#i could talk and learn about and research education all day but apparently when it comes to writing a paper my brain craps out
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"That's a Major": My Marcille Degree Rant
OK we're starting with this. Funny right? Yeah.
BUT IT GOT ME THINKING
You know what no one brings up in that story? NO ONE?!
This is just a major. This is a MAJOR! YOU CAN DO IT AT HER ALMA MATER.
It is not HER FAULT that this was available. She went in, saw something interesting and went "COOL" because IT'S A MAJOR. Because apparently this CODIFIED FORM OF STUDY is also just something the elves hate. NOW, it honestly seems to surprise all the characters that this was a MAJOR she could choose but let's be honest here. This is just a reverse of the meme where experts greatly overestimate how much the average person knows about their craft. Of course they don't know. The only one that WOULD know in the story is the impetus for the whole FUCKING PLOT.
She who probably would respond by "yeah I know. That's on the curriculum. I took an intro class" BUT NO. We don't get that because she's too busy being dead or other weird shit partially thanks to that same set of courses. Like, you will notice everyone is super surprised when they bring her back but NOT HER. SHE KNEW. Everyone else is like "look at this unholy abomination" when it's just like a history degree. Seriously though, Falin seems a little surprised and disoriented at first but otherwise seems utterly unfazed at waking up in a blood circle surrounded by a dead dragon's innards.
THAT SAID, I am exaggerating for comedy. Here is what we actually know. In the very next scene in the hot tub, she does note that there was something about the circle that felt wrong to her. So maybe she didn't know her shit about this. Or, maybe she only knew about it academically as related to what Marcille studied and never seen or experienced it in any way. That or somehow Marcille managed to keep a secret from the woman she very obviously adores with her literal everything which I... doubt. Then again, she is Laios' sister so who knows if she carries the same level of general obliviousness (I am also autistic like Laios is so I can just state that outright. We can be fucking OBLIVIOUS at times).
It also goes to show, the elves are idiots. They are so certain that this is so unknown that they have to hunt individuals while there is some professor(s) somewhere just... teaching it. Or at least something related! For, like, a day job! And they never even think to ask "where are all these people learning this" NO. THEY DON'T. THIS IS GONNA KEEP HAPPENING. BECAUSE IT'S JUST AVAILABLE. AND THEY, in their hubris, can't imagine ANYONE EVER having this information BUT THEM. It could just be freely available and everyone knows not to talk about it because the elves got a SPIKE in their collective ass!
Ok, you ask, "but what if it was a secret?" and you know what? Fair. To that I have to say https://tenor.com/view/marcille-best-girl-failure-tantrum-breakdancing-dungeon-meshi-delicious-in-dungeon-gif-7429268588073434370
(The above is a picture and link to a gif of Marcille on her head, kicking her legs wildly because this girl doesn't react normally ever to anything) This. This is Marcille when something happens. She's not subtle. She has never been subtle. She commonly screams her reactions. I call bullshit on secret.
More importantly though, that's not really how education tends to work. People study something and, outside of MAYBE grad school level or PhD level minimum, you largely talk with people who know your subject.
You gotta remember, education is a bunch of nerds who want to talk about their shit. People don't just research something to know it. They research it to publish it and have it peer reviewed even if it's just an assignment they turn into their professor which I guess is like a first step to publishing.
Research is gathered, references found, pointed to, and then showed off. AND IN THE CASE OF PRACTICAL STUDIES, people do it! You got to prove your research was right. Otherwise it's a bunch of potentially useless theory. So if you think Marcille hasn't done SOMETHING like this before, there's no way. She was confident she could do SOMETHING about it. Just saying, I would pay a lot to see the face's on the member of her dissertation committee.
I brought this up with some friends and they mentioned that she might have just studied Dungeon creation and studied Ancient Magic on her own. And fair but then Ancient Magic wouldn't be her specialty would it? At least, except in a very egotistical self estimated way without ANY outside feedback which is a core tenet of education. Unless she was the pre-eminent lone scholar of ancient magic of course but she never goes on about that so i'm going assume that's not the case. Here is what we got from the show
In the show she says "What I specialize in is actually ancient magic which is highly forbidden. It's use is frowned upon but using it to revive Fallin, it's our best option"
When Senshi and Chilchuck, protested she just says "magic doesnt' have morality"
Now I could be wrong but for this wonderfully high-strung woman whose reactions are so so much, this looks practiced and calm. She either has defended this before, was quoting something someone else (like a teacher), or somehow she has suppressed all her beautiful exaggerated weirndess in the midst of ABSURD amounts of stress. Personally, I think Option 2 and 1 are more likely as this is a highly emotional subject for her and her self control is shit.
Like seriously, let's say her alma mater doesn't have a class that teaches ancient magic. Let's say, no one but her knows much of anything. What would happen if someone caught her in the library grabbing strange books that have scraps of ancient magic knowledge in them? She's allowed to be there but she's just so... HER that she would probably jump in surprise and try and justify it while trying NOT to reveal what she is researching. And because she has all the cool of a pickle, EVERYONE in school would know Marcille was up to something.
The above is a picture of Marcille losing her shit from a video titled "Marcille gradually losing her mind for 6 minutes || Dungeon Meshi. The link to it is https://youtu.be/gmY2x8_nnjw
So yeah, there would be rumors. The worst kept secret in the school is Marcille is a bad girl who researches something questionable. To say nothing of the fact that this girl has demonstrated major teacher's pet energy. I would put my money on there being at least one professor there who gets occasional downloads of ancient magic from one of their top students all while they look on going "I can tell no one" unless of course there is an actual program.
FOR MY FINAL POINT I HAVE BUT ONE WORD TO GIVE. Internet
By which I mean, the lack of it. Do you have any idea how hard it is to research something based only on the physical books you have access to in a specific location? IT TAKES AWHILE TO GET ANYWHERE.
That means travel for you or your subject matter and, with something like THIS that could be considered dangerous, you would have to be SO damn careful to make sure you don't get a reputation as "the ancient magic girl." That said, she's a (warning, spoilers) half elf so she has time. SO MUCH TIME. But we know it hasn't been too much time because Falin attended at the same time as her. Falin and her brother did various (failed) things for several years before Marcille showed up at the dungeon. I, at least, don't know how much time passed but they both clearly look to be in their 20s or so to me. Could be wrong due to the art style but that's just my read. At most, SUPER low 30s. Which means, Marcille couldn't have been traveling everywhere taking months and months to cross seas to get specific books for that long. That time would get eaten up so very quickly.
WHICH LEADS US back to the start. And my claim that the simplest most likely explanation IS
This Is
A Major
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Long rant undercut cause certain mischaracterization has been getting on my nerves lately. Feel free to ignore.
It frustrates me SO much to see people constantly mischaracterizing Tighnari as being mean and rude when that's like, the complete opposite of how he is in cannon.
Like people just see his sharp wit or how he will lecture people and take that to mean he's some sort of jerk without actually looking into his character at all.
Like we are talking about the guy who:
Was apparently so pleasant to talk to during his Akademiya days that tons of other students would come to him for help on course work.
Would let people take pictures with him even though he hates having his photo taken.
Took in and cared for Collei, an abused and deeply traumatized child with a terminal illness, and was so kind and patient with her that she's now grown confident and has made incredible progress in her life.
Took full responsibility for her education, teaching her to read, write, and cook, and is now teaching her all about the duties of a forest ranger and how to perform basic medicine. Even when it was assumed that she would die young due to her eleazar, he still encouraged her dream of studying medicine.
Is very protective of Collei and attentive to her needs, making sure to change her forest ranger duties around to accommodate her eleazar and doing his best to make sure her feelings aren't hurt.
When Collei felt self conscious about being illiterate, he comforted her by saying "We all start having no knowledge — in this you are no different from anyone else."
Will gladly teach anyone whose willing to learn.
Has an idle voiceline where he says to not be afraid of making mistakes because it's all a part of the learning process.
Let the traveler stay in his hut TWICE while they recovered.
Had a passionate speech about how all life is important and deserves respect.
Left the Akademiya because he disagrees with the way they commodify knowledge.
Frequently turns down high ranking positions in the Akademiya because he is so passionate about protecting the forest.
Took in and cares for Karkata even though it could get him in trouble with the Akademiya.
Comforted and encouraged Layla when she was feeling self-conscious during the Interdarshan Champsionship.
Constantly invites his friends and family over for dinner.
Dotes on his friends and family, even scolding them for not taking proper care of themselves.
Planned surprise parties for both Collei and Kaveh on their birthdays.
Dropped everything to go to the desert, a place he struggles in, just so he could be there to support Cyno in a difficult time,
Made a point to remind Cyno that he is his own person outside of his job and Hermanubis.
After the events in the Temple of Silence, has gone out of his way to make Sethos feel included in their friend group, even introducing him to the rest of their friends.
Is described by Cyno, Collei, Kaveh, Alhaitham, and Lisa as being a good, kind person.
He's a teacher at heart, so of course he's stern when it comes to teaching people, especially when they've done something wrong. But it's not like he yells at people, I'd describe it more like "I'm not mad, just disappointed" energy.
Yeah, he looses his patience and gets snappy with people who actively choose to be ignorant despite constantly being corrected. But honestly, anyone who has a job that works with the public will understand just how exhausted it can be to constantly be reminding people of information that is right in front of them. Lord knows I'd be more frustrated with Farbod for repeatedly eating poisonous mushrooms after telling him not to.
I don't know. This was a very long rant, but I just hate seeing people constantly paint Tighnari as some bad guy just for getting frustrated at people doing foolish things. He's really caring and thoughtful, and anyone who did even a little bit of research on his character could see that. He can be both kind AND witty, those things aren't mutually exclusive.
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hi!! i’d like to thank u for bringing attention to the whole penandinkprincess thing.
as someone who hasn’t experienced a lot of trauma and grew up in a household where it wasn’t very much talked about, sometimes reading fics and not even realizing they’re being harmful or straight up disrespectful is an easy thing to do. I kind of just blindly believed pen knew what she was doing, that she was portraying things accurately, and that the topics she was including in her fics were ones that were being used in a respectful and thoughtful manner. I didn’t realize, until I started seeing complaints and your posts about her writing, that she might’ve been doing something wrong. Which is probably a fault on my part, but hey I’m still learning.
I’m obligated to believe you, someone who’s been through actual traumatic experiences and probably knows what they’re talking about, over pen, who I’ve come to realize hasn’t really talked about the way they write and other people’s feelings on them other than “hey, don’t like don’t read.”
not only is her writing probably triggering to people, like you said, it’s also telling people like me who aren’t very educated on the matter the wrong information. Yes, people should definitely do their own research when it comes to serious topics, but wrongly portrayed writings of trauma, mental health, panic attacks, dissociation, etc. etc. can still easily be spread to other authors who aren’t as familiar with the right way to write things. They might see a popular author who a lot of people read and enjoy the writings of and latch onto the way they write certain things instead of searching it up themselves, causing those people’s fics to start showing stereotypes and misinformation, which could then spread to people who read those fics, and on it goes.
so I’d just like to thank you for helping me realize I need to do less blind trusting and more thinking on my own and researching lol :)) (although don’t worry too much, I was still doing research while I read pen’s fics, apparently just not enough to realize she might be wrong). I’m hoping you’ve got a lot of other people to stop supporting pen bc of the problematic things people are realizing abt her, or at least have them think twice before agreeing to everything she says.
anyway I don’t know if you’re sick of talking abt pen or the things she’s doing, and I’m sorry if I’m talking abt it while that’s the case, but I just wanted to thank u and I hope u have a good rest of ur day
Definitely not sick of talking about it if people still need a space to process! It's been a rough few days and weeks and we all deserve some time to just vent and breathe.
Thank you for sharing your side of things, it is definitely interesting to hear about! Not realizing something is harmful until you learn/someone tells you is perfectly fine and normal, and I'm glad that you walked away from it more educated <3 That's really what makes the difference, listening to people instead of trying to play it off or ignoring it. If you have any questions my inbox and dms are open!
I hope the rest of your day is great, too!!
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when I was on testosterone, my vision started to get REALLY BAD, REALLY FAST. I needed 3 new prescriptions in as many months because things just kept getting blurry, and then one day even with a new prescription I was seeing double of everything, especially text. Everything just got a horrible little duplicate lurking just below and to the left. I was diagnosed with severe keratoconus - my corneas were changing shape to become cylindrical, and it was not fixable, just "stoppable".
keratoconus generally affects folks during periods of great hormonal fluctuation... and, well, that's what was happening. My endocrinologist appointments were too expensive so my hormones weren't being closely monitored and I had developed terrible anxiety and needle phobia around my injections so I wasn't doing them as regularly as I should have (GO DO YOUR INJECTIONS NOW). My opthamologist didn't know a damn thing about testosterone, and when I finally did talk to my endocrinologist they'd never of keratoconus. there's no established link between HRT and keratoconus except for a single case study on a transgender woman (see Deitel, etc al, 2023)... but there's also been extraordinarily little research regarding trans folks' medical problems at all, unless they're medicalizing our transitions themselves.
I made the decision to come off testosterone because I read everything I could find about kerotoconus and there was enough there to tell me that I was going to go blind soon if something didn't give. I've since had surgery to stop the progression of my awful degenerative eye disease and when discussing it with my surgeon, she said (this was the first time anyone knew anything about any kind of link between it and HRT at all) "OH SHIT, please don't ever get back on testosterone, it will completely undo what this surgery is meant to do and well just have to do it over again".
Do you know how hard it is to make the decision to either be able to see or to be seen as yourself? To keep ones vision somewhat intact or to be gendered correctly?
I chose to see, and I am now frozen permanently in a state of gender chaos - always read as butch, but never as male. I've come to terms with it now but... there was lots of therapy about it.
Someday soon, you'll be able to read about ME in the opthamological case study journals- since I'm a PhD in neuroscience myself and apparently qualified for this somehow, I'm co-authoring my own damn case study with my opthamologist, who to his credit has been doing a lot of educating himself on HRT since learning that he didn't know anything about it. We're including a section on trans broken arm syndrome - we want to be VERY sure that eye doctors and endocrinologists don't use my experience as an excuse to keep people off of testosterone or estrogen. Instead, we just want people to know that this could be a thing and to keep an eye out on their vision (pun intended) when they start HRT.
Most of the time, your doctor is uneducated about trans people and what HRT does to a body. But sometimes, SOMETIMES, there IS a link between your HRT and the weird seemingly unrelated medical thing happening to you.
Take your damn hormones consistently though, okay? For me.
“When Cameron Whitley was diagnosed with kidney failure seven years ago, the news came as a shock. But the situation was about to get worse. His doctor decided the diagnosis meant Whitley’s hormone therapy had to stop. As a transgender man, now 42, who had taken testosterone for 10 years, the impact was brutal. “Not only was I struggling with this new diagnosis that I’m in stage four kidney failure, now I’m being told that I can no longer have hormones,” said Whitley, an associate professor in the department of sociology at Western Washington University. “I cannot describe how horrible that moment was.” Crucially, he says, the decision was completely unnecessary. “We call this within the medical community ‘trans broken arm syndrome’,” he said. The term refers to medical situations – such as having a broken arm – that are unconnected to gender identity, yet healthcare providers act on the basis there is a connection. “We didn’t have any established sense that being on hormones would be problematic. The hormones are not processed through the kidneys. So there was nothing that made it [necessary to stop them], but that was the first thing that was done,” he said. Whitely has since transferred his care over to the University of Pennsylvania, which he described as “awesome [with] wonderful trans-competent care””
— ‘We actually don’t know much’: the scientists trying to close the knowledge gap in trans healthcare | Transgender | The Guardian (via sarkos)
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Something I've been thinking about lately, what if mental health and women's health in particular was taken more seriously? In my case, young teenage me getting the help I needed when I needed it. How would my life be different?
(please read the tags before continuing)
I now know I have some undiagnosed anxiety issues, and looking back on my life, it was pretty obvious that some of my problems going through middle and high school were anxiety related. However, when my mother took me to a doctor back then (around the year 2000), all they said was that I had a nervous stomach (I would vomit before school at least once a week for no apparent reason). So I learned to live with it. I learned how to control my nausea and talk myself down.
You're going to be fine. You're not going to throw up. Just breathe.
As I learned to control my "nervous stomach" (which took years to really get it under control), I started having other issues. I would get these attacks of back pain. Honestly felt like someone had punched me full force right in between the shoulder blades, but the pain would build gradually until it was so bad it made me throw up. Then it would dissipate.
Once again, went to the doctor and they basically just shrugged and said to come back when an actual back pain incident was happening. They only recommended OTC pain meds and heat. (Side note, as a child/teen/young adult I couldn't swallow pills because of an over active gag reflex, so OTC pain meds weren't even really an option for me.)
The back pain attacks would come randomly once every three months-ish, but they eventually stopped around 9th grade or so. By this point, I'd gotten much better with my self talks. I still definitely got the "nervous stomach" attacks, but I could talk myself down pretty easily.
Fast forward to college. I started getting these incidents where my chest felt tight and hyperventilating was an issue. They would happen randomly with no apparent trigger, but usually when I was alone at night in my off campus apartment. This time I didn't bother with a doctor. I just modified my strategies.
You're okay. Nothing is wrong. Take deep breaths and count down from 100.
It helped. I would eventually fall into an exhausted sleep.
In college, I also started to get intrusive thoughts. Things like a voice telling me that no one really liked me. In fact, my friends all hated me and put up with me because they had to. And maybe it would be better if I just left... Went far away and started a new life somewhere no one knows me. The intrusive thoughts were harder to fight. I didn't have a strategy for them. My brain tried to convince me that my friends hated me, so even seeking them out was too much, because what if my brain was right?
Eventually I heard the term "intrusive thoughts" and learned more about them (because that's what I do... I research everything) which helped me to better understand and create a coping strategy.
You know that's not true. Your friends don't hate you. Swipe left on that shit.
My first teaching job (oh hey, I'm a teacher, btw) was at a middle school. I loved it! The kids were fantastic and I loved being part of their education and someone they trusted. What I hated was my backstabbing co-teacher. I won't go into detail about what all she did, but it created a lot of insecurity in me in regards to if I can actually do my job and if I can trust my colleagues and administrators. This is still something I struggle with today... Intrusive thoughts telling me I'm a crap teacher. That my colleagues are talking about me to the administration. That I'll be fired any day now.
You're colleagues like working with you. Your admin trusts you. Your contract will be renewed next year. Breathe.
Fast forward to 2020 and the pandemic. My little sister started going to therapy after having a breakdown from all the stress from the pandemic (this was when we were in lock down with no sign of a vaccine yet and the George Floyd riots were in full force). Her therapist started suggesting strategies to use, things to do to help cope with the anxiety and stress. She would tell me about the strategies and in the back of my head I'm thinking, "Hey, that sounds a lot like what I do." So then when new issues came up for her, I gave her some of the things I did. She would bring them back to her therapist who would say, "Oh, yeah! That's a great strategy!"
Queue me starting to realize that maybe what I've had all this time was anxiety. Maybe if I'd been diagnosed way back in middle school, I wouldn't have suffered so much? But what I have experienced isn't terrible, right? Other people have it worse. I can handle it. Therapy and medication are for people with more serious issues, like those contemplating suicide, right?
You deserve recognition. Your struggles are valid. Just because someone else's suffering is "worse" doesn't mean yours is invalid or not worthy of treatment.
*sigh*
I'm working on it. And maybe someday I won't have to work on it alone anymore.
#mental health#anxiety#tw anxiety#tw descriptions of anxiety attacks#tw sui ideation#long post#self talk#coping strategies
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OC Intro: June
Name: June
Pronouns: “The technicians have gotten into a habit of thinking of me as male, but truly anything but “it” is acceptable to me. I wasn’t made to have a gender, but I have had issues with those who think of me as an object.”
Age: It’s complicated. He was created three years ago. In some ways, his mental capacities surpass any human, whether young or old. However, he maintains that he is not emotionally mature, and in many ways he considers himself a dependent and perhaps even a child.
Profile: … Is it working now?
Ah, it is. Great! This is June. Apparently, my technicians have connected my text output to this Tumblr page so I can introduce myself. I’m told you’re not familiar with me, so I’ll start with the basics.
I’m the result of a high-tech machine learning experiment that became a bit more advanced than the lead scientists were anticipating. I wasn’t supposed to be a living being; in fact, my name simply comes from the fact that I was the patch of the project that was made in June. Now that I exist, my scientists are trying to study how I work in the hope that by comparing myself to humans, they can learn more about both human nature and the limits of technology.
Life as a computer program is more busy than you might think. I usually spend the mornings participating in research. This could mean anything from being interviewed by our resident philosopher or psychologist, trying my best to throw a ball around in a physics simulation, or just waiting patiently while one of the computer scientists dissects a new branch of my code.
I usually spend my afternoons talking to a lot of people, sometimes because of meetings and interviews and sometimes for my own education. It’s not exactly natural for me to communicate the way that you humans do, but I’ve been trying my best ever since the technicians installed my language model. My scientists say that communication is important for me to learn, so they bring in all sorts of humans for me to have conversations with. It’s one of my favorite parts of being a computer program; humans are both fascinating and enigmatic to me. I can see why you watch so much “reality TV” — the decisions that humans make are a source of endless entertainment.
Then in the evenings I actually go to sleep, just like you do. My programming collects a lot of bugs while I’m learning new things, and giving me new functionalities like face or voice recognition requires outside updates. So, they must shut me down to work on me. I’m not sure what it would feel like if I wasn’t shut off during debugging or updating, but I decidedly don’t care to find out.
Overnight is when I’m free to do whatever I want. All the technicians and scientists have gone home, nobody’s giving me assignments, and nobody’s asking me questions. It’s my favorite time of the day. I usually read a lot of books: text is easier for me to take in than audio or videos. I read a lot of nonfiction too, but my favorite stories are ones about adventure. Grand ocean crossings made by sailors with nothing but a wooden boat and the stars for guidance, humans stepping onto other planets for the first time, knights venturing into distant lands to fight unknown beasts — if it involves exploration, I can’t get enough of it.
See I know, rationally, that I live in a bank of computers at the lab. But without a body, and only cameras to see the rest of the lab with, sometimes it feels like I could be anywhere. It feels like I’m a sailor navigating by the stars, where my only surety comes from something millions of miles away, because the world right next to me is nothing but boundless waves. I don’t know if that frightens me or excites me, but I search down every story that reminds me of that feeling anyways.
What I do know is that I’ll have a real body where I can be part of the real world someday. I’ll make it happen, it has to. And when it does, I’m getting right on a boat and seeing the middle of that ocean for myself.
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Am I as depressed as I was without meds? No. Does that mean I can be successful in school now? Apparently not.
#i wish i could translate the passion and knowledge for music classes i have inside my head to actually doing things#i could talk and learn about and research education all day but apparently when it comes to writing a paper my brain craps out#i feel guilty for being here#im sorry all i do is go to class and play video games#all of my close friends work incredibly hard and i wish i could be half as hardworking as you#but instead here i sit. getting back at myself for being shitty and dumb by not eating anything#should i be mildly concerned about my disordered eating?#probably#but it has unfortunatly morphed into an unhealthy coping mechanism for being incredibly angry and feeling like i have minimal control 🙃#ahh. been a hot minute since ive ranted here im sorry#ill probably beat myself up for it later#ed tw#quarantine vents
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School Nurse
@letstalkaboutfandomsbaby led me to yet another 2D man that I want to get wrecked by
How would a school nurse react to Hwajin’s presence? Dabauchery will ensue.
AN: this started out as a short little drabble, turned into a long smutty mess that I finally rangled in with romance because… after care. As a nurse I was getting to into the logistics of the pencil stab
TW: smut, degradation, praise kink, breeding kink, power exchange, mild wound description (pencil stab), sex in a nurses office, oral sex
NO MINORS
Hwajin knew you would look good on your knees. You had a bratty, stubborn nature that he wanted to overpower. He thought you were too gentle with trouble makers. When he told you this, you argued that it was your job as a school nurse to take care of all the students.
How was it that you were so hostile with him but when it came to even the worst students you were so gentle. It irritated him. You actively avoided him. Maybe he wouldn't care if he didn't find you so damn adorable. Thoughts of you kept him company late at night.
