#i dont know what i look like anyway like photo to photo from mirror glance to mirror glance i am a different person to myself

[ghostpantomime]

one drunk guy at work said i look like someone else which i really do Not look like but oml is it messing with my perception of myself

[onlyonetifosi]

Why me? How you dare?

-> Word Count: 1950

->Author note: 2nd part? And I would appreciate some ideas to write . English is not my first language so sorry for mistakes

Pierre Galsy, love of my life or that what i tougth only a month ago . It's been a little over a month since Pierre and I broke up, and I still can't understand why it happened. My twin brother Arthur was the one who found out first. He came into my room, sat down on my bed, and just looked at me. I could tell something was wrong. "What is it?" I asked him. "Pierre broke up with you," he said simply showing me a letter.

I couldn't believe it. I had thought things were going so well between us. We had been together for almost two years, and I had never been happier. But apparently, Pierre didn't feel the same way. He told in the letter that he didn't think we were compatible anymore and that he needed some time to be alone. I was heartbroken. I cried for days and refused to leave my room.

My older brother Charles tried to comfort me, but I just couldn't seem to snap out of it. Finally, after about a week, I decided to get out of bed and face the world again. But even though I'm slowly moving on, I can't help but wonder what went wrong. Why did Pierre break up with me? Was there something I did wrong?

I spend my nights crying for him, we were so happy for years but he decided out of nothing to cut laces with me and he was gone when i came home from work one night. Its heartbreaking only knowing about him from his bestfriend, the problem is that his bestfriend is my older brother Charles, Charles Leclerc, the one that said years ago that his friends where forbidden, but i didn't listen to him and now im facing the consequences.

Why I had to be so stubborn, I wish I had listened to him.

-Allez princesse, lève-toi, on dîne avec maman- Charles says entering in my room and opening the curtains for the sun to enter in my room, I cover myself with my duvets but he rip them of me as I growl at him .

-Allez! Je sais que tu ne veux pas parler, mais on doit dîner avec ma femme- he says to me as I roll my eyes and groan in displeased, today im having dinner at Charles house with all our family and his girlfriend, Charlotte,don't get me wrong Ilike her a lot but Im not in the mood to talk to anyone. I dont know why Charles dragged me here, but it seems like he wants to talk to me about something. I go in the bathroom and brush my teeth while glancing myself in the mirror and i notice that im really skinny now that im not eating that much ever since Pierre left. "Im sorry for what happened two years ago" Charles says as he enters in the bathroom "I should have listened to you when you said no guy was allowed around here" I say as we sit down on the floor of my room while we watch TV. "Pierre is a good guy" he says as he changes the channel "You two were perfect for each other, you just need to let go and move on" he says as he changes the channel again. "Im sorry" I say as I look down. "How about a big plate of ice cream?" Charles says as he gets up from the floor. "No thank you, its alright" I say while keeping my head down. "I'm going to get one anyway" Charles says before he leaves my room.

I turn off the TV before laying down on my bed with my box of tissues. I take out a tissue before wiping some tears away and start looking at old pictures of Pierre and me when we were together for two years that were in a photo album that my mom gave to me after he left me. The first picture was taken on our first date when we went on a picnic at Central Park in New York City when it was warm outside but then it started to rain so we had to grab our stuff quickly and ran towards the street where we took a cab home since it was getting cold out . The second picture was taken on Valentine's Day last year where we went to an expensive restaurant for dinner then later walked around town a bit before heading back home.

Photos that remembered our good old days where we were so happy together, even though there were some days where things didnt seem right between us which happens sometimes between couples, not all days are perfect or happy days but what matters is how you make them right or happy again after feeling upset, unhappy or angry towards each other which is what we used to do when there were problems between us until Pierre broke up with over something so stupid that could have been fixed if only hed listen to me instead of running away, making me hate myself because I thought nothing was wrong between us at first thinking everything was fine like usual but then things started changing slowly over time which made my heart ache more knowing that id never be able to see him again.

I wasnt aware that Pierre was feeling miserable about us because I never gave him a chance to tell me what was wrong thinking he would just be able to talk to me about it at any second if something was wrong when usually we had no secrets between us but then he told me everything in a letter after breaking up with me explaining why he broke up with me and how unhappy he felt thinking I didnt care about him anymore since I was never home, that we stopped communicating like we used to because things got difficult between us over time.

