voice. “-but what about tomorrow at 5 pm? At our place.” Wade offers before Logan speaks up for the first time, his gruff voice almost vibrating through the phone speaker.

“We got dinner with Peter tomorrow.”

“Oh yeah! Hmmmmm, day after, noon, our place?” Logan doesn’t object at the time, so you agree. 

“Sure.” You don’t know what to say next, but are saved by hearing something nearing in the background. It takes a beat for you to realise what it is.

“Are those sirens?” 

“Whoops yeah, that would be our sign to get going.” You hear the rev of the bike’s engine, then the wind starts back up. “Kisses and smooches, pookie, don’t be late!” Wade hangs up, leaving you staring out into space.

What has the universe gotten you into?

[levshany]

how do I put this. Even those who actually track our blogs and are interested in our Aus can get a little confused about what's going on here. but I'll try to explain anyway

we already mentioned the crossover between Anarchists and Tandem and even DRAWED them once, back when Tandem was in development (and by the way, this crossover is canonical for both AUs). Now this story has been continued >:D

Here's some context: It so happened that the Colibri wanted to see what alternative timelines looked like and ran into the king and the jester. Phil was delighted with Colibri and wanted to flirt with them. Jester Collie was categorically against it. so he immediately possessed Phill and tried to fight Tandem. he didn’t succeed because his fusion with Phil is extremely unstable. and here we are

Initially, @angstyhikka and I just drew these three pages, but then @lasymit supported the idea and made a drabble which she allowed me to add to the post :3

------------------------------------

"Let go, bitch! I'm not done with you yet!"

The savage creature desperately squirmed in Philip’s hands. It grabbed onto him, trying to either break free or, on the contrary, rush closer, glaring furiously and baring its shark teeth.

He held the clumsy, collapsing fusion at arm's length and looked at it with slight disgust. His tandem with the Collector was a strange but harmonious union. And what was writhing in front of them right now was the direct antipode of the word harmony.

“Well, I am,” he said distantly.

And with his other hand he grabbed the one sitting inside the demon’s body. Under the flesh soaked in titan blood, he felt a soft essence, like rubber or hot wax. The Collector from this universe felt completely different to the touch.

He stretched them, pulling them away from each other, disentangling them from each other. Paradoxically, bodies that should repel each other by the nature of their forces, like unipolar magnets, clung to each other very stubbornly. But Philip was still stronger with the power of the Collector in his hands, power which he clearly used better than the local... king of demons...

“Ouuuuch ouuuuch,” a boy in the robes of a jester, painted in red and black, shrank on the ground, wrapping his arms around his own chest.

He was not at all like his Collector. Philip had never seen his friend's material body before. But he knew he looked different. For some reason he knew this for sure.

"Who pulls a guy out like that!? Fuck!!", the now-green demon yelled nearby. And he clutched his head painfully.

What Idiots. They vomited three times while chasing him. Philip did them a favor by stopping this outrage.

Now these two were lying helplessly at his feet, groaning and gasping, trying to catch their breath and come to their senses. Now they are separated.

"What were you trying to achieve?" His question was almost rhetorical.

"It wasn’t me, it was all him!" like a child, pointing a sharp, protruding finger towards the Collector, the demon yelled. "I didn’t want to fight at all!"—here he gazed up at Philip with some strange look and batted his eyelashes expressively—"I wanted something else– something more interesting."

"Ohh fuck off, Maggie! You traitor!" came the shout from the red Collector. Philip silently decided to call him the Jester and the demon, by analogy, the King. Philip had already guessed his name. But he couldn’t bring himself to call this savage by that name. Not even in his mind. 

He ignored the King's vague attempts to take a tempting pose while still lying on the ground and grinding his teeth from the headache. He turned to the Jester.

"So you're in charge?"

Judging by King's behavior, it would indeed be reckless to put him in charge. But, having always been the decision-maker when paired with the Collector, by right of being the adult, Philip is accustomed to his friend almost never taking the leading role unless circumstances require it. Like a couple of years ago...

“Nuh-uh,” the Jester raised himself up on his elbow and rubbed his chest, inhaling deeply, greedily. "We're bros! Equal rights and stuff."

And he twirled his funny yellow gloved hand in the air.

Something in the Jester’s words pricked Philip. He didn't fully understand what exactly.. Until the King said, in a dramatic whisper:

"I no longer have a brother. You’re dead to me!"

And Philip stood there, trying to remember that the air was not hard, dense lumps, that it did not clog in the throat and did not press in the chest with a dull phantom pain. Meanwhile these two idiots, after a couple moments of aggressive looks, laughed out loud.

“Yes, I would strangle such a brother,” the King squeezed out, wheezing and squinting through laughter, “with my own-"

And he bent over, swallowing the end of the sentence with a cough as the toe of a boot hit him in the stomach.

