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jcmarchi · 9 months ago

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Car-GPT: Could LLMs finally make self-driving cars happen?

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/car-gpt-could-llms-finally-make-self-driving-cars-happen/

Car-GPT: Could LLMs finally make self-driving cars happen?

In 1928, London was in the middle of a terrible health crisis, devastated by bacterial diseases like pneumonia, tuberculosis, and meningitis. Confined in sterile laboratories, scientists and doctors were stuck in a relentless cycle of trial and error, using traditional medical approaches to solve complex problems.

This is when, in September 1928, an accidental event changed the course of the world. A Scottish doctor named Alexander Fleming forgot to close a petri dish (the transparent circular box you used in science class), which got contaminated by mold. This is when Fleming noticed something peculiar: all bacteria close to the moisture were dead, while the others survived.

“What was that moisture made of?” wondered M. Flemming. This was when he discovered that Penicillin, the main component of the mold, was a powerful bacterial killer. This led to the groundbreaking discovery of penicillin, leading to the antibiotics we use today. In a world where doctors were relying on existing well-studied approaches, Penicillin was the unexpected answer.

Self-driving cars may be following a similar event. Back in the 2010s, most of them were built using what we call a « modular » approach. The software « autonomous » part is split into several modules, such as Perception (the task of seeing the world), or Localization (the task of accurately localize yourself in the world), or Planning (the task of creating a trajectory for the car to follow, and implementing the « brain » of the car). Finally, all these go to the last module: Control, that generates commands such as « steer 20° right », etc… So this was the well-known approach.

But a decade later, companies started to take another discipline very seriously: End-To-End learning. The core idea is to replace every module with a single neural network predicting steering and acceleration, but as you can imagine, this introduces a black box problem.

The 4 Pillars of Self-Driving Cars are Perception, Localization, Planning, and Control. Could a Large Language Model replicate them? (source)

These approaches are known, but don’t solve the self-driving problem yet. So, we could be wondering: “What if LLMs (Large Language Models), currently revolutionizing the world, were the unexpected answer to autonomous driving?”

This is what we’re going to see in this article, beginning with a simple explanation of what LLMs are and then diving into how they could benefit autonomous driving.

Preamble: LLMs-what?

Before you read this article, you must know something: I’m not an LLM pro, at all. This means, I know too well the struggle to learn it. I understand what it’s like to google “learn LLM”; then see 3 sponsored posts asking you to download e-books (in which nothing concrete appears)… then see 20 ultimate roadmaps and GitHub repos, where step 1/54 is to view a 2-hour long video (and no one knows what step 54 is because it’s so looooooooong).

So, instead of putting you through this pain myself, let’s just break down what LLMs are in 3 key ideas:

Tokenization

Transformers

Processing Language

Tokenization

In ChatGPT, you input a piece of text, and it returns text, right? Well, what’s actually happening is that your text is first converted into tokens.

Example of tokenization of a sentence, each word becomes a “token”

But what’s a token? You might ask. Well, a token can correspond to a word, a character, or anything we want. Think about it — if you are to send a sentence to a neural network, you didn’t plan on sending actual words, did you?

The input of a neural network is always a number, so you need to convert your text into numbers; this is tokenization.

What tokenization actually is: A conversion from words to numbers

Depending on the model (ChatGPT, LLAMA, etc…), a token can mean different things: a word, a subword, or even a character. We could take the English vocabulary and define these as words or take parts of words (subwords) and handle even more complex inputs. For example, the word « a » could be token 1, and the word « abracadabra » would be token 121.

Transformers

Now that we understand how to convert a sentence into a series of numbers, we can send that series into our neural network! At a high level, we have the following structure:

A Transformer is an Encoder-Decoder Architecture that takes a sequence of tokens as input and outputs a another series of tokens

If you start looking around, you will see that some models are based on an encoder-decoder architecture, some others are purely encoder-based, and others, like GPT, are purely decoder-based.

Whatever the case, they all share the core Transformer blocks: multi-head attention, layer normalization, addition and concatenation, blocks, cross-attention, etc…

This is just a series of attention blocks getting you to the output. So how does this word prediction work?

The output/ Next-Word Prediction

The Encoder learns features and understands context… But what does the decoder do? In the case of object detection, the decoder is predicting bounding boxes. In the case of segmentation, the decoder is predicting segmentation masks. What about here?

In our case, the decoder is trying to generate a series of words; we call this task “next-word prediction”.

Of course, it does it similarly by predicting numbers or tokens. This characterizes our full model as shown below,

I would say the loss function for this particular output produces a near-0 value.

Now, there are many “concepts” that you should learn on top of this intro: everything Transformer and Attention related, but also few-shot learning, pretraining, finetuning, and more…

Ok… but what does it have to do with self-driving cars? I think it’s time to move to stage 2.

Chat-GPT for Self-Driving Cars

The thing is, you’ve already been through the tough part. The rest simply is: “How do I adapt this to autonomous driving?”. Think about it; we have a few modifications to make:

Our input now becomes either images, sensor data (LiDAR point clouds, RADAR point clouds, etc…), or even algorithm data (lane lines, objects, etc…). All of it is “tokenizable”, as Vision Transformers or Video Vision Transformers do.

Our Transformer model pretty much remains the same since it only operates on tokens and is independent of the kind of input.

The output is based on the set of tasks we want to do. It could be explaining what’s happening in the image or could also be a direct driving task like switching lanes.

So, let’s begin with the end:

What self-driving car tasks could LLM solve?

There are many tasks involved in autonomous driving, but not all of them are GPT-isable. The most active research areas in 2023 have been:

Perception: Based on an input image, describe the environment, number of objects, etc…

Planning: Based on an image, or a bird-eye view, or the output of perception, describe what we should do (keep driving, yield, etc…)

Generation: Generate training data, alternate scenarios, and more… using “diffusion”

Question & Answers: Create a chat interface and ask the LLM to answer questions based on the scenario.

LLMs in Perception

In Perception, the input is a series of images, and the output is usually a set of objects, lanes, etc… In the case of LLMs, we have 3 core tasks: Detection, Prediction, and Tracking. An example with Chat-GPT, when you send it an image and ask to describe what’s going on is shown below:

A GPT-4 Vision model can return the objects in the image, just like object detectors do (source)

Other models such as HiLM-D and MTD-GPT can also do this, some work also for videos. Models like PromptTrack, also have the ability to assign unique IDs (this car in front of me is ID #3), similar to a 4D Perception model.

PromptTrack combines the DETR object detector with Large Language Models

In this model, multi-view images are sent to an Encoder-Decoder network that is trained to predict annotations of objects such as bounding boxes, and attention maps). These maps are then combined with a prompt like ‘find the vehicles that are turning right’.The next block then finds the 3D Bounding Box localization and assigns IDs using a bipartite graph matching algorithm like the Hungarian Algorithm.

This is cool, but this isn’t the “best” application of LLMs so far:

LLMs in Decision Making, Navigation, and Planning

If Chat-GPT can find objects in an image, it should be able to tell you what to do with these objects, shouldn’t it? Well, this is the task of Planning i.e. defining a path from A to B, based on the current perception. While there are numerous models developed for this task, the one that stood out to me was Talk2BEV:

Talk2BEV takes perception one step further and also tells you what to do

The main difference between models for planning and Perception-only models is that here, we’re going to train the model on human behavior to suggest ideal driving decisions. We’re also going to change the input from multi-view to Bird Eye View since it is much easier to understand.

This model works both with LLaVA and ChatGPT4, and here is a demo of the architecture:

Talk2BEV (source)

As you can see, this isn’t purely “prompt” based, because the core object detection model stays Bird Eye View Perception, but the LLM is used to “enhance” that output by suggesting to crop some regions, look at specific places, and predict a path. We’re talking about “language enhanced BEV Maps”.

Other models like DriveGPT are trained to send the output of Perception to Chat-GPT and finetune it to output the driving trajectory directly.

The DriveGPT model is pure madness… when trained correctly! (modified from source)

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. If we summarize, I would say that:

Inputs are either tokenized images or outputs of Perception algorithm (BEV maps, …)

We fuse existing models (BEV Perception, Bipartite Matching, …) with language prompts (find the moving cars)

Changing the task is mainly about changing the data, loss function, and careful finetuning.

The Q&A applications are very similar, so let’s see the last application of LLMs:

LLMs for Image Generation

Ever tried Midjourney and DALL-E? Isn’t it super cool? Yes, and there is MUCH COOLER than this when it comes to autonomous driving. In fact, have you heard of Wayve’s GAIA-1 model? The model takes text and images as input and directly produces videos, like this:

These videos are generated by Wayve’s GAIA-1 model

The architecture takes images, actions, and text prompts as input, and then uses a World Model (an understanding of the world and its interactions) to produce a video.

Architecture of GAIA-1 (source)

You can find more examples on Wayve’s YouTube channel and this dedicated post.

Similarly, you can see MagicDrive, which takes the output of Perception as input and uses that to generate scenes:

(source)

Other models, like Driving Into the Future and Driving Diffusion can directly generate future scenarios based on the current ones. You get the point; we can generate scenes in an infinite way, get more data for our models, and have this endless positive loop.

We’ve just seen 3 prominent families of LLM usage in self-driving cars: Perception, Planning, and Generation. The real question is…

Could we trust LLMs in self-driving cars?

And by this, I mean… What if your model has hallucinations? What if its replies are completely absurd, like ChatGPT sometimes does? I remember, back in my first days in autonomous driving, big groups were already skeptical about Deep Learning, because it wasn’t “deterministic” (as they call it).

We don’t like Black Boxes, which is one of the main reasons End-To-End will struggle to get adopted. Is ChatGPT any better? I don’t think so, and I would even say it’s worse in many ways. However, LLMs are becoming more and more transparent, and the black box problem could eventually be solved.

To answer the question “Can we trust them?”… it’s very early in the research, and I’m not sure someone has really used them “online” — meaning « live », in a car, on the streets, rather than in a headquarter just for training or image generation purpose. I would definitely picture a Grok model on a Tesla someday just for Q&A purposes. So for now, I will give you my coward and safe answer…

It’s too early to tell!

Because it really is. The first wave of papers mentioning LLMs in Self-Driving Cars is from mid-2023, so let’s give it some time. In the meantime, you could start with this survey that shows all the evolutions to date.

Alright, time for the best part of the article…

The LLMs 4 AD Summary

A Large Language Model (LLM) works in 3 key steps: inputs, transformer, output. The input is a set of tokenized words, the transformer is a classical transformer, and the output task is “next word prediction”.

In a self-driving car, there are 3 key tasks we can solve with LLMs: Perception (detection, tracking, prediction), Planning (decision making, trajectory generation), and Generation (scene, videos, training data, …).

In Perception, the main goal is to describe the scene we’re looking at. The input is a set of raw multi-view images, and the Transformer aims to predict 3D bounding boxes. LLMs can also be used to ask for a specific query (“where are the taxis?”).

In Planning, the main goal is to generate a trajectory for the car to take. The input is a set of objects (output of Perception, BEV Maps, …), and the Transformer uses LLMs to understand context and reason about what to do.

In Generation, the main goal is to generate a video that corresponds to the prompt used. Models like GAIA-1 have a chat interface, and take as input videos to generate either alternate scenes (rainy, …), or future scenes.

For now, it’s very early to tell whether this can be used in the long run, but research there is some of the most active in the self-driving car space. It all comes back to the question: “Can we really trust LLMs in general?”

Next Steps

If you want to get started on LLMs for self-driving cars, there are several things you can do:

⚠️ Before this, the most important: If you want to keep learning about self-driving cars. I’m talking about self-driving car every day through my private emails. I’m sending many tips and direct content. You should join here.

✅ To begin, build an understanding of LLMs for self-driving cars. This is partly done, you can continue to explore the resources I provided in the article.

➡️ Second, build skills related to Auto-Encoders and Transformer Networks. My image segmentation series is perfect for this, and will help you understand Transformer Networks with no NLP example, which means it’s for Computer Vision Engineer’s brains.

️ ➡️ Then, understand how Bird Eye View Networks works. It might not be mentioned in general LLM courses, but in self-driving cars, Bird Eye View is the central format where we can fuse all the data (LiDARs, cameras, multi-views, …), build maps, and directly create paths to drive. You can do so in my Bird Eye View course (if closed, join my email list to be notified).

Finally, practice training, finetuning, and running LLMs in self-driving car scenarios. Run repos like Talk2BEV and the others I mentioned in the article. Most of them are open source, but the data can be hard to find. This is noted last, but there isn’t really an order in all of this.

Author Bio

Jérémy Cohen is a self-driving car engineer and founder of Think Autonomous, a platform to help engineers learn about cutting-edge technologies such as self-driving cars and advanced Computer Vision. In 2022, Think Autonomous won the price for Top Global Business of the Year in the Educational Technology Category and Jeremy Cohen was named 2023 40 Under 40 Innovators in Analytics Insight magazine, the largest printed magazine on Artificial Intelligence. You can join 10,000 engineers reading his private daily emails on self-driving cars here.

Citation

For attribution in academic contexts or books, please cite this work as

Jérémy Cohen, "Car-GPT: Could LLMs finally make self-driving cars happen?", The Gradient, 2024.

BibTeX citation:

@article{cohen2024cargpt, author = Jérémy Cohen, title = Car-GPT: Could LLMs finally make self-driving cars happen?, journal = The Gradient, year = 2024, howpublished = urlhttps://thegradient.pub/car-gpt,

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one-time-i-dreamt · 3 years ago

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I got an email from Tumblr that they will be issuing printed versions, like an almanac of sorts, and I thought, what the hell, how is it gonna look, they print out a huge part of your dashboard so you could read it offline? A couple of weeks later I received a big book with bold "Tumblr. Printed edition* on the cover in the mail. Inside of it were like year-end wrap ups of fandoms that Tumblr does every year, but without top 10s, mostly there were extremely long text posts, like full length scientific articles. And the best part was, you could have cite those articles and submit your own, and it would count as publication for you if you're in the academia. Of course those printed posts were somewhat sanitized (not a single John Green copypasta inside), but many were just plain weird subject discourse posts you might've seen on here post 2014, with words like f*ck or sh*t every other sentence. They also had sections in the journal about niche Tumblr communities, like gardeners, or old 90's Mexican tv show shippers, or one of the billion something-core aesthetics. They had moodboards printed out on actual paper. They had interview pages with Tumblr funnymen. Sarah Z had an author's column there.

The whole thing was like 2000 pages and they promised to issue it monthly.

#dream #dreams #tumblr culture #sarah z

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brushstrokesapocalyptic · 3 years ago

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it’s time for the “overanalyzing one-off lines” show!

so the very first thing magnus says when he sees pit in chapter 2 of kid icarus: uprising is as follows:

“Well, I didn’t expect to see an angel here. Hope this doesn’t mean I’ve kicked the bucket.”

now, i’m not sure if you’re aware, but that’s a really weird thing for someone to say, and it’s even more weird that no one comments on it. pit and palutena go on talking about unrelated things, as if that’s a totally normal and expected thing for magnus to say.

now, if you’re like me, you probably also didn’t really react to this line the first few times you saw it. it’s the second chapter, kiu has a lot of slightly-odd lines which turn out to be foreshadowing. me, personally? my first thought was “oh, i guess angels are probably associated with escorting the dead to the afterlife,“ and then i moved on.

they’re not, though. that’s what reapers do. and there’s no way humans have these two races mixed up. just fucking look at them.

do they look anything alike to you??? no. they don’t. which raises the question of why, exactly, magnus said that.

now, we don’t know a lot about angels as a whole. pit (and by extension dark pit) is emphatically not the gold standard of angeldom. we can assume he looks fairly ordinary for an angel, seeing as no one has trouble identifying him as such. beyond that, though, a lot of what we know about angels comes from what pit isn’t. for starters, he can’t fly. and there’s something else, too, but i’ll get to that later.

before that, though, i’m gonna go through the various unsubstantiated comments made by people with a dubious level of authority on the subject. (incidentally, i sourced these screenshots from the wiki— much more convenient than trying to dig through youtube for every single random conversation.)

without any further ado! let’s get into it!

Angels as Messengers

Gaol: Aw, Palutena’s little messenger boy. And Magnus, it’s always a pleasure. (src)

in the specific context of overanalyzing magnus’s first line, this is an important sentence to pick out. magnus and gaol are both humans, both with presumably a fairly similar history as mercenaries up until gaol got stuffed in a suit of armor. but while magnus makes a weird comment about death, gaol calls pit a messenger.

and pit agrees with her!

Viridi: I wish I had an angel to do my bidding. It’s like having an intern.

Pit: I’m not an intern. I’m a messenger of the gods!

Viridi: Poor Pit. Don't you know that the definition of angel is "errand spirit"? (src)

this particular conversation is the most insight we get into angels as a whole, i think. viridi thinks of angels as like divine interns, there to do little tasks for gods, and palutena doesn’t exactly disagree with her. pit says they’re specifically messengers, which lines up with biblical mythology. i could see the traditional role of angels in the world of KI being exactly that, showing up to tell the humans what the gods have to say because the gods themselves are too busy being petty jerks to do it themselves.

The Angel’s Code of Conduct

Magnus: You go in fully dressed? Don't you at least want to change into a...swimming tunic or something?

Pit: Oh, no no no! The angel's code of conduct says that we must always be ready for duty.

Magnus: I guess you wouldn't be an angel if you didn't do things by the book. (src)

Pit: Hey! You know the angel's code of conduct! I need to be prepared at all times! (src)

another random little thing is the angel’s code of conduct. without a larger sample size, we can’t know if it’s a real thing or just an excuse to save on laundry, but apparently it’s against the rules to not be on call at all times. in pit’s case, the duty he has to be ready for is doing palutena’s dirty work, but it can easily mean just about anything— including, of course, being a messenger.

No Warrior

Chariot Master: But you are no warrior, angel. Tell me, why do you fight?

Pit: I fight for Lady Palutena. And I fight for the people under her protection!

Chariot Master: That's not reason enough for an angel. (src)

remember how i said there was something else weird about pit? the chariot master seems to think angels aren’t very prone to battle— or perhaps even that they’re actively opposed to it. this lines up well with the idea that they’re supposed to be messengers, peaceful go-betweens for gods and mortals. this does not line up well with pit, the adorable weapon of mass destruction.

and it also does absolutely nothing to explain the question driving the whole existence of this post.

you know what does kinda lean towards an explanation?

No Other Angels

Pit: Do all gods have their own angels, like you have me?

Palutena: No, I don't think that's necessarily the case. (src)

i said before that the Intern Pit conversation had the most illuminating information on angels. this is what i was actually referring to. on its own, it’s pretty innocuous, but it’s just as weird as the magnus line. shouldn’t pit know about other angels, seeing as he is one himself? but he doesn’t know if there are other angels.

the only angels we ever see are him and his clone. no one ever directly references the existence of other angels, they only make general statements about what angels as a whole are like— statements which clearly don’t apply to pit, meaning they’re not just extrapolating based on the one angel that definitely does exist.

the one time someone does comment on the hypothetical existence of other angels, palutena gives a vague answer to the tune of “no,” the topic is changed, and no one brings it up again.

let’s go over everything i’ve established about angels up to this point. they can fly, they’re peaceful messengers of the gods, and pit is the only one that seems to exist as of the start of KIU.

it should be pretty obvious at this point what answer i’m dancing around, if it wasn’t obvious from the start. pit is the only angel around because all the other ones are dead. the reason why magnus said what he did is that his thought process went something like this:

See an angel.

Think “Aren’t angels extinct? Is that a ghost? Am I a ghost? I sure hope not.“

Make a quip about that.

Move on with his life, because he isn’t dead and evidently neither is this guy.

i’m not gonna pretend i went into this post with the intent of any other conclusion to that mystery. anyone who’s bothered glancing over a plot summary for the original kid icarus can draw that conclusion. it’s certainly what i did, reinforced by fics by people who had the same thought!

the truth, however, is that this was all a trick to get you to read my analysis of the theoretical nature of angels as a race. now that you’re invested, i’m going to dramatically throw aside my cape and reveal my TRUE FORM: telling people that fandom consensus is wrong, and my ideas are cooler and better than everyone else’s and you should all throw roses at my feet and bow before your king.

