#i am constantly mashing everything up that interests me

[thisisworsethanitlookslike]

hii pointing the same ask back at you; do have any bonkers AUs & crossovers between interests rn 😼

See the thing about The Magnus Archives is that SPOILERS

At the end of the show Jon and Martin are taken thought a portal that leads to another universe or possibly multiple universes. Which means I’m constantly putting these two guys in my current interest.

One of my favs is TMA/Carry On bc both Simon and Jon have wonderful parallels and I even thought of an amazing plot on which all Cosmic Fear Entity’s are destroyed and all Magic Holes get restored that makes a lot of sense. Jmart being weird uncles my beloved. (I have a couple sketches)

There is a sillier Warrior Cats crossover which I made that also has a lot less serious sketches.

Also thought of a Neverafter and Witch Hat Atelier crossover (tho witch hat is an insert instead of a post cannon tma)

But what I’m trying to say is - of course I thought about jmart and ttm crew meeting and how esp Neil would be affected by the fears bc he has so much potential for multiple. And all the flavors that the Sigcorp has is just really really perfect!

Sigcorp does such an invasive procedure where all your secrets, your whole life is laid bare and that is so Eye to me. But the doctors are also somehow angels of death which is giving Terminus and Neil specifically is so so Lonely but also needs to Know and is So So So afraid of dying, The End. Do you see Cat do you???

Anyway so the plot would be - Fears (and jm) enter Sigcorp universe (maybe even unbeknownst to them as code in a simulation 👀👀👀👀👀) and the eye has chosen it’s knew stronghold and it’s Sigcorp - specifically Neil as he is somehow the heir to the laggy Lynri build up.

Jmart come investigate this new stronghold and there we have a premise that has no where to go. But wouldn’t that be fun??

[josendlessmonolouge]

Intro post

hello I’m Jo! (Well not really- it’s a shortened version of my middle name but on all internet platforms I’m Jo) I am a minor (16) so don’t be weird ig but like even if I was an adult I’d want you to not be weird. Also on a separate topic I have audhd and ocd.

I use she/they pronouns

this blog is mostly for my fandom stuff but it’s also just anything that comes to mind. So like fashion, poetry, art, and photography. I have an ancestory blog: @muscadineandwesternsuits my main fandoms currently are:

The heroes of Olympus and Percy Jackson. (I’m frank zhang’s 1# fan)

the outsiders

M*A*S*H 4077

I personally only really post about PJO and HOO but I reblog outsiders and MASH stuff

My interests: entomology, plants, nature, reading, gardening, painting, fashion, cowboys, uranium glass, vintage toys, the 1970s, beadwork, pottery, rock collecting, family history, history, epidemics (my special interest since I was 8) animals, anything Lucy maud Montgomery ever wrote, taking AP classes and then constantly complaining about constant homework, running and hiking, folk music, veterinary medicine ( I work at a vet) and like so much more I just love to learn

here’s a mood board of everything I’m all about: jo mood board

my Dni is pretty normal: nsfw blogs. Radqueer. Anyone who has anything against religious people of anykind. People who use religion to be hateful. Zionists. Terfs.

really oddly specific but if you make fun of the American south by calling it stupid or uneducated or make fun of southern accents and are not southern please leave me alone. Idk why it just bothers me because make fun of the racism or homophobia or something actually worth making fun of not the many amazing wonderful kind people. And the amazing culture that raised me into who I am.

I’m working on a tagging system so I will update this once that is set up

Jo’s closet- fashion and clothing related stuff

Jo’s closet wishlist- fashion and clothing reblogs

Jo lore??? - general irl non fandom related post

Jo’s vintage - my vintage collections and vintage

Jo’s headcanons - my head canons

Jo’s art = my art

Jo’s aesthetic= my aesthetic posts or my reblogs of stuff that are my aesthetic

jo’s chats- chatting rb

Jo’s pets-my pets

Jo’s random stuff- random stuff I like

still organizing everything so it’s taking a while and I’ll probably have to make more jo

[rll-sohi]

Some of my favourite music!

The Brave Little Abacus - Masked Dancers: Concern in So Many Things You Forget Where You Are

An incredible mash of Math Rock, Midwest Emo, some elements of Progressive Rock, and probably much more, I have no idea honestly. This is a hard album to classify; I had never heard anything like it before the first time I listened to it and still have not. I happened to come across this album when I was first getting into music and when I had first made a Spotify account, about January 2019. It immediately enthralled me, with vocalist Demirjian's harsh yet emotional vocals, the constantly innovative rhythms, and a sound unlike any I had heard before and did not know how to classify. I quickly found out: I would spend the next month consuming these new genres I had discovered called "Midwest Emo" and "Math Rock". I believe this album is what really gave me my jumpstart in music listening. If I had not discovered it I probably would have given up on personally looking for music and gone back to listening to whatever was on the radio or in media I consumed lol.

Eventually I found that Midwest Emo was not my absolute favourite genre, but this album has still influenced me to have a love for kickass riffs and any kind of experimental rock. Map of the Stars is the best song ever btw

Deerhoof - Love-Lore

Oh boy what can I say about this. A short, mathy and noisy trip of 34 minutes, but one that will stick with you for a long time. I would not hesitate much to say that Deerhoof is my favourite band; these guys have been pumping out some of the most consistently intricate and interesting arrangements For the past couple decades, and this is them at the pinnacle of those two descriptors I think. Every track on this is great, but I have to highlight 2 and 4.

The second track is, for the most part, a smooth guitar riff backed by an arrangement I can only describe as being similar to a factory assembly line; everything falls into place as if deliberated according to calculations. Satomi's mechanical vocals add to this mood, and her sugary voice keeps it interesting. A couple minutes of waiting pays off, when the guitar explodes into a new riff packed with noise and Satomi attacks her vocals with renewed energy.

Track 4 is 19 minutes, which may be daunting but is definitely worth it. Sections of dissonant guitar plucking, simple rock made enjoyable by Satomi's cheery vocals backed by Deerhoof's characteristicly noisy guitars, and even a section of very spaced notes somewhat akin to Glenn Branca's no wave classic "Lesson No. 2".

Love - Forever Changes

A 1960s Psychedelic Rock classic, but also on top of that a product of folk and classical music. This is, in my humble opinion, the best executed album ever. The instrumentation is nothing insane: vocals, acoustic guitar, drums, violins, and pretty much anything else you would find in any and every other album that those genres listed above encompass. The rhythms are not crazy either. It is the way the instruments interact with each oher that makes this album shine so much. "Alone Again Or", for example, is so dreamy, with Arthur Lee's vocals climbing up and down and doubling each other, while the violin and guitar somewhat subtly climb pitch and volume in the background until both instruments and the vocals explode for a short refrain, immediately followed by a quiet guitar solo to regather everything.

This shit really is psychedelic though, the way Arthur Lee and his army of acoustics pick you up from "Alone Again Or" and keep you enchanted all the way until the end of "You Set the Scene", which is an outright incredible closer by the way. I have listened to this album in full something well over a dozen times and it still never fails to keep me interested. I even get something new out of it everytime: truly, Forever Changes.

Radiohead - OK Computer

I am not going to spend my effort adding more words to the multiple Bibles-length amount of words already written about this album dude All I will say is that it really does deserve the hype

Mr. Ye - The Life of Pablo

This is simultaneously the funnest hip hop album ever and at other times the realest. It is certainly a mess to listen to but that kind of adds to the fu,n and more importantly, the worth of its themes. Something something Kanye knows he is flawed and tries to enjoy life regardless but it gets to him at times, which is very evident in the up and down nature of the album. Sound-wise there is obviously a lot of experimenting, as is characteristic of Kanye. Noise rock fans might be drawn to "Feedback".

Well, that is it I suppose. There are a couple of interesting albums I have been racking hours on recently, so this list may have some new additions. For now, I would like to list some honourable mentions:

Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation (Some of the coolest guitar tunings and transitions ever hoooollyyy this album is so raw)

Swans - Soundtracks for the Blind (This 2 hour and 21 minute behemoth is the most expansive album I have ever listened to. How the hell is an album at times no wave, musique concrete, and at One point EDM?? And it has a cohesive mood throughout the whole runtime?? Gira outdid himself.)

Bladee - Gluee (I apologize for listing a Bladee album along with these other titles but it is such a fun album LMAOOO)

Sweet Trip - Velocity: Design: Comfort. (This album really should not work. I think if it was order one track differently I would not have liked it. GG made me feel like I was having a stroke good album)

Polvo - Exploded Drawing (Avant-garde and post-hardcore goodness. "Fast Canoe" is great.)

[mooifyourecows]

moo there’s so much to share !!!

first of all, spotify wrapped is out and the amount of joy brought to me by looking at yours is unmatchable. ALSO i don’t use spotify so mine isn’t annual BUT i checked my apple music replay today and i think it is so telling so i will put some pictures! (also for top artists my fifth is matt maeson but i messed up my picture because i was in class and distracted)

also !! thanksgiving !! saw that you made your dinner high and i think that is so fun , and glad you didn’t get hurt or anything ! i’m so spacey already i can’t imagine cooking while inebriated (does inebriated work for things other than alcohol? would intoxicated be the right word? i’ve always thought of it as intoxicated as drunk and inebriated as high)

thanksgiving was super fun this year , and i also cooked thanksgiving dinner ! not all of it of course , but i helped with everything but the turkey and did a couple things myself ! made the casseroles and stuffing and made pumpkin cheesecake and the pie filling for the pumpkin pie ! then the other stuff we made , mashed potatoes , sweet potatoes , and brussel sprouts that i helped with all of and we also made pecan pie and cornbread stuffing and greens and stuffed mushrooms. the desserts we made were a tart with maple custard pecan crust and apple roses (left) pumpkin cheesecake (middle left) pecan pie (middle right) and pumpkin pie (right) super proud of them

and i forgot everything else i wanted to say but i am also doing very well in school !! lowest grade is 87 (and a 17 but i am working on it i just have a very big missing assignment) and i am looking into colleges and majors and what colleges are good for each major so hopefully i can find some cool places to look into more !

i hope you’re doing well and enjoying the beginning of the holiday season !!

Matt Maeson and Bon Iver = great taste

(I don't listen to enough of mitski or loona to be able to tell if that = great taste but i assume it does)

i think inebriated is mostly used for drunk but i get you 👉 though in my experience, cooking while drunk is more dangerous than cooking while high. when i'm drunk, my pain tolerance gets too high and i'm way too off center so i am pretty much guaranteed to burn or cut myself. usually burn. i think i've burned myself on the stove or oven every single time i've drunk cooked. and i usually don't realize how bad it is until the next day so that's no bueno! don't drink and cook, unless you are not using harmful tools or have the supervision of a sober person! meanwhile when i'm cooking while high, it just takes me like… double or triple the amount of time to complete tasks because i constantly forget what i'm supposed to be doing, or get so enraptured in what i'm doing that everything else fades away and I've been doing the same thing for an hour when it was supposed to only take ten minutes

EITHER WAY, this is me being a responsible adult: don't do drugs or drink alcohol and then do potentially dangerous things

your food looks delicious babe, im glad you had fun and had lots of yummy stuff to eat 🖤

Congrats on your good grades too! good luck looking for schools and majors but make sure you don't stress out too much about that stuff. it's totally natural and expected that you change your mind about what you want to do. nobody should have to make a decision about the rest of their life when they're just a teenager! don't be afraid to test things out first, go to school undeclared for a few years if you want, just to try out different courses and learn where your true passions lie! There are so many jobs and fields out there that you don't even KNOW about when you're a teenager but could discover from just experimenting with classes that interest you. so don't feel like you gotta pick something and then stick to it for the rest of your life! Change your mind a million times, I highly encourage it 🖤🎉

thank you for the cute pup pictures 🌈

[erodasfishtacos]

can you write something about cheating harry and yn acting like a proper couple in front of anna, like harry with his arm around her and kissing her head and stuff, and anna is just standing there fuming and maybe tries to get physical with yn

Love Your Broken Pieces

-

warnings: cheating; mentions of trauma and domestic abuse

if you enjoy please consider donating $3 to my ko fi.

(any donations over $15 get a guaranteed blurb written of their choosing!)

reblog, like, comment, & come chat!

-

YN really really didn’t want to go out.

She wasn’t going to tell Harry that because it was a celebratory dinner for him because he’d just won Entrperur of the yearand she wasn’t going to ruin it.

It’s not that she didn’t want to celebrate his achievement.

She was so so proud of him but her therapy session had got moved up a day because the therapist had to go out of town.

YN didn’t want to bother him so she had went herself without telling him.

It was trauma-focused therapy which meant it was intensive, draining, and overall triggering at time.

Today had sparked a new memory that she had suppressed and she was really struggling to get through the day without his support.

She shouldn’t need him for everything. It wasn’t fair to him.

So she’d sat on her bed for thirty minutes before she managed to pull on a nice dress before curling her hair - zoning out and accidentally burning herself lightly.

Harry had to pick up Anna, offered to pick up YN.

“Hey pup, y’want me t’pick you up on the way?” Harry had called while she was swiping on mascara.

“No, I’ll just Uber,” YN try to keep her tone light but couldn’t stomach sitting in the car with that disgusting woman right now.

“No, let me come get you,” He insists, always preferring to drive her around over some stranger.

“I really don’t want to be in the car with Anna, okay? Just drop it,” YN replies a bit too tersely.

There’s a pregnant pause.

“What’s wrong, puppy?” Harry knows her much to well.

She couldn’t help but bristle, “Nothing. I just have to get ready. Okay? I’ll see you there.”

YN shouldn’t have hung up like that but her hands were shaking and it was taking all of her might to pull herself together to go.

“It’s all your fuckin’ fault your mum hates me,” Her dad had spat at her, right in the kitchen after dinner.

“Fuck,” She mumbles to herself as she drops her lipstick and it rolls under the dresser.

—

She canceled two Ubers before she found a driver who didn’t seem intimidating.

It made her fashionably late, everyone already seated, and it doesn’t make it any better when Anna greets her.

“About time. Can’t even make it at a respectable time for your supposed best friend’s dinner.”

Anna and Gemma both make a grimacing face at the rude comment but Harry interrupts before they interject, “S’okay, Uber’s can be a pain in the arse.”

“Er, yeah. The Uber…” YN mumbles lowly, there was an empty seat across from Harry that had been saved for her.

She could feel Harry’s eyes following her, studying her as she kept her head down and looked on the verge of tears.

“You look too much like your goddamn mother.”

“What d’you want to drink?” Harry asks softly, tapping her foot under the table.

“God Harry, she’s not a child,” Anna rolls her eyes as she glances over her menu.

Harry glares over at her with a strict warning glance that she needs to change her attitude or there is gonna be an issue.

“Just water,” YN replies, swallowing hard.

He knows somethings wrong when she doesn’t bite back at her, instead looking down at the menu like it’s the most interesting thing ever.

Harry had already known by the phone call.

There were quite a few people at the dinner, constantly engaging him in conversation as YN kept to herself.

It’s after the appetizer’s arrive that he can’t stand her fake smiles and attempts to seem like she’s enjoying herself.

“Outside, now,” Harry says firmly, not a question but a statement.

“Harry, don’t,” Anna huffs, not liking the private attention her enemy is about to get.

“I don’t remember askin’ you,” He hisses under his breath before following YN’s retreating figure to the main entrance.

They end up in the small alleyway, “Tell me what’s going on.”

YN’s eyes are moody, putting back on a nonchalant expression that would work for anyone but him, “I’m fine, I don’t know why you’re making a big deal. Let’s go enjoy your dinner.”

Harry backs her up against the brick wall, hand over her shoulder, “We’re not goin’ anywhere until you tel me. M’not stupid.”

It triggers something because she starts sniffling, whispers, “You’re going to be mad at me.”

His hard facial features relax, pressing his forehead to hers, “Please pup, y’know I love you no matter what.”

“My therapist moved our session to today. I went and uh…” YN begins to full on cry, burying her face in her hands.

“C’mon, tell me,” He encourages softly.

“It triggered a repressed memory. I…I didn’t want to ruin tonight for you. I fuck up everything for you already,” She chokes out, letting him pry her hands away.

“Puppy,” He murmurs with a laugh of disbelief, “I fuckin’ wake up everyday because of you. You make my life worth livin’. I’m not happy unless y’are.”

“I just…didn’t want tonight to go like this,” YN sighs quietly, “One night without my trauma.”

“Hey, hey. We’re workin’ through it together, yeah? It takes time. Y’made the effort to come and that means more to me than anything else,” He says truthfully, tilting her chin up.

Harry melts a bit when she leans up to give him a lightening fast peck, “I am so proud of all your accomplishments.”

“Wouldn’t have done any of it without you, sweet girl,” He rubs a thumb under her eye to wipe off a streak of makeup.

They stand outside for a minute longer in a tight hug.

-

When they walk back into the restaurant, Harry quietly asks Gemma to switch YN seats which she graciously agrees without a fuss.

Anna is shooting daggers at YN while the change happens and Harry pushes in her seat for her.

The whole dinner consists of Anna fuming and hanging on every single movement between the two despite her hand on Harry’s thigh.

When he scoops up a bit of his mashed potatoes and feeds them to YN, laughs when she makes a face at the amount of chives mixed in.

It’s like he doesn’t even noticed the casual arm he occasionally throws around the back of YN’s seat as they chat.

“Harry,” YN scolds with a small smile when he steals a shrimp from her plate when she’s not looking.

Anna had shrimp too and he didn’t look once to do that to her.

“S’good, here, have a bite of m’steak. Know Y’don’t like it rare but s’good. I promise,” He encourages, cutting her a thick piece.

How the fuck did Harry know how YN liked her steak?

He didn’t even remember Anna’s favorite color.

“Y’gettin’ sleepy?” Harry whispers to YN towards the end of the meal, his lips are nearly brushing her ear and Anna pinches his thigh hard.

“Fuck,” Harry replies, flinching away from the pain as he turns to his girlfriend, “Wha’ did you do that for?”

“Can you pay at least a little bit of attention to me? I’m your girlfriend despite how much YN wants to pretend she is,” Anna says haughtily, loud enough for her to hear.

Harry is about to snap on her but instead YN speaks up first, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know jealously was on the menu. Eat up, Anna.”

Anna begins to sneer but Harry says, “Why don’t you go take a second in the bathroom? Then we can talk, okay?”

With a little stubbornness, she does - stomping away from the table without looking back at YN who had rolled her eyes.

“Y’on my menu tonight? A bath and cuddle sounds nice,” He offers to his love, thumbing her upper thigh.

“So nice,” YN agrees, “Can we use that sugar cookie bath bomb?”

“Of course, anythin’ you want, m’pup,” Harry hums sweetly, kissing the top of her head.

Anna is walking back when she sees it.

He’s cheating on me.

It flashes through her mind but she pushes it away because she reminds herself that YN is a pathetic little clingy girl who Harry wouldn’t ever like that way.

—

Later that night, Harry holds YN as she recount her memory.

Praises her for being so strong.

Kisses her because he loves her so much it hurts most days.

Assures her that he’ll love her even if she’s never ‘fixed’.

Promises that he’ll never let anyone hurt her again.

—

I’d love feedback 🥺

taglist babies (thank you): @dioc4ne @hazgoldenstyles @harrysdimple05 @wonwooen @ficnarry @leeroysdancer @harrysloveheart @harryscherrysugar @pradastardust @rish-haz @wildcstdrexms @evanstylestan @wisetoadbonkbiscuit @meredithhuntt @tpwkvictoria @lovely-him @haymix @eiffelmezarry @pilgrim-harry @soullessbabee @afterglowstyles @tulsasjesus @elenagilbert01 @meh–mood @pretty-pop-princess-hs @msolbesg @localfalsegodstan @evanjh @i-just-like-fanfics @harrys-hs-gf @lightsupdoyouknowwhoyouare @afterglcwswift @harrystyles-tpwk @amyvandijk @godilovetheenglishx @harrys-cherrry @theprofessionalfanby @your–sweetest–downfall @la-cey @bdbtchdir @killerqueencapstan @elizabeth23567 @camflowervol6 @its-a-finee-line @rish-haz @solonelytobe @nav1234 @harrynamjoon @hopefullimaginer123 @westallenhes @awesomebooklover17 @will-be-a-fineline @vasilikir5 @your–sweetest–downfall @pretty-pop-princess-hs @harrynamjoon @harrypinks @ivyirenehoax @harryspink @sunsetcurve-h @goldenstylesh @mouthfulloftoothpastehs @hello-34583 @prettylovley @nicolecarsley @lamariettes @imavirginhoe @unknown7549 @mellamolayla @kiwitsayedsugar

[drosselmeyerwrites]

Random SessKag thoughts for the day...

One of those things those of us who sit on the SessKag side of the Inuyasha fandom constantly see is the following: "I just don't get SessKag! The pairing doesn't make any sense!"

What if I told you that a chunk of us SessKaggers would agree?

I'm serious. Looking at the true canon material (not Yashahime), there is arguably nothing there to attest to any sort of romantic relationship interest. And I'm the SessKagger who would argue that if another SessKagger is saying otherwise? Yeah, those are shipper goggles. To each their own - but shipper goggles.

So, if this is the case, what makes people flip over to SessKag?

In short, it's the stories themselves. Not just any stories. But the ones that don't pretend there was something there before when there wasn't. It's the stories that take two unlikely characters and make them experience something that flips their known world on its head and changes the path of their lives. And this is a necessary story component because what existed canonically before isn't enough to make the case for the pair.

But, in the end, these are the stories that manage to do just that and give people pause, making them go, wait a minute, that works. Why does that work?

Briefly? Good plots and character development. Never underestimate the power of character development. Giving one of our canon characters an arc that is done well enough to justify a change in themselves or a change of heart is needed. And when it's done right? It's not OOC because the argument for why this was a reasonable outcome is tied right into the process of developing the story.

While there are always exceptions, we commonly see a recurring mention of particular stories among SessKag fans that brought them over to the ship. Resmiranda's Tales from the House of the Moon and RosieB's Beside You in Time are two such examples.

More often than not, these ship-changing works are stories that would fall into the category of epic fanfiction - 200K+ word undertakings that span conflict, adventure, and then the eventual romance built through the experiences they bear together. They are huge creative works and make the case for the pairing by taking the time to do it thoroughly.

And in the end, esp. given the plethora of issues that are intrinsic to Inuyasha's canonical pairings, new SessKaggers make the flip because these stories just did relationships better. That's not to say that other pairings don't have stories that do similarly. In fact, given the problems with the canonical relationships, I truly hope they do - because they all need a starting point for making things make better sense.

But I spent years as an InuKag fan. Die-hard. Wrote and everything, though that's a penname I now leave to the wind and hope doesn't resurface because I was younger then and cringe at the writing. But the second I was exposed to an epic SessKag piece? The moment it sucked me in? I flipped sides. And it was because SessKag simply did it better. And overall, as an "older" Inuyasha fan now? I've found SessKag to also typically account for matters that are more mature and more pertinent to where I am in my stage of life. There's all kinds of fanfiction out there to enjoy, and it should be enjoyed. And because this is not a dissertation, there are going to be more generalizations in this post about fanfiction and the ships than I'd like, so consider that, please. But the one thing about SessKag that has always stood out to me is the ability of some authors to make a case for what truly is an unlikely, non-canon pairing. And they do it so well that it opens up an entire new world.

There's so much more to be said involving character analysis, psychology, and how these things mash together to further make a case for the pairing when it's done right. But if you're one of those who sits back asking why? I would suggest starting with and epic SessKag fic. Yes, it's a time investment. And even among those, not all are the same.

But in the end, even if you do not jump ship, it might help you understand the why a little better.

Maybe not. And if that's the case, don't yuck other people's yum and whine about it on social (barring shit like S*ssR*n, but that's another topic of conversation with different implications). Enjoy your ships, and stop being concerned about why other people enjoy theirs.

Unfortunately, I'm going to include yet again the all assholes, pedo-apologists, and child abuse apologists will be immediately blocked warning as standard anymore because one side of the fandom can't bothered to act like adults anymore.

[nimuetheseawitch]

001. MASH. GIVE ME ALL THE DETAILS.

002. HAWK AND BEEJ, OBVIOUSLY

003. RADAR O'REILLY

Sorry I left this in my ask box so long. Here we go again :)

001 | MASH

Favorite character: I'm on such a Hawkeye kick right now. I just love the way he loves: so fully and completely and sometimes excessively. He loves passionately and he loves passion. He gives and gives and gives of himself and has a surprisingly large capacity for love. And he's whiny and annoying and full of faults and simultaneously expects everyone to love him and reject him at the same time. He is full of contradictions. He is a bisexual folding chair of a man.

Least Favorite character: Zale. He gets very little character except to be antagonistic towards Klinger. What does he even do?

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): inspired by @thebreakfastgenie, one of my new favorite non-canon ships is Hawkeye/being okay. Klinger/Soon Lee, Charles/Donna, Hawkeye/BJ/Peg (OT3), and Hawkeye/almost everyone. I want him to have slept with pretty much everyone in camp and just be a great friend to everyone later. It's practically canon, but I want to open it up to all genders.

Character I find most attractive: Margaret in that halter top...

Character I would marry: I think I constantly change my mind on this, but today I would marry Bigelow.

Character I would be best friends with: Mulcahy. I dunno, today I'm really feeling like talking about religion with someone, and he'd be up for all my weird thoughts on it.

a random thought: my mind is currently stuck on all the impressions they do of Mulcahy...

An unpopular opinion: Charles is right - Mahler is good. And he wasn't playing Mahler's 5th loud enough. That opening should be eerily quiet, one lone trumpet into the void, and then a cascade of sound. Performing that symphony so many times is probably a big contributor to my tinnitus.

My Canon OTP: Klinger/Soon-Lee. It was short but oh so sweet. They didn't know each other for long, but the contrast was incredible. The way she was fighting against the entire concept of the army and Klinger was shaken out of his complacence to help her, and then she cares too much about him and leaves him behind but he cares too much about her and follows her closer to the front. And how she wanted to see him in a dress. And they look so damn happy. And they're gonna get three weddings: MASH, Korean, and Lebanese.

My Non-canon OTP: Hawkeye/BJ. I feel a little disappointed in myself, but I have to be honest. It's popular because it's good. They're a hot mess, and I love them for it. I also wanna fix it. And make it worse. And I'm a sucker for a mustache and suspenders (and so is Hawkeye).

Most Badass Character: Klinger. Like Ginger Rogers, he did everything his fellows did, but in heels (and probably backwards sometimes). And he can read, write, and speak in at least two languages with vastly different alphabets. He's brilliant and gorgeous and has an excellent eye for style.

Most Epic Villain: The constant trauma of war dredging up the traumas of their childhoods. I posted recently about this, and it's constantly on my mind. The war affects them all in different, unique ways. Hawkeye and his reversion to childhood and his pattern of repressing traumatic events, Charles and his obsession with what it feels like to die, BJ's attempts to control his life at home, Frank's clinging to Margaret and to "patriotism," and so much more. Their coping mechanisms often hurt them as much as they help, and it's all kinds of fucked up. And the Army preys on it.

Pairing I am not a fan of: Frank/Margaret. I mean, I love their dynamic, and it's a really interesting part of the show, but she has always deserved more. And Frank brings out the worst in her. Her character growth really takes off once she leaves him.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): POC characters. Ginger and Oliver had a few excellent bits and then just disappeared from the show. Captain Sam Pak was amazing and seemed like he would be a recurring character, but we only saw him a few times. It took them until season 11 to give Kellye an episode. When Klinger decorates, they spew racist garbage and laugh at him.

Favourite Friendship: I'm really into Hawkeye and Margaret right now. They're not always close, but she is able to take him down a peg when she needs it, and she has a huge capacity for kindness. She loves as hard as Hawkeye, but she shows it differently. They take a while to find their groove, but once they do, they're amazing.