"Philip! Philip... They've had enough... He doesn't know what he's talking about."

Philip's cheek twitched.

"Ouch... bro, save me!" the King squeaked hoarsely.

And this completely infuriated Philip. He swung his foot again, this time at the face. But he was met by an elastic wall. And the ground under Colibri’s feet, along with all the space, suddenly curved.

If it weren't for years with the Collector in his head, he wouldn't have realized what happened. But now he clearly saw how a couple of dimensions were distorted, folding space into a loop. He suddenly found himself not between the King and the Jester, but at a considerable distance. And these two were already close together. The boy helped his “brother” get up from the ground; King was now leaning on Jester’s shoulders, clutching his stomach. Perhaps Philip miscalculated his strength a little. This happens sometimes... Especially when it comes to emotions.

“Hey! Hitting people who are down is against the rules,” the Jester frowned. "Give us a timeout!"

Philip felt his jaw tighten. How the nodules rolled across his face. But the flaring rage, as it often happened to him, went away as easily as it filled the air in his chest, leaving reddish streaks before his eyes and pulsating power in his fingertips.

“Get out of the way,” he let his hands glow slightly.

"Ohhhh, what about a last kiss, star boy?" the King whined, clinging to the Jester and trying to straighten up next to him, as if hoping to reach Philip from a distance of ten steps and still get the coveted—

A kiss? Seriously, what the hell? Philip directed a confused, irritated look that bore all these unspoken questions at the Jester. He awkwardly shrugged his sharp shoulders, caught in the King’s grip.

"Don’t be mad... Philip, right? Don't be mad at him, Philip. His Majesty has a reason to be an idiot. And he didn’t mean it out of malice about the ‘brother’ thing.”

Philip looked at the Jester more carefully. The collector in his head was silent. But Philip sensed something from him. Philip also noticed the King’s uncomprehending expression.

“What’s wrong with ‘brother’?” The King sounded surprised.

And then Philip understood. And his face froze.

Yes... yes, what need is there to remember such things? He himself tried to forget for a long time... If he succeeded, would he be the same now as the king in front of him?

Looking at this wretched shell of a “King” who’d forgotten everything important about himself and the loyal “Jester” still standing steadily at his side, the Collector in Philip’s head began to sob. They both, it seems, had the same thought. It’s scary to look at the reflection of a future that never happened.

The jester smiled at him guiltily- at both of them. And then he confidently and widely showed about fifty teeth to his King.

"People don’t like such familiarity, you fool! You can’t just kiss someone the first time you meet."

"But it's okay to fight them when you first meet?" Philip was indignant...

Yes, it's Philip. He cannot refuse to call this man by his own name. Philip himself could one day become such a “king.”

------------------------------------

also @kenku97 helped us with translation and added this comment, I gotta show it to you ;v;

"I thought “The collector in his head sobbed” needed more context for people who aren’t as tightly wrapped up in these AUs as we all are. To understand why Collie’s crying, you need to point out how Tandem Collie sees himself in the Jester. They’re both caring for a Philip who is forgetting himself and the people closest to him. Jester is living out Tandem Collie’s worst fear: what will happen when Philip can’t remember anything anymore? What will become of their friendship? And it’s bittersweet because the King and the Jester are still friends, even though the Jester basically had to start over from the beginning. Jester Collie is quietly carrying all of those memories inside his heart of a friend who has basically disappeared while still learning about and loving the brand new person his friend has become. It’s so sweet and so sad.😭"

that's pretty much all for now It’s hard to return to drawing after the holidays. and this is not even a new art you see, but last year’s. therefore this comic cannot be considered the first work of this year sadly

[em-harlsnow]

short mini-fic 🫶

ian mainly gets tiktok because Debbie won’t shut up about it. She tells him it’s simultaneously terrible and really good, and starts posting videos of Franny to her private account. She whines that she doesn’t have enough followers, so okay, ian will bite the bullet.

he downloads it, only to see Franny. it’s pretty boring at first because the FYP hasn’t caught up to what he likes yet. eventually, though, he gets a bit more into it.

he starts following some gay or lesbian or straight (although there are fewer of those) couples on the app, watching some of their content because it’s funny. he follows people who know about gardening and people who aim to motivate you to run and eat healthy.

he’s been on it for around three weeks when he starts understanding trends. They don’t last very long, and some are kind of interesting. It’s almost like an inside joke but for the whole internet. one trend in particular, ian thinks is actually hilarious.

it’s a couple trend. it involves one person asking the other to leave while they get changed. maybe the beauty’s in the simplicity, because the reactions to it are wildly entertaining.

he just has to try it on Mickey.

he’s not gonna record, because he doesn’t really care for people knowing their private life.