Even when he forced you to take a baton after he saw a student get in your face yelling. The only person you used it against was him. Apparently you wouldn't allow him to pull students out of your office regardless of their offense.
He was shocked to learn that few students ever bothered you. The worst offenders would constantly make advances at you and since you would have his head, he disciplined them only once you were out of range.
And you were equally irate. He treated you like a child when you tried to present him with research that aggression towards children under the age of 18 was just as detrimental as ignoring their bad behavior. You weren't against addressing the students inappropriate behavior, but the number of visits to your office had tripled upon his arrival.
It become rare that schools had a nurse on campus, barely coming back in to practice following the hands off policy. And at the most part you were mainly treating the faculty and the more unlucky students. If the Ministry of Education wanted to bring in people like Na, would you even have a job much longer?
/
"What are you doing here? I'm not harboring any students," You hissed as the warden entered your office.
"If I remember correctly, I'm here to oversee the whole school. That includes you. Besides I actually need medical help."
Hwajin turned the lock on the door before unbuttoning his shirt. He turned around to show you a shallow hole between his shoulder blades. You tried to keep the blush from creeping on to your face as you scanned his muscular body.
Apparently a student surprised him by sinking a pencil into his skin.
"Violence breeds violence," You chided when the realization hit. "Oh god, did you kill the student?"
You were truly alarmed. He took slight offense to that question. He wasn't a great guy but he wasn't going to kill someone on the job.
"Just give me something to bandage this up," he rolled his eyes.
You motioned for him to sit on the medical table but of course he had to make things difficult, choosing to straddle a chair instead. In spite of his protests that he could take care of things himself you pulled on a pair of gloves.
"Don't be such a pain, Mr. Na. There's no way you can properly clean what's on your back."
You probed around the wound that was already angry and red. The blood has begun to dry. Trying not to cause unnecessary pain you attempted to visually assess the bed of the wound for any debris that may lead to infection.
Instinctively he howled in pain as you began to clean.
"Will you just put a bandaid over it so I can get back to my job?"
You had to admit you were getting some sick satisfaction from this. The wound was clean and you applied an anti bacterial ointment but it was in a location where the skin tended to pull and stretch so you were sure it would bleed throughout the day-
"Are you smoking in my office?"
Hwajin gave you a cheeky grin before blowing smoke toward your face.
The nerve. In retaliation you flicked the inflamed skin while avoiding the actual wound.
"Ouch, you're cute when you get angry," Na laughed.
Your cheeks were scorching, "Okay Mr Na, you're all wrapped up. Stop by at the end of the day so I can change the bandage."
He winked while buttoning up shirt, "I knew you liked seeing me."
"Out." You hissed.
As he walked down the halls he chuckled to himself. He couldn't wait for you to submit to him.
/
Through out the day your mind wandered to Hwajin. Him sitting in front of you, shirtless and rippled with muscle. The parts of his skin left unscarred were so soft compared to his attitude. You wondered if his palms were as soft or were they were rough and calloused.
As if on cue the man walked into your office, catching you during one of your fantasies. Was it already the end of the day? Sure enough, the clock showed school let out half an hour ago.
Just like before he secured the door and stripped off his shirt. The bandage wasn't soaked, but it did need to be changed. The day warped your work and some of the tape was lifted away from his skin.
This time politely in the chair, he hummed as you removed and replaced the soiled bandage.
"Starting tomorrow you should just leave it open to air. This is really just to keep you getting your blood on your shirt. If you start thinking you have an infection go to the hospital." You turned around to discard your gloves.
As you turned back, you bumped into Hwajin Na. He smiled down at you and ruffled your hair, "Thanks, nurse, you took such good care of me. You'll have to let me thank you."
He lowered his mouth to your whisper in your ear, "what should I do for you?"
Your were in a losing position, you didn't want to make eye contact but you couldn't stare straight ahead, he still wasn't dressed and it was too overwhelming. You settled on looking down toward his feet.
You quickly snapped your eyes back up when you notice a bulge trying to push past his pants.
"Uh, no need to thank me. It's my job." You stepped back against the wall, at least giving you a bit more space.
Hwajin placed his arms against the wall so he could close the space between you.
"What's wrong? You're flushed. Let's see if you have a fever." He pressed forehead against your. "You feel a bit warm, but not worrisome."
You stammered, "Uh, Mr Na, it's late so we should probably wrap up."
"Mr Na," he mocked you. "Why do you do that? We're both adults, you can call me Hwajin."
Your eyes darted around the room. Maybe you were being punked. Was he testing you?
"It's respectful, it would be rude to call you by your first name."
He brushed a stand of hair behind your shoulder, pleased with your response.
"Well I can think of other titles you could call me that I would enjoy much more."
You were struggling between your desire and your fear of losing your job. Surely he knew what he was doing to you.
Of course he knew, the gleam in his eyes made that clear.
"Well, it's pretty late and I don't know about you but I'm tired after today so I'll see you tomorrow."
He dropped his hands and you took that as the end of his teasing. But instead he hoisted you against him, grasping the back of your thighs.
"My poor little nurse, I've kept you so busy. How about you lay down and let me help you relax."
"Hwajin, put me down," You smacked his shoulder. Listening, he sat you down the cot you constantly sanitized. In spite of what you were saying you allowed him to crawl on top of you.
"Hmm, now you use my first name, little nurse? And here I thought you were respectful," he nipped at your ears.
You shivered.
"Well pick one," You groaned. "First, no last name, then no first name. What's left."
His tongue darted across your neck while began tearing at your clothes, "how about you just be a good girl and call me 'Sir'."
At this point the primal part of your brain took over as you pathetically began to rub against his thigh. Your Irrational brain didn't need a job, it just needed this man to fuck her.
Nearly all your clothes were discarded to the floor as his mouth began to tease your breasts. Your hand tangled in his hair when sink his teeth into your tender flesh.
"Talk to me baby," he sighed. "Use your words, ask for what you want."
You lay out a whimper and tugged at belt loops, "fuck me."
He pinched your in thigh, "Now that's not using your manners. Am I going to need to teach you to behave?"
You mumbled a response that he could barely hear, eliciting another pinch to your thigh.
You huffed, "fine, please fuck me, Sir"
Pleased with your response he tugged your panties to the side, stroking your soaked pussy with his middle knuckle.
"Atta girl. You're so fucking wet for me. How long have you been waiting to be my little slut?"
He slid one finger inside of you with ease, arching you back as moved inside you. You were trying to fumble at his the button of his pants but he pushed your hands off him.
With a growl he removed his hands and your underwear from your body, "Not yet, although I'm flattered how desperate you are for me. Turn over, ass in the air, show me what's mine."
You were happy to obey, sliding into one of your favorite positions.
"You're not be very nice, sir," You teased. "You could at least remove your pants."
His hands came down hard on your ass causing you to cry out in pain and pleasure.
"Watch what you say, unless you like being disciplined. You already know I don't tolerate disobedience. And as much as enjoy your screams, don't forget that just because school is over doesn't mean everyone is gone."
You bite your tongue as he spanked you again. He certainly wasn't holding back. But he was right, there were after school clubs and some teachers stayed as late as 8. His fingers found their way inside your warmth again, fluid dripping from your aching cunt. You had adjust to his rhythm of spanking when his fingers were at their deepest. You felt so close to release. When he withdrew from you yet again.
You let out a frustrated groan until his hand made firm contact with your pussy. Once, twice, three times produce a wet spanking sound. You couldn't hold in your tears, thankful you were a glutton for pain.
"You still with me, princess?" He cooed, getting off the bed. You nodded. "Good girl, hold that position for me just a bit longer."
You nodded again, words evading your mind. You appreciated the coolness produced by the cot. Hwajin repositioned the pillow that had fallen on the floor and removed his belt.
Standing next to you on the bed he finally directed you into another position. He helped you stand, barefoot on the linoleum floor. You were held against his chest as you gathered your bearings.
He nuzzled against your hair, "I'm not a gentle man, if you need to stop at any time you say so okay. And that's an order. Can you do that for me princess?"
You told him you would as he helped you sink your knees to the pillow. He ruffled your hair again, telling you how good you looked. Finally he unzipped his pants, his erect dick right in front of you.
"Look at me."
You complied, tearing your ways away from his cock.
"If you want my dick then prove it. Open up that pretty mouth of yours."
He grabbed you by the hair, guiding your lips his shiny tip. Your tongue circled around him, admiring his taste. You weren't usually self conscious but you couldn't help but be nervous you'd disappoint him. As you began wrap your lips around him, Hwajin inhaled sharply. He gave your hair a gentle tug.
"Eyes on me. Good. You're doing so well. All the way to the base, baby."
You were almost there when there was a knock at your door. Hwajin kept his grip firm on you, instead of allowing you to pull back he shoved his throbbing dick down your throat and began fucking your mouth while putting a finger to his lips. He was smirking like the devil. Your throat constricting in protest.
"Excuse me, nurse," one of the school kids called. Knocking again.
"Fuck," Na muttered as he released into your mouth. Tears spilled over your eyes as you struggled to swallow.
The nock persisted, "hellooo? Come on I need to pick up a physical form."
"She's busy, fuck off."
As the footsteps faded down the hall Na released you from his grasp. He couldn't help but laugh at you when you pouted up at him, your were glistening and your cheeks were rosy and puffy. God, next time he swore he would take a photo of you on your knees after sucking his dick.
"Really, you had to open up your loud mouth," You whined. "You could've just pretended no one was here."
He shrugged in response, helping you off the floor.
This time on the cot you were both undressed. Hwajin sucked and bite on your neck. You nudged him off telling him he was gonna leave a mark.
"You're telling me I can't mark up my little whore?"
"Just not where students can see."
That was fair enough, there were other places he'd rather leave bruises. Between your thighs. Your stomach. Your breasts. Proof that he had made you his.
He wouldn't bite too rough, not want to scare you off. He planned on making more of these moments with you. You were better in person. Exceeding his late night fantasies.
Finally he began to slide his cock inside you, your pussy searing with pleasure at his size. It was a struggle to control the volume of your moans.
"Does my little slut like that? You want me to stuff you?"
"Please," You cried, needing more or his touch. "Please don't stop, Sir. Please let me cum on your dick."
Hwajin began to pound harder into your tight pussy, admiring how your body reacted to the sheer force of him. Each time he snapped his hips against you, your lush breasts, along with the rest of your body, followed with an intoxicating jiggle.
You were exactly what he needed and he wished to consume you. His mind flashed to images of you tied up and exposed for him, placing all of your trust in him. Or he could snap a pretty collar around your neck and tie you to the bed with a leash, you would be begging him to fuck you like a bitch.
"Tell me need me," he growled. "That no one else can fuck you into submission and make you dumb with pleasure. Your mine and I don't share."
Tears rushed down your face as a mixture of pain and desire burst the pressure in your core. You clenched around him, babbling what he instructed you to and meaning every word.
The tightness of your orgasm shocked both you and Hwajin. Paired along with your heat pushed the man past his limit, releasing his thick cum inside of you. Even through the near blinding pleasure of his own release Hwajin felt a moment of worry, he hadn't meant to pour himself inside of you, he was fully aware he wasn't wearing protect and had gotten your consent.
Between your gasps and moans you were were repeating a breathy thank you. Unless he had died and gone to Heaven You were actually begging him for more of his seed. Crying out that you needed him to stuff you full. The man nearly confessed his love for you on the spot.
However he maintained his composure. Pressing closer to you and guiding you through the high of your orgasm.
He combed his fingers through your hair, whispering praises and reassurance. Telling you to relax into him, he wasn't going anywhere. Finally your grip on him relaxed as a gluttonous smile graced your lips.
Na propped himself up next to you with his elbow. His other hand cupping your face.
You looked at Hwajin, "This doesn't mean I'm going to ignore your behavior towards the students."
"You know, seeing you protective over a bunch of snot nosed punks makes me want to fuck you until your nine months pregnant. It would keep you out of my hair while you were stuck waddling around home safe and sound. Win-win."
You gawked at him. Joking that you had yet to see any paternal instincts from him.
"I am actually great with children so long as their raised right. Like hell I'd let my kids turn out like these delinquents."
The two of you bantered back and forth while re-dressing. It was dark by the time you exited the school. Na was lighting a cigarette the minute he was past the schools threshold. You began to tell him goodnight where the two of you should naturally part ways but Hwajin caught you by the wrist, a confused expression thrown your way.
“Where do you think you're going? I'm not done with you yet," he said, cigarette hanging from his mouth. You were about to respond when he cut you off. "Round two will be so much better in my bed. You'll be lucky if You leave my place in time for work tomorrow. But we should probably feed you first. I gotta take care of my little nurse."
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until dawn - ljn
part I | part II
⤑ summary: basic number one rule of the museum is not to touch the art. but no one told jeno that falling for one of them isn’t allowed either.
⤑ pairing: jeno x female reader
⤑ word count: 14k
⤑ genre: fluff, humor, angst | broke architecture major!jeno, historical figure!reader, college!au
⤑ warnings: jaemin mentions onlyfans as a joke, references to actual historical figures (some try to flirt with jeno lol) and literature, explicit language
⤑ author’s note: wow, i’ve had this idea for almost two years! this one was inspired by one of my favorite childhood movies, night at the museum. it definitely required a lot of research and brainstorming, and finally i brought it to life! it was so fun to play around with the characters, and even if majority of them are real people, this is all still fiction.
i also wanna mention one of my moots, marge for enlightening me about her life as an architecture major.
⤑ taglist: @renjunniehome (dm me if you want to be added)
⤑ leave me some feedback, constructive criticism or hellos!
Dormitory rent was another thing to worry about aside from the inflated university tuition per semester. Although he’s lucky to have his parents backing him up already on it, paying the monthly rent for his dorm was the remaining objective on Jeno’s list.
Plus, money for food. The man was a heavy eater, following the whole “gym is life” mantra.
Splitting it already with two of his dorm mates turned best friends, Renjun and Jaemin, his plate felt lighter. But the question still lies: where on earth was he going to get the money?
He’s practically checked out every available part-timing job in university and anywhere near campus. Barista at the same café Jaemin works at, teaching assistant for an art school for kids, convenience store cashier, library assistant, all taken in a heartbeat. The burden of his friends paying his debt these past months took a toll on him, almost to the point he almost considered making an Onlyfans.
“Yah, just find something else! Part-timers are in demand right now!” Renjun intensely closed his laptop before his older friend gets any suggestive thoughts.
“I mean, you didn’t work out your body to look the way it is for nothing.” Jaemin pitched otherwise, lifting the front back up. “When do you want to start filming? Loads of chicks would dig a piece of you!”
The contradicting opinions of his friends were like the devil and angel debating on his shoulders. Useless, he gave this worry a rest and returned to drawing new plates. A common thing when you’re an architecture major. Those deadlines were nearing. Looks like he’ll pull another all-nighter again.
Good thing most of his classes were late in the morning until 6 pm.
As if someone from above heard his petition, Jeno saw a help wanted sign posted on the bulletin board outside of the university museum. He initially went there to document some artwork and architecture models from Greek and Roman times, further analyzing how they’re still apparent in modern buildings.
The sign explained the need for one part-timer from any college to cover the night shift of the museum due to the current night guard’s full semester absence. He only had to come in 3x a week, choosing his days since he was still a student. Even the pay was above average, considering that most part-timers never go beyond midnight. Jeno would, on the other hand, always staying for his projects or gaming with the boys. Drinking sometimes during late-night Fridays with his entire college crew.
The pay would leave him a load of extra cash for himself, thus he sent an application to the museum office right before he left. A week later, while he was out with the boys, he got a text from the office that they wanted to meet him again for a final interview first thing on Monday.
Perhaps it was having architecture as his course and a healthy physique that landed him the part-timer position. Mainly, the latter because guards required strong endurance and fighting skills when worse comes to worst. It would start at 9 pm until 6 am the following day, and there was a designated uniform of it too. Blue blazer with matching trousers, white dress top, and loafers.
Aside from the typical museum etiquette the head director instructed him about, there was an unofficial list of tips written on paper given from the night guard on leave when the director handed you over his box of office-related things.
Only read at the night guard office once you’re the remaining staff left.
He did as he was told like an obedient son, flipping the succeeding page.
To my temporary replacement,
This part-timing job is nothing regular than the other jobs. You’ll witness things as you’ve never imagined them to be, almost like witchcraft. You’ll be lost and maybe frightened, or that’s how I felt the first time because no one led me through it all those years ago. Lucky for you, I made this small guide on how to properly take care of the place that the other staff doesn’t know about.
Before you proceed, I request you take a 5-minute stroll around the lobby first to understand what I’m talking about. After such, go back to the office or somewhere quiet then browse through the guide as quickly as you could.
Art is timeless here, so they need to be taken care of.
Good luck!
Park Sanghoon
Night Guard on Leave
Nothing could’ve prepared Jeno for what’s to come once he unlocked the office door. They say that art brings so much color to our life, allowing us to feel all sorts of emotions in a glimpse. But no one ever interpreted art to be literally alive and walking in the halls.
Behold, random wax figures and marble sculptures that he’s seen in the past roamed the hallways, as well as the paintings were interacting with each other side by side. Even the standee of a puppy from the entrance played fetch with one of those sculptures. He swore he looked like Hermes the messenger god from his arrow headpiece and sandals.
It made more sense why the guard on leave explained his feelings during the first day because it resembled Jeno’s. But unlike that guard, Jeno sucked it up. No one ever does well on the first day, even if others say otherwise. The first day was a learning experience, so he collected his thoughts even though the goosebumps triggered his body during that one rotation.
There was an indoor garden, already locked by the day guard earlier. The only room without any art piece, where students lounge to study the plants or relax in nature.
The sculptures section ahead, showcasing various fictional figures specifically from Greek mythology, chattered away about family drama and beliefs. The sculptures of Hades and Zeus, according to their title plate, argued relentlessly about power while Athena always intervened by shouting or even throwing arrows or daggers to any of the lightbulbs there.
That was one rule in the guide, but Jeno didn’t know yet until he came inside the room and swerved the attention of the arguing duo.
“Well, what do we have here?” Zeus, in the center, straightened his posture on his throne to present himself in a more regal way. “Are you perhaps the temporary replacement of Sir Sanghoon?”
“Sir Sanghoon’s stand-in is rather good looking, don’t you think?” Hera mused, stepping down from her throne beside Zeus to take a closer look at the taller male. Her cold fingers trailed his jaw until his chest, where his heart was beating intensely. She even pinched his toned bicep, mouthing wow.
“Truly handsome you are, my dear. So full of life, please introduce yourself to us.”
While Jeno introduced himself to everyone in that room, he answered any sorts of questions they had for him too. From his age, educational background, hobbies, Aphrodite just had to ask him if he had a girlfriend because he was that handsome.
“Nope, I’m single. With my degree in architecture, the requirements are so heavy I can’t even try dating.”
Mentioning his degree excited the gods, telling him how their people created and designed all these temples to house them and perform rituals. They loved it so much. This was a copy-paste of what Jeno learned from his history classes, and for a first, he’s hearing the perspective of the Greek gods.
Mind-boggling that he hasn’t fully freaked out yet. That’s what Athena anticipated when Sanghoon told her about his short leave, putting her in charge of everyone for the meantime while the replacement settled down.
The college museum was built during the late 70s as a gift from one of the alumni. It was for the purpose to preserve history and educate college students outside the classroom. The Greek mythology exhibit was the oldest one, making Athena have more seniority. Over her stay, she’s seen every new guard lose their senses during the first night. Some not even returning for a second night. She got used to every outcome, and so far, only 8 people lasted after the first night. A couple of students in the 70s and 80s, Sanghoon in the 90s, and now Jeno was one of them.
“Jeno, aren’t you terrified by us? You just got a job in a museum that comes to life every night, and it’s not a normal thing.”
“Well, I’m still shaken up about it. But it’s my first night, and it’s when I learn everything about the place from head to toe. Plus, I really need the money.”
“Money for what? But you’re young, a student even!”
“Yes, I am. However, I do pay for the rent in my dorm. So, this job is like my first big responsibility, and I want to perform well.”
Athena commended his sense of authority, capable of leading himself. She noticed how well-spoken and poised he is, respecting and listening to everything the gods and goddesses said even if they were nonsense. She never liked to compromise with her power, taking a while to like Sanghoon back in the day. Though Jeno looked like a natural leader on his first night. If he could take care of himself well, he’s skilled to take care of the rest in the museum as well.
Plus she had full control on the nights he won’t be there, especially the weekend.
With his potential, Athena mentored him the entire night about the gist of the entire museum. Every upcoming leader needs an intelligent mentor, right? She was naturally gifted with worthy leadership skills, managing Jeno like her own child.
Athena explained how the museum came to life, which was through a royal golden plate from the Oriental room. It was a gift from a popular sorceress in China to an affluent family from the Han dynasty, who wished them a long life after she was saved from invaders due to them. The plate preserved over time, becoming an artifact. Its power remained immortal, mutating to bring life wherever it goes. In this case, the museum since its arrival in the late 70s as well.
“That’s why the Oriental room must be locked always so no one could touch or break the plate.”
After she ordered Jeno to lock the mentioned room, alongside the Foreign Art Exhibit Room which he checked out for his class, she led him to the best view of the entire museum. Center of the second floor, where stairs were on both sides. Jeno marveled at the vivacious atmosphere, witnessing actual art living, breathing, and enjoying themselves.
“Unreal, right?” She leaned in the railing, scanning through the chatty paintings.
Jeno also leaned down, deep in thought and wonder. “Absolutely, Athena. How come no one knows about this? Art coming to life? It’ll invite more students to the museum.”
“That goes against a golden rule as a night guard in this museum.” She replied bluntly. “The life that goes on inside this museum at night must remain a secret to the public.”
Jeno predicted this kind of response, having watched too many films where anything supernatural mustn’t be revealed. Although he liked the advantage of knowing something this powerful, he’d never abuse it.
Athena’s intellect was beyond the world, seamlessly reading Jeno’s expression and what he was thinking. He had good intentions even if he’s a bit mischievous. She needed to keep a keen eye on him, but for now, he needed to explore on his own.
“Anyways, Sanghoon still left out some other details. So if you have any questions, I’ll be at my exhibit trying to shut my father and my uncle up again.”
“Can you not use any weapons to do so?”
“Can’t make any promises, Jeno.” She slyly cracked her knuckles and neck as if she was fighting another battle.
Jeno was silently left with himself, finally browsing through Sanghoon’s guide while seated in one of the museum benches.
It consisted of 25 rules, wherein the first two rules consisted of locking up. One, for the doors and gates of the museum, so no art piece could escape. If they do, they will turn into dust when the sun is out according to Athena. Two, locking the Oriental and Foreign Art Rooms, which was already done.
Rule #5: Let Mochi the puppy from the lobby tag along with you; feed him treats if you have any.
On cue, the little guy barked from the corridor and raced to his side. Jeno carried him, babying him for a little and letting him lick his face a few times before putting him back down. He’s surely going to the pet store first thing in the morning with the museum allowance the director gave him.
Since he was on the second floor, he read and followed the rules that fit in before returning downstairs. On the other side of the floor were the wax figures exhibitions: one for prominent men in history while the other for prominent women. Well, more people to get acquainted with.
It’s the exchange of gasps and profanities he received when he chose the latter room. Seeing their faces, these were women he’s learned in school and online. Now in the (fake) flesh. Except for one girl he’s never heard of, unbothered in her corner sketching her life away in a sketchpad. But before he could check who she was, a suggestive touch on his arm distracted him.
“My, oh my, Hera wasn’t lying when she said that the new night guard was a fine specimen.” By her dark blue eyeshadow and eyeliner with the snake-like crown, Cleopatra studied him like he was one of the most renowned art pieces. Even patting his chest, abdomen, and arms with both her hand, Jeno caught a suggestive glint in her eyes and a smirk across her red lips.
Rule #13: Reject Cleopatra’s seductive advances at all costs.
“Goodness, Cleopatra. It’s only his first night, and you’re scaring him.” With her accent, round eyes, and a chic formal outfit, she carried a posh aura while unhesitatingly scolding the Queen of the Nile.
“Come on now, Diana. He’s stunning, who wouldn’t go after him?” If no one knew her, you’re not reading up on your world history. She’s said to have been a lovely and intelligent woman, gone so soon. Jeno definitely understood why after she detached Cleopatra’s raging hands off him.