Character I most identify with: Hawkeye. I think we're really supposed to identify with him, and I'm pretty sure my brain is cherry-picking bits of his character to make it work, but I just feel connected with him on some fundamental (and probably really fucked up level).

Character I wish I could be: Absolutely none of them. The 50s were bad for people like me, and a war is a terrible place. And they're all incredibly fucked up. I admire many of them, but I never want to have to be that strong.

002 | Hawkeye/BJ

When I started shipping them: subconsciously forever. More actively, probably last September/October during my 2021 rewatch. I'd thought it before (I've been rewatching it frequently since 2012), but it started rotting my brain around "Rudyard Kipling" this time around, and it brought me to MASHblr.

My thoughts: I wish they could make each other happy. I want to torture them, I want to see them in every imaginable scenario, I want to see them together, I want to see them yearning and apart, and I just want more of their absurdity.

What makes me happy about them: the way they laugh at each other's stupid jokes.

What makes me sad about them: they just don't seem like they'll ever be able to make it work.

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: Peg erasure. And bi erasure. I have read fic that convinces me of the comphet of it all for BJ, but he does love Peg, and that needs to be handled well. And Hawkeye is bisexual (or pansexual) and no one can convince me otherwise.

Things I look for in fanfic: Gotta have some angsty BJ who is struggling to process feelings. It's all about the characters for me, so I'm looking for interpretations that align nicely with mine, or do something new and interesting.

My wishlist: asdflsdkjf, I don't know. I want them to be happy, I want them to be sad, I want them to be a complete mess. But recently I really wanted more modern hospital AUs.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: BJ with Peg or possibly fucking up his entire life and ending up alone and regretful (can you tell I love him?). Hawkeye with someone new, not anyone from MASH. Or maybe with Trapper (Trapper's got some things to answer for too, but there have been some excellent versions of them getting together after the war).

My happily ever after for them: In a cute Victorian in San Francisco that's technically split into two apartments (for propriety), with Erin every other week (the rest of the time she's with Peg and her wife). OR neighboring houses/a duplex with matching lavender marriages. BJ working on a motorcycle while Hawkeye knits and talks. Lying on the couch/bed, Hawkeye somehow comfortable while awkwardly wrapped around or on BJ, who is sitting like a normal person but absentmindedly stroking whatever part of Hawkeye is closest while they read medical journals or do chartwork. Domestic bliss. Reading glasses when they get older. Maybe Peg takes Waggles and BJ and Hawkeye get two cats. Or they keep Waggles and get two kittens who annoy the heck out of him lovingly as he ages. Umm. I uh, maybe need to go write some fic now. About Waggles and Marlene (Dietrich) and Edith (Piaf), their cats. brb.

003 | Radar O'Reilly

How I feel about this character: I have complex feelings about him. How many times does he lose his innocence/possibly his virginity? I was tired of that plotline the first time. But I love the weirdness of his psychic abilities (when he responds to things Potter is writing/thinking!) and how he is sometimes a vegetarian? He's weird and wonderful.

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: I dunno. I actually really like that one girl he meets at the airport near the end of his run. And there was at least one fic I read that implied that he ended up with Park Sung, which I love.

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Henry. I don't think I can say more without crying.

My unpopular opinion about this character: I don't know if this is unpopular, but Radar was wrong about how he got mad at Hawkeye. I kinda hated his hero worship of Hawkeye.

One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon: I wish they had let him grow up a little better. They kept rewinding him to make him so naïve, and I wish he'd had the chance to grow a bit more as a person.

Favorite friendship for this character: Klinger. I wanted more of whatever was happening with the practice proposal that one time.

My crossover ship: I just had the idea that he meets Shawn from Psych, and I don't know what's going to happen, but it sounds fun.

[redhead-batgal]

Thanksgiving Prompt List

Because you should never skip thanksgiving or pie 🥧.

“ITS TURKEY TIME!”

“There’s pumpkin pie, chocolate pie, cherry pie, Apple pie, lemon meringue pie, coconut cream, banana cream pie, key lime pie…. Do I need to go on?”

“Thanksgiving is for giving thanks” “And for body slamming each other during the family football match!”

“I don’t care if it’s tradition, I am not killing a live turkey.”

“UGH I’m so stuffed you could used me as a bowling ball.”

“It’s time for hand turkey’s everyone.” “HECK YES!”

“I swear to all that is holy, if you don’t get your ass out of my fucking kitchen, you’re going in the turkey.” 

“Carmel apples, leaves falling down. What could better then November?” “I don’t know maybe fucking June?”

“You want me to meet your what?” “Family, I want you to meet my family. It’s thanksgiving after all.” “I don’t believe in families or thanksgiving.” 

“HAPPY NOVEMBER!” “No one wishes anyone a happy November.” “Well I just did.” 

“Christmas-” “DON’T YOU DARE.” 

“I think you might have gone a little overboard with the food.” “There’s no such thing as overboard during Thanksgiving!” 

“What do you mean you don’t have Thanksgiving plans everyone has Thanksgiving plans!” “Well I don’t” “Yes you do you’re coming with me.”

“Who wants seconds?”

“How in the hell did you get a black eye?” “Me and my brother were fighting over the wishbone... let’s just say it broke.”

“You will turn on the Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade” “But the game-” “The game can wait, the parade is tradition!”

“Are these instant mashed potatoes?”

“What in the hell is sweet potato casserole?”

“You don’t eat turkey on thanksgiving? Then what do you eat?” “Ham.” 

“There is no such thing as Thanksgiving music.” “I have a three hour long playlist that begs to differ.” 

“Mac and Cheese must be on the menu, it’s not Thanksgiving without it.” 

“How in the world did you set the kitchen on fire... but still keep the turkey frozen?”

“Tofu turkey? For Thanksgiving?” “(They/them/he/she)’s vegetarian.” ‘Well they can suck it up for one day. I want a normal turkey!”

“We must watch a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving it’s the best movie to watch.” “I think Addams Family Values is pretty good too.” “.... Let’s watch both, I wanna see the blonde chick get cooked alive.”

“I don’t care if it’s cliché, it’s Thanksgiving, I’m gonna drink a pumpkin spice latte.” 

“Pizza?” “We have a tradition of constantly trying to make Thanksgiving dinner only to nearly burn the house down and order pizza.” 

“FOOD FIGHT!” “NOT MY PIE YOU FUCKERS.”

“You put marshmallows on potatoes?” “They’re sweet potatoes.” “No, no.” 

“WHY IS IT SNOWING? NO NO, I REFUSE. GO AWAY SNOW! IT’S THANKSGIVING NOT FUCKING CHRISTMAS!!!!”

“I’m thankful we didn’t burn down the house this year.”

“You spent how much money?” “It’s for Thanksgiving dinner, I’m thankful that it’s not me whose paying the bill though.”

“OH THANKSGIVING TURKEY, OH THANKSGIVING TURKEY, HOW BLACK AND BURNT YOU ARE!”

“I’m thankful for all of you losers, you keep my life interesting.” 

“I’m thankful for everything... please pass the salt.” “You can’t do that.” “Fine, I’m thankful for alcohol, drugs, guns and explosions, please pass the salt.” 

“You have been eating chicken nuggets every Thanksgiving since when?” “They’re Dino chicken nuggets one, and two I’m too broke to buy a turkey. Chicken nuggets go for like ten bucks for two hundred of them. One turkey’s like thirty dollars.” 

“She made homemade peach cobbler, chocolate pie, rolls, a turkey, mashed potatoes, Mac and cheese and a pumpkin roll in one day... is she a god?” 

“You can’t have that entire pie to yourself.” “I made it I can do what I want with it.”

“Alright, who spiked the Thanksgiving punch?”

“I don’t like thanksgiving.” “You’re only saying that because your pie didn’t win the contest last year.” “You were the judge, what do you expect me to be happy about it?” 

“Uh, I’m pretty sure that turkey is supposed to be dead.” 

[d-criss-news]

1883magazine.com

Darren Criss

On his new EP ‘Masquerade,’ the multi-talented Darren Criss welcomes everyone to the party.

Throughout his career, Darren Criss has never been one to shy away from boundaries. As an actor, he has won numerous awards and critical acclaim for his portrayal of Andrew Cunanan in Ryan Murphy’s award-winning drama American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, as well as hearts and a cult-like following for his portrayal of Harry Potter in Team Starkid’s A Very Potter Musical. As a musician, his talent shows the same range; he is as well known for his ability to belt a broadway ballad as he is for his covers of Top 40 hits on Glee.

For Criss, this is because all music is simply music. Musicians and listeners alike need not box themselves into certain genres and while this concept is currently growing in mainstream media, it is one Criss has known since he was a teenager. At Warped Tour, he encountered fellow San Franciscans Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, a punk-rock cover band that specializes in the unexpected (their most played track on Spotify is Country Roads.). Inspired by what he’s always known was possible, Darren’s career has had freedom most artists take years to explore — and with his new EP, it’s clear that is the most recent chapter.

‘Masquerade’ is an exploration into Criss’ more eclectic side with each track on the record representing a different persona or masque for the artist. The overt character-driven quality of the EP lends not only to allowing fans to learn more about Darren Criss, but also to create a project where something can be found for everyone.

1883 Magazine spoke to Darren Criss about his perception of genre, his new EP, and the curse of creative people.

Congratulations on ‘Masquerade’. I love it. It’s so fun!

Fun is a very fair adjective, I would agree.

I feel like there’s a very cohesive vision or aesthetic to it. When you set out to make the project, did you have this end goal in min  or were you just making music?

Yes and no. First and foremost, when you’re dealing with the whole of what an artist does, there are so many different facets that make the whole piece. To start, I’m just a songwriter — that’s the main thing that seeds everything else. But, because I’m a creative person, I’d like to think that I have a somewhat cohesive vision for my projects. However, you can conjecture and pontificate over what you want to happen, but ultimately a project is going to come out how it does. The thing that ties it all together, hopefully, is the artistry of the music or the person’s voice. When I heard you say “cohesive” my mind was like, “Phew!” Because we’re all scatterbrained people and we just constantly pray other people somehow think that we planned something or we had it envisioned all along, so to hear that is an enormous relief.

That being said, I had hope for how the EP would come together. I’ve been leaning into this notion of a character-driven song. The dirty secret about that is all songs are character-driven; all art is character-driven in some way or another. I just use that wording to aide folks that might be perceiving me as an actor and to apply that methodology to music.

How so?

I always thought it was a bit of an unfair double standard — where actors can be in a horror movie or romantic comedy — and we’re still behind that person as an actor. Actors can put on a prosthetic nose or a wig and do different things to service whatever story they’re doing. Historically music has been a little trickier, but now I think that’s changing. I’ve always been a self-proclaimed genrephile. I love so many different kinds of things. Growing up it was difficult for me to really assert this without confusing people. Now, that kaleidoscope has shifted in my favour, because people are more into eclecticism and musical diversity due to playlist culture and the whole homogeneity of everything. I’m employing this notion of being an actor and being behind a character and applying it to music by treating each song as its own kind of character. I want the art to correspond with that.

That’s an interesting concept to apply to music.

I know that everything I just said is horrifically more cerebral than it needs to be. If you like the music and it’s fun, great. I’m just trying to help people out that might be confused by perhaps some of the cognitive dissonance that’s happening between some of the styles. At the end of the day, it’s an artist’s voice, literal singing voice, and heart voice — what they have to say and how they say it — that tie everything together. People are more accepting of that than they used to be. This is exciting for me because I finally got to lean into something that I’ve always leaned into my entire life.

The last EP you released was ‘Homework’ in 2017. How do you think you’ve grown as an artist since then?

For me, obviously, there’s personal growth and professional growth. I think my growth is much more technical — getting better at recording music or being able to translate abstract ideas into physical recording — the things that I don’t think necessarily would be seen on the records. Again, much like an actor, ‘Homework’ was me playing the part of making a very low-key, singer/songwriter record. I’m a big believer in dressing for a party. I had some singer/songwriter songs that I wanted to honour. Each record I release shows a different version of myself that I haven’t gotten around to sharing.

The songs on ‘Masquerade’ are not like, “oh man in the past few years, I’ve suddenly become this person.” The EP was me finally getting in touch with my more Garage Band musician roots that I hadn’t been able to flex. It made sense to me to finally make this music. I had linked up with people that I thought could help me bring it to life in a way that hadn’t been done before and I felt like the timing was right. As I mentioned, it seemed like audiences might be a little more privy to this kind of thing.

I don’t want to be so stubborn as to think that there hasn’t been growth. I’ve been so lucky as an actor, that I’ve been busy as an actor. The only obstacle to me putting out more music, which I wish I was doing all the time, is time. I’m not an artist that just shows up, sings, and checks out. I’m writing, I’m producing, and I’m really in the weeds. It takes a great deal of investment, emotionally and mentally when I make music.

So, when you say, “you wish you were always releasing music,” do you mean to imply you have more music or at least ideas for more music?

I think the curse of creative people is that our ideas move faster than our bodies can execute. What this inevitably will create is a huge queue of unattended things that you will always be haunted by. From there, you have to catch as catch can. At any given moment, there’s still so much more in the queue that I want to put out. It literally took a global shutdown for me to finally have the time to look at the said queue, and say, “Okay, which project do I not only really want to do, but also do I have the resources to do and do I think fits into where I am right now?” Because I’m very cognisant of l where I am in my career. I have this huge selection of songs and when I have the time to focus on music, I go through and pick the ones I think fit where I am mentally and how I think other people are feeling.

With all these different genres of music you’ve released and all the music-centric projects that you’ve been a part of, is there a type of music that you enjoy performing the most?

I would say everything, but I don’t mean that in a way to just include everything. By nature, I’m a dot connector; I like shortening the distance between two things as much as possible and showing people how they can coexist. It’s my MO personally and professionally. Genre, while it has a lot to do with the cultural background and history of a type of music, is the boxes that we’ve arbitrarily made up to categorize and market music. I’m completely nondenominational when it comes to genre because all I can hear is chords, melody, and lyrics. It’s never been separated to me. When I’m performing live, I relish getting to lean in and bring together genres. I love using the setlist to show an audience how similar different genres are. For example, I’ll play a punk rock song and right after that I’ll sit at the piano and sing a ballad. My voice will be a little different, but it’s still my voice. Just like in acting, no matter what character an actor is portraying, it’s still their face and their body. Trying to minimize a distance between genres when I perform is an exciting prospect because I like getting audiences to rethink what they think they know about the differences between genre and how really at the end of the day it’s all just storytelling. So…I like performing it all.

I didn’t say you couldn’t say you liked everything. [Chuckles] That’s a perfectly acceptable answer.

I like putting all of it together specifically to show the similarities. Historically, all the great steps forward in a new kind of art form have been by mashing two or three seemingly unrelated things together. It’s happening constantly. It’s happening right now. Culture is a constant conversation back and forth. It’s a sharing of ideas that ebb and flow to create something new. I’m not saying that I’m taking part in this ancient conversation, but I’m certainly enjoying it. When I see pieces of it that I would like to showcase, I jump at the opportunity to do so.

Since ‘Masquerade’ has been in your creative bank for a while, what would you say inspired it?

Every song has its own inspiration. The album doesn’t really have an inspiration. If anything, I’m trying to make sure that I can show up for myself. I feel like with everything that I’ve done musically, I haven’t gotten to represent who and what I am and what I do. To me, this EP gets me closer to that goal. I still think that only a small percentage of me has been represented and that’s just because of time. I haven’t been able to focus on music in the way that I’d like, but ‘Masquerade’ is a huge stride for me.

Speaking of you being on Broadway, Elsie Fest is Sunday! On top of it just being exciting because it’s back, it’s your first public gig in almost two years. What did you miss most about the festival?

Listen, even without a global pandemic to worry about, putting on a music festival is hard enough. It’s one of my favourite times of the year because I’m very proud of what we’ve built and what we’ve continued to build and expand upon over the years. There’s been a community that has been built around not only people that come to the festival but people that have been part of it. I’ve followed these performers’ careers and I’ve been really grateful that we got a piece of their magic and got to be part of their journey at Elsie Fest. Magic which I can’t take credit for. I just lucked out with having incredible people perform. Over the years, we’ve had Cynthia Erivo perform twice. The first time she premiered a song called ‘You Will Be Found’ from a musical that would open in a year called ‘Dear Evan Hansen.’ We premiered a song from a movie called ‘The Greatest Showman.’ Keala Settle went on to win a Golden Globe for that song. Last year, we had a young girl from Disney sing for us — her name was Olivia Rodrigo. Those are just three examples. There’s been a lot of people that I’ve been thrilled to see do their thing. This year we have an incredible lineup. Barlow & Bear are coming, along with Jordan Fisher, Adrienne Warren, Pentatonix’s Kirstin Maldonado, and Alex Brightman. It’s gonna be great.

The obvious and the biggest answer is getting to perform live within as much of a safe and comfortable environment as humanly possible. Luckily we’re an outdoor festival, so that’s already to our advantage. I will be performing this new EP, but there is also a lot of music to catch up on and a lot of music I want to share. I’m mainly excited to share it with other human beings. I look at performing as a service industry. Everything that I do isn’t worth a whole lot unless other people experience it because it takes on a life of its own. The audience is not there for me & I’m there for them. I’m trying to service an experience that’s bigger than both of us and create something that couldn’t have been there if both parties were on their own.

Before I let you go, I need to tell you that Tramp Stamp Granny’s is one of my favourite bars in LA. I’m obsessed! I haven’t made it back yet. Like I said earlier, the editor Kelsey is also one of my best friends and when she comes, it’s top on my list of places to take her.

Really?! That makes me so happy. You couldn’t have said a better thing. We’re open again to limited capacity. We require vaccinations cards at the door and we’re only open Thursday-Saturday. Talk about being with people — the night we reopened, about a month ago, I got pretty emotional. It was nice to see people just being happy to sing and celebrate life with strangers. That was a really encouraging sentiment because despite the use of digital communication which I do think is an amazing thing, we, so clearly, inevitably, yearn for each other. Despite everything, people were coming to the bar and were so happy to be there and be around other people. Our need for other human beings is a constant that is extremely encouraging to me as a bleeding heart idealist. It’s nice to be a small part of that.

Finally, you said earlier Barlow and Bear were going to be at Elsie Fest. I cannot wait for the Unofficial Bridgerton Musical and was so excited to see you’re involved.

It’s cool meeting them because in a much more organized and impressive fashion they’re doing what my friends and I did ten years ago with ‘A Very Potter Musical.’ They are insanely talented and deserve to be the huge phenomenon they have become. They’re the future. I’m trying to grab onto their coattails however I can. [chuckles] They’re just getting started. I’ve been a big fan of Emily’s for a long time. She hates it when people say this, but [mock yells] she was a child prodigy and she still is. She’s an amazing human being.

Masquerade is out now.

Follow Darren Criss @darrencriss

Interview by Sydney Bolen

[ocmakerofcanada]

Incorrect luca quotes ft. my oc, Ćeceilia

The Threequel

( I think I might make this an actual series. )

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

Alberto: We either die free, or die trying!

Luca: Are those the only choices?

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

Alberto : If it pleases the court I would like to say that my opponent is TALKING SMACK!!

Giulia : ...

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

Luca: Onion rings are vegetable donuts.

Ćeceilia, used to this by now: Um, sure.

Luca: Your stomach thinks all potatoes are mashed.

Alberto: Okay?

Luca: Lasagna is spaghetti flavored cake.

Alberto&Ćeceilia :

Luca: Lobsters are mermaid scorpio-

Ćeceilia: Okay, that one is a little-

Alberto, interested: No, no, Luca, keep going.

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

Ćeceilia, opening a Capri Sun: Guess I'll drink my sorrows away.

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

Luca: I personally don't think it's possible to come up with a crazier plan.

Alberto : We could attack them with hummus.

Luca: I stand corrected.

Alberto : Just keeping things in perspective.

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

Ćeceilia: I'm very scary.

Giulia: You're about as scary as a wet kitten.

Ćeceilia: Wet kittens are cute, at least I've got that going for me.

Giulia: And short.

Ćeceilia:

Ćeceilia: ...Yeah, yeah. I guess.

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

Ćeceilia: I am very small and I have no money, so you can imagine the kind of stress that I'm under.

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

Ćeceilia: How do tall people people possibly sleep at night when the blanket can't possibly cover you?

Alberto : Ćeceilia, it's four o'clock in the morning.

Ćeceilia: So, you can't sleep, huh? Is it because of the blanket?

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

Alberto : I am an expert at identifying birds.

Ćeceilia: Okay, what about those ones flying over there?

Alberto : Yeah, they're all birds.

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

Giulia: When life gives you lemons, what do you do?

Ćeceilia: Make lemonade!

Giulia: No, throw them back up in the sky and make life deal with it’s own spazzatura.

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

Alberto : Don't worry, I've got a few knives up my sleeve.

Ćeceilia: I think you mean cards.

Luca: He did not.

Alberto , pulling out knives: I did not.

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

Alberto : Here comes the lightning!

Alberto , whispering: You've got to imagine it coming out my fingertips, wherein I am an almighty wizard.

Ćeceilia: Ok, currently imagining that. Hmm, not bad. Not bad at all.

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

Ćeceilia: *is hugging Luca*

Giulia: Hey! It's my turn to hug Luca!

Giulia: *grabs Luca*

Alberto : *kicking down the door* What do you mean, "yOuR tUrN"? We agreed now is my time slot!

Ćeceilia: No, It's still my turn!

Luca: *suffocating* Guys, I love you, but just because I'm the smallest doesn't mean you can be hugging me constantly!

Giulia : But we need the moral support!

Ćeceilia: And you're small! Which is cute!

Alberto : If I don't hug you right now I think the depression will kick in and my body will stop functioning.

Luca: *close to tears* Well- I, I guess.

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

Alberto : My goal is not to be the best, but to inspire someone enough to one day surpass me.

Ćeceilia: YOU CAN'T JUST SAY THAT EVERY TIME YOU BEAT ME AT CONNECT FOUR!

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

Luca: I did it! I memorized everything in the book! I'm gonna ace this test!

Giulia: Ok, Luca, I'll give you one more question before you go. What ended in 1918?

Luca: 1917.

Giulia: ...You're ready.

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

Giulia: *Gasp*

Luca: wHAT??

Giulia: What if soy milk is just milk introducing itself in Spanish?

Luca: *inhales*

Alberto, in another room with Ćeceilia: Why can I hear screeching?

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

Giulia: I have a problem.

Ćeceilia: If it's harder than 2+2, I can't help.

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

Ćeceilia: HYDRATE OR DIE-DRATE!

Ćeceilia: *aggressively throws water bottles*

Luca: Uh... what's up with her?

Alberto: She’s trying to yell mental health and wellbeing into us.

Ćeceilia: I APPRECIATE ALL OF YOU!

Giulia, crying: It's working.

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

[moondustaeil]

ᴄᴏʟᴏᴜʀɪᴢᴇᴅ ᴇᴄʀᴜ ⊰❀ ᴋ.ᴊᴡ

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ✧☾.·:·. colourized ecru

⠀ ⠀⠀ about

⋅  genre : soulmates!au - fluff, angst, suggestive content

⋅  pairing : Jungwoo x reader

⋅  word count : 25.8k

⋅  warning: it gets a little bit suggestive at the end, but no actual smut

⠀ ⠀  ⠀ ⠀

⠀ ⠀⠀ synopsis

⋅   “Pick a colour” said lady Cyan who was strangely familiar. Your fingertip had endlessly trailed over the palette, but you picked ecru. Every day that goes by: you sit under the Daimyo oak that protected five little daisies, little did you know one of the five daisies is willing to give you a “loves me” or “loves me not” with Jungwoo, the boy from the enchanted soulmate library...

⠀ ⠀  ⠀ ⠀

⠀ ⠀⠀ colours

⋅  this is a collab created by @neo-cult-ure​ , where me and other writers went for a soulmate concept but each went our own ways with a specific plot. I would like to take the time to thank everyone in this collab: for the friendship and for the process that we underwent together ! Please check out their fics as well. [Author’s note is at the bottom]

「ᴡʜɪᴛᴇ : # ꜰꜰꜰꜰꜰꜰ」

Sat with your back against a tree, it nearly appears that you're one of the stereotypical nature-lovers on earth. It would have looked like a regular thing to do, if only you held a cliché poetry book, or if you weren't sitting there whilst clouds were turning into a very dark shade of blue. The if-only scenarios were only fiction as in reality you were sitting against a tree in the middle of a weather transition, your hands empty and your eyes shut.

"pick a colour," a faint but comforting voice tells you, you nearly feel comfortable due to the sugary sweet undertone in the voice if it weren't for the pair of eyes you were greeted with. The cyan-coloured eyes look straight into yours even if yours were shut in reality.

Upon hearing the request, your eyes open themselves to do as you are asked. A soft layer of dust seems to coat your eyelashes which causes your eyes to flutter open a couple of times before you're greeted with the world. Your expectations don't meet up with what's actually in front of you, the last thing you had in mind was an empty landscape on each angle that your eyes explored. No one with a cyan-coloured pair of eyes staring into yours, in fact, no one is around you at all. There is no colour palette from which you can pick a colour, the only colour palette is that of the scenery. Just a stereotypical scene surrounds you: green grass, white daisies, and a very dark rain-filled sky.

It's going to rain, and it's a shame that you have to find out the second it's too late. Little droplets rapidly leak from the dark clouds, not enough to get you soaked, but enough to make you realise it was time to leave. You get up from under the tree, setting off in a fast walking pace as you leave the park. You don't run as you don't want to look like the fool who sat in the park whilst knowing it would rain, that embarrassing feeling is not something you want to give yourself. Whatever you were doing under a tree on a rainy Sunday evening is forgotten momentarily.

The world seems strangely different but one thing that stayed the same was the way to your apartment, and you're lucky it's only a ten-minute walk, nine if you continue to keep up the slightly faster walking pace. Though thanks to the weather, the walk seems a bit longer, but still only exactly nine minutes pass when you sprint up to the stairs towards the second floor.

You close the front door behind yourself once you're inside the apartment. The first thing you do is kick off the wet pair of Vans on your feet, you leave them in the middle of the hallway before stepping over them to get into your living room. You stare at the decorated living room, staying silent as there is no roommate you have to greet, which luckily allows you to glue yourself onto the sofa for the rest of the night. Dinner could have been made but you're not in the mood to make a mish-mash out of leftover ingredients.

For everything in life, there's a useful app, just like there's a useful app that you use to order your dinner with. Unfortunately, there's no such thing that gives you an explanation for your own weird actions like sitting underneath a tree for god knows how long. You pay for your dinner before throwing your phone aside, leaving social media to drown in its toxic nature.

You stand up from the sofa and head to the bathroom. You wash up by taking a quick shower, brush your teeth, do your overly extensive skincare routine even though you don't feel like it, and lastly change into your most comfortable nightwear. Right when you leave the bathroom and are about to settle yourself down on the sofa, the intercom stops you and tells you the food arrived. Luckily for you, you already paid and the delivery man is nice enough to drop off your food right in front of your door instead of two floors down.

"thank you!" you say extra loud so that the delivery man manages to hear you even when he's already on his way downstairs. You lift up the bag with food and instantly take it inside before any of your friendly neighbours come outside to have a healing talk. Once you close the door again, you decide that it's the moment to lock yourself in for the rest of the evening. A house party by yourself seems the perfect way to name what you're about to do: watch abandoned Netflix series while you occupy your sofa as a dining area.

You slowly start eating whilst Netflix provides you with entertainment. Yet, the series isn't interesting enough to keep you distracted from your thoughts, that or your thoughts are very determined to keep the subject alive. The view of two characters getting in a petty fight over money is replaced by the same view as earlier: the pair of cyan-coloured eyes that were staring into yours, followed by the sight of the tree you had been sitting under not long ago. There was something about the scene that seemed too important to forget as it constantly returned to your mind.