(or just, y’know, take it as the subjective analysis that it is. whatever floats your boat.)

Hot Takes

the original kid icarus does not actually tell you about angels going extinct. here’s the wiki article with the full text of the backstory, just for convenience, so you know what i’m on about for the rest of this post.

so, the part of the story that i think gets misinterpreted is this part about palutena’s army.

Medusa led a surprise attack on Palutena's army which could barely fend off the attack. Palutena's army suffered major losses and was heavily defeated in the final battle.

specifically, i think a lot of people interpret said army as having been made up at least partly of angels. sure, in the actual game it consists entirely of centurions, but you have to take old NES games with a grain of salt. i know i don’t buy for a second that pit was part of palutena’s guard before the original game (he was just too goddamn young), there’s nothing wrong with reinterpreting things.

recall everything i established about angels already, though. this is the hot official lore, from the game everyone knows and loves. angels are messengers, and if the chariot master is to be believed, never warriors. pit is an outlier. palutena’s army consists of centurions, not angels. if medusa wiped them out, it wasn’t because they were fighting for palutena.

(and honestly, i don’t think angels are necessarily associated with palutena exclusively. sure, she’s got the wing imagery, and she’s got the one known surviving angel working for her, at least up until pittoo is born. but angels are messengers of the gods, not messengers of palutena. again, pit is an outlier.)

which all brings us to the real question of this post.

what the FUCK happened to all the other angels? why is there only pit? why does magnus act surprised to see a messenger of the gods, and make a quip about being dead, if not because angels are otherwise extinct?! WHO KILLED THEM, AND WHY?!

thus concludes the “over analyzing one-off lines“ show. see you next, uh, maybe at some point if i feel like it!

(also another thought i had but couldn’t find room to fit it in properly: the gods don’t really act like angels are all extinct, but i feel like that can be explained through the sheer scale of a god’s lifespan. if we assume they were wiped out sometime around the original kid icarus (even if not as palutena’s army) then that’s a whole twenty-five years. that’s a long time for us humans, but for a god, that might as well be last tuesday. “yeah, i know what angels are like. sure wish i could have one. too bad palutena’s got a monopoly on the one single angel that medusa didn’t manage to wreck.”)

#kid icarus #kid icarus uprising #the things i think of at five am #i am just yelling and spewing thoughts and theories and headcanons #if anyone has their own thoughts to add go right ahead i am dying to know whether or not i'm actually breaking new ground with all this #or if there's some vital lore i missed #or anything like that #i am OPEN for CONVERSATION

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eureka-its-zico · 4 years ago

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Irrevocably Yours

Request: hey! can i request a scenario of jungkook being a rich kid who has ome of his legs is leg failure , basically can't walk without a cane , And he falls in love with a normal girl , and they end up running away , happy ending plz , also if u can , LIT IT Up with smut ' thank u ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

A/N: So. This request was sent to me a long ass time ago. I mean a LONG time ago, and I spent so much time working on it...it became too long. So I broke it up in half. Just to see if anyone actually becomes interested in how this ends. Just to see if anyone still reads anything I write. So if you end up enjoying this, please let me know and I’ll post the last of this. I have so many things buried inside my google docs that need to be set free from hibernation.

Also, I’m sorry if this isn’t any good. I’ve rewritten this a thousand times trying to fix it, and I’ve done all I can for now. I hope someone out there enjoyed this craziness. And to the original person who asked for this, if you ever see this, I’m sorry it took so long. P.s. I also took creative liberties and changed it up a little. Much love, Jenn

Jungkook x Reader

Word count: 13,756 (yeah I know, it was longer before I halved it. Sorry!)

Genre: fluffy/Smutty(later)/First Love drama sorts mess

A part of you would always remember the first day you’d met Jeon Jungkook. His presence standing in the doorway to the classroom held every single one of your classmate's attention along with yours. Jungkook silently demanded to be noticed, even though in a way he wanted no one to notice him at all. The classroom felt louder than usual, or maybe that was just how you recalled it. Maybe it's what caused the ringing in your ears when the room was swallowed up in silence. The sound of his cane hitting the stained linoleum; ticking like a time bomb with every step.

At first you couldn't see why he necessarily needed it. Jungkook was a master of hiding things. Even pain. It wasn’t until he’d reached the teachers desk, his hip moving to rest against it to ease the extra strain off his good leg, that the stories of his accident became true. Not one of you were willing to look too long at the challenge in his face. Defiance turning his soft features bitter as he glanced out across the room. Jungkook wanted to appear strong; to dare anyone to mutter even a word that he wasn’t. That he wasn’t the same person he was before the accident.

He must have been able to fool your home room teacher into forgetting. His eagerness to introduce Jungkook only caused him to accidentally come too close to his legs in passing. The teachers’ waist moved and harmlessly bump against Jungkook’s bad leg. A small movement that was enough to change Jungkook’s entire demeanor for just a second.

The whole room collectively took a breath; waiting for him to scream out in pain. To turn savage and yell or curse at the stupidity of the teacher. Jungkook did none of it. He continued to look out into the room with his chin held high.

You could see, however, through the crinkle by his eyes and how heavily he now leaned on his cane that it’s caused him a great deal of pain. A brief moment in showing what he tried to hide and if you weren’t staring so hard at him, you were sure you would’ve missed it.

An infamous legend among other schools as his face showed up on Sports articles that featured proud features of parents beaming excitedly at cameras. Taekwondo and track metal’s around his neck by the dozens. Grades to match the intensity of his athletic drive with a rumor that if he tried something for the first time, Jungkook would still be phenomenal at whatever it was.

Even without ever actually meeting him - everyone in that classroom knew who he was. Jeon Jungkook was a hard man not to hear about.

In the beginning of the year there’d been a different headline for him, however. He’d been the passenger in a friend's car that was struck by a drunk driver. The ferocity of the impact leaving the car looking like a bow. Jungkook lost a friend that night, and part of the mobility in his left leg. The driver himself died instantly and you weren't sure if that was justice enough for the two boys who’d lost so much in a matter of three seconds.

And with so much, yet so little known about him you found yourself unable to join the others in measuring up the boy in front of you.

Jungkook was taller than you thought he would be, or maybe you’d silently been hoping the universe wouldn’t be so cruel to give someone talent and every single attractive feature known to man. He’d been played up like he was a god among the rest of you feeble mortals. You figure’d girls were overacting, I mean it happens. Imagining after listening to all their swooning, you’d somehow shockingly find out he was nothing more than your average - ordinary - boy.

Jungkook was anything but ordinary.

His lean frame still retained years of training that wasn't so easily hidden, even under the layers of the school uniform. You could see the care he still placed on his outward appearance. The rising star who was still handsome, even underneath all his brooding. His school uniform strained against tight muscles in his arms and, worse, was his legs. Your cheeks heating into an embarrassed blush as his eyes landed on what seemed like your desk. It was silly to think he’d caught you gawking. Everyone was gawking at him, but even a millisecond of his gaze made your cheeks light up with embarrassment at the idea of being caught.

There was gossip of him not wanting to go back to his old school; his old life. You didn't really blame him. Why be stuck in a place where there were millions of memories of a time you had with a close friend? Of having the ability to walk down the halls without everyone looking at you like you were damaged goods.

“Everyone pay attention!” Mr. Choi shouted.

It all seemed unnecessary. Your attention was already on him whether he wanted it or not.

“I’d like to welcome our transfer student, Jeon Jungkook. I expect you all to be on your best behavior.”

“I don't need you to defend me,” he snapped.

He started moving his way down the aisle towards the only empty seat in the room: the one next to you.

You quickly turned away from him and started cleaning up your space. Jungkook got to the desk faster than you thought and dropped his backpack down on top of the desk. His long body slumped down into the seat, placing his cane next to the window seal.

“We’re going to continue with our previous lecture from yesterday. You can share with Y/N until you get your own books.”

You flipped to chapter eighteen with your many notes scattered inside. Your eyes giving him a sidelong glance before sliding the book neatly between the desks. Jungkook didn't bother to look at the pages: his gaze was locked elsewhere. Somewhere outside the window with the freedom far beyond the gates of the school.

The enter class you’d spun a hundred different sentences in your mind. Each one playing out in your head as pure idiotic or unnecessary. You just couldn’t shake the feeling that it felt wrong letting him sit there like no one cares. To be a part of the prying gazes of the class; to know his name and him not knowing yours in return. You weren't sure why you gave a shit so much, anyways, but you did.

At the sound of the bell he was the first one to hop back onto his feet. His hand instinctively taking hold of the cane to keep him propped up as he moved to situate his backpack over his shoulders. You’d followed close behind him and gathered up your things.

You didn't see him again until fifth period. His brooding presence in the back of the class hung like a dark cloud you couldn't shake. You knew you weren't necessarily the most cheerful person in the room, but even Jungkook’s sour puss attitude was making you want to throw glitter at him.

He didn't acknowledge you when you came to your usual seat at the window, and it didn't bother you. No one usually acknowledged you anyways. What did bother you was that he was sitting in your window seat. Statistics was by far your least favorite subject this year, and the one thing that kept you sane was that window seat.

“That's my spot.”

Your voice didn't hold any hint of malice. It was just definitive: you wanted your seat. Jungkook didn't look at you straight away. His eyes still daydreaming through the window and the world beyond. When he did finally look at you, you were sure the annoyance in his face was meant to send you packing. Too bad for him you’d seen worse.

“Is that look supposed to scare me? It doesn't change the fact you're in my spot.”

“I don't see your name on it.”

Your laughter turned to a scoff; cut short by your disbelief.

“What are we in middle school? If you want to get technical, it was assigned by the teacher aka my name is theoretically on that seat. So -”

You acted like he was a pet you could shoo off your bed. The hand motion earning you his brow to raise in return.

“You’d really make a cripple get up?”

“Is that what we’re calling you? A cripple? Because it looks to me like you’re still capable of doing things, oh say, a paraplegic can't.”

The anger rolled through him suddenly like storm clouds. All the possibilities of playful mischief disappeared as he regarded you with so much hate, it was as if he’d struck you.

“Oh, really? I didn't realize that they were giving away M.D titles in high schools now.”

Your mouth opened to - to what? Apologize? The sensitive part of you told you that you should. His accident hadn't been a full year yet, and here you were badgering him. Yet, you knew if you continuously babied him like everyone else it was only going to do more harm than good. Your next choice of words were cut short when your teacher walked in and asked why you were still standing.

“He’s in my spot.”

God, now who sounded like they were in middle school? Your teacher seemed to draw a blank. His gaze moving from you to Jungkook then back to you.

“Just sit down, Y/N.”

You did so with a huff. Your arms pulling your backpack you’d sat down on the desk closer to you like a pillow. Just so you could rest your chin on top of it and tried to ignore the smirk that was now on Jungkook’s face.

After you’d gone to your next class you couldn't stop thinking about your exchange. It turned your mood sour the rest of the day, and you couldn't understand why. A part of you wondering if it was because of your choice of words or the defeat that shown all too bright in his doe eyes.

The end of the day couldn't have come fast enough. You just wanted to get home and out of your uniform and maybe get a chance to go take some photos before your parents got home. You were too preoccupied with thoughts of where you wanted to go, and what coffee shop you wanted to stop at, when you collided into the back of someone else. A loud curse followed suit of the sound of a cane dropping on pavement making your eyes shut tight and your throat constrict around a groan.

“Jesus, can't you watch where you’re goi- oh, it's you. Enjoy attacking cripples, do we?”

You opened your eyes to see a less than amused smile on his face. He acted more like a judge at your hearing and whatever sentencing he was giving out, it wasn’t in your favor.

“I’m sorry I wasn't paying attention.”

You moved to pick up his cane for him when his hand angrily swatted yours away making you jump back a step.

“I don't need your charity. I can do it myself!”

“No one said you couldn’t! I was only trying to be nice.”

“Yeah, well, go and be nice somewhere else.”

He situated his weight on his good leg and bent at the knee low enough for his hand to reach out and grab his second form of support. The movement so graceful that it left you stunned, but not as much as his words did.

“You know, just because something bad happened to you, it doesn't give you the right to be an asshole. You aren't the only person to lose someone or something important. Get over yourself.”

With your hands latched underneath the straps of your backpack you stomped around him. Not caring that you left him standing stone still. His mouth slightly agape as he watched you take your exit.

During your walk home, somehow, Jungkook plagued your thoughts. Your mind unable to comprehend why you were still thinking about him. It was the first time you’d met, and yet, you couldn’t stop thinking about him. If you were being honest with yourself you knew from replaying the last thing you said to him.The look on his face saying plainly that you were an asshole.

Everyone’s pain mattered. Grief and loss wasn’t measured by anyone else’s pain but the person who experienced it, and to diminish it in any way was unfair. Regret was building inside your chest and it was all you could do to keep your feet from sprinting back in his direction.

When you got home you went directly to your room, throwing your bag on the bed, and sulked to your desk. You had more pressing matters to attend to than a boys’ possible hurt feelings. No matter how many times you tried, however, you weren’t able to write out theories on government history or explain anatomical questions.

The only thing your brain appeared to focus on was how to apologize.

You thought about Jungkook while you showered and brushed your teeth. You thought of him when you laid in bed and struggled to find a way to sleep. Your mind playing out the million different possibilities of how your apology would be taken from him. You didn't necessarily understand what it felt like to have your dreams stolen from you. To be forced to cope with a new life you hadn’t asked for and the emptiness of losing someone you loved all in one go.

If the tables were turned and it was you, wouldn’t you feel equally as bitter?

The following morning in between toaster cooked waffles and fixing your uniform in the mirror, you’d resigned to apologizing to him. No matter how much thinking of it made your teeth grind and a growl rise in your chest at the thought. You imagined him sneering and replying with smart remarks and it caused your mind to waver, but you were better than the pettiness swelling in your chest. You were okay with knowing his prickled exterior came from something you couldn't ever understand.

You made sure all the time you had while you walked to school was used up by mumbling the speech you’d made up the night before. At crosswalks practicing the best stance that didn't appear threatening, was friendly, but wouldn't be misconstrued as flirting.

That was by far the last thing you wanted to happen in his eyes. Sure, Jungkook was undeniably attractive...as much as you would've loved to laugh sarcastically in his perfectly sculpted face that his obviously very masculine features did nothing to make you weak in the knees. That you hadn’t noticed when his elbows, still clad in his jacket, moved to rest on the desk it’d caused his biceps and shoulders to equally fight for whatever was left of the fabric. Or that small scar on his cheek caught your attention when he became annoyed; his tongue poking out at the side of his jaw.

No, you hadn't been paying an embarrassing amount of attention to him at all (or at the ridiculous outline of his thigh muscles in his school uniform) with every step he took.

So, since you hadn't personally taken notice of any of physically appealing traits, why would you flirt? You were well aware of the vast difference of not only your social scale, but also of your class ranking, and looks overall. You were lightyears away from ever being able to consider being more than a female acquaintance he happened to get stuck next to at school. He wasn't the first boy who was out of your league, and Jungkook wouldn't be the last. Why it bothered you so much was a child's thought you refused to entertain.

When you finally got to school you hurried up the steps and briskly made your way down the hall. Not stopping even after Jenny cursed after you for nudging her as you went by. As soon as you swung open the door for homeroom, your eyes landed on Jungkook’s position. His cane leaning against the desk, hands tucked inside the pockets of his uniform slacks as he leaned back against the chair.

His gaze was focused somewhere outside the window, completely blank and motionless, and you wondered if he could've been having a thought at all. He was close to being marked as unreal in your book when he blinked and turned his gaze towards you.

You hadn't realized you’d been staring until that moment. Your gaze dropping to the worn linoleum as you briskly made your way down to your desk. A mumbled, “Good morning,” falling like a bad habit from your lips while you came around the side to slid into the desk chair. Nervous hands clutching tightly to your bag as you stared straight ahead, unwilling to glance in his direction.

Somewhere between cursing your awkwardness and staring out the window like an escape hatch your teacher started the lecture. None of it to which you were paying attention too, which was probably why you heard him call your name. You jerked in your seat as he yelled it a second time. Your eyes no doubt wide from giggles that sounded around the room.

“Y/N, since you're listening, you can go ahead and answer number forty-seven in the workbook.”

Panic sent your eyes wide as you stared back at his expectant face: waiting for you to fail. You hadn't even taken your book out since you’d sat down, finally moving to do so, when you felt a light tap against your bag. It was enough to jerk your gaze away from the teacher and down to a completed book of all the problems done by Jungkook.

He cleared his throat and tucked his hands back inside the pockets of his trousers easily not understanding the severity of how his actions had left you wide-eyed in surprise. You were still taking too long, causing your teacher to prompt you with a grunt and Jungkook to casually reach out and tap the answer again. Your eyes trailing over the written answer before standing up and clearing your throat. The answer rolling off your tongue as easy as breathing; as if you didn't just steal it from a notebook.

You made a silent prayer the teacher didn't notice the sweat threatening to break at your temple. The nervous ticking of your feet tilting from spot to spot. A rush of relief escaping your lips when his response to your answer was to continue class.

You took your seat next to Jungkook; unable to acknowledge him just yet for saving you from whatever punishment your teacher would've no doubt thought of. The realization that Jungkook himself was the reason for your lack of concentration making your cheeks flush an embarrassing pink making your arms wrap protectively around your backpack.

You’d never even brought out your textbook. Never dropped your bag from your desk and no doubt Mr. Choi knew you were given the answer. You buried your mouth against the coarse nylon in a weak attempt to stifle your embarrassment.

“Thank you.”

Your eyes caught the soft tilt of his brow as it rose at the muffled words. You could make out his left shoulder leaning him down towards your huddled position, making your hands involuntarily tighten into your backpack.

“What was that?”

The husky whisper of his words weren't anything you’d heard before, and they resonated up your spine to leave you staring starry-eyed.

“Th-thank you. For giving me the answer.”

He didn't respond. His gaze fixed solely on your face until you forcibly struggled to keep from fidgeting under its weight. After what felt like a small eternity, Jungkook nodded his head and faced forward. The sudden ghost of the death of your conversation causing you to blink at his profile.

The rest of the class was spent with your focus lacking on taking notes. How could you focus with his presence commanding your attention? A small army of ants creeping along your nerves demanding to acknowledge him. It was so strong, when the bell rang you jumped up from your seat to try and escape into the freedom of the school’s hallway, only to end up with your knee connecting straight into the hardwood of the desk. Jungkook’s snort at your misfortune was enough to remind you how much of an arrogant pain in the ass he could be.

“Wow - good job doofus.”

Your head snapped back in his direction; tongue rolling in your cheek as he hopped up from his seat. A hand snaking out to grab his bag and sling it over his shoulder as the other reached for his cane. You held your head high despite how awful your knee was stinging, and stood up adjusting your bag.

“Seriously? That's all you've got? Doofus? Next time let’s try harder.”

Jungkook didn't seemed miffed by your retort, actually seeming more amused than anything, and for some reason it only bugged you more. Did you really want to get into another argument like you were in primary school with him? You discarded the thought as you tightened the strings on your backpack and decided to take the mature route and leave him behind.

The hallways mass of bodies rushing to get to their next period giving you comfort; until you remembered you shared the same economics class. Today was also a field trip to a farm to learn the process of making soy products. It would take up the last few classes of the day. You’d been excited to spend the day out of class and enjoy the rustic scenery out of town. Your only hope was that he hadn't been able to get his parental slip signed; he’d just started the day before. How could he?

When the teacher walked in and asked Jungkook for his permission slip you wanted to howl. Why was the universe so cruel? But why did you care so much?

It was a question you didn't bother to think about; you just grumbled the whole way to the bus. Your teacher standing at its entrance to put a check by your names every time one of your classmates passed him by like lined up cattle. You were the last checkmark: the last person to find an available seat. You rounded the final step and your stomach sank down into your shoes. The universe seeming to play a sick joke of musical chairs; your only options being Jungkook or Amber, the girl who actively struggled to make sure your life was a living hell.

You’d rather be eaten by dogs than even attempt to sit with her. Jungkook it was, then.