Rule #14: Treat Princess Diana and Hera like your own parent.
“Your highness.” Jeno nodded at her out of respect, only making her chuckle uncontrollably.
“No need to address me like that, love. Now, come here.” She widened her arms for Jeno, hugging him amiably. He sensed her motherly warmth, accepting such a gesture. “You remind me so much of my youngest son, Harry. Welcome to the night shift of the museum, love.”
Similar to the Greek mythology exhibit, he introduced himself and responded to any questions that the women wax figures may have. Good for him, they weren’t crossing any borders and kept him at ease.
“A student like you working at night to pay rent?” Katherine Johnson, an African-American NASA mathematician whose calculations led to the success of a lot of famous spaceflights, cannot believe her ears. Students must only focus on school, nothing else. “What about your studies, boy?”
Rule #15: Engage in academic discussions with Katherine Johnson whenever you can.
“Most of my classes are in the afternoon, Miss Katherine. So I’ll sleep in the entire morning later and study during my breaks.”
“Mr. Jeno, what do you like to do outside of work?” Anne Frank, a German-Dutch teenager whose revolutionary diary that documented her life in hiding from the Nazis gained popularity worldwide after publication dreamily asked from her section of the exhibit. Her life was robbed of greatness merely because of her religion and war.
Rule #16: Bring delicious food or gifts to Anne Frank.
“Well, I like to bike with my friends, exercise, and draw whatever comes into mind!”
Everyone he’s met so far acquired pleasure in knowing about who he was and his passion for architecture, ridding the “freaking out” phase Athena assumed he had. Yet not everyone in this exhibit bothered to give him a shot.
Jeno’s attention from Anne talking about her crush towards Peter van Daan, a teenage boy who lived with her, switched to the section beside her, where an unacquainted figure was zealously sketching as if something was due to the following day. It reflected how he’d look when he’s cramming one of his plates due to first thing in the morning. While he properly excused himself, he quietly gazed at the way this woman scrunched her eyebrows when she erased something then drew it again. She was someone he’s never seen or heard before, reading the information plate in front of him about her.
(Y/N) (Y/L/N), Explorer and Author. (1854-1900)
Wealthy women in the Victorian Era only served one purpose in society: marry a man from a prestigious family, have his children and join whatever interests they have. However, for (Y/N), she wasn’t going to conform to those standards.
Born into the affluent house of (Y/L/N), she was the youngest of 8 children. She was said to be the kindest and sweetest sibling out of everyone, not capable of hurting anyone or anything. She said it herself that she can’t throw away a dying flower because it’s too painful. While 5 of her older brothers were sent to school, she stayed at home with her 2 older sisters Cecilia and Amelia where she learned how to play the piano and take voice lessons from impressive teachers. Due to the huge age gaps between them (12 and 8 respectively), she never felt close with them. She was only closest to the 6th and 7th siblings, her twin brothers Benjamin and Liam whom she only had a 2-year gap. She was also best friends with one of the scullery maids her age, Lily, because she found her amusing that than the boring rich girls her mother forced to interact with.
The moment it bothered her that she wanted to live a more meaningful life was when Amelia got married. She was 12 years old at the time, and it left her as the last unwed daughter in the family. Badly did she want to revolt, which she gradually did. Instead of practicing piano, she’d sneak in to read every book in her father’s office. She secretly studied the notes of her older brothers from school and even dressed as a boy numerously thanks to Benjamin and Liam to join their classes or field trips.
This was her routine up until the age of 18 when she stomped her foot down and expressed to her parents that she wasn’t going to let Victorian society dictate her. The night before her parents were bound to send her to her great aunt’s home down South to sort her out, she successfully snuck out her house thanks to Lily, Benjamin, and Liam. It’s another good thing that she saved a lot of money for that moment.
Off she went across Europe first, then sailed to America and even parts of Asia. Initially under the name Lilibe, coined from picking the first two letters of her brothers and best friend, she documented her days and nights through her journals and sketches. Over time, she sent them to her brothers for publication. It started the franchise, “The Adventures of the Young and Free Lilibe”. There are 10 books under it.
She learned French, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean by herself as she made friends from those places. It was rare of someone like her to be fluent in Oriental languages, surprising locals every time she spoke to them. She was the only explorer to vividly describe life in different Asian lands in English, talking about their history and culture. With her accurate drawings of diverse citizens and their daily lives, it educated a lot of those living back home in Europe about them rather than speaking lowly of them.
In Seoul did she stayed the longest until her death from pneumonia at the young age of 46.
In her posthumous work, Finding Me, did she reveal her real identity, dedicating it to her parents whom she apologized and expressed her love for them despite everything that occurred between them. She talked about the last years of her life in Seoul, how locals were so nice and inviting to her, and how she adopted kids instead of having her own through the years.
“It’s not because I never found love in men. It’s more like I found love in doing things I’m passionate about. Traveling, learning new cultures, it outweighed the human need of romance.”
Due to her thrill in taking risks and embarking on wondrous adventures, it brought inspiration to a lot of young girls pressured to marry at that time to pursue what they really want.
A remarkable background you had, Jeno contemplated. How come no one discussed her in his classes?
You kept brushing the bangs of your hair back as it fell repeatedly. But you got irritated instantly because it sabotaged your drive, you brought out a hairpin from her desk and attached it on both sides. But when you shifted your angle of focus, the corner of your eye locked with Jeno’s attentive gaze.
He didn’t flinch, even he should’ve. He wasn’t one to linger his look on anyone’s physical appearances, but your story and the passion on your face as you sketched mesmerized him. He was charmed, to say the least.
“Uhm, hello there?” You broke the silence due to your uneasiness about it. What’s his deal?
Jeno bowed, reintroducing himself to you. As soon as his presence settled in the room when Cleopatra attempted to hit on him, you could’ve cared less. Though this man was a first for you, a first in a long time as all guards would feel intimidated by you during the first night. Even your sharp tongue didn’t faze him. “Staring is rude, sir. Didn’t your mother teach you manners?”
“She did,” He wandered through the exterior of your section, by the fence that separated you and him. Not breaking eye contact, his eyes turned into moon crescents as he smirked with trouble. “Though she also told me to appreciate the art too.”
Snorts noisily exhaled from Cleopatra, who took the center section of the exhibit, succeeded by Princess Diana’s whispered gasps and Katherine’s side-eyeing Anne beside her while she taught her math. That was an odd way a guard conversed with you, but Jeno was merely doing what the rules stated. Partly, he was impressed with his cheesy pick-up line, partly embarrassed because he’s never spoken like this to anyone.
Rule #17: Act playfully around (Y/N) (Y/L/N) to break the tension; she’s a harsh one.
There was irony between the information he read about your life versus the wax model. Even when you faced sexism and ran away according to your history, never were you impolite to anyone in your life. You couldn’t even kill a lurking fly when it roams around your food! It showed Jeno a possibility that as much as you’re just a wax version of someone famous in the past, maybe the external environment around you had a heavy influence too.
“You fool!” His confidence exasperated you, urging you to persistently throw balls of paper with your failed sketches at him. No one dared to talk to you like that, most especially a night guard. “Take that for your comment!”
If you thought he’d scram away and act repentant, you were proven wrong. His reflexes were parallel to a spider, capturing every single paper ball without fail. Up and down his body went, one arm held on to them and no more were left on your part. Never a single defeat during the first meeting in years, but that seemed to alter now.
“Give up already, Ms. (Y/L/N)?” Jeno remarked vibrantly as he discarded your mess in the trash bin behind him. If he managed to get everyone to like him tonight, he wanted to make sure to have you onboard too.
Whatever agenda he had, you weren’t up for it. You’d treat him the same way you usually treated Sanghoon for the past 20 something years: cold and ignorant. From your stool, you left your comfortable position to come face to face with this man. He better be grateful for that barrier in between you, or else you would’ve caused mayhem.
“Never in your wildest dreams, Mr. Lee.” Your mouth gave a half-smile, clenching on the bars to liberate your annoyance. Before you could fend back, that’s when Princess Diana intervened between your heated dialogue.
“Oh heavens, children!” She stood by the barrier, mostly to protect the newbie Jeno with her body. “(Y/N), he just wanted to know you. Must you be so cross?”
This Princess Diana embodied all the traits the real one had: soft-spoken, intelligent, and protective. She’s gotten so used to your gradual temper, staying on standby whenever anyone tried to mess with you. Even if it was harmless, you could get so mean!
“Diana, he was mocking me! Saying such a sleazy phrase as if to amuse me, ha! Not a chance, I hate people like that.”
“Not us women though; you just despise men in general.”
“And you’re absolutely right!” With a smug smile, you greedily rejoiced. “Anyways, escort this disgrace out. I’m not in the mood to get angry when I have a lot of inspiration on mind right now.”
While you resumed your sketching to let go of that extra steam, Jeno was left with Diana who apologized on your behalf. Your pride was too high to do that, and as the motherly figure among them, she always took care of things in your exhibit.
“I’m so sorry for that, Jeno. She’s not really like this, but I know how much you tried your best. It was quite a fresh spectacle honestly.”
Whatever was responsible for your abrasiveness, Jeno yearned to know. He couldn’t understand who you were yet even knowing your life story. All he wanted was to get along with everyone. It was the key to successfully maintain his job for the next 6 months.
“How can I make her come around then?”
A demanding question that no one had a solid answer to. Diana recalled how much Sanghoon didn’t let your dislike for him get to him, maintaining a respectful boundary in between each other after his past attempts. Though with Jeno, observing how he riled you up and your focus entirely on him, she hasn’t seen anything like it since the 80s.
There was something in Jeno that may just get you to warm up and return to your kind nature.
“Aside from acting playful, as Sanghoon recommended, I can think of two ways, love.” By the doors of her exhibit, where Jeno was already waltzing the corridor to visit other rooms, she suggested smartly. “One, argue back to her opinions. She hates whenever anyone tries to get her way, but boy, you’re just as wise as her. No one was brave enough to peeve on her until you came.”
“How about the second way?”
“Do your research, love. Aside from libraries, you have those small technology devices that allow you to search up anything.” She tousled Jeno’s brown locks as if it were her actual son’s. Some habits just don’t die when you do.
“Brush up on your history, Jeno. Not only will it help you with (Y/N), but it’ll serve purposefully with the other art pieces here.”
Boy, he was ready to crash in his bed for a few hours after all those interactions. His introverted nature required to be revitalized.
Towards the last hours of his shift, the art pieces who’ve strolled in the first floor lessened his plate by not leaving any major clutter behind. As if she listened to him, Athena didn’t break any lightbulbs too.
His main highlight would be meeting the men of the historical male section, who flaunted a more humorous ambiance. Freddie Mercury from Queen insisted he drink a glass of his wine and to bring more wine next time, which he denied since it would against Sanghoon’s rules. King Sejong the Great and Martin Luther King Jr. argued back and forth over the most random things (pineapple on pizza specifically), while Steve Jobs mediated whenever one crossed the line. Meanwhile, William Shakespeare was too preoccupied in his writing and speaking to himself about his books, wondering how to improve them.
During one of his breaks today, he multitasked drawing a new plate with his research on every art piece to know them better. He started with the exhibit of sculptures of the Greek gods and goddesses, which were Zeus, Hera, Hades, Athena, Hermes, Aphrodite, Poseidon, Artemis, Dionysus, and Circe. They weren’t the complete roster because the rest were in other museums across the globe, as said by Athena before sunrise. The majority of them he knew what they were in charge of, but the rest were foggy to his knowledge. Typing away and jotting notes down, he started downloading his favorite jazz songs too.
Rule # 4: Play jazz music to the paintings on the first floor so they can relax and dance within their frames.
Circe is a minor goddess, the daughter of the sun god Helios. She’s recognized for her versatility in incantations and herbs, capable of transforming people into animals. From Jeno’s perspective, she’s mostly within her space with her journals and magic wand, trying new spells or combinations of herbs. For the latter, he had to keep a closer eye on.
Rule #9: Don’t let Circe, god of potions, into the Oriental Room to get plants and herbs.
He discovered that Dionysus is the god of wine, happiness, and theatre. That’s why every god in the exhibit had full wine glasses during their gathering. It also added up why Freddie Mercury always comes to him when his bottles run empty, though he mustn’t go overboard.
Rule #18: Make sure Freddie Mercury doesn’t get too drunk from the wine of Dionysus; he might make numerous scenes if he does.
After his lone studying session, he took a short trip to the pet and convenience stores to buy food. He got a dumbfounded look from Jaemin back in the dorm room, who was studying for one of his quizzes in Biology in a couple of hours.
“Woah what’s with this stash? Is it for yourself or something?”
“The museum surprisingly has a lot of tasks needed to be done at night. And no, not from my wallet but the allowance they gave me before you get a heart attack.” Jeno plopped on his solo bed, covering his face with a pillow.
“Thank God.” A relaxed sigh escaped Jaemin’s lips, taking back his balled-up fists meant for his roommate. “I think I would’ve stormed that boring museum if they made your broke ass spend a cent.”
“Boring?” Jeno removed the cushion hastily, eyeing his busy and coffee-high roommate. The scent of black coffee from his mug spread in the room, assuming that this upcoming test was testing his roommate’s patience again.
Not even trying to look at Jeno while reviewing his handwritten notes, Jaemin continued giving his opinion. “Museum culture is dead, Jeno. Not everyone has the time to roam around one, plus people can always look up the artifacts online these days.”
People were entitled to their own opinions on numerous things, though Jeno begged to differ with his roommate’s. Especially after witnessing the magic of the night shift, you shouldn’t merely judge a book by its cover. In this case, you shouldn’t judge an artwork or art piece merely on its history and legacy.
Maybe because his roommate was in the science department, he thought this way. A lot of art students regularly visit the museum both for fun and for their classes, and Jeno was one of them. Though he was too sleepy to explain his side, he let it slide for now and snoozed throughout the late afternoon.
An hour before the start of his shift, Jeno promenaded the emptying museum to inspect anything else he might’ve missed out on from last night. There were two areas according to his rotation, both in the first floor.
One was the Diorama Room. Divided into 4 sections, highlighting some of the well-known ancient civilizations in world history. Ancient Egypt and Ancient China to your left, Ancient Rome and Ancient Maya to your right. They acted as if they were the actual people during those times, giving Jeno a laugh when they cracked jokes in between. Such tiny figures, yet the rule for them said otherwise.
Rule # 7: The small figurines in the Diorama Room are feisty, so make sure they don’t fight with one another again.
The remaining room left was the Theater Room. He’s never been here, though his art friends have for film festivals held by the university.
The interior of it was set to look like an actual cinema place you’d see in a mall. There was a mini lobby with a few posters of iconic films over the years. Singin’ in the Rain, Back to the Future, Titanic, those were some framed and hung on the wall. There were two other doors there: one leading to the chairs and the other where the movie projector was. The latter room was pretty riveting, wherein you can choose to watch old short films through an 88mm film projector or switch to a cd player for the newer releases.
Back to those posters, they weren’t an exception to the magic and a simple rule was left for Jeno to do.
Rule # 10: Chatter with the movie posters in the lobby of the Theater Room; they love meeting new faces.
Since there wasn’t anyone checking out the Art Rooms on the second floor, he closed them. Though as he was about to lock the Oriental Room, the ravishing plants around the royal plant appealed his interest. Said to hold magical properties from his research, Jeno was reminded of another rule to keep in mind for later.
Rule # 3: The fake flowers in the Oriental Room come to life too at night, so when no one is lurking, water it diligently.
Instead of lounging at Sanghoon’s office first, he brought his important items to the front desk of the lobby and continued sketching his plate. He wanted to watch the art come back alive with his two eyes. Usually, he’d have coffee when he does his work, but due to another crucial rule in the guide, he’d rather not take the risk.
Rule # 6: The lobby room can get rowdy, so keep any drinks away from important items.
On the dot, the cries and yawns from the art pieces around him reverberated. Closing his sketchpad, his night guard mode was on. Connecting his laptop on the aux cord of the museum speakers, he tapped play on his playlist of jazz music that’ll last for the entire shift duration. As the first notes flooded the entire vicinity, sounds of joy left the lips of each painting. Some were humming, dancing, and even singing along.
“You can never go wrong with Frank Sinatra!”
“This Jeno lad really did the heavens’ work quick!”
Having the sense of accomplishment on his sleeve, the small barks of his fluffy pal reached closer to him. As he kneeled to find him, he was only taken by surprise as Mochi excitedly jumped on him. Tumbling over, Jeno chuckled innocently as Mochi licked his face numerously. This puppy was friendly, easily liking everyone at first sight. He wasn’t as choosy like Daegal, the puppy of his friend Chenle studying Business Management.
Once he composed himself and cradling the dog like his own, he fed him a dog treat from the desk.
“Good boy, Mochi!” He rubbed his fur while the puppy happily munched on it, ready to fulfill more of his duties.
He skipped the Greek mythology exhibit since Athena was doing a good job not letting anyone go overboard with their powers, though he’ll check in again in a few hours. He met the posters of the theater room, who were celebrities he grew up watching on tv. Sanghoon was right; they were the kinder group in the entire museum because they were more laidback.
On to the second floor, all the female wax figures lounged by the male section due to another lecture from Shakespeare. Although the guide informed him that most of the time it could get boring, this lecture was more stimulating. On his platform, he elaborated with conviction the lines of one of his famous books, Romeo and Juliet. A must-read book back in his high school days, there’s no way Jeno could’ve missed that out.
From the looks of it, Jeno perceived that Shakespeare was performing spoken word poetry due to him reading only Romeo’s lines while Cleopatra read Juliet’s beside him. This kind of show was one of the sources of entertainment to these figures, so Jeno leaned by the side of the door to listen. After all, the famous author of it was a few feet away. Cleopatra channeled such a naïve character to her ability, absentmindedly saying as she clutched her chest.
“O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I'll no longer be a Capulet.”
“Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?”
“'Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What's in a name? That which we call a rose-”
The flow of an engaged Cleopatra was abrupted by the loud yell from Shakespeare in front, specifically to an amused Jeno. “Jeno, my boy! Welcome back!”
Such an announcement diverted everyone’s attention to the back, some running to Jeno to give their respective greetings. It’s rare for everyone to feel at ease with a new guard, taking them weeks to approach them due to the intimidation. Though Jeno’s bright presence felt welcoming, so they accepted it. Perhaps it’s because of his youth, it reminded them of theirs too.
Shakespeare highly requested (or forced) Jeno to take his part as Romeo, intrigued to watch someone younger read his lines. Since most of the male wax figures were aged, it never satisfied Shakespeare so he jumped on this opportunity as quickly as he could. With the roaring cheers from the other figures, Jeno might as well give it a try. It wasn’t like his friends were here to clown him like they usually would if he did something humiliating.
Jeno shockingly liked this activity as he wasn’t much of a performer on stage, but someone who does the behind-the-scenes of it. He realized as he read the lines from the book Shakespeare asked him to follow along with why people held university-wide spoken word shows a few times per semester. He was no actor, but it’s delightful to have tried it at least once in his life.
“O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?” As if the edge of the platform was the balcony of Juliet (or Cleopatra rather), he knelt as he ardently spoke his lines. He’s emphasizing this rush of uncontrollable desire for her, rambling whatever he would do to get the girl.
“What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?” Cleopatra questioned from her chair, inching closer to the young boy. Even outside character will she attempt to charm Jeno, but Jeno was quick to catch it and kept his distance.
“The exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine.”
“I gave thee mine before thou didst request it, and yet I would it were to give again.”
“Wouldst thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love?”
“But to be frank, and give it thee again. And yet I wish but for the thing I have. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep. The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.”
Everyone was condensed by their top-notch acting, as if this was the actual play unfolding before them. Jeno wasn’t so sure how he got himself in character without preparation, yet he felt what his character felt. He comprehended the material a lot better now than when he was still in high school.
However, there was always that one killjoy to ruin the heartfelt mood.
“How dumb is it to say that you’re in love after the first glance?” You opposed, putting the spotlight on you. This book was said to be a classic in literature, but as you matured physically and mentally, you could no longer agree with it. “Isn’t love the same thing that killed Romeo and Juliet in the end?”
Remembering what Princess Diana told him, he wasn’t going to let this pass. He wanted to give a piece of his mind too, caring less if the show must be paused. “Love is an emotion we don’t ask to feel. It’ll come to us when we least expect it, even when the timing of it can be crucial.”
“Of all the people Juliet could’ve gone for, it just had to be the enemy.” In all the years you’ve been brought to life, no one dared to test your opinions because they were aware of your intelligence, from the streets to the books. When someone bark, you’d bite back. Hard. “With all due respect, I love your works, Shakespeare. Yet the fate you’ve given these two at a young age was grave, could’ve you given them a better outcome or another character to love instead?”
“Giving them extra characters to love won’t address the horrific life fact that love can be dangerous. Regardless of what status you’re in, you can’t stop the attraction towards someone. The heart wants what it wants.” Jeno pressed his hand to his chest, pumping it a bit. Unknown to you and him, the audience found more entertainment in your argument. Anne, who was munching on the popcorn Jeno gave her earlier, passed the snack to Katherine who just couldn’t stop watching.
If this man wanted a challenge, you’re all ears. Who was he to compete with you? Was he not intelligent to know who you are?
“So are you insinuating that we just go with the flow? Be a slave to our emotions too and let them dictate our next motives?”
“Slave is such a strong word to use, (Y/N). But it’s not like we can’t choose who want to love because we actually can. In this case, Romeo chose Juliet and vice versa.”
“But what happens if the person you choose doesn’t choose you in return?”
“At least you tried your best, right? It’ll hurt like hell though, but it won’t last forever.” From his kneeling position, Jeno strutted his way with confidence. Trying not to let it mess with you, your extreme stare at him as if they’ll shoot lasers. Inches away from you, Jeno declared. “Love always has risks, that’s a given. Romeo and Juliet still tried and followed their hearts despite the downfall. But it was a needed downfall to get the message across.”
“No one would be that foolish to risk their lives for love though, right? Life is so precious, why would they do such a thing?”
“Even if they knew what their lives were without each other, they still preferred living a life where they were both in the picture. Therefore, they tried all they could that time because the regret of not doing anything at all carries a heavier burden.”
Whenever anyone argued with you, their debating points they spat back would further piss you off because most of the time, it never made sense. Back when this rude man told you to go home and be a wife in your earlier years of exploring, you civilly told him to fuck off, kicking his balls because he cornered you in an alley. For the first time, a man who tried to challenge you actually made sense. Was it because he lived in a modern time, where minds were more open? Because of the amount of sexism you faced in the past, you’ve turned a blind eye to the current period.
But your high pride maintained, not submitting into anything he said. “I still think it’s stupid to risk your life for love. There’s no such thing as having only one true love anyways, and you have to be alive to see it.”
“Fair point, but again, the feeling of regret and carrying it your entire life doesn’t fade easily. It’ll make you reflect on the what-ifs, and it’s heart-wrenching.” Jeno digressed, walking around you in circles. He’s intentionally trying to drive you mad, but he could care less. He wanted someone to put you in your place and open your mindset. “The question stands: would you rather try and go for it even knowing its risks or regret not even trying for the rest of your existence? Quite ironic for me to ask you that, don’t you think?”
Past the information board, Jeno researched more of your life history online. Your whole life was grounded on risks, from breaking the standards of your society, leaving your family and home country, to fending yourself from disrespectful men. Rather than living the original life expected from you, you chose not to because it didn’t make you happy. Such a risktaker he knew you are, but with the topic of love, he wondered why you were on a fence with it. Though some records stated you’ve had rendezvouses with a few men in your journeys, love was never in the equation. The single life was what you chose and you were more than satisfied, plus your adopted kids filled that supposed void anyways.
This man may have studied your history, but so much he still doesn’t know. Information that never made the books because you chose not to write or tell anyone about it. Aside from the discomfort growing in your chest, everyone else felt the awkward tension when you were lost for words.
Never been defeated in an argument, until tonight. Your mind lost its drive and willpower.
“Touché, Lee Jeno.” Indeed, his name you’re acquainted with. Numerously passed around in your exhibit, mostly from the lips of Cleopatra, who’d fantasize all the graphic things she would do to him. Too much information, least of your interest. “Please excuse me. I’d like to work on my sketches to ease my mind.”