But Pierre made the biggest mistake of his life by breaking up with me because he thought Id get over him easily which is far from it instead of getting over him id lost interest in guys since hes the only one I ever loved and dating someone else would feel weird knowing they are not Pierre, its been months without hearing from each other and without telling anyone about my breakup. If youre wondering how Im feeling now or how's my life going then I'm fine for now Im working on not thinking about Pierre every 5 minutes but its pretty hard considering how much Id loved him, how close we were and all the great times we had together as friends before dating and as couple.

-Maman, je ne veux pas aller demain, il sera là, je vais pleurer ou le tuer quand je le verrai (mum, i don't want to go tomorrow, he is gonna be there, i will cry or kill him)- I plead my mum, who came to visit me.

-Caroline Éve-Marie Leclerc, lève-toi maintenant même (get up now)- she forces me and I don't have another option than oblie her.

When we arrived to the Gasly's home, the one I had been so many times before in my childhood, I see my 2 older brothers and my twin brother alongside their girlfirends.

-Carla, I missed you- I hug my twin's girlfriend who I couldn't see for months.

-Allons tous à l'intérieur ils nous attendent (let's go in, they are waiting for us) - my mum says and we follow her.

When we enter to the house, I see him with a beautiful girl. -Oups désolée je ne savais pas que vous seriez là (oops, i'm sorry i didn't know you were going to be here) -says his girl who looks so many times like any model he was before I was with him- Well, I didn't know you would be here too -he retorts. We were about to start with this argument when my mum comes and says: -Arrêtez de faire l'idiot, tous les deux, c'est Noël après tout! (stop doing the idiot the 2 of you, its Christmas)- We shut up and go sit down at the table where the dinner was ready.

After eating and chatting for a while we started playing some games. I was playing Monopoly with my brothers and their girlfirends while my ex was flirting with that girl. I tried not to care but inside I felt hurt because he had chosen her over me even though I had been the one who loved him so much. When it got late, we all went to sleep in our rooms. The next morning, I woke up early and went downstairs to get something to eat. When I got there, I saw my ex and that girl kissing under the mistletoe. I couldn't help but feel jealous and hurt all over again. I went back upstairs and cried myself to sleep.

I enter into my brother room, he was there still in bed while his girlfriend was showering.

-Artie, why does it hurts so much, I hate him- I start crying. -It hurts because you still have feelings for him, after everything he did to you. You need to move on and stop thinking about him- he said. I nodded my head and went back to my room. I get ready, and I go down to see his mum and mine chatting and I decide to join them.

-Oh Carol, how pretty are you- his mum, Pascale tells me while sehe gets up to hug me- Do you want to make some Christmas cookies like we did when you were petitte?(little) -I would love to!- I say with a smile. After we made the cookies, we sat down and talked for a while. His mum told me that she was sorry for what happened between us and that she hoped we could be friends again. I told her that I forgave her and that I missed her too. Then there he was entering the kitchen kissing his girlfriend like a horny teenager. It hurted so much, his mum realised and hugged me.

-What are you doing?- the girl asks- Some cookies- i explain her trying not to be rude. He barely looked at me and i could see in his eyes that he still loved me. I wanted to leave but his mum insisted on us spending Christmas together like we used to.

Once they leave the kitchen, his mum made my sit with her. We talked a little bit before going to sleep and she told me that i should give him another chance because he was really miserable without me. I didn’t want to do that so i refused but she kept insisting. Later that night, he came over to my room and kissed me. I immediately pushed him away and told him that we were not together anymore. He screamed at me and left the room in a hurry. Next day, he didn’t even look at me and ignored my texts. I was devastated and his mother was mad at him for doing that. it killed me inside, like if i just ruined Christmas for them all. They never mentioned it again after that but i could tell they felt bad about it.

My brothers were there to support me along the way, and his mum was there too. She was angry at his son to doing that to me and she speek to him barely during the holidays. it wasn’t the best Christmas after all due to this. With all of it said, I still miss him and care about him.