Your hand clasped tighter around the strap of your bag as you moved it farther up your shoulder. A large sigh accommodating your steps as you side-stepped down the aisle ending with you in front of his seat. His cane taking up what was left of it.

Jungkook didn't seem to register your presence or he just decided to pretend you weren't there. Either way you felt your annoyance grow as you cleared your throat to grab his attention. His chin barely leaving the perch of his fist as his head turned; gaze intimidating in a way that left your fingers pinching the fabric of yours clothes just to make sure they were still there and he hadn't stared straight through them.

“Can I help you?”

“I need a seat.”

He looked back and no doubt noticed the open spot next to Amber. Jungkook’s giving the slightest nod as he retorted, “There’s one right back there.”

“Come on, Jungkook. What do you want?”

“You're bribing me now?”

His smile was so bright, borderline adorable, and you hated how it threatened to make you retaliate with your own.

“Stop being a brat and just tell me,” you snapped instead.

Jungkook shot a quick glance back at Amber’s giggling figure. You were sure most people thought she sounded like wind chimes or something else cute and feminine, but to you it just sounded like a cat dying. When he looked back at you, Jungkook checked you out one last time. His eyes stopping at the lone earbud that sat against your chest. For a moment, you thought he was actually staring at your breasts making your cheeks burn and your gaze to look anywhere else but at his smug face.

“Let me listen to your iPod there and back on this trip, and I'll let you sit with me.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

Jungkook did a lavish hand sweep at the window. The motion reminding you of the showgirls on The Price is Right, making you believe maybe he’d somehow watched it, and one too many times.

“You get to use your imagination while you look out the window.”

“No way. Joint custody.”

“Fine. Joint custody, but I get to pick the music the whole way. If you have shitty taste the deal's off.”

He stuck out his hand for you to shake and there was a moment, a minor second, that it felt like you were making a deal with the devil. However, the sound of Amber’s laughter practically had your hand bolting into Jungkook’s. You shook it harder than was necessary before dropping it and shooing him to move.

Jungkook removed his bag and cane from the seat. Your legs giving out moments later so you could plop down in it, only to be greeted by his outstretched hand. The smile that spread across his lips shining brighter than the mischief in his eyes.

“As per our agreement: the iPod.”

He wiggles his fingers and you wanted to smack him. Your own squeezing tighter against the metal until, reluctantly, you chose your fate by placing it into his hand. Jungkook didn’t seem to mind your current look of displeasure while you watched him begin to scroll through your assorted music collection.

At least the seat was warm.

The first few seconds were somehow more awkward than you thought possible. Eyes locked in a fifty-yard stare so intense a soldier would’ve been envious. The only movement you caught of him was from your peripherals. Jungkook’s thumbs picking up speed from the leisurely way he scanned through the artists you’d offered. And no you did not, whatsoever, happen to notice the way his bottom lip would dart inside his mouth just to be held gently between his teeth. All the while his eyes focused on the task in front of him.

Nope. You weren’t paying attention to him. Not even a little bit. So how he was able to make you jump twelve inches out of your skin, while you were most definitely not embarrassing yourself by gawking over a beautiful man, was beyond you.

“Ya!” Jungkook clicked his tongue in distaste. His hand wiggling the ipod in your direction, as if it had caused some great offense. “What is this?”

Your neck tiled as you regarded him like he’d grown two heads. You were also positive if your eyebrows knitted together any harder you’d end up with a unibrow.

“Ugh, a mystical device that plays music.”

The look on Jungkook’s face faltered from frustration to annoyance. It was so sudden it ended up sending a bark of laughter in his direction. And just like that, the annoyed look was back again.

“I mean, what the hell do you have on this thing. Who is The Dead Weather? City and Colour? Joji?”

“They are artists I enjoy.”

“They’re shit.”

You rushed to try and snatch it back from him. Jungkook’s reflexes proving to be faster than your growing urge to smack him.

“Excuse me, little miss,” he began. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He used his index finger to push gently against your forehead, but with the current level of irritation, he still proved faster than you. Your failed attempt to swat his hand away meeting only empty air. Earning you a smirk of smug satisfaction.

“I’m trying to get my things back.”

“That wasn’t part of our agreement.”

You tried one last time to take him by surprise. Your right hand shot out too hard to grab at the object clasped in his large hands. The momentum carried you forward to land shoulder first against his chest. Leg nudging against his with enough force that it caused his cane to move an inch. It took everything you had to keep your head down to hide your flaming cheeks.

“And now you’re assaulting me.”

If your eyes were capable of rolling back any father you might've seen brain cells.

“I was only trying to get my property back. Since the only thing that’s coming out of you is complaining.”

“I’m not complaining,” he snapped. “You’re acting like an Indian giver.”

“Is that all you know how to do: complain?” You continued, completely ignoring him. A slight smirk now etching your lips. Jungkook’s eyes flicking down to notice your amusement at his expense. “I believe they call it, ‘trying something new.’”

His eyes narrowed on you and for a split second your pulse began to race. Sure, the agitation on his face at your teasing was obvious, but you could’ve sworn...maybe...just maybe he was smirking. Could you have possibly been able to make him smile?

“I should make you go sit with Amber.”

The smugness in his voice and the cocky smile that joined it instantly made whatever fun you were having come to a complete halt. Jungkook was so pleased with himself he had the audacity to shimmy his shoulders like he’d already won. The rolls had reversed. It was your eyes turn to throw daggers in his direction.

“Now who's the Indian giver.”

Even though he played up on what he felt like was a win, you could tell he was not as amused. His non-injured leg bounced to an incredible rhythm that he could only hear. Probably a furious count to a hundred to keep himself from saying anything else to continue your usual thrilling conversations. So when he handed over one earbud, and the iPod, but placed the other into his ear, it was fair to say it left you baffled.

You were waiting so long for him to give an explanation, but all he did was continue to stare at you. It was starting to make your pulse race again. Why did he constantly have to feel so intense? Everything about him. Not even his current state made him seem any less notable. It just didn’t seem fair.

It wasn’t until he cleared his throat did you realize you’d been staring. For god knows how damn long.

“You gonna play something or not?” he asked.

His hand motioned towards the music while his fingers adjusted the earbud he’d kept.

“I’m so confused.”

“You look it,” he retorted, causing your earlier thoughts to remember, although handsome, he was an incredible pain in the ass.

“Ten seconds ago you complained about my music. Now you want me to play it for you.”

Jungkook turned his gaze away, his body relaxing back against the hard foam of the seat. His eyes still cast outside the window as if he was trying to find some way to escape.

“Either I can spend the next couple hours listening to you talk, or “try” out some new music. If I have a choice, I’ll pick the music please and thank you.”

Oh, how you wish you could’ve shoved him out that tiny window. But as much as you hated to admit it, Jungkook was right. Music was the only reasonable escape from possibly having either of you commit murder.

It was your turn to try and get comfortable. This time your thumb scanning down the list of artists until your eyes caught sight of one he’d mentioned. Without giving him warning you pressed play. The haunting melody of Joji’s “Dancing in the Dark,” flooded the earbuds. His voice melancholic as he began to sing a sad tale of not wanting to be the hidden second option.

The song choice was enough to finally get Jungkook to look back at you. Somehow already having enough with the song choice before it’d barely even reached the chorus.

“Just listen.”

It was the only advice you could give him, and hopefully the reassurance you’d tried to ease into your tone was enough. Whether it was or not, by the time the chorus began he seemingly relaxed again into the seat. His arms moving to cross lazily against his chest. He seemed to actually be taking in the song while he watched out the window. The passing of the steel and concrete that was Seoul into the rural areas of green and forest.

The music itself was calming. It was enough to let yourself fully relax back against it and close your eyes. With your eyes closed you could easily fade out the sounds of the sporadic conversations on the bus. Even though you only had one ear bud, all you needed was to concentrate on the music to drown out the world.

It took a few seconds for you to be pulled into a Joji’s song about terrible longing and being left behind by a lover. I mean, you didn’t really know too much about the latter, but hey, a girl could daydream. His voice was seconds away from heading into the second verse of the chorus, when you heard the sound of the melody being lightly sung beside you.

The voice was beautiful. The most startling part, not the fact of its softness, or the way it swelled in perfect harmony with the song, was that it came from Jungkook. Your eyes flung open with your head snapping to gaze at his serene expression. He continued to face the window, daylight playing along the profile of his face, and his gentle voice singing perfectly in tune.

It wasn’t loud enough that anyone else could’ve heard it over the dozens of bursting conversations being spoken throughout the bus. That the only conclusion you could come up with to why he would be singing at all. He thought no one would be able to pay attention. You probably would’ve stayed gawking at him if his eyes fluttering open didn’t send you crashing back against the seat and clutching your eyes shut. You needed to pretend you hadn’t noticed. Or else he would stop. He would hide this part of himself that showed he was more than what he tried to portray.

You didn’t have to open your eyes to know he was glancing in your direction. To see his eyes gaze over you with suspicion before settling back and listening to the next track. Khalid’s intro of “Talk,” beginning to play into your earbud.

You spent the rest of the trip staying beside him, close as you could get without looking creepy, just to hear him gently sing. He breathed a gentle version of each one he knew, or came to like, and made it his own. Even being a few times were his nerves got the better of him. His voice rising ever slightly when he drew too deep into the song. He would quiet after each outburst, but to your pleasure Jungkook would start back up moments later.

After all the bickering, you could definitely say the trade was worth it. You were so taken with listening to him that when the bus came to a stop, you didn’t realize it until your earbud was yanked from your ears. Your eyes heavy from sleep fluttered open and closed a few times before they focused on Jungkook’s face.

“Ya, didn’t you hear them call us off the bus?”

Your response came in the form of slow blinks and a mouth half-hung open. You wished more for a nap than going out to explore a farm, but your limbs were screaming to be stretched. You went to answer him when, instead, Jungkook grabbed his bag, cane, and started to try and scoot over you.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Trying to get by! So excuse me!”

His backside rubbed against your arms and, to your horror, your chest. Without thinking, your hand lashed out to smack across his bottom causing both of you to go as still as the dead. Your heart was thundering as you looked at your hand like it’d just finished committing murder. Maybe it had. But the only person it’d murdered was you with your eyes roaming up to see a shocked Jungkook gawking down at you over his shoulder.

“Did you really just smack my ass.”

“It was an accident!”

“An accident?” He questioned.

“Self-defense!”

Jungkook tried to hide the amusement your no doubt panicking was causing him. His mouth struggling to keep the frown that was tilting ever so slightly at the top of his lips.

“If anything needed to be defended, it was my honor. Over here just smacking people’s ass’s without a warning.”

You knew by now your face looked like a fire hydrant.

“Self-defense from you dragging your ass all over me! I’m not a seat, ya know.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

This time Jungkook didn’t try to hide his smile. To your surprise, it wasn’t a malicious one that showed he enjoyed your embarrassment. No. This one decorated his face in something softer that made your heart thunder to a different rhythm entirely.

“Oh, look you guys. Shit Stain and The Cripple are flirting.”

Amber’s grating voice was one you’d grown painstakingly accustomed too. The sinister way she spoke impossibly loud just so everyone was forced to hear her. Whether they wanted to or not. You were used to her coldness and the constant way she harassed you. What you weren’t so used to, was having Jungkook as part of the punchline.

Immediately, you felt his legs tense where they touched you. The muscles ramrod straight and flexing under the skin. The lighthearted tone you’d heard seconds before in your banter was now replaced with an aloofness that made you stiffen in your seat. Jungkook’s jaw held tight as he regarded Amber as if she were no more than a pest buzzing at his ear.

“Ya, fix your nose before you bother talking to me. I can see half the planet up there.”

Amber’s eyes flashed hellfire as she glowered over her shoulders to stop the giggling that ensued. When all grew quiet enough to where she felt like she would be heard, a harsh smile spread her lips. Her legs began to take a step to move away from the two peasants who’d held enough of her attention.

“Whatever, Cripple. Try not to get your stick in any holes.”

She was passing the front of your shared seat when, suddenly, Amber’s legs gave way. A tumbling mess of shrieks, bleached hair, and her arms flapping rapidly a solid indication of her mysterious attempt at taking flight. The only thing that moved to catch her was her face. The minute the laughter began to bubble up inside you, you quickly placed a hand over your mouth. Least the she-devil hear it escape.

You took a second to inspect what could’ve possibly taken down the ice queen. Even when she wore ridiculously high heels, Amber walked with a grace you knew you’d never pull off. Not without looking like a newborn giraffe, that is. Glancing down you noticed Jungkook’s cane strategically placed right where her foot would’ve landed. The culprit in making Amber a freshly minted carpet on the bus’s floor. Somewhere on the bus you knew she was up from her tumble and huffing a few choice words. You were sure she knew, just like you did, that Jungkook was the one who’d done it. You paid no attention to her tantrum and kept a transfixed gaze on him.

He’d finished scooting the rest of the way to get to the middle of the bus and was situating his cane and shoulder bag. His hand suddenly reaching down into view and patiently waiting for you to take it.

“Come on, Y/N. Let’s go.”

You knew you looked like a fool. Your eyes mirroring the thousands of silent questions that threatened to make you ill. A part of you hoping he understood your dumbfounded look simply begged him to find some way to answer you. You’d stared starry-eyed up at him for so long you half expected the patience of Jungkook’s open hand to fall flat. Instead, he continued to surprise you. His gaze gentle, and hand openly waiting for you to take it when you were ready.

With eyes wide and mouth agape, your body rejected your stunned silence and placed a small hand in his. His own quickly enveloped yours perfectly and gave you the added support you needed to find stable footing beside him. Jungkook finally looked away from you to stare at the remaining goons.

The moment you stood beside him you became painfully aware of the noticeable height difference. Your gaze moving up inch-by-inch until your eyes were locked onto his face. The stubbornness of a hard set jaw and eyes that dared anyone to speak enough to make your heartbeat pick up in your chest. When he appeared to be finished making sure his presence was known, Jungkook’s eyes turned back to you. A silent request of reassurance to know you were alright making you answer with a quick nod.

Your cheeks blushed furiously as you struggled to look away from his gaze. No longer were you so worried about Amber; your mind trapped on a repeat of questions. Did Jungkook always smell like Calvin Klein cologne? Could it be considered weird how you felt undeniable comfort pressed up against him? Or really weird if in your head you suddenly imagined recreating this scene a million times later with you being braver beside him, instead of being the damsel in distress.

He didn’t seem at all perplexed with your case of sudden shyness. His strong legs pulling you both forward and past the horde of Amber and her lackeys without missing a step. His head held high while the other hand helped him keep his balance without using his cane. For the small world that was high school, Jungkook showed them he was still that once popular boy who was known for not taking shit from no one. A demi-god amongst mere mortals that were somehow honored by his presence.

And here you were. So close to the orbit of his sun and walking away unscathed.

Your train of rushing thoughts kept you from paying attention. It was something you soon were going to regret when he led you off the steps of the bus and onto the dirt road. Jungkook’s exit was obviously graceful while yours in comparison was a train wreck. Instead of your feet stepping off the last step and landing like a normal person, you lost your footing. Your clumsy feet sending you struggling to find a balance with the earth before you crash landed on the floor. Luckily, Jungkook’s back was there to catch you.

The momentum of your fall sent his feet skittering to correct you both before you fell into the dirt. A few choice cuss words leaving his lips and crimson flaring up on your cheeks to make the dance of falling even more entertaining. You could practically hear the cackling of the witches echoing out of the bus like a cave.

Jungkook made quick work of righting you both; his good leg furiously hoping to support the weak one. His cane dug into the earth a good inch to add some more stabilization. You let go of his hand and moved away from his side where you’d previously been planted. You weren’t worthy of being there. This boy who saw your distress and helped you. Only for you to ruin it in the process.

“Well that’s one way to ruin an exit,” he huffed.

He glanced in your direction and you could’ve sworn he was smiling. Or was that a smirk? Whatever it was, it was quickly washed away as his eyes took you in. “You okay?”

“I’m sorry!”

Your words rushed from your lips with your back snapping to bow a perfect ninety-degrees. Your hair a curtain to try and hide your embarrassment.

“Ugh...for what?”

“For bumping into you like that. I should’ve been paying attention.”

A soft laugh bounced from between his lips and you were willing to beat his face lit up like pure sunshine. You moved to stand upright just in time to see you were right. Jungkook was either oblivious to the way you were looking at him, or was simply unfazed. His shoulder hiking the backpack where it’d begun to fall as he adjusted himself to get ready to move to join the rest of the class up ahead.

“You did ruin one hell of a stylish exit.”

“I don’t know how stylish you can be stepping off of a school bus, but...thank you.”

The both of you locked eyes with one another. A large part of you hoped Jungkook was able to see the sincerity or at least hear it. Maybe he wasn’t that much of a pain in the ass after all. That soft smirk you’d grown accustomed to etched back on his lips as he took the first step towards your waiting classmates.

“No problem. Plus, I figured I owed you for letting me listen to your music.”

You felt your brow shoot up in mock surprise. Your legs falling into step beside him.

“I thought you said I had terrible taste.”

“I never said terrible,” Jungkook corrected. His eyes danced with a playfulness that lifted a smile to your lips

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“Well, it wasn’t the greatest, but thank you. I actually ended up liking most of it, at least.”

“Oh, what a sweet way of insulting my musical taste.”

“Hey! I said I liked most of it. It’s like a win-win. Kinda.”

You wanted to be snappy. Give him some more hell for always playing up on being a condescending moody jerk. In reality, walking next to Jungkook while the silence swelled around you without the awkward pressure; you knew that wasn’t all of him. He’d proven how sweet he could be at the memory of how easily you’d felt protected by a simple stretch of a hand. The look in his eyes while he waited for you to take his extended hand a plea to know you could trust him. Strangely, a part of you already felt like you could.

You snuck a look over in Jungkook’s direction, and felt a smile begin to sweep up the corners of your lips. It was a different, but nice, change to have someone come to your defense. Yeah, most of the time you wanted to throttle him for seeming like he could care less. In that moment, however, he cared enough to help. That had to mean something.

“You’re welcome.”

You hoped your words conveyed the gratitude you felt in that moment. Prayed that Jungkook could hear it. When he looked at you, you made sure to give him a quick smile before you looked away. Your eyes struggled not to look back at him; to tell him all the things that were racing through your head. It took every ounce of your will to stay focused on the group of classmates that were growing closer. Somewhere along the way, you’d hoped Jungkook would’ve replied with his usual smart ass remarks. It worried you how sad a small part of you felt at his silence.

Now, you worried maybe you were going a little nuts.

Instead, you came to the edge of the group in silence. Your ears struggling to grasp on to the middle of what your teacher gave out for instructions for the day.

So what if that insane part of you didn’t receive a smart ass remark in return for your gratitude. You were more than happy with the fact Jungkook stayed by your side. The close proximity just enough to convey what you were both feeling without unnecessary words.

______________

For the past hour the farmer -Kim Sejung - had shown the class around his vast property. The beginning of this magical tour starting with where he manufactured the tofu once it was fermented then sent down to be processed for packaging. He was a man who took immense pride in his work. The next room where the fermentation took place and, his overeager explanation, spelled out how devoted he was to his craft.

The whole entire backwards presentation was something your teacher decided became a chance for everyone to write down everything you’d been shown. A punishment you knew was coming when Kim Sejung lost half the class to their own conversations long before you’d hit the second part of his speech.

Now, anyone could be wondering why all of you were taking the longest stroll of your life out in the middle of the farm. A fair question you’d been asking yourself since you realized your shoes were completely covered in mud. You’d been trying to understand why this hadn’t been the first place Kim Sejung would’ve taken all of you. Your only guess being he just enjoyed showing the process backwards. Or maybe he was secretly a mastermind at torture. It was the only logical conclusion you could come up with at having the entire class now out in the muddy acres of his farm.

And sure, maybe your attention was being sent over your shoulder every five seconds. A certain boy with exhaustion creased in his brow making it harder for you to ignore. You were looking back so often you felt like you’d end up with whiplash at any minute. Really, it was all Jungkook’ fault for causing you to worry; becoming painfully aware with each glance at Jungkook’s struggling frame.