Mickey’s sat on their bed on his phone when ian comes in, happily chuckling away to YouTube. ian walks over to the draws, grabbing his pyjamas so that he can change for bed.

“hey, can you leave while i get changed?” he asks Mickey, and the reaction is immediate.

“What?” eyebrows raised incredulously.

“Can you leave the room while i get changed?”

Mickey scoffs. “No.”

“Come on. I’ll be quick.” He tries to persuade.

“Then you can change here.”

“I just want privacy, i’ll literally be ten seconds.”

Mickey all out laughs at him, putting his phone down. “Privacy? fuck off with that bullshit. i’ve been up close and personal with both your cock and your ass, fuck privacy.” And then in a move ian doesn’t expect, mickey sits himself up and watches him.

“Mickeyyy, just please let me get changed. or at least turn around.” He pleads.

“No. I’m watching you get changed now.”

“Why?” Ian’s sort of running out of excuses as to why he wants to get changed away from Mickey, but he needs to continue.

“Because I like watching you get naked.”

Ian scoffs, then turns to go into the bathroom and change. Mickey grabs him by the back of his jeans and gently tugs him back to the bed.

“Is this an insecurity thing? coz you know you’re the hottest guy i’ve ever seen.” he says, blue eyes staring up at ian.

ian smirks. “thank you, and no, not an insecurity thing. i just don’t want to get changed while you’re watching me like a perv.”

Mickey smiles back. “i am your husband, we have been together ten years, i am perfectly fucking entitled to watch you like a perv. now get changed.” he grins, smacking ian’s ass to make a point.

“i feel like you didn’t do it right.”

Mickey’s eyebrows scrunch in confusion. “Didn’t do what right?”

“It’s a tiktok trend where you tell your partner that you want them to leave so you can get changed. you made it sweet.” Ian argues lightly, finally getting changed.

“fuck off. i’m not sweet. and fuck off with your toktik bullshit.” Mickey replies, and watches Ian like a perv as he strips down and pulls on his pyjamas.

“sure mick, you’re definitely not sweet.” ian states sarcastically, and Mickey rolls his eyes.

[luhverrie]

what abt going to a party with the LB boys and hcs on what each of them are doing while they're there 😛😛

I LOVE THIS!!! ENJOY MY LOVELIES <3

★┊[LB BOYS @ A PARTY] .ᐟ

🎤Fred Durst

• Shows up late, but makes an entrance—like kicks the door open with sunglasses on at 9pm sharp.

• Immediately yells something like “Yo, who wants to get this shit started!?” then disappears for 20 minutes to “take a call.”

• Dances badly but with full chest confidence. He’s got NO rhythm, but thinks he’s crushing it.

• Tries to hook up with someone in the first hour but ends up vibing out to old hip-hop and getting weirdly emotional about ‘90s rap. Fucks everything with a pulse (me🤭)

• At some point he’s outside dramatically smoking, saying “man… it’s all just energy, y’know?” to someone who didn’t ask.

• Tries to freestyle but it’s mostly yelling. People cheer anyway.

• He’s bouncing off the walls, but it’s manic. Every laugh is a little too loud, every joke a little too desperate.

• Flirting with three people at once but keeps glancing at his ex across the room.

• If you catch him alone, he’s weirdly quiet. He pulls at the label on his beer bottle and says:

“Sometimes I feel like I’m not even the guy I pretend to be.”

• Narcissistic attention whore♥️

🥁John Otto

• Comes early with a relaxed vibe, maybe carrying drumsticks or a pack of smokes.

• Starts drumming on whatever he can find—tables, cans, even kitchen counters—just for fun or to hype up the energy.

• The life of low-key moments; jokes around with people, laughs easily, brings chill energy to balance Fred’s intensity.

• Caught sneaking food from the kitchen—pizza, leftover snacks—because he’s always hungry.

• Likes to step outside to smoke and chill quietly with close friends.

• Occasionally breaks into beatboxing or playful rhythms with partygoers.

• Came stoned. Gets more stoned. Accidentally hotboxes the pantry trying to “find the chips.”

• Sitting on the floor with a half-eaten Pop-Tart, tapping rhythms on an empty 40 oz bottle.

🎧DJ lethal

• Quietly sets up the music gear and takes over the sound system to keep the party flowing.

• Mixes hip-hop, rock, and early electronic tracks seamlessly, drawing on his producer skills.

• Keeps an eye on the vibe and dials the energy up or down accordingly.

• Prefers hanging with the band or trusted friends, not the big crowd.

• Observes more than talks but has moments of dry humor and insight.

• The first to notice when someone’s having a rough night. Slides over silently, offers water, a playlist, or a hoodie from his car.

• Keeps the music going to cover the weird silences. Changes the vibe when he sees someone retreating into themselves.