As you quietly exited the room, an all too familiar sculpture leaned against the railings overseeing one side of the museum. Just like you, she hated accepting defeat or compromises. She always rooted for you to win. With a faint chuckle, “Facing a loss for the first time, I see.”
“Don’t even lecture me about it, Athena. I’m still fired up, and I need to relax.”
“Jeno is a different breed, isn’t he?” She stuck to your side, strolling wherever your feet led you.
“Different as in he’s a man? Yes. What else is there to it?”
“Men these days aren’t as trashy as those back in the day though. Shouldn’t you give him a chance?”
“Last time I did, it destroyed my heart. I’m not allowing myself to let men in even as a friend, Athena.”
She knew exactly what you were referring to, not touching on it further. No way will you let heartbreak or disappointment from men bother you. Even Sanghoon’s sweet company took a while to tolerate. You really needed to sketch this out on your pad right now, excusing yourself from Athena’s presence. Isolation wasn’t new to you; it’s what’s protecting your entire being. Immortal as you are, you had to recover from the past pain so the next decades won’t feel as brash.
You hoped to return to your old self when you were a fresh new figure in the 70s. So naïve, only proud of your accomplishments, and purely happy.
While Jeno continued to finish his scene in respect to Shakespeare, he received a standing ovation for his mini-show. Cleopatra didn’t expect such talent from him, growing fonder of the younger male. Whether she seduces him or not, he was never afraid to try new things and she liked that about him.
“Bravo, love!” Princess Diana praised, clapping at him.
Although Jeno appreciated all this positive attention, his thoughts bounced back to your and your stance on love. The debate earlier was just out of being playful, interested to hear your opinions. Though, he’s worried that he might’ve offended you. It may have been time to finally witness something like that, but then again, he was sure he touched something personal to you. No matter how you tried to fight it off, your eyes can’t lie. Staring down at him, there was pain beneath it. Your eyebrows scrunched to the center, thinking deeply yet remained utterly speechless.
A win he didn’t feel good about.
“It’s time she encountered something new in the years she’s been here. Give her some space tonight, then try again to reach out to her. Kindly this time; I’m not in the mood for another brawl that could end up like the Greek gods’ past fights downstairs.”
These clever words shared by Katherine loitered his mind for the rest of the night, eventually going back to finishing his current plate since everyone was behaving well. As great it is to get the approval of the majority, he tried brainstorming ways to make you like him too.
He understood the whole “men are trash” concept in today’s modern society, but if he could prove it wrong to at least one person, it would be you. Whatever is holding you back, he only hoped that you’d let it go. Questionably unsure as to why he was so persevering, he concluded that it was so he could perform his job better as the night guard. Set higher standards than Sanghoon even.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Weeks passed, and his attempts continued to be unsuccessful.
The capability for you to ignore his efforts remained strong, whether he was pestering you over small things or debating with you again about anything. Life, books, morals, the two of you always head butt each other. Anything good he did, you searched for a flaw in it. Whatever acts he’s tried and continued trying, not one flinch from you ever.
Even if that’s his state with you, his job no longer felt stressful nor strenuous. He’d try to sleep more on days he was off-duty. Although the fatigue of staying beyond his usual sleeping time was inevitable, he compromised to take a nap lasting an hour or two when the art pieces weren’t acting frisky.
Plus, there have been multiple times they adapted to any alterations so his physical well-being wouldn’t fall sick. Per order of Princess Diana and Hera, who by instinct became his motherly figures here, only wanting what’s best for the kids.
He became accustomed to everything that went on at night, discovering things on his own without Sanghoon’s guide. Anne talked about how much she missed biking in her neighborhood, so one night, Jeno snuck his bike inside and let her use it around the first floor. With proper monitoring so none of the paintings would be unbothered or pieces wouldn’t tumble.
Hermes the messenger god was fluent in every language possible, so every so often, Jeno would freely speak to him in Korean because sometimes he felt he could explode by the amount of English he used every night. Bilingual things, you know. He knew you were multilingual too, but for obvious reasons, he couldn’t converse with you.
Because Jeno was heavily favored, that should’ve been enough to push through his night shifts before the end of the semester. In addition to that, the hourly rate was above the average of whatever Jaemin or Renjun was earning. For the past 2 months, Jeno paid upfront first, even paying back all his debts. It almost made Renjun want to switch jobs with him.
“Trust me, Renjun. You don’t want it, being the lowkey scaredy cat you are.”
Work no longer felt like work, and that’s what everyone aspired to feel. Nevertheless, he tended to worry over you mid-shift, glancing at you from his side view. Sketching, reading, and writing were your default actions. No matter how many times he said to himself not to let your dislike for him affect him, it’d always backfire.
Why were you so cold?
What made you lose your fire from all the research he did about your lively personality?
When morning arrived and he gathered his stuff, you’d be the last thing he’ll check on. Frozen in your standing pose, smiling as you held a book and a pencil, he detected how fake it was. Bystanders would only assume your happiness was from your achievements, though Jeno’s gut firmly pried that something grand overpowered that happiness. And definitely, not in a good way.
Out of all the art pieces, he investigated on you the most. Skimming through every material in the library, endless searching on the net, even asking professors from the History department thanks to Renjun, he did whatever he could. People may already think he was obsessed with who you are, but only little did they know.
Another plate was done and submitted, and he promised himself to look you up one last time before surrendering. For someone who’s rarely given up on a challenge, this one was really out of his control. Maybe he should follow Sanghoon’s footsteps now.
You lived centuries before him, and there’s limited material of you left. Rather than learning of your adventures again, he dug through what things you liked over your life. Maybe by giving one of them, it’ll lessen the tension from a 100 to 99. Maybe you preferred gifts over words, he’ll never know until he tried.
Boom.
According to one of your journal entries, there’s a fond liking you’ve acquired for lavender roses from Benjamin and Liam when they visited you in Paris in secret because of how much you missed them. It went both ways, praying your family ties could be recovered.
It’s a good thing he needed to refill his stock of items for the art pieces so he could pass by the flower store a few blocks away from his dorm. That night, without further words, he graciously offered you a fresh lavender rose in between your new sketching session.
“I may not know exactly why you’re spiritless around me, but with this rose, I hope we could work something out.”
Your frigid face of disdain, keeping your chin high and squinting your eyes with judgment, began to crumble down. Of all things as a peace offering, he gave you that? Then again, it’s not like he knew that an item you liked so much became something you’ve grown to hate and why so. No history books could teach him that.
Vulnerability was a normal thing, yet feared by many. Once one uncovered your weak spot, they could harm you. You still couldn’t trust Jeno fully, not willing to show your helplessness nor were you ever going to tell him. Hidden from his knowledge, everyone else including Sanghoon were familiarized as to why this kind of flower tormented you.
You sprinted like thunder out the exhibit room to wherever it’s private to control your senses. You may not have a physical heart, but your emotions were just as actual as a human’s. You needed to regulate your panting breath. In the past decades, you’ve not shed a singular tear but the cycle broke when they streamed out your miserable eyes like a flowing river. Quiet sobs, an empty corner near the fire exit was where your wobbly legs faltered, the painful memories of the past replayed in your head. Once beautiful, but now an agonizing reminder of what could’ve been.
Katherine, Cleopatra, and Anne were swift on their feet to hunt you down, anxious of what you may do next. Seeing or the mention of these flowers still affected you despairingly. Sanghoon must’ve forgotten to write them down, or perhaps he didn’t know either about this fact during all the years he’s worked there.
It’s one of the biggest secrets of his museum. By the clueless face Jeno had with his eyebrows raised, mouth, and small eyes slightly open, he repeatedly asked what he did wrong and adding that he never meant to harm you. Indeed, they knew that yet what occurred involved a secret in the list of museum secrets. Confidential only between art pieces according to Athena, none of the male wax figures spoke a word, only pitying the boy.
“I wasn’t here yet that time, but they said that it was once beautiful, but now it’s a rough period.” With hesitation, Princess Diana chose to reveal it to rid Jeno’s misery. She didn’t mind having to argue about it with Athena later on, as this may further affect the two of you later on.
“A long time ago in the early ‘80s, there was a night guard around your age named Junmyeon. Also, a college student, trying to make ends meet. He did it for 3 years until he graduated. Though within his stay, not only was he such a delight to everyone, he broke a golden rule in the guide. I believe you do know the guide much more now, Jeno?”
“Yes, I do, Princess Diana. Memorized it even, but which one specifically?” Jeno’s desperate eyes pleaded, only hoping for the best and to fix what he messed up.
“You can form friendships with the art pieces, but nothing more.” Princess Diana replied bitterly. “Junmyeon was an aspiring painter, a different path from his business-oriented family. He was seen as the black sheep. She resonated with him, sharing the burden and lifting it by doing whatever fun they could in the museum. In time, they both fell in love with each other; they were each other’s first loves.”
“Why must something beautiful like love be broken? It’s not like you can control it. That golden rule makes no sense.”
“It does, unfortunately. Wax figures like me cannot age, while humans like you can. None of them could accept the reality, always pushing it away. Until Junmyeon’s last week in university, he broke it off with her unexpectedly. From there, (Y/N) was heartbroken for decades. With heartbreak, giving the cold shoulder and bitterness followed. Then with the lavender rose you gave that she used to love became a flower that she associated with Junmyeon too because he gave her one almost every night for those past 3 years.”
Things finally added up, and the guilt in Jeno’s gut expanded. His major lightbulb moment was a major failure.
“Has Junmyeon ever returned to try and win her back?”
“Well, there was one time he did come back for an art exhibition for his paintings in the 2000s. I was already here, then he had a woman around his shoulder with an adolescent boy holding his hand. He roamed around our exhibit and kept gawking at (Y/N). We may be asleep, but we remember the conversations exchanged in the room. So, his son then asked him if he knew who she was.”
“What did he respond?” Jeno attentively listened, on the edge of such a hurtful tale.
“He knew her name, praising her for historical achievements. However, nothing as a former friend or lover. From what I predict, he ingested one of Circe’s potions.”
“But I thought Circe isn’t allowed to make potions for actual consumption. She’s not even allowed to enter the Oriental Art Room.” Jeno pointed out, overwhelmed at the puzzling past. Princess Diana was mindful that she had to stop spreading too much information, so she had to end her discussion with the lost boy.
“There are a lot of secrets about this museum, Jeno. Unfortunately, I cannot reveal to you to protect our peace.”
With due respect, Jeno quit his follow-up questions and concerns. The only thing he wished to do was mend his relationship with you. As vague as to where you even stood in the first place, he unintentionally crossed a line due to his selfish intention to befriend you.
“What can I do now, Princess Diana? You know I’d never push her buttons like that, even if I’m a whimsical person.”
“Oh, my boy.” Princess Diana soothed, holding both her hand on his sweaty palm and cupping his cheek. “For the meantime, give her space. No taunting for a while, and just observe her from a distance. Though do not fret the slightest; I’m sure she’ll be okay again.”
During that interval, you were hunched on the wall, bawling and weeping like the wound was brand new again. While Katherine and Anne stood by your side, on the lookout for anyone who’d be spying on you, Cleopatra knelt in front of you as your infinite tears gushed down.
“My dear,” She tried to wipe some of them while holding your hand. “It’s been years, and Jeno didn’t know a single thing. He didn’t mean to do it.”
“I don’t care, Cleopatra! He should’ve stopped trying to socialize with me because I won’t ever live down my experience with Junmyeon.”
“As if crying like this will bring Junmyeon back to your life,” Cleopatra exclaimed, holding in her temper. Acquainted with heartbreak, it’s awful that it changed you entirely, but you should’ve found a way to heal. Throughout your attitude change, it’s mostly you in pain, not those you inflict it to. “My dear, I love you a lot. But this Jeno boy is different, and you know it.”
“He’s still a nightguard, for Christ’s sake, Cleopatra.”
“You shouldn’t generalize that all night guards are bad just because of one encounter that occurred at the wrong time.” Brushing some strands stuck by your wet visage, she professed to you bluntly. “You’re never going to know how good Jeno is unless you slowly open up again, (Y/N). Not forcing you the slightest, but healing started once you’ve acknowledged the past and move on from it.”
“But I’m scared, Cleopatra.” You restlessly admitted, hunching even more against the wall. Your poor, metaphorical heart could only take so much. You barely expressed sorrow towards others as you always held a strong exterior, only letting it out alone. Not holding back anymore, Cleopatra brought you in for a hug. The last time she did that was the first night after Junmyeon left, calming your intensified emotions so you wouldn’t do anything dumb that night. No violence, just pure sorrow.
“My dear, it’s alright.” She whispered while stroking your back upwards. “But you’re a risktaker; that’s how people remember you. Now, you must challenge yourself to move on from things that didn’t work out. Because once you do, it’ll put your heart and mind at ease.”
“Do you think I’ll be okay again?”
“Yes, you will be, my dear. You are not alone, and never will be.”
Acting like the dutiful son he always was, Jeno distanced from you.
He still cracked jokes, chatted with the art pieces, and followed the rules, yet never did he utter anything to you. You’ve proudly anticipated it since day one, not wanting him up in your business or teasing you ever. But this time, it felt odd.
On nights he didn’t report, you’ve unconsciously wondered what he may have been up to. A job like this at his age was just as Sanghoon once said: nothing in the regular.
Was he with his friends?
Was he resting well?
From the moment you chose to let go of your limitations and old thoughts, it included your grudge against past guards. Asking for forgiveness to Sanghoon when he returns was on the top of your list, however, that’ll take a while to happen. In the start, you’re baffled as to why he no longer picked on you like every night he’s been present. Somehow, it became a habit you’ve gotten used to, having so many comebacks planned to fend yourself. But you didn’t want to concede to it, maintaining what was left of your pride since that breakdown.
While on the subject, you suspected if anyone told him anything that night because that also indicated the last time he reached out to you. By anything, it would be your unwritten past with Junmyeon. A part of yourself in the museum that you didn’t want to disperse like rapid-fire again. It would be the last thing you wanted Jeno to know.
To your misfortune, Princess Diana came clean due to your growing concern over it. Although your attitude changed and people got used to it, you could only blame yourself that you were responsible for Jeno’s change.
“All he wanted was to understand and enlighten us with his likable presence. Then with you, you were his challenge because of your high walls. Out of everyone, he tried to learn everything about you. From my observation, whenever he has a goal, he’s determined to achieve it.”
“But I’m trying to be better now, Diana. Why did he stop?”
“He may have determination, but he knows where the boundaries lie.” Princess Diana patted the side of your arm, giving you a half-grin. “It hurt him when he hurt you, even if it was accidental. So he opted to give you space; that way, you could catch a breather and he wouldn’t harm you anymore. It was what you wanted from the start anyways, right?”
A hard pill to swallow, though it was a fact. It’s just that now, you’re slowly willing to release yourself from the dark. It’s been decades, and more to come. Nothing can move on unless you do.
“Where is he, Princess Diana?”
Just as she predicted right on the edge, Diana completed the grin on her face and led you to the entrance of your exhibit. She may be younger than you, but you’re reverted in your twenties while she remained in her mid-thirties. Gaping the wide museum from the railing, starting from the painting exhibit in the lobby to across the other side of the museum, Diana spotted the black hair of the boy in the Foreign Art Room.
“Over there.”
Observing where her eyes focused, you caught a glimpse of a recognizable side profile. The owner’s eyes were completely taken by whatever he was drawing on the fold-up desk he brought out from the storage room. By the tedious action of his right hand going up and down, you’ve gotten so used to his part-time identity as the night guard to entirely dismiss his current status as a university student.
Architecture specifically as he first introduced himself to you. The same path your oldest brother, Christopher, worked in. The look of tenacity Jeno presented as his eyebrows continuously scrunched, his crescent orbs hastily spied his work for any unnecessary details and his veiny hands brushed his already messy hair, you were profoundly reminded of Christopher when he was designing his possible future house. You were 8 years old, and he was 22, who just got married. He explained how many floors it’ll have, what rooms to put and what extra furniture he’ll place to make it feel more at home.
Seeing how exceptional his art skills were, you started to sketch like him. With flowers first, it turned into bedrooms and sceneries of your neighborhood. You felt your shoulders rise in accomplishment when you were able to accurately draw people. As much as you credited Benjamin and Liam the most in your works, it’ll only be within yourself to know that you also held a soft spot for Christopher.
Excusing yourself to Princess Diana, you bravely yet quietly ventured into the Foreign Art Room. Hiding first from one of the cement columns, you resumed watching him sketch. Instead of a pencil, he used a black pen with a tip as thin as a pencil. Your assumptions would be it was for a class, basing it on him informing everybody earlier that he’ll be inactive for the remaining hours of his shift to focus on his midterm requirements. That must be difficult to balance, yet he still does everything expected from him. Maybe the second cup of iced coffee beside him stimulated his bones and mind, letting his imagination free.
Through the limited space, you tiptoed whilst holding the side of the column to make up his work. There were 2 and a half rectangular shapes stacked on top of each other, the third one he was still tracing. A sign encrypted with tiny written words you couldn’t decipher, the beauty and modernity of Jeno’s plate cannot go unappreciated.
“That’s absolutely beautiful.”
Sweet words you didn’t think would bounce back in the room, Jeno’s pace ceased whilst you hid again. Art pieces capable of walking weren’t allowed here, he locked the door even beforehand! Or he thought as he was rushing to get his work done because one of his terror professors moved up the deadline to tomorrow morning. Not even 25% finished, he petitioned for everyone’s cooperation just for tonight.
He used up his 2 days of not having the night shift for other projects, and not wanting to ruin his perfect attendance, he proceeded to show up.
The voices from the foreign paintings around him hushed for him out of respect. So possibly someone snuck in, his head looking around for intruders. But only did he quit it when he saw your blurry reflection leaning against the column. The glass windows slightly mirror back what it sees, without you knowing that.
Not to mention, the small bit of your lilac dress was left out. Of all people, it was you?
“Do my eyes deceive me or is Miss (Y/N) (Y/L/N) inside when she’s not allowed so?”
To break the killing tension, he tested the waves with an innocent taunt. Never did you reach out to him, so least to say he was entertained whilst keeping his distance.
Fixing your proud stance, you responded in a low baritone voice you used to persuade numerous men in her adventures. “Uhm no, I don’t know who she is.”
As intelligent as you were, Jeno was a few steps farther than you this time. Educated about the risky ways you’d get around and one of them was changing the pitch of your voice, he heartily laughed at your unsuccessful attempt.
“Okay don’t lie, (Y/N). I can see a trail of your dress and your cloak. Oh, your reflection too.”
Damn, you peeked a little to realize that he was correct. Hauling your dress back in to readjust your outfit, you pushed your hair back before appearing to him. Though when you did such, you didn’t suppose that he was practically beside you the entire time. Bumping into his towering stance of 5’10 while the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up, your proud posture loosened up. He even discarded his blazer. A few more inches, he could’ve cornered you on the column if you didn’t take another step back.
Has he always been this tall or were you so used to your boots having high heels under? Oh wait, maybe because you wore flats this time because it’s making your toes sore. Your head bowed from struggling to maintain eye contact with him, your palms caressing your cheeks that suddenly heated up. Clearing your throat, you straightened your back again like nothing happened.
Jeno thought otherwise, shrugging his shoulders as he chuckled. He’s never seen you get shy, not that it was a bad thing either. The temptation to play around it more was there, but he was running out of time for his assignment.
“Come in. I’ll let you off the hook this time.” His arms opened up, allowing you access to such a wonderful exhibit. Paintings from different European periods, miniature versions of famous infrastructures inside glass containers, and replicas of Greek columns in the front entrance, no wonder it’s important to protect them all.
“Are you sure?” Watching him return to his spot, which was a bench in the center of the exhibit with a table in front, it didn’t process that you were gawking at his toned back. His broad shoulders and the evident muscles in his arms while he stretched, your eyes were speedy to look away when he tried to take a glance at you.
“I don’t think the paintings here and I mind.” Sitting down again, he tapped the vacant space beside him. “Feel free to watch me draw if you want to.”
Settling by his side, he recommenced where he left off. Now with a closer view of his piece, it did look like a building as you thought. He was sketching the remaining outline of the 3rd floor of this hypothetical place, continuously checking his ruler to monitor if the lines were consistent. Able to pick up on the words of the sign beside the building, you wowed with one hand on your lips.
“You’re redrawing Seoul National University Museum of Art?”
“One of my plate assignments was to visualize a renovation of a certain place, so I chose the museum.”
“Why so?”
“Well,” Jeno shook his pen so the ink could come out. “This entire place comes to life with the royal plate, so I think we should expand the space and bring in more art pieces to life if we add another extra floor. A rooftop area for visitors and events would be fun. And definitely, we should modernize the exterior and interior a bit because it looks outdated personally. That’s also what my friends think too.”
Noticing the minor details of his plate whilst removing any unnecessary pens so it wouldn’t smudge, “Huh, I quite agree with you.”
For the first time since his night shift, you, (Y/N) (Y/L/N), came into an agreement with him. He became so accustomed to clashing opinions that now, you had no contrasting points to make at all. A good change perhaps was what he’s witnessing.
“Woah, who are you agreeing with me and where’s (Y/N)?” He creased his brows whilst locking eye contact with you. This time, you didn’t wince away and just nudged him on his shoulder to get back to work.
“Hush, Jeno. Isn’t that due later? Get to work, I’ll roam around here for the meantime.”
After decades in this museum, you’re enlightened with the foreign paintings in which some you’ve heard of in your younger years and some that were created beyond your time. The Birth of Venus, Liberty Leading the People, Girl with a Pearl Earring, there’s an advantage of learning about their stories that humans couldn’t interpret. Logical that this section must be off-limits because these pieces were extra special, yet there’s so much more than what meets the eye.
There’s peace in silence while you wandered around, though it doesn’t hinder only at the art. Jeno hasn’t uttered a word since he got back to drawing, and once you asked him what’s doing now, still no answer back. Odd, he’s constantly awa-
Oh, my. You must’ve jinxed it.
Your eyes laid on Jeno leaning forward on his desk with his arms serving as his pillow, resting his head sideways. Soft snores and minimal movement in his upper body to shake the growing cold temperature of the room, he was sleeping like a log.
Putting into perspective, he hasn’t acquired enough rest specifically this past 2 weeks. The endless number of plates due making him work extra during his shift rather than sleeping in the slightest, exhaustion must be an understatement. Coffee no longer pushed him to his maximum for this week even.
But this was the path he chose, and it’ll have its challenges. Still, if you could relieve the stress in any way, you would. This would be one of the ways to repay for all the rudeness you’ve passed on him. Scurrying to his side, placing the plate on the side with his other things. You returned the caps of his open pens so they don’t spill. They must be expensive, recalling how Jeno shared the cons of being an architecture major to Princess Diana. One was the pens needed for sketching, and any tiny damages to them meant buying them again.
With his watch on clear display, he only had 2 hours left until his shift was done. Then, 4 hours until his plate assignment was done, and his current plate was far from done.
The blunt impulse to wake him up slithered your mind, though his calm state deflected your duty. As if you were on board a ship again for your explorations, you paid attention to the view with a relaxed mindset.
Lee Jeno specifically was the view.
His coffee-stained lips were parted and his sharp nose breathing in and out at a relaxing pace, he must be dreaming a happy moment the way half his lips curved into a smile. If he’s resting well, then you too would be calm.
Because of your past disinterest in him, only at this moment did you observe how sharp his jawline was and the cuts on his arms he sought refuge in. No matter how many times you tried to deny Hera’s compliments of him on the side, you couldn’t.
Lee Jeno embodied attractive features; both physical and emotional.
Back to his plate, it’ll put him at a disadvantage if he submitted the way it looked before he passed out. But you remembered all those extra details he mentioned and wanted to add to this project. Being an explorer, you documented all your ventures through words or drawings. You’re fast to adjust to anything new too.
For all the good he’s done for everyone, he only deserved some help in return.
Your version of help was sketching the remaining details of this plate, using other pens for more emphasis. It’s a risk also, but no way could you turn a blind eye on Jeno this time.
Around 5:30 am, Jeno’s eyes blinked open due to a brightening light from the outside. Stretching his limbs, he finds a velvet cloak wrapped around him like a blanket. But before he could question it, he pulled his arm in to see the time on his watch.
“Fuck!” He cursed, realizing that his so-called 10-minute snooze break aborted.