But why was it that you couldn't forget about it? Your eyes close as you give in to the thoughts before they consume your entire brain. It seems like a bunch of little white clouds start to form in your mind, each of them is filled with a tiny piece of information about the unforgettable encounter. Despite your confusion, you’re willing to make those little clouds pop in order to receive some new information. Firstly told was that you weren’t allowed to forget the tree or lose focus of it, another cloud tells you to remember the tree because it might not be there forever. The little clouds fill the blank spaces in your mind, but it’s not enough.

You indeed never saw the tree before, it is something you can conclude after you went on a train of memories. Before today, you had been in the park numerous times to situate objects and pieces of nature, it was a little bit too familiar to say that you had no idea whether you saw the tree before or not. A piece of your heart interrupts your thoughts, without words making your interest in the tree bigger with each second you thought about it. Perhaps you would listen to yourself and keep an eye out for the tree, just to check if you weren’t betraying yourself.

After sighing, you shake your head to yourself. “You’re going crazy,” you tell yourself in a whisper, taking the glass of water from the side and sip from it to wash away the stream of useless thoughts. Fortunately for the future, it’s a mission you would fail in. Unfortunately for you, the thoughts wouldn’t get washed away for quite a while.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

7:05 am

You wake up with a jerk, immediately catching your breath as you came back from running a marathon. The faint voice in your mind disappears, leaving you alone in your dark bedroom. The distant sound of rain drumming against your window makes your eyes open, searching for the little patch of light in the darkness until your eyes are fixated on the window.

It must be raining outside and you must be in your room. Unlike a minute ago when you found yourself in the park once more, sat underneath the same tree as yesterday with the cyan-coloured eyes staring at you from a distance. Your tensed body falls back onto the bed in relief, you're happy to be in bed even though the urge to go to that specific spot is eating you from the inside. Slowly but surely you turn your body towards the window, eyes focused on the patch of light that shines through. The sky seems grey like it's grieving for the start of a new week, but you're just grateful that you're not completely consumed by the darkness in your room.

When you think about something so much, people would say that you're in love, but clearly, you can't be in love with a tree, can you? If it was up to you to explain your feelings towards the tree: it would be a mix of hatred due to the constant thoughts about it, but also fascination because of the unknown meaning behind it. It's no secret that by now, you actually start to believe you're either way delusional, or that faith is on your side but you're not sure why.

"Fuck it" you quietly tell yourself as you get your sore body out of bed, starting the day rather impulsively as you would have preferred to stay in bed for a little while longer. Your nightwear is ditched on the sheets as you almost shoot yourself into yesterday's outfit. There's a sauce stain from last night's dinner in the middle of your shirt, but the dried-up spot is something your eyes miss or don't even care about at this moment. It's too late to question what you're doing before you realise it, you've already left the bedroom.

Similar to other and more rushed mornings, breakfast is something you forget about, though now it seems like abandoning it willingly rather than just forgetting about it. You walk past the kitchen and directly into the hallway, exchanging your bare feet for the wet shoes you left in the middle of the path yesterday evening. It seems like you're rewinding yesterday's events even though this time, you sprint down the stairs instead of up.

The moment you walk out of the apartment complex, you can feel the little droplets of rain layering onto your hair, it's like taking a shower first thing in the early morning. The feeling is annoying and it could lead to you getting sick, but you don't think of the consequences, neither are you caring about them right now. The sprint turns into a fast walking pace as you're greeted by a still calm street. Luckily at this hour, there aren't many people around, and if they are then they're in a rush to get to work.

Your feet speed up lightly as the urge to get to the park grows only bigger knowing you're only ten minutes away from the place. You walk further towards the park even though it's hard to keep yourself from going past the walking pace, luckily you're just very determined to keep your bit of dignity. Ten minutes isn't that much in reality, even if it takes up one of the six parts in an hour and one of the three parts in half an hour.

When the park comes into view, you opt to ignore the presence of a few early birds that jog towards the park, just like them you start jogging. The remaining minute turns into a matter of seconds as you run through the unofficial entrance and straight towards the tree that you feel captivated by. You don't care that you're running over the grass rather than the ground, it's not like the bit of dew could make you slip.

Your feet come to an abrupt halt once you're close enough to the tree, only taking smaller steps towards the piece of nature until it seems like the tree could engulf you in its branches. You greet the tree with a smile, unaware of your own little gesture. With the bit of distance between you and the tree, you reach out your hand to touch the trunk. "What makes you so special?" you ask quietly, it's more like a rhetorical question as you feel like you have to find out the answer for yourself.

Your hand pulls itself away with a slight sigh, the calmness spreading through your body after a second of contact between you and the tree. You turn your body and get into the same position as yesterday, your back pressed against the trunk while you look at the scenery. The spot that you claimed allows you to stay out of the rain, the branches and twigs catching a couple of droplets before they can get to you. It takes a minute for you to settle down in that spot, but once you do, it's like you're sitting in the perfect spot.

The view you have from this spot is amazing, especially seeing people rushing in their lives while you're sat under a tree that gives a protective vibe. But you're aware that you must be sitting here with a goal, and you have no idea what that goal could be. You cock your head to the side, allowing your eyes to check the little flowers that you find yourself in between like you ruined their little get-together.

Five little daisies proudly standing amongst other big trees and plain green grass, their two simple colours stand out compared to the other naturistic elements around you. It were the kind of flowers you would make a flower crown with when you were still a child and the flowers you could use to determine whether your crush really loved you. Not that you did that many times as you were too realistic, or at least that's what you thought about your years as a child.

A tingling feeling spreads itself starting from your wrist and all the way towards the ends of your fingertips. You break eye-contact with the white-yellow coloured flowers and use your eyes to inspect the palm of your hand. But, you don’t see anything more than just a simple hand quivering to the unexpected intensity of the tingles. Your fingers clench themselves until they’re hidden in your fist, pressuring the tingles to go numb. 

The set of strange events make you close your eyes to ponder, trying to ignore the reality to just silently wonder about them without having to go through the experience once more. Yet, the moment you close your eyes you seem lost in one of those events, one that you’re encountering for the second time. The Cyan-coloured eyes stare into yours eyes, a determined and yet comforting look that make you feel responsible over something you’re not aware of. “Ecru? That’s a fantastic choice, darling. Your world is now colourized ecru” the voice says in a soft tone. The voice seemingly fits the fawn colour that you can imagine when saying ecru. Your mouth opens to speak, but before you can push one word out, the pair of eyes are gone. 

Once again, you're left in the park with your eyes closed and your hands empty just like they were yesterday. Only this time, the world had changed, or perhaps it had before but you were too dumb to realise.

The world is now colourized ecru

「 ꜱɴᴏᴡ : # ꜰꜰꜰᴀꜰᴀ 」

"Your world is colourized what?" Sicheng asks you, making it clear you had to clarify the story for the third time today. His eyes glance over at you like it would make him understand the words a little bit better. You would have sighed if it wasn’t for the fact that you would do the exact same thing if he told you a similar story. You wouldn’t have understood either, perhaps you wouldn’t even bother believing it.

Getting the words on the tip of your tongue again, only takes up a few seconds, you could repeat them whenever you wanted and your head provided you with the same voice as the person that told you.”Your world is now colourized ecru” you repeat again, this time saying the words slower since the language gap could make it harder for him to understand what ecru meant, even though it isn’t language-related as you had to google the colour too. “The voice told me that” you add, explaining more than needed just so that Sicheng could understand and believe your story.

“Colourized ecru, isn’t that like the beige colour?” Sicheng asks as his feet take slower steps just like his mind is processing the entire situation in a slow pace. To you, it is almost too slow, as being headed to the park became something you are weirdly enthusiastic for, or rather than that, you simply long to find yourself sitting underneath that tree. “I thought so too, but apparently it’s not. I saw a pinkish shade in it but Wikipedia said it was greyish-yellow. So I don’t know anymore” you answer his question, leaving your best friend even more confused now that he doesn’t know which colour your world really became.

The rest of the walk to the park is as blank as it was before, with Sicheng asking questions and you giving vague answers because Google wasn’t always as smart as you thought. Eventually, you realise that you would have to find a way to answer your own questions instead of letting Google do it for you. And aside from mental support, you’re sure that Sicheng can’t help you with answers either. 

“This is the tree,” you say as you walk underneath it with Sicheng, allowing him to sit first between the five daisies that he hadn’t even noticed yet. You sit down on the free space next to him, stopping the urge that your eyes get as you don’t want to close them while your best friend is around. “Do you know what kind of tree this is?” Sicheng asks you, his head raising to look at the branches, twigs and the leaves hanging from it. He fails to see the way you shook your head but already expected a no from you, or well, he had never seen your interest laying in the origins of a park tree.

Through his lensless glasses, Sicheng looks at you again. “Perhaps you should visit the library, they must have some books about trees,” he suggests, his head turning unexpectedly when his hand touches one of the five daisies hiding in the grass. Before you’re able to catch up with what happened, he quickly places his hand next to them instead of on top of them. “And flowers” he adds quickly, giving you an innocent smile.

"Did you ever play the loves me, loves me not game with daisies?" Sicheng asks as he motions to the little miracles of nature with his free hand, your eyes immediately go towards the flowers, something you almost instinctively do as you would stare at them each time you came here. “I didn’t, I wouldn’t know who would love me” you answer with a small shrug, still convinced that you never played those silly games during your childhood. The loves me, loves me not game was made up out of lies, a flower would never be able to tell you who you belonged with. “Your soulmate loves you.”

“My soulmate?” you ask as you hear the word soulmate go past Sicheng’s lips. The word isn’t unfamiliar, perhaps it’s a bit too familiar as there is a lot of doubt to the existence of soulmates in the world. Some claim soulmates are just for people who meet each other and symbolically label themselves like that, others say soulmates could meet each other in special circumstances, and there was a group of people that completely deny the existence of the phenomenon. You have no idea which group you belong to, neither do you know what Sicheng thinks about it. Never have you pondered about the possibility of meeting your other half. 

Sicheng hums in response to you, a tiny smile coating his lips as he reaches out to one of the flowers and disconnects it from its long stem. “You just go like this” Sicheng says as he ignores your soft protests against what he was doing, something felt wrong when he plucked the flower from its safe spot. “Loves me, loves me not” he says as he starts to demonstrate, leaving you to watch how he throws away something precious. It makes you feel emotional, with petal after petal falling to the grass after getting plucked from the yellow-coloured disk. Each of those petals seem to represent how close you are to having tears in your eyes. You felt sick with apprehension.

“Loves you not,” Sicheng says whilst the last petal sadly falls onto the green grass, laying scattered next to the other petals that he had plucked away. Just like you predicted seconds ago, tears are burning in the corners of your eyes, threatening to run down your cheeks, but you refuse, you don’t want to be the person to cry over a flower. “That means you’re not my soulmate and I’m not yours,” Sicheng simply says, whatever was left of the flower falling from his fingertips and ending between the few white petals. 

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

The feeling of melancholy continues to follow you everywhere after what had happened. It started as a small pit in your stomach the moment Sicheng first separated the flower from its natural habitat, but as the hours go by the pit only grows bigger and leaves you unable to feel a different emotion.

After Sicheng left you with an apology for possibly fucking up something you desperately needed in your life, you had found yourself grieving over the flower for two complete hours. Those hours go by with tenderly holding the remains between your aching fingertips, and telling yourself you had four flowers left that no one would pluck away from you. Yet, when you left the park, there was the fear that a stranger or child would pluck them for fun. You had been hesitant about leaving, but you couldn't stay with the flowers day and night.

That’s how you end up marching to the local library, following up the at least useful piece of advice Sicheng gave you. You were no longer angry at him, perhaps you even blamed yourself for not making it clear enough how important the flowers were to you, how they seemed to connect to you and the ecru world you found yourself in. Grateful for the suggestion he made earlier: from the suggestion about going to the library, to the suggestion of a so-called phenomenon called soulmates.

You had no idea what time it was when you found yourself in front of the library, neither did the sky really tell you much because you weren't looking up at it. Your eyes were too busy to make sure you didn't bump into any people or objects whilst your thoughts were working overtime. Your steps were quick as the stairs only counted a few of them before you were right in front of the wooden door. Something else you didn't notice were the opening hours hanging on the left, you would have been able to see it was a quarter past closing time when you arrived. Your fingers wrapped around the door handle, trying to pull it down in order to get the door open but the handle merely moved an inch before getting stuck in its position. "Shit"

The spark of hope you had was taken over by the large part of melancholy once again, you didn't even need the opening schedule to know that you probably were standing here because it was closed already. This was one of the reasons you had to make sure before getting hopeful for things, especially now that you were obligated to wait the entire night before you were able to possibly let your thoughts rest. You couldn't help but pull the handle down once more, or attempt to as this time too it had no intention of letting you in.

In the end, there was no other option but to go home for the night and be tortured by your strayed thoughts. The walk home being extra long due to your unnecessary stop at the park to check if the tree and flowers were still there, waiting for your return tomorrow. But perhaps that's not the only thing waiting for you, perhaps a soulmate is waiting somewhere as well. Waiting for you.

「 ʜᴏɴᴇʏᴅᴇᴡ : # ꜰ0ꜰꜰꜰ0 」 

For the third day in a row, you're already waiting in front of the library ten minutes before the building opens its doors. For the third day in a row, you manage to find a spark of hope somewhere inside of your body that tells you that today is the day that you will find something. But finding the right books is harder than expected: somehow writers don't really dive deeper into the wondrous world of soulmates and books about trees take ages to thumb through just to get to the right illustration of the tree. It's hard to find what you're looking for, especially as you have no idea what you're actually looking for.

But today you're determined to find anything the book is willing you tell you. You hope having a picture of the tree would make it easier to receive information, even if you have no idea if any of the people around are skilled in giving you the answer to which kind of tree it was: the books are supposed to give you the answers but how are you going to recognise your tree between many others? Something else that could help you were the daisies, you know the name but never imagined there to be a meaning behind them until you thought back about Sicheng sadly removing one from the world.

You’re shaken out of your thoughts when the door is unlocked and soon opened for the public, even though right now no one but you stood in the invisible queue. The feeling of victory is quick to spread through your body the moment you step inside, the high shelves don’t make you feel small, if anything, they give you more motivation.

“Good morning,” A voice speaks up without you realising it, you unfortunately ignore it because you’re too focused on finding the books you need for your progress. If you had heard it, you would have been able to tell how oddly familiar the voice was, and you could have linked it to the weird experience you had in the park. It was a missed chance, but more chances would come in the near future.

Your footsteps take you up the stairs where you had been going to for three days now, it became a part of your routine. Nature-related books were usually found upstairs as not many people were interested in the miracles of life these days. You admit that before, you were one of the people that took nature by granted, something that changed drastically in a short period of time. 

You sit at the empty desk near the corner, a popular space you know from experience, but as no one is there, it’s yours for the rest of the day. You’re quick to turn on the computer in order to check out the catalogue, a catalogue of which the books don’t change but each day you scroll past the same ones in hopes that a new one gets added. Your fingers hesitate over the keyboard, hitting a letter befoe deleting it again as you remember searching for the word yesterday. “Can I help you?”

You look away from the computer screen when you hear the voice, a fake, friendly smile appearing on your lips as you get ready to give a fabricated response. “Not really I don’t know what I’m looking for but I don’t think you can help me,” you tell the person in front of you, giving her only a brief glance which makes you seem uninterested. “Perhaps I can help you, you can tell me what you’re looking for and I will help you with finding the right books” she offers you. Out of annoyance, you hand the person the little, coloured post-it note with the keywords on.

“Tree, daisies, and soulmates” The voice reads the keywords on your paper out loud, her words flow out like she’s familiar with them. Your handwriting must be near enough to read it without trouble. “Yes,” you mumble in response, already knowing the words by head so there was no need for anyone else to say the words like the woman just did. Okay, perhaps it had been a rude thought of you and it was uncalled for, but you’re convinced that no one is able to help you and you weren’t willing to waste time on someone who wanted to try. “What kind of tree are you looking for?” she asks you but before you can answer, she interrupts you again “do you have a picture or a name?”

You hastily fish your phone out of the pocket of your pants, after unlocking it going straight to the gallery to find the set of pictures that you made yesterday. All of the pictures look overly similar, but having multiple pictures gives you more proof. “Ah, I think I know what tree it is” she says when she gets a glance of your phone, or rather, the picture of the tree. “This is the Quercus dentata, or daimyo oak if I’m correct. I can find some books about this tree for you?” she inquires after blowing you over with the difficult name and her cleverness to recognise the tree immediately. She hands you the note back even though you immediately discard it beside the computer keyboard.

“I don’t know, I don’t know what I need” you admit to her, slowly turning in your chair to properly tell what was going on. The last thing you want is spilling the story to anyone gullible and willing to listen, but there is a sense of trust between the two of you. Indeed, you don’t know what you need and one of the reasons that you’re here is to find out what you need and why you need it. “You don’t know what you need?” She asks you, but still smiles as she says the words, she seems like she knows more and she’s about to share it with you. You shake your head, an almost desperate gesture as you want help even from a librarian who perhaps had no idea how to help you. “Seeing the keywords on your note, I would say you’re here lurking for information about something specific that overcame you. And you must be looking for an explanation because the tree, the flowers, and the soulmate part all seem to blend together?”

Having someone next to you, saying the words from a perspective that was unfamiliar to you, it was like one of your millions of questions just got an answer. The answer was so easy, perhaps because the question was a simple one too. “Is that true?” she decided to ask because the look in your eyes revealed how surprised you were by the words. You slowly look up at her face, promptly staring into the pair of bright-coloured eyes. The unnatural cyan-colour rings a bell in your mind, and it only takes a second to remember the times you had seen the eyes before. “Y-yes, I think so” you respond in a softer tone, barely getting any words out of your mouth because of the shock that numbs your ability to speak or think. 

The elderly woman can only nod at your words, something you don’t see as you are too busy staring at everything but her face. Right now, you’re looking at the name tag pinned to her shirt. It shouldn’t be a surprise to see her name, but yet, “Cyan” is typed down in a Verdana-lookalike on the tag. The numb feeling completely takes away your ability to speak, or you’re just speechless at this point. A couple of days ago there was nothing, then the tree came in your life, and now you feel as if you’re close to figuring out the ecru world you live in. Yet, you don’t have half of it figured out, barely a quarter. 

"So, can you help me?” You ask out loud, your posture straightening more unknowingly. You expect a no but still hope for a yes, and you can’t tell beforehand which one of the two it’s going to be. Cyan -if that’s what her name really is- seems to hesitate, her eyes simply staring at you with an emotion that you can’t name. “I’m not sure, I already helped you to realise what you’re looking for” your shoulders immediately slump back against the wooden chair, a sigh slipping from your lips as you try to admit this was exactly what you expected even when it wasn’t.

You nod sadly as your eyes leave her to focus on the computer screen again, this time you know what to type in the search bar but you feel too unmotivated to make it through on your own. “Thank you anyway” you say soft as you give her one last glance, your eyes almost begging for her to stay so that she would give you more information. You’re convinced that this Cyan, is the same Cyan that brought you in this strange ecru-coloured world. It’s something you can’t accuse her of, but deep inside you know that you’re right about them being the same person: some people that you come across in your dreams, are real people, just like Cyan.

"You're welcome, don't let it get plucked away from you, you will find out"

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Exactly fifty-nine minutes before closing time, you still find yourself in the same spot in front of the computer, though this time, the screen is pure black and your eyes are scanning every few words in the book laying on the dark table. 

The work that you’re doing now isn’t ever going to meet up with any work you used to do for school, this took a lot more energy but at the same time, you feel more useful and smarter than the times you would make a paper about concentration because it was easy to copy from others. When the teacher back then said that making the paper had seemed to help you a lot with your skills, you were sure that you were good at faking such things. But if there was a teacher to evaluate you now, you wouldn’t even have to fake anything.

Thanks to Cyan you got onto the right path, or at least you are trying to convince yourself that you are walking on the right path. The pieces of evidence next to you give you a good feeling, it seems like literature is more important than you used to believe, especially the pages where little post-its are pasted between to look back on. However, you don’t seem to realise there is no more time to look back on any of those things, you had been so caught up in the available literature that you forgot about the standard needs of a human or the opening hours of the library.

You flip the page of the book as quick as you can once you read the last few words of the sentence, another soft sigh leaves your lips as you realise this book about daisies isn’t going to get you far. Perhaps there was a limit to the amount of information people could receive in a day, but at this point, you’re convinced that you’re way past that limit. Your eyes meet with a new chapter, the boldly-typed title staring at you but you’re too busy translating the words from their original language into English, even if the English words are written a dozen times over the upcoming paragraphs. 

effeuiller la marguerite

Quietly and almost inaudible, you translate the words for yourself. When you say them in French, it doesn’t ring a bell despite the little knowledge you have of the language. When you repeat the same words in English, you instantly think back about the day you and Sicheng spent in the park. The way he used one of the precious daisies to demonstrate how you were supposed to play the simple, but childish game of “loves me, loves me not.” You could still taste some bitterness of the moment on the tip of your tongue, a consequence of Sicheng unintentionally ruining the flower. 

The first paragraph provides you with a definition of the game, something perhaps not useful even though school always taught you the definition before anything deeper. Even if the context was the more important part, you still needed some framework to understand.

“She loves me, she loves me not or he loves me, he loves me not is a game of French origin, in which one person seeks to determine whether the object of affection returns that affection.” The words are literal, perhaps a bit formal but not in a university-level. It gives you the hint that you are the person looking for an object of affection in this ecru world. It is you, you that has to search for the other person, for a he, she or them that would possibly love you, or not.

“How does it work really?” you ask yourself silently as you read past some French paragraph that you don’t feel attracted by, it seems like the next paragraph nicely explains how you’re supposed to play. It’s quite silly to think of it, you exactly know how to play the game, but don’t believe yourself and go for an unscientific instruction in a book about daisies. “A person playing the game alternately speaks the phrases "He loves me," and "He loves me not," while picking one petal off an ox-eye daisy for each phrase. The phrase they speak on picking off the last petal supposedly represents the truth between the object of their affection loving them or not. The player typically is motivated by attraction to the person they are speaking of while reciting the phrases. They may seek to reaffirm a pre-existing belief, or act out of whimsy" you read in a whisper-tone, sometimes stumbling over your own words because of the stiff and formal use of words. However, the moment you look back at the words, they don’t seem as formal and stuff anymore, they make sense in some way.

The chapter is no longer than two pages long, yet those two pages had managed to provide you with a lot more information than other chapters did. Added to your story were now the flowers that fit right in the framework Cyan made for you, it’s like being one step closer to knowing what you’re supposed to do. A sad hunch overcomes you as you finish the chapter: there are only four daisies left, four daisies that you can’t recklessly use to play the game. You need to find the matching object of affection.

Your hand pulls back the thick side of the book against the other to close it, resting it on top of the other books that you had been browsing through today. For a second, you allow your eyes to close as they’re exhausted from the endless focus, yet it didn’t mean you were going to give up. On a different pile were two books left: one of them is filled with more information about trees, the other is a magazine that has an article about soulmates. Unfortunately, that article is the only copy that has the words “soulmates” in them, meaning that no other existing source was available to you.

“Sorry to bother you, but it’s closing time. And I think you really need some rest, love” Cyan who had helped you so dearly before was now about to ruin part of the progress you made, or she was trying to help you by giving you an opportunity to go home and rest. Though, you opt it’s the first option as you feel too far into it to stop. Perhaps Cyan wasn’t aware yet, but she would find out soon that you came here on a daily basis ever since three days ago. “Can’t I stay for a little while longer, just until you closed up. I need to read some more” you say in a soft tone as you motion towards the two sources that still have to get scanned by your inexperienced eyes and mind.

Cyan takes the magazine from the pile, reading the word “soulmates” on the cover and immediately she knows which magazine it is. It’s one that most beginners want to read, but at the same time, it’s the most useless piece of literature in the entire library. Yet, it seems like you’re willing to read the public source as they don’t have any others. “You can come back tomorrow, can’t you?” she asks simply, dropping the magazine back onto the pile before looking at you to scan your facial expression. The emotion displayed on your face is mostly desperation: it makes Cyan want to give in, but the tiredness in your eyes is what holds Cyan back from telling you to stay until she closed up. It wasn’t like the article was helpful and you would regret staying longer just to read it. 

"Come with me"

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Cyan paves the way to a place you had never witnessed in the few years of regularly visiting the library - not that you visit overly often, or at least not before the entire ecru-world circumstance - , but you are positive that this hall was one of the places you had never walked through.

Walking there takes long enough, long enough to forget that you left most of your stuff on the desk in the corner. A vague idea tells you that you’re going underground: mostly because you had been taking many steps down rather than up, and also because of the musty smell that is sticking onto the walls surrounding you. Cellars always look old but you’re willing to have a debate over this cellar being older than a few centuries. 

You want to ask Cyan how long there was left and how many more steps in the staircase, you have no idea where you’re headed and the eerie feeling seems to double itself with each step further. You stop yourself from asking though: you don’t consider yourself as a six-year-old who continuously asks his parents when the car ride is finally over. You purse your lips as you hold the question even if that means you have to breathe through your nose.

“We’re here” Cyan announces after coming to a halt in front of a large iron door. The door is large enough to let a giant pass if it’s not for the obvious fact that it’s closed. Your own steps stop as well, aligning perfectly next to Cyan’s. From up close, the door is heavily decorated by different elegant shapes. Yet, there’s no keyhole that indicates the requirement of the longitudinal grooves. The door is a masterpiece, it seems like it belongs in a museum more than as an actual door underground. “Won’t you open it?” you ask Cyan quietly, only tearing your eyes from the door to see when Cyan would open the door. 

Cyan’s first response is to shake her head as a sign that she’s not going to open the door for you, in response to that, you let out a huff of annoyance and disappointment. How are you supposed to get in when the librarian doesn’t even want to open the goddamn door for you, it’s not like you know a secret way through. “You have to open it, darling,” Cyan says when she notices that you’re not amused, by far, you look irritated. 

“How am I supposed to do that?!” You ask loudly, drawing a long sigh from your mouth as it was another feature that you weren’t prepared for. You set another step closer to the door, not looking back at Cyan because you don’t care if she follows you or not. You’re not a magician like your friend Kun is, you’re clumsy and still didn’t figure out how to do the magic trick with the glasses that he always shows you. “Hocus pocus!” Leaves your lips before you can stop it from happening, whether it is for the laughs or for the deadly-serious expression on your lips, it doesn’t matter as the door doesn’t bother to react.

The string of magic spells leaves your lips, at once, calling out each one you know and unmagically cast them onto the iron door. Yet, none of them have the intention to pull the handle down and open the door for you. Cyan can’t be any more amused, but she is aware that you would still be here for hours if she leaves you to cast these spells. “Opening the door is like opening a new world for yourself,” Cyan tells you in a quiet voice, just loud enough to overpower your voice that casts the last spell you know. The hint is amateur level, even you find the answer within a minute. 

You swallow away the bundle of nerves that want to spread in your stomach. What you are about to say can, either way, be foolery or the start of something unidentified. Just like Cyan mentioned, opening the door is like opening a new world, and you are ready to be a part of it. 

"Ecru"

「 ᴀᴢᴜʀᴇ  : # ꜰ0ꜰꜰꜰꜰ 」

When you wake up from accidentally falling asleep with your head buried between a formal-worded book, you hear the large doors closing themselves slowly, and you guess you must have missed the moment they opened due to your tiredness. The non-rhythmic footsteps are unrecognisable but there must be only one person that has unlimited access to this place, Cyan. Your guess is confirmed when you hear her voice telling you: "you look tired.”

“I’ve been looking through these books for nearly three hours” you answer with a deep sigh leaving your lips, your fingertip tiredly points to the large pile of books of which you only managed to read one in those three long hours. But that one book is enough to make it seem like you read everything in this entire underground library. 