• Posts up outside the bathroom like a guardian after Fred gets too drunk and starts shouting at a wall.

• Doesn’t talk about himself. Ever. But if you sit near him long enough, he starts playing loops on his little SP-202.

• If someone bumps the table? He WILL shove them. No hesitation.

• Has clearly done drugs. Maybe not tonight. But recently.

• Occasionally smirks and disappears into the night with someone he didn’t come with.

🎸Sam Rivers

• Low-key and steady, usually standing or sitting slightly apart from the loudest action.

• Approachable and grounded, willing to chat but prefers smaller groups or one-on-one conversations.

• Keeps an eye on the group dynamics, sometimes acting as the peacemaker(with Lethal) if tensions rise.

• Mellow energy with occasional dry wit or deep observations.

• Rarely the center of attention, but always respected by the group.

• Likes to keep things calm and steady, sometimes retreating when things get too wild.

• Probably broke into the host’s parents’ liquor cabinet and took the weird fancy shit.

• You find him lying on the floor, arms outstretched. You ask if he’s okay. He says,

“I’m waiting for the bassline to rise from the earth.”

• Super drunk. like… SUPER drunk.

🎨Wes Borland

• He almost doesn’t go. Tells Fred he’s got to “work on the new guitar tones” or “mess with the pedal board” or “perfect a face paint idea.” Lies. Just doesn’t want to be around people.

• Shows up late, dressed totally normal. Hoodie. Jeans. Head down. No makeup. Nothing theatrical.

• Enters the party like someone sneaking into a movie late—quiet, hoping no one sees him.

• Spends the first hour in the hallway, pretending to be texting on a flip phone (it’s dead).

• Gets cornered by some girl who’s like “Why aren’t you wearing the eyeball thing tonight?” and just gives a weak laugh.

“I’m off-duty. The alien’s asleep.”

• Actually sneaks away to the host’s garage, finds an amp, and just quietly strums weird chords to himself while sitting on the floor.

• Leaves the party in the middle of it and comes back 45 minutes later with a bag of Taco Bell for himself and no one else. Doesn’t explain it.

• Fred keeps trying to pull him into pictures and he dodges every single one like a Sims character avoiding fire.

• Someone asks him what his paint means and he says,

“It’s just a barrier. I talk more when I wear it. You don’t want to know what’s under it.”

• Ends the night sitting on the roof in the dark with Sam, not talking. Just sharing silence like it’s their secret language.

[palenutbasement]

(all scenes are depicted as platonic)

So every Inktober I try to do something more challenging, and this year I thought I would make a short comic/fanfic. I think I got the idea for this one a year ago but I was already wrapped up with another Inktober. Eventually I solidified the idea by making my own prompt list some time ago.

This comic is split into three parts with 10 days focusing on each of them, 30 in total, everything is compiled here. I wanted to post them after October in case I wanted to change anything.

This first part takes place in the summit.

The comic is basically all improvised, that means no planning for the composition, plot, or sketching any drawings. The most planning I did was write a few scripts ahead of time within the month to save me some time but most of them would be changed last minute anyways.

As for the plot, I won't go too deep into it because I don't want to talk too much, so you'll just find commentary on the making of the comic and stuff.

This first part is a little gimmick-y compared to the next two, with new elements appearing almost every day. It’s because I relied a lot on the prompts (dog, milk, etc.) to keep things happening, eventually I move further away from them.

What is surprising to me is how much the art changes as the days go by especially within the span of one month. I did refine a few things to keep it more consistent but this is nearly indistinguishable from the original drawings.

I should also mention that my favourite aspect of this project was adding references to the game and subtle details (if you can find it all, awesome!!) This may have been done quickly but I like to have those things and put at least a bit of effort into the dialogue.

Part 2

Eventually I figured that drawing the same setting for 30 days straight would drive me insane, hence why this comic is split like it is. I’m glad I did because it makes the story a little more interesting, seeing the characters have different attitudes in different places and whatnot.

This one takes place in the cave directly after pt 1. Admittedly I do better drawing outdoor settings, it's what I'm used to, but the cave wasn't so bad to figure out.

I remember these two days I was streaming drawing the comic to my friends, so I kinda zoned out while we were talking lol

One of the prompts was about napping, so I made Dwarf sleep. I believe I was tired that day too and it was therapeutic to draw and include that. Also they look cute, I think.

18 & 19 have some of my favourite drawings in the comic. The campfire lighting is what we'd get if I had a bit more energy each day, and I like the perspective in the first panel of 19.

I find this last section interesting, because of all the 30 days, it’s the only one in Dwarf’s POV. I felt like it was fitting to do something like that at the time.