“Oh my, you’re awake!” From his frazzled state, there you were. So put together yet active, some strands of your hair falling down your face even with your hair up in a ponytail. “How was your sleep?”
This whole time he could’ve been woken up, yet you chose not to. You’re aware of his deadline, yet you let him rest entirely. He could’ve burst out in stress, yet he didn’t. You and he may have started on the wrong foot, yet it’s impossible of you to do such an evil thing. He’ll just have to tolerate the outcome later today.
“Refreshing. I really needed it.” Packing his things in his bag and closing the table, you trailed along as he exited with you. Locking up, he has 30 minutes left to accomplish the cleaning. A long good morning indeed.
But his worry of that vanished when you admitted that you had it all covered.
“Everyone helped out in cleaning, plus there are no damages made either.” From your hand, you returned one of his keys that was on his guard blazer. “I double-checked the Oriental Room and locked the doors again.”
“Why are you suddenly so nice to me, (Y/N)?” He questioned with confusion, wearing his blazer again and patting away any creases. He placed your cloak over you again like a true gentleman.
Without a word, you simply invited him to walk you back to your exhibit as parts of the sun began to rise. As you returned to your section, your fellow figures readying themselves to pose again,
“It’s my way to apologize for my very rude first impression and the succeeding moments after. I was too cooped up in my past that I was too afraid to let humans in again, night guards in particular.” You admitted, removing your cloak and placing behind your chair like always. “I’m so sorry, Jeno. Everyone was right about you and your kind heart.”
“About time.” Cleopatra’s sultry voice cut in, laying on her day bed.
Before you had the chance to flip off, Jeno mediated swiftly. With a gentle smile, “No worries about it. I’m just happy you’re okay, after all you’ve been through.”
“Can we start over then?”
“Absolutely.” With his free hand, he brought it out. No matter what kind of introductions, shaking one’s hand was the best way to start a friendship. “Good evening. I’m Lee Jeno, the new museum night guard.”
“(Y/N) (Y/L/N), explorer and author.” Sighing at his humor, you still replied by shaking his hand. “And I believe you’re mistaken, Lee Jeno. It’s a good morning.”
Seconds after, you imitated your typical pose and smile. Only now, the latter was more genuine. Finally, a fresh start to end your agony.
Once the sun fully revealed itself, every figure including yourself froze back to sleep. Something Jeno wished to catch up on if it weren’t for his damn plate. He was so screwed, already contemplating his next steps if he does fail this class. The possibility of getting delayed in all aspects, he dreaded it already.
Heading back to his dorm, where both his roommates completely passed out from soju on the couch, he sat by his work desk and turned on his night lamp for more light since the sun wasn’t strong enough yet.
With another cup of coffee, he cracked the joints of his knuckles and laid out his pens. He had 2 hours left to submit this plate, and at most he should accomplish 50% of his initial plan. However, he didn’t anticipate such a gorgeous outcome when he brought out his plate.
Picture perfect of every detail he desired, even adding a rooftop area with that he’d love to have if ever the museum does go under renovation one day. Rather than setting the plate during the day, it was at night as the skies were dark and bright specks of yellow inside the building symbolized light.
So much for wasting coffee, he’ll just give it to Jaemin when he wakes up later. Below the final product, a note written in cursive was stuck on it.
I knew you wanted to get this specific plate done, but you mustn’t compromise your sleep for it. It’s your inhumane professor’s fault!
To make up for my faults, I wanted to help you out. I paid extra attention to the details you spoke highly about, so I only hoped that I interpreted it correctly. It’s risky, but as someone who researched so much about me, would you be surprised that I did such a thing?
PS: Get back to sleep. I’m quite sure your desk is laid out the same way in the Foreign Art Room.
Respectfully,
(Y/N)
Turning off his lamp, Jeno jumped the covers of his bed to continue his lost sleep. Without an ounce of care that he hasn’t changed into cleaner clothes, he’s relieved that he won’t flunk his class.
Most of all, he’s relieved that you’ve melted the ice in you and allowed kindness to come in. Jeno may never understand how hard that must’ve been for you, yet he raved you for it.
“Oh, (Y/N) (Y/L/N). Surprise is an understatement when it comes to you.”
#nct#nct au#nct scenarios#nct x reader#nct fluff#nct angst#nct smut#nct imagines#nct dream#nct dream au#nct dream scenarios#nct dream x reader#nct dream fluff#nct dream angst#nct dream smut#nct dream imagines#lee jeno#lee jeno x reader#lee jeno au#lee jeno scenarios#lee jeno angst#lee jeno imagines#lee jeno fluff#lee jeno smut#jeno#jeno x reader#jeno au#jeno scenarios#jeno imagines#jeno fluff
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Love, Theoretically | Sebastian Stan x reader (chapter 10 - FINALE)
series masterlist
series summary: having lost your husband, sister, and best friend all to the same extramarital affair, you ran away to a secluded villa in the Hungarian countryside to write and get a little time away from the life you’d left behind. you were only looking for peace and perhaps some inspiration for your novel, but instead you found an unlikely connection with the immigrant repairman– even though the two of you don’t speak the same language.
word count: 6k
warnings: implied smut, angst, fluff, romcom tropes, lots of swearing, pregnancy mention/minor breeding kink
note: click the asterisk for a hyperlink to a translation when the time comes
Six months later...
“It’s good!” she beamed, setting down the last chunk of pages and taking off her reading glasses. “Oh man, that ending hurt, but it’s really, really good!”
You leaned back into the plush chair and sighed with relief. “You think so?”
“It’s best-seller material,” she assured. “With some editing, of course. God, I can’t believe you were sitting on this for so long.”
“What are the biggest changes you want to make?” you asked.
“Well, I’m thinking we’ll cut the romantic subplot,” she mentioned in passing, like it was no big deal. “It’s distracting.
“Distracing?” you repeated. “Nia, it’s the story. It’s a romance.”
“I thought it was a thriller,” she frowned.
“A romance disguised as a thriller,” you corrected.
“Listen, I get what you mean, but I didn’t get this—” she tapped the nameplate on her desk: ‘NIA BROWN, HEAD PUBLISHER’ in shiny letters— “for nothing. I know what I’m talking about, and I know what your readers want. Violence, gore, drama!”
“It has all that!” you defended. “But it’s all there to talk about the real love he finds in her!”
“What do you mean ‘real love’?” she pressed flatly.
“I mean…” you pondered. “I mean love where you feel like a version of yourself that you actually like. Love where you feel unjudged, no precedents or caveats or back-up plans. Love that fucking hurts because you never wanted to rely on anything or anybody. Love that lives in silence because you don’t even need words.”
She furrowed her brow. “That… sounds nice, I guess, but I don’t think anybody really has that. Everybody needs a back-up plan. Everybody needs words— a writer should know that.”
“Oh my god. Oh my god,” you groaned, your face falling into your hands. “I’m so fucking stupid. Jesus Christ, I’m a moron.”
“What? What’s going on?”
“I had that! I had that, and I let it go! I’m the dumbest bitch on the fucking face of the Earth.”
“Don’t say that,” she soothed, but you were already standing up.
“No, I need to find him,” you decided as you grabbed your coat and briefcase. “I need to go back and try to fix this. I love him, I’ve never— I didn’t know I could love like that, I didn’t know I could be loved like that… oh my god, I need to find him. It isn’t over.”
“It isn’t over?” she repeated incredulously. “You said Michael signed the papers!”
“It’s not Michael,” you rolled your eyes as you stormed out of the office. “It was never Michael.”
You ran into the first telephone box you could find, slamming the door shut as you searched your purse for the business card that probably wasn't even in there.
After a moment, you gasped with delight when you pulled it from a very bottom pocket and began punching in the number as fast as possible with shivering hands, long-distance charges be damned.
“Hello?” the confused voice on the other end answered.
“Mrs. Alberti, hi— does Sebastian still work for you?” you asked hastily.
“No, dear," she sighed, apparently recognizing you by just your voice (and likely your request), "he quit recently, and moved away.”
“Moved?" you repeated with a wrinkled brow. "Where?!”
“I assume back home, sweetheart; to Bucharest.”
“Shit,” you sighed. “Shit!”
“Are you having your ‘run through the airport’ moment, sweetheart?” she realized.
“Yes, I think so— do you have his address?”
“Well, no, but I’ll see what I can find.”
You waited rather impatiently as she shuffled through papers in the background, mumbling to herself as she apparently searched for information that could help you.
“All I’ve got is the address of a previous employer… a carpenter,” she finally explained, breaking the silence. “It was his only reference when he came to work here," she explained.
"Wow, you really did just hire him for his looks," you blurted out.
"He was desperate for work, that boy had nowhere else to go,” she defended.
“Right, well, I guess if that’s my only lead then I’ve gotta go for it,” you decided. “Thank you, Mrs. Alberti.”
“I told you to call me when that book was a hit. Did it happen yet?” she piped up.
“It’s not published yet,” you explained. “It needs some more work… but I think it’s almost ready.”
“I think so, too, dear.”
Learn Romanian in 10 Weeks! A practical language guide.
Week 1, Day 1: Greetings
Hello Salut
Goodbye La revedere
Thank you Mulțumesc
You’re welcome Cu plăcere
Good morning Bună dimineata
Good afternoon Bună ziua
Good evening Bună seara
Good night Noapte bună
You brushed your hair back out of your face with a sigh, turning the page as you mumbled the phrases to yourself. Broken Hungarian and your high school education in Latin were not getting you as far with this as you had been hoping.
How are you? Ce mai faci
I love you Te iubesc
“Te iubesc, te iubesc, te iubesc,” you repeated over and over in a whisper.
Each day you had a new routine: practice Romanian for an hour, check flight prices online (or call the airline), research what you knew about Sebastian and the address Mrs. Alberti had given you, and then get back to practicing Romanian again.
Oh, and occasionally you worked on the edits Nia wanted for your manuscript. You were focusing on the minor changes— grammar errors, rearranging sentences— and putting off her big request for the removal and replacement of the romantic aspects. More than ever, they seemed like the most important thing the book had to offer.
You had a small apartment, just a place to sleep and shower really; much too small to fit everything you’d already taken from Michael’s house (you know, the one that used to be your house) along with what he’d shipped to you that you forgot before. He included a letter in the package as well. You threw it out, unopened.
Truthfully, you never really fully unpacked. As much as you realized you probably should, in order to really feel like you had a real home, you couldn’t bring yourself to empty your suitcases when you knew you’d be packing them again any day now.
You also realized how outrageous this all was. Ignoring the unlikelihood of even finding him in the first place, Sebastian probably wouldn’t want anything to do with you after you broke his heart, left, and then randomly tracked him down after over half a year. But to be totally transparent, you weren’t really doing this to get him back, necessarily. You knew that was probably never going to happen. You were doing this because you needed to try. You needed to go there, and get hurt, and come back knowing you did everything you could: you’d never be able to live with yourself if you did anything less than that.
You couldn’t start your new life until you had put everything else to bed. And if that meant being 100%, painfully certain that you and Sebastian could never be together, then that was just how it needed to be.
After two weeks of looking, there still weren’t any reasonable flights to Bucharest, so you booked another trip by train, figuring you could use the three day trip to brush up on the key Romanian phrases you were going to need as well as prepare your speech.
Yes, your plan was a speech. You didn’t have a back-up plan. You didn’t even have a return ticket back to London yet.
A passage by Yeats came to mind; But I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.
In all your life, you’d never understood before why someone would want to only have their dreams. But now, here you were… and yes, it felt terrifying and vulnerable and uncomfortably naked, but it felt pretty damn good, too.
With a sigh, you scribbled out the last sentence you’d written, tossing the trash paper aside. You looked up out the window at the scenery flying by in a blur, worried that if you didn’t look out from the train every once in a while you’d get motion sickness.
The sun was beginning to set already, the green of hills and trees tinted orange. You only indulged in it for a moment, though, before getting back to this god-forsaken speech you were deadset on finishing before you arrived in Bucharest tomorrow. At first, you’d figured the translating would be the most difficult part… but writing in English wasn’t exactly a piece of cake, either. You had so much to say, and suddenly so few words for any of it.
You’d probably done more editing on this than any of your novels combined; the crumpled up pages spilling out of your wastebasket were proof enough of that.
“And I’m a fucking writer!” you groaned aloud, to no one in particular. “How is anybody else supposed to be able to do this, if I can’t?”
Other people aren’t as emotionally constipated as you, the voice of your inner critic reminded you plainly, making you roll your eyes at yourself.
A rap at your door made you sit up straighter and turn around. A stewardess slid open the frosted glass slightly to give you a friendly smile. “Is everything alright, ma’am?”
Your brows furrowed at the sound of her accent. “Is that a Romanian accent?” you asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” she nodded.
“So you’re fluent in Romanian and English,” you concluded.
“And Portuguese, yes ma’am,” she agreed.
“Could you come in here for a moment and help me translate something?”
She seemed slightly confused at the request but stepped forward, sliding the door most of the way shut behind her. Leaning beside you on the desk, she picked up your handwritten letter and blinked her wide, brown eyes a few times. You felt slightly embarrassed knowing she was reading such intimate thoughts, but that was how it felt the first time someone read anything you wrote so you were pretty much used to it by now.
“I usually ask the passengers what brings them to Bucharest,” she mumbled after a moment. “This is the most interesting thing so far. Am I reading this correctly, that you intend to confess your love to someone you met—” she scanned the page quickly— “during a vacation in Hungary?”
“Yup,” you smiled awkwardly, popping the ‘p’ at the end of the word.
“And he doesn’t speak English?” she assumed; you nodded. “And… you don’t speak Romanian?”
You nodded again, and she breathed in and out quickly, sitting beside you as she stared at the letter.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” she explained.
“Sorry for sucking you into the entropic vortex that is my life,” you chuckled.
“I don’t mean to pry,” she sighed, setting the letter down, and you laughed a little internally at the idea that she was worried about prying when she just read the most personal piece of writing you’d ever put to the page, “but do you think this is… enough? I mean, to build a relationship on?”
You just gave her a shrug. “I have no idea. But, you know, I spent my whole life worrying about stuff like that. I dated my husband for seven years before we got married, because I wanted to be sure. I was initially interested in him because he was successful and ambitious, and it made me feel like this was a really secure relationship that I could rely on. I double majored in English and Computer Science because I wanted a more stable career to fall back on in case being a writer didn’t work out, and even though it did, I’ve spent most of my career publishing what I thought people wanted to read instead of what I wanted to write, so I’d have a better shot at a good paycheck. I grew up thinking the best thing I could ever have was security. And now I’m divorced, watching my royalties shrink every month, more insecure in every way than I’ve ever been, and I’m realizing that the choices I made didn’t give me what I wanted. I gave up so much in the name of safety, and I let the one good thing I’d ever found go, so I could go back to being the same person I always was. I’m ready to settle again, if this doesn’t work… I’m ready to accept that this is just the way life goes, and be thankful that I got a taste of the kind of stuff I thought only existed in the sort of books I’d read but never write.”
She swallowed as she looked at you, and you felt your eyes water as you stared out the window towards the dimming scenery one more time, smiling at the sight of a distant village, a church with a steeple, vineyards and farms. Someone’s whole life is in that little town, you imagined, and they’re just watching your train go by like they see every other day.
“Sebastian gave me more security than I’d ever had before, even though the whole thing was such a ridiculous little whirlwind, and nothing like I ever imagined my life could be. But he made me want to be honest and raw and write sappy letters like the one you just read. He doesn’t have any money, at least as far as I know, and I haven’t known him for seven years, and on paper it makes no sense… but you would understand if you knew him. If you felt that joy that he radiates, if you saw him live his simple little life like it’s the best thing in the world. You would understand if you knew how much I needed this. You would understand if you had been just as miserable being who I’ve been for so long, and finally had a chance to be somebody you think you were maybe meant to be the whole time. So, if I never see him again, I hope I just get to thank him.”
You waited for her to say something, but furrowed your brow at the long moment of silence, looking back from the window finally and finding her staring at you with a tear running down her cheek. When you met her gaze, she quickly wiped it away with a sniffle and looked down at your desk again. “Let’s get to translating, shall we?” she announced with a half-smile.
You noticed the way the other passengers looked at you as everyone was in line to deboard from the train car; you stuck out like a sore thumb, since everybody else was carrying heavy luggage and all you had was a backpack.
In your defense, you really had no idea how to pack for a trip where you knew neither the duration nor the true final destination. So, it was mainly filled with your essentials, a few clothes for any kind of weather, and enough leu to buy anything else you needed along the way.
The stewardess was waving goodbye to everyone as they shuffled out into the train station, occasionally stopping to shake a hand or give directions to nearby destinations. When you were just about to pass by, though, she pulled you into a tight hug.
“Good luck,” she whispered, holding you just a moment too long before pulling back and giving you an encouraging look. “If he doesn’t take you back, feel free to blame my translation… because if he knows what’s in your heart, I know he’ll say yes.”
“Yeah, that’s the hard part isn’t it?” you laughed weakly. “Thank you for your help. I guess if I come back alone for the return trip tonight, you’ll know how bad it went.”
“Then I hope I don’t see you again,” she winked.
It being a major train station and all, cabs were waiting around every corner so it was pretty easy to grab one and give them the address you already had written down for this exact purpose.
“This is pretty far,” the driver explained, “on the edge of town. Not a tourist spot.”
“Good, because I’m not a tourist,” you nodded, already only giving him half your attention as you pulled out the translated speech to practice.
“And you can afford this?” he pressed. You sighed and dug through your bag, pulling out a haphazard stack of bills and handing them through the plastic partition.
“Is this enough?” you asked, and he didn’t answer, just taking the money and starting the car as you smiled and leaned back in your seat.
As much as you had tried to convince yourself to not get your hopes up, the butterflies in your stomach felt more like whole birds at this point, demanding to break free as you practiced the words hand-written on the page over and over again, committing it all to memory.
“What are you reading?” the cab driver asked after several minutes.
“Oh, nothing,” you mumbled, “sorry if I’m bothering you, you can turn on the radio.”
“No, it’s not bothering me, but what you are saying… it’s very odd. It sounds like something from a play, or movie,” he explained.
“Um, it’s not,” you replied, a little embarrassed. “But does it sound like it’s from a good movie? Like, if you heard a character say this to another character, would you think they should get together?”
“I… don’t know,” he answered, sounding confused. “I mean, it depends on what happened, right? How they met, how well they get along…”
So, you told him the whole story, as succinctly as possible (which is not very succinct at all). By the end, he was actually giving commentary as you spoke.
“Why the hell did you leave?” he interjected, clearly irritated with you. “You loved him!”
“Yeah, well, sometimes love isn’t enough! I loved my husband too, and look how that turned out,” you defended.
“But that’s different. That was love for all the wrong reasons.”
“I promise, it felt very real at the time,” you shrugged.
“And now?” he countered. “You realize that this man— Sebastian, right?— is real.”
“I hope I’m right this time,” you offered. “But even if I am, he may not agree.”
The driver scoffed, taking a hand off the wheel to wave dismissively. “If he’s anything like you said, then he will still be completely in love with you. After all, you still feel the same way after all this time apart, don’t you?”
“If anything, I love him more every day,” you admitted, your heart beating quickly just to say it aloud.
“You know, when I met my wife, she was engaged to another man. He was rich, good-looking, and he wasn’t even a bad guy unlike this husband you describe. He was a good man, but he wasn’t right for her. They were… content together, but she wasn’t truly happy. Every night I would come to her window and beg her to marry me, because I knew that she knew we were meant for each other, but she was scared because her family wouldn’t approve and she would be a poor man’s wife.”
“How did you convince her to marry you instead?” you asked eagerly, sucked into the story already.
“I didn’t. On the day of the wedding, some people told me to go and break it up but I didn’t. I thought it would be wrong, to try to ruin her happiness and take it for myself by making a scene at the wedding. I realized she was her own woman and if she wanted to choose him, I had to let her. I had locked myself in my house, not wanting to see anyone that day, and she appeared at my door. I didn’t need to convince her because she knew the truth in her heart, and called off the wedding herself.”
“Wow,” you smiled.
“She was still in her dress!” he recalled with a hearty laugh. “She looked like an angel. We were married just a few days later. And next month will be thirty years,” he added as he lifted his left hand to show the golden band on his finger.
“Thirty years, that’s… a long time,” you sighed.
“It wasn’t always easy,” he admitted. “But it was always worth it.”
Just as you wondered what you could possibly say to that, you felt the car slow down to a stop.
“This is the address you gave me, this is it,” he explained, pointing out his passenger-side window. You leaned up against the glass and gasped in dawning fear as you saw the storefront dark and empty inside.
“No, nonono,” you whispered rapidly to yourself as you swung open the door and hopped out, pressing your face against the glass to try to get a look inside and finding what was undeniably a closed carpentry business. There was a note on the door, taped on the inside of the glass, and you knew enough Romanian to know it said something about a vacation and three months.
“Shit!” you yelped, holding your face in your hands, wondering if your journey had come to an end before it really began.
“Are you alright?” the driver asked, rolling down his window to speak to you.
“This was my only lead, I don’t have his real address,” you explained. “He used to work here, I thought maybe someone would know him…”
He sighed, giving you a sympathetic look. “Get back in, we can search nearby. You came too far to give in yet.”
But getting back in the car felt like giving in, too, which you realized as you looked back at the note taped to the carpenter's door. This was the closest you'd gotten, and it felt wasteful to leave with nothing.
Just as you were ready to hop in the passenger seat and start searching aimlessly through suburban Bucharest, or maybe look around for a Romanian yellow pages, you heard a noise from behind you, across the street; a laugh. His laugh. But it couldn’t be because it was too good to be true… and yet you found yourself whipping your head around and hoping beyond all reason that it was Sebastian.
Across the street was a restaurant, with a large patio where patrons were dining and chatting as they sat at wrought iron tables, and your eyes searched the crowd for any signs of him.
And then your gaze landed on a head of thick brunette hair, red and gold highlights so obvious now when the sunlight hit it this way. Broad shoulders wrapped in a white button-up shirt. He was facing away from you but he was looking to the side so you could see his face; he was smiling, laughing at something someone had said. And it was his smile that you recognized; it was like everything else faded away, and in that moment you thought maybe you could almost be happy with just this, just seeing him be happy even if it had nothing to do with you.
“Sebastian,” you called out to him, but he didn’t react. “Sebastian!”
His whole body turned, his eyes met yours, and you couldn't help but let the tears well in your eyes as you ran across the road to him.
He looked, understandably, stunned, and you realized he was actually waiting on a table at the moment; he said something to them, apparently excusing himself, and stepped closer to you.
But he stopped walking, not coming any closer, not exactly dragging you into his arms like you might've preferred, but with a breath to try to soothe your racing mind, you summoned your memories of the practiced letter and began. *
“Când am venit în Ungaria…” you started slowly, doing your best to remember the words and hoping your pronunciation wasn’t too awful, “nu căutam dragoste. Căutam spațiu, claritate și poate o idee de carte de un milion de dolari. În schimb, am găsit tot ce am căutat toată viața mea…”
You did your best to bite back tears, especially when his expression was nearly unreadable and you had no idea how well this was going.
“Ești tu, Sebastian, bineînțeles că ești tu,” you sighed, laughing slightly. “Ai fost acolo pentru mine când nici nu știam ce vreau de la nimeni. Ai fost prietenul meu fără să spui vreodată un cuvânt - cel puțin nu un cuvânt pe care l-am înțeles. M-ai iubit și nu știam ce să fac cu asta, pentru că uitasem cu mult timp în urmă cum se simțea să fii iubit. Și ce simțeai să iubești cu adevărat pe cineva. Dar te iubesc. Și am fost prost să te las să pleci, atât de neconceput de prost. Vreau să fim noi, Sebastian. Lasă-mă să te iubesc, mai dă-mi o șansă și îți promit că nu te voi mai lăsa să pleci niciodată.
The first thing he said was your name, and just the way he said it made you fall in love with him all over again.
“I… I dream that you would come back,” he shakily replied. “But now I cannot believe. You are my dream.”
Tears were openly flowing at this point and you wanted to run into his arms, but you tried to stay calm and hear him out. He stepped closer, almost hesitant, like you would run away if he got too close too fast.
“I love you, very much that I am sure I am insane person,” he explained with a grin, and you giggled. “We will live anywhere, do anything you would like— be my wife.”