Cyan let out a quiet hum at your words, stepping closer to you with the same unstable sound of her footsteps on the floor. “That’s why I decided to get some coffee for you, you slept for over an hour,” she says in a sweet tone as the cup of coffee is delivered to the moon-shaped table you sit at. A small smile coats your lips thanks to Cyan’s sweet gesture, and you know your non-verbal message has been delivered when she smiles back at you. Every now and then she would deliver coffee to you, you didn’t even ask for it, she would disappear at random times and return with a cup of coffee for you. Your inner coffee addict was happy with that.

"Did you find out anything new?” Cyan asks as she has her eyes on you and one hand placed on the pile of books like she’s trying to suck the magic out of them. That thought is one you dismiss soon, you can expect a lot but that beats all of the other ridiculous thoughts you had. You reluctantly shake your head in response, hesitating because you had found many amazing things but you doubted if they were useful. “I guess so, but at the same time, I don’t think so. I don’t understand any of the words in the book” you admit, your eyes still reading over some of the words.

The book gets pulled from under your elbows by Cyan who takes it between her two hands as she begins to read at the point where you left off before falling asleep. “You’re reading the wrong book. I told you to follow your heart and choose a book based on that, not on an interesting title” she immediately scolds you for choosing what you did, she read less than a sentence but it’s enough for her to know that this book isn’t going to give you the answers you need.

"I don’t know how to, it’s harder than you think” you complain with a deep sigh, putting the cup of coffee down on the porcelain saucer before looking up at the elder librarian. “How am I supposed to know what my heart wants?” you ask, the question sounding both genuine but also mocking. You don’t believe in letting your heart decide which book to take, if it was true, you would be reading an easy and understandable book that wasn’t part of this underground library’s catalogue. 

Cyan closes the book and can’t help but sigh just like you did a second ago, she sounds disappointed even if she doesn’t use any words to confirm the feeling. It’s not an uncommon thing for people to choose the wrong book, everyone at least does so one time, especially when they judge by the cover. But after years of sneakily doing this, Cyan had a steady set of expectations from humanity, especially those looking for a soulmate. 

“y/n. Think about your soulmate, close your eyes and let your soulmate pick the book for you. Listen to your heart, it’s commissioned by your soulmate” Cyan says in an overly sweet and soft tone, dropping the thick book on top of the others as a sign all of them were useless in your story. You admire her for the way she says the words because you wish it’s as easy as it sounds, but, you hate the words because it’s not as easy as that. How is your soulmate going to recommend you a book if he doesn’t even know about your existence? 

Your phone vibrates steadily next to the pile of useless books, even though the moon-shaped table is in front of you, you huff because you are too lazy to lean forward and take the device in your hands. For an unknown reason, you flag your phone as an unnecessary accessory down here: there is no WiFi and you don’t expect anything from the phone reception. But clearly, your phones proves you wrong when it vibrates a second time. 

You lean forward and pick up the phone from the book-filled desk, finally giving it some screentime and giving yourself some ‘me-time’ as you would always name it. The lockscreen gives away the time, but you only have eyes for the notification of your best friend Sicheng. You feel bothered that he messages you, it wouldn’t be bothering if you weren’t in this almost-enchanting library.

Sicheng [ 2 : 35 pm ] : I found some more daisies around, plucked them and they're in front of your door

Sicheng [2 : 35 pm ] : sorry for wasting one the other day, I didn't know they would mean so much to you ):)

You can't help but smile soft, a certain feeling of warmth spreading through your tiniest veins and dropping once they reach your heart. It's obvious that Sicheng feels sorry for what he did to the daisy, and he must think that you’re not answering the door because of that.

It is a fact that you hadn’t been speaking to him since the day in the park, not because you were angry -as you weren’t -, but because you isolated yourself in the library after he advised you to. Sicheng was someone you couldn’t be angry at, he was soft but also because he had given you a little push onto an unknown path. You were still walking on the path he pushed you on, however, he isn’t walking on that same path and you feel bad about it. 

“Will you not write a message back to him, darling?” Cyan asks you as she notices the way you can only stare at the messages you received, and your fingers are resting on the edges of the screen rather than the keyboard that is waiting for you to send a message back. Your eyes stay on the screen, they never break eye-contact from the messages, not even when Cyan asks your attention by questioning you. “He doesn’t know I’m here. I think he thinks I’m angry because he took one of the daisies and showed me how to play the game” you explain to Cyan. She can see your facial expression growing bluer as you think about it. 

“But you’re not angry. So make him bloom again, his smile is precious to the world” Cyan says before you can continue telling the story with even more details, she is aware of the things that happen but still listens when you tell her the story about the little daisy. 

y/n [ 2 : 39 pm ] : just as much as you mean to me, you're a precious bean x

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Apparently, and without warning, you're not the only soulmate-searching human in the world. The first time you realise it's simply because Cyan decides to tell you one minute before a girl that's also looking for her soulmate walks in, the time after you notice it's before the iron-grated door opens itself after receiving the name of a chosen colour. You're never facing the door but you're still able to hear how many different voices there are and how many times the door opened itself.

Three free moon-shaped tables are moving away from the centre of the library, each one getting closer to one of the bookshelves but simply so that everyone has bits of privacy in the process of finding their soulmate. Your table was right in front of a bookshelf already: probably because Cyan thought it was needed for a beginner to receive lots of written knowledge.

Among the variety of people around in the underground library, no one looks familiar to you. You don't meet eyes with them but you can put the blame on the fact that their noses are buried between antiquated books. Even those who are already familiar with one another, don't waste more time than the few seconds a small greeting takes up, simply because they're too disciplined. It makes you feel awkward, as you're too new to step up and introduce yourself to the hardworking set of people.

Silence fills the room to the brim, leaving only the furniture to take up the rest of the space. The only sound you hear is quiet breathing and when a slightly moist fingertip tries to turn the page of one of the books. Whilst everyone is busy with the literate, you are not. The books on your table are shut, still labelled as useless ever since Cyan said that they had no value in your story. But you can't bring yourself to figure out which one your heart wants, or which one your soulmate would recommend to you. Cyan probably was right, but that doesn't tell you how you should find the answer to the question, nor how to find the right book.

You stand up from the decorative stool, trying not to make any noises which you succeed in as you can easily slip off the piece of furniture. You let go of a breath that you had been holding in but it's even quieter than your footsteps as they approach the nearest bookshelf. It's only a few steps before your feet come to a halt in front of it and your eyes take over to complete the next task.

Your eyes stare at all of the books that you find yourself in front of, it's a lot to take in with all of the different colours and letters coming to you at once. Unknown writers and complicated book titles, but as Cyan said, you try not to judge the book by who wrote it or how interesting the title sounds. Society just got you adapted to thinking difficult was always the right choice when it came to literature.

It's like you're standing at an intersection of choices, but there are more than four choices, and perhaps there's only one right option amongst the hundreds of possibilities. Fortunately for you, you can't see how insecure your back looks from this angle: others see the way your shoulders carry a responsibility but they also remember how they had been at the exact same spot not long ago.

"You don't know which book to take?" A voice asks you, the male voice making you spin on your heels immediately just to politely face whoever was speaking to you. The man in front of you has a sweet smile on his lips, you immediately notice that once you look up to his face. The sweet smile tries to indicate that he's being friendly but also gives away that he's happy. You can't help but wonder if he's close to finding his soulmate.

You sigh softly, a monologue that you have been participating in a lot more these past days. Sometimes you sigh because you're frustrated by this endless hunt for answers, other times it's because you feel like you should give up and move on, and other times you do it because you just don't know. The thing you don't know is also hidden behind something you don't know, even though that doesn't really make sense to you. "No, I can't seem to figure out which book is mine" you answer honestly.

"That's totally fine, we all started at this point,"  He tells you, never stopping the smile from hovering over his lips. You realise that maybe out of experience, he's willing to help you more than Cyan is, or at least his advice could help you more than Cyan's vague instructions. "You indeed have to let your soulmate pick the book for you, but there's a catch to it all. The things you think you've researched outside of this library are the things you have to research here again. You're not looking for what a soulmate is, but who your soulmate is."

You're obligated to admit, the words make you think more clearly than Cyan's do. Cyan's words leave you to sleepless nights of wondering what they mean, the words of this man make you think twice and you already know what’s expected of you. Specifically, the last bit of words are what stick to your body and follow you behind even now that you're still standing in front of him.

You're not looking for what a soulmate is, but who your soulmate is.

"There's no right or wrong definition to soulmates, everyone describes it differently. But you have to focus on the things you experienced and find the meaning behind them, after that you can connect them to your special person" He says, the explanation seems never-ending but you willingly accept every single word that leaves his lips right now. The scowl from earlier turns into a grateful smile, you are genuine about the gesture as you feel helped by what he offered you. "Thank you…" you say to him, hesitating to end your sentence as you wish you are able to say the name, but you can't say things you don't know of.

He lets out a tiny laugh as he realises he had been stupid enough to help you before asking whether you need it, and without politely introducing himself, but he's used to helping everyone here now that he's so close to meeting his soulmate. "I'm Johnny, the one who usually helps others around here" He introduces himself, clearly it's not the first time that he does this but you had already figured that out the moment he gave you some useful advice. "I'm y/n, I guess I'm new here. Almost like a high school student on the first day of the first year."

Johnny can't help but let out a soft laugh at the latter part of your introduction, simply because he said something along the lines of that back when he was the youngest of the group here. In a matter of months or even weeks, that position drastically changed. "Everyone is like that at the start, but some new people will join sooner or later. Before you know it, you will be helping them as I helped you."

The words - just like before - stick onto your brain, luckily not onto your heart like his other set of words did. You break the eye-contact with him to instead stare at the many books waiting on the shelves, hoping that magically your soulmate would make one of them fall in the palm of your hand. But it's not as simple as that: your soulmate won't connect the dots for you, it's you who has to do that and your soulmate might create a shape out of it.

With a soft sigh, your eyes flutter themselves shut to get into a moment of peace. It's the scenery of the park that always does the trick for you: it's calming despite knowing there is a life-altering meaning behind it. The tree engulfs you between its branches, and you're safe under the oak with the daisies by your side. The daisies where the book showed you a ritual named "effeuiller la marguerite" of. But it's the tree that keeps you from harm, that invites you to come back over and over again.

It takes a few seconds to remember the scientific classification Cyan gave you, as she probably read it in the same book that you read on that day. Nonetheless, the Quercus dentata unconsciously became a part of the baseline information of which you thought you had it organised. But Johnny was right: you had to focus on things you experienced.

The daimyo oak that engulfs you in its branches seems to want to tell you something, it's an enchanting moment even though it's only a daydream that you find yourself getting lost in. The information that it gives you is purely its existence, yet it's linked to the existence of your soulmate too.

You tilt your head as you have the impression that someone is walking up to you with slow steps, yet it's like that because your heart tells you to live in the moment. The footsteps don't look like Cyan's unstable pace of steps, and on top of that, it's more like a manly figure which you notice by his legs and shoes. It's vague but the individual details will together give you a clear view, layer per layer.

Despite the fact that you're aware it's not Cyan walking up to you, you can't imagine someone else doing so and you have no other option but already think of the outstanding features that strike the starring role in your daydreams. You start to get twitchy with each step the person takes closer to you: it's an eerie feeling that you don't know what to think of. It's a daydream that you're living in, but it all seems a bit too real to be just a dream during the early hours of the evening.

In your daydream, you close your eyes, in hopes that when you open them, you won't be able to see anything but the peaceful scenery around you. Yet, luck isn't always by your side and for once, that's a good thing. You open your eyes and immediately met up with a pair of soft-sentimental-looking eyes. They're brown, in a shade that could be defined by the world's most cherished colour of brown.

"You coloured my heart ecru"

「 ɢʜᴏꜱᴛᴡʜɪᴛᴇ # ꜰ8ꜰ8ꜰꜰ 」

Blank-faced, you look up from the syllables that form a term together, your eyes are slow to react to the sound that triggers your other senses easily. The iron door creaks open as slow as your eyes focus on it, but you're quick to give up the hope that you're going to be the only one in the library tonight. Cyan's voice is quiet but still gets louder with every step she takes inside the library, symbolically taking the young man under her protective wings as he walks into the library after her.

The thick book closes as your elbow moves from between the two separated parts, but it goes unnoticed as your eyes are drawn to Cyan's new -victim- soulmate. A rare warmth spreads around the room and circles him like it's his aura presenting him, he's the young lad your existence softens for.

"I assume this is the library you've been looking for" Cyan announces to the stranger as she smiles at his sudden humbleness. His hands fold together politely as his feet are tightly pressed together to only take up one tile out of the hundreds that embrace him. "A little disclaimer before the library overwhelms you with useless information: pluck the book your heart chooses for you, it's commissioned by your soulmate."

You can see the expression change on his face, there's a universal set of facial expressions of emotion, and surprise seems to be one of the six universal possibilities right now. He doesn't show any of the critical signals aside from the arch that his eyebrows form into. "How do they tell me which book?" He asks once the surprise makes space for an emotion that you can't read so well.

"It just happens, Jungwoo. It might take some time but they will naturally come to you"

With the useless piece of advice, Cyan decides she has given him enough to leave him to his task. She walks away from the new test-subject and moves to a set of books that the others left behind a few hours ago. You can still recognise the cover of the book that Johnny had been reading earlier, and the book Ley read about life after meeting your soulmate. The two of them were awfully close to meeting their soulmates, with Johnny already knowing what the name of his soulmate was. Unlike you: you only possessed of the birth date of your soulmate.

When Cyan's footsteps are the only ones you can hear, your head slightly turns to the side to see around the room and catch the stranger standing on the same tile as before. He seems glued to the tile, the tips of his Nike-branded shoes rub over one another in an attempt to soothe himself, but it only shows how unfamiliar he is with the situation. You can't blame him, you had been like that too not long ago.

"You should sit if you want to" you break the uncomfortable, nearly timed, sound of Cyan's footsteps against the floor. The sound moves to a layer in the background as your voice is now the centre of attention combined with the presence of the young man.

You don't expect an answer to your words as it was a mere offer. But the silence makes your voice fade out instantaneously. One layer less, another chance for silence to fill the room like it did when you were sitting here alone. The stranger can only nod in response, clearly feeling shy when his feet shuffle to the moon-shaped table that is diagonal of yours. He quietly lowers his body and takes a seat on the low stool.

Unfortunately for the stranger, you don't have a lot of time to make him feel at ease in the library. It's self-discipline, something you badly need when you're isolated in this place for almost ten hours and that six days a week. There's more than enough work to do, and much like exams, distractions only cause more harm than help.

Your book is still closed on your desk, a result of getting distraught by Cyan and the stranger bursting into the library not long ago. Soon you notice what happened to your book and let out a tiny curse to yourself, your hands working quickly to open the book again. It's a hard task to find the exact page you left off at: any page between the numbers two hundred nineteen and six hundred eighty would be the one you read last. You know you're to blame for this, not Cyan, not the newbie. More discipline wouldn't be a bad idea.

Your fingertips tumble over each page hastily, starting at page two hundred nineteen to continue browsing over every page that follows after that. If you see the word you read last, you know which page it is, but to do that, you still have to turn each page until your eyes encounter the word. Now that you think of it, you don't even remember which word it was, but hope to retrieve it soon.

On the other side of the library, there are ten fingertips that aren't actively browsing from page to page in a book. Rather than browsing in a book, they're tapping onto the moon-shaped table continuously. It's a composition of instrumentless and voiceless music, a song you never heard, but you don't prefer having to hear it twice.

"I'm sorry but can you stop? I'm trying to focus" you announce in a questioning way, not losing the politeness in your voice as it almost sounds like it's only an option for him to quit. Luckily, he does as you expect of him, causing his fingers to tremble from the sudden lack of stress-relief. "Sorry," he says in a soft tone, sending an apologetic smile your way but the innocence in his voice already causes you to forgive him. "I guess I was trying to call out to my soulmate or something," he says, not holding back the snippet of laughter that nervously bubbles from his lips.

You don't know why your lips curve up into a smile at his lame joke, perhaps because it's amusing to see someone being nervous about being here. Now you now why Cyan works in this library, she can laugh at people's stupidity on a daily basis. You still remember how entertained she was when you said numerous spells to the door when you only had to say the colour you picked out to open the door.

"It's okay" you say back to him and smile, but you notice from the look on his face that he's filled to the brim with nerves. "You must be nervous" you suggest, giving him the opportunity to open up if that's what he needs right now. You, like no one else, are aware of the unfavourable feelings that the soulmate context brings along. After days, you still don't have a label to paste on the feelings from back then, simply because you still don't know what to feel now either. "I am. One of my friends already met his soulmate, and my parents are soulmates too. They suggested for me to visit this place as they said not everyone can find their soulmate randomly" he explains even if he doesn't state the reason why he's so nervous. Perhaps the pressure is the reason: pressured to find his special person because his friend did and his parents obviously did too.

You nod at his explanation, making sure he knows that you're listening, but you don't interrupt as you want to hear how he feels. His story reminds you of Sicheng who made you believe even more than you perhaps did before. Whether you were a believer or not, is something you don't remember because you simply didn't think about it that often. Perhaps you were a believer, or one of the more sceptical people, or you could have been a non-believer. Whatever you were, it didn't matter anymore, you are a believer now.

"My name is Jungwoo by the way," He says before you can respond to his explanation, he probably saw your facial expression as you were trying to form a correct answer and also didn't feel like telling you an uninteresting story of how he found out someone was his soulmate. To say it easily, the subject changed.

"I'm y/n"

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

It's twenty-five to eleven when you take the small steps to reach the street again, spinning on your heel to see Jungwoo sliding down the railing that separates the stairs evenly.

The sight makes you clasp your hand over your mouth in an attempt to silence the laugh that threatens to leave your lips. But only after you see Jungwoo losing his balance unexpectedly which causes his little playful moment to come to an end a little too soon. His feet stumble over the last two steps of the stairs before his body bumps against yours with full speed.

Not by speed, but by force, your body is dragged backwards and you almost hit the floor with a shocked Jungwoo in your arms. But before that happens, his fast reflexes are able to catch himself and you before the unfortunate event takes place. Yet, it doesn't stop the two pairs of feet from trying to find balance on the evenly divided ground.

"I'm sorry" Jungwoo immediately apologises as he makes sure your two feet can find balance without his arms holding you up, but the mere distance between your bodies causes his own feet to be unstable. It's a feeling he needs to shake off, his soulmate is somewhere waiting for him, and your soulmate must be waiting for you somewhere as well. "I was just trying to make you laugh, not fall"

"But I didn't fall, and I had a good laugh. Trust me, I had more fun in those seconds than in the past days" you admit easily to Jungwoo, it's the downside of being isolated in an underground library, but hopefully not a future consequence of looking for your soulmate. "Ah" is the only thing that slips past Jungwoo's lips at your response, it leaves both of you in a communal cloud of wondering what to say to not make it any more uneasy.

You simultaneously look into the same direction when a flower-shaped shadow seems to dwindle down from a large tree. "Did you see that?" You ask as confusion spreads over your face, your eyes torn between looking at Jungwoo or the shadow that slowly disappears once it hits the ground. The soft landing must have taken the silhouette to blend their shades into one.

"Sorry?" Jungwoo asks as he looks at you again, his head tilted to the left as he tries to find the reason behind your confusion. The beanie that refrains his hair from moving too much doesn't prevent his bangs from moving in the same direction as his head.

The reaction leaves you speechless and stumbling over your own words before you even say them, "the flower. A daisy just fell from that tree," you say as you point upwards to the large creation of nature. Jungwoo's eyes can't help but follow your fingers up to the leaves of the tree, he can't see the colour of them in the darkness, but daisies are absent in the almost-chromatic view.

"I don't see anything" he responds to your words as he tries to make his eyes work harder, but no matter how much he squints, the enlarged view shows a total lack of flowers in the tree, especially daisies.

Tiredness is clearly ruling a position as CEO while you're only a personal assistant for the feeling. "I'm tired, I bet it was something else or my eyes are just clowning around" you mumble in disappointment when you realise Jungwoo is right. When you look at the tree again, you don't see any daisies, and you become aware that daisies don't commonly fall from trees that aren't specific daisy trees.

"Sounds like you should go home" Jungwoo mumbles to you, letting a soft smile coat his lips and you're sure your clumsiness has been forgotten unless he's planning on teasing you with it for the upcoming time. It's something you see him capable of as earlier, he had a good laugh about a writer's odd name. But the soft smile that displays on his lips makes you trust him not to tease too much.

"I think I will" you confirm Jungwoo's suggestion, trying to give him a similar soft-looking smile in return, but you're too tired to control the muscles that make the gesture possible. Like a stereotypical teenager from a sappy romance, Jungwoo hides his large hands in his jeans pockets. "Will I see you tomorrow?"

Your response is a soft hum before you confirm it with your words. "I'm here every day, most of the day. So expect to see me a lot" you answer his question.

"I'll look forward to it" Jungwoo quickly tells you, the genuine tone in his voice refraining you from walking away without saying goodbye.

An hour later and you find yourself tucked in a thin sheet that is supposed to keep your body heat at a stable temperature for the rest of the night. Though, it's not the sheet that keeps your body at a pleasant temperature, but rather the little train of comforting thoughts that rides around in your mind.

From the little moments of laughter you shared with Jungwoo, to the sweet brown eyes of your soulmate that you continuously gaze into whenever you close your own.

It makes you feel warm inside

Your eyes - as they usually are when you're in bed - are closed as you want to go over all of the little big things of today. Yet, by now, you should know that it's a task you won't be able to fulfill.

While the colour is sometimes considered dull, the brown colour of his eyes seem to create other feelings. Feelings of warmth and wholesomeness as you gaze into them. The green palette of the park surrounds the two of you and you can feel the trunk of the Quercus dentata against your back.

"Don't pluck me daisies. Just make me be your flower"

「 ᴡʜɪᴛᴇꜱᴍᴏᴋᴇ # ꜰ5ꜰ5ꜰ5 」

"I don't understand what else I have to find out, Cyan" you breathe out as you drop the heavy-weighted book on top of some others that you had been scanning through for the past four and a half hours. Another two hundred seventy minutes wasted, and yes, wasted was the right word to use for all the time you spent in the library so far.

Cyan easily notices the high level of pressure, she already noticed when you first made your entrance of the day. "What do you mean by that?" She asks you as she tries to lift her body to sit on the side of the moon-shaped table but eventually just leans against it before accidents happen. "I already found out I have to play a game with the daisies, and my soulmate's birthday is February nineteen. What else do I have to find out?"

The way you say your words makes it easy for Cyan to see through them and bump into a big lump of exhaustion. It's a price many people pay but at the same time no one asked them to pay the fee, it's something people do to themselves because they're so desperate to claim someone to be theirs. You're no different from anyone when it comes to that, no one is any different. At least humans have one thing in common even though it doesn't make them less unique.

"Potentially, you could look for your soulmate"

A scowl coats your entire facial expression, your muscles doing work without you having to ask about it. You open your mouth to speak up but silence yourself from the string of curses and confusion that blend together to a feeling called bitterness.

"What?" You ask as you wish to get rid of your confusion, you swallow the curses you want to throw at her. You shouldn't curse at her, seeing that aside from her vague way of phrasing things, she's a blessing. The bitter feeling on the tip of your tongue is something you want to out but just like tastebuds, they stay in their place for you to enjoy the lingering bitterness a bit more. "You mean I've been here 24/7 for nothing?" you ask her, quick to hold her back because you receive a vague answer to your surprised exclaim, but even if this time your question is unmistakable, you still expect a similar answer.

"Darling," Cyan is about to continue but you hold up your hand in aim for her to stop. You know where her "darling" leads you in life. And that destination is non-existent.

Despite your tries to stop, she doesn't. "Listen to me y/n. You can go out and find your soulmate right now, no one ever told you to stay inside the library. If you know how to find your soulmate, go for it"

Now, that is something Cyan doesn't need to tell you twice. Instead of cursing at you, you now want to hug her tightly and press numerous pecks to her cheek to thank her. It's something you don't do though, but you could if you follow your current happy hunch.

It's the isolation that took a toll on your well-being and affected your way of coping with different emotions and situations. Before you entered this enchanted place, you were as sweet as a strawberry but now that you were allowed to leave, you walked out as a bitter cranberry that was kept in the fridge for one day too long.

"Are you serious?" You just want to hear her say the words once more, confirm that it was what she truly said before. You expect yourself to run out of the library within an instant, but your feet are attached to the tile as you wait for her to repeat the words once more.

She doesn't repeat the words once more, she simply nods and drifts off before you're able to stop her from doing so. Your eyes follow every movement she makes in the direction of another door and disappears behind it before you're able to see what is behind that door.

With your feet securely attached to the tiled-floor, you had no other option but to awkwardly stay still for at least sixty seconds. Your thoughts go blank at you look around the library.

Jungwoo is still sitting where he usually sits, his head buried between a book while his right hand is holding a pen in case he has to make notes. There is a white pair of earbuds in his ear so you assume or hope that he didn't hear the exclamations you made during the conversation with Cyan.

Generally, things aren't any more filled or less empty as they usually are. If anything misses, it's the presence of the other soulmate-searching humans. Today there's no Johnny, Ley, Isabelle, Donghyuck or any of the others that would usually be around at this hour of the day. You're aware they don't come every day, but you're so used to their presence filling up the ancient space even if they constantly read.

Your feet take you a step backwards, going towards the door to head outside. It's too early to celebrate that you can finally leave this antiquated hellhole because there's a hint of truth in Cyan's words, and you fear not being able to come back once you leave permanently.

"I'm going to go out for some air" you announce to no one in particular, it's not like anyone is available to you, but you still feel like telling so that Cyan and Jungwoo both know that you'll be back in a matter of minutes. You mean to see that Jungwoo nods, but realise soon that he's only bobbing his head along to a pop song.

You spin around and take the silence as an opportunity to leave for a few minutes, it doesn't have to be long, just some time to properly think and put everything on a non-organised timeline in your head. The iron door closes as you take your leave and follow the stairs up, right now they seem to lead to temporary freedom.

Once you're outside, it seems like you haven't seen the world in more than a year, even if it's been a matter of days, not even enough to make a sum that ends in enough days for a month. You have no idea what time it is until you look up at the sky and imagine this must be what the sky looks like when it's afternoon.

Your freedom only lasts for a minute, before you know it, you're claimed by whoever is making your phone vibrate in your back pocket. How did you even forget about the little device you used to be obsessed with?

Your hand slips in your pocket, clutching the phone between your parted fingertips before pulling it out of the pocket. It's only a matter of seconds before the phone is facing you with a bright screen, revealing that it's not just a text message but that someone is calling you.

Called ID is no other than your best friend Sicheng, and you waste no time in picking up the phone to hear what he has to say. You breathe into the speaker without realising that you do, already looking forward to hearing a voice other than Cyan's.

"y/n? Are you okay?" Sicheng asks, hiding a cough because he thinks he disturbed you in a heated moment, yet that's far from what is going on right now. "I am, sorry" you quickly say, regaining control over yourself to not pull such weird stunts once again. The last thing you want is Sicheng to think about your bed-activities.

"I've been trying to call you for the past two hours now, but it never went through" Sicheng breathes out himself but it's a sigh of relief that he finally gets to talk to you. He's not the type to call, so he must have been in a state of distress when he wasn't able to reach you. "I was busy, sorry" you apologise once more to him.

Sicheng sighs for the second time, it's another exhale of pure relief. "I have to talk to you, do you have time? It's important," he says before you're able to ask why he called you non-stop for the past two hours. You opt to nod but after a few seconds, realise that he can't see it. Normally he's next to you but now you're hearing his voice through the phone so he can't see you, and you can't see him.

"Of course, I have time" you answer Sicheng as you try to speak in a comforting tone, not aware of what Sicheng is about to say but it already sounds like it's something serious. "What is it?" you ask when your eyes don't pick up any response, no sound, nix.