Part 3

Since we were approaching Halloween, I wanted to have a special part for it. It’s related to the other two parts but it takes place some time after. I’m really sorry it’s out of season, if it were up to me I would have had this post out earlier (thank my midterms for the delay)

Out of all the other parts this one is my favourite. Maybe because it’s more recent I’m inclined to think that way but it has some of my fave moments that I've written here.

Other than that I don't have much commentary for this part. More thoughts at the end!

I was caught up everyday atp, but I didn’t have much spare time to prepare for the ending (I wrote it the morning of that day). I think this is a decent conclusion though.

I intend on coming back to this story, maybe next year to make a continuation but we'll see what happens. There are definitely things that I want to come back to someday.

Thank you for making it this far btw. It's been an eventful month for me beyond this (Untitled) comic, but there wasn't a single aspect of this that I didn't enjoy doing. It's a silly project and I care about it.

Also, I'm not going to neglect the 31st of October! That day will get an illustration, where I will pick my favourite panel and redraw it. I want to take my time with this one so it's not out yet, but hopefully I can finish by Christmas.

[biowaredisasterbisexual]

Reflection Ruesday

Thanks so much to @becausedragonage for creating this game, and to @sandcastlekings for tagging me!

Rules: Go through your writing, art, gifs, etc. that you started but never finished and find something you love. Brush it up a bit if you want and share it. Tag me and use the tag Reflection Ruesday (it'll grow on you, I promise) and I'll comment and reblog. Then tag some other folks you think might enjoy it.

I’ll send out some no pressure tags to: @basedonconjecture, @bygonesigh, @hyperions-light, @grimrevolution, @mageofquandrix, @jouskaroo, @the-sparrohawk, @theunsinkablesappho, @mythals-whore, @davrinsleftpectoral and you! If you’re reading this, you!

So my go-to move of using all my old Josie/Leliana draft work is ruined because I am apparently now cleaning those up, adding a couple pieces, and then posting them. Eventually.

That’s okay though! I have other stuff! Aaaaaand since Neve Week 2025 is coming up, I thought I’d pull out something that didn’t make it into Getting Into Trouble! So that’s below the cut.

“So, now that he’s not here…you and Rook?” Bellara asked, almost the moment they had entered her workshop.

Neve chuckled softly. She’d seen this coming, Bel was wonderful at so many things, but subtlety wasn’t among them.

She’d almost been able to feel the amusement coming off of Rook when the three of them had been in Arlathan the day before, and Bellara had said now they could solve crimes and it would be romantic. But he’d refrained from comment in an impressive, for him, exercise in self-control. Probably only achieved because Bel, unlike Davrin, hadn’t been aiming to draw a reaction out of them. She’d just been excited.

Which was very sweet.

But Neve had been certain that Bel would want more answers than that. And, now that Rook was out stirring up who knew what trouble in the Necropolis with Emmrich and Lucanis, the other woman was taking her shot.

“Yes?” Neve asked, only a slight hint of tease to her voice. “What about me and Rook?”

Neve and Rook. Speaking about them as a pair, a unit, warmed her from the inside and made her feel like she might be leaping off an insulae to her death.

“Uh….” Bellara didn’t seem to have planned a follow up, and Neve chuckled to herself quietly, but fondly.

“You two are…together, right? I mean, of course, I…is it…good? You don’t have to answer that,” came tumbling out, words running into each other as Bel spoke.

If she couldn’t talk to the other woman about this, Neve didn’t know there was anyone she could talk to about it. She and Rana were friends, after a fashion, but it was not this kind of friendship. Bellara different. They told each other most things, even when it was hard. And so she admitted, “Yes, we’re together. And…I guess that would depend on what you mean by ‘good.’”

Because it was good. It felt amazing. It was also, indisputably, crazy and a terrible idea. If she’d had had any sense at all, she should have said no. Shouldn’t have leapt in, with him.

But Rook had an endearing and irritating ability to turn all of Neve’s “no”s into “maybe”s.

She still wasn’t quite sure what to do with that.

“You…like it?” The other woman asked, seeming confused.

Neve sighed and hung her head, but smiled. “Yeah, Bel.” She admitted, looking up to meet the other woman’s eyes. “I really do. A lot.”

Too much, she knew. Because when it all went wrong, as it was almost guaranteed to do, it would hurt that much more.

Bellara grinned. “That’s great!”

Neve chuckled, but glanced away. Great? Sure. A great way to break her own heart, maybe. “Yeah.”

The other woman’s brow furrowed. “Is it…not great?”

With a long exhale as she thought, Neve looked down at her hands where they were folded over her notes. “I don’t know, Bel. He’s…he’s Rook. I feel like I’ve known him my entire life. And he’s always there for me. Charming, sweet…”

Safe. Rook was her safe place. But Neve couldn’t say that aloud.

Because that would make it real. And it would hurt all the worse when she lost it. Him.