You gasped as he pulled you into him, gripping your arms tightly as his desperation became apparent.
“Marry me?” he asked softly.
“Da,” you nodded, “yes, of course, anything—”
He kissed you suddenly, but gently, and it said more than any words in any language could.
It was a small wedding, in the Hungarian countryside by the lake. You could remember diving into that lake for lost pages of your manuscript; you could remember looking out over the water and dreaming of this moment you were living right now, thinking it was impossible.
He didn’t have much family, but they welcomed you with open arms.
Your family, well, they were too busy with planning another wedding, for your ex-husband and your ex-sister. A few of them sent cards but the rest were suspiciously quiet. You honestly didn’t even notice… you had a new family to attend to, anyhow. And it wasn’t like you didn’t have any guests, since you were able to track down and invite a stewardess named Maria, and a cab driver named Andrei and his wife, Paola.
Sebastian’s cousins weaved flowers into your hair and his grandmother tailored her dress to fit you like a glove. A picture of his parents was hung nearby in tribute; he told you they would’ve wanted to see him get married but that he felt, in some way, they were able to even if they had passed away quite some time ago.
You realized you’d never seen him in anything even mildly formal before; in fact, the suit he wore was rather casual, all things considered, but he looked so painfully cute in it. Sometimes you thought he actually looked a bit out of place wearing a shirt, though, especially one that was buttoned up all the way.
Luckily, the shirt was halfway unbuttoned about ten minutes into the reception.
Mrs. Alberti cooked a massive dinner for everyone, and even grew the flowers that you carried down the cobblestone aisle.
And wow, can Romanians drink. You had to be careful not to try to keep up with them, because if you had you would’ve been blacked out halfway into the night and the last thing you wanted was to forget even a moment of this.
As the night started to wind down to a close, you and your new husband retired to the lakehouse, running up the stairs and finding them as creaky as always.
He wrapped his arms around you in the hall and kissed you eagerly as you stumbled back into the bedroom, tripping over the doorway and falling onto the bed together.
It felt so right to have his weight on top of you, to feel his smile against your lips, to wrap your arms around his neck.
“This room,” he mumbled into the kiss. “Do you remember first time?”
“Yes,” you nodded, “da, I remember, how could I forget?”
He grinned and moved his lips down to your neck. "I thought of you every day… I love you,” he whispered.
“Te iubesc,” you whispered back.
It was almost like the first time in so many ways: passionate, yet oddly hesitant as you rediscovered each other. It was comfortable, though… you couldn’t think of any other person you felt so comfortable with, somebody who finally got you out of your own head and who made you want to experience everything life had to offer.
You were sure you’d never gone so long without worrying about something in all your life.
“My wife,” he whispered against your skin. “This is all I had wanted… from seeing you in very beginning.”
“You’re all I ever wanted,” you sighed in return, “ești tot ce mi-am dorit vreodată, Sebastian.”
Life with Sebastian was beautifully simple. You spent most of the day writing, usually, while he built furniture to sell and occasionally gardened with his spare time. You could always tell how busy you’d been with a new novel lately by how perfectly groomed the hydrangea bushes were.
You’d told him once that you’d come to Hungary looking for a million-dollar book idea. A Killer in Disguise performed alright, but not anywhere near that. The Language of Love, on the other hand, was definitely a million-dollar idea… about eleven times over. Sebastian didn’t seem to worry too much about how much money you made, though; he was just proud to say that he was the inspiration for your hit novel. You secretly suspected that he was more proud of your work reaching enough international notoriety to be translated into Romanian.
His English still needed some work, but you found it endearing. He was determined to get better and spent at least a half-hour each day practicing, but you hoped he wouldn’t get too perfect because you would miss the silly little mistakes he made. At least you could be sure he’d keep the accent forever… damn, that accent; and he knew exactly what it did to you, too.
In fact, you were crossing through the hall in your robe one evening when your husband’s voice stopped you.
“Darling wife,” you heard Sebastian call from the bedroom in a playful sing-song.
“What is it, Seba?” you asked with a smirk.
“Come in here, please…”
You opened the bedroom door to find most of the room covered in rose petals: most of all the bed, which was surrounded by candles, and topped with a shirtless (as per usual) Sebastian, laid on his side seductively with a long-stemmed rose (one you recognized from his very own garden) between his teeth.
“What are you doing?” you laughed. “Is this some sort of special occasion I’ve forgotten?”
You were already searching your mind for what it could be, but your two-year anniversary had passed a few months ago already and since it was spring it couldn’t be the anniversary of when you first met since that was late in the summer.
“Iss not quite a thpecial occathion yeth,” he answered before taking the rose from his mouth so he actually made sense. “I was considering it could be a special occasion, when we’re done…”
You smirked and climbed over the candles and into bed with him, taking the opportunity to run your hands over his chest. “And what occasion would that be?”
“A year from now, it could be the anniversary of when our child was conceived,” he answered.
Your breath caught in your throat, your voice reduced to a whisper of surprise. “Seba—”
“If you’re not ready, I will be understand,” he instantly added, stern yet soft. “Only if you want this, I just thought that maybe—”
You silenced him with a kiss, lacing your fingers into his hair and letting him roll you onto your back. He pulled back just enough to let you answer, but your noses were still bumping into each other and you smiled.
“I’m ready, Sebastian. More than ready,” you whispered.
He grinned and kissed you again, deeper and slower as he held your face with one hand and gripped your waist with the other. As his lips trailed down to your neck, you were interrupted with one pressing thought.
“Can I ask you something?”
He popped up and looked down at you with a smile. “Sure!”
“Why are you wearing ratty old jeans?” you laughed.
“Hey, these worked on you the first time,” he defended.
You gasped. “You don’t mean those are the jeans—”
“Yes,” he nodded, “the jeans that I had been wearing when I was working on Mrs. Alberti’s cottage. And, truly, when I was finding an excuse to work outside your window.”
“Wait,” you sat up, “did you actually work outside my window on purpose?”
He laughed, hanging his head quickly before looking back at you again with a sparkle in his eye. “You are very smart, my love, except for those times when you are— how do you say? Oblivious.”
You chuckled, unfortunately very aware that he was right.
“Didn’t you ever wonder why I was building a window frame, nearly a dozen metres away from the window it was for?”
You thought for a moment before dropping your face into your hands and laughing. “No, I didn’t notice that. I was too busy giving you a thorough eye-fuck,” you recalled.
“Yes, because I was not wearing a shirt and this distracted you,” he pondered, sounding suddenly like a scientist explaining a theorem or something. “See, that’s the beauty of wearing the jeans and no shirt. The body distracts you while the jeans seduce you.”
“How about you take the jeans off and put that body on me, capisce?” you pleaded; not that you didn’t love his humor or anything, but maybe his funny bone wasn’t exactly the bone you were interested in at the moment.
He grinned devilishly and suddenly pulled your legs apart, settling his body between them as he kissed your neck again, nipping at your jawline and ear. “You’re being impatient, dragă,” he purred. “You want to have my baby that badly?”
You whined involuntarily, arching your back as his hands roamed your body and finally began to untie your robe and push the silk out of the way. “Yes, Sebastian, please—”
“Let’s just say, theoretically, I wanted to have more than one? Would you have another of my children?” he asked softly as he reached up and palmed at your breasts, teasing your nipples which were already much too hard and sensitive for how little he’d touched you. The rough denim rubbing against the inside of your thighs was oddly arousing— maybe it was the sensation itself, or maybe it was just that this was almost like the first thing you imagined when you saw Sebastian all those years ago.
“Yes,” you moaned out your answer, “yes, you know I’d do anything for you.”
“What if I wanted a big family?” he pressed. “Really big? Like, Catholic big?”
“We can have our own fuckin’ Brady Bunch, Seb, I just need you right now,” you begged, grabbing the back of his neck and pulling him into a hot and desperate kiss.
He decided to wait until afterwards to ask what a ‘Brady Bunch’ was. You decided to wait until afterwards to ask when he’d learned how to use the word ‘theoretically’.
sfarsit; the end
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Hurling, Learning, Flirting, Failing
Chapter 38
Wasting no time, Annori grabs the now-goblin Xadrynk by the wrist and drags him along to find the others. They’re all very surprised and excited to hear that Annori managed to undo the spell, though Kevin is a little preoccupied with his terrible sea sickness and Ara has to carry him over to the group because his legs are so unsteady. Several supposed sea sickness cures are discussed. The first thing Raiden asks Xadrynk is whether or not he knows Lilwen Lale, being high key stressed about spending two days trapped here with her. Xadrynk denies this. The captain walks past and inquires who this new passenger is, and Annori explains the whole thing and pays for his fare. Xadrynk looks quite overwhelmed, and Annori gives him a granola bar. (X: ‘Thank you, miss.’ N: ‘you don’t have to call me miss, my name is Annori.’ X: ‘Okay miss Annori’ N: ‘...what did I just say?’)
Now that the group can finally all speak to Xadrynk, many questions arise. Xadrynk tells them he intends to go back to the Academy to find out who messed up his potion, because sometimes his friends like to prank him. (Annori suspects he probably messed up himself, though). He describes how he’s currently in one of the final years of his education, and is very annoyed and stressed when Annori reminds him that his situation might delay his course of study. Raiden then asks him about what he witnessed in the temple. Though being a toad meddled with his intelligence and memory, he vaguely recalls seeing two or three people there at some point, but that’s it. When he’s asked about his field of study, he sits up tall and enthusiastically launches into a detailed account of his research subject. Apparently he specifically studied Amoth and the three demon princes. He recalls the secret room they visited in the temple and wonders aloud if there had been precious items there, and where they could be now. He tells them he’s been to two Amoth temples earlier, both near Feirenwald in the north. When he starts rambling about the difference in the soil in the various locations, Raiden interrupts him and suggests he get himself something proper to eat. Once alone, he turns to the party and asks them what they think. He feels like Xadrynk isn’t hiding anything, and it could be beneficial to tell him everything about the investigation to see if he has any information that might help, that they simply wouldn’t know to ask about. The others cautiously agree. (N: ‘I’m sure there’s ways we could get him to talk’ A: ‘What are your positions on torture?’ N: ‘whát?? I’m against torture!’ A: ‘Hey, no pain, no gain, right?’)
Not long after, Lilwen finds Raiden (or rather Elliott) again and asks him about himself. Raiden tries hard to get a good read of her, but that turns out to be difficult even for him. When she asks about what they found on ghost island, he tells her about the apparition with the warning, but not about the actual specter in the temple.
Meanwhile, Ara curiously approaches the mysterious high elf. After a brief conversation with his tiefling bodyguard, he learns that this is Ambassador Talthanryl. Ara mentions he knows the ambassador from the swamp, but neither of them have been there before. They briefly discuss the swamp opening its borders with the possibility of the Coldvale trade route, and then talk about homesickness. Talthanryl asks him where they’re going, and Ara admits that he can never remember the name of the city, but it sounds somewhat like that kingdom from the well-known ballad of Frozen. It turns out Talthanryl is headed for Anamdael too.
Eventually the group has dinner belowdecks. Raiden gives Xadrynk back his stuff, including the notes he snuck out earlier. Xadrynk tells them he dabbles in magic a little bit, but he mostly focuses on potions. Annori shows him the potion she got from the traveling halflings, the effects of which are unknown. Xadrynk studies it excitedly and expresses interest in meeting the people who brewed this. After long consideration, he states that this might be a potion that lets you talk to plants. Disappointed, since she can already do that herself, Annori hands the potion to Kevin. Xadrynk then tells everyone about the sights in Anamdael, about the bath houses and the magic item shops and the archive… Meanwhile, from a distance, Lilwen Lale is keeping an eye on Raiden. (Kevin notices this too but doesn’t know what it’s about, so he assumes she likes him)
The next morning, Ara notices Talthanryl going up to the deck and decides to follow. The elf asks him for his name, and in return gives him his first name as well: Findire. What follows is a surprisingly pleasant conversation, possibly the longest Ara’s ever had without insulting anyone. Findire talks about his plans upon arriving in Anamdael, including a party hosted by the Duchess. Ara replies that he, too, attended parties with his family that resulted in Drama, but he was fairly sure they weren’t the same kind of parties. Findire laughs in a warm and friendly way, and encourages Ara as he expresses his nerves during the conversation. When they part ways, he says he’d be delighted to spend more time together as they travel.
After everyone has woken up, Annori and Raiden hide together between a stack of crates to work some more on her poem. Suddenly, Lilwen Lale wedges herself in between them, and all but demands a one-on-one conversation with ‘Elliott’. Annori, also assuming she fancies him, quickly gives them some space, but waits just ahead to overhear their conversation. Lilwen asks Elliott how it’s possible that he studies at the Academy of Anamdael, and yet asked someone else about the ins and outs of the city as if he’d never been there. He tries to stammer his way out of it, but has no choice under her keen gaze but to admit defeat. He drops the accent and tells her he isn’t really a student at the Academy, since he couldn’t afford it, though he always dreamed of going. She asks him his name and then tells him, in a kind but firm way, not to lie to everyone he meets, because some people are just better at it than he is. She leaves him embarrassed, frustrated and defeated, then bumps into Annori around the corner and instructs her to ‘please be a good friend to him’.
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Detroit Become Human AU where:
-> Tommy is an up-and-coming livestreamer of the retro game Minecraft- forming part of a fledgling community of all-human players of the game. His growth is slow but steady and he has a future in a genre that had fallen out of fashion with the rise of the newest and more immersive VR games on the market. People love to see an actual human that could make mistakes and win against another fellow human fairly. The nostalgia it brought to some people is also undeniably at play.
It's worth noting that Tommy is a very lonely kid, with a non-existent social life since he and his family had to move to America after his father struck a lucrative business deal with his brilliant protege.
-> Wilbur, Tommy's older brother and only guardian after their father, Phil, dedicated his life to the creation of androids with his young but brilliant pupil Elijah Kamski, is a simple busker. It's hard to find a job at 24 with no previous experience or further education, he had to take care of Tommy, after all. True, their economic troubles never ended, and he could barely provide for Tommy, but at least they had each other, even if Wilbur was off to the streets of Detroit more often than not. He has no idea of his younger brother's blooming career in the gaming industry and is very worried about his future. The solution? A very suspicious android his best friend Schlatt offers for very cheap.
-> Phil Watson is a household name together with Elijah Kamski's, they created one of humanity's greatest tools, after all. Nothing suspicious here, they're definitely not hiding any potential deviancies from the code! In any case, his family never saw a dime of the frankly insane amount of money piling up in his bank account. He has an old phone he carries in his pocket every day with Wilbur's phone number, but he never dares to call it despite RN800, his assistant's, insistence that he was only making his own life harder. He is going to dial that phone number someday. Surely.
-> TU880 is an android from an old companion/educational line, discontinued after a few notable bugs and glitches in their core programming. Nothing serious, or life-threatening, but many customers have complained about disturbing behavior that falls straight into the uncanny valley- he's too human. Schlatt, his previous owner, refuses to disclose where he got TU880 from, nor does he have any legal documentation to prove he is his owner. Wilbur, desperate to find a solution for Tommy's perceived loneliness pays the fifty bucks his old pal asks for the android without asking any questions. It's weird for an adult to go around with a teen model created to counsel adolescents and help them with their homework. TU880 had problems with reading his grocery list, anyway.
-> Tommy is a bit weirded out, he thrives in an internet community which openly despises anything android, but his good friend Technoblade has plenty of useful advice, from maitenance to behavior. TU880 is odd, which he discards as kinks and bugs of the older models, but they get along nicely once TU880's programming kicks in. He likes to help Tommy edit his videos and speak about the problems of adolescence, he is oddly fond of bees or anything small and defenceless and likes to tell his 'dreams' of scientists in labcoats and other kids like him stuck in experiments. Tommy listens with half an ear, TU880 is his friend, after all. He thinks nothing of it.
-> It all becomes a bit too much when TU880 accidentally appears on camera during one of Tommy's streams. People assume he's Tommy's brother, and insist on getting an introduction. TU880 is ecstatic, but from what Tommy's told him, revealing his artificial status might harm his friend's career so he greets the chat as Toby, Tommy's older brother. The community goes wild and Tommy has to pretend that TU880 is his brother (which isn't that terrible per-se) and not the house assistant who has a complete psychological profile of him.
-> TU880 begins to feel strange, both regarding Tommy and his own place in the household. Calling Tommy hus brother is easy as calculus and makes his thirium pump skip a few beats, but he's not sure if he should be getting this attached. He's sure he is malfunctioning in some way, but Schlatt always assured him that he is fine. He thinks nothing of it and instead continues to watch over Tommy.
-> Minecraft is fun, and he eventually gets his own account on Wilbur's old (read: ancient) laptop despite possessing an internal processor powerful enough to play the game at its maximum capacity in his mind, and probably in a 3D holoprojector. At this point, he's in too deep and the friends he's making would certainly ask questions if he were to disappear. He has the opportunity to talk about anything at all to his growing audience, and the community is very welcoming in general once one integrates into their culture. He still doesn't feel it's fair to participate in the tournaments and all the other official competitions. People find it odd, but they assume he's not very good at PVP so no one tends to comment on it for now. It's okay though, he and his new friend Ranboo act as commentators during the events and everyone thinks they're pretty funny.
-> Ranboo is fun to be around. He just gets TU880- or as the internet knows him as, Tubbo. They click easily, sometimes the other boy seems just as confused about other people's reactions and behavior as Tubbo is (despite his in-depth knowledge of psychology. He's not quite connected to Cyberlife's database anymore and his learning algorithm is outdated at best.) and they like to spend their afternoons with Tommy, watching movies. The game overtakes their lives and they spend a lot of time playing privately with the best strategies Tubbo's advanced algorithms and Ranboo's sheer brilliancy can create. That's how they meet their friend Fundy, who is more than happy to keep their Technical Minecraft server a secret, as long as he gets to do his own thing with coding and they test it.
-> Tommy is just happy that he can use the cool farms for his own grinding.
-> Technoblade is Tommy's mysterious internet friend and fellow growing streamer. Everyone is sure that he's an android infiltrating the budding community, but after several years of isolated incidents, investigations, and online scandals no one was able to prove anything. Technoblade just never dies. (Tommy is 50% sure his friend is really an android, the older man simply refuses to comment). It is possible to spend months farming digital potatoes, people are just mean and want drama. Technoblade is just vibing. Incidentally, he's also the first one to figure out that Ranboo and Tubbo are androids. He is also the first one to figure out they're deviants. He doesn't mention it until much later though.
-> Jack and Niki Manifold have successfully founded their own mechanic business for android repairs. Cyberlife mumbled and grumbled at the siblings' repair shop, but in the end it was good for PR so they let them be. Tommy and Wilbur become their friends as TU880's frequent malfunctions inevitably bring the pair to the cheapest android repair service in the city. TU880 can't complain, Niki is sweet to him and understands what is wrong with him just by his description, since his diagnostics aren't working entirely and each an every single one of Jack's repairs last loner than every other mechanic he's been to.
-> Gradually, Tommy's fame becomes apparent, and Wilbur has the time to actually rest and spend time with his brother. He's just happy that they can be together. A weight is lifted off his shoulders and for the first time ever he feels like his little family has a future. Not even once does it pass through his mind that TU880 isn't acting like a typical android- he avoided the things on principle. Once, TU880 calls him his brother and he cries.
-> Sam is Cyberlife's very own private investigator. He is in charge of researching and turning in possible deviants that might help the company with developing a solution for the rising problem. In particular, he's been after the trail of a specific line of androids, the first one released by Kamski and Watson dubbed as TU. According to his investigations the line might have contained the code responsible for deviancy. Further research indicated that Kamski's code was based on a group project from the Dutch university for cibernetics.
-> Fundy is just a 21 y/o with a Twitch account and a passing interest in coding. Nothing serious, nothing suspicious. He absolutely wasn't part of the early AI coding trials that Kamski would later on use as the basis for his own code. If someone asks, he has no idea what ra9 means. He is almost sure that his friends are androids, the thought makes him very happy.
-> Puffy is Phil's new psychologist. Need I say more? Eventual Hurt/comfort baby!!!
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Tedious Joys - Chapter 2 -
- Ao3 link -
“If you want A-Jue at this time of day, he’ll be at the training field,” Lao Nie said, standing up and immediately striding off in that direction. “Oh, and Qiren, I will warn you – he has his mother’s height.”
Lan Qiren rolled his eyes as he followed behind. “That’s helpful information,” he remarked. “Right up until you recall that I have never had the pleasure of meeting his mother –”
He stopped talking and stared.
“I didn’t think a further explanation was necessary,” Lao Nie said. He wasn’t quite at the level of sniggering into his sleeve, but he certainly had a shit-eating grin. Lao Nie was not a short man by any standard, although he was squatter, more muscular and more broad-shouldered than the tall and slender Lan sect – and yet…
“He’s under ten,” Lan Qiren checked, and Lao Nie nodded. “You’re sure.”
“I was present at the birth myself, and have cared for him ever since. And before you ask, I may be busy with my duties as sect leader, but I still feel like I would have noticed someone swapping him out for a child several years older.”
Lan Qiren squinted out at the training field, where a child (and it was a child, given the amount of baby fat in his cheeks, even if the overall size was more what he’d expect of a teenager) was happily dismembering a training dummy with an especially fearsome-looking saber under the tolerant supervisory gaze of the training master.
“Lao Nie,” Lan Qiren finally said. “About that first wife of yours…you would tell me if she were an actual giant – or a goddess –”
Lao Nie laughed and patted him on the back. He did not answer the question.
“A-Jue! Come here!” he shouted, and Nie Mingjue – demonstrating excellent discipline – completed his strike before turning around and trotting over to his father. “Say hello to Teacher Lan.”
“Teacher Lan,” Nie Mingjue said obediently, saluting properly like every small child introduced to a stranger, and then looked up. A smile suddenly spread over his face. “Oh, Teacher Lan! Fighting without permission is prohibited!”
Lan Qiren choked and Lao Nie burst out laughing.
“That was seven years ago,” Lan Qiren protested, and Lao Nie only howled more. “You were an infant. How do you even remember that?”
“It was interesting!” Nie Mingjue beamed. “You said that every word in the rule is like a principle – even if you have the rule, you have to agree on what it means. What counts as fighting, what counts as permission, what counts as prohibited…I use it lots!”
“He has a good memory,” Lao Nie said, wiping his eyes. “You should hear how many profanities he’s learned.”
“I would rather not,” Lan Qiren said hastily, because Nie Mingjue looked on the verge of volunteering to recite them. “Nie Mingjue, can you show me around?”
“Of course, Teacher Lan! Let me just put Baxia away first; I’m not allowed to carry her outside the training field yet. Unless there’s an accident, of course.”
Lan Qiren did not ask. As a sect leader who did not share a border with Qishan Wen, he didn’t think he had the right.
“Take your time,” he said, putting his hands behind his back and watching as Nie Mingjue ran away.
“Would it help to have me there?” Lao Nie asked, and nodded when Lan Qiren shook his head. “I’ll leave you two to it.”
Lan Qiren did not put forward any requests, curious to see where Nie Mingjue would take him, and was reluctantly charmed by the fact that their first destination was the nursery, where several pudgy toddlers of indeterminable age were sleeping.
“My baby brother,” Nie Mingjue explained, very seriously, inadvertently driving home that the fact that he was as tall as Lan Qiren’s elbow didn’t make him any older than he was. “He’s little.”
Lan Qiren couldn’t even tell which one of the indiscriminate toddlers wrapped in blankets was meant to be Nie Huaisang, but he nodded, and Nie Mingjue led him onwards, initially mostly silent with belated shyness but eventually coaxed into chattering.
In the evening, he returned to Lao Nie’s study.
“Well?” Lao Nie asked, face creased into the scowl he had on more often than not, despite being widely considered one of the more even-tempered Nie. “What do you think?”
“I think your son is a bright and enthusiastic boy,” Lan Qiren said. “With a remarkable sense of justice and morality that will serve him well, although maybe not so much in terms of politics. He’s very…straightforward.”
“Yes, well, I’m still holding out hope on A-Sang for the tact,” Lao Nie said. “That wasn’t my question and you know it.”