Don't be a ghost even we are in halloween :)) Reblog, like or something <3

[un2-verse]

BILLY — Kim Taehyung (2)

pairing: taehyung x f reader

genre: horror au, yandere au, saw/john kramer au

synopsis: News of a Sadistic Serial Killer nicknamed “Jigsaw” is spreading around town like wildfire… the nickname stemming from the puzzle piece he cuts from every victim’s body. No one knows who he’ll trap next but in a town full of delinquents and criminals, it could never be you. Right?

warnings: mentions of suicidal thoughs, abusive relationships, stalking etc. dont read if triggered. there are some ?? fucked up things in this but idk what to word them. but also mentions of self harm/self hating thoughts.

wordcount: 2.2k

a/n: unedited so pls forgive me for any mistakes and lmk if u want to be added to a taglist^^

series masterlist

part one part three

You’d spent a couple of hours in the café with Taehyung. Jimin popped over every now and then to talk with his best friend and to make sure you had everything you needed while there.

When you left, Jimin wrapped his arms around you as he bid his farewell, “It was lovely to meet you Y/N! Please, don’t be a stranger!” You simply nodded your head as you pulled away from the hug. You grinned back at him as he moved to Taehyung. You opened the door, carefully stepping outside to leave the boys with some privacy.

Once the door shut Jimin’s smile beamed, “so she’s the girl you’re always talking about, Flower? Right?”

“Yeah she is, thanks for that though man but, I’ve gotta go. I’ll see you later?”

Taehyung smiled as he made his way towards you, you looked up and he swore, he saw a hint of nervousness in your eyes, probably because it’s dark, he thought to himself. “Come on then, let’s get you home.” He held out his hand, you were quick to grab a hold of it. Taehyung intertwined your fingers as he tugged you back across the road, “it’ll take about twenty minutes, you gonna be alright to walk?” he glanced down to you.

Your heart warmed at the way his eyes smiled with him, “I’ll be fine, thank you.” He seemed happy enough with your answer as you fell into a steady rhythm. You felt a little conflicted, you may not know Taehyung well but he had an energy about him that made you wanna spill every secret you knew, you’d shared pointless stories while you were at the café, having learnt Taehyung was a family oriented person, he loved art and he was passionate about little subjects other people would deem small. Yet he had a warmth that you’d not seen in anyone else.

Fuck it, you thought, he’s shown nothing but kindness, you may aswell open upto him… atleast.

“I was in an abusive relationship.” Taehyung felt himself smirk but quickly wiped it from his face, he arched an eyebrow as he looked down to you, “it was my first too. It left me, fucked up, in a way. Not that I wasn’t already fucked up.” Progress. He squeezed your hand in reassurance, go on… “I’ve always been insecure and uh, uncomfortable with the way I look. After that disaster of a relationship, it left me worse for wear.” you kept your eyes on the road, you didn’t want to see the judgement on his face yet it didn’t stop you from carrying on, “I never told my friends or family about it. None of them knew I was struggling before it anyway so I’ve been letting it tear me apart.”

“Why tell me then doll?”

You risked a glance at his face. There were no traces of judgement or pity. Swallowing down your nerves, you added softly, “I had to tell someone. Even if that someone is a random person— who showed me kindness when I needed it.”

Taehyung felt his heart clench, she’s already trusting me… this was easier than I thought. “Don’t feel like you need to tell me anything baby,” I already know it all.

You felt your cheeks burn from the pet name, how could something so simple, affect you this much? God, talk about a schoolgirl crush. “That’s the thing, I don’t feel like I need to. I just, I want to.”

Taehyung presented you with his boxy grin, “Then you can tell me anything you want, whether it's big or small.”

“Thank you Taehyung.” It was like the sun had shone down on you, the simplest gesture meant the world. Here you had a person willing to talk to you about your darkest secrets. A person willing to listen. Someone who had no ties to your family, which made it easier for the words to flow from you, “It’s like, I was this happy, care-free kid. I smiled without forcing it and when I laughed… I felt free. I didn’t feel like I was losing my breath. Not like I do now, everytime I do so much as breathe, it's like these roots have twisted around my lungs and everytime a breath escapes, they crush them tighter. It’s like a reminder. You’re never fully alive. You’re never fully happy. Pain overrides any other emotion. I’ve learned that, after all those years. I used to think, I’d never accept it.” A solemn silence fell over you. The roots squeezed your lungs even tighter as you whispered, “I’m scared of living.”