[winxixia]

hello!! I hope this isn’t weird to send out of nowhere - I just wanted to say that I really like your Guardian’s design! Do you have any more information you can share about her? It’s okay if not, I was just curious to know if there’s more to her character!

I hope you have a lovely day today!~

(this blog technically isn’t my DQIX blog but it does also have a DQIX-themed URL, so I guess it sort of counts haha. I’m @sentinels-of-the-starry-skies!)

Pétale, duty-minded Guardian

Human age: 17-18 yo

Hair colour: turquoise

Eye colour: turquoise

Likes: colourful clothes, dancing, animals

Dislikes: disappointing her master, ungrateful mortals, ghosts, her appearance

Pétale is a serious Celestrian who’s taking her role as a Guardian very seriously – perhaps a bit too much. She tends to repress her feelings in the name of duty, though she doesn’t like to be asked for her opinion only to have it ignored in the end.

She follows the rules she’s been taught and will keep doing so, even if she dislikes them.

Her character evolved a lot through the years, and she matured along me, but her seriousness is something that stuck with her and her will to do well, though she humbly says it’s only her duty. She doesn’t understand humour very well for she takes everything literally.

As for the rules mentioned above, I imagined the following examples: a Celestrian must not show vanity, they must wear Celestrian clothes and not human clothing, they must not partake in human activities like dancing…

There is a lot I’ve been thinking about related to her future. I want her to grow through the hardships she went through, and to slowly learn how to assert herself. One thing that stayed since the very beginning is her crush/love for Aquila whom she respects a lot. However, due to everything she’s been through, she starts questioning her feelings for him and notice his flaws more often, and she no longer hesitates to give him a piece of her mind.

She’s been very lonely as a child, having lost her parents early, and despite being the youngest Celestrian, she wasn’t taken care of much. Older Celestrians had their own pupils to watch over, so, even though they would agree to teach her the basics, she learnt on her own through books and observation. Aquila greatly changed her life when he took her under his wings, hence why she feels so deeply attached to him. Because of this, and the Celestrians’ rule to not rebel against one superior, she was able to stand her ground against him very late, after they both became human.

She didn’t have many friends when she was young, and only as a pupil did she somewhat make some. But after being lonely for so long, she would rather focus on her duty and to not disappoint her master.

She’s called Pétale/Petal because at the time, I didn’t notice the Celestrians were names after birds… I wanted to give her a flower name, but they all felt too classic, unoriginal. So I went for Pétale!

She almost had pink hair & eyes because that’s my favourite colour, but then I picked blue instead, because it looked so cool… I like blue as well I suppose haha.

I always draw her with a smile but, when I’m writing her, she’s not smiling much; it’s more polite than anything. What can I say, I like seeing her smile…

She dislikes her apparence: face too round, eyes too big, hair colour too bright... She lacks confidence in it, and since she can't wear whatever she wants, it takes her a long time to accept herself and the help of the three friends she made through her journey.

I had plans to write a story settled after the events of the game… But I’m unsure about sharing them for now. I wrote the plots when I was still a teen and I’m not confident about their quality.

Thank for reaching out & asking me about her! I’m so glad someone cares enough haha! I’ve always thought of writing such post but didn’t think anyone would care… So thank you! And thank you for your patience, I know you asked about her a while ago! Don’t hesitate if you have more questions, I’ll try to answer faster! 😊

[talenlee]

Goblin, Vandal, Sugg

Every word you’ve ever used comes from somewhere. The structures you use to discuss ideas is informed by ideas that came before it. I’m not getting all Sapir-Worf about this (and if you don’t know what that is, you don’t have to know because it’s probably not true), but rather wanting to draw your attention to the way the world you live in is in part defined by the words you use. If you’re an English speaker, there are ways you describe food that are a byproduct of French invasion centuries ago. Words like ‘technocrat’ and ‘hyperspecialised’ are constructions that borrow from how intellectuals used to use Latin. Your swear words are almost all from the poor working class, and used to describe sex, god, or excrement, and that’s not how all swear words work in all cultures!

Your world shapes your language.

In any given fantasy setting you work on, you don’t usually have the same linguistic history to justify why the people there talk like we talk now. In fact, to be completely fair, they probably don’t talk like us at all: you have fantasy languages, across fantasy constructions. Any given phrase a character in your world says is probably not using the exact same words as we are and we’re all working with a sort of fictionalised fantasy that makes the concepts reasonably translate across.

There’s a whole treatise then about how we handle Native American names and loanwords that we italicise like etouffee.

Point is that you have words, in your world, and you can attach stories to them. You’ve probably seen me talk about Orcs and how they relate to language and stereotypes, along in my long post on the word ‘Orc’. Here’s another set of examples I like for my world of Cobrin’Seil, as they pertain to the best little evolved raccoons, the Goblins.