How Sejung -, or anyone else for that matter, hadn’t noticed he was falling further behind the group with every step left you completely perplexed. You’d gave up listening to whatever the farmer or teacher talked about or what questions they were throwing around. You could bet it had to do about soil.

If everyone else could ignore him why couldn’t you? It’s not that you hadn’t tried, cause of course you’d done exactly that. Your bottom lip now held a semi-permanent indent from your teeth. Whenever you felt that tick in your neck to look back to check on him: you bit down. When you felt like drawing attention to him by saying something: you bit down. A part of you willing to bet Jungkook would never forgive you if you did.

Your solution? It was ingenious, really.

You fell back behind every classmate. Patiently, you waited for everyone to pass you up. Your feet dragging in the muddy dirt until you were sure no one would notice when you inevitably stopped.

With a soft count of three under your breath, you came to a halt at the back of the group. Your small count continued for another round before you were comfortable with the distance it’d placed between the group, Jungkook, and yourself.

You let out a huff of satisfaction as you turned around to give Jungkook your complete attention. Your neck thanking you for the small favor. What you found, however, greeting you was far from what you’d hoped to find.

Jungkook’s current location became a solid five feet behind the group. His feet finally coming to the large puddle of mud that you and the class had easily maneuvered Jungkook had not. His struggle coming to a standstill at the muddy puddles edge. Jungkook’s face etched itself in harsh determination to no doubt allow him from moving forward. You told yourself you would stay back and wait for him.

Just wait, You kept telling yourself over and over. A broken record having nothing on what you felt capable of standing there. Your pulse bonding in your veins and feet bouncing with anxiety as he assessed his options. All you were supposed to do was hang back to walk with him. That was it. You weren’t his nanny. You knew how he felt about being pitied, and yet, when he took his first tentative step out into the mud and his cane sunk deep and his bad leg followed suit, your feet deceived you.

It appeared Mother Nature had her own way of pushing you past your reserved good intentions. Your feet sprinted forward fast enough that you were embarrassed at their quickness. The expected movement bringing Jungkook’s frustrated gaze up from his current dilemma to you.

“What are you doing here, Y/N?”

The annoyance held in his question didn’t go unnoticed by you. If it was you in his position, you’d be annoyed seeing you standing there too and not offering to help.

“I came to help you.”

The words just streamed out with your running thoughts. Your feet willing to move forward back into the mud to help him. Jungkook noticeably began to struggle to remove his foot that submerged quickly underneath.

“I didn’t ask for your help.”

“You didn’t have too, Jungkook. I want to help.”

“Let me rephrase myself.” His irritation was pure fire in his eyes as his words hurled in your direction. “I didn’t ask for it and I don’t want it.”

You wish you could say you handled his dismissal with grace. That you understood he was only being a jerk because he was embarrassed and angry at his current predicament. You really wanted to be that bigger person. Well...that most definitely wasn’t what happened.

Your eyes narrowed in on him. Your previous desire to help evaporated as you watched his leg sink deeper. His other foot soon joined the first in a poorly calculated attempt to release the other. Your arms crossed over your chest as you took in the scene before you.

“Well, Jungkook, I’m not sure if you noticed but you’re slowly heading towards being buried under that mud.”

“Thank you for that astute observation. Anything else you’d like to add?”

“Why are you being such an asshole?!” you snapped.

Your arms came loose down at your side and turned to clenched fists. You weren’t exactly sure what you expected his reaction to be. You knew Jungkook held a hatred for being pitied. Hell, you would too if it was the other way around. You knew he wasn’t helpless, but you also knew he couldn’t do everything alone. No one could. So what was so wrong with offering to help him?

You weren’t sure how you looked. Maybe crazy? Or did the desperation of not knowing how to handle the situation have you appear sad? Whatever it was Jungkook saw, it was enough to look away. His eyes dropping down to his covered feet.

The space between the two of you swelled with tension. His hair perfectly covering his face, and kept you from being able to steal any glance. It was enough to make you unsure if you should prepare yourself for a verbal battle with him or if you should simply walk away. What if you’d made a mistake thinking Jungkook would want to be bothered at all with help. Especially from you.

“God, this is embarrassing.”

His words were so light you weren’t sure at first if he’d spoken. A part of you wondering if you’d made up the sound of his voice as Jungkook’s face continued to be hidden by layers of hair. But, lord help you, you knew you weren’t imagining things. The sound of his voice is something you’d come to recognize with ease. You knew without a doubt it most definitely was him. And the sadness that reverberated from his words made your anger dissipate instantly.

“What?”

Could you have picked a stupider response? When Jungkook lifted his head up to look at you, you knew he silently agreed.

“It’s embarrassing!” His hands motioned to take in his current predicament. The hurt shown on his proud features made your heart ache to comfort him. “How pitiful can I get? It’s so damn frustrating! The cripple unable to get himself out of some stupid mud.”

“Jungkook, you are literally the least pitiful person I’ve ever met.”

“And yet, it doesn’t make me any less stuck.”

You took a step forward and began to try and edge around what you could of the puddle. You knew there was no way you weren’t getting more mud on your shoes, but the purpose was worth it.

“Why didn’t you just go around it?” Your question earned you a dead stare. One that reminded you of your mother when she felt like you’d asked the silliest question. You held your hands up in surrender and said, “Hey. It’s a fair question.”

“If I just go around it, it proves that I can’t do the simplest thing, Y/N. It proves…”

“That you aren’t like everybody else,” you finished for him.

You could’ve kicked yourself. How could you not have noticed it sooner. Jungkook just wanted to prove to himself that he could still do things like he did before his accident. Because even though he showed people bringing up his disability didn’t bother him, it did. He still hadn’t come to terms with what happened, and believed the current state of his leg deemed him less worthy.

He looked away from whatever he saw in your eyes. His own fighting not to show the sadness that threatened to spill down his cheeks.

“You aren’t like everyone else, Jungkook.” Your words tore his head back in your direction. His shoulders quickly squared up to take whatever verbal blow you were about to hurl in his direction. You were happy to convince him otherwise.

“You don’t need to prove anything to a single person. Yeah, you aren’t a hundred percent who you used to be, but it doesn’t make you any less you. You aren’t defined by a damn leg and if another human being does treat you differently because of it: fuck’em. Now, get your shit together and hand me the end of your cane.”

The both of you stared at one another for what felt like an eternity. Jungkook’s face unreadable as his eyes took you in making you squirm just the slightest bit. Whether he was looking for a hint that you were deceiving him; that something hurtful laid underneath, he wouldn’t find it. You made sure with your hand this time open and waiting for him, that he could see just how much you meant what you said.

After what felt like a baby size eternity, Jungkook answered you in a way you’d grown to expect. In one swift motion, he picked his cane out from the mud and placed it, dirty end first into your waiting hand. Your face scrunched up in disgust, as the leftover mud squished between your fingers. The action enough to break the coldness of Jungkook’s blank expression into the smirk that was all too familiar.

“Oh my god! You would do that.”

The amusement on his face was enough to tell you he’d most definitely done it on purpose. Of course, you’d already known that. You didn’t need his raised eyebrow or that devilish smirk to inform you of that.

“Oh, so you think you know me now.”

“I know enough to know, without a doubt, this is something you’d do. Brat.”

You saved the last word for good measure and it was met with a bark of surprise laughter. His reaction was not something you’d expected, but a welcomed one as his face instantly lit up brighter than you’d ever seen. Jungkook’s laughter and smile was genuine and good god, was it breathtakingly adorable.

Who knew calling him a brat led to so many heart stopping possibilities? Like no longer having a permanent scowl.

“Alright smart ass, how about we settle this for when I’m not stuck in the mud.”

“You got yourself a deal. Only if you stop pouting.”

“I was not pouting!”

It was your turn to laugh wholeheartedly while your other hand moved to secure itself to his cane. There was no way you’d be letting it slip free from you. Mud or no mud.

“Tomato potato: pouting is pouting.”

Jungkook’s head tilted to the side. His brain noticeably trying to comprehend what it was you just said.

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense, Jungkook now grab a hold of yo-“

Honestly, you should’ve seen this coming. He’d already given you a muddy end of a cane. It was the perfect foreshadowing moment that was leading up to this, and yet, somehow you were surprised when he pulled with full force. You figured he was strong - not freakishly. Not enough to send you flying face first toward the large mud puddle with the sound of a squeaking bird of surprise that you could only assume was yourself.

The only thing that kept you from going face first was a split second decision to ruin just the lower half of your outfit.

The impact with the mud was squishy and came with the weirdest sound effects that reminded you of pushing your hand into a container of slim. God, was it squishy. An immediate, “Ewww,” dragging out from your lips as your hands lifted up from where they’d been buried. Your eyes taking in the full extent of your lower half now resembles the Swamp Thing.

Jungkook’s laughter brought you back to reality and flinging what was left of the mud on your hands in his direction. It only earned you another bark of laughter.

“What in the hell was that for?!”

“Now whose pouting?” He teased.

You wanted to hit him but you knew you couldn’t reach. So you settled for flinging another round of mud.

“Are you kidding me? You pulled me in here cause I said you were pouting!”

“Yup.”

“Unbelievable. You’re a child.”

“I thought you said brat?”

“That too! Ugh! Jungkook! You’re such a pain in the ass. I’m not helping you anymore.”

You moved to try and pull up one leg and found it way more difficult than you’d imagined. Seriously, was this shit superglue? No matter how many times you struggled to pull up either leg it wouldn’t budge; producing an agitated groan to seep from your body.

You wanted to murder him.

When you glanced up at him at least Jungkook had the decency to appear worried.

“Do you need help? I didn’t think it’d be so hard for you to pull yourself up.”

“Oh, so you’re worried about me not being able to pull myself up, but not about me covered in mud.”

The shrug Jungkook gave as an answer made you want to throttle him. You wanted to tell him to shove his help up his ass. Realistically, however, you knew there was no way you were getting unstuck without getting dirtier from crawling around. For a second time, his hand appeared, like magic, in front of you.

Your eyes trailed up his hand to that devilish grin of his and found your earlier agitation disintegrate. What you hated the most, was how his eyes lit up to match his smile. This warm version of Jungkook wasn’t someone you were used to. You’d seen the cocky jock who knew he was good at everything. Experienced the real asshole Jungkook that made you want to rip out chunks of hair. But this side of him...was worth a heartache or two.

Without another thought you reached out and took his hand and allowed him to start lifting you up. It wasn’t until you were half way you came up with your own plan. A devilish grin of your own spreading your lips wide as the idea grew into something worth doing .

Jungkook had a moment to be confused before your free hand shot out and took fierce hold of his forearm. You made sure it was locked in place before your body went completely limp, and sent his body into an unbalanced mess.

“The fu-!”

Jungkook’s descent, at first, made you feel like you’d accomplished a victory. One you didn’t get to relish in for long. Jungkook may not have been able to finish his earlier sentence, but you easily made up for it. A softened, “Fuck!” came pressed from your chest as he landed sideways on top of you. The angle reminded you of an awkward pair of scissors: if one part of the scissors was ridiculously muscled for a student.

You’d had little time to move your hands up to brace yourself against his weight. The air from your lungs whooshing out in laughter with your body struggling to recover from underneath him. And no, no you weren’t painfully aware that your hands could feel every well lined muscle under the fabric of his t-shirt. And no, you were not blushing. Not even a little.

You were sure when Jungkook lifted his head up to look in your direction, he’d see the sinful glee you took in your awkward positioning. Instead, your lungs erupted into laughter. One side of his face perfectly smeared with mud making one eye remain closed and his right doing most of the work. He looked ridiculous...and cute.

“You think this is funny?”

“I think-I think it’s the best thing I’m going to see all day.”

It took a few tries to speak through your laughter, but when you finally got the words out you couldn’t have been more proud. Jungkook on the other hand, seemed to struggle to keep the annoyance on his face. The first sign of a smile cracking into the mud that began to dry on his face.

Jungkook moved to prop himself up - the action giving you the room you needed to wiggle out from underneath him. You were about to call it a success, a retort to an unspoken comment he’d yet to make. All of it came crashing down, however, when Jungkook’s mud covered hand rose from the depths and placed a long streak down your nose with his thumb giving an artistic sweep across your cheek.

The marks he gave reminded you of those old western movies you’d seen. Warpaint covered faces of men getting ready to square off to defend their home from invaders. The thought seemed to match perfectly with the beat of your heart thundering like a drum inside your chest.

It wasn’t just because Jungkook touched you - on purpose - in a playful way. It had nothing to do with the fact his muddy hand was currently resting against your cheek. Or from the denial that it brought out a spark of mischievous happiness to ignite inside you as your mouth fell open to expose the sound of laughter. No, your heart pounded against your chest purely for the look that passed behind chocolate eyes and the soft smile that followed close behind.

So, sure. In that instance it could’ve just been a plan old look. You weren’t a hundred percent sure it wasn’t more than just a look though, either. There was that one boy in first grade, however, who did give you an aggressive teeth-clacking peck on the lips during recess, but this was completely different.

And because you were so uncertain of what it all meant, your only reaction was to lift your hand up from beside you and slam it palm first against his face.

Jungkook’s face lit up in shock and you couldn’t stop the eruption of laughter that spilled from your lips. It was an immediate rush of joy at seeing his handsome face marked by your small muddy handprint that streaked itself across the plains of his face. Normally, you’d be mortified: waiting patiently to be scolded and made to feel small. Instead, the shock wore off his face in an instant. Jungkook’s eyes lighting up with childlike excitement as a giddy, “Oh yeah?” rushed between his lips.

You didn’t have a chance to wonder what he meant before he reached into the mud and brought up a snowball version of the earth.

“Oh, no you don’t!”

Your eyes went wide and frantic giggles exploded free as your body struggled in vain to get out from under him. The previous joy of being pinned by his weight dissipating when that large mud ball found its new home smeared on top of your head.

“Jungkook-ah!”

His own laughter rose up around you as your body began to move in earnest to get out from under him. When you finally realized it was pointless, another bright idea overtook you. If Jungkook noticed the renewed mischievous glint in your eye, he didn’t show it.

He continued to smile obliviously down at you until the two fist fulls of mud you’d taken in both hands came crashing down on top of his head. It didn’t matter that your face caught some of the aftermath: the face he made was priceless.

You didn’t get a chance to enjoy your tiny victory before the two of you were a mess of arms and limbs rolling feverishly around; the two of you playfully wrestling for dominance. The mixture of your laughter rising up until you weren’t sure where Jungkook’s ended and yours began. By the end of it, you were both resembling the pigs you’d seen earlier on the farm. Bodies fully covered in wet earth and lounging beside each other in exhaustion. Every few moments random fits of giggles overtaking the two of you until you realized you both needed to get back.

This time, instead of the two of you refusing help from the other, you eagerly took it. The both of you worked together to reach the edge of the mud pit and, without further incident, pulled each other out.

The walk back to the main barn was done in silence. In other circumstances, you would’ve been consumed with a need to fill it. The impending weight of anxiety would’ve flared across your skin until you would’ve blurted out anything. Small talk was never one of your strong suits, but a comfortable banter had somehow formed between the two of you. You knew if you started talking, Jungkook would respond. It was still a fifty-fifty on whether or not it would be a smart ass response or a real one, but a response nonetheless.

You didn’t try to start a conversation. You chose to enjoy the reassurance that he was beside you. Your mind running through what exactly just happened and how you both ended up looking like bad impression art. You’d spent so much time stealing glances in his direction that you could’ve sworn you caught him doing the same. But who were you kidding. No one had stolen glances at you since middle school, and that was only to steal the answers off tests.

There was no way Jeon Jungkook would be the one to break that trend. No matter how flattering the thought. So when you felt that knowable itch of being watched you found yourself surprised that Jungkook was indeed staring at you.

“Are you cold?”

Jungkook’s question jolted you from your train of thought and sent you reeling into another. He was closer to you now. Close like you’d been while sitting on the bus with your shoulders brushing with every movement. Every bump helplessly sending you lightly banging into the other.

On the bus you could easily play it off as something out of your control. But now? Now there was no good explanation that you could find to why Jungkook decided to walk so closely beside you. There was no way to explain away the way his gaze drew across your face like he’d save it to memory.

“Well I am covered in freezing mud water.”

You’d tried for sarcasm but your voice barely carried over a whisper. It made Jungkook’s head subconsciously dip lower just to hear you. The devilish smirk he was infamous for spread like wildfire across his lips.

“I would offer you my jacket, since it’s the gentlemanly thing to do, but you see some crazy person pushed me into the mud.”

A scoff escaped you as your hand playfully whipped out to slap his shoulder.

“Ya, Jungkook! You? A gentleman? That’s funny. What is also funny is the fact you got yourself stuck in the mud first. I just came to rescue you.”

“Rescue me?” He asked with an eyebrow coyly cocked.

“I’m like your knight in shining armor.”

A throaty laugh came from between his lips; sending his head back exposing his face to the sun. You were mesmerized watching him as the sun kissed down across his face and weren’t at all ashamed at being caught watching as he brought his attention back to you. A smile of your own growing to match the one he wore along with your mind fluttering in wonder of how he was even real.

“If you’re my knight, Y/N I’m in a lot of trouble.”

You feigned hurt but couldn’t hide the grin happily splayed on your face and, crazy thing was, you didn’t want to. It felt impossible that the two of you were so giddy with each other. A strange familiarity brewed heavily between you to the point it felt like the two of you joked like this for years.

Jungkook’s own smile enough to warm the chill that began to creep up your arms to expose goosebumps on your skin. The two of you fell into a shroud of companionable silence and continued to make your way back to the main entrance of the farm. Your heart skipping a helpless beat every time you feel Jungkook’s fingers graze across yours. Your mind hopelessly wanting to believe maybe, just maybe, he was tempted to reach out and hold it.

You came back to the main farm and found your teacher and classmates impatiently waiting. The immediate shock your teacher showed at your appearance seemed to grow more intense until he came storming over: hysterical at your current condition.

“What on earth have the two of you been doing?!”

“They’ve been rolling around with pigs.”

You knew that tart voice anywhere and wasn’t surprised it was Amber that spoke. What did surprise you was how much you didn’t care with Jungkook standing like an equally filthy calm current by your side.

“We’re sorry, seonsaegnim,” Jungkook began coolly with a bow. When he realized you were still standing a hand shot out to the back of your head to bring it down. You quickly slapped it away but kept yourself in a bow. “We got lost from the group and found ourselves stuck in a giant mud pit.”

“It seems to me like you were playing in it,” the farmer chuckled. “I could hose them off before they get back on the bus.”

His offer left heat rising to your cheeks. The sound of a sea of giggles making your stomach ache in embarrassment. You used the curtain of your hair to hide and hoped they’d come up with a different suggestion, but with a small shrug of his shoulder, Jungkook brought your heated attention back to him. A soft smile cracking the now dry handprint you’d left across his cheek.

It was ridiculous. You both looked ridiculous, and yet, he was still handsome. You probably looked like a troll.

“Hey Knight in shining armor,” he whispered. “It seems we get to take a bath together.”

The sun couldn’t be anywhere near as hot as your face felt. The heat spread from red cheeks and down your neck until the butterflies in your stomach were out of control. Jungkook knew what he had done. He could see it plainly on your face and he loved it.

You, on the other hand, wanted to hit him.

And just like divine intervention your teacher did it for you. His curled up pamphlet struck down on top of Jungkook’s head, but it only made his smile grow impossibly larger.

“Ya! I don’t think so! We’ll have you go one at a time to clean up. I’ll look for something for you both to change into.”

Jungkook went first to be hosed down. The farmer actually allowed him to have his privacy so he could get into his more...private areas in peace. The clothes that were found for both of you to wear were old gym clothes thrown in a box in the storage bay at the bottom of the bus. You imagined they must have been thrown there for a reason. The colors were sad and faded down to a color that resembled the mud you’d fallen in. An even sadder rim of yellow wrapped around the sleeves the only hope of color in the terrible outfit you were now forced to wear. At least it was warm with the added bonus Jungkook somehow ended up with the shortest shorts in the box.