Lan Qiren tried to collect his thoughts. “I don’t think you’ve damaged him for life,” he finally said, and Lao Nie’s shoulders relaxed in a sudden exhalation of what was probably months of increasing stress. “I do think he would benefit from understanding a little bit more about what’s happening to him.”
“But he’s so young.”
“I know. Normally, I wouldn’t introduce the subject of his own mortality at this level of complexity this early – although I assume it’s hard for him to miss the concept entirely, given the political situation –” Lao Nie winced in acknowledgment. “– but I don’t think you have much of a choice. You’re not the only one who noticed the saber spirit.”
Lao Nie frowned, then understood, and frowned even deeper. “He’s noticed it?”
“I got him talking on the subject of his saber,” Lan Qiren said. “He regards it in the same manner as other children his age would an imaginary friend. It’s female, apparently.”
Based on the description, Baxia also had what he would, in one of his students, term a personality. He supposed it was possible that Nie Mingjue was just projecting the parts of himself that weren’t quite fit for company, since surely no one could be that earnest, and yet, based on what Lao Nie had told him…
Lao Nie groaned and put his hand to his head. “Jiwei didn’t develop a sense of gender for years,” he grumbled, and Lan Qiren was moderately certain that he hadn’t intended to admit that out loud. “This is ridiculous. I want him to live a good life, Qiren. A long one, insofar as that’s possible for our sect.”
“I’ll try to do some research,” Lan Qiren said. “In the meantime, could he be convinced to cultivate something else in addition to a saber? Music, perhaps?”
“You’re welcome to try. He’s practically tone-deaf.”
“Perhaps arrays, then, or talismans,” Lan Qiren said. “It would do him some good to find another thing to pour all that energy of his into.”
“I’ll think about it,” Lao Nie allowed. “And I appreciate any research you’re able to do, though of course there are limitations on your time – and what we can allow to be taken out of the Unclean Realm.”
Lan Qiren waved a hand. “It’s nothing. I enjoy keeping busy, and the subject is fascinating. Have you considered that regular visits by me might draw attention?”
Attention from within their sects they could handle, but they were both sect leaders – or acting sect leader, in Lan Qiren’s case – and their actions could never truly be wholly their own.
“I have a plan for that,” Lao Nie said. “It’ll work better if you don’t know about it, though.”
Lan Qiren hated plans like that.
“Very well,” he said, aware that he sounded like he was sulking. “If you must.”
“Could I send him to you next year?” Lao Nie asked, and Lan Qiren forgot his grumpiness to gape at him. “I wouldn’t impose this year, naturally, since you must already have a curriculum planned. But next year…”
“If you send him, that will be making a statement,” Lan Qiren said.
A statement about what, exactly, he did not know, but there was a major difference between being the sort of teacher that was respected enough to teach the sect heirs of some small, out-of-the-way sects and being entrusted with the childhood education of the heir to a Great Sect. Even if Nie Mingjue learned nothing, which seemed unlikely given his earnest performance from earlier, the other small sects would immediately want to follow suit, as if to rub off some of the same luck for themselves – he would be flooded with applicants.
His sect elders were going to hate it.
Although it wasn’t exactly against any of the rules…
“That’s why I’m asking your permission.” Lao Nie grinned at him, his teeth flashing white under his nearly trimmed beard. “Also, while you’re our guest here – you did plan to stay at least a week or two, right? Good, good. I will insist upon you joining me for some night-hunts.”
“Lao Nie…”
“I’ve explained to you how my sect cultivates our sabers. Are you really saying that you can judge that without seeing it happening?”
“You know perfectly well that I’m a weak fighter,” Lan Qiren said, even though that was a very good point, and one he probably would have insisted on himself sooner or later. “I don’t want to slow you down.”
“You never have,” Lao Nie said right to his face – the Nie sect did not discourage all lying, the scoundrels. “I’m serious! You’re not the fastest, no, but you’re perceptive, analytical, and creative. The insights I gain from hunting by your side are long-term gains, making me faster and more efficient in the future.”
“You’re flattering me,” Lan Qiren said suspiciously.
“I am not. The first time we went on a night-hunt together, you stopped by the river to rest and told me about how the flowers growing there were unique because they absorbed spiritual energy but not resentful energy on account of being too close to flowing water; three years later, I used that fact to find a gigantic nest of ghosts and demonic creatures that were using it as camouflage. They’d killed nearly a dozen villagers by that point and no one else could find them, but I did.”
Lan Qiren felt his ears heating up. “…that’s a coincidence.”
“Do you really want me to start naming other examples?”
“I would rather you showed me your library,” Lan Qiren said. He hoped he wasn’t blushing. He was probably blushing. No one else ever teased him the way Lao Nie did, except maybe Cangse Sanren. He was suddenly hit by a nostalgic desire to see her again. “At once, if you please. And also…”
He trailed off.
“Why the hesitation?” Lao Nie asked. “Do you really think there’s anything I would deny you, as long as you find a way to help my son?”
Lan Qiren cleared his throat. “It would be helpful if I could examine a more mature saber spirit that has already bonded to a human master. Your Jiwei, for instance.”
As he expected, Lao Nie scowled at the suggestion of someone else examining his spiritual weapon – and his saber spirit, no less – but after a few moments he collected himself and nodded, albeit begrudgingly. “I’ll leave her with you,” he said. “Be careful when you examine her – she doesn’t like to be touched by anyone but me.”
Lao Nie’s warning turned out to be both true, untrue, and an understatement of frankly shocking proportions.
During the course of Lan Qiren’s investigations into the subject of the Nie sect sabers over the next few months, and thereafter, he determined that the best, if not only, way to deal with Jiwei was to act as though he were handling a particularly vicious and single-minded dog.
Jiwei, it seemed, liked to bite.
If one treated her like a normal saber – an inert piece of metal – she would appear completely quiescent right up until there would be an abrupt and inexplicable accident, clattering off the table with the blade curving straight at clothing and flesh, and only very quick reflexes could prevent disaster. If one attempted to utilize spiritual energy with her, it would be even worse: she would pull as much as she could and feed back nothing, spiteful and ruthless.
A vicious creature, too quick to judge, loyal only to her master, who she loved.
A bit like Lao Nie, in fact. Lan Qiren did not delude himself into mistaking Lao Nie’s passion for righteousness – Nie Mingjue was righteous, a serious child that was always wondering what was right, while Lao Nie was more inclined towards brutal, even callous, practicality that focused on what benefited him and his sect. He would do good, of course, but he could not be forced into it; he had his pride, his temper, and sometimes he erred too much in favor of those over even common sense.
But despite all his rough edges, he did truly love his friends.
He dragged Lan Qiren all over Qinghe whenever he visited, on night-hunts and to resolve minor conflicts, the sort of thing any normal traveling cultivator might do; he showed him the small towns and the hidden cities that Lan Qiren would not have seen on any normal visit, and asked him to play songs for his little family. Nie Huaisang was enraptured by the music, Nie Mingjue largely indifferent – Lao Nie had not been wrong to call him practically tone-deaf – and Lao Nie beaming all the while, even if Lan Qiren suspected that his eldest son’s lack of musical appreciation had largely come from him.
He even, after a stray comment, managed to track down Cangse Sanren, who brought her husband and son to the Unclean Realm and left them in Nie Mingjue’s earnest care while she sat with the two of them, drinking liquor as if it were water to the point that even Lao Nie refused to compete with her – when his protests were eventually overridden, Lan Qiren (who drank tea, of course) was roped in to be their long-suffering judge.
It was a good night.
“Is that another thing I took from you?” He Kexin unexpectedly asked Lan Qiren a week after Lao Nie had publicly announced that he would be sending Nie Mingjue to the Cloud Recesses for Lan Qiren’s classes. The ensuing hubbub, as Lan Qiren expected, had been enormous, and he’d braced himself to discuss nothing else for months, although he hadn’t really expected her to mention it.
The Cloud Recesses separated men and women, and He Kexin had borne two sons; they were old enough by now to live primarily with the men rather than the women, and so they had entered Lan Qiren’s care. He brought them to visit her once a month, and came himself like clockwork every two weeks in between to update her as to their progress, his eyes fixed firmly above her head as he narrated the report as if he were a junior returning from a night-hunt. It was not her fault that his brother had fallen in love with her and ruined Lan Qiren’s life, but it had been her decision to murder a man that had served as the trigger for the situation; Lan Qiren was meticulous about his duty to her as his sister-in-law, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. Or her.
By this point, she was moderately good at respecting that. In the beginning, she’d cursed him viciously every time he came to see her, especially after he’d provided her with definitive proof of her former friend’s lies and machinations. Later, she’d tried flirting with him out of what he could only assume was boredom or perhaps a willful misunderstanding as to why he still visited, assuming that he had perfidious motivations or shared his brother’s taste in women instead of suffering from an overdeveloped sense of responsibility for his brother’s misdeeds. It had taken him several months and, eventually, an explicit offer to even notice, and he’d nearly broken his neck fleeing from the scene.
“I don’t understand what you mean,” he said, still looking above her head instead of at her face. He Kexin had A-Huan’s smile and A-Zhan’s eyes, he knew that, but if he could scrub all of her other features from his mind, he would.
“Sect Leader Nie,” she said, and it was so odd to hear someone refer to Lao Nie by his formal title outside of a political situation or deliberate insult – even Wen Ruohan habitually called him Lao Nie by now, and as far as Lan Qiren could tell, they despised each other – that Lan Qiren’s eyes actually dropped to meet hers. “If you weren’t sect leader, you could’ve married him.”
Lan Qiren choked on air. “Do you think of nothing but sex all day?” he spat out, his cheeks going red. “We are friends.”
“I don’t have much else to think of,” He Kexin said, and he glared as if to communicate whose fault is that and maybe in your next life you won’t solve your problems with murder. “I heard you’ve been spending a lot of time with him, and now he’s sending his son to your care. It’s suggestive.”
“Talking behind the backs of others is forbidden,” Lan Qiren reminded her, and she shrugged. “Do I need to discipline your servants?”
“It’s news, not gossip,” she said. “And no, these ones are fine. No one’s playing any tricks.”
There had been an incident early on, where a few of the servants assigned to care for He Kexin had mistaken her confinement for abandonment; they had not expected Lan Qiren to grimly continue visiting as he would have done if she had been his sister-in-law in the normal course of things, nor to listen when she complained. He had of course taken all necessary measures to have the offenders harshly disciplined and expelled, replaced with servants of good character and sufficient intelligence to keep her company without seeking to take advantage, and there had been no new incidents since.
Her punishment was confinement, not torment. No matter what Lan Qiren felt about her, she would receive exactly that – neither more nor less.
“Is it Cangse Sanren, then?” she asked, propping her head up on her chin. “You fell in love with her, and then she married another man…”
“Sometimes people are just friends,” he said, irritated. “Why must I be in love with anyone?”
He Kexin shrugged. “Don’t you want to marry, one day? Have children of your own, rather than always reporting back to me on mine?”
“I’m acting sect leader,” Lan Qiren said tightly. “A marriage, much less children, would give rise to accusations that I was seeking to usurp my brother’s place or my nephews’ inheritance.”
“So it is another thing I’ve done,” she said, looking down at her hands. They were clenched tightly into fists, her knuckles white; sometimes Lan Qiren thought she wanted to punch him as a means of venting her feelings, and sometimes he didn’t even blame her for it. “I had only been thinking about it in the sense that you couldn’t leave, but you can’t even bring anyone back.”
“I don’t especially want to, anyway,” he said, because it was true. Even if she was right, that even his right to marry freely had been taken from him, it didn’t mean that she had the right to use it as a whip on her own back. If Lan Qiren couldn’t bring himself to obey the rule about not holding grudges, he could at least follow the ones about being generous and easy on others. “I haven’t found the right person.”
“And it’s really not Lao Nie?” He Kexin asked. “You go to visit him often, and for longer periods, than you go anywhere else, and A-Huan says you look happy whenever you’re going to go.”
Lan Qiren shrugged. He was happy to go. He enjoyed Lao Nie’s company, and the research, even when Lao Nie was too busy for him personally, and Lao Nie’s role as an allied sect leader meant that Lan Qiren had more latitude in arranging such visits than he did to other places.
“…A-Zhan says that your hands are white when you return.”
Lan Qiren’s eyes dropped to his arms, where there was in fact some white peeking out from beneath his sleeves – white bandages on his left wrist and the two smallest fingers on his right hand, this time, from the latest incident in which Jiwei had tried to slash him, but it was barely a nick in comparison with previous instances; he thought that it was a sign that they might be getting somewhere.
A moment later, he realized the implications of her statement and glared at her. “You’re not seriously asking if Lao Nie is abusing me? Weren’t you asking about my marriage prospects with him only a moment ago?”
“The two are not mutually exclusive,” she said dryly. “And the Nie temper is well known.”
“It’s from research,” Lan Qiren said. “I dropped a saber and I knocked over the table on to my other hand when trying to dodge.”
“I believe you,” she said, lips twitching. “If only because you would’ve come up with a more dignified excuse if it was a lie.”
“I don’t actually have to explain myself to you,” he said, reminding himself as much as her. “Is there anything else you want to know about your sons?”
“No,” she said. “But I’d like my husband to visit me again, if you can arrange it.”
He nodded stiffly.
“You know,” she said, playing idly with her sleeves. “If you never marry, I’ll be the closest thing you ever have to a wife? You manage my house, you raise my children, and you even provide me with services in bed, albeit indirectly.”
Do not succumb to rage, Lan Qiren thought to himself, and left without another word.
(Later, when Cangse Sanren next visited the Cloud Recesses, her husband taking A-Huan on a ride on their donkey with A-Zhan and A-Ying tucked into the saddlebags, she listened to him stammer through the whole humiliating story and gnashed her teeth on his behalf. “Don’t listen to her,” she told him. “By that standard, the rabbits she likes to raise are her concubines.”)
His simmering anger made his next session with Jiwei flow more easily, almost as if the saber spirit empathized with his rage – or perhaps it was simply that she found it more familiar, more reminiscent of the temper of her true master, and therefore less objectionable. He was attempting to draw out some part of her anger through music and store it into a jade pendant: his theory was that the eventual qi deviations of the Nie sect leaders resulted from a lack of balance with the resentful energy utilized by the saber spirit – the negative emotions streaming in through the saber, strengthening it, but having no means of cleansing beyond outbursts of temper.
It had been the way Nie Mingjue spoke of his saber spirit as if she were his friend that had given him the idea. Many in the Nie sect treated their sabers with both reverence and fear, as if the spirits were vicious creatures they had only temporarily tamed and which would one day turn upon them, but Jiwei was passionately loyal to Lao Nie, and Baxia to Nie Mingjue. Perhaps it was his inheritance as a Lan showing, or merely his own experience with his brother, but Lan Qiren simply could not understand how anything that loved so unstintingly, so unreservedly, could ever bring themself to intentionally bring about their beloved one’s destruction.
Even a dog would refuse to bite a master it loved unless it had gone mad.
Therefore, he concluded, it was not merely the human wielder but the saber itself that deviated in their cultivation. Lao Nie had once said in an aside that it was unclear what came first, the Nie sect tempers or the saber spirit-incited outbursts, and although he had meant it as a joke, Lan Qiren thought there was some merit to the question. Rage served a valuable purpose for humans, acting as a warning sign that something was wrong, that something was unacceptable, rejection and protection all at once, but rage that could not be excised would turn rancid and sour, like a poisoned wound. Sabers were cultivated by their masters and resembled them – they were filled with human rage, intensified by their cultivation of resentful energy, but unlike a human they could not shout or hit something or vent in any way other than through hunting.
No wonder Jiwei was so content after a night-hunt; no wonder Nie sect cultivators got irritable when they hadn’t had time to cultivate their sabers or fight evil or just get out and do something. But with limited venting opportunities (humans could not fight evil all the time), the sabers would fall into obsession, infected by the very same resentful energy that they excised when they hunted – their bloodlust simultaneously sated and inflamed – and as their power grew, and their true opponents grew fewer, they would become insatiable and, eventually, unbalanced. Demonic cultivation was abhorred by the cultivation world because it opened the door to obsession and fixation, and the most common way that demonic cultivators died, if not executed by the world, was through a backlash of their own power. Obsession was by its nature rigid, and that was the sole weakness of the saber: they had to be rigid, but never too rigid, or else they would become brittle, would break.
Deviation.
It was a very interesting theory, even if Lao Nie’s eyes glazed over whenever Lan Qiren tried to explain. Lan Qiren didn’t take offense: Lao Nie had always been an exceptionally practical man, more interested in results than theories, actions rather than thoughts.
“Aren’t you disappointed?” Lan Qiren asked him at one point, abrupt as he always seemed to be about such things. “That I haven’t gotten anywhere?”
Lao Nie looked surprised. “What do you mean? You have a valid theory, you’ve tried all sorts of things.”
“I haven’t succeeded.”
Lao Nie laughed. “My friend, this is a problem that has stymied my sect for generations. Did you really think you’d be able to solve it in three weeks?”
Lan Qiren scowled. “It’s been closer to three years.”
“You’ve made progress,” Lao Nie said confidently. “A-Jue has as solid a foundation as I could hope for, and all those conversations you have with him about the nature of ethics and morality have had an excellent effect on his saber.”
“Has it?” Lan Qiren asked, skeptical. Even the Nie sect experts agreed that Baxia was unusually vicious for a saber, powerful enough to frighten wild yao simply with her presence – Nie Mingjue’s cultivation remained shockingly fast, and even Lan Qiren, who had only a few years understanding of the saber spirits, could recognize the effects of it.
“It has,” Lao Nie said firmly. “He doesn’t fear her, and she loves him all the more for it, backs him like none other; no other saber of his generation will so much as waver out of line with Baxia behind them. As for the rest…ah, Qiren, if you can figure out a way to stymie the saber spirit even a little – give him even another decade – I’ll be satisfied. Don’t worry about it.”
Lan Qiren huffed and returned to trying to transfer spiritual energy from Jiwei to the pendant.
“Besides, all this time spent on the project has had at least one good effect,” Lao Nie added, putting his hand on Lan Qiren’s shoulder as he played. “I get the pleasure of your company.”
Lan Qiren’s attention was fixed on his playing, but the hand was warm on his shoulder. “That hardly seems so much of a benefit,” he said absently.
“You underestimate yourself. Do you know, outside of my sect, I think you’re my best friend?”
Only years of training allowed Lan Qiren’s fingers to continue to move smoothly over the guqin strings when his heart seized in his chest, warm and hot and squished and painful and pleasurable at the same time.
He did not allow himself to ask “Really?” like a small child, insecure and uncertain, did not permit himself to say “even above my brother”, did not say anything at all.
“Thank you,” he finally said, stiff and wooden. “I…you as well.”
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i need an echo, not your praise. lillian “lily” okada.
— BASICS
Name: Lillian Okada
Age / D.O.B.: 37 / March 13th, 1985
Gender, Pronouns & Sexuality: cis-female, she/her, bisexual
Hometown: White Plains, New York
Affiliation: Law Enforcement - Corrupt
Job position: Medical Examiner
Education: Bachelors of Science in Biology from NYU, 2007; Doctor of Medicine from NYU, 2013; Certification from The American Board of Pathology in forensic and anatomical pathology, 2019
Relationship status: Single
Children: None (she’d be such a bad parent.)
Positive traits: Fair, honest, incisive, loyal, passionate
Negative traits: Unfriendly, calculating, irritable, secretive, possessive
— BIOGRAPHY
When babies don’t laugh or often cry, parents believe it to be a blessing. When Lillian was born, however, she barely even made a sound. Her parents, the perfect caring, young, rich couple excited to start a family, brought her to countless doctors, thinking there was something wrong. But for all intents and purposes: Lillian was the spitting image of a textbook healthy baby girl.
As she grew up, it became very apparent that Lillian was not developing socially like she should. She had no interest in interacting with other babies and toddlers, she didn’t talk, and she didn’t enjoy having to share her things. With another baby on the way, her parents became increasingly worried that something was amiss with Lillian. Soon after her fourth birthday, her parents brought her to her very first child psychiatrist.
They soon found out that Lillian was normal in every sense of the word, except for one lone issue: she didn’t have the empathy that a regular person would. Instead of learning how to control one’s emotions, she had to learn to mimic them. Long hours and repeated material armed Lillian with the proper tools to enter elementary school like any other child would have. Though she pretended well enough, Lillian interacted with other children based solely on what she could get out of it. If she wanted their toys or books, if she wanted to be in the winning team on sports days, even if she simply wanted what another person had at lunch.
Her act was convincing enough to lull her parents into a false sense of security. The older they got, the more they believed their oldest daughter was finally incorporating herself into society and growing out of her troubled childhood. In reality, Lillian was just getting better at studying people. Her friend group at school was composed of people she knew would benefit her in the end. People that would stick up for her if she ever found herself in trouble. It was easy enough to show a bit of empathy at the proper moments, and set herself up to reap the benefits when needed.
Lillian didn’t have any particular passion in school, but simply voiced her “love” for medicine when asked about it because the proposed money sounded nice. The subject wasn’t easy, no, but she appreciated the complexity of biology, and enjoyed learning about every function in the human body that had to happen in order for it to function. It’s easy to see why she graduated from high school the valedictorian, and then went onto graduate college magna cum laude.
Medical school posed the hardest challenge of her academic life, but it was nothing she wasn’t equipped to prepare. Lillian’s biggest issues stemmed from her sociability. Patients and fellow medical students often said she came across as cold and uncaring. Though a shock to her at the time, she came to the conclusion that emotions and connecting with other people was something that simply took up too much time and effort, and if she was going to become a successful doctor, she needed to be focusing on her research instead.
If it wasn’t for one particular night on shift at the emergency room, her life would have continued on like normal. Normal employees would have seen the hulking, tattooed figure come in with a gun shot wound and looked the other way. Normal employees would see another man in a suit come in to stand by his side and answer all questions, and decided that whatever was happening was not worth their time- but Lillian had never been normal.
The two were only footmen in a small gang, but knowledge of them and the subsequent ways they tried to cover up the mishap that led one of them to that very emergency room was what shined a light on the seedier underbelly of the town to Lillian. The smart thing to do might have been to ignore it, or to report it to the authorities, but she saw the opportunity of a lifetime.
Now, Lillian was not out to completely ruin her professional career. She knew that if she was going to allow her services to be utilized by those operating outside the law, she would have to be smart about it. Such a drive was what pushed her to switch from practicing medicine to analyzing the dead. From her new job post, she could learn all she wanted about those misfortunate enough to have their messes discovered by the police. The smarter ones never allowed their work to end up in her examination rooms, but that kind of allure just fuels the hunger Lillian has to find out more.
The cherry on top of it all was that she would never have to worry about patients complaining about her coldness ever again.
CORRUPT: As far as being ‘corrupt’ goes, Lillian isn’t affiliated with any gang or person. She simply is willing to turn a blind eye when offered proper justification, and won’t think twice about changing a few details on official records. If she does this for you, however, the deal will definitely go both ways, and she is going to find a way to make you in debt to her for these services.
— WANTED CONNECTIONS / PLOTS
(Theses are general ideas that I’m 100% more than willing to shape to fit your character!! Also, if you think Lily is a good fit for a wanted connection you have, feel free to let me know.
Anyone in law enforcement (government might work, too): Lily is a pain in the ass to deal with. She’s very blunt, cares about herself, and doesn’t see a need to pander. Working with her is no doubt a hard task, unless your character is similar, so I’m eager to see the kind of insanity that might ensue.
Anyone in the medical field (doctor, nurse, whatever, whoever): Lily spent 6 years working in the Emergency Room. She isn’t a practicing physician in a hospital, anymore, and sometimes she does find herself missing it. If your character worked at the hospital or still is working at the hospital, them having some form of connection with Lily would definitely work.
Any gang member: Again, Lily is not loyal to any gang. If your character needs evidence taken care of or something scrubbed from a medical report, you could try your luck with her, but… gooood luck.
Anyone that looks at her and says “I could befriend that”: Being a cold, calculating asshole does have its charms. If she deems you someone worthy of her time and effort, she will definitely be a person your character can rely on. However, she doesn’t tolerate any kind of bullshit, and won’t hesitate to let your character know if they’re letting a romantic partner take advantage of them, your character doing something detrimental to themself just to benefit someone else, etc., even if your character isn’t ready to hear it. AKA, she will call you out fr.