The word ‘Goblin’

In Cobrin’Seil, most people speak two languages. Most people who speak only one language speak Common, and Common is full of loanwords from other languages. ‘Orc’ and ‘Beast’ are well known loanwords. There is a word that has risen in prominence throughout all the common-speaking countries in less than seventy years, and the word it displaced is still even in functional and legal use.

The word is both new and old; new to common, but an old word to the language it’s from. This word is Goblin.

Goblins are by no means new. They’re one of the three great old cultures of the world, a social symbiote culture that pretty much exists in any given settlement of any size. It’s usually seen as a sign of health that a community can sustain Goblins — in the same way that communities that lack pets are probably culturally alienated from all the cultures that do keep pets — and if you encounter an enclave that lacks goblins, it’s often because that enclave is specifically for a purpose and has done proactive things to drive out Goblin presence. Goblins are a culture that’s as old as Orcs, older than Ogres and even most of what you’d consider modern-day Elves.

But the word Goblin was not a word in common language and descriptors that was used in dictionaries and education and technical words, until what are known as the Peoples Reform. Not People’s Reforms – but the legal system of the Eresh Protectorate (which tends to set precedents most of the rest of the world follows) formalised the idea of Peoples. For most cultures, this didn’t make a lot of changes, but it did peel out of the laws one of the largest and long-standing carve-outs for Goblins that eroded the idea of their own cultural identity and heritage. The word Goblin is encoded as the term Goblins use to describe Goblins.

Linguistically, Goblin is a funny word. It’s an omniterm; without modification, it serves as noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb and preposition and it does so in entirely intelligible ways to those contextually familiar. The sentence ‘Goblin goblin goblin goblin goblin’ is a meaningful sentence describing a party taking care of a third party because they see the commonality they have with one another. Good luck making that make sense in a sent letter though.

Goblin is possessive; in a lot of ways it can be translated to the common term ‘us,’ with some wiggle room. It’s also a comical non-answer; guards asking a Goblin ‘what are you doing?’ will often get the answer ‘goblin,’ which in this case means something like ‘being myself and doing what I should be doing,’ which is an answer but it is also unhelpful, and you have to understand how goblins communicate to get a handle on what that might mean. Goblin language is simple but contextual and it tends to highlight that goblins are extremely prosocial. Goblin language makes very little sense without the context of who is talking and about what.

There’s a real truth to the fact that many Goblins who have taken to theatre or art will write dialogue in Goblin but stage directions in Common.

But the word is new, legally, but the people aren’t. What was the change? Well, prior to the Peoples Reforms, the term the human kingdoms used for the people known as Goblins was the term Vandal.

The Word ‘Vandal’

You can’t kidnap a Goblin.

Legally, I mean.

This isn’t because Goblins were protected under the law, no no, the laws were way too racist for that. The crime was that, wherever you transported the Goblins to, the people didn’t want Goblins there, so you were committing a crime by inflicting Goblins on them. Basically, it was considered a crime to take a Goblin from one place to another, because the place the Goblin arrived didn’t necessarily consent to the presence of a Goblin.

The term for transporting a Goblin was based on an archaic term for Goblins that operated on the assumptions that Goblins were just a problem and a pest brought into any space. They were known as Vandals, a term hypothetically meaning all nonhuman troublesome cultures including Gnolls and Bugbears, because if those people arrived in a place, they’d wreck things. Funnily enough, Gnolls and Bugbears got removed from this term over time because they would usually, if it rose to legal levels, be committing much more dire crimes, and also, guards didn’t like just bullying them at random, since they were very big and tough people by comparison to the much smaller Goblin. Over time, ‘Vandal’ came to mean ‘Goblins, and behaving like a Goblin,’ and that association meant the legal term got ensnared around it. Ultimately, dropping Goblins off in a space that did not want them was the act of Vandalism. Vandal then, was a term used to not to refer to the Goblins themselves; much funnier, instead, it was the legal term for a person who committed the crime of nonconsensual transporting of Goblins.

During the Peoples Reforms, since this law already existed, the crime of Transporting A Goblin Nonconsensually remained on the books, but Kidnapping, as defined under laws, had its historical Goblin Carve-Out. Nowadays, kidnapping a Goblin is typically treated as Vandalism (Kidnapping), because tidying up old and technically incorrect laws is a lot of a pain in the butt. This even applies when the Goblins are lawyers, who as it turns out, delight in getting non-Goblins in trouble for ‘Vandalism,’ which is a catch-all term under Eresh law for ‘general goblin-like behaviour.’ And we’ll talk more about what makes something Goblin-like in the context of Cobrin’Seil another time.