“Flower, some people are anchored to this world by their feet, others by their fears. You don’t have to voice it, I know you’re scared. You have your fears. Your demons. The thing you were doing at the cafe; is destructive. Anything that harms you, is destructive. Fuck, it may only be something as simple as picking your skin but that can lead into bigger things.”

It already has.

“Taehyung, I know that. I knew when it started but it helps, it lessens my anxiety. You’re the only one to have picked up on it. My friends… they don’t notice. If they do, they don’t mention it.”

Taehyung scoffed, “You really think anyone on this planet is your friend?”

Your mouth was sewn shut. You didn’t want to admit it but, there was some truth to his words.

You walked home in silence.

That night haunted you. It forced its way into your dreams. It clouded your thoughts when Yoongi and Hoseok were with you. When you’d spent time together, you were vacant. A soulless body. It was like a poison had found its way into your brain, second guessing relationships and people’s motives.

‘You really think anyone on this planet is your friend?’

Why were you letting it get in your head so much? You knew your friends. They were the only ones you felt safe with. They were your friends for a reason, they supported you (albeit sometimes they had a sense of… tough love) but they always had your back.

You didn’t mention Taehyung to Yoongi or Hoseok. You felt as though that was something that should be kept between you and him. Plus, the duo would’ve felt betrayed and upset by the fact you had wandered into foreign territory alone and found company in a complete stranger-- especially after they’d warned you about the whole Jigsaw shit.

To save the arguments, you went about your life as usual. You helped out your Mum with the flower shop, the array of flowers made you realise how the simplest things were beautiful. That of course, didn’t include yourself. Rancid thoughts clouded what was once, a tranquil space. Those god forsaken roots hadn’t lessened. Breathing was still difficult— as was pretending that you were absolutely fine.

You avoided mirrors, a quick glance could wreck your entire mood. You hated people taking photos of you, it made you scrutinise every single thing.

My nose is too big.

My chin is too round.

My face just shouts ugly.

My legs are disgusting.

My stomach is embarrassing.

My boobs are weird.

Not to say, you didn’t have these thoughts on the regular. However, the more you eluded your appearance, the voices lessened. You could ignore the way you looked, forget it completely. Often convinced yourself you were a plain person. The stereotypical norm: someone that no one would look twice at. It helped you get on with everyday tasks, it helped you ease the anxiety.

After all, every flower must grow through dirt.

But how would you react? If you knew, he had all the pictures of you?

Tuesdays you worked at your Dad’s garage. You didn’t know much about cars but you enjoyed his company. As well as spending time with Hobi and Yoongi. You often found yourself pranking the former with Yoongi, little jokes that luckily, didn’t piss Hobi off too much.

Today though, you were late. You’d had to spend more time trying to find the more appropriate clothing… you didn’t want people to see the slashed lines of red that littered your body.

After you messily threw an outfit together, you made your way down to the garage. You found your eyes trained on the silver Nissan Skyline, mouth agape as you collided into something.

You felt hands grab your shoulders, “Watch where you’re going,” Yoongi brought his hands to ruffle your hair, “gotta be careful while we’ve got that here kidda. That fuckers expensive.” He released a chuckle as you rolled your eyes, softly elbowing him out the way.

Your dad was under the bonnet, a box of tools were scattered around his feet. Organised mess, your Dad was infamous for it.

“Sorry I’m late Pops, what do you want me to do?”

Not even a second later, your Dad turned to face you, “Ah darling, not a lot while we’re working on this. Can you go make us some drinks?”

“Yeah course, I won’t be too long!”

You passed Hoseok on your way to the little kitchen situated at the back, he sent you a wink as he shouted across, “Coffee for me kidda!”

Three cups were spread in front of you. Americano for Yoongi, Coffee for Hobi and Cappuchino for Pops. Just as you were about to shout the guys, a presence had situated itself comfortably behind you. Before you had time to turn around, a deep baritone voice addressed you, “You not gonna ask me if I want a cup baby?”

You felt yourself still. You knew that voice. The voice that was haunting your dreams, even your wake.