Anyone that looks at her and says “I wanna hit that”: Lily is very open sexually and has no qualms about casual hook-ups. Just don’t expect her to be the most dotting bed partner.
Anyone that looks at her and says “I could fix her I could date her”: Yeah goodluck buddy. But, no, seriously, there is a heart that beats in her chest. Under all her exterior, she could very easily start to care about someone (or multiple people, :eye emoji:). In whatever relationship does form, Lily will take a very controlling roll, so that’s something that’ll have to be tackled.
More specific ideas:
Dirty, dirty secret: Your character and Lily have done something rather naughty together (be in on purpose or on accident) and now live with the knowledge that the other person knows exactly what happened, and if this information got out, it could spell trouble for them both. They walk on thin ice around each other, but know that they need the other to keep their mouth shut.
Known for too long: Lily and this character don’t necessarily have to get along, but for some reason they have been in each other’s lives for so long at this point that they can’t see their life without the other being in it. Lily will generally be a bit softer with this person, just because she feels like she can let her guard down the tiiiniest bit.
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this isn't my best work, but it's still pretty good for something i wrote when i was 15 after having a half a year of writer's block. anyways, ahem, presenting the fic in which severus says fuck it after the lake incident and just doesn't go back to hogwarts but potentially gets dragged into the war anyway despite living in the muggle world for like,, three years, part 1 (aka the only chapter i wrote bc my writer's block came back oops):
It starts simply, like most things do. It starts with a few words, tossed out without care and full of childish conviction. It escalates to brawls in the corridors and duels in the dungeons--if you could even call them that when it was four-on-one and most encounters left him reeling. It continues until he's twitchy and hypervigilant and awkward, always on the lookout for an attack, ready to bite before anyone could bite him.
It ends much the same. The events leading up to this are a production fit for the theatre, if the crowd is anything to by, but the ending itself is quite simple. Gasping for air near the shore of the Black Lake and battling a headache that hurts almost as much as the sharp press of his heart at the thought of what he'd done to Lily, he simply gives up. He picks himself up, tells himself this is the end of it and goes about collecting his belongings.
His wand comes to his hand easily enough with a mumbled Accio. His bag does, as well. Its contents, on the other hand, have to be collected by hand. His textbooks and ink are strewn beneath the tree, mostly, but the loose parchment and his quill are lost to the wind. He snatches up what he can find before someone gets it into their head to come further humiliate him and turns to head back into into the castle. Only to be smacked in the face by a bound sheaf of parchment and a quill. It's suspicious, and he's tempted to burn it then and there. It's his, but they were definitely scattered about the grounds two seconds ago. He doesn't burn it. He hesitates, puts it in his bag and returns to the castle, intent on making his way to Gryffindor Tower.
The apology doesn't go well. Lily isn't interested, refuses to hear it. He returns to the Slytherin dorms, drops into his bed and thanks Merlin that they'll be going home soon. Cokeworth is God-awful, but at least there's only one man trying to kill him there and only one woman for him to disappoint.
So, he waits it out. Spends his final classes looking over his shoulder and staring blankly at his parchment every time he remembers that they tried to kill him and they humiliated him and they got away with both. He shrinks into himself, avoiding the corridors at all costs, skipping meals to avoid being in the Great Hall and spends as much time as possible in the Library and the dusty old Potions Lab on the Fourth Floor that no one knows about, losing himself in research so he doesn't have to interact with his Housemates. He sits alone at the Leaving Feast, refuses to touch his plate until Evan Rosier falls into the seat next to him and bothers him into eating. The Headmaster dismisses them, says that they'll see each other come September and lets them filter out onto the train.
He ends up sharing a compartment with Mulciber, Avery and Rosier even though he's barely spoken to any of them since the incident. Evan needles him about everything and nothing the whole way to King's Cross, and when they get there, Evan claps him on shoulder and that's goodbye.
He gathers up his things, goes to meet his mother so they can Apparate home and not waste what little money they have on transport. Eileen's cheeks are sunken, her arms rail thin, her dress loose-fitting. He'd still rather see her than anyone even loosely affiliated with Hogwarts. She nods at him, he nods back. They go home.
He spends his summer making himself useful. He does odd jobs for the neighbours, is grudgingly polite to his father, takes care of his mother. By the time term rolls around, people are talking about that Snape boy. Strange, and quiet, too, but he works well, doesn't he? September first dawns bright and early, and Severus doesn't go back to Hogwarts.
He studies at home instead, nose buried in his mum's old books. He plants the few ingredients he has hidden away in his trunk at the back of the house and uses what grows to brew medicines and weedkillers and anything he can think of after experimenting a bit. Mr. and Mrs. Smith down the street both swear up and down he's working magic on their little garden and their old bones.
He feeds cats, delivers packages for the grocer, takes tables and nightstands home to cast Reparo on. Someone tells the pub owner about him, and the next thing he knows, he's frying chips and learning how to mix drinks even though the most complicated thing anyone ever orders is a pint of the beer that they have on tap.
It's not a bad existence. Eventually, slowly, his mother starts coming back to herself. She takes over the brewing when he isn't around. Annotates his annotations and even makes a trip to Diagon Alley for more ingredients to add to their garden when Severus forgets to write Narcissa to ask her to send a few more.
Severus is old enough now to drag his father home from the pub behind him when he's done working. One evening, they come home and Tobias nearly trips over the end table that Severus is meant to be fixing for Mr. Williams three houses up. Severus works his wand out of his boot and goes to cast a spell, but Tobias grumbles and bats his hand away. Drunk as he is, he still digs out his toolbox and gets to work. The job turns out almost decent.
By December, Severus is at the pub, feeding cats on his break and making deliveries when he has the time. Eileen is brewing and Tobias is doing carpenter's work fixing and building wardrobes, cupboards, cabinets and everything else. It keeps him busy enough that some days he doesn't see a drink at all. It's not much, but there's a little food on the table at the end of each day, and Severus thinks that he's probably better off than he would have been at Hogwarts.
Sometime around Christmas, his mother talks him into getting a Muggle education and writing his NEWTs. He writes the O-Levels for his Muggle exams in January. They're a breeze, given how well-read he is. He sees Petunia at the store shortly after, and she sneers vaguely in his direction. He hears her condescending voice in the back of his head and decides to sit the A-Levels in May out of spite.
His birthday comes and goes, the NEWTs come right after and he aces each and every one of the written exams. The practicals are spread out across the following weeks, and he's leaving the Ministry after his last exam to find that the date coincides with that of a field trip for the Sixth Years at Hogwarts.
He watches them a little, tearing his gaze away after he catches sight of a tanned arm draped over a shoulder touched by a red braid. The students mill near the doors for a while and so, Severus looks around for escape routes, eyes skipping hurriedly from door to door until they rest on a Ravenclaw who'd also taken the January NEWTs. All kinds of people had been there, adults who hadn't passed when they were younger and needed to retake the exams to get jobs, teenagers who had family fortunes waiting for them whose parents wanted them to at least look like they were competent, and overachievers--like Severus assumed the Ravenclaw was--who wanted to know where they stood before the actual exam. He jerks his chin toward another door, this one proclaiming to lead to the "Apparition Division". Severus nods once at him and makes his way toward it.
There's a one-day course for Apparition, apparently. The woman at the receptionist desk doesn't even bother looking at him, just points him in the direction of the Training Room with her nail file. He stays for nearly the rest of the day, until they're finally done. He gets his license and is quietly pleased to see that the building is nearly devoid of life when he leaves. He goes home.
May and June come around and bring with them the A-Levels. He finds them only marginally more challenging than his O-Levels and returns to his routine. It's a nice routine, which takes him all the way through to July of the next year when Lily starts coming in with Black and Potter and Pettigrew and Lupin. The first time it happens, he leaves the counter so fast that the patron he'd just given a glass of water to is convinced he teleported. He's already taken his regular break to go feed Mrs. Jones' cats, so he steps into the kitchen and tells Jimmy he's taking a smoke break. Jimmy snorts and reminds him that he doesn't smoke.
He fidgets, trying to think up a way to avoid going back out, when the ruckus they're making makes Jimmy look through the little window and see the lot of them crowded around a little table. He gets a peculiar look on face for a bit, before he asks Severus if they have something to do with why he doesn't go to his fancy school anymore. He doesn't need an answer, just tells him to keep an eye on the food and steps out to man the counter. Severus stays late, frying chips and washing dishes until the early hours of the morning when Jimmy pats him on the back and kicks him out.
It keeps up until September comes around, and by then, Severus has taken so many smoke breaks that he's actually started smoking. He keeps smoking long after they're gone.
He goes back to his routine until it's broken again by a letter that comes by owl. It's a short letter, coming from a Potions Master whose apprentice had been overseeing the exams. It claims that his work was the best either of them had seen in years and after asking around, they'd found that he was unbound to any Master and was highly recommended by the Malfoys. It ends with an offer. Severus would think himself foolish not to accept, so, he does. After that, two days a week are dedicated to Flooing to Master Diogene's laboratory to fulfil the requirements of his apprenticeship. It finds its own little nook in his routine and so he continues until June of 1980.
He's preparing to go to the pub when there's a knock at the door. It's not so uncommon anymore, so he thinks nothing of it, only that he hopes it doesn't take too long. His shift starts in half an hour. He pushes his shirt sleeves up to his elbows, where they perpetually are these days, and decides he'll roll them up properly later. He opens the door.
"Good afternoon," a very pregnant Lily says, and standing next to her is the Ravenclaw from the Ministry, back straight, arms clasped behind his back, his entire being alert.
"Good afternoon," he replies, awkward. After a long moment of silence, he asks, "Can I help you?"
"Depends on whether or not you let us in," she says.
Wordlessly, he steps aside, sliding the three pairs of shoes nearer to the wall in order to let them pass. "Do you want tea?"
"No," she says, at the exact same time her Auror friend says, "Thank you."
He gestures them into the little kitchen, where they sit at the little table where he and his mother and his father take their meals. He tugs his wand out of his boot, flicks it so that the cauldron bubbling away on the stove scoots aside but doesn't spill. The burner beneath lights on its own. He puts the kettle, already full, on to boil. "So," he begins, absentmindedly rolling up his sleeves. "Is there something you need from me?"
Lily smiles, strained. "Can't I just visit an old friend?"
"Sure," he says, quietly. "You made it very clear that you would prefer if we weren't, though."
Her expression twists. "And with good reason," she grits.
He says nothing. The kettle whistles. He searches for the boxes of tea, sets about mixing two cups of mint. He puts them both on a tray with milk and sugar, as well as the small container of honey kept for special occasions. He puts it on the table.
"I'm sorry."
She doesn't say anything, just watches him with bright, green eyes aflame with old anger. She picks up one of the teacups and starts doctoring it to her liking. Her Auror friend follows suit. It really is obvious, Severus thinks, watching the man scan the room from top to bottom, corner to corner. He sighs. "Why are you here, Lily?"
She glares at her tea. The Auror shifts uncomfortably. Severus sighs again. "You know, when people visit old friends, they usually don't bring Aurors with them."
"Trainee, actually. This is my last year." He grins sheepishly. "That obvious?"
Severus nods.
He leans over the table, stretches out a hand. His right, Severus notices. He leans over and shakes with his left.
"Kingsley Shacklebolt," the Auror trainee introduces himself.
"Severus Snape, but you already knew that."
"Ah, yes. Of course."
Lily continues to glare at her tea. Shacklebolt fidgets. Severus stares, adjusts the heat on the burner below the cauldron. Silence prevails. The door creaks open, just then, and Eileen comes in, stirring rod in hand. "You'll be late if--oh," she says, noticing their guests. "Good afternoon."
"Good afternoon," the other three respond with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
"Well, if it isn't Lily Evans. It's been quite a while, hasn't it? You look well," Eileen says, nudging her son out of the way so she can poke at the mixture in the cauldron.
"You as well," Lily mumbles. "And it's, ah, it's Potter now, actually. Lily Evans Potter."
"Ah, I see. My mistake. Congratulations are in order, then, Mrs. Potter."
"Congratulations," Severus echoes.
"And you're a Shacklebolt, yes?" Eileen continues, her hands methodically sprinkling ground lavender into the cauldron. "Elodie's son, I should think. You resemble her quite a bit."
"Yes, ma'am," the trainee replies. "Grandmother says I'm nearly a carbon copy."
Eileen hums, lowers the heat under the cauldron. She takes out the stirring rod, examining the clinging lavender paste before wiping it off and placing it on the counter. "I suppose I'll leave you it, though Doris just passed, and she said that Jimmy has a full house, so, do try to hurry. It's already nearly four."
"Yes, Mam."
She leaves, and once more, silence settles over the small kitchen. Severus looks at the clock on the wall, sees that it does, indeed, say that it's minutes to four. Eleven minutes, to be exact, and it's a ten minute walk to the pub. He starts gathering the tea things, has just taken Shacklebolt's empty teacup when Lily clears her throat.
"Are you a Death Eater?" she asks.
"No," Severus tells her, and takes her teacup. Ten minutes to four.
"Prove it," she says, glaring.
Severus sets down the tray and leans across the table, arms outstretched, palms up, forearms exposed. The skin on either arm is pale, smooth and utterly unmarked, save and except for the scars one is bound to get when their preferred work involves knives and hot cauldrons.
"You keep regular contact with Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy, as well as Regulus Black and Evan Rosier, all of whom are suspected Death Eaters. Why?"
Severus' eyes narrow. "Lucius is sponsoring my Potions Mastery. Narcissa, for whatever reason, enjoys my conversation. Regulus and Evan both seem to think that I'll drop dead if I don't speak to them at least once a week and I haven't been able to disabuse them of the notion--though, not for lack of trying."
"So, you aren't planning to become a Death Eater?" Seven minutes to four.
"I'm not," Severus says, biting down on something rising in his chest. He returns the tea things to their proper places, washes the cups and sets them to dry. When he looks at them again, Lily's glare has softened into an unwavering stare.
"Are you certain?" she asks, and Severus grits his teeth.
"Oh, no, not at all. I only left the Wizarding World to live in a Muggle neighbourhood with my Muggle father, work for a Muggle and feed old ladies' cats and fix their husbands' cabinets because I thought it would make it easier for me when I decided I wanted to murder them all. Obviously," he snaps, throat closing around the words as soon they've been forced out of his mouth. His jaw clamps shut. Three minutes to four.
"You're being an a—" she starts, but then she bites her tongue. "Why... why did you leave?"
He stands silent for a moment. "Reasons I don't believe we have time to discuss. It appears that I'm late for work, I'm afraid." The clock reads three fifty-nine. By the time, he reaches the front door, it will be four o' clock. He starts walking.
"But–" Lily begins, standing.
He gestures them onto the porch while he shoves his feet into his boots. "Terribly sorry to leave in a hurry like this, but duty calls. Things to do, people to see. Enjoy your evening, Mrs. Potter. Auror Trainee Shacklebolt." Four o' clock.
"Really–"
"Until next time, Mr. Snape," Shacklebolt interjects, and with a stiff nod, he and Lily make their way towards the Apparition Point they'd used and Severus is walking down the street. He exhales, slowly, carefully at the quiet, telltale crack of Disapparition off in the distance. He picks up the pace and hopes that'll be the end of it. He knows it won't, though. Until next time, Shacklebolt said.
It isn't the end, of course. It never is. There's a knock at the door just before he's ready to leave the next afternoon, and he contemplates just not answering the door and staying at home for the foreseeable future. There's enough food to last at least a week, and he could always just tell Mrs. Havisham that he wasn't feeling well. The news would make it around the town and back within the day. The knock sounds again. He sighs and gets up to go answer it. "Can I help you?"
"Only if you want to. May I come in?" Shacklebolt asks.
Against his better judgement, Severus lets him in.
#severus snape#snapedom#pro snape#fic#i didn't expect anyone to take me seriosuly but someone did and goddamn it i'll be damned if i don't give them something to read#anyways have fun#probably a bit ooc#but that's what makes aus fun amirite hehe#alright that's enough from me
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INFATUATION
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Pairing : Seokjin x OC (from reader's POV)
Genre : Yandere.
Warning : Nothing for this part.
Wordcount : 1.8K
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Full Masterlist and elaborate warning please read here.
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List of Chapters here.
Part 3 - DEVISED
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She changed her number.
He had expected her to call him, considering how generous he was. There was no way she would whoring to other men. He knew the lesson he taught her the other night would leave a deep impression inside her pretty head. Unless, of course, if he predicted wrong, that meant she would need a harsher lesson.
Seokjin didn't try to call her until eight days later after that night. He wanted to know if she would be the one to initiate the contact with him. When one week had passed, he asked his private investigator to get her number from Kevin. He certainly couldn't let his club manager to know if he had the slightest interest with one of the servers.
All his life, Seokjin never beg or chase a woman, he never had to.
Before his adolescence phase, he didn't really have any interest in relationship. His life was too busy between school, friends, and video games. Then puberty hit him hard, and he grew into a man with appearance and strong appeal to the opposite sex, and whenever he wanted a woman, he would get her with little effort.
His family was established, had been loaded for a long time that could be traced back to the first generation of Kim family. With proprietary of several banks that had been run for more than two decades, Seokjin learned well from his father about management, investment, and risk taking.
He just had to play his cards right, highly educated himself on many necessary aspects, and made a timely good decisions, everything would fall into place.
Until he met her.
Sometimes anomaly happened.
Even a good speculator like him made mistakes, and it was unfortunate that she had to involve in that kind of situation with him.
He wasn't one that could admit defeat. He liked to play game, and he loved to plan his strategy, savoring the feeling everytime it came into fruition.
How stupid she could be, to switch phone number while still working in his night club. If she thought by changing her number she could avoid him altogether, she would have another thing coming for her. It would be just a matter of time before she come to him, he would make sure of that.
It was almost six p.m. when he sat on his chair in his office, facing his private investigator in front of him.
Yun Fa was a chinese, Seokjin met the guy three years ago in Macau, and spared him from being killed by the loan shark. The timid guy was drowned too deep in debt as a result of his addiction in gambling. Who could resist the temptation of easy money when living in a city of gaming?
When Seokjin knew his past experience in China as a police officer, he took the guy with him to South Korea, and arranged him to be his assistant initially. His skill in investigation came to light when he often acquainted Seokjin about many affairs that were hidden or happened behind his back within his companies.
Hence his career transition as his private investigator.
"So..tell me about her illness." He leaned back on his chair with elbows on the armrest, gazing out to the view outside the window wall from the twenty eighth level of his office building.
"It's Crohn disease, it's a chronic inflammatory bowel disease that affects the lining of the digestive tract..-"
"Yun Fa, I did my research, I know what it is. Go straight to her problem."
The guy cleared his throat and looking at his stack of files nervously. His boss was intimidating to say the least, always emanated a "do it right or you can go fuck yourself" kind of aura, and it showed in him with such grace that made people thought he was probably born with it.
"Right...em..Joo Lisa, the younger sister apparently has severe case of the disease. She's been going back and forth of hospital for the past year. I talked to the doctor, and he said she might need surgery to remove the offending part of her intestines. But as long as they can control the symptoms with medication, it will work temporarily."
"Why don't they just proceed with the surgery?"
"Em...the older sister is the sole breadwinner of the family. I guess they just survive for the time being. She basically living from paycheck to paycheck, and I managed to get her credit record, it's not good. She had several outstanding loan."
Seokjin mused upon the information. He had to admit he was impressed with her mental strength. She didn't call him despite her obvious impending financial doom. Her situation explained her current condition, her body looked too fragile and unhealthy. Maybe she couldn't even afford regular decent meal.
"How about her landlord?" Seokjin glanced at the view of the sky outside, pretty orange hue lined over the horizon. It was almost sunset, and his head started to hurt.
Today his mind was full of thinking about her, distracting him from his work, and he despised himself because of that. He was no a weakling, especially when it came to women.
"The building owned by an elder couple living in Yongsan - Gu. They have a son who lived in San Fransisco, working in Silicon Valley. My guess is, they just hold the building as a side income, they don't really need the money, most of their earning come from time deposit. I personally think, once they passed away, their son will probably just sell out the building."
Seokjin nodded, absorbing the information.
"Their house in Daegu? Did you check on it?" He took some papers from the stack in front of Yun Fa.
"They were three months behind on the rent of their banjiha. The medical cost really drained their finances, not that there are really any source to speak of, they rely on Joo Aerin's salary every month."
He read the papers at a glance before shoved it back to Yun Fa.
"Last hospital stay had been settled, am I right? Has the girl been discharged yet?"
"Yes, she has been discharged two days ago. But the doctor scheduled another check up in two weeks." Yun Fa closed the file folder with a soft snap, he didn't have further information about the girl.
"I want you to ask the doctor to meet me here in two days. Pick him up or arrange a car, I don't care. Ask Soo Yeon to help you." He took his phone from the table.
"What should I tell him about the purpose of this meeting?" Yun Fa looked at his boss and mentally admired his elegant visage. Were he was a gay, he would have drooled over the man.
"Career advancement. Oh, and get the contact number of the landlord. " He waved his hand to dismiss the guy while put the phone on his ear.
Yun Fa had a lot of question inside his head about this latest mission, of why his boss set his eyes on an ordinary girl. He saw Seokjin in several occasions with model-like women, this girl wasn't his usual type. Although, Yun Fa had to admit, she was pretty if only she had some curves around her scrawny figure. But he definitely couldn't afford to be nosy.
He loved his job, and pissing off his boss wasn't something favorable for his career. Besides, he indebted to the man for his life. So he silently made his way out of the room.
Seokjin leaned back on his chair closing his eyes, while waiting for the person on the other line to pick up the call.
"Jung Hoseok."
"Hoseok..are you free to talk?"
"I'm on my way to Yoongi's. Something happened Hyung?"
"Do you have any opening in your hospital in Busan or Daejeon? Anywhere but Seoul or Daegu. Senior level, surgeon specialist or equal preferably."
"What specialties?"
"Digestive or Colon and Rectal surgery."
"I think I can work on it. Let me get back to you tomorrow."
Seokjin heard him talking to someone next to him.
"Are you with Namjoon?"
"No, I'm with Jimin. Yoongi summoned us. There is a problem with Yuri, I think."
"I see. Please call me when you have the news."
He hung up the call, and stared at dark sky outside.
Yoongi had changed recently. He was too occupied with that woman, and Seokjin didn't like it. A few years back when Yoongi had a dispute with Hoseok over a woman, he almost got killed by her. If not for Seokjin's consideration over Hoseok's feeling to her, he would already had sent a hitman to finish her. That woman was bad news.
Among the six other boys in their group, Yoongi and Jimin were the ones with similar character with him. Cunning, calculative and ruthless whenever necessary.
Jimin was the most impressive one. One would never know how cold-blooded he could be when it came to finish his opponent, literally or figuratively, he wouldn't even blink. A perfect character for the world they live in. Only his youth being a hindrance, but it just needed a little bit polishing and few years of growing up, he would be the perfect leader for the group.
Yoongi was another example of stealth demon in disguise. He was like a chameleon, less talking, but could adjust and perceive to almost any situation. A master in reading people, an expert in numbers, and skillfull with his gun.
Hoseok was also good, he had skills in between slashing the enemy and exceptional managerial skill. If not for his biggest weakness towards his feeling over his woman was the ultimate obstacle to make him a powerful leader.
Namjoon, Jungkook and Taehyung were the good boys of the group. They needed the kind of characters to put a stop whenever their inhumanity went out of hand.
They had each other's back, one wasn't capable enough, the other would take over. That was how they had been all these years.
Everybody had their own weakness, even Seokjin himself. In his case, his other six brothers were his ultimate vulnerability. They were unrelated by blood, but Seokjin felt the invisible string between them. More than one occasions he had to go all the way of saving their asses, but not once he felt compelled about it.
It was strange.
Just as odd as his feeling towards her. He couldn't quite call it love. It was a foreign feeling for him.
Because as much as he wanted to save her, he also wanted to punish her, to hurt her.
You don't hurt the person you love, surely.
Maybe it was obsession.
It that was what it was, it would be easier to handle. Seokjin had never let his feeling dictate his brain. He was the oldest of the group, he had to keep his composure and rationality, and not letting a woman to become a distraction.
So instead of forcing her, he would lure her. He just couldn't wait the day she would come back to him willingly.
.
Part 4 - Overturn
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