The word ‘Sugg’

But there is a word, ambiguous in meaning and origin that exists in common, that most people know and that word is ‘sugg.’ It seems to indicate a sort of laziness, a restful state. If you see a Goblin curled up on a pile of playing cards, ears out, eyes closed, you might say ‘can’t use those cards, there’s a goblin sugging on it.’ Or ‘sorry man, I’m pretty sugg.’ The word is extremely ambiguous but it has a thread throughout it of being:

Indulgently lazy

Very relaxed

Overwhelming and absolute

The thing is, nobody’s too sure what it means, and when you ask people who would know, they tell you to ask a Goblin. Goblins, after all, are where the word comes from. In fact, if you ask the right goblins in the right trail you’ll find that while Goblins use the word ‘sugg’ in the same way, they think it comes from Common. Why?

Because Goblins got the word from this thing they found in established human communities. There’d be a nice small dark box, full of paper that you could just curl up in and nest in, and on the outside of the box, there’d be a notice: SUGGEST IN BOX. So they assume the Goblin who enjoys that box the most must surely be their sugg-est Goblin. Which meant paying attention to how they all sugg, and from there, the neologism was born.

Now, non-Goblins and Goblins alike use ‘sugg’, each convinced they got it from the other.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[ethanjhake]

Have you considered posting your comic here on tumblr or showing a preview instead of just links? Just links doesn't give people an idea of what the comic is about and likely won't be clicked on by new people but clips of the comic or the whole pages + external links would help pique interest more

First of all, let me apologize for taking to long to respond to this 😅

And next I want to apologize for this being such a long response.

Truth is, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Even before you sent me this ask, but I didn’t want to answer right away because I didn’t know what I wanted to do about it yet.

I think you’re definitely right, links to another site are really not the best way to draw people in, especially if you’re on mobile. And I’ve been trying to work on a better solution.

I think for a while I didn’t want to post on tumblr just because that would be another thing I would have to keep track of besides the website, webtoons, and ko-fi and patreon. But I have been considering that more and more, I think that would help make it more accessible, both in general but especially to tumblr users,which is where I think most of my current audience is from lol.

But, I’m still held back by one problem. If I post on tumblr, people can reblog it, (I know I can disable reblogs, but that feels icky to me, I don’t want to make it hard for people to share the comic.) and if they do, then I can’t really control what pages people see in what order, and that’s (generally speaking) not great for stories. I’m not so worried about spoilers, but I’m more concerned that if people are exposed to the comic pages out of order, then the story loses its power of presentation. 

I think the story of SotF is really similar to a film, and when you’re advertising a film you make a trailer. You take specifically curated shots and sound bites from the film and place them in a specific sequence to engage the viewers and make them ask questions. Questions like: “How do the main characters end up in a situation like that?”, “How do they get out of it?” “How does Jack Black do as casting for Steve?”, “Is this gonna be as good as the first movie?”. You go see that movie because you want those questions answered. (or you wait a little longer and watch a YouTube review.) 

Direction wise, it’s almost a mini film in and of itself. If you see a clip of a film by itself without any explanation, you don’t feel as engaged with it as you would if you saw that scene within the context of the movie as a whole. But it also doesn’t pique as much interest as one specific line from that scene would out of context. It’s a balance between asking and answering questions. What you give/show that makes the viewers ask questions that they want answered. 

I really don’t know how to apply all of this to advertising a comic though, and I may be making this more complicated than it needs to be lol. But I think for now at least, I don’t have enough material to advertise with anyway. I haven’t even gotten through the prologue yet! I think right now the best thing I could do for advertising is making promotional posters. And even that is something I have to budget time for.

I also thought about posting clips of some sort, but I couldn’t really figure out how to do that with the pages of comic that I’d put out so far. I would have to do it in either one of two ways: (if there’s another way let me know lol) I’d either have to post a few pages at a time, let people see what the comic is like and get invested so they actually want to click a link to see the rest (this is what I see most people doing), or I would post a snippet of one page, giving people a small glimpse of what happens so that people want to click the link to be able to read the whole page. But there were problems with each. I’m working on this comic very slowly, as I don’t have a lot of time to put towards it, so posting two or three pages all at once would amount to months of work. 

And I couldn’t really find a way to cut my comic pages into little snippets. I feel like that can compromise some of the structure of the page as a whole, since I design the pages to be viewed as a whole, to draw the viewer’s eye from here to there. If I clip it down, I don’t think your eyes would track with the page in the same way when you see the full page. I think this method works better for comics that use the infinite scroll format. At least, that’s where I’ve seen it work best.

So TL;DR: I want to up the promotion of my comic but i can't really do that at this point with the low amount of material I've made so far or without potentially compromising the experience of the story of the comic.

Thank you for sending this ask! It really made me think and helped me put these thoughts to words.

If anyone wants to comment or add to the discussion, feel free!