"It's about the daisies"

You are all eyes and ears once he mentions the little flowers that have become so precious to you. Your eyes even glance to the spot where you thought you saw a daisy dwindling a couple of days ago, back when Jungwoo must have labelled you as lunatic.

"What about the daisies?" you ask back carefully, your hand fumbling with the edge of your shirt as your heartbeat picks up the pace. Through your veins spread nothing but fear, because deep in your heart you know exactly what happened to the white-coloured flowers.

"How long has it been since you were in the park?"

The question doesn't take you by surprise but it makes your nerves build up even more. The pit in your stomach now seems to take up al available space and even then, it only seems to grow bigger and bigger. Your mind has to dig through countless of book pages to get to the asked piece of information: when was the last time you had been in the park?

"A few days ago?" you answer in a questioning tone, admitting the words take you by surprise. It gives you time to reflect on yourself: how you abandoned the park for the library, and the real tree for a fantasia daydream of it. All of that for your soulmate, even if it's your own fault.

Sicheng hears how unsure you are by the underlying tone in your voice, it gives away that you're either way insecure or scared. He opts for the second one: it obviously wasn't going to be good news if he had been trying to reach you for over two hours just to happily talk about your visits to the park. "I was there today, y/n."

"And?" you impatiently urge for him to continue speaking before you properly processed the words that he went to the park. It's nerve-wracking to wait until he finally speaks up, even if you doubt that you want to hear what he has to say.

Nix.

"The daisies are gone, someone plucked them off. Only some stems are left"

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

When you wished for freedom, you didn't wish for the four daisies to be plucked away from you.

Your fingers dig through the grass in an attempt to find remains of the daisies, or find new barely-blooming daisies. You run your fingers through the cold grass multiple times, your eyes observing between the blades of grass to hopefully encounter something.

Sadly, you have to conclude that everything is gone, aside from the stems that are hidden between the grass. Clearly, the non-beautiful pieces were left even if they were critical to the white-yellow-coloured flower. There is a torn piece of a white petal laying in the depths of the grass, and you grieve over it.

Tears are endangering the soft and dry skin fo your cheeks, but the wet tears stay hidden in the corners of your eyes for as long as you're strong enough to hold them back. "Why?"

You don't get a response to your question, simply because you're not asking anyone, and no one is around you to answer. You know it's a question you can answer for yourself, and there is only one answer possible: you're the one to blame.

The blame is put on yourself, for various and valid reasons. For starters, you abandoned the park to spend your time in a library where books guide your feelings instead of your heart. Second, you were the person that wished for freedom and it heavily affected your chances to ever meet your soulmate in this life.

The combination of thoughts trigger the tears and they take their chance to slowly roll down your cheeks in grief. You feel your cheeks getting wet with remains of sadness, regret and grief. Before the first one falls onto the green grass, another one already rushes out and follows the wet trail.

You want to close your eyes and disappear from reality, but you don't allow yourself to see your soulmate's soft orbs when you close your own. Instead, you can only stare at what should have been the flowers guiding you as you walked on the path to your soulmate.

Whatever there is left to grasp, you grasp between your fingertips. You pull pieces of grass from the earth in the process of taking the leftover stems from their designated growing space.

When you stand up from your kneeled position, you faintly notice that the jeans fabric that covers your knees became a mixed colour of green and brown: the colours of grass and dirt. But the discoloured jeans are the least of your concerns right now.

With the stems of the daisies tightly clutched in your fist, you leave the daimyo oak alone by running out of the park. There's only one place you can go, and only one person that can tell you what to do: Cyan.

Your feet had never been this fast whilst running to the library, nor had your eyes done an effort of this kind to make sure you didn't bump into fellow humans or objects. That was one less disappointment for you to worry about. You had no idea for how long you ran when you finally arrived at the library, it seemed to have taken hours but in reality, it must have been a matter of minutes.

"Ecru" leaves you lips before you run through the barely-opened door to get inside the library. You look around frantically, searching for Cyan but you can only see Jungwoo who is still studying whatever he got to know about his soulmate.

Your feet skip over the large tiles as you march over to Jungwoo, trying to be understanding but you pull at the cord of his earbuds so that at least one of them falls from his ear. His lips are parted in surprise and it takes him a second to turn his head and realise that it's you who did it.

"Where is Cyan?"

Jungwoo doesn't answer your question immediately, causing you to only get more anxious. Tears start to rapidly flow down your cheeks, they do it gracefully but the sight looks far from that in third-person view.

"Why are you crying?" Jungwoo asks you worriedly, grasping your arm in an attempt to pull you into a comforting hug. But your trembling hands don't allow it, yet, they're too weak to stay together to protect whatever is left of the little daisies.

The remains sadly fall to the floor, descending from between your fingertips and onto the cold tiles. Your eyes meet Jungwoo's momentarily but as soon as you become aware of the emptiness in your hands, your blurry vision shifts to your hands, and towards the floor.

One droplet, two droplets and still flowing. Falling on the sadly fallen flower stems and petals.

"They plucked my daisies" you croak out in a broken voice, staring at the floor where the faint green colour becomes the eye-catcher of the scenery. Your blurry vision leaves you with nothing but hues, you can't even recognise the shape of a stem in the little heap that was on the floor.

You still feel the stems falling from between your fingers even though you're left empty-handed.

"Your daisies?" Jungwoo asks as he stares at the floor as well. His vision clear enough to see blades of grass, mixed with a couple of while petals and next to them some more greenery that he can't particularly name because they look the same as grass but a different texture. It's the little petal that makes him realise what you mean when you say the word 'daisies' but it still doesn't click in his mind.

His hand awkwardly moves towards you as you continue to sadly drop your tears over the greenery, his hand is reaching towards your back but pulls back in hesitation.

Before Jungwoo is able to make up his mind about the right way of comforting you, your name is called by Cyan who almost spurts from the hidden room within the library. She marches over to you with quick and heavy steps until she's right in front of you.

"y/n, what's wrong?" Cyan asks as her foot hovers over the stems unnoticeably, her hands move to your shoulders to make looking into your eyes possible. Her hands instantly straighten your shoulders but your eyes never leave the stems that are now crushed by a pair of elderly-woman shoes. You don't have the guts to say anything about it, if anything, it makes you realise that your chance to meet your soulmate is crushed.

"My daisies" you start to say but you can't finish off what you said so far. The daisies were the only living organism that mattered to you aside from your soulmate, and now, both of those were lost. Your arms that limply hang from your body bring a movement to your index finger, merely pointing down to where Cyan is standing. The effort goes by unnoticed, even by yourself.

"Your daisies?" Cyan inquires but the tears that freely run down your cheeks give away the answer before you even have to tell her what's going on. Better than you know, she is aware of your task and aware of the five daisies that led you to your soulmate. She doesn't judge even if she knows, she listens.

You nod your head, hiccuping due to the lump of sadness that is stuck in your throat. "Someone plucked my daisies and now they are gone."

Cyan's hands that had been on your shoulders, rapidly move to the back of your head as she pulls your body against her own. Her lips part as she wants to say everything will be okay any upcoming day, but that sadly wasn't the truth, nor would you believe it if she said that.

"Look at me," she tells you, once again holding onto your shoulders as she distances your bodies. Your tear-filled eyes are slow to react and ignorant as you can barely focus them on her. "This doesn't mean the end, y/n. I'm going to help you look for a way to make this right."

You want to trust her, you really do. But you can't bring yourself to put a grain of trust in her words because they seem unrealistic, just like everything else that is happening in this library.

"y/n," she says your name effortlessly because she knows you're listening even if you are not willing to. "I'm going to help you. Together we can still find your soulmate" she tells you, just the same words as earlier but with different words and phrases.

You take her hands away from your shoulders and shake your head in response. Your earlier wish for freedom becomes the wish to never remember any of the things that happened, a wish for the daimyo oak to permanently and magically disappear from the park so that you never have to look back at it again.

"Sorry Cyan," You say to her, the words hide the exact phrase that you're giving up or you've already given up at this point. Once more, your eyes meet the floor in sadness.

A virgin-white petal stares at you from its position on the floor, it's as damaged as your heart is, yet, its condition doesn't make you feel less lonely. You bend down, not caring if both Cyan and Jungwoo are staring at you whilst you grieve over the lost and broken petals.

Your fingertip reaches out for the petal, carefully lifting it as it rests on your fingertip.

You have to decide if you're going to wilt like a daisy or if you're just going to go forward and live the life that you've been granted

「 ʙᴇɪɢᴇ # ꜰ5ꜰ5ᴅᴄ 」

Your fingertip caresses the outline of the daisy that is printed on the spine of the book, your finger lifting slightly when it comes across one of the raised bands in the middle of the spine. It's useless to open the book but you can't help it, you open the book until the gutter is steady enough to separate the two parts.

Another illustration of a daisy stares back at you as you observe it, it's the anatomy of a daisy, something you surely knew by head at this point. Why did you still remember it even when you would never be able to use the knowledge?

Your heart hurts, almost symbolically sinks when your thumb tumbles over a few chapters, a new page greeting you with the uses of a daisy. Your eyes follow the different uses: culinary when its young leaves are between other edible greenery in a salad, herbal medicine when their juice is extracted to heal wounds, soulmate when it's destined that a person looks for an object of affection through the French game effeuiller la marguerite.

You swallow away the lump of sentiment in the back of your throat, trying not to gaze upon the infamous word, but you read out the word silently at least five times, once for every flower you abandoned in the park. Your thumb moves to the corner of the page, over the page number in hopes to skip over the page.

Yet, two minutes later, your eyes still read over the words while your thumb is frozen upon the digits that you don't want to change. It's like you're sentimentally obsessed, a bad consequence of not being able to say goodbye before your grieving process began.

Donghyuck who has been studying a book about dreams -as he has been dreaming about his soulmate and still would dream about them until the day they would meet one another -, stands up from his stool as he sees you lurking around the bookshelves in distress and grief.

"Are you alright, y/n?" he asks with a caring smile on his lips, you miss the sight because your eyes are endlessly pasted on the page of the book. At first, you only nod in response before muttering out a quiet, "yes."

Donghyuck shakes his head, his hand pulling on the top edge of the book to take it from your tight grip. "Focus on me for a few seconds, please. I know you're not alright," he says as he manages to conquer your weak grip, receiving the book between his hands even if it was never your intention for it to end up in his hands.

"I don't want to talk," You say as you look at Donghyuck but only momentarily, not allowing him to look at your tear-filled eyes for longer than a handful of seconds. You lower your head, facing the floor and mistakably see the green hue of the stems even when the floor is clean and only matte in its own dark-blue colouration.

"I know," Donghyuck responds, his hands gently put away the book on the nearby bookshelf before he takes your hands in his to hold. "But you can't give up now, your soulmate is waiting somewhere for you. Are you going to give all of that up because of the daisies?"

Even if you don't want to listen to what he has to say - because you've heard the same words at least twenty times in the past week - you can't help but listen to every word and consider it in the depths of your mind. "I know," you answer to his words but leave his question unanswered.

Yes, you are going to give up the progress you made because your daisies are plucked away. There is no reason for you to continue the search of your object of affection just to please your inner-soulmate personality or dreams. The longer you think about it, the more doubts you start to have with everything that has happened. No one could change your mind thus far: not Johnny who came by to say he met his soulmate, not Émilie that took your seat the times she was there, not Cyan who tried her hardest to be a positivist in this situation.

"Don't give up yet," Donghyuck said as he looked at you, a sad smile coating his lips because he felt emotional by just the sight and thought. If he were to lose the one thing that could lead him to his soulmate, he would have given up too, perhaps even earlier than you did. "You still have the daimyo oak in the park right? Please don't give up so soon."

You don't plan on replying to Donghyuck's endless pleading about you giving up, but a response is not anticipated anymore when the noise of the iron doors opening suddenly interrupts the conversation. All heads turn to the door, even yours is quick to react by giving all of your focus to the door instead of the melancholic-looking floor.

You catch a glimpse of who is running out of the door before it slowly starts to close again.

Black-haired Jungwoo who had been dressed in his usual jeans with nothing but a simple shirt to dress him up casually for the daily library visits. The white Converse-branded shoes on his feet take him out of the library as fast as his feet allow him to go. Walking is not even an option, he is running.

"What is going on?" Donghyuck and you simultaneously blurt out when seeing the young boy run out like his life is depending on it. Even when the iron-grated door slowly closes again, your eyes don't recolate, too astonished by the sudden unexplained and unexpected situation.

Cyan slowly steps forward towards the door as she sees it closing, she carries a smile on her lips as she knows exactly what is going on. She glances proudly at the closed doors, her eyes slowly blinking as her imagination is prepared to show her what is going to follow next. "His soulmate," she answers shortly, giving you and Donghyuck a soft look "flowers are blooming on his path, he must know the way."

The words leave you and Donghyuck clueless, but it's the smile displayed on her lips that make you the most confused that you have been in a while. You have the perception that Jungwoo found his soulmate, or at least is one step further than he was last week.

As you feel your heart breaking, you experience happiness that Jungwoo found his soulmate.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

The minute hand ticks around the clock twice, it signals four times in two hours: when a new hour is announced and when that same hour passed halfway already.

One hundred sixty-six minutes pass by on the clock, you don't count any of the minutes but you're aware enough of the time each time you take a small glance. Due to the observing skill, it's not hard to count how many minutes pass by.

The minute hand is about to move a millimetre under your watching eyes, but you get distraught by the sound of the door opening. It can only be one person, the person everyone waited for: the person Donghyuck and you stayed longer for, the person Cyan dropped her work for.

Jungwoo appears inside again with a jubilant smile coating his lips, he looks like he won a singing contest but is out of breath due to the timeworn use of his voice. He breathes deeply as the doors close, giving him a cool breeze even though his body feels too warm to get cooled off.

"y/n," he starts immediately as his steps approach you, his pace fast but the rhythm in his footsteps are off due to the running back and forth he did. Twelve steps further, he stops when he is only two steps away from making physical contact with you.

You stay silent as you're taken by surprise, surprised by the sudden unexpected scenario that is yet to unfold right in front of your eyes. Speechless, even after a few seconds, you still can't utter out a response.

"I was in the park," Jungwoo says as he notices your silence, his breathing faintly coating a layer of warmth on your cheeks due to the condensation. His hand reaches out to yours gently, running only the pad of his thumb over the skin of your hand. "In the park?" you ask him soft, your expression brightening by a whisker, but it's enough for Jungwoo to see the changes.

"I was in the park" He repeats again, his other four fingertips slowly embracing yours until he is properly holding your hand in his. Your hand is trembling in anticipation or fear, for whatever is about to leave his lips next.

You nod in response, urging for him to continue speaking, you want to pull the words out of his mind so that you can hear them sooner, but realise he must have seen something unforeseen. "I went to the park for you, because I heard you talking about the Daimyo oak. So I immediately left and went there, and under the tree was a daisy."

A daisy. Those are the only two words you process out of all of the words he said. It's quiet when you try to once again process and accept what he said, your imagination running wild over the thought of one single daisy blooming under the oak, giving you another chance to meet your soulmate.

"Are you for real?" you ask as a smile slowly creeps onto your lips, your lips desire to curve upwards but you don't let them because your heart doesn't want to be harmed in case it was only a sick joke on your grieving process.

Jungwoo excitedly bobs his head up and down as a yes, he's excited but at the same time he has never been so serious about something before, he's torn with what way to bring over the news to you in order for you to believe it. But the young man can't contain the positivity that streamed through his veins when under the Daimyo oak, he saw a tiny daisy growing.

"You have to get to the park," Donghyuck says with a bright smile, Jungwoo's excitement clearly getting transferred to Donghyuck because he's unable to control the happy expression on his face. His eyes shift to Jungwoo and then back to you, not even considering Cyan who has been standing with you as well. "Go!"

Cyan clears her throat before you can do as Donghyuck says, it doesn't stop you from taking a step towards the door but does stop you from running out of the library to check if a daisy is really growing in the spot where the other four had been plucked away. She calls your name to make you turn towards her, which you do as you become aware that she wants to say something.

"Don't let it get plucked away again," She starts saying in a serious tone, almost strict as this might truly be the last chance you have to find your soulmate. You react by nodding your head, not giving her words attention, nor do you use your own words to reply to her.

It turns out to be Donghyuck who triggers you into ignoring Cyan "go!" he shouts and in reaction to that, you take off running. You exchange the library for the outside world again, this time not for freedom, but for your soulmate who might have given you one last chance.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Desire is like a storm. Things get broken

There is a quote saying "where flowers bloom, so does hope."

Hope bloomed in the depths of your heart as you ran all the way from the library to the park, running over the grass instead of the path just to get there a few seconds faster. From afar you weren't able to see if your tree engulfed a little blooming daisy.

But once you came closer, close enough to observe small-scaled details. One thing you're not able to observe is the growth of a little miracle in the grass.

Green is the only colour that paints the grass-filled space underneath the tree, you're not colour-blind, as no petals nor disks stare at you as you stare down in search for them. There are no daisies growing, peeking from out of the grass to grow even taller than the green blades.

"Where is the daisy?" you ask yourself quietly as you glance around your aura, circling around like a clock but it's useless. Nothing is growing, nor blooming, aside from the pain in your heart, even though you're embraced by the branches of the Daimyo oak.

Your view lowers itself another notch, this time in disappointment as there is nothing more to observe. Whether Jungwoo played a joke on you, or the flower got plucked away between the time that you and Jungwoo separately observed here, is something that doesn't matter. It's not Jungwoo's fault, nor is it the tree's that didn't protect its fellow natural miracle. It's your fault, you couldn't even live life as a natural flower, you bloomed like an artificial flower.

「 ꜰʟᴏʀᴀʟᴡʜɪᴛᴇ # ꜰꜰꜰᴀꜰ0 」

Your slouched shoulders effortlessly moved along with the natural movement as soon as you sigh, the walls seem to tighten after you let out the sigh. You feel closed in but the walls are so far away, it feels like you are left alone in a place you don't recognise anymore.

The physical sensation you feel when you sigh makes it clear that you're heartbroken, if not any feeling that is even worse than heartbreak. Even though heartbreak is the excellent word to use right now, broken not by your soulmate, but by yourself.

There's a hot cup in your hands, hot from the heat of the beverage, but it doesn't warm up your cold fingertips, nor does your heart feel warm by the little source of heat.

Less than one week ago, your days still felt enchanted. Filled to the upper brim with magic of the unexplained. Your warm beverage had tasted like the loveliest love potion, and you had willingly drunk every sip until the last drop fell on your tongue.

Each day was different but no less magical, if anything, each day that passed was more magical than the other. The twenty-four hours in a day resembled one step towards your soulmate, thus you walked the path for countless hours, and got one step closer to the promised land with each day that appeared on the calendar.

Dull. Days no longer felt magical or enchanted. Days were endlessly filled with dullness: every twenty-four hours, all one thousand four hundred forty hours, and the many seconds you could convert it to but that would fall into more depressive thoughts about never being able to walk the path.

Flowers had wilted on the path, blooming was something that wouldn't occur again. It was one of a kind opportunity to see the path filled with flowers. Unforgettable. Now you're doomed to walk on the same path and notice how the shades of reality coloured life but left the wilted flowers monochrome.

"ecru"

The word is hidden behind the muffled scoff that you let out but you can hear yourself saying the words. You don't expect a large door to grant you access to a library this time, if anything, you wish for something grander. Whether your grand wish has something to do with your soulmate is something you don't even know: you wish to meet him but at the same time you wish to forget everything that happened. Even though you're sitting in your own home, you hope that you can forget the past weeks and return home. A world without Daimyo oak and daisies.

Next to the post-it note where the term of the colour is scribbled down on, is your phone that has been endlessly occupied with its buzzing indications. It's something you opted to ignore for the past forty minutes even though the buzzing is more bothersome than the person who is spamming you with possible supportive messages.

You let out a soft sigh when the buzzing finally comes to a halt for longer than five seconds, you can't see it yourself but a sense of relief is washing over your facial expression, coating the sadness momentarily.

Now that the obnoxious buzzing isn't filling your eardrums, you feel tempted to pick up the phone and look at the messages, perhaps even force yourself to reply to some of them. Your temptation is hard to neglect, and within a span of nine seconds, the phone moves from the table into your hand.

The plain lockscreen of a professionally photographed scenery makes you think negatively about the way people see reality, it's them that see all of the nice colours while in reality, things are as coloured as you make them, and you're not planning on continuing your life with a pair of ecru-coloured glasses sugarcoating the world.

You're about to press the button to make your screen go black but get reminded of the many notifications because of the little border that restricts you from seeing the full picture on the screen. You take a second to stare at all of them: not individually even if multiple messages and useless emails have been displayed there, the global look seems to be your concept for picking who is important enough to reply to.

One name catches your attention, a name that you put in your contacts but never received a message from, nor ever sent a message to him: Kim Jungwoo.

Jungwoo [ 9 : 59 am ] : please reply, Cyan said that you shouldn't let the daisy get plucked away

The message makes you press the screen multiple times, once to say you want to read the message and twice to confirm to your phone that opening the messaging app is all you want at this moment. The coloured lockscreen disappears from your sight, instead, you're greeted with at least a dozen of one-sided messages, waiting for a response from you.

You scroll up lightly, until the moment your screen nearly hits the top of the saved conversation. Intensely, you read them word by word even though minutes ago, you swore you became a non-believer

Jungwoo [ 9 : 10 am ] : are you awake? There's something I need to say

Jungwoo [ 9 : 31 am ] : the daisy is under the oak in the park

Jungwoo [ 9 : 31 am ] : please believe me this time, I swear it's there

Jungwoo [ 9 : 46 am ] : let me go to the park with you, I'll show you

Jungwoo [ 9 : 48 am ] : please believe me. This oak is my birth flower and I believe in the magic that it would grant you a daisy because it did. I swear the daisy is there

Jungwoo [ 9 : 50 am ] : I'm staying here until you reply

Even though it was a waste of time, you still read the remaining seven messages to yourself, they all said the same, they all told you to reply or get your ass to the park as fast as possible. Another element that returned in more than half of the messages: the daisy.

Your feet are steadily placed on the floor, your legs seem to make it a forceful feeling like you're preparing to start running a marathon any second now. Indeed, you are ready for takeoff whenever the last straw triggers you into doing so. There's only one destination, one path, one marathon trail and that leads you straight to the park.

But it's your mind that runs a different marathon and prevents you from putting stupid thoughts into action, your mind endlessly avoids both of the paths there are: to go or not to go. You have enough reasons not to, seeing last time there hadn't been a daisy. If there is a reason to go, it's for your soulmate.

There is nothing you can lose by going, or at least that's what your heart tells you to tone down the loudness of your mind's unsteady footsteps. Plus you still trust Jungwoo, despite him being incorrect about the daisy last time, but you convince yourself that he stood under the wrong tree…

"The wrong tree?" You question the words you tried to convince yourself of, it's a thought that didn't cross your mind before but he had never explicitly said the Daimyo oak was his birth flower. It meant that he wouldn't be able to choose the wrong tree, there was only one Daimyo oak in the park, and apparently, it was accompanied by one daisy.

Jungwoo [ 10 : 13 ] : please come to the park

The buzz from the phone almost went through your veins, triggering you into the takeoff you had expected. Without responding to the text, you put the phone in your pocket as you got up from your chair.

Left your house, door wide open, heaven knows.

The daisy is so worth it, it is.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

The unbuttoned grey trenchcoat that Jungwoo is wearing immediately pulls your attention, almost no one could pull off being so tall and make a trenchcoat look shorter than it proportionally was. Yet, it is the pure-looking facial features that bring the small sign of happiness to your lips.

"Finally!" He breathes out as you take the last few steps towards him, removing his hands from the 'storm' pockets to immediately run them through his black haircut instead. His body is filled with healthy tension and perhaps fear as well, because he badly wants you to believe him, after all, he had been speaking the truth all this time.

"How long have you been here?" You ask worriedly as you imagine him being here for way longer than you might realise, especially when you think about the forty minutes that he begged for you to come to the park. Jungwoo shrugs in response but there's a mischievous smile that tells you everything you need to know, "not too long".

As you look at Jungwoo, the Daimyo oak seems to naturally catch your attention by being as tall as it is. You don't need to tell the black-haired boy in front of you about the oak, nor about your newly-found excitement and hope about the daisy because Jungwoo can almost feel your emotions spreading through the many veins in his body.

"Oh!" Jungwoo reminds himself when he remembers why the mischievous smile was on his lips and the reason why he had been waiting here at the park for over an hour. "You have to come and look at the daisy," he said as his hand leaves his hair and immediately reaches out for your hand.

It would have looked like him dragging you along if it weren't for your own fast-paced footsteps that match Jungwoo's as you march towards the oak. You stay quiet as you anticipate the appearance of a little daisy, but Jungwoo can only let out a happy sound that almost sounds like a giggle.

You heard those happy giggles before, years ago, when your friends played "loves me, loves me not" with the daisies in the park and you wonder if soon you will be the giggly person because there is someone who answered you positively. You might not be at the appropriate age to giggle about such things, but better late than never. And when you're old: nostalgia is nostalgia, no matter at which age you were giggly over a lover you met through a game of loves me, loves me not.

Your feet move slightly faster than Jungwoo's when you're only a few steps away from being under what seems like your safe haven. Jungwoo takes it as a sign and slowly lets go of your hand, stopping his feet from moving before he's able to step into your safe bubble.

His eyes follow every movement you make, his eyes shining with happiness for you but he feels a little piece of his heart hiding the feelings that he isn't supposed to feel. He doesn't want to feel as okay as he feels, he wants to tear up but something tells him it's okay to be okay. His thoughts take him to fragments of time: when he saw you laugh or when he saw the tears rolling down your cheeks, all of the times he can look back on with his honest heart that stays hidden for the outside world.

"Jungwoo?"

Your voice pulls him out of his thoughts, he doesn't need to move his head to be able to see you as he had been staring at you and the scenery unknowingly. Nervously, his hand itches the back of his neck but still doesn't get the hint that something is expected from him.

"There is no daisy," You tell him even if it is too quiet for him to hear it, you only hear yourself say the words. You wish you were in a phase of denial, a phase where your mind will sugarcoat the sad story with something untrue and non-realistic. "There is no daisy!"

The second time the words leave your lips, Jungwoo can clearly hear what you said. "What do you mean?" Jungwoo asks incoherently, confusion fills his mind but he can't see anything because you're standing in front of the spot where he saw the daisy before.

His lips part slightly to speak but nothing comes out, he swore he saw the daisy here before you were here, and the time when you didn't show up at all as well. There was only one flower so how would he be mistaken so much? His breathing is stuck in his throat from the bundle of nerves that block the way.

With heavy - almost plumbum-feeling - feet he drags himself under your safe haven and his birth tree. Just like all the times before this one, he feels a sense of warmth engulfing him like the tree is holding protective branches around his body and above his head.

His feet come to a halt right next to you, like an anchor sinking to the depths of the sea, he stranded to this particular spot and isn't able to move another step. He moves his head to the right slightly, trying to catch a glimpse of the green grass that should surround the white flower. "The daisy," Jungwoo exclaims in a whisper as there are no white petals of which the colour deviates with the green of the grass.

Geen madeliefje

"y/n," Jungwoo starts anxiously as he placed his hand on your shoulder, the grip barely non-existent as the happiness from before is replaced with a heap of other mixed feelings. He feels sad for you, he truly does, on the other hand, he can't help but feel blank and empty now that there is no flower that grants your wish to find your soulmate.

Your lower lip nearly trembles as you hold it back from parting to yell at the world, yell at Jungwoo for once again saying he saw a daisy while there is no daisy waiting for you. It bothers you more how his warm and comforting hand is placed upon your shoulder.