After the two of you dried off and changed you were shepherded onto the bus. The place that held Amber and her minions now vacant due to the teacher demanding you sit exactly in the far back in their spot. He must have imagined it would be like putting two naughty kids in time out. The only effect it really had was giving you the chance to breathe and enjoy the solitude.

Jungkook dug around for your earbuds inside your bag. Finally finding the small container and lifting it open. His fingers pulling out the left and surprising you by placing it gently in your ear. Your face must have shown this but Jungkook paid you no mind. He was busy placing the other bud into his ear; flipping the case shut and throwing it back inside to forever be lost until you practically tipped out your bag to locate it again. Oh well. A problem for another time.

“Put on something for the ride home, Y/N. I trust you to be dj again.”

You wanted to tease him. To joke about putting on the YMCA or Macarena . The only thing that stopped you was the relaxed features of Jungkook’s face. The lazy way his neck rested back against the seat and his head languidly gazing in your direction. You tried to squish back all the butterflies that look gave you and a hushed, “Alright. Lady Marmalade it is,” embarrassingly came from between your lips.

Your eyes were too focused on your music list. You didn’t allow them to look as he chuckled beside you. The sound light and rough all at once - demanding you give it attention.

“Don’t make me regret it,” he joked.

You kept scrolling until you found Deans’ “D (Half Moon)”. The soft piano and tone of his voice quickly filled the ear buds and by the soft hum of the voice beside you, you knew you’d pick a good one.

You allowed yourself to relax beside him. Your right hand placing the playlist down between the two of you. Your body was so relaxed you didn’t think about moving your hand anywhere else. Your eyes falling comfortably closed as you continue to listen to the acoustics of the song and the even softer, and equally pleasurable, song of Jungkook singing along.

When his left hand found its way down beside yours, you didn’t question his reasoning. The music held between the two of you and maybe he wanted to change the playlist. You let your mind continue to think that even after his finger gingerly grazed yours and found a home beside them. Both of your hands stayed this way the entire ride back to campus. Neither of you moved to change positions; lost to the sounds of the melodies of the playlist.

#jeon jungkook fanfic #jeon jungkook fanfiction #jungkook fanfic #jungkook fanfiction #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts fluff #bts smut #jungkook fluff #kpop fanfic #kpop fanfiction #requested fic #bts #jeon jungkook #jungkook #kpop

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young-dumb-and-vaccinated · 3 years ago

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The Cult Girl (Hannibal x Female!Reader) pt. 13

Hello friends we have come to the end of Cult Girl. Thank you all for hyping me up throughout this story and giving me the confidence to actually post my work. Y/n and Hannibal throw a dinner party.

The sunlight streamed in through the window, illuminating the entire kitchen in that homey mid-morning glow. You were enjoying your coffee and scrolling through an article on your phone.

"Senator Hatch reportedly coughed up his late wife's toe on the floor of the precinct." You read out loud. "Huh. Wonder how that could have happened."

You side-eyed Hannibal, who was contentedly sharpening his knives. Placing a rather large meat cleaver to the side, he met your gaze. "I have my ways."

You finished off your coffee and brought the mug to the sink. "There was no way Theresa was going to survive that night, was there?"

"Clever girl." Hannibal praised.

"You were going to kill her if I didn't, were you?" You felt a smile coming on. "Did everything turn out as expected?"

"Darling, this all went much better than I could have ever hoped for." He smirked. "See, I had the whole evening mapped out. I was hoping you'd be the one to deliver justice and kill her, but I had to prepare for the possibility that you wouldn't."

You folded your arms and leaned against the island. "Is that why I was so sick that day?"

You could have sworn you saw some hesitation in Hannibal's face. Maybe even a touch of regret. "Yes. You needed an alibi. It was as easy as removing a single birth control pill from your packet. You'd see it was missing and think you'd already taken your medicine-"

"So I'd neglect to take my focus meds." You cut in. "Yeah, I knew something was off."

"By the end of the day, you'd be experiencing full withdrawal symptoms." Hannibal nodded. "I don't take any pleasure in upsetting the delicate balance of your brain chemistry, and for that I am sorry. I did what I had to."

"Yeah, don't ever do that again." You ordered, no disarming smile in sight. "I need those meds to function."

"I promise you, darling," Hannibal said, sincerely. "I would never keep you from being anything but your very best. I was just looking after you."

"I suppose now that all this is out in the open, you won't need to pull any shit like that again." You muttered. "But I'm still going to keep my pills at my apartment."

"That reminds me." He said. "Would you like to invite your roommates for dinner tonight? I've prepared a wonderful Spanish-inspired menu that's perfect for entertaining."

"I'd love for you to meet my friends, but, they all keep such weird hours I doubt they'll all be free tonight." You shrugged. "I'll give them a call though."

"Wonderful." He smiled. "You make arrangements while I prepare the kitchen."

You stepped into the office and called up Pilar. She answered within the minute.

"[F/N]!" She near shouted. "Holy fuck, how are you doing?"

"I'm actually doing..." you looked back into the kitchen, watching your beloved Hannibal in his element. "Really well."

"I heard about your cousin." Pilar cut in. "One down, two to go."

You snorted. "No fucking shit."

"Sorry, was that okay for me to say?" She apologized. "I know you said Theresa was a bitch, but it's your trauma and I-"

"No, you're fine." You laughed. "She was a bitch. Hey, do you have any plans tonight?"

"Uh, no. I don't think so." She answered. "Why?"

"Hannibal wants to invite you all for dinner tonight." You said with an audible smile. "Y'know, to celebrate the bitch's death."

"Yo! Steph!" Pilar shouted across the room. "Wake Randy up! We're having dinner at [F/N]'s rich boyfriend's house!"

You could make out Stephanie's voice in the background. "It's about damn time. We've been waiting for her to redistribute the wealth."

"She means thank you for the invitation." Pilar corrected.

"It's not like I had to twist his arm or anything. It was his idea." You chuckled. "He loves having guests. And excuses to dress up."

"Oh so we're getting fancy, huh?" Pilar's voice turned up in excitement.

"Hey [F/N]!" Randy snatched the phone from Pilar. "Text me the menu for tonight. My girlfriend'll steal a nice bottle of wine to pair. She's a pro, she works over at Cavatappi's wine and spirits."

"Much obliged, Randy." You said. "I'll see you guys at seven."

You returned to the kitchen with a smile. "They're coming."

"Well, we don’t have a moment to lose, then." Hannibal placed something wrapped in butcher paper on the counter. "Come now. Let me show you how to properly prepare a heart.

You and Hannibal spent the rest of the morning and the whole afternoon preparing a bountiful meal. You reveled in the irony of finally finding a space for Theresa in your life. That space just so happened to be on the stove.

Seven came far too quickly, but your friends were always a welcome sight. You greeted them at the door with hugs, Hannibal watching with stoic adoration.

"Guys, this is Hannibal Lecter, my partner." You introduced. "Hannibal, this is Pilar, Stephanie and Miranda."

"It is a pleasure to meet you, ladies." Hannibal greeted. “Please, make yourselves comfortable.”

"Here you go, Dr. Lecter." Randy handed him a bottle of wine. "Thank you for inviting us."

Hannibal examined the bottle. "Yes, this will pair quite nicely with our meal. Thank you very much. [F/N], could you show our guests to the dining room?"

You nodded and accepted the bottle, given the extra responsibility of pouring. You led your friends to the dining room and wasted no time distributing the alcohol.

"A toast." Stephanie rose her glass. "Too many of history's worst have had the privilege of dying on their own terms. Today, we celebrate the death of one who didn't: Theresa [L/N]."

"She will join her sisters Nancy Reagan and Madame Nhu in hell tonight." You concurred, tapping your glasses together with a series of satisfying clinks.

"Okay, you need to spill." Randy scooted her chair up and leaned towards you. "How the hell did you get away with it?"

"Well, it helped a lot that her husband was already a felon." You teased. "If I didn't kill her, he was going to eventually."

Pilar made a face. "I can't believe it took actual murder to get that latter-day lump thrown in prison."

"Well, the LDS church is a very influential organization with a stronghold on all of Utah." You explained. "There's a long history of legitimizing sex abuse there."

"We know, cult girl." Stephanie laughed. "You remind us every time your pedophile cousin-in-law comes up. Relax and take your victories where you can get them.”

“Ladies,” Hannibal entered. You rushed to his side to help him with the dinner plates. “Have we ever tried organ meat before?”

Everyone’s eyes found Pilar.

“Braised liver is delicious and you guys are just cowards.” Pilar protested. “I will die on this hill.”

Hannibal smiled and presented your friends with their plates. “You are a woman of good tastes, Pilar. Our first course is Riñones al Jerez.”

“Kidneys.” Randy translated. “Who’s kidneys are we eating today, Dr. Lecter?”

He tilted his head. “Theresa’s, of course.”

“I don’t care whose organs you harvested.” Stephanie said, her eyes rolling back into her head. “This is delicious.”

You and Hannibal shared a glance and a smile.

You and your roommates devoured the Riñones al Jerez, then dug into the next serving of heart stewed with chickpeas and olives. You finished off the evening with natillas de leche and a bottle of Sauternes Hannibal just happened to have lying around.

“This is the first time since like, Keith Raniere got sentenced that I’ve seen [F/N] happy-drunk.” Stephanie observed.

“Or even just... happy." Pilar said, looking at Hannibal. "I'll have some of whatever she's having, please."

"My pleasure." Hannibal poured her another glass of wine.

Your phone began to buzz on the table, capturing the attention of your guests. You didn't even need to look at the caller ID to know who it was. Nobody else in the world had such horrid timing.

"Shit, you've got to answer it here!" Stephanie pleaded. "So we can all give her a piece of our mind!"

You looked over to Hannibal, who you knew was just as curious.

You dragged the answer icon across the screen and put it on speaker. You gestured for your friends to be quiet. "Yeah?"

"Well look who finally decided to pick up." Grandma said. "Thank you for gracing me with your attention. I know you have so much going on right now, you're just too busy to pick up the phone and talk to your grieving grandmother."

"For your information..." you stumbled over your words. "I was interrogated by the police yesterday. I think that counts as having something going on."

"Are you drunk?" Her voice was laced with a disproportionate level of disgust.

"I'm grieving too, Beatrice." You counter. "What, suddenly you're the only one who can drink the pain away? That's not very democratic of you."

"In your state, you shouldn't even be thinking of alcohol!" Grandma scolded. "You of all people should know the effects alcohol has on an unborn baby."

You smacked yourself on the head. Of course Theresa would plant a seed to fuck you over one last time. "Did Theresa actually tell you I was pregnant?"

"It was her last message to me, actually. Anyway, you're coming home." Grandma said, without so much as waiting for a response. "I won't have my great grandchild living in that dangerous city that your cousin was killed in."

You exchanged looks with your friends, who were going through the same combination of emotions as you were. Grandma's words just seemed to fade out as you shared an entire nonverbal conversation with the people around you.

"And you're leaving that terrible, terrible man."

Hannibal raised an eyebrow and looked at you, waiting to see how you'd respond. You knew what you had to do. It was finally time. You did something you should have done a long time ago.

"No." You said, your nerves loosened by the wine.

"What?"

"No. And I mean it." A big smile crossed your lips. "Theresa lied to you. I'm not pregnant. And you have to live with the fact that your granddaughter's last words to you were a blatant lie."

Hannibal looked at you with pride and your friends began to silently gas you up with encouraging gestures. "

"...And that you're the only one to blame for her deception." You continued. "You raised her in your own image."

"This is why I refuse to let you raise my great grandchild with that man!" She wailed. "He's twisted your mind against me! He's made you cruel!"

"Hannibal made me see clearly that you made me cruel." You said with absolute certainty. "You'll never see me again."

"Don't be like your mother, [F/N]." Grandma snarled. "Don't cut people out for trying to help."

"You'll never see me again." You repeated and decided to leave it at that. You ended the call and blocked the number, joined by an eruption of excitement from your friends.

It was finally over. Your life could truly begin.

#hannibal nbc #hannibal x reader #hannibal lecter #hannibal x you #cult girl

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writing-in-april · 4 years ago

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Postmarked In The Past

Spencer Reid x Female Single Mom Reader

Summary: After sixteen years of no contact Reader reconnects with Spencer because she has to reveal the secret she’s been keeping since she stopped sending letters to him.

A/N: Hey heyyy! This is my sixteenth fic (it’s actually was totally unintentional to choose the 16th for this fic even though the daughter is 16 in this fic lol 😂) for my 30 fics in 30 days for April!! This one is based off of this request and is part of my unlinked Spencer Reid & Letters series! Thanks for all the love and support lately- I was going to put out my plan for my 1500 follower celebration yesterday or today but if you saw my post I’ve been struggling so it’ll probably come on the 19th or the 20th. Submit an ask here- I love hearing from everyone 🥰Thanks for reading and hope y’all enjoy 🥰

Warnings: Reader keeps a huge secret she definitely shouldn’t have, Reader is a single mother-the daughter doesn’t have a specified name but she is specified to be 16, Reader is very defensive when her daughter finds the letters, mentions of a one night stand

Main Masterlist Word Count: 2.5k

Spencer had been a bright spot in my life, one that had been snuffed out all because of me. When I had found myself pregnant with his child, after I had visited him once, I bolted. For a long time I justified my actions, saying to myself that it was better that Spencer was unburdened while his career was just starting out. But, deep down I knew how wonderful Spencer would have been as a father, how he would have moved heaven and earth to make everything work. And, that guilt haunted me.

The memories I had of him were so far in between, every moment with him had been so fleeting at the end. I struggled to sometimes even remember how he looked as it had been sixteen years since I last laid eyes on him.

I had to strain my memory to remember the way his gelled hair curled around his ears and how sometimes I saw him let the curls free only around me. His eyes had been brown, I could remember that. But, pinpointing what shade they were when they glinted in the light or were drenched in the shadows was lost to me. I knew he had been tall and lanky, his hands reflecting that with how spindly they were. To remember how those fingers had felt on my skin, or how his lips had marked me, or how he would gently stroke my hair was too difficult. Whether it was because I couldn’t remember or that I didn’t want to, it was just too hard for me to want to try to strain my memory anymore.

The labor had been the most difficult thing I had gone through, no one had been there to hold my hand. And, I didn’t really want anybody else except Spencer holding it. I had gritted my teeth and accepted it, pushing through the physical and emotional pain, especially since the pain of losing Spencer had been entirely because of me. I had been given a beautiful baby daughter that day and it was then that I started to force myself to forget Spencer, she looked too much like him to be able to bear.

The only things that remained in my life that involved him were the letters I sent to him in the last year of our relationship while we were long distance and my daughter. The letters were able to be shoved in a box at the bottom of a closet, but my daughter confronted me with my actions everyday by existing. I loved my daughter very much, I just tried to avoid the topic of her father by concocting a lie and making myself forget all of Spencer’s features so I wouldn’t see them as much in her. My nightmare would be the two things converging to confront me with my guilt, I don’t think I could handle that.

—-

At the kitchen table I saw my daughter, holding a letter. Her holding a letter wasn’t at its core a bad thing of course, but I could tell by the slight yellowing of the paper that it was getting old. Immediately panic spread through me; there were no other old letters she’d be looking at besides mine, the ones I sent to Spencer.

“Those are private.” I snapped defensively, definitely too hostile to be reasonable. It was obvious by my tone of voice that I was hiding something.

“Private?!” She yelled, giving away that she had already read at least a few of them. I clenched my eyes shut to prepare for her question, “Are these from my father?! Who you said was a one night stand?!” I vividly remember explaining the lie I had concocted for her, her being confused why I would only be with her father once. It was a hard subject to dance around, a difficult lie for me and her to swallow. But, the alternative was too painful for me to be honest with her, or honest with Spencer. And, I knew it made me selfish, at the time it had been so Spencer wouldn’t stop his blossoming career. With time I realized that I really had done it because I had been scared. The guilt had started to sting worse when I realized that.

I had been caught, there was no weaseling out of this. I hanged my head in defeat, finally admitting to the large lie I had even roped the rest of my family in, “Yes.”

If she had been a dragon she’d be breathing fire on me while she spoke, “And why would you keep this from me! Did he do something bad or something?! Is that why you didn’t tell me?!”

“No-I-“ I stammered a few times until I found the words, “I- I did it because I didn’t want to hold him back… We were so young, and I knew he’d quit his new job across the country to come back to me.” Keeping the details still vague was my only armor right now. I kept to myself how those letters were the way we communicated for months when he started in the academy. We were only able to meet up once a month, and one month I unexpectedly fell pregnant. I never sent another letter or came to visit him again once I found out.

She clenched her jaw at me, looking back down at the scores of letters that we had written, and I had hidden. Her next question now made me clench my jaw, “C-can I see him? Or call him? Or send him a letter?” If you don’t know how to contact him anymore I’m sure we can-“

I was nervous as to where this was going. There was no way I could contact Spencer again after all these years, the guilt already ate at me everyday. Seeing and remembering his face would only make it worse. Fear was fueling me and I cut her off because of it, “No- I- I don’t think it’s a good idea...I just need more time- until I’m ready.” I started to shrink away from her, my authority slipping through my fingers as I became more and more vulnerable.

“You’ve waited sixteen years, you’ll never be ready.” The spite in her voice was stinging, she wasn’t completely wrong in her statement.. And when I didn’t answer she then stormed away, slamming the door to her room.

——

Our relationship in the few weeks following was strained at best, estranged at worse. She barely spoke to me since then, the biggest conversation we had was about what was for dinner- and that had been about two sentences long.

I was slowly coming around to the idea of perhaps finding a way for her and Spencer to reconnect. The guilt that I had been so afraid of becoming worse if I confronted it head on, only grew worse by avoiding it. I was actually going to talk to her after I got home from work, until I realized what she did.

She left her own letter on the table titled Dear Mom, detailing where she was going without giving any specifics. There was one part that gave her reasoning for writing her plan down, she didn’t want me to have a heart attack even if she was mad at me. Plus there were a few sentences about how she had used her own money that she had been saving up, which was supposed to be for college only serving to make you even more frustrated. At the bottom she wrote- I’m going to find my Dad, please don’t follow me or call the police.

I scoffed to myself, wondering if she expected her warning to not to follow her to be followed. Of course I was going to follow her, there was no way I was going to just let her go off on her own like that.

It wouldn’t be too hard to find her. Spencer may have changed apartments since then, but one quick google search of news articles he was mentioned in showed me that he still worked at the BAU in Quantico. It was probably a safe bet that my daughter did the same thing and was planning on visiting him at his office.

The plane ride there had been tumultuous, not in the sense that there was any chaotic occurrence or severe turbulence on the plan, more like in my mind. My hands shook, my foot tapped, and my mind raced while I took the long flight from Las Vegas all the way to Quantico. My mind went round in circles whether or not I viewed Spencer meeting my daughter- our daughter as a good thing. It was difficult to accept that even though they’d both most likely be mad at me, they deserved to meet. Especially since I knew how good of a father Spencer could potentially be. Once I had landed I didn’t stop, getting a cab straight from the airport to where the BAU offices were located.

The building looked daunting in front of me. It wasn’t a skyscraper by any means, but the task that I was here to do was so big it felt like one as I stared at it while trying to work up the courage to go in. The guilt however, was too hard to ignore.

My mind was on autopilot as I told the secretary at one of the front desks. It was too stressful to focus on worrying, so exhausted from the emotional roller coaster I was riding. An agent had assured me that she was safe which made some of the stress melt from my shoulders luckily.

“Here she is.” The agent gestured to the office, empty of any other person except my daughter. I felt even more relieved now that I saw her with my own eyes.

When I entered she waited a second before speaking timidly with disappointment, “He’s not here, he's on a case.” Her demeanor had deflated almost immediately as she saw me escorted up.

“Who told you that?” My arms crossed around my chest, nervous and furious all at once. I didn’t need to tell my daughter how in trouble she was, by the pout on her face she knew she’d be getting grounded for a long time even if I did let her talk to him.

“This nice lady named Garcia, she works with him. But, she did tell me I had to wait for you until she called him” For the first time since I had read her letter to me I cracked a smile. When we had still been communicating, Spencer often wrote and spoke about his teammates. Besides a fleeting photo of the team shown to me by him while I had been over here visiting, all my perceptions of the team and how they might look were all based on my imagination.