You really think anyone on this planet is your friend?

Taehyung watched the way your body tensed, your shoulders stiffened, your breathing altered. Hm, she’s nervous. How cute.

“What are you doing here?” the words passed your lips, delivered as though they were encased in thorns.

A deep chuckle filled the room, “What do you think I’m doing here?” Taehyung inched closer, the atmosphere was almost palpable. You felt the way his chest brushed against your back, a sudden chill shot through you as he brought his hand up— which grazed against your skin whilst he moved your hair from your neck. His eyes turned hungry at the sight of your goosebumps. Your heart raced when he brought his head lower, lips next to your ear, “You think I’m here for you baby?” I am… but you don’t need to know that just yet.

You spun around, squashed between the table and Taehyung. Heat radiated off of him, how can he be so hot? It felt like you were in a furnace (while face to face with the Devil.)

Fear stricken, you tried to fight through it. Don’t show him. Don’t let him see. With a sarcastic smile plastered on your face you retorted, “Of course you are Taehyung. You tracked me down using the information I gave you and figured out which Garage is ours.”

The sarcasm was practically dripping from your tone like venom. Taehyung felt himself stifle a laugh.

You just didn’t know. In all fairness, you didn’t know anything. How would you know that Taehyung had done exactly that, except he’d done it months prior.

He lowered his head to yours, your hands raised to push him away but Taehyung wrapped his fingers around each wrist and tugged them to lay between you before you even had the chance to nudge him. You felt like you were stuck in a Venus fly trap.

“I’m not some type of sicko, doll.”

You were just a naive, misunderstood, little girl.

“I’m getting my car fixed. Your dad’s working on it right now.”

Your body visibly relaxed, releasing a breath you didn’t know you were holding. “Oh, the Skyline? Wait, you have a car and made us walk back to mine the other week?”

“I didn’t make you walk for the fun of it baby, my car is literally in the shop so obviously it was broken.”

Only, the car was perfectly fine when you met him those weeks ago. He had made the pair of you walk so he’d have more of a chance to speak to you and to touch you. The only way he could follow you around without being suspicious, especially at your dads work, was to have a somewhat reasonable excuse (which resulted in him messing with the engine). He knew although you’d shied away from him that night, he could easily win you back around.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry Taehyung. I’m also uh, sorry about how that night ended.”

“Don’t sweat it, I know what I said came off a little... weird but I didn’t mean any harm.”

With an angelic smile on your face in return, Taehyung knew that soon, that smile would morph into a grateful one. After all, he was going to help you.

Until a person is faced with death, it’s impossible to tell whether they have what it takes to survive.

Live or Die.

Your choice.

He had first seen you out and about last year. However, he had first heard of you when the guys working for him had slammed a file onto his desk, Subject #13 was scrawled on the top. Filled to the brim with pictures of you and everything about your life down to the littlest detail.

L/N Y/N— D.O.B 03.11.02— 19 years old.

Phone number: XXXXX.XXXXX

Female. Lives with parents at: 171 Norm Street, Falfield F91 7DW. Was outcasted at school but befriended a Jeon Jeongguk [19 years, male. 92 Carriers Road, Cressage CY5 3EA. XXXXX.XXXXX].

Ex partner is Kang Jaehyo. [23 years. Male. Abusive and manipulative, laid his hands on Y/N multiple times leaving bruises and scars. Sexual abuse was also discovered. Have been broken up for 4 months. 13 Walkers Drive, Falfield, F73 1DL XXXXX.XXXXX]

Y/N has suicidal ideations (as well as 7 attempts). Self harms by “cutting” “punching” and “scratching”. Diagnosed with Depression and Anxiety Disorder on May 13th 2016. Works at Toret Garage and Letty’s Floral. Both places owned by parents.

The web of lies and deceit had barely scraped the surface.