"Jungwoo," you repeat his name as he said yours, the difference is found in the tone: whereas he sounded anxious, you sound broken. It's a symbolical thing but Jungwoo can almost hear your heart breaking in pieces when you say his name like that, even though, your heart would never react in any form or shape when saying his name.

Your body turns to him, causing his hand to limply drop to where it is supposed to be next to his body. Your eyes are closed but you find the courage to slowly open them to look at Jungwoo, you hope disappointment isn't the blinding emotion in them because you try to keep it hidden.

"It's okay, thank you for trying," You say in a soft tone, curving your lips into a smile but the corners stay as tight at they are now, not even moving the tiniest inch because you keep them in tone. "I'm sorry, I really thought I saw a daisy here," Jungwoo noiselessly admits, his eyes non-stop going between you and the spot where he saw the flower blooming.

You look at him to meet his eyes, knowing you can believe him when he says that, and you want him to know that you believe him but at the same time that you're disappointed in yourself for allowing the situation to get out of hand. The brown eyes seem familiar, a little too familiar as you swear you've been staring into them every time you close your eyes.

Jungwoo tilts his head as you look into his eyes, confused by the sudden change in your non-verbal attitude even though he unknowingly feels the same emotions as you do. The more you stare at him, the further his head tilts as he continues to gaze back.

Something as tiny as a snowflake appears in front of your visions, Jungwoo sees it as it dwindles down in front of your eyes, you can see it peacefully falling from his hair and onto his grey trenchcoat. Your eyes want to shift to the sky but you're stopped by the colour contrast going on in Jungwoo's hair.

White petals elegantly rest on the black strands of hair and a single minuscule daisy is trapped between the locks of his bangs. The white petals contrast against his black hair and the yellow-coloured disk makes the look wholesome. Disbelief spreads through your body, causing your eyes to widen as you try to make sense of the situation.

"There is a daisy in your hair, Jungwoo," you whisper nervously as your fingertip points towards the non-artificial flower in his hair. The sight makes your heart beat faster: a nearly adoring feeling spreading from your heart into your tiniest bloodstream.

You're standing under Jungwoo's birth flower, the Daimyo oak. While you're standing there: you are looking for a daisy to find your soulmate with and Jungwoo is next to you with multiple petals in his hair and one daisy to complete the look.

"In my hair?" Jungwoo asks as he uses his hand to almost comb through his hair, causing a few of the petals to fall from his hair and onto his fabric-covered shoulders. He feels the softness of the petals under his fingertips and can almost feel his quickened heartbeat in the tips of his fingers with each touch he leaves onto the petals.

You don't have to conclude, it's premade and there's only one possibility. Jungwoo is your soulmate.

Saying the words out loud isn't something beefed, by the time the conclusion is given to you, Jungwoo already has a bright smile on his lips. Smiling like a flower receiving a bit of sunlight to grow towards, smiling like a person who just found his soulmate.

His gaze is locked with yours, staring at one another as the droplets of reality sink in. The brief silence that follows is as tender as a rainstorm of daisies.

"It's you," you whisper to break the silence, your eyes endlessly locked on your soulmate who can't help but mirror your actions because he's stunned. A smile breaks through your facial expression as the last sigh finally pushes past your lips.

The flower in your heart was blooming and you could feel the effect it had on you. The person that you had fun with and cried with, the person you motivated into searching for his soulmate. He was your object of affection.

Jungwoo slowly nods even if he is still trying to grasp the situation with both hands, his fingertips slip from reality and dip into the ecru world he unconsciously chose for when Cyan told him to choose a colour. "It's me, " he says in a soft tone, a nervous chuckle slipping from his lips as his ecru world no longer seems divergent from reality.

Under the embrace of the tree, Jungwoo reached his arms out to you and within seconds engulfed you in his arms. His arms felt warm and sincere, feeling the desperation by the strong grip he had on you.

Your eyes were closed, as were Jungwoo's, almost overly used to the vague image of one another. But the heartfelt moment keeps you in reality, the freshly-bloomed love between two soulmates.

"Their desire was silent yet magnificent, like a thousand daisies attuning their faces toward the path of the sun"

「 ᴇᴄʀᴜ # ꜰᴀꜰ0ᴇ6 」

The chorus of your alarm needlessly plays its tune to wake you up, it's only on the bedside table so you have no trouble in reaching out your arm and pressing your index finger onto anything that feels like a phone screen. It's a Sunday morning, a day of only domestic softness and time for loved ones.

"Why did you set your alarm?" You hear the voice next to you question out loud even if it only sounds like a mumble, the slight chilliness makes everything sound louder than it truly is. The sheets even produce slight sounds as Jungwoo turns his body to you, pulling your body against his until there is no space for gaps to breathe. "I have no idea," you mumble in response, your heart relaxing after being awoken by the music.

It's too late to fall into slumber again and you would rather spend your time looking at your soulmate, Kim Jungwoo. You slowly turn your body around until you're facing him and smile once you see his somewhat swollen cheeks from laying on them all night. "Stop."

You let out a small laugh at Jungwoo's simple request for you to stop staring at him, his voice makes it sound effortlessly adorable and from that, you conclude that he must be happy with the specific way of affection you're giving him. Still, you don't follow his request and stare at him for a few seconds longer: giving him your coloured eyes full of admiration and love.

"You're still doing it, flower ~" Jungwoo sings almost impossibly high, his morning voice straining his throat which results in him letting out a small cough. After giving your boyfriend a worried look, you let out a hum as you know you've been caught in the act.

"Gotta admire it before it gets plucked away"

Jungwoo scoffs in response to your words, his fingertips pressing onto your skin like it is a sign that he wouldn't get plucked away and wouldn't let you get plucked from his life either. It's a soft feeling on your warm skin, his fingertips caress protectively. "I won't get plucked away," Jungwoo says to ease your mind a bit from the worries, he can imagine the thoughts that go through your mind on this lovely Sunday morning "but you'll have to water me every day," he whispers against the shell of your ear, hoping to hear you laugh at those words.

It is not the joke that makes you laugh, it is not the dirty undertone of the words, but it is Jungwoo simply being himself that makes the smile return to your lips. Worries fade like the moon does in the sky who temporarily exchanges his position so that the sun can make flowers grow a little more towards the light.

"Was that supposed to sound as dirty as it did?" You ask him as you can finally find the laughter in his words and you seize the opportunity to make this morning a good one. Jungwoo's facial expression deadpans but it's noticeable that he's trying to bite the corners of his lips with the intention keep them on the thin verge of curving upwards. "Nope," he says, his lips pressed together but laughter breaks the non-existent glue between his bottom- and lower- lip.

"I don't believe you, look into my eyes and say again that those words were not meant to sound dirty," you request from him as you get yourself comfortable on the free space of his pillow, making it easier to look into the homely-brown pair of eyes. Which he does: his eyes travel from the exposed skin near your chest, up to your lips and into your eyes. "Those words were not supposed to sound dirty, your interpretation was wrong… but I guess you just think about sex often," he teases.

In disbelief, you playfully roll your eyes at what you've been told about yourself, by none other than your own soulmate. "You think so? I think you should go out for a walk and reflect on who has the dirtiest mind here," you suggest, using the same playfulness from when you rolled your eyes.

Jungwoo's laugh fills the room, ringing decibels louder than your alarm did before you were awake. But the sound is music to your ears: it's the perfect song, played at a loud volume that it deserves to get played on because everyone should hear his laugh. Seconds after he started, his laugh slowly dies down as his lips gaze towards your lips again.

"Maybe it's me," he admits in a serious tone as his lips copy yours unconsciously, making slow movements like yours as you part your lips to respond to his words. His serious tone doesn't make you laugh but it still sounds strangely sincere, perhaps because his mind did shift to a sexier setting once he saw your lips moving like they usually did.

Once you catch up with his newly-found interest for your lips, you also catch up with his confession of why he is the one with the dirtiest mind between the two of you. You become aware of your lips being the centre of attention and play along at the moment by biting the right corner of your lower lip. "I bet it is".

Jungwoo huffs when he realises your teases are not a coincidence, nor an accident. But he's quick-witted and pulls your body on top of his without hesitation: giving you no other option but to once again look into his brown eyes. His expression is unreadable: he doesn't look like he's playing around anymore, but the same softness is still displayed in the depths of his orbs.

He puckers his lips and pouts them upwards, getting more and more desperate until he finally reaches your soft lips with his own. The kiss that he initiates is soft for the first few seconds and he can feel your smiling lips against his out of happiness.

Soon his lips start to move against yours, the kiss getting more heated as you notice his body is yearning for certain touches and that special kind of affection. Energy and excitement mix together and spread through his limbs and even his lips get affected by it: his lips that were moving against yours slowly lower themselves in a trail filled with open-mouthed kisses. He doesn't stop until the moment he kisses the side of your exposed neck, the kisses finally arrived at the planned destination.

The soft breath you let out as reaction only makes Jungwoo press more kisses in your neck, knowing by the reaction that they make your morning a little more pleasurable. His unoccupied hands trail to your hips, keeping you still before you can even start to make slow grinding motions on top of him, his fingertips squeeze your covered skin whilst his imagination starts running wild.

"Is it not too early for this?" you ask soft as your head lulls to one side, allowing his kisses to take up more space and press on the more sensitive spots of your skin. A hum leaves Jungwoo's lips and you feel the vibrations of his hum against your throat "it's never too early for this," he whispers against your skin, placing another kiss down before he pulls away from you.

Jungwoo sits up on his knees and rids himself of his layers of nightwear: the shirt that covers his skin and the pair of sweatpants that hide the hairs on his legs. His boxers are tightly covering the crotch area and it only gets worse as he winds himself up over the thought of your body. Once he's undressed, he gapes at you as you do the same he did seconds ago. Your shirt is discarded and your shorts soon join to coat the floor with a layer of fabric.

"Look at you," he whispers as he smiles at the sight of you bare, it's not just naked, it's bare and outside of that, it's beautiful. More beautiful than watching blooming flowers in the park but he shouldn't pluck petals, he only waters them so that they grow.

After taking in the sight of your body once more, he leans down to your abdomen and runs his fingertips over every little bump of your skin, every soft little patch and every rough one too. When he reaches the waistband of your underwear, he loops his fingers through them and starts to remove them in a teasingly slow manner: first an inch on the left, then only half an inch on the right. The fabric feels smooth as it runs over your legs but it's his fingers that provide warmth.

Your underwear soon joins the little heap of discarded clothes on the floor, you opt to look at where it lands out of habit but Jungwoo pays no attention to the piece of clothing.

Unlike your previous position, Jungwoo now hovers over you instead. His lips press kisses over every spot of your skin: what you expected to be a heated moment of not-so-delicate touches ends up being a moment where his lips caress over your skin with adoration.

"I love you so much," he whispers to you, his lips pressing against your earlobe to give a tiny kiss there before his loving path continues down your body. Your response follows minutes later when his lips have almost reached the lower part of your stomach but you're simply in bliss due to these soft petal-like kisses. "I love you too," you whisper back to him, sucking in some fresh air but it results in your mouth allowing a quiet moan to slip out.

The way his soft lips press kisses against your sensitive skin makes the moment last longer, it makes you more impatient for more but you're enjoying the slow pace towards a possible love-filled morning. His lips press together on the smooth path of your inner thigh: giving both sides an equal amount of kisses but teasingly kisses towards your sensitive areas more.

"I want to make love to you," Jungwoo mumbles against your smooth skin, his warm breathing reflecting on his cheeks that start to feel slightly damp but he doesn't care. "Can I?"

Luckily he looks up at you when he's asking the question, he sees you nod almost right after he says the words. A smile changes his current appearance and he looks even softer than he did a few minutes ago, you wonder how it's even possible that he looks even more soft and loving.

"Yes?" he asks as you don't reply to his words by actually saying something, even if he is content with the nod, he still wants to hear your voice and have your consent. "Yes," you breathe out, repeating his words without the questioning hue.

He sits up slightly, straightening his back as he is admiring you for a few seconds. His impatient hand runs over the many spots that have been touched by his lips before, it's a teasing trail full of little twists and minimal touches that leave you wanting more. His index finger reaches the most anticipated spot once his trail has been hiked.

"Sex is the seed and love is the flower"

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Jungwoo hides your hand together with his in the sleeves of his trenchcoat, even though the warmth is provided by the sun, you feel more warmth from his - unnecessary - gesture.

The colour palette that is used to create the scenery of the park comes into view, and you can't help but smile as if you're seeing it for the first time in your life. It's like an ancient painting in a museum, you have seen it on the internet but never in real life, but in reality, it's just been long enough for you to forget the many shades of nature.

Almost six months ago, this would have looked like the stereotypical scenery but minds change, and views change too. From afar you can see the green grass and some white collectables of which you know that they are daisies, they fill the grass like butterflies fill your stomach each time you look at Jungwoo.

"Why are you smiling like that?" Jungwoo asks as he notices the smile on your lips and the way your eyes are trying to catch a glimpse of the park that suddenly isn't as far away anymore. He knows why you smile, but he still asks because he is delighted to hear the story being told from scratch. The story is the book his soulmate picked out for him and his heart willingly read every page.

"Because the park," you respond to him as your eyes shortly move to him but you don't want to lose sight of the real-life painting in front of you, you don't want it to get plucked away. Jungwoo looks away from you to look at the same piece of art, getting lost in the familiarity that sparks a collectibles in his mind.  

The world seems strangely different, the painting seems strangely different despite its familiar setting. The only thing that stays the same is the love between you and Jungwoo as you walk hand-in-hand towards the park. It's only a few seconds away, ten to be exact, nine if you pick up the pace a bit.

Jungwoo's feet halt before he's about to step on the grass field, not because it's something not everyone appreciates, but because his eyes observe why the world seems strangely different. You don't seem to notice yet, your sight is blinded by the colour ecru and you're not aware that the effect might wear off soon.

"y/n"

Your attention goes to your boyfriend again, the scenery that you've been vaguely looking at is replaced by the sight of two very surprised eyes. You hum in response as you continue to look at him, not questioning his look until he mentions it himself, which you're positive of that he will.

"W-where's the oak?" He asks as he looks at you before his eyes drift back to the missing piece of nature in the center of the park, he can see the tree in his imagination but notices its absence when he dips into the river of real life. He thickly swallows even though his throat is waterless.

Your head moves a few degrees to the right as you can only look at your boyfriend, "huh," you ask him as you eye him with your confused orbs.

"The oak," Jungwoo says in a more steady tone even though he has to keep himself steady, for some reason his long legs seem ready to give out any second. His hand untangles itself from yours to point towards the place where he met his soulmate, under a tree that was no longer there, but he was, and you were too.

Your eyes follow his fingertip until you can't see his finger in your eye-width anymore. The greenery of the park doesn't state it but your eyes officially discover the absence of the familiar oak: Jungwoo's birth tree, the tree where you found your soulmate under, the tree where daisies dwindled upon your shoulders once Jungwoo leaned towards you to hold you for the first time.

The memories are close in your embrace but you're no longer held by the tree that made all of those memories possible.  You lower your head, noticing the vague image of little daisies that are spread out all over the field, endlessly gracing every few inches with their appearance.

"Did it get plucked away?" Jungwoo asks soft as his voice almost stops cooperating, he's filled with confusion and emotions, his mind going over at least ninety-nine scenarios and he loses you in every single one of them. His hand is close to yours and he takes the opportunity to hold you tight before - just like the four daisies, and the oak - you get plucked away.

From the uninhabited space in the park, your eyes go to the movements on the little pathway of the park. A pair of unsteady footsteps shuffle over the stone-filled ground but they come to an abrupt stop when she bumps into a young man: as she stumbles back a notch, a smile coats her lips. As the young man helps her by placing his hand on her upper arm, you can see the bright colour of her eyes. Cyan, that's the exact term to the colour of her intoxicating eyes.

"Pick a colour," you read the words that fall from her lips and you can't help but mouth them in relay one second after she does. It's a familiar phrase and you even taste the remains of the colour you picked on your lips: it's a soft shade with a not-so-matching name.

Ecru.

The word effortlessly brings a smile to your lips: it's the colour of your soul and the colour of Jungwoo's love for you. Ecru: ecru was the colour of your world, ecru was atmosphere, ecru was the little steps on your path, ecru were tears when the path was unreadable. Ecru was and is magic.

"I don't think it did," you finally respond to Jungwoo has been looking at you until the answer fell from your lips. Your lips press a small peck onto his to ease his nerves. "We just planted the seed elsewhere, and it's blooming right now."

A U T H O R S N O T E / I N S P O 

hello, little daisies. With this, you must have reached the end of “colourized ecru,” it’s been an honor writing this. I know it’s not the best writing, not the best fic, or anything but I feel happy that I was able to finish this. For the longest time I put off writing this, even to the point where I wanted to tell the other writers that I wasn’t going to go through with the collab. But I did start writing and neatly finished the fic the day before it’s due. Thank you for reading, thank you for existing 

Inspo [music] - winner, remember ; d.o, that’s okay ; yesung, here i am ; yesung, paper umbrella (jungwoo acts in this mv if you didn’t know) ;  lee taeil ; one man (cover and yes I love taeil y’all know) ;  . . .

love, ambrosia aka moondustaeil  🌼

[dreamescapeswriting]

BTS Reaction || Best Friends Brother

A/n: for real! I try and aim for like 600 words each and then others are just like NAH BRO YOU GONNA HAVE 800-900 A PIECE. Like I’m sorry if some are shorter than the other, I don’t mean them to be. I love all 7 of my boys, they all cute and all deserve love

Seokjin:

You’d grown up with your best friend, you spent every moment you could together since the moment you could both walk, she had an older brother named Seokjin, everyone called him Jin though but you didn’t, you called him Seokjin because you knew it annoyed him a little, in retaliation he called you Midge, short for midget, claiming it was just right for you. You both constantly teased one another and bickered like an old married couple, everyone, including your best friend, always said you’d be together but you could never imagine it, no after so many years of knowing him, you’d practically grown up alongside him.

You had been single your entire life, not that there was anything wrong with that but you were 23 years old and still hadn’t had your first kiss, or held someone’s hand who didn’t love you like a little sister or was your literal family member. You were starting to think there was something wrong with you, you never voiced this opinions to anyone else because…you didn’t want to seem like you were bothered by it, many people were single until their late 30’s, some never even got married and it’s not like you weren’t trying, you were. But it was as if Men stayed away from you as if you had a huge sign above your head telling them to stay away. In reality, it wasn’t a giant sign above your head, it was Jin, he was constantly telling guys to stay away from you, that you were bad news or that you had someone else. Whenever someone new would come along and take interest in you, he would threaten them. He couldn’t stand to see you with someone else who wasn’t him, even if you weren’t together yet.

“Is there something wrong with me?” You asked one night, you’d been drinking with your friend all night and she went out to buy more booze, you were sat on the sofa next to Jin who was playing video games alone, you laid your head down on his shoulder to stop the room from spinning so much and he looked at you, a small smile turning on his lips as he watched your eyelids flutter shut.

“What do you mean?” He chuckled pausing his game and wrapping an arm around your shoulder, you giggled snuggling against him and wanting to lay there all night.

“I’ve been single my entire life…maybe I’m broken, maybe I’m supposed to just grow old and buy a cat.” You whispered, sobering up a little as the moments passed and you began to think everything over.

“I don’t think you’re broken.” He murmured, now feeling guilty for every guy he pushed away from you, maybe it was wrong for him to push them away, it’s not like you were stopping girls from getting to him.

“I should join a dating app like your sister, maybe I’ll find someone that way.” You took out your phone but he swatted it again,

“No!” You blinked at him, and then looked at your phone that was now on the floor facing up.

“No?” You questioned, he bit down on his lip debating to tell you everything he’d been feeling since the moment you turned 16, the moment you changed the way he thought about you.

“Seeing you with someone else makes me sick to my stomach.” You stared at him confused for a second, he continued talking.

“I’ve liked you since you were 16…You did that stupid dance mash-up with my sister and you looked dorky and cute…I fell hard and there’s nothing wrong with you, it’s what’s wrong with me.” You were still trying to process everything he was saying to you,

“I told guys to stay away from you, that’s why you’ve been single, I didn’t want people taking what was mine.” He admitted, you said nothing, you only moved closer to him, looked into his eyes and then down at his lips before leaning in and kissing him.

You wanted nothing more than to stay on the sofa making out with him but the front door was starting to open meaning your best friend was home.

“We’ll talk more tomorrow.” You whispered in his ear before going to help your friend inside.

Yoongi:

It was stupid to get involved with your best friends brother, you knew that when you started dating and you knew it the moment you stopped dating. You’d dated Yoongi from 16 till 20 when he went off to become a big rap star in his band. It hurt that he left you the way he did but you knew he needed to achieve his dreams, still it didn’t make being around him easier whenever he came back home for a visit. No one knew about your four-year relationship, you’d kept it hidden from everyone, including your best friend, you didn’t want to risk her finding out and being upset about it. So it stayed a secret, something only you and Yoongi knew about, you were madly in love with one another and spent whatever time you could together. Late-night dates when your friend was asleep at a sleepover, sneaking out of the house to be with him, going on long late-night walks together, hand in hand where you could be a real couple, only to return to ignoring each other in front of your best friend.

When he left you things changed, it was hard to be around your friend sometimes, whenever you’d look at her, you would see Yoongi staring back at you, they did have the same eyes Afterall, whenever you’d stay over at her place and have a nightmare you couldn’t go running to Yoongi with it, he wasn’t there to look after you and it wasn’t his job to anymore, he left you. Alone. Whenever he would come home for a break you would make up excuse after excuse not to come around to see your friend, you were either too busy with work, studies or sick. You couldn’t risk seeing his face, seeing how happy he’d become while you were still left behind, falling apart because the one you loved didn’t love you back anymore.

(x)

“Just come round! No one is home and I’m so bored!” Your best friend said down the phone to you, you looked at the clock beside your bed and sighed, it was 7 pm on a Saturday and you had nothing better to do. You knew Yoongi was due back any day but your best friend hadn’t mentioned anything meaning he probably wasn’t back yet.

“Fine, but I’m expecting snacks!” You said, taking the car keys from your cabinet and heading towards your garage, you could hear her yelling from the other end, and some cupboard doors, meaning she was getting things ready for you.

(X)

You’d missed spending time with her like this, it was carefree and nice. You’d both started watching movies together, then it lead to a pamper night, facemasks, nails and a bubble bath. It felt good to have fun around her and to relax, you’d missed being able to do that. Now she was asleep on the sofa next to you while you finished the movie that was playing on the TV, the doorbell rang and you frowned, you knew nothing could wake up your best friend once she was asleep so you got up and went to answer the door, standing there with a suitcase in the rain was Yoongi.

“Oh. Hi.” You said moving out of the way so he could come in, you looked at the sofa.

“She’s asleep…I can wake her up if you want?” He shook his head, his eyes trained on you, you looked down at your outfit, you were dressed in booty shorts and a tank top, you suddenly felt insecure about it and walked into the living room.

“I was about to get dressed and leave.” You lied taking your clothes from the sofa and going towards the bathroom, you were almost safe inside when he pushed you inside, pushing your back against the door and locking it.

“You’ve been avoiding me.” He spoke, you stared at him as if he was crazy.

“Well…that’s what happens when people break up Yoongi…they avoid one another.” You pushed him away from you and tried to leave but he put his hand on the door to stop you.

“You’re mad at me? For leaving you?” You stayed silent, not wanting to talk about it.

“Look I made my choices and you made yours,” That was it, you’d heard enough, you turned around to face him, tears in your eyes as you tried your best not to let them roll down your cheeks.

“Bullshit! You made your choice and I was forced to deal with the shit show you left behind!” You whisper yelled at him, the tears finally flowing as you let out what you finally felt, you still loved him, of course, you did. You didn’t think you would ever stop, no matter what. He was always going to be your true love. As you were about to leave his hands gripped your wrist and he kissed you, all thoughts going out of the window you just kissed him back

Hoseok:

Secretly dating your best friends brother was supposed to be easy, simple and nice. Except it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t simple but it was very nice. It started by accident, which was cliche to say but it was true. You’d mentioned in passing to him that on your bucket list was to go to the beach at 3 am, it was a dumb goal, you’d seen it on Pinterest a million times before and it looked like fun, a week later he showed up at your door, or rather your balcony door and took you to the beach.

“Hoseok? It’s 1 in the morning what are you doing here?” You grumbled opening in the balcony window, he smiled at you and pointed down to the car waiting for you both.

“Beach at 3 am remember? It’s a two-hour drive so I packed snacks, blankets and music.” You were shocked at first, your best friends brother was spending time with you alone, but you didn’t care, you grabbed some leggings and a coat, changing into them and went out to the car, climbing down the balcony because you didn’t want to get caught by your parents.

(x)

You’d spent the entire morning on the beach, watching the sunrise over the sea and then going to get breakfast at a nearby cafe, where he pretended to propose to you for a free breakfast meal. On the way back to the car is when he admitted his feelings for you, telling you how he’d liked you since the moment you stepped foot into his sister’s life and how he didn’t think he could spend another moment as just your friends brother, he wanted more, he wanted to be your boyfriend.

That’s how it started. A simple, not so date, date on the beach. You made it your goal to go to the beach together for 3 am once a month, making it a tradition together. But the longer you dated the harder it came to hiding it from your friend, it was harder to hide where you’d been all night on the same night her brother was missing, it was harder to explain why you couldn’t date someone she was trying to set you up with and it was harder to watch when her other friends flirted with Hoseok right in front of you.

(X)

Hoseok and you had been dating for 11 months now, and it was the night you would normally go to the beach together, he was coming to pick you up like he normally would and you were waiting on your balcony for him.

“Baby! Come on!” He whispered up to you, you went climbing down the balcony and headed to the car, holding his hands on the gearstick as he drove, if you hadn’t been so invested in spending time with him you would have noticed the car following behind you as you drove to the beach together.

(X)

“So this is where you both go?!” You stood up from the floor and turned to see your best friend staring at you, red in the face as she looked at you and then to Hoseok.

“Y/BF/N!” You stepped towards her but she moved away staring at you, shaking her head as she looked at Hoseok, he wrapped his hand around yours and you looked at him nervously, it was now or never.

“I can’t believe you! You’re dating him! After all the shit I gave everyone else for flirting with him.” It was true, she didn’t want her friends to flirt or date her brother but you couldn’t help it, you were in love with him.

“You don’t understand-” She shook her head at you, and turned to face her brother.

“And you! You! I warned you not to date any of my friends!” She screamed, she was drawing attention from early walkers now and you swallowed the lump that was in your throat.

“I love him.” You called out, she stopped mid-rant and turned to you, hands on her hip with a smirk on her face.

“Love? You, love him? Do you even know what love is?” You looked down at the floor and dropped Hoseok’s hand, you didn’t want to be a reason a brother and sister would fall out.

“Y/N. Wait.” Hobi said grabbing your wrist again and turning to his sister.

“I’ve been in love with her for a while now Y/BF/N…There is nothing you can say or do to change my mind. You can hate me, you can ignore me but don’t shut her out just because she’s dating me.” She stared at you both, the way he rubbed small circles along you knuckles to try and calm you down.

“I don’t want to hear about dates, or how much you love one another…and I want my best friend to spend time with me too…not just you.” She ordered at her brother before leaving you to your beach date.

Namjoon:

It was your best friends birthday which meant a big party was being thrown in celebration of her, which is great but you would rather be at home, in bed, with a book, than out in a club that was rented out for her, with a lot of people crowding around and trying to see the birthday girl, you were happy for her of course but big parties weren’t your style, you’d rather have a small meal together than a big outrageous party. You figured you could get away with sneaking a small book into your handbag, and then going to sit at the back of the club alone to read all night, she was going to be busy with other people so she wouldn’t notice you not drinking too much or not dancing a lot.