Despite that, when a vibrantly dressed woman clicked her heels into the room, I knew it was her. Spencer had perfectly described her, shining bright compared to the dull colors of the bureau’s office.

“So your Spencer’s baby mama.” Yep, she was definitely as blunt and beautiful as Spencer had described. I blanched at her comment, though I didn’t deny it, which was all she needed to know to confirm.

“Can you give me his number?” I skittered past the question, not wanting to confirm it out loud.

She beamed brightly at me, already starting to punch in the numbers with the phone on the desk in front of me. “You can call him now if you want on this phone, they just stopped working for the day.”

When she handed me the phone, it had already started ringing. I couldn’t help but panic, almost refusing the phone until my daughter nudged me forward to grab it. My finger trembled severely as I wrapped my hands around the phone, but I still managed to hold on to bring it up to my ear just as someone picked up the phone.

“Hello?” It was him, he sounded so similar to the boy you knew, that boy was a man now. He sounded more haggard compared to sixteen years ago; I wondered what all had happened since then.

“Hey- Spencer it’s me.” By the hitch in his voice that came through the speaker, he knew who it was.

At first I heard nothing from him, only some rustled feedback in the speaker. My shoulders were practically at my ears now afraid he might hang up. He did eventually stumble out a greeting, “H-hi? Why are you calling me after all these years- aaand on a phone at my work?”

“I’ve got to be honest with you,” I cryptically answered with an evident shake in my voice. I was biting my nails now, not caring if I chipped the polish on them. My daughter grabbed my hand to comfort me even though she was probably still furious at me which helped coax out my next statement, “cause I haven’t told you why I stopped talking to you…” I breathed in deeply once before I finally admitted the secret I had held for so many years, “Spencer, you have a daughter, she just turned sixteen.”

Dead silence was all I got, that was until I heard a choked out sob from him, “Why?”

He didn’t need to elaborate any further, it was quite clear what he was asking. Again another meek shaky reply came from me, “There were a lot of reasons- the main one was I didn’t want to hold you back.”

My daughter was now crying as was I, I hadn’t given her my reasoning until now. Maybe one day I’d give Spencer all the reasons why I had hidden it from him for so many years even though it was painful. I had held a lot of guilt about not ever contacting him again or even sending another letter. Spencer deserved to know everything, especially about his daughter who was the spitting image of him in almost every way.

“Can I talk to her?” I agreed, which seemed to surprise my daughter. I think she thought I’d be furious enough with her to not let her speak to him. She would still be getting many privileges taken away from her, just not this one as it was my fault she never knew her father in the first place. My fingers shook even more as I moved to click the speaker button so he could hear her speak.

“Hi- dad.” They spoke for a while, while I took the back seat, barely interjecting. They both deserved every ounce of father and daughter time that I had deprived them from throughout the years. My chest did feel lighter now that I had told him, now that my daughter was getting the chance to know him. Hearing them laugh and giggle with each other almost immediately only cemented how much she was her father’s daughter.

When the phone was handed back to me, after seemingly hours of talking (Garcia had even popped in a few times to get me more coffee) Spencer asked,“Can you stay in Quantico till I get back?”

I smiled, happy that I’d finally be able to see and remember his face again after all this time, “We’ll be here waiting, it’s time you meet your daughter in person.”

Ask Me Anything

—

Tag lists (fill out this form to join): If your url has a strike through it means tumblr won’t let me tag you- check in your settings if you allow yourself to be searchable

All works: @shotarosleftpinky @oreogutz @90spumkin @kyra-morningstar @s1utformgg @boxofsparklingmuses @multixfandomwriter @takeyourleap-of-faith

All MGG characters: @muffin-cup @willowrose99 @princesssmooshie @peterpanouat @anaagraceeberr @ashcakes1918 @reid-me-a-story @cosmic-psychickitty

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Letters Series: (Group of Unlinked fluff fics about Spencer and letters): @whoreforthebau @sierraraeck @90spumkin

#spencer reid #spencer reid angst #spencer reid x reader #matthew gray gubler x reader #matthew gray gubler #matthew gray gubler fluff #mgg #mgg x reader #criminal minds #criminal minds x reader #30 fics in 30 days

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thisisntapainting · 2 years ago

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Living with Chronic Suicidal Thoughts

"If you don't want it, please, could you just spit it out : 'Cause I can't take much more of this messing around" -Spit, Slutever

WARNING: Ok, seriously, if you didn't read the title, this deals with suicidal thoughts and whatnot. This also talks about trauma, mental illness, and the related. Viewer discretion is, well, advised.

It's been a problem since I was in elementary school, and like a nasty birthmark in a place you don't want one to be, it just never goes away. It's made me go to therapists, hospitals, anywhere, desperate measures from school and parents alike. A demon that haunts the shoulder, and a stain you just can't get rid of on your plate.

Every day, the thought comes along, about if I ended my own life. Every single day, sometimes less than other days, sometimes more casually than in those crisis days I have. But it still comes around a lot, and it's, well, a problem, but a problem that I don't think would ever go away. I know what causes it most times, but I always end up saying I don't know why if somebody asks, because the cause would take more than one sentence to explain. But every day it comes, and every day I consider commiting self-unalive.

It's like a solution to every problem that comes up. Room is messy? Dad's mad at me for it? I could clean it up, or I could just hang myself here and save him the college bills. Same old, same old. But I also don't ever end up acting on this, or hurting myself, or at least, not anymore. I get dangerously close to those edges, but never enough to actually do anything. I scream into the interwebs voids of whoever could listen to me that day of wanting to die, but nothing ever results. That's probbaly why I haven't had any more intensive care for my suicidal thoughts -- they're just thoughts. Thoughts and ideas by themselves cannot kill. Maybe these thoughts are a security blanket, because no matter what happens, at least I have a way out -- death!

Or a security blanket away from my past. My traumatic experiences have left me more disabled than I already was with genetic disabilty. I don't usually post about my mental disorder diagnosis list, but since it's relevant -- Autistic people are much more likely to develop C-PTSD. As a quick fresher, for those who don't know, C-PTSD is Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and is traumatic from a series of never-ending events that make somebody feel trapped, or something like that. Again, it has disabled me more than anything else ever would be able to. I would probably be normal enough to not even run this site if it wasn't for the alienation, the pain, the everything that C-PTSD hands me and tells me to go fuck myself with. The worst part is knowing it isn't really my fault I have C-PTSD, and the people who caused it are either long dead, my family, or both. No apologies. Fuck.

But in the last few years, my chronic suicidality has been getting better, and mostly in the last year or so. I've adapted a new mindset to combat this general cloud of illness -- I go through with a positive nihilism. Nothing in life matters, but that isn't a bad thing. It's actually really cool, because since it doesn't matter, I can stop giving a fuck about what bothers me, and boom, it no longer bothers me anymore. Literally just stop caring. I have the image right next to this in my wallet for a reason, a constant reminder -- I (usually) am able to stop things from hurting me now. Literally just stopped caring.

In addition, I have a slight list of other things here, and if you identified to this article, I think you can also try these.

- If it's avaliable, when I feel an episode coming on, I go to the nearest water fountain, and just splash cold water on my face. It interupts the head. Learnt this in group DBT when I was still in group DBT.

- Above anything else, distract. Distract yourself from those thoughts until the distraction overtakes the thought and it goes away. Copes are up to you -- I just hop on ROBLOX or watch Vinesauce. Specifically Vinesauce.

- Unironically the "name five things you can see, four you can touch" ect. thing works in the short-term.

- Above all, this is a waiting game. You just have to make it through the bad times to get back to the epic awesome times. You can do this! Lobster believes in you.

This probably comes off as a public vent, a pity party. It is a vent. I am allowed to be open about these things sometimes, as a treat. It is ok to shout into my personal void of a site as well. Again, if you identify with these thoughts, there is help. There is better times. As a closing note, while I do not avocate for going to therapy anymore for personal reasons, that is also an option, and it works for some people. I don't have much else to say, but reader, know that I love you like I love the rest of this world. I love you for even taking the time to visit my site, even if it was just the index and nothing else interested you. Having a stage to act and write like this is a gift. I love you. ❤

#suicide #suicidal thoughts #mental illness #cptsd #ptsd #complex ptsd #complex post traumatic stress disorder #trauma #disability #nephro.txt #nephro.pdf #ask to tag #espessially for this. please just ask.

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lilflowerpot · 3 years ago

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The Linguistics of “Galra”

So it’s entirely possible that literally no one cares about this aside from me, but in re-reading and making minor edits to the entirety of Little Blade thus far, I managed to really annoy myself with my own inconsistency when using “galra” or “galran” so now you’re getting a post about it.

If we go back to basics, traditional grammar is comprised of Parts of Speech (PoS), these being categories of words that have similar grammatical properties. For the sake of both simplicity and my own sanity, we’re just going to focus on those most commonly found in Indo-European languages:

Nouns: naming words for a specific object or set of objects (people, places, animals, items, or concepts)

Pronouns: substitute for nouns to function as nouns (I, you, he, she, they, we, it)

Adjectives: modifiers that describe a noun (beautiful, friendly, useful, overwhelming)

Prepositions: express space or temporal relations between nouns/pronouns (as, on, in, under, after)

Articles / Determiners: occur with a noun or noun phrase to express quantity, ownership, or specificity (an, the, this, my, your, some)

Verbs: doing words that convey an action (run, fight, sing)

Adverbs: modifiers that describe a verb (quickly, frequently, quietly)

Conjunctions: link words, phrases, and clauses, or draw comparisons (and, as, because, although, therefore)

Interjections: expresses a feeling or reaction, either alone or in a sentence (oh, wow, shh)

Looking at the above, the word “galra” falls into the categories of both a noun (the galra as a people) and an adjective (relating to or characteristic of the galra) depending on the context in which it is used. Furthermore, unlike human/humans or altean/alteans, the plural form of the noun “galra” remains the same as its singular counterpart, which begs the question: in what possible context did I start using “galran”? ...The answer to which is that I apparently had no real reason at all, and seemingly used “galran” as a substitute for “galra” as and when I felt like it which is terribly shoddy writing, so as of this moment I’m setting my new linguistic rules in stone.

The undisputed common noun form is “galra” - both singular and plural - to refer to the individual / collective species as the subject within a sentence:

And if they are, then that’s too much of a coincidence: five half-blooded galra working so closely together, when Keith isn’t sure he’s ever seen another save in the mirror? - Little Blade, chapter 01

As an adjective, it’s a little more fluid. Though “galra” remains its default form, “galran” comes into play if the following word begins with a vowel sound, unless said following word is a preposition (ie. after, inside, under) or a conjunction (ie. and, or, if).

It’s such a galra confidence, that it brings a genuine smile to the prince’s features. - Little Blade, chapter 02

When he closes his eyes against the world, he can see the sheer scale of his hand against the tiniest suit of galran armour he’s ever known, in perfect clarity. - Little Blade, chapter 04

“She was born thickly furred, like her father, however her maternal people were of a particular disposition that saw them shed their skin every twelve decaphoebs or so; suffice to say, her second flesh was not so galra as her first.” - Lotor, Little Blade, chapter 15

The single exception to this rule is Pidge’s use of “galran” when referencing the galra writing system-

“I researched it. It took a while: digging it out from the Castle’s database when I can’t read galran and wouldn’t know how to spell it besides, but I’ve been told I can be pretty stubborn.” - Pidge, Little Blade, chapter 11

-wherein “galran” functions as a noun due to Pidge not knowing the actual name of the language most commonly spoken in the Empire, and so extrapolates galra > galran in the same way an alien could theoretically say that we speak “human” (which is obviously a massive simplification, but you get my point).

#fun fact! the word 'as' can be a preposition / conjunction / adverb based entirely on context and I hate that :))))#english is a ridiculous language and as a native speaker I offer my sincerest apologies to anyone who is not #Ao3 Little Blade #galra history & culture #well language really but iNTO THE WORLDBUILDING TAG IT GOES

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eddie-redmayne-italian-blog · 4 years ago

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I never read before, interesting article !

How nurse caught nation’s deadliest serial killer, her co-worker

By Post Staff Report

April 14, 2013 | 4:00am

The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder [Hardcover] Charles Graeber For Sunday Postscript

He was supposed to be an angel of mercy — but he was an angel of death, and likely the most prolific serial killer America has ever seen.

Charles Cullen had most recently been a nurse at Somerset Medical Center in New Jersey when he was arrested for killing patients with drug cocktails he secretly administered. He confessed to 40 murders in New Jersey and Pennsylvania — though investigators believe he may have killed as many as 400. He is currently serving 17 life sentences.

It was never revealed how detectives were able to stop him — until now. In a new book, “The Good Nurse,” author Charles Graeber unveils the identity of a confidential informant, Amy Loughren, who cracked the case.

Loughren was another nurse at Somerset, a co-worker and confidant of Cullen. Contacted by detectives, Loughren agreed to provide them files from the hospital, wear a wire to try to get him to confess, even talk to him in the interrogation room.

It was Loughren who first realized the scope of Cullen’s madness. This exclusive excerpt reveals the chilling moment, in November 2003, that Amy Loughren discovered how Cullen was picking — and killing — his victims.

Amy found curious combinations of drugs that Charlie had consistently ordered. The list was long, sometimes half a dozen in a night. Amy knew these drugs to be more commonly used in a cardiac unit. Charlie was working in intensive care. His orders emptied the supply drawers.

Then, time and time again, Charlie ordered a restock from the pharmacy. His position meant he’d be the first to take the delivery. At the time, he was seen as being helpful. Now Amy wasn’t so sure.

The two Somerset detectives who had contacted her, Tim Braun and Danny Baldwin, were investigating the deaths of a handful of patients who had suspicious levels of a heart drug called digoxin in their systems.

HOW HERO NURSE GOT CHARLES CULLEN TO CONFESS

Detectives were trying to trace a single gun; Amy thought this was pointing to an entire arsenal.

Charlie had been bartending, titrating a pharmacopoeial mélange, from both drugs he’d pulled from the cabinet and drugs he hadn’t.

Each drug in the cocktail had a specific biochemical effect. Together, they were a biochemical symphony. In combination, it didn’t require nearly so much of any one drug to push a vulnerable patient over the edge. One drug pushed while the other pulled.

Only the patient’s reaction mattered. The gap of time between the serving of the cocktail and the patient’s reaction was suspenseful. There might be a crash or a code or a Lazarus-like recovery. The cocktail was the riddle and the lab reports were the answer.

Amy had imagination enough to make sense of the patterns, but she couldn’t begin to imagine the monster that amused itself with them. All she was certain of was that it wasn’t the same gentle soul who was her friend Charlie. The emotional disconnect bothered her as much as the murders themselves.

Amy considered herself to be a perceptive person — a spiritual traveler, a listener with well-tuned antennae for the frequency of vibes. Growing up as she did, she had always assumed that if she was near a monster, she would feel it. And yet, standing next to Charlie, she had never felt anything like evil.

Maybe she’d gotten him wrong, or maybe her antennae were broken. Or maybe, Amy thought, she was half blind and could see only the good in people.

Somerset used a computer system for keeping track of patients called Cerner. Charlie’s Cerner pages told her she had assumed wrong. Charlie was not, actually, the world’s greatest nurse, the world’s greatest chart keeper Amy had ever seen. He had hardly typed a line.

It was, in fact, the worst charting Amy had ever seen. There were blotches of words here and there, blurts, spasms of hurried and misspelled observations. It couldn’t have taken him more than a minute to do that work. Whatever he was doing on the computer, it wasn’t input. That meant Charlie had been outputting something.

Amy had to wait until her next shift to print out the rest of the records. This time, she couldn’t wait until she got home. That morning she called ahead, then brought her paperwork to the second floor of the prosecutor’s office to share her discovery with the detectives.

The Cerner automatically kept track of everything a nurse did within the system and provided a time and date stamp of every page a nurse had browsed. Charlie was browsing all night. That was what he was doing. Browsing.

Cullen’s computer records were the most incriminating piece of evidence the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office had against him thus far. But in order for the detectives to understand it, Amy needed to provide a quick primer.

Cerner had been introduced to the medical profession only a few years before as a compact and efficient way to input notes on patients, to look up their allergies, code status, lab values, etc.

But nurses were only supposed to do that for the patients they were caring for on shift.

What nurses never did, at least not any nurses Amy had ever known, was use Cerner to look up the status of other nurses’ patients. But that, it seemed, was exactly what Charlie Cullen had been doing.

Amy started with Charlie’s June forays into the chart of one patient, the Rev. Florian Gall. The hospital records showed that Gall had gone into cardiac arrest at 9:32 a.m. on the morning of June 28 and died approximately 45 minutes later.

Gall was not Cullen’s assigned patient on the night he died. Yet the Cerner records showed Charles Cullen snooping into Gall’s medical chart at 6:28 a.m., then again at 6:29 a.m. on June 28. He was checking in, only minutes apart, looking for something only a half-hour after a digoxin spike had registered in Gall’s lab work and three hours before the digoxin levels in Gall’s system would stop his heart.

“And that’s just Gall,” Amy said. The Cerner records contained lines and lines of Charlie Cullen’s log-ins at the computer, thousands of them, sometimes hundreds a night.

“He was studying them,” Danny said. “Why the f— was he studying them?”

Amy thought she knew. The nurses had IV bags lined up for them. But what if Charlie had made a drug cocktail, and injected it into one or more of the IV bags sitting by where he worked?

He wouldn’t need to bring them to the patient’s rooms, he wouldn’t need to be present at all. The other nurses — even Amy — would do that work for him. Charlie could simply retreat to his corner and use the Cerner to scan the lab reports and the patient’s progress.

Cerner would tell him where his loaded IVs landed. He wouldn’t need to be present for the death to feel the impact; you could just scan back on the Cerner anytime and follow the action.

It could be that same night or the next day, it didn’t matter; the event was always available on the screen to be relived again and again.

Was that what he was doing? Amy felt her heart beginning to sicken. She had delivered his drug cocktails.

And her friend Charlie had been following the action across the ward, like the box scores on a sports page.

Excerpted from “The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder” (Twelve), by Charles Graeber, out tomorrow.

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swiss-cheeze · 4 years ago

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What Gube Wore || Matthew Gray Gubler

Request: YES/NO: I asked the Instagram account whatgublerwore if I was able to use a few of their posts (as well as a few I asked for specifically) and they agreed!

Gender: they/them, none.

Warnings: uh, cute? Kissing, Gube being Gube.

———

‘Can we go for a walk?’ you had asked, ‘of course, after I finish learning this scene babe,’ he said. Oh yeah, walk, AN HOUR AGO. All you wanted to do was to take a walk in the nearby park, frolic in the flowers and then walk home in the dark with Matthews arm wrapped around your shoulders as you try not to fall asleep on him.

That's it, that's all.

You loved him with every fibre of your being, for five years of course you did, DO. But goddamn can Gube be annoying.

------

Puppy.

Fish.

Matthew at a red carpet two years ago.

Criminal Minds.

Cosplay.

Puppies.

This is what graced your instagram page as you scrolled through that little magnifying glass at the bottom of your screen. Scrolling. Scrolling. Scrolling. God, it was endless! You let out a little huff as you put your arm down beside you, phone still in hand, and let your head fall back on the top of the couch. You could hear Matthew rehearsing upstairs for one of the newer movies he recently got cast in; Gube did allow you to rehearse lines with him every now and then when he needed it, bounding down the stairs with a ‘BABE HELP’ before shoving the paper into your chest, telling you what to read and where to end before bounding back up to his office for another few hours, however that was not the case today. Picking up the dreaded block of wires and battery you scrolled to the top of the discovery page, pulled down and waited for the pictures to load, however as soon as the pictures did load, one caught your eye. You cocked an eyebrow as you pressed on it; a half picture of Gube and the shirt he had on and the other half was the shirt he was wearing in the picture.