[bibbawrites]

Life Is A Highway - Single Dad!Charlie x Owen

THIS IS PART 9 OF THE SINGLE DAD!CHARLIE SERIES, YOU CAN FIND THE OTHER PARTS HERE

Request: none

Word Count: 4397 words

Summary: Part 9 of Single Dad!Charlie, Margaux and Charlie roadtrip to Oklahoma for the JATP streaming party 

Warnings: swearing, sexual references pretty sure everyone knows at this point but this does include romantic chowen, remember this is fictional, if you dont like that just dont read :)

A/N: correct me if i’m wrong but i’m pretty sure this is the longest part of this series so far, it got a bit out of control lol  set at the end of january when charlie and jeremy joined owen in oklahoma, this is charlie and marguax’s trip there and the day leading up to the streaming party days  also in this owen didnt move into the studio apartment, he moved into a slightly larger version of his current apartment :) anyways, hope you enjoy! 

Tag List: @happinessinthedarkesttimes​​​​​​​ @littlemissaddict​​​​​​​ @vicesvsvirtuesfanfic​​​​​​​ @headheartbellarke​​​​​​​ @lovesanimals​​​​​​​ @bartok-the-magnificent​​​​​​​ @juliefromaustralia @multi-universe21 @rangerelik @kaitieskidmore1 ​​​​​​ @fandomxreaders​​​​​​​​ @ifilwtmfc @yagorlemmalyn​

“Daddy?” Margaux piped up from her car seat. Charlie glanced in the mirror. They had been in the car for almost 14 hours now, with only a few short stops for lunch and toilet breaks, and it was almost time for them to stop for the night. 

“Yeah baby? You hungry?” Charlie questioned, and Margaux nodded. 

“A little bit, but can we listen to Julie?” She gave him a small grin, and Charlie smiled, reaching for his phone to bring up the Julie and the Phantoms album, and stop his country music playlist. 

“Of course we can. Which song?” He asked. 

“Umm.” Margaux trailed off. “Great!”

Charlie chucked to himself, turning the song on and glancing at his daughter every so often as she happily sung along to the song. Margaux was obsessed with Julie and the Phantoms, her favourite character was Alex and she often requested to be dressed in pink just to match him. Charlie was actually quite surprised it had taken her this long to request the album. 

The GPS told him to pull off at the next exit if he wanted to stop at the motel he had planned to, so Charlie obeyed, his focus going back onto the driving as Margaux happily belted Stand Tall from her car seat. 

- 

No more than 20 minutes later Charlie was pulling into the carpark of a small motel and parking, before turning in his seat to see Margaux. 

“We’re gonna stay here tonight, okay? And then drive the rest of the way to Papa’s tomorrow.” He told her, and she peered out of the window. 

“A hotel!” Margaux exclaimed excitedly. Charlie chuckled slightly, looking at the run down motel they had stopped at. It was far from the exciting ‘hotel’ Margaux saw it as, but he loved how her childhood innocence could make it seem like the most incredible place she had ever seen. 

“Yeah baby. We’ll go in and have a bath and then maybe we’ll go find some food to eat, how does that sound?” He smiled and Margaux nodded. 

“Good.” She agreed. 

“Okay good, let’s go in then.” Charlie pulled his mask on and reached across to the passengers seat for the bag he had packed their essentials for the night in, and placed it on his back once he climbed out of the car. He walked around the car, opening up Margaux’s door and getting the four year old out of her seat and lifting her into his arms. 

“Gotta go talk to the people.” He told her, locking the car and heading into the reception to book one night, letting them know that they would be leaving before the sun rose in the morning. 

Once they had the key Charlie and Margaux headed back out into the early evening and found their room, entering it easily. Charlie placed Margaux down once he had shut the door behind them, and the four year old ran over to the window instantly, peering out of it like she did with every place they stayed at. 

Charlie smiled, throwing the bag down onto the bed and sitting down, pulling his mask off. 

“Do you wanna have a bath before we go get dinner baby?” He questioned. 

“No.” Margaux replied simply. Charlie laughed. 

“Can I at least change you into some warmer clothes?” He asked, and Margaux thought for a moment before nodding, coming over to her father and letting him change her into the long, fluffy pants and hoodie he had pulled out of the bag, and when she was done, placed a tiny beanie on her head. 

Charlie grinned. 

“Okay, what do you want for dinner? Anything you want.” He said, pulling her onto his lap, and she snuggled closer, thinking. 

“Um...” Margaux trailed off. “Burger King!” 

Charlie stood up, shifting Margaux to his hip and putting his mask back on before grabbing the car keys. 

“Burger King it is