“You! Me! Dance! Now!” She yelled taking your hand as soon as you walked through the club doors, she took you handbag and handed it to Namjoon, her older brother, who looked at you sympathetically, he knew you didn’t do big parties, and neither did he. He put the handbag over his shoulder, knowing you didn’t trust anyone with your things.

“Happy Birthday!” You yelled as she took you out onto the dance floor and started dancing, it wasn’t your thing but you did your best to dance along with her, a man with a tray of shots came over and she took four, handing two to you and two to herself, downing them and egging you on to do the same.

(X)

She finally let you leave the dance floor and you went off to find Namjoon, so you could get your handbag which had a bottle of water inside, you needed it after the drinks she’d been handing you, one after another. You spotted him sitting at the back with your book in his hand, you smiled going to walk over when a guy took hold of your waist and pulled you against his back, grinding into you in time with the music.

“Get off me you creep!” You yelled turning around and smacking him across the cheek, you scoffed turning away and leaving him, standing next to Namjoon who was infested in the book and hadn’t noticed you.

“You always bring books to parties?” You joked, sliding into the seat in front of him, he laughed looking up from the pages and at you.

“Teen romance isn’t my first choice.” He said handing it over to you, you looked at where he’d gotten to and smiled.

“The part where he comes to rescue his boyfriend from the Mage, romantic and daring.” You smirked shutting the “Carry On” book and sliding it into the handbag he’d given back.

“You’re being watched.” He commented pointing over your shoulder at the guy you had just slapped across the face.

“I smacked him, creep kept grinding on me.” You shuddered, he was making his way over so Namjoon moved to sit next to you, you were confused but stayed silent.

“Hey baby, come and dance again. I know someone who is really missing you right now.” The guy said rubbing his hand across the crotch of his pants, you were about to open your mouth to speak but Namjoon beat you to it.

“She’s not interested, she’s got a boyfriend.” He took your hand in his and smirked at the guy in front of you, who was starting to turn a red colour.

“She was grinding on my dick man, you better watch her. She’s bad news.” Namjoon turned to look at you with a smirk and then back to the guy.

“She’s my bad girl.” You felt a heat rush to your face and between your legs as soon as the words left his mouth.

(X)

As soon as the guy left you excused yourself, going to stand outside and get some air, the feeling of Namjoon’s hand on yours and him calling you his bad girl was doing things to you, you’d never imagined before.

“Where’s your boyfriend now?” You groaned turning to face the same guy from inside the club, he ran his hand along your cheek while the other snaked its way around your waist, dragging your body into him.

“No big tough guy to protect you now.” He was about to kiss you when Namjoon punched him in the jaw sending him onto the floor, you screamed running into Namjoon’s arm, your head on his chest.

“Listen here psycho, if you lay a finger on Y/N again, I’ll kill you!” You hit his chest with your fist, people were starting to stare at you, and his sister was standing in the door.

“Joonie…people are looking, come on.” You whispered taking hold of his hand, instantly his shoulders relaxed as you touched him and he moved away from the guy, you took him over to a calmer area and looked at him.

“He’s gone, I’m fine. Look at me I’m fine.” He stared at you, biting his lip.

“I couldn’t stand the thought of him- Of him kissing you, or touching you.” He moved a hair from your face and you looked at his lips.

“Kiss me.” He stared at you dumbfounded.

“Kiss me Namjoon.” You pleaded, he didn’t need to be told a third time, he bent down and connected your lips with his, a cheering coming from his sister who had been watching the entire interaction.

Jimin:

You’d slept over at your friend’s house a billion times before and you were bond to sleep over a billion times again. You had been best friends since you were both in nappies, she was your best friend, you told her everything and anything, except the fact that you had caught her twin brother with her other friends before, making out at parties or out on dates together, he made you promise you’d never tell her about the dates he had with them, or kisses they shared or he’d reveal your biggest secret. He knew your biggest secret thanks to your dumb hiding place for a journal, hiding a journal under your pillow isn’t a great hiding place when your best friends twin brother is nosey and likes to have dirt on you, but the secret he thought he knew he didn’t know the full truth of, he thought you had a crush on one of his friends, which wasn’t true at all, the crush you had was on him but you couldn’t tell him he’d read the journal wrong because he would just ask who you had a real crush on, so it went on like that. He would threaten to tell his friend you liked him unless you kept his secret, meanwhile, you fell harder and harder for the guy that would never like you back

(X)

You were out with your best friend for a day of shopping and coffee, you’d spent the morning walking around the mall looking for new outfits for her, she was going out on some big date and wanted to look nice so you agreed to help her find something to wear. Currently, you were sitting in a cafe waiting for her to come back from the toilet when Jimin walked in with another friend of hers, you instantly felt your heart sink to the floor as he wrapped his arm around her waist and kissed her on the lips, you looked at him and then to the floor not wanting your heart to break any more than it already had.

“Y/N? What are you doing here?” Jimin asked coming over and standing next to the chair, his date by his side who was smiling at you, you’d met her before, she was quite close with Y/BF/N and it hurt to know she was flirting with her friend’s brother when Y/BF/N wanted no one to date him.

“I’m here with Y/BF/N…you might want to leave unless you want her to find out you’re being a skank with her brother.” The harsh words left your mouth before your brain even had time to register what you were saying, Jimin let out a chuckle as his date screamed in shock at you,

“Jimin! Say something!” She demanded but Jimin continued to laugh along at what you had said, she scoffed smacking him and walking away, you rolled your eyes at Jimin and looked at your phone, sending a quick text to your friend explaining how you felt sick and would leave her bags with the cashier.

(X)

Jimin followed you out of the cafe and into the street, you knew he was following you but you ignored him going to find a taxi to take you home, you were mad and upset at yourself for letting your feelings for Jimin come out in that way,

“Were you jealous of her?” You stopped dead in your tracks, like a deer in headlights, you turned to look at Jimin in silence and it’s as if you could see the cogs in his mind slowly start to turn as he realised you didn’t have feelings for his friend at all…they were for him.

“You were, weren’t you?” You stayed silent shaking your head and trying to act as though it was a dumb accusation.

“Tell me the truth Y/N.” He said backing you up against a wall, your back hit the brick wall and his arm was above your head, you looked up into his eyes and wanted to grab him and kiss him, you wanted him to pin you against the wall like you’d seen him do with other girls and make out with you.

“No. I don’t, that’s dumb.” You stuttered out, your hands shaking, he smirked taking his hand and rubbing your cheek with his thumb.

“Then why are you shaking?” He whispered in your ear, you bit down on your lip resisting the urge to kiss him, you loved your friendship more than you liked him, he wasn’t worth throwing it all away for.

“All this time I thought you liked Tae and I was trying to make you jealous…guess you liked me all this time.” You stared at him and he moved away from you.

“I’ll take you out on a date…I’ll ask Y/BF/N first, getting permission and whatnot, it’ll make her like the idea of us being together even more.” He bent down and picked up the bag you had dropped, leaving a small kiss on your cheek before going back to the cafe where his sister was.

Taehyung:

You had been best friends with Y/BF/N since you moved in next door to her at the age of 18, and you had regular sleepovers at one another’s house, but there was one problem with sleepovers, You suffered from frequent nightmares, it wasn’t a big deal to anyone else but to you it was. They felt all too real everything that happened in your nightmares felt traumatic to you, it would bring up old memories you had forgotten and forge no ways in your mind for them to torture you with. The only person who knew about these nightmares was your best friends brother, Taehyung, he found you one night on the airbed during a sleepover, whimpering in your sleep, tears streaming down your cheeks and you were fidgeting. He tried to wake you up but when he touched you he found it stopped you from moving so much, the whimpering stopped completely and you relaxed against his touch, he ended up waking you up and asking you about the nightmare, that was when you explained them to him, you laid against his shoulder as you explained the stories of your nightmares, and you ended up falling asleep on him, but no nightmare happened. You had a peaceful nights sleep for once. You’d never really had an entire night of peaceful sleep with no nightmares before and it felt nice to finally get some decent rest, you would wake up feeling refreshed instead of tired from all the shaking you did.

(X)

It continued that way for months, whenever you would go to bed at home Taehyung would sneak through the window to come and sleep next to you, he was the only one that could make the nightmares go away, his touch or him just being there made your mind at ease, it was great for him as well because he couldn’t sleep without holding something, a person or a pillow. He slept soundly with you wrapped in his arms, listening to your breathing as you finally slept peacefully, he would constantly set an early alarm so no one at home would notice he was missing during the night and you would always get up at the same time to start an early day, finding it hard to sleep without him being next to you, but outside of the bedroom you hardly spoke a word to one another, you would say hello and how are you in passing but there was never any conversation there, even on a night time you would just sleep next to one another, or curled up together.

Tonight was different, tonight you were stopping over at your friends house for a birthday sleepover, you didn’t think it would be that much of a big deal, you could sneak up to see Taehyung when she finally drifted off but she hadn’t just invited you round, she invited all her friends around which meant it was going to be harder to be alone with Tae.

(X)

Taehyung came down at 3 am to check on you, and he found you on the sofa, whimpering and crying in your sleep again, he’d come up with the idea of you sleeping in one of his shirts and some shorts it was an idea that if you could smell him maybe it would help a little but it was clear the plan had failed dramatically, it pained him to see you this way, he checked his sister and her friends were all asleep before he bent down, picking you up bridal style and carrying you up the stairs, you stirred a little, laying your hand on his bare chest and smiling in your sleep.

“Tae.” You moaned out, he almost dropped you from the sound of your moan, you’d never moaned out his name in your sleep before, he laid you down in his bed and covered you with the sheets, as soon as the contact with him left you were whimpering out again, and he climbed into the bed next to you.

“I’m here baby.” He whispered pulling your head against his chest, one arm going around your waist and rubbing small patterns against the area of exposed skin, you hummed against his chest and snuggled against him.

“Love you Tae.” You whispered out, he smiled, the rubbing stopped and he kissed the top of your head.

“Love you too Y/N.”

Jungkook:

You were going out on a date, a blind date, you hated blind dates, actually you hated any dates at all. They weren’t your thing, you wanted to just be left alone with your crush that would never happen but your best friend insisted on you going out with the guy she’d found for you, he was “the perfect match,” she said to you but you knew that was a lie, your perfect match was her brother Jungkook but it was never going to happen, he saw you as his little sisters annoying best friend who was always around her. You weren’t little though, you were a young woman so you had to get over this crush, it was stupid, a crush at your age. So you agreed to go on the date, but now looking back on it you wish you hadn’t. It was the night of the date and you were panicking about what to wear, you’d gotten changed into a short tight fitted black dress and you looked at yourself in the mirror, feeling insecure, you grabbed your keys and headed to the front door, slipping into some black vans and putting on a coat over the top of your dress. You began the drive to your best friends house.

(X)

After ringing the doorbell countless numbers of times someone finally answered,

“Y/BF/N!” You yelled moving past Jungkook ans going into the house, he stared at you confused and you shouted out her name again.

“She’s not here, her and parents went out for the night.” He said still staring at you, he noticed your legs were bare and you were wearing a coat.

“Where? I have to see her, she has to cancel this stupid date.” You said, your eyes finally meeting his, his were wide at the mention of a date and he walked you through to the living room, he sat down on the sofa while you paced in front of him.

“A date? You’re going on a date?” You shook your head.

“Not anymore, I can’t, it’s stupid. I don’t know why I agreed, I don’t like him I like someone else!” You said you were starting to get nervous now as you realised you were alone with Jungkook and his eyes were on you.

“I feel like I can’t breathe, I’m in this stupid dress, I look awful and I don’t want to go out with some creep I don’t know!” You whimpered finally sitting on the coffee table and keeping the coat wrapped around you tightly.

“A date though? A real date? You were going to go out with someone?” You groaned throwing your hands on your face.

“Yes Jungkook a date, keep up, fuck I can’t breathe in this dress.” You wanted to cry but he stood up and went over to a nearby washing pile taking one of his shirts and handing it to you.

“Go get changed, come back down and we can have a movie night. You and me, I’ll call Y/BF/N I’ll have her cancel the date and you can chill out here.” You nodded and took the shirt from him going over to the bathroom to get changed.

(X)

“Jungkook?” You called from the bathroom door, he looked over from the TV set and you smiled.

“Can you help me?” You questioned, he came over and you opened the door, letting him inside and looking at the floor nervously.

“The zip is stuck and I can’t get it off.” You turned your back and moved the hair out of the way, he came closer to you and put one of his hands on your waist and the other on the zip, his breath catching in his throat as he noticed you weren’t wearing a bra with it.

“You’re not wearing anything underneath.” He whispered out, finally getting the zipper down, you held it around your body and turned to look at him, he had a blush on his cheeks and so did you.

“It didn’t look right with underwear.” You said back to him in a whisper, neither of you understanding why you were whispering.

“Were you expecting to get lucky?” You stared at him and then laughed a little at his comment, you coughed trying not to laugh too hard.

“No, I didn’t think I would be getting lucky, I didn’t even want to go out with him.” He nodded, turning to leave but then stopping and looking at you again.

“Before you said you don’t like him, you like someone else…who?” You blinked at him, the dress still clutched around you and you bit on your lip.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell you.” He smirked, all of his nerves gone now he came back over to you and played with the strap of the dress which was hanging loosely on your shoulder.

“Oh I think it’s a good idea.” He bent down, his face inches away from yours.

“See…I always thought you liked me, you’d blush whenever I was around or whenever I spoke a word to you…and now…You’re blushing now and I haven’t even touched you.” You gulped and looked at his eyes and then to his lips.

“It’s me isn’t it? It’s always been me.” He whispered in your ear, that was it, it was enough to have you weak at the knees, you threw your arms around him not caring that the dress was dropping and kissed him.

“It’s always you.” You panted between the kiss, he smirked wrapping his arms around you and picking you up.

“Good.”

[sohmariku]

RIKU’S RANDOM LIFE: MENTAL HEALTH

May is the mental health awareness month, apparently, at least in the US. The perfect moment to tell you I only discovered yesterday, well into adulthood, that I have most definitely ADD. (Attention Deficit Disorder) A subtype of ADHD, the one without hyperactivity. Everyone knows it, right? That said, have you ever looked up the symptoms of ADD? Because I certainly didn’t. The list includes stuff like: forgetful and chaotic due to bad short-term memory, increased need for sleep, trouble expressing emotions, easily distracted, prone to (day)dreaming, difficulty staying on task and short attention span.

THAT’S LIKE THE PERFECT DESCRIPTION OF ME! WHY DIDN'T I KNOW THIS!?

I’m pretty sure my mother didn’t read this list either, otherwise she wouldn’t have wondered why I always seemed to forget every task she ever gave me! They had to literally block my bedroom door with the laundry basket to remind me. And even then, I would often forget to hang the laundry. I’d just step over it without even noticing it. It also explains why I found it hard to pay attention in class and especially in later years of secondary education found my mind drifting off far too often. Not to mention, as long as I can remember I’ve been sleeping 9-12 hours a day. It’s just three examples how ADD has affected me in my life and it still does.

Now, a disclaimer before I move on. I’ll be throwing around a lot of terminology from this point. However, I have no degree in psychology, nor do I have any official diagnosis. I speaking of personal experience and whatever information the internet fed me. This is a very incomplete account of everything these disorders/diablities entail, please don't use this to diagnose yourself.

Let’s continue, I was also yesterday years old when I discovered what PPD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified) actually is. This terms has been all around me growing up with siblings diagnosed that way, but until yesterday, I didn’t quite understand what it meant. It was always described to me as “a diagnosis you get, when they can’t quite figure out what’s bothering you.” That doesn’t really make it sound like the diagnosis PDD-NOS has any meaning, but apparently it does. Did you know that PDD-NOS is actually an autism diagnosis? I sure didn’t. It means you’re autistic, but don’t fit into the other (two) old subtypes. Though, not too long ago everything was mashed together and now we're just speaking of ASD (Autism spectrum disorder), if I'm not mistaken.

While we’re at it, I actually learned only a few years ago that I am (most likely) autistic. I am not officially diagnosed, but reading and listening to other people’s experiences, it just makes so much sense. I recognize myself so much in other autistic people’s experiences. Discovering this, I felt such relief. I finally figured out what made me different from other people. Or rather, I discovered I was different and that was all right. I wasn’t just a failure as a human being. Autism can affect many parts of life. My struggles were real. It’s quite nice to know why I had these explosive meltdowns, even long after puberty ended. Or why my interests could be very intense, why I seem to dislike certain foods so much. Quite honestly, it explains everything! (Especially now I’ve added ADD to the mix.)

Social anxiety, performance anxiety, depression. It all stems from my autism (and ADD). It’s almost unbelievable no one caught on to all this sooner!

Well, to be honest, I think my mother knew to a certain degree. She has told me to see a psychiatrist, to find out if maybe there was something more. Unfortunately she never named the something. And my anxiety ridden body only imagined people giving me tasks to conquer my fears. Not people who could actively help me. So I refused. I would have been nice if I had known what ADD and PDD-NOS really were. Maybe just maybe I would have seen a professional sooner. Maybe just maybe I wouldn’t have struggled as much as I did. And maybe just maybe I wouldn’t have eventually wasted my time (and money) on some psychologist who, after a few sessions of me crying my eyes out, told me: “You need to get a grip on your emotions, otherwise we can’t start treatment.” …thank you, that’s was very helpful… NOT! I quit seeing her not long after that.

Today I'm mostly depression free, chronically stressed, the executive dysfunction is real, possibly in a burnout and constantly on the edge of a meltdown. After reminding myself five times, I finally put some chap stick on my dry lips. My short-term memory is still crap. (Reminder to myself: do the dishes and clean the kitchen, please!) But other than that I’m doing relatively well. I have an amazing boyfriend, who fortunately doesn’t seem to mind that I don’t have a job (and likely never will). The sun is shining (for now) and I spend my days mostly doing what I like while desperately trying to keep my house from descending into chaos. So, all is good. Good enough at least! Just taking it easy and waiting for better, covid-free times. ^^

(And now my anxiety is telling me that sharing this post may not be such a good idea... 'cause, what if people misunderunderstand what I wrote and think I'm doing worse than I am? ...so, please don't worry about me. I take good care of myself. All is fine... Sort of... As fine as it can be considering we're in a pandemic and I'm tired of having my boyfriend at home 24/7. Don't pity me... I am good as I am... I better stop rambling and just post this thing.)

[velvetthunder1999]

All the time on Earth

Part 8 - Friction and Doubts

Summary: George trying to figure out what’s bothering you, while you turn to Fred for help

Warnings: Cursing

Word count: 2.7K

George Weasley x Reader

Masterlist

It took George two hours to finally go to sleep and he didn’t have an easy night. Every hour he woke up, half thinking about what happened, half mumbling in his sleep, arguing with some non-existent person. He replayed his favorite parts of the night in his head over and over again; when you lied down next to him, when you grabbed his hand, when you said you loved his laugh. He smiled to himself. He was sure he would never be able to laugh around you again without being conscious about it.

And the kiss. He closed his eyes, touched his cheek. He remembered how you smiled at him, and how nicely your vanilla shampoo smelled when you leaned closer to him.

By morning, he was a mess. He wanted to see you again but knew that he should be careful. You were smart. If he is taking things too far, you’ll figure it out in a second. No, he has to watch himself. But — that doesn’t mean he can’t have breakfast with you, though.

Fred had already went to have breakfast before George even woke up. He got dressesd quickly and headed down to the Great Hall, wondering what his brother will say when he tells him about last night.

It only took him two seconds to find Fred at the table, sitting next to you. You were talking with him, leaned closer and closer as you were speaking. George started walking towards you, when he saw Fred nodding and you shaking your head in response. He said something to you, then the two of you just stared at each other. Then Fred said something again and you nodded. And then you took his hand and gently squeezed it.

George stopped in mid-step. This cannot be. Why — Why were you holding hands? He was suppose to — he wanted to hold your hand! And Fred — no, Fred would never. He would never do something like this. He will talk to him as soon as he can.

You realized George was watching you and you quickly let go of Fred’s hand. George thought this was weird, but forced himself not to panic. He put a nice smile on his face and sat down opposite you and his brother.

“Good morning” he said.

“Morning” you said, casting down your eyes. Was there something wrong? “Well, I gotta get going anyway” you stood up from the table.

“Wait” George exclaimed before he could’ve stopped himself. “Meet you at lunch?”

“Sure” you said, already walking away.

George waited until you got far enough then turned to his brother.

“What was that about?”

Fred was looking at him in surprise.

“What was what about?”

“Don’t play with me Fred” George said with a sharp tone.

“You mean, her walking away? She went for class, I guess —

“She was holding your hand!”

“And?”

“And?! You know how I feel about her!”

“What’s gotten into you?! She had a rough morning so I comforted her. Like friends do to each other!” he was looking at George with concern. “Why are you being such a git? Was last night a failure?”

George stared at his porridge, unable to eat.

“I’m sorry” he said. “No, last night was really great.”

“Then what? Did you tell her?”

“Almost.”

“Arghh” Fred rubbed his face in agony. “I cannot take this much longer.”

“Everything was so great. Perfect, even. But we had to leave when Filch came. Then she kissed me on the cheek but now she won’t even look at me.”

“She did what?!” Fred was shocked. “I told you she likes you!”

“I don’t know. It was more like a friendly kiss.”

“There’s no such thing as a friendly kiss! Rubbish!

“Then why was she leaving so suddenly?”

Fred became silent. He shrugged then took a sip of his coffee.

“I don’t know. She has her own life, you know. And why don’t you ask her if you’re so interested?”

“Yeah, maybe I will.”

George and his brother had free period after breakfast and spend their time in the common room, working on their sales and thinking about recepies for new products. When lunch time came, George convinced Fred to go down earlier. He mumbled something about being hungry but Fred just rolled his eyes. They arrived earlier than most students and Fred sat down next to Angelina and Alicia and started talking with them. George followed his brother but couldn’t eat. He was constantly looking at the door, checking every second if you are coming already.

When you arrived with Ginny he raised himself from the chair a little. You looked at him, sent a soft smile and a small wave then sat down next to Hermione who was already with Harry and Ron. You said something to Ginny, and you weren’t far but George couldn’t hear what you were talking about. He was seriously thinking about standing up and sitting down closer to you.

His growling stomach eventually made him eat two plates of mashed potatoes with sausages and beans. He would sneak in a word or to into Fred’s conversation but his mind was elsewhere. He decided to follow you and talk to you as soon as you leave the table.

“Hey, Potter, how’s your head? Had any nightmares lately?

Hearing Malfoy’s snarky voice made George look up again. The Slytherin boy was marching over to the Gryffindor table, holding a newspaper.

“Shut up, Malfoy” said Harry.

“Yeah, how’s your fur?” asked Ron. “Had any fleas lately, you ferret?”

Malfoy’s face turned into an ugly color of grey. His eyes shined with anger.

“You, Weasley probably had the time of your life, eh? Finally something interesting happened to you, other than your mother feeding the chickens.”

George was ready to stand up and Fred turned his head towards Malfoy too, but you were faster. You stood up, looking deeply into Malfoy’s eyes.

“Yeah, let’s talk about that time when you were sitting on the train in a private compartment while Ron here flew a fucking car to school when he was twelve. What was the last time, you did something that cool, Malfoy?”

He was taken aback. You smiled.

“That’s what I thought. You bitch.”

Malfoy’s hand moved quickly and a wand was pressed against your throat.

“You irritating mudblood — ”

Chaos erupted around the table as everyone started shouting at the boy. George didn’t even know what he was doing, he just wanted to punish Malfoy, he just wanted to hurt him…

“Mr Malfoy!” McGonagall swooped in the scene, shocked at the disturbance around the table. “Mr Malfoy put down your wand at this second! How dare you! Miss Y/S/N, what is going on here?!”

Malfoy lowered his wand but didn’t put it away. You answered to McGonagall withound batting an eye.

“Malfoy insulted Harry and Ron so I called him a bitch. He whipped out his wand and called me a mudblood, Professor.”

McGonagall took a sharp breath upon hearing the words.

“If it is what truly happened that means consequences. Mr Malfoy I am reporting this to Professor Snape and I am expecting you tonight at detention. Same goes for Miss Y/S/N tomorrow.”

“Y/N didn’t do anything Professor!” shouted George.

“Yes, Malfoy provoked it by coming over!” helped out Fred, too.

“I understand, but Miss Y/S/N has to learn that we do not accept handling our conflicts this way. As the Head of the Gryffindor house I expect to be informed about these events. Also, Mr Weasley, I would appreciate if you didn’t climb on the table next time, and I am asking you to get down from there immediately.”

George looked at his feet and realized that he was actually standing on the table with his wand still pointing at Malfoy. You turned around and when you saw him you had to fight a laugh. He hopped down to the ground and stood next you while McGonagall was finishing her scolding.

“ — only Monday and you are already misbehaving. Mr Malfoy go back to your seat. And put your wand away, I am not ordering you again! I am expecting you at eight o’clock.” McGonagall waited until Malfoy was halfway to the Slytherin table, then she continued. “Everyone, attend to your duties! While I am a teacher here, there will be no students duelling in the Great Hall!”

Then she turned to you and spoke in a low voice that only you and George could hear.

“Miss Y/S/N, I give you ten points for your loyalty to your friends. Detention is not cancelled, however.”

“I understand, Professor.”

She nodded, but George was sure a smile was hiding in the corner of her mouth.

“Go on then.”

You took your bag and left the table. George took his own as well and ran after you, catching you in the Entrance Hall.

“Y/N, wait up.”

“Oh, hey,” you said. “What’s up?”

He stopped next to you.

“Can I walk you?”

“Sure” you answered, but didn’t say anything else. You two started walking.

“I’m sorry you got detention.”

“It’s okay,” you shrugged. “Was worth it.”

George was searching your face. You didn’t look at him. Something was wrong, he was sure. He just didn’t know what it was.

“Are you alright, Y/N?” he asked. You nodded, still not meeting his eyes.

“Sure. Why?”

“I just — I missed you this morning.”

The sentence came out in a rather shy voice but he wanted to watch your reaction. Your face seemed to flinch and you gulped before looking down on your feet. Was he — Oh, God, he hoped he wasn’t annoying you.

“Sorry, I mean — er,” Why was he so awkward? Why couldn’t he finish a bloody sentence?! “I meant that if there’s something troubling you, you can tell me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Fred said you had a rough morning.”

“He said that?”

“Yeah.”

You stopped, your classroom was just around the corner. Finally, you looked George in the eye.

“It’s nothing, really. Don’t worry about it. I just — I’m just tired from all the studying. Also, I still have to do that shitty groupwork with McLaggen, so that’ll be a laugh,” you said sarcastically and a weak smile appeared on your face.

“Oh,” said George. “I understand, of course. We can hang out later then. I mean, if you want to. After you finished studying. Gotta get those good grades, if you wanna get into the Department of International Magical Cooperation.”

Your face lit up.

“You remembered?”

“Sure” he said. “I remember everything you tell me. Also, Percy works there, too, so I hope you’ll get his job and make him look like a fool.”

You laughed and for the first time since breakfast George was relaxed again. You checked the classroom, seeing that Flitwick was coming.

“I need to go,” you said. “Aren’t you suppose to be in class or something?”

“Yeah, probably,” said George, making you laugh again.

“Right. See you later, then.”

“Bye. Have fun.”

He felt dizzy again. He was watching you till you reached the room, but only turned around after he had seen the last lock of your hair disappear behind the door.

——

You were massaging your temple for the last twenty minutes while McLaggen was talking about his ‘famous’ keeper moves that helped him a lot during practices at home. You glanced down at the parchment in front of you. It was still completely empty. You had already wasted almost half an hour of your life, listening to the quidditch stories of someone who was making you angrier by  the minute.

“ — and I told him ‘Algie, you’re a nice chap but next time try staying on the ground’,” he laughed, way too loudly. “But you know, the old goat knows me, so he’s —”

You started to loose your temper. You just wanted this homework to be finished.