‘Whatgublewore’, was the name. You cocked an eyebrow as you clicked onto the profile, and sure enough there was 29 posts of shirts that Gube had worn, that teddy bear face coin purse (you swore you saw that purse not a day ago), sweatshirts, jackets, a cup and that orange and black scarf of his you loved. They were all there including the real names as well as ebay listings or prices from the actual website, you couldn't help the smile that spread on your face as you went through every single post, looking at the listings as well as the names and liking the ones you, well...liked, obviously. It didn't cross your mind that yourself and Matthew had been out about your relationship for the past 4 years and whoever ran the account would see that ‘(Y/n)_Gube’ would be liking their posts...whoops? You shrugged at the thought as you finally got to the end of the posts, and followed the account as a devious plan crossed your mind, an evil grin replaced the previous happy smirk as you got off the leather couch and bounced to Matthews office.

“Guuubbeeee~” you sang from outside the door with the ‘shave and a haircut’ knock. You could hear the rustling of Matthew as he put down his script, possibly his journal, what sounded like a few pencils and another book? (possibly his art book?). The oak door opened and you were met with a disheveled looking Matthew; hair sticking in every angle and matted, sweaty, but still smiling.

“Hey darling, you okay?” he asked, you gave out a laugh as you pushed Matthew back into the room and walked straight for the unopened window.

“You have to learn to open the window in this room Gube, remember last time?” you questioned as you opened the window, a nice gust of wind rustling the sill, curtains and loose papers as Matthew let out a soft sigh from the sudden coldness in the room.

“What? Me passing out? No not at all,” Matthew said with a laugh as he played with his shirt before sitting back down in front of his desk and picking up a blue colour pencil, you shook your head as your devious plan rolled itself onto its back in your mind.

“Gube, you said we would go for a walk when you finished the scene!” you huffed softly like a little child as the scratching of Matthews pencil came to a halt and he placed his head in his hands on his desk, your face fell. He was exhausted, “oh...babe,”

“Im sorry,” the small whisper came from Matthew as he rubbed his hands over his face, “Darling i am really sorry,”

“Oh sweets,” you mumbled as you padded softly to the man in front of you, your hands coming onto Matthews shoulders and rubbing the tension and knots out of them, Matthew groaning appreciatively, “come on babe, it's not too late; let's go for a walk to the park and get some ice cream” you kissed the side of Matthews head softly before going lower down his ear. Leaving butterfly kisses to the side of his neck, down his collarbone before giving a little nip and quickly kissing your boyfriend's cheek, his hearty laugh bubbling from his throat.

“Yeah come on, grab some shoes let's go to the park,” Matthew said happily as he stood up but you blocked his walk way, a cocked eyebrow was all you got.

“Can I wear your Coach Western Parka with fringe from the 2018 fall slash winter collection?” you questioned with a shit eating grin, Matthews mouth dropped open for a moment before closing, opening, closing and opening again as his finger came up to point at you, took a breath before clothing his mouth again.

“My what?” Matthew questioned, completely oblivious and confused, you giggled.

“That jacket you wore to the Horse Girl premier earlier this year!” your excited voice rang out, Matthew winced slightly with a laugh.

“Right, that one, of course! How could i forget” Matthew said with a laugh as he put a finger in his ear and wiggled it, “huh? I'm sorry? What? I can't hear you, my girlfriend made me deaf” Matthew said with a laugh as you giggled with him, giving a little ‘im sorry’ before Matthew shook his head and quickly picked you up, throwing you over his shoulder and walking to your shared bedroom. Your loud screams of ‘GUBE’, ‘PUT ME DOWN’, and ‘TWIG’ seemed to go on deaf (pun definitely intended) ears as you hit Matthews butt softly, after a few seconds of Matthew walking (seemingly taking the long route to the bedroom) you started to just play with his nice rounded butt, hitting it like bongos while making ‘boop boop boop’ sounds. “You good back there?” Matthews asked, aliebt loud so you could hear what he was saying.

“Perfectly fine besides the dizziness of my blood rushing to my head!” you said with a laugh before Matthew finally got to the bedroom and placed you down on the shared bed, walking to the wardrobe he found the jacket you requested and threw it to you from across the room before the two of you started moving around the room/house; grabbing shoes, keys, purses or wallets as well as Matthew quickly shoving on a jumper he left from earlier in the day before heading out the door for a nice relaxing walk...plus ice cream!

-------

About a week passed since you asked specifically for Matthews clothing and since then you hadn't asked for them by name, just taking what you wanted because you knew Gube wouldn't mind either way, but as the two of you where getting ready to go shop in a few new thrift stores as well as the newly opened ‘The Smell Of Old Books And Coffee’ cafe; buy, read or rent books while drinking your favourite drink or cakes, only rule? You spill it, you buy it. You grinned as you swiped through that same instagram page before finally landing on something good, you liked the photo, read the title a few times and then closed the app and your phone and shoving it into your jeans pocket as Matthew walked into the bedroom.

“You ready doll?” Matthew asked as he put away a few of your stray shirts, you smiled.

“Yeah, can i just borrow your Vintage Tuak Canada Wool Sweater?” you asked with a devilish grin as Matthews face broke out in a smile too.

“Okay, what's up with you?” Matthew asked as he stood in front of you, “how do you know all these names suddenly that I can't even remember or know?”

“I have my ways~” you singed, “gray zip up sweater with what looks like brown snowflakes on it,” you said describing the jacket, Matthews eyebrows rose in confusion.

“Gotta give me-”

“You spilt orange juice on it when we went on a breakfast date in the winter two years ag-”

“YEP OKAY” Matthew said quickly, remembering the embarrassing moment instantly, you laughed as you put a finger in your ear and wiggled it.

“I'm sorry? Did you say something? I think my boyfriend screamed so loud HE MADE ME DEAF” you yelled at the end of your sentence jokingly as Matthew rubbed the sweater on your face, muffling your laugh.

“Blah blah!” Matthew said as you took the jumper and slid it on, zipping it up halfway before walking out with Spencer to the shops, your evil plan still dwindling in your mind.

-----

You waited another two, almost three weeks before asking for another article of clothing; this time it was for an radio interview for the both of you, ‘celebrities and their relationships: Matthew Gray Gubler and (Y/n) (L/n)!’.

“BAAAABBBBBEEEEEEE” your loud voice rang out from the kitchen as you heard the tell tale sign of Matthew footsteps moving towards you, his head popping out from a doorway making you laugh as his hair bounced.

“Wassup?” Matthew questioned.

“Can I wear your blue blue japan woven rayon MT. fuji & sakura fubuki short sleeve shirt?” you questioned, “jesus christ that was a mouthful i didn't even think i would get out,” you said with a deep breath and a laugh, Matthew was laughing too with that beautiful smile of his.

“You gotta tell me what shirt that is love,” Matthew said as he finally came to lean against the door frame.

“Blue shirt, you wore it in japan for your book tour,” you said with a grin, “cherry blossom petals-”

“GOT IT” Matthew exclaimed from the hallway as he ran to the bedroom, you waited a few moments and sipped at the juice you had in front of you before hearing Matthews footsteps coming back and into the kitchen with the shirt you requested.

“Thank youuu~” you kissed Matthews cheek on your tiptoes before pulling the shirt over your head and tucking it into your pants.

“You gonna tell me how you know the names of all of these shirts or still keep me in the dark?” Matthew asked as he fingered the collar of your (his) shirt.

“Imma keep you in the dark a little longer” you said with a sigh and sweet smile before Matthew rolled his eyes teasingly and beant to kiss your forehead.

“Alright fine, you gotta tell me soon though” Matthew mumbled softly, you kissed the man's chin as it was the only thing you could reach with his lips on your forehead.

“I will, promise” you said softly, “I just like messing with you, you know that,” Matthew finally released your forehead as you looked at him, your eyes beamed with love and mischief as Matthew smiled before tugging you out of the house and towards the interview.

-------

Again a few weeks past before you asked for another article of clothing of Spencers, this time it was for a cute little local carnival that the two of you agreed to go to, and you just thought this little number would be cute for people to see, so, you bounced to Matthew who was in the kitchen pouring a cup of coffee.

“Oh no, did the body come back alive?” Matthew asked as he added sugar with a grin.

“Oh shit yeah, i had to uh, kill someone else cuz they saw me burying the other one” you said with a laugh, this was an inside joke of course and you two didnt actually kill anyone, Matthew laughed as he took a mouthful of his coffee and leant against the kitchen counter.

“Okay, what do you want this time my little duckling?” Matthew asked, the nickname made you grin wider at the irony.

“Since we’re about to leave for the carnival~” you singsonged as you cozied up to Matthew, him looking down at you with such love and adoration, “could i wear your Ralph Lauren Mallard Sweater?” you asked with a knowing look.

“And what sweater is this exactly?” Matthew asked as he kissed the top of your head and wrapped his arms around you, coffee cup still in hand.

“The ducks!” you happily exclaimed, Matthew made a ‘ah’ sound.

“Should've known,” Matthew laughed, “i'll go grab it while you pack the car?” your boyfriend asked, you gave a nod, kissed his cheek and bounced off to the car to start packing. A few minutes passed and of course Matthew came out with the sweater of your request, handed it to you, gave you a loving kiss against the car and then got in; driving off to the carnival.

-------

The two of you flopped through the door of Matthews ‘haunted tree house’, showbags, teddies and food tucked under each of your arms and a few bags in your mouth for extra space (Matthew had laughed when he asked where the last few bags would go and suggested a second trip but of course, you being you said two trips where for losers and simply opened your mouth, and of course Matthew didn't say no). The bags rustled as they where put down on the couch and you stood around for a little, taking in the day as you pulled out your phone and scrolled through the numerous photos you had taken; on the ferris wheel, darts, milk bottles, a few with fans (those made you smile the most).

“Why are you smiling at your phone doll?” Matthew asked as he somehow morphed next to you, you grinned.

“The photos from today,” you showed the photos on your phone to Matthew who giggled at a few and pointed into some others at peoples passing faces that he thought was funny, but, his laugh was caught short when you swiped across for another photo without realising that that new photo was of Matthews Cherry Blossom shirt, and it was an instagram screenshot.

“Babe whats that?” he took your phone as you protested against him, swiping for the piece of tech, Matthew swiped a few more times and sure enough there was more, specifically of the previous items of clothing you'd asked for in the passing week. He turned to you with a confused look, “okay, cats out of the bag, what's this?” Matthew questioned, you huffed slightly but agreed, the cat was indeed out of the bag.

“Okay okay, i found this account,” you paused and took the phone from Matthew and moved it to Instagram, “here,” you showed the account to Matthew who idly scrolled through the few hundred posts, “they came across my suggested page and i thought they were so cool,” you shrugged feeling slightly embarrassed, “they do a lot of research for what you wear and have and i think it's just a really cool thing that they do and other people also buy what you've worn and it gets those brands out to more people and all of that good stuff and...yeah” you shrugged, “i'm sorry” you mumbled.

“What? No sweetheart, don't say sorry, this is like amazing!” Matthew exclaimed as he brought you in for a hug, “this account is amazing,” Matthew reached into his pocket and brought out his own phone and found the clothing account, “‘Whatgublewore’?” he laughed, “that's one way to put it,” and with that Matthew followed the account as he handed back your own phone.

“You do realise the heart attack you're going to give that person who runs that account right?” you asked with a chortful laugh as Matthew had realisation all over his face.

“Shit,” he thought for a moment.

“Send them a message Gube,” you said knowingly with a laugh.

“RIGHT, yeah that would be a good idea wouldn't it?” Matthew said with a laugh and a smile as he brought up the messaging box.

‘Hello!

Yes this is the real Matthew Gray Gubler.

Thank you so much for this account! It's amazing that my fans do these sorts of things, it's slightly weird but weird is good. (Y/n) found your account and for the past few weeks has been asking for certain shirts, jumpers and sweaters with their exact names because of your account!

It's amazing that you've done this and I encourage you to continue.

Don't be afraid to message me if you get stuck, i can send photos of the tags and...stuff, lol.

Thanks,

Gube.’

“How's that?” Matthew asked you, you scanned the message and smiled.

“I think they’ll love it,” you said with a nod, Matthew grinned as he sent the message and turned off his phone.

“Well i think that's enough phone time for one day,” Matthew said he he plucked your phone from your hands amongst your protests, “how about we go up to our room with all the candy we've got, watch movies and eat ourselves into a sugar rush slash sugar coma”

“That sounds brilliant” you agreed as the two of you started gathering the candy into one bag (leaving the others on the couch for you to deal with tomorrow), grabbing a water bottle each from the fridge you always have stored (reusable don't worry) and headed up to your shared room to start binge watching...well, whatever you wanted really.

#criminal minds #spencer reid #derek morgan #jj #penelopie garcia #david rossi #aaron hotchner #emily prentiss #matthew gray gubler #matthew gray gubler fic #matthew gray gubler x reader #mgg x reader #mgg

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superman86to99 · 4 years ago

Photo

Superman #84 (December 1993)

Superman takes a short Paris vacation! Like, one day short. What's the worst that could happen?

Oh, man.

So, for the past few issues, we've been hearing about children being abducted in Metropolis. Now we see that they're being kept inside a giant toy house by some creepy bald man in Quasimodo clothes who seems to be obsessed with toys -- a "Man of Toys," if you will. Side note: no wonder the children haven't been found... all the articles about them are just gibberish! (See clip below.)

The kidnapper thinks that these kids' parents don't deserve them, and that they're much better off here, in an underground hideout with a man who threatens to starve them if they don't play with him. (And I do mean literally play, with action figures and stuff.) Meanwhile, as these children cry for help, Superman is having the time of his life. While helping move a stranded ship with some huge-ass chains, Superman spots a sunken galleon with a treasure chest inside and fantasizes about keeping the booty...

...before turning it over to the authorities anyway, the big boy scout. Then, he wakes up Lois at 6 AM and tells her they should go to Paris right now, which usually means your significant other is having a mental breakdown, but in this case they can actually do it. And so, after deciding that he deserves to use his powers for fun every once in a while, Superman and Lois drop everything and fly to France with super-speed for the rest of the day/issue.

Anyway: back to the child abduction! Cat Grant and her son Adam attend a Halloween party at Adam's school, but there's a disturbed weirdo in a hideous costume lurking among the crowd. Yes, I'm talking about Jimmy Olsen in his Turtle Boy suit.

Shortly after that, a guy in a dinosaur costume (see, all the creeps are dressed as reptiles) lures Adam out of the party with the promise of "superb video games." What child could resist that? Of course, that turns out to be the kidnapper and Adam ends up in his hideout along with the rest of the missing children and, worst of all, not a single "Lextendo" console.

The kidnapper gets angry at Adam when he refers to the toys at the hideout as "old-fashioned junk" (he was REALLY looking forward to those video games), and even angrier when Adam tries to free the other kids. Adam is brave and puts up a good fight, but...

And those were Adam Morgan's final words. "Uh-oh."

Next, we have a pretty harrowing scene of Detective Turpin letting Cat know Adam’s body was found, and Jimmy and Perry White taking her to the morgue to identify the body (most people probably wouldn't bring their former boss to something like that, but Perry sadly knows more than most about losing a kid). As for Lois and Clark, they were gone so long that the Daily Planet had time to print a headline about the murders. The issue ends when the lovebirds walk into the office smiling like two people who just spent the night fooling around in Paris... only to feel like jackasses when they find out what happened.

To be continued!

Character-Watch:

And that's it for little Adam Morgan who, unlike the also tragically diseased Jerry White, didn't even get any post-death appearances. Adam went from a little kid scared of Superman, to a huge brat, to a character who was approaching likeability as of last week. That's why I hate it when DC kills off young characters like Adam or Liam Harper: in long-form storytelling, children represent potential. Look at how much Wally West or Dick Grayson evolved over the years compared to their mentors! Sure, there's a huge probability that Adam would have ended up disappearing from comics for 25 years anyway, but who knows, maybe we'd now know him as Teen Gangbuster or something. GangbusTEEN.

This issue also represents a turning point for the kidnapper, who is never named or seen clearly in the story itself but I don't think I'm shocking anyone by spoiling the fact that he's Toyman (it's in the cover, for one thing). In his last two appearances before this storyline, Toyman helped Superman save some kids from Sleez and looked genuinely sad to learn about Superman's death, so this is a pretty dramatic change for the character. We'll find out why he went from big softy to child killer in Superman #85 (but don't get your hopes up).

Plotline-Watch:

The most disturbing part of the issue, all things considered, is still the part where Toyman climbs into a giant crib and hugs a huge stuffed bunny. Look at serial killer Tommy Pickles here:

Don Sparrow says: “Even with the upgrade, Toyman is still just a man in a suit, a common complaint about Superman’s rogues gallery.” Funny you should say that, because I JUST shared an old Wizard interview in our Twitter in which Dan Jurgens talks about how Doomsday came out of his frustration with the fact that most Superman villains are dudes in suits (plus other interesting tidbits from the era, like how it was actually Roger Stern’s idea to bring back Hank Henshaw, so check out that link!).

Don again: “The entire Superman storyline of this issue feels like filler. Diving for buried treasure and soaring off to Paris -- it all feels like wasted time next to the Adam storyline.” I have a theory that the entire ship sequence is there as an excuse to put Superman in those big chains and make that Spawn joke (which I didn’t get until now, since I’ve always read this issue in Spanish).

Superman says that pulling that big ship was "a little easier than expected" -- that's either another hint that there's something going on with Superman's powers since he came back, or a subtle dig at the state of American ship manufacturing.

Another adorable "window tap" scene for the books, and this is the sexiest one so far. Is it me or has Jurgens started copying more than just Teri Hatcher's hairdo from Lois & Clark? (For anyone who thinks Lois has gotten implants, I refer you to this clip.)

While in Paris, Lois asks Clark if he's ever wondered what would happen if his rocket had landed in other countries. Don: “Clark’s conversation with Lois sounds like a bunch of concepts for Elseworlds stories. We eventually would see a Russian Superman, and a British Superman, but not yet the French Superman. (Hire us, DC!)” Yep, got my French Superman pitch ready, Jim Lee. Or just let us do Russian Superman again, since Red Son wasn’t even the first time you published that idea.

Don once more: “Another thing that makes no sense about the ‘new’ Toyman is his resentment of technological toys—when in previous appearances he himself had deadly high-tech toys to vex Superman over the years.” I especially resent his hatred of video game consoles. Incidentally, I wonder what types of games are available for Adam’s beloved Lextendo. Star Lex 64? Mega Man Lex? Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles & Lex?

No one is more upset at Lois and Clark for going AWOL than Whit. NO ONE. He's so furious that his usually grey mustache turned black.

Patreon-Watch:

As always, shout out to our patrons, Aaron, Murray Qualie, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Samuel Doran, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush and Raphael Fischer! Last month’s exclusive Patreon article was about the recently unearthed sequel to Superman 64 for the PlayStation, featuring Metallo, Parasite, and Lois looking even hotter than in this issue:

Hot damn. Find out more at https://www.patreon.com/superman86to99!

And believe it or not, Don Sparrow has even more to say about this issue. Read his section after the jump:

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

I should start off my section with a big caveat: I flat out hate this issue. There were several weird decisions made in the post-Death-and-Return era (most of them along the same lines of making the Superman titles more grim-and-gritty), and this story was one of the worst of them. My theory is that, despite the praise and record-breaking sales of the Death and Return storyline, the Superman creative team felt pressure to have more extreme storylines, perhaps in response to the wildly successful Image books coming out at the time. Between this story, and the upcoming “Spilled Blood” storyline, the Super books take a hard—but temporary--turn into more violent and upsetting storytelling—even though these stories are by the same writers as the previous few years. While death has always been a part of comics, and Superman comics was no exception, there is a jarring glibness and unfeeling toward the way violence is handled in these pages that is quite different from the stories that preceded it. It’s made all the more jarring by the fact that well-established personalities suddenly veer wildly out of character, Toyman chief among them.

We start with the cover, and while it is technically well-drawn (by the familiar team of Jurgens and Breeding) it’s also a very upsetting visual. I think they should have gone with the pieta type pose with Adam and Superman, OR the scary badass bowie-knife Toyman (who apparently has a Cheshire cat smile now) but not both. But the cover is a good hint at the tonal dissonance of the comic within.

We open with a splash of the now-extreme 90s looking Toyman, with his serial killer shaved head and spooky cloak, ignoring the pleas of hungry kids he has locked up in a tiny jail cell for days at a time (if that sentence doesn’t ring alarm bells for how wrong this is for a Superman story, I don’t know what will). For much of the issue Toyman’s eyes are obscured by glare on his lenses, further de-humanizing a character who was once one of Superman’s more empathetic bad guys.

We cut to Superman tugboating a huge tanker with giant chains and it’s a cool visual (one repeated in the Batman V Superman film). It feels especially out of place to focus on, given how upsetting this issue is otherwise, but throughout the whole comic, Lois is drawn smoking hot, especially on the two page spread on pages 9-10.

The scenes depicting the actual murder, while still wildly out of place in a Superman comic, are well done, and give a real sense of darkness and menace, which I suppose is the intent. Perhaps my least favourite visual is the Big Bird stuffie, silently bearing witness to what’s about to occur.

The edges of the panels on get more slashy and off-kilter (to me, looking very much like the layouts more typically seen in Image comics of the day) and I suppose I appreciate the restraint of how little Dan Jurgens shows of the death of a child, showing only a bloody slash on a black background. This is still a pretty baroque image for a Superman comic, but certainly less violent than it could be, given what is happening.

Cat Grant’s silent horror is well staged, and powerful in its way. Lastly, Clark Kent bending in sorrow and regret is a powerful image.

While this issue is handled marginally better, and more maturely than other comics on the shelf at this time, I still believe it is one of the biggest mistakes of the era. Giving a long-established character an unceremonious death for shock value is gross on its own, but making it a child definitely crosses a line for me. Making it worse is that, while the Toyman is a criminal and a killer, he has shown in past issues (a similar kidnapping storyline involving Sleez) that he genuinely cares for the well-being of children. So for a long-time reader, this also felt like a betrayal of a long-established, fully developed character. Adding to the ugliness of this is that Adam dies heroically, trying to free the children who have been caged, unfed, for days, but even in that regard, he fails. The headline at the end of the issue confirms all the children are dead. Adam’s death did not buy the other kids enough time to get away. It was all for nothing. Had Adam died, but the other children lived, maybe this issue wouldn’t leave quite as bad a taste. [Max: It’s weird because it’s all told in a way where it’s told in a way where it would make sense, narratively and within the story universe, that the other kids survived, but then it’s almost casually revealed that nope, they died too. A scene of one of the kids relaying Adam’s heroism to Cat in a future issue would have gone a long way.]

Superman doesn’t come off well in these pages, either. It’s honestly the type of story they should just stay away from, because the more you think about all the calamity that is going on around the clock, the less defensible the whole Clark Kent persona becomes. Superman carving out time to romance his fiancée directly led to the preventable deaths of innocent children—how do you come back from that?

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

I’m always looking for hints that perhaps Jimmy or Perry know Superman’s secret identity deep down, and Jimmy’s anger at Lois and Clark on their return to the Daily Planet offices would seem to give that theory some credence, as he’s as angry at them as if he knew Clark really were Superman. Either that, or he’s ticked that it fell to him, and none of them to escort Cat into the morgue. [Max: Has this issue finally converted you to the “Jimmy is terrible” side now, Don?]

I don’t think I’m the only one who disliked the new Toyman—SPOILERS BE HERE: years later, in Action Comics #865, Geoff Johns retconned this whole story, reverting Schott into the criminal who over-relates to kids, rather than the child-killer of this story. Apparently the infantile Schott, who speaks to “Mother” a la Norman Bates, is a robot so lifelike it fools even Superman, and the “Mother” he’s constantly replying to was the real Winslow Schott trying to recall the malfunctioning robot. [Max: That’s one Geoff Johns retcon I really didn’t mind, even if it felt kind of derivative of his similar “all the Brainiacs are robots made by the real Brainiac” reveal.]

#superman #dan jurgens #josef rubinstein #toyman #cat grant #adam morgan #dan turpin #whit #gangbusteen #super luthor fighter ii turbo championship edition

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mashtonasfuck · 4 years ago

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there’s a ghost in the back of this room

Pairing: Ashton Irwin x Calum Hood (and also a bonus side of muke that happened accidentally)

Prompt:

Person B is a ghost in Person A’s house and they would be really freaked out but Person B always leaves really good advice using the kitchen magnets, so Person A is not really bothered

Warnings: mention of a missing person who reader knows is dead/a ghost

Word Count: 3K

A note from Lucy: This is part of the halloween writers collab organised by @maluminspace and @h0tsos. The masterlist can be found here. See the end of the post for more notes. Hey look, I managed to write cashton fic without it turning into smut! Thanks to @loveroflrh and @kindahoping4forever for reading this over for me 💙

If you’d like to be added to my tag list then please fill in this form

You can find my masterlist here

This work must not be reposted anywhere - I do not give my permission for it to appear anywhere other than on my blog, or on my ao3 page.

——————————————————————————

“Ashton, why does your fridge say ‘stop being an idiot’?” Ashton glanced over to where Luke was staring at the fridge door in mild amusement.

“Oh, that’s just Calum - ignore him. I usually do” Ashton rolled his eyes as a picture fell off the wall as he finished speaking, the thud causing Luke to spin around, eyes wide.

“What was that?”

“I just brushed past the picture and knocked it off, that’s all.”

Luke narrowed his eyes at Ashton, the older man chuckling as he hung the picture back up.

“Come on, let’s watch this damn movie you don’t shut up about.”

–

Why did you tell Luke to ignore me

The question was on Ashton’s fridge the next morning, the letters a mishmash of colours and cases. Ashton pinched the bridge of his nose as he read it - only he would get a self conscious ghost living in his house.

“Calum, are you here?”

A cupboard door opened and a mug floated down onto the counter a few feet away from him - Ashton took that as a yes and shoved a pod into his coffee machine before grabbing the mug and pushing the button.

“I was only messing with you, Cal. Besides, you’re my ghost, it has nothing to do with Luke.”

Ashton watched as the letters on the fridge rearranged themselves, sipping on his coffee and humming at the bitterness dancing on his tongue.

Do you not want your friends to know about me

Ashton groaned internally, how could he explain this to his house ghost without offending him?

“I think they’d be pretty freaked out if they knew I lived with a ghost. You saw Luke’s reaction to you knocking that picture off the wall. Besides, I like keeping you a secret, you’re mine.”

It’s pretty hard for me to be yours when you’ve never even seen me

Ashton had in fact seen Calum. Or at least a photo of Calum.

–

He hadn’t been in the house more than a month when he started to realise that things kept happening. A photo moved slightly, the couch not being quite as tidy as he’d left it. The day Ashton had realised he actually had a ghost, he’d come home to find a new photo of him and Luke floating in midair.

“Um, hello?”

The photograph was dropped hastily, as though Ashton had scared the ghost he evidently had living in his house. After that, Ashton started talking to the ghost, even though he never got a reply aside from the odd knock on a table or a wall. It was while he was at a store grabbing something for dinner that he saw the fridge magnets. He grabbed all of the packets they had and drove home with a grin on his face.

“So, I bought you these today,” Ashton held out the magnets towards where he hoped his ghost was, “I thought maybe you could try talking back to me?”

Ashton felt a small whoosh of air as the ghost moved around the kitchen and he tore open the first packet, dumping the contents into a drawer he never used. Almost immediately the letters started floating from the drawer towards his fridge and Ashton watched as the ghost arranged the letters into a sentence.

Hello Ashton

“Hello, ghost. Oh - what’s your name? It feels weird calling you ‘ghost’.”

The letters arranged themselves once again.

My name is Calum

“Nice to finally know your name, Calum. How was your day?”

I’m a ghost Ashton

The brunette snorted as he watched the letters form another sentence.

Boring thank u for asking

Ashton laughed before spending the next few hours conversing with his ghost - with Calum - via fridge magnets. Calum had told him his full name after Ashton insisted upon knowing it.

“If you ever piss me off, I need to know what to call you.”

Calum Hood

It lingered there for a few seconds before ‘Hood’ was moved over.

Calum Thomas Hood

Ashton turned it over in his mind. Why did that name sound so familiar to him? He thought nothing more of it until he was at work a few days later.

STILL NO SIGN OF MISSING MAN

Police are still searching for Calum Thomas Hood, 24, who disappeared from his home 6 months ago. They’re urging anyone who may know anything about his disappearance to come forward.

Attached to the article had been a photo of the missing man, and Ashton knew it was his Calum. (He’d later cut the photograph out of the newspaper and taped it to the bottom of his desk drawer where no one would find it.) When he’d got home from work that day, Ashton had asked Calum how he’d died.

Not sure don’t remember

Ashton had debated telling the police that he knew exactly where Calum Thomas Hood - or at least his soul - was. He’d told Calum this one evening and a single word had appeared on his fridge.

Crazy

–

Calum was bored.

Sure, being a ghost meant that he could walk through walls and move things with his mind, but being bound to one place had its drawbacks. There were only so many times you could move things around waiting to see how long it took Ashton to find them before you’d moved everything.

(He’d even tried to swap all the furniture in Ashton’s bedroom with all the furniture in his living room, but Ashton had come home earlier than Calum had anticipated and made him put it all back to normal without any help. Moving things with your mind was tiring.

“You’re a ghost, Cal, how can you get tired?”

Calum had used all of the ‘i’s and the ‘l’s to make a middle finger on Ashton’s fridge door.)

Calum thought that Ashton could sense how restless he was. Ashton seemed to find new reasons to work from home during the day so Calum wasn’t by himself. Not that they could really interact unless Ashton was in the kitchen. They’d tried using a pen and some paper once, but Calum’s ghostly abilities didn’t seem to extend to pens. He couldn’t seem to get the pressure right to actually leave ink on the paper. Ashton had laughed at him before being met with a cushion to the face.

Calum missed being alive. He missed being able to go outside. He missed coffee. He missed being able to pet dogs.

Most of all, he was frustrated that he couldn’t remember how he’d even become a ghost. At night while Ashton was asleep, Calum tried to remember what had happened. (There wasn’t much else to do while your best friend was sleeping.) He’d get so far into the memory and then something would tug him back into the present moment. It was disconcerting. Calum could sense that he was close to finding out the truth, but something was stopping him. He’d tried to explain it to Ashton but ran out of letters and gave up. He’d debated asking the other man to buy more, but had resigned himself to the fact that it just wasn’t worth it. Ashton wasn’t going to be able to help him figure out what had happened - it was something he needed to figure out for himself.

–

“Hey Cal, how do you feel about me throwing a Halloween party this year?”

Although Ashton couldn’t see him, he knew that Calum had raised an eyebrow at his question.

It’s your house Ashton

“Well excuse me for wanting to make sure my resident ghost wasn’t inconvenienced.” Ashton smirked at his fridge as Calum spelt out a new message.

Appreciate it

Sure, have a party

Ashton cheered aloud and began reeling off his ideas to Calum, barely giving the ghost time to form a sentence. Calum shook his head fondly at the man standing opposite him - if Calum had been alive and met Ashton, he was sure that they’d have been best friends. When Ashton had finished speaking, Calum had one thing to say.

You already have a haunted house Ash

–

The party had taken Ashton weeks of planning and he’d dragged Luke into the prep early on in the process.

Calum liked having Luke around - he was fun to mess with. He’d taken to moving Luke’s glass from wherever he’d put it down and putting it on the other side of the room. Watching Luke’s bewilderment was a new favourite activity of Calum’s - Ashton had to keep taking the fall for his antics.

As Halloween rolled around, Ashton’s house really did look haunted. Every room was shrouded in black and there were cobwebs all over the place. (Calum’s favourite thing was the skeleton hiding behind the downstairs closet door that jumped out whenever you walked past it.) According to Ashton, the outside looked just as scary as the inside, but Calum had to take his word for it.

As people started arriving, Calum retreated into Ashton’s room. He didn’t usually go anywhere near the other man’s room, but Ashton had told him that it was okay if he needed to get away from all the people. Calum was worried about being walked through. Ashton had done it a few times by accident, and Calum had felt sick every time it had happened. That was something they were both eager to avoid, especially once Calum had explained to Ashton how it felt.

A knock on Ashton’s bedroom door piqued Calum’s interest and Luke’s head appeared around the door frame.

“Ash, are you - oh. You’re not here.” Luke started to close the door but stopped suddenly, pushing it back open and slipping inside before closing it behind him. He glanced around a few times, gaze running over where Calum was sitting on the end of the bed.

“This is going to sound crazy, but is there someone else in here?”

Calum cocked his head at Luke’s words; he knew that Ashton wasn’t particularly forthcoming with Luke about his existence. He shifted off the end of the bed, moving across the room to stand about a foot away from Luke. The blonde let out a breath as he felt the temperature in the room drop slightly.

“Calum, right?” Luke’s voice was quiet as he spoke, Calum smiling at the fact that Luke remembered his name. He picked up a pillow from Ashton’s bed in response, tossing it gently towards Luke. The other man caught it easily, eyes growing wide at the pillow that was suddenly in his arms.

“Holy shit, you are actually real.”

Calum let out a laugh at Luke’s words, amazement etched into the blonde’s face.

“I’ll be right back, don’t go anywhere.”

The blonde left the room, returning a few minutes later with an armful of stuff. He dropped it all on Ashton’s bed before turning around and facing the room.

“So, um, I bought a small magnetic whiteboard and some of the letters from Ashton’s kitchen drawer and I was wondering if we could talk about something?”

Luke watched in shock as the letters began arranging themselves on the whiteboard.

Hi Luke

What’s up

Luke sucked in a breath before he started talking.

–

Calum knew this was crazy.

Luke was crazy.

Just because it was Halloween, it didn’t mean that Ashton would suddenly be able to see him. Calum had always thought the whole ‘veil being thinner on Halloween’ thing was bullshit. Luke was insistent that it wasn’t, telling him that if anyone would be able to see him it would be Ashton.

“He’s in love with you, I think.”

The way Luke had said it had been so casual, but it sent Calum’s mind reeling. Ashton couldn’t possibly love him. He barely even knew him. Luke had dismissed Calum’s concerns before he’d even completed a sentence on the board. The more Calum thought about it, the more he was sure that he was the one in love with Ashton. He paused rearranging the letters for a moment as he stared at Luke.

Think I love him too

Luke had lit up with a smile at Calum’s words before slipping out of the room to find Ashton.

Calum was sure if he had any contents in his stomach, that they would be on their way out by now. He was so nervous. Luke was so sure that this would work, that Calum found himself believing the blonde man wholeheartedly. It felt like an eternity before Luke finally returned dragging Ashton behind him, along with another man that Calum had never seen before.

“Calum, this is Michael. He’s my boyfriend and he’s also slightly psychic.”

Michael blushed a deep red at Luke’s words, scanning the room before he locked eyes with Calum.

“Hello, Calum.”

Calum waved gingerly at the green eyed man staring at him, Michael breaking out into a smile. He glanced at Luke and nodded slightly, the blonde smirking at Ashton. Ashton was standing behind Luke looking bewildered as he watched the exchange between his friends.

“Can someone please explain to me what’s going on? Luke, how did you find out about Calum?”

Luke glanced over his shoulder at the brunette man and rolled his eyes.

“Please, I don’t know why you thought no one would find the picture you’d taped to your desk drawer. Coupled with the fact that you kept blaming ‘Calum’ for things. You weren’t exactly subtle, Ash. I put two and two together and did a google search.”

Ashton’s jaw dropped open as Luke spoke, Calum snickering at his reaction. Michael smiled widely at Calum and turned to face Ashton.

“You already know what Calum looks like, right?”

Ashton nodded slowly, fearful of where this was going.

“As we all know, the veil is thinner on Halloween, therefore allowing spirits to pass between the realms. I’ve never tried to bring an actual ghost through the veil, but there’s a first time for everything, right?” Michael rolled his shoulders as he spoke, turning back to face Calum. “Provided this goes right, we should all be able to see you. I mean, I already can. But Luke and Ashton too. Worst case scenario is that only I can see you, and this doesn’t work. You only live once though, right?”

Calum rolled his eyes at Michael’s words, bracing himself for whatever the man was about to do.

“Oh, wait.” Michael glanced at Ashton before looking back towards Calum, “Say something to me, Calum. I need to know if I can hear you already or not.”

Calum raised an eyebrow at Michael.

“You’re such a know-it-all, Michael.”

Michael broke out into laughter, Luke and Ashton looking at him in confusion.

“This is gonna be fun, nice to meet you Calum.” Michael smirked at him before cracking his knuckles, “You’re gonna fit right in with us all, I’m sure of that.”

“Michael, what exactly are you going to do?” Ashton’s voice was nervous, he didn’t like the fact that Michael could see Calum when he couldn’t.

“We, my dear friends, are going to summon Calum firmly into the realm of the living.”

–

Calum felt the air around him grow fuzzy as he watched the three figures sat on the floor in front of him.

“Now Ashton, I need you to imagine Calum standing right in front of you. Really imagine it. See him in your mind’s eye. You got it? Good.” Michael looked away from Ashton and back towards Calum. “Cal, whenever you’re ready, I need you to come and stand in front of Ashton. I’m 80% sure that this is going to work. It depends how well Ashton is visualising.”

The brunette huffed in Michael’s direction and Calum smirked.

“Is he always like this when I’m not around?”

Michael grinned at Calum before nodding and gesturing to the spot on the floor in front of Ashton.

“Whenever you’re ready, Calum.”

–

Holy shit

“Cal?” Ashton’s voice was barely a whisper as he stared at the man suddenly standing before him.

“Hi, Ash.” Calum blushed under the other man’s gaze, casting a look towards Luke and Michael who were both sat on the floor smirking.

Ashton blinked a few times before slowly standing up and reaching towards Calum. The other man grabbed his arm as he stood, helping to pull him off the floor.

“How - how are you corporeal right now?” Ashton looked over at Michael who simply shrugged in return.

“You must be really good at visualising. It was only supposed to make Calum visible and hearable. Whether or not he was corporeal was out of my control.” Michael pulled Luke to his feet as he stood up, taking the blonde’s hand, “Now, if you don’t mind, I need to go and make out with my boyfriend in Ashton’s spare room. Nice to meet you, Cal. I daresay we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other in the near future.”

Michael dragged Luke from the room, the blonde waving absentmindedly at Ashton and Calum as they retreated, closing the door behind them.

“It’s really you.” Ashton ran his hand up Calum’s arm. The other man was wearing the same clothes as in the photo Ashton had seen, Calum’s leather jacket feeling smooth against his fingers.

“It’s really me, Ash.” Calum brought a hand up rest against the back of Ashton’ neck. “It’s so weird to be able to talk to you and for you to actually be able to hear me.”

Ashton laughed quietly at Calum’s words, leaning forwards to rest their foreheads together.

“I can’t believe you’re really standing here and I can see you. Remind me to get Michael a case of beer or something.”

“Noted.” Calum grabbed both of Ashton’s hands, lacing their fingers together. “I’ve thought about being able to touch you for so long.”

Ashton hummed quietly at the other man’s words, the realisation finally setting in.

Calum was here. He could see Calum. He could hear him. He could feel him.

“Ash, I need to tell you something.” Calum nudged Ashton’s head up so they were eye to eye. “I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you.”

Ashton smiled softly at the admission.

“Pretty sure I’m in love with you too, Cal. I mean, it’s kinda complicated because you’re a ghost and all, but I really do love you.”

Calum searched Ashton’s face for any sign of hesitancy before closing the distance between them.

——————————————————————————

Notes: I deliberately left this open ended so I can come back to it in the future. I hope you like it, I’m really unsure about it 🥺 please let me know what you think here

Taglist: @pxrxmoore, @irwinkitten, @kindahoping4forever, @sadistmichael, @loveroflrh, @adoringlrh, @pinkbubbles-and-bigtroubles, @maluminspace, @malumsmermaid, @lashtonswildflower, @irwindoll, @castaway-cashton, @everyscarisahealingplace, @converse-luke, @zhangyixingxing1, @mrs-joel-pimentel-23-25

#cashtonasfuck #cashtonasfuck writes #superbloomirwin #superbloomirwin writes #ashton irwin fic #calum hood fic #cashton fic #5sos writing collab #5sos fic #5 seconds of summer fic #cashton fanfic #cashton fluff

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