“ — anyway, my aunt always says that I’ll find my place in the League just fine. I agree, of course, I know how talent —”

You were seriously consodering walking away.

“ — everyone knows I’ll be the best once I have my place in the team —”

Please, stop. It was enough, just stop.

“ — and after my last year’s perfomance I’m certain that —”

“Oh my God, shut up. Shut the fuck up!”

You stood up form the couch, shouting. Everyone in the common room was watching you but you didn’t care. McLaggen was looking at you, confused, angry.

“What the hell, I —”

“Just shut up! I cannot spend a second more with you. You are annoying, you are selfish and way too proud of your zero achievements, and listening to you makes me wanna kill myself. Seriously. Just shut up.

He stood up too.

“With this attitude don’t ever imagine going on a date —”

“Going on a date with you was never in the vicinity. It wasn’t even in the country. I cannot work with you. I’m requesting McGonagall to give me an other pair or let me do the whole thing by myself.”

And with that you turned around and left the common room. Your footsteps echoed as you were walking on the empty corridors. You needed to find them. You wanted to find them. You needed them to make you happy, to make you laugh after this useless meeting with McLaggen.

You checked the owlery first, then ran down to the Great Hall. The kitchen was no luck either and the courtyard seemed empty, too. As a last resort you headed to the library; if you wouldn’t find them there you decided to stay anyway, and get something to read that would take your mind off the whole evening.

You entered the library being as quiet as possible and started looking at the tables. You searched through the whole place without any luck, when suddenly at the last table in the corner you saw a familiar ginger head.

“Hey, Fred.”

“Hello there,” he looked up, smiling. “What’re you up to?”

“Can I sit?”

“Help yourself.”

You sat down next to him, looking around.

“He’s in the bathroom, will be back in five,” said Fred before you could even ask. You nodded. He looked at you, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything” you said. “Did you tell him I had a rough morning?”

“Well, you kinda had.”

“Yeah, but… I don’t know.”

“Well, I have to tell him something when he asks me why wouldn’t you talk to him.”

“He asked that?”

Fred nodded. Then checked behind his back after his brother.

“Why won’t you believe me when I tell you he likes you?”

“Don’t start this again, please.”

“Answer me.”

You rolled your eyes.

“I know he likes me, he’s my friend.”

“He didn’t do all that yesterday just to be your friend.”

You didn’t say anything. Fred sighed.

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I… I have Ginny. And you guys. And that’s it. I… I cannot loose one of my only three friends.”

“You can’t do this forever. Shit’s gonna come out.”

“You know what? I’m gonna tell him. Before summer break. So when he rejects me, we won’t be seeing each other for two months. And I can forget him and come back here withouth even caring.”

“Brilliant plan,” said Fred sceptically. “So I literally have to listen to the two of you suffering for three more months.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, am I boring you?”

“No, but you’re making me real mad sometimes.”

“Like when?”

“Like now. You two are bloody perfect for each other. One is blinder than the other.”

“I’m not blind. I know we’re friends.”

“Friends?! He adores you!”

“Well, I see it differently.”

“What do you see differently?”

George appeared at the table sitting down next to you. You shot a warning sideways glance at Fred and shook your head.

“Not important. I was just telling Fred how angry McLaggen has just made me.”

“Really?” said Fred, muttering under his breath. You kicked him under the table.

“Yeah? What did he do?” asked George, not noticing what you just did.

You told George (and Fred, of course) how you left McLaggen in the common room and that you want to request to work alone. After you finished, the twins started to come up with ideas of how to prank him, or as Fred said ‘use him as patient zero to their new experimental products’. You only needed ten minutes with the twins to feel better again. And when you went to bed that night you finally had a good night sleep.

[halothenthehorns]

All in the Family

Chapter 3: The Vanishing Glass

"Ouch! What the-"

"Where the bloody hell are we?"

"Can't breath-"

"I swear if someone doesn't get their foot out of my arse I'm going to-"

"Shut up!" Lily's voice finally managed to shout above them all, but when this still did nothing to alleviate their extremely cramped, dark conditions with all limbs mashed into one, she worked furiously to dig her wand back out of her pocket. She was aware of several more cursings, both hers and whoever she was painfully elbowing as she did so, before finally dislodging it and saying with confidence, "Lumos."

Her light didn't manage to illuminate much, now all she got was a close up of the seven others extremely pained expressions, cobwebs, and was that a spider darting across the slanted ceiling? They were unanimously standing on a single mattress, toddler sized, with one pair of trainers and exactly one article of clothing a person should wear tucked in the thirty centimeters of foot room that Remus was currently tangled up in. There was only the slight glint of metal to reflect off of, faintly gold with slits for bars but clearly covered with another layer of metal, but when Alice reached to try tapping frantically on it, nothing happened.

No one could move without shoving someone else into an even more uncomfortable crouch, it didn't seem possible they were even all squashed inside of this dingy place.

"Okay, that helped nothing," Frank said in an obnoxious tone that tried to sound conversational with his face smashed against the wall. "Someone want to try something else getting us out of here!"

Alice, to her credit, did just that, but no matter what spell she used on the thin bit of wall exposing the promise of the outside world, it yielded nothing.

"Hang on, that bloody thing Prongs was reading got us in here," Sirius said quickly, again trying to shift his weight to any form of comfortable, and only managing to knock Remus' jaw shut accidentally. "Someone grab that and try it again!"

"You want me to try going through another ten pages with Peters elbow in my junk!" James howled in protest.

"Hang on," Peter panted, wriggling around and profusely apologizing as frequently as he was cursing until finally he wrenched it out of his spine and frantically flipped to the correct page. "Whatever you do Evans, don't let the spell go out!" Peter begged as he began. He zipped right past the chapter title, no one could much care why glass would be vanishing at a time when that's all they wanted to do.

It would have been interesting, under normal circumstances, to finally get a feel for how James' kid was going to be, and the first few passages established quite a bit with it's time elapse, which made it all the more confusing when they did get to Harry and something just seemed slightly off.

Then they got the explanation.

"Oh, my, word," Lily managed to get out while also trying not to inhale so deeply her chest would keep brushing up against Potters.

"Peter, was it?" Regulus tried to ask of someone he'd never directly spoken to, and the fact that the two were now in each others laps wasn't a particularly friendly place for first meetings. His face was twisted from something other than discomfort though when he said, "I don't think I quite heard you right, but did you say this wizard's child, was sleeping in a cupboard, under the stairs, of the Muggles!"

"This cupboard!" James screeched, the echo eerily reminding them all of a bat and several people glanced up to make sure that wasn't in here as well.

"Look, I'm sorry you're kid is sleeping with shoes, I really am," Alice tried her hardest for the sympathetic tone, but it was lost on her with the increasingly strained way her neck was having to twist at to stop herself constantly smacking it against the low wall. "In case you hadn't noticed though, so are we! So can we please badger on about this at a later time!" She'd always enjoyed being close enough so Frank could wrap his arms around her, but this was ridiculous.

Peter tried his best to get through the rest, but none of it was exactly enjoyable material that made the passing time better. There were several scoffs of disgust all around, even in their current predicament they all still managed to have sympathy for this kid and his lowly life. Wormtail also had no more wish to state the plethora of insults accumulating in all of them that they wanted to lob at the people doing this to Harry's life, their misunderstanding of his accidental magical abilities would normally have all of them popping a lid with rage if the claustrophobic feeling wasn't keeping a damper on everything.

He just had time to snicker a bit for the smallest bit of laughter at Harry's wit, and wondering how much oxygen they had in this place, when he did stop in surprise at a particular revelation. "Err, James, you been hiding something from us?"

"I wish I could be hiding anything right now," he said through gritted teeth. Never in his life did he think he'd be complaining of having Lily Evans smashed against his chest, but he also didn't think he'd be sandwiched with Peter on his arse at the same time. This wasn't exactly the cozy life he'd wanted for his future.

"Then why is your kid a Parselmouth?" He had to ask through quick panting breaths now, and he really wished he was getting more air. There were wet patches appearing along him, his clothes growing increasingly more uncomfortable and strict as if their limited space was still managing to shrink. What he wouldn't give to transform right now...

"Don't be daft man, this is the worst time in the world for a joke!" Remus howled in protest as Sirius once again managed to knee him in the shins.

Peter declared the passage that said otherwise, there really was no other way to understand such an interaction between Harry and a snake.

Regulus arched his neck painfully to glance over Peter's shoulder, but no one needed confirmation Peter was not in fact making this up. Finally though Regulus' sharp prod and a hiss in his ear reminded him, "congratulations, the kids certainly something to talk about, after we get out of here! This thing isn't getting any bigger!"

Peter managed something of another weak laugh, he'd never heard Sirius' little brother crack a joke before and he did it remarkably in such a similar way as Sirius did, but finally he nearly got to the end with only the slightest bit more pause of shock at such a punishment being put on a child. No meals? Were they actually trying to starve the kid to death as well as confine him in the closest thing they could to a prison?

Then there was a soft click, a catch of breath from them all as the sound of the lock on this place finally being released, and they all fell on top of each other in a heap.

Hope you enjoyed the vivid mental image this chapter gave me, it was a hoot to write and keep giggling at the lot of them all pressed together like that.

[mariinara]

TWENTY-TWO (Sam Drake x Reader) ANGST |PART 1|

A/N: Yeah, yeah, I'm STILL alive lmao. I've been so held back by finals that I didn't have time to actually think of writing or the premise of this request but a thought suddenly OCCURED to me and HERE WE ARE. Hope ya'll enjoy this 🥰.

Request for anon: '14, 18, and 19 for angst prompts with Sam? 👀👀 I also really really adore your work!!!'

Tags: @the-drakeboys , @the-winchesterboys , @missdictatorme , @hrgnm , @elledrake , @samdrakeftw , @ghost-of-the-oldwest​, @s4mdrake , @purplezebra68

Prompts: "Can you just kiss me? One last time? That's all I ask.." + "Don't make this harder than it already is.." + "It's better this way."

Warnings: OKAY. So this one has none of the prompts yet. This gets a little NSFW towards the end. HUGE age-gap between Sam and the reader. Mentions of Sam getting cheated on. So on, so forth.

Word count: 4,106

(Part 2 here!)

“I got it.” 

You reached out for the plates Sam held in his hands, giving him a polite smile as you did. He returned it and carefully handed them over to you, being cautious so as not to drop the multiple cups in his other hand.

“Thanks, kiddo.” He said, to which you smiled brighter before turning around and walking over to your best friend and Sam’s only daughter-- Avery. Sam was hot on your heels to the kitchen and you placed all the dishes in the sink for you and Ave to clean up. 

You smiled to yourself when you saw Sam giving his daughter a quick kiss on the cheek, which made her groan in embarrassment but giggle when her dad made fun of her. It's always been like that. You’d sleep over at their place for the weekends and help around the house after dinner. It was a tradition that you’d kept ever since kindergarten, back when Sam and your father were friends, before the asshole completely bailed out on you and your mother when you were quite young. Sam had your mom’s back throughout the years, with family court, some expenses she couldn’t handle, finding her a job, taking care of you when she was working late. They were like brother and sister and you grew to be Sam’s second daughter, but as soon as you hit sixteen, spending time around Sam became for the sole purpose of just..

Being around him. 

You didn’t know how or why it happened, but ever since that whole month he’d spent picking you up from highschool with his daughter to go over to their place, make dinner for you, and struggle with calculus, you felt those butterflies in your stomach whenever he’d call you “sweetheart” or kiss your forehead or give you the warmest of smiles. He did the same thing with his daughter, but you weren’t his daughter and, since that month, Sam became the epitome of the man you’ve always been dreaming of. 

He was funny, spontaneous, had a heart of gold, but jokes as dirty as the bottom of his worn out Timberlands that only added to his rugged charm. He was supportive, understanding, and showed unadulterated love and passion towards his daughter-- towards bringing her up. Granted, he was stubborn and had a bit of a temper and rarely ever listened to the voice of reason, but those traits all came with the ‘pure-hearted man’ package. 

And when you went to college with Avery and the two of you got a summer job outside of Boston, you found yourself missing the man during the entirety of the summer that you’d spent away from him and when he’d facetime you and Avery, you’d stay up talking to him about movies, books, your job, how your day went. He cared for you like a daughter and while that was frustrating for you for a couple of months, you found out that as long as you were around him, that was enough. As long as he loved and cared for you, that was enough. You were no longer interested in having a much older man wrapped around your finger. You didn’t know how he might react but you were sure he was going to lecture you about how you were too young. How him and your parents had been friends for over two decades. That you were like a daughter to him, nothing more. You could literally feel the red hot waves of embarrassment creeping up your neck with the mere thought of confessing to the man who constantly drove you crazy with the simplest of gestures.

But you swallowed your tongue and bottled up your more-than-likely teenage hormones and never told anyone about your feelings. Nobody knew. Not even Avery. Especially not Avery. You weren’t prepared to lose your childhood best friend over emotions that’d eventually fade. And you weren’t prepared to lose the only “father-figure” in your life, either. 

So, there you were: Cleaning the dishes while chatting about random subjects with Sam and Avery. Your mind and heart were heavy, but you weren’t willing to ruin the few days off you had in Boston with your family. Your mom was in New Jersey-- too busy with work to drop everything to come and see you. It was upsetting, but those two made everything better for you.

You looked over your shoulder when Sam called out to both of you from the living room and, coincidentally, you’d just finished drying the last dish. You and Avery exchanged looks before chuckling.

“He sounds excited..” You commented, to which Avery rolled her eyes with a smile she couldn’t conceal.

“His video game just got here..” She nonchalantly said, but that caused your eyes to widen slowly before you dropped the rag from your hand.

“What video game?” 

“Uhh..” She pulled on a thinking face, “Dead.. Red.. Somethin’ -- I dunno, dude.” 

In a flash, you were out of the kitchen and on the couch, right next to Sam, who looked at you with a grin which you returned with a bright smile, “You ready?” 

You sighed and shook your head, “Ready to watch you fail miserably at this.” 

“Oh, that is-- That’s not fair.” He laughed lightly while you waited for the game to install data. He’d turned to you when he said that, faking defeat. You smiled and shook your head, looking down at your hands.

God, he was so perfect. The way the corners of his eyes tugged up when he smiled. His wrinkles. His bright, warm, hazel eyes that held both strength and tenderness. 

Nope. You weren't getting over that man anytime soon. And when you snapped back from staring at him, you found him staring back at you silently, his eyes jumping from yours and to your lips and then you felt it.

That spark. 

His smile softened and some perverse area in your brain convinced you that he was leaning closer. Or maybe you were and he stayed still because he wanted this as much as you did.

"You guys again.." Avery sighed as she plopped on the lazy boy chair next to the couch, her eyes on the TV screen. 

Sam cleared his throat and looked down at his lap, rubbing his sweaty hands against his thighs and you looked down at your hands that were nestled between your thighs, biting down on your lip to contain a girly giggle. 

"What is it with you two and video games?" Avery asked, resting her head back on the back of the chair. 

You turned to her, immediately perking up at her words. You then sighed and sat back with an eye roll, "Your daughter is such a disappointment.." You muttered to Sam, who shook his head in fake dismay, clicking his tongue.

"She can take that attitude to the orphanage." He joked, which made you look at him with furrowed brows, a surprised laugh leaving you.

"Har‐Har. Very funny." She rolled her brown eyes at the both of you, crossing her arms when her dad sent her a wink and mouthed an 'I love you', "You two just have fun and I.." She stood up from her place, "Am gonna crash." She stretched her arms up with a groan and a yawn afterwards, reaching under her pyjama top to scratch her stomach.

"Alright, baby, g'night." Sam called out, receiving a wave-off from his daughter, "I love you!" He called out with an amused grin.

"You're not gettin' one back, old man." She called back from the top of the staircase that led to her room. Her response made Sam laugh lightly. 

You looked at him when he did, soaking in his infuriatingly good looks. You couldn't help but smile when he shook his head and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, the controller in his hands and his eyes glued to the TV.

"Ready?” He asked, sending you a grin and a small eyebrow raise, as if he was challenging you.

You raised a brow at him in the same fashion and nudged his shoulder with your fist, grinning back, “Ready to see your ass getting kicked, y'old geezer.”

Sam rolled his eyes and focused on the TV and you could see his little smile from the corner of your eyes, only to see it falter as he looked at the controller and back at the TV repeatedly, “Uhh..”

You looked down at the controller to see that the blue light wasn’t emitting from the front, which meant he was disconnected. You smirked as you watched him struggle and button-mash with a questioning look on his face.

“Either you’re really exhausted or you really don’t know how to work a PlayStation controller..” You quipped, trying to hold back an amused chuckle, “Which I doubt.”

Sam frowned in confusion at you and looked at his controller again, his shoulders slacking when he saw that it wasn’t lit. He breathed out a chuckle, his eyes closing. You could tell that he was beating himself up at his own lack of focus, “Yeah, okay..” He reached for the charging cable and plugged it into the controller, “Got it. Thanks for the help.” He sarcastically muttered.

“Don’t mention it.” You replied nonchalantly.

And there he went, completely immersed in playing, while you watched him take one too many bullets, get devoured by giant snakes, or gallop off a cliff. He’d curse and laugh in frustration, his head getting thrown back while you teased him about how he’d make the same mistakes over and over again. You made short trips to and from the kitchen to grab some beer for both of you to go about your long gaming hours.

An hour turned into two, which turned into five-- by some miracle. Two bottles of beer turned into six, and then it was the whole pack. You two handled alcohol well, but it didn’t mean that you weren’t a little tipsy. You found yourself laughing at your blunders when it was your turn to play, which elicited laughter from Samuel, despite not knowing what was so funny. 

You then sighed and paused the game to rub your eyes, calming down from whatever hilarity that was going on. You then sniffled and sat back, “I dunno how Ave doesn’t like video games..” You mumbled, watching Sam taking a swig from his beer. He then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and swallowed with a heavy breath afterwards. 

“Uhh..” He leaned forward to put the nearly empty bottle down, “She’s more like her mom than anything; She got everything from ‘er.” He paused for a second, “Uh-- Well not everything, but..” He sent you an unreadable look, his lips pressed together in a thin line, “She’s still here, y’know?”

You knew. 

Ave had told you about why her mother was no longer in the picture. Rather, she was never in the picture. Not for Avery, at least. She was too young when her mom “left” them. The lack of a father for you and the lack of a mother for her was why your relationship grew stronger. You were both missing certain aspects from your life and you could relate and understand each other better because of it. So while it was a curse, it served as a blessing. She was always open about that issue and about her past. 

But the reason you perked up when Sam started talking-- when his voice had the faintest tinge of sadness and his eyes glued to his hands as he fiddled with his thumb, seemingly deep in thought -- was because he’d never opened up to you about that particular bit. You knew everything, but only in Ave’s perspective and you never knew how Sam felt about all of it. 

“Whaddya mean?” You asked, adjusting yourself on the couch so one leg was bent under you and the other was on the floor, your arm resting on the back.

He glanced at you, unsure. He seemed like he wanted to take what he said back. His eyes darted nervously around the living room and he pursed his lips, clearing his throat, “I’m.. sure Avery told you." 

You shrugged, a small, warm smile playing on your lips, "But you're not Ave." 

Sam's left thumb rubbed against the palm of his right hand and he looked down and away from you, his leg bouncing up and down and his elbows braced on his knees again when he leaned forward. He seemed like he was thinking deeply about what you'd said and after a few seconds, he let out a sigh of surrender. 

"Do we have any more beer left..?" He quietly asked. You blinked and stopped fiddling with the fraying thread on the stitching of the back of the couch.

"Uhh.." You racked your brain, "Just the shitty kind.." You replied with a small shrug.

He nodded, still not looking at you, "Grab one." 

 "Alright.."

You made a quick trip to the open kitchen and opened the fridge, grabbing him a bottle and popping it open. When you were done, you went back to the living room, sitting back down next to him and handing him the cold beverage. 

He rested back and placed his arm on the back of the couch, bringing the bottle to his lips. You watched him intently, leaving him to collect his thoughts. You knew he was trying to filter them-- to decide what it was he was going to say and what it was he was going to leave out, but God, you wanted him to be as authentic and transparent as possible. 

“I tried..” 

He suddenly started. His voice had dropped an octave, as if he didn’t want you to hear that. You did, though, and his words -- as simple as they were -- made you frown deeply. You just wished he’d look back at you but he only looked down at his lap, his fingers tapping on the bottle that rested on his knee. 

“I really.. really did..” He shook his head slightly, “I tried for Avery.. She was so young and I thought she needed her mother, but..” He let out a dry chuckle, reaching up to rub his forehead, “One day, I come back home after a long day out with Avery.. We–" He laughed softly– wistfully even, "We spent the whole day at the zoo and.. I'd almost forgotten about why it hurt to be at home, but.." He shrugged, frowning again as his gaze lowered. You saw him swallow thickly, as if he was holding himself back from an outburst, "I walk in there and I see another man in my bed with my wife.." 

Your heart stung at what he said. What made it worse was how he said it. His voice had cracked and it was barely above a whisper. You never knew what Avery's mother did exactly and upon hearing that, you wondered how a person could be so selfish. So willing to give people like Sam up for her own personal pleasure. So willing to leave her little girl with that permanent scar in her life. 

"I knew she was doing that.." He closed his eyes and shook his head slightly, his brows twitching to a furrow as he swallowed again, only a bit harder. He pursed his lips and exhaled shakily, "I never thought that she'd bring him home. To our room. Our bed.." He wiped the palm of his free hand against his lap, inhaling a shaky breath, "The.. same goddamn bed where our baby girl slept between us while we sang her to sleep.."

You let out a breath you didn't know you were holding and felt your eyes well up with tears at what he said. He'd been keeping those thoughts to himself all that time and it seemed as if finally voicing those thoughts– the nightmares that clawed at his brain every single night – brought tears of comfort and relief to his eyes. 

Your eyes flickered up to see him frowning, his eyes still closed and his lips pressed tightly together. But there was no way you could miss it: That single, glistening tear that ran down his cheek. You felt the anxiety bubbling within you. 

That was not what you had in mind.

You didn't want to see him like that.

You thought he'd stopped hurting from that a long, long time ago but you were wrong. It never left him. He carried that weight around while simultaneously trying to raise a happy daughter all by himself. 

He covered his eyes with one, trembling hand, rubbing them while trying to take deep breaths to calm himself. You reached for his back and started to rub big, slow circles silently, letting him know that it was okay to let it all out. That was something that you've never experienced before. In all of your years knowing him, that was the first time you've seen him like that. And you absolutely hated it.

How he trembled with every cry he held back from you. How he furiously rubbed away the tears from his eyes with his fingers. He reached to set the half empty bottle on the table and plopped back again, his posture surrendered and weak.

“Oh, baby girl..” He breathed out, shaking his head slowly, “If I’d known she was gonna grow up, knowing that her mother betrayed her, hurting because of it for so long.. I wouldn’t’ve married her..” He finally removed his hand from his eyes and sniffled, “I wish she’d know how sorry I am sometimes.. Because I look at her, and..” He sighed, trying to find the right words, “I just-- I see a beautiful, smart, creative girl who deserves the world and I always feel like there’s somethin’ missing in her life and it’s like whatever I do, it’d never compensate for the lack of a mother figure and--”

You cut off his rambling by squeezing his shoulder lightly, “Sam..” You shook your head, a deep frown on your face. For the first time during the past fifteen minutes, he looked at you. He looked so lost. His cheeks were stained with tears and his eyes were red and glassy with the layer of tears that begged for one more reason to drop from his hazel eyes. You pursed your lips and shook your head at him and the longer you looked at him, the more you felt his pain. And before you knew it, you lurched forward, right into his arms, hugging him close. As close as possible. Your fingers curled to grip at the back of his t-shirt as you closed your eyes tightly and let your own tears run down your cheeks. He seemed to be in a state of shock for a couple of seconds but, slowly, his arms snaked around your waist to hug you back. His fingers sunk in the skin of your back through the thin pyjama top the tighter he held onto you. His nose was buried into the crook of your neck and, despite your furiously beating heart, you mustered up enough courage to let your fingers slip into the back of his hair for your nails to softly and soothingly scratch his scalp.

“You could’ve never known, Sam..” You spoke, your voice a hushed whisper as you continued calming him with your fingers, “Avery is the best friend I’ve ever had and it’s all thanks to you and you alone..” 

You felt him inhale deeply, his chest pressing against yours more as his lungs expanded and the breath he let out against your neck almost made you dizzy but you continued without fail, “I hope you know that I think you’re the most amazing human being on this planet and, when in doubt, remember how much you’ve helped me and mom through the hardest times..” 

Sam slowly relaxed in your arms and his hand started rubbing circles on your back until it was just about the both of you, comforting each other in the comfortable silence. His steady breaths let you know that there was an enormous weight on his chest and it’d been lifted only then. During that conversation. It was all he needed: Someone to listen to him and hold him and..

He slowly pulled away from the embrace but his hands were loosely on your hips. He looked at you with a warm gaze. Stared into your soul, unraveling you then and there. The look in your eyes-- that pure adoration you had towards him. The way you gave him those big, beautiful eyes and bit down on your lip while you stared at his. It made his breath hitch in his throat. 

No one had ever looked at him that way and as much as that scared him. As much as it was wrong and unethical. He felt himself gravitating towards you. It was absolutely ridiculous how both of you had no control and almost seemed surprised by your own actions. While one hand remained on your hip, his other raised to brush your hair out of your eyes to tuck it behind your ear and grab the side of your neck, his thumb brushing on your jawline once, twice, three times as he leaned closer and closer. His breath fanned your lips and suddenly, his lips were against yours. 

The warmth inside you burst. It overflowed. Your brows arched and you took in a deep breath, in disbelief of what was going on but it felt so good. So wrong but so right all at once. As bad as it was, your eyes fluttered shut and your resolve melted away completely, but Sam suddenly realized..

You are his friend’s daughter. 

He practically raised you.

He pulled away with a disapproving groan and pressed the back of his hand to his lips, blinking repeatedly. You studied his reaction carefully, your own fingers ghosting your lips as you took in a shaky breath. 

“Fuck..” He breathed out, his eyes closing and his brows knitting together, “I’m sorry, sweetheart-- I dunno what came over m--” 

You silenced him by grabbing his shirt and pulling him to crash your lips against his again. 

‘Fuck it.’, you thought, ‘He needs this and so do I.’ 

Your hands went to his shoulders, your grip firm on his muscles. He was still tense and he wasn't kissing back but, God, when your tongue brushed his bottom lip softly, he felt his willpower dwindling away. 

He wasn't thinking anymore and neither were you.

It was a right-here-right-now moment and you were going to cease the chance and hold onto it with your nails and teeth.

When he relaxed and kissed you back deeply, you pushed him down on the couch, never breaking the kiss as you straddled his hips. His hands were all over you. Under your top, his nails scratched at your tender skin gently and the moan he let out when you pressed yourself against his crotch snapped something within you.

And Sam?

He was too far gone.

'Fuck..' He thought, 'This is so wrong.. So fuckin' wrong..'

He watched you hastily unbutton his pants and he told himself to stop this. That there was still time for him to push you off of him and tell you what a mistake that was. But he couldn't help it. The innocence in your eyes as they flickered to look up at him. The sweet yet devious grin you sent him. 

The fact that you could get any man you wanted but needed him right there was enough to make his resolve crumble. 

He let out a grunt and closed his eyes, throwing his head back and trying to steady his breathing. You were so needy. Your hands were on his hips as your mouth fully enveloped him. He couldn't help himself. His hips bucked and low, gruff curses tumbled from his parted lips. 

And you couldn’t stop yourself. 

You wanted to relieve him and he felt so good. His hands brushing your hair back and holding it in a tight fist. And you watched his head rolling back again after he’d mustered up enough strength to look at what you were doing. 

You didn’t know it yet but you had much to regret soon.

And so did he. 

Nothing would ever be the same again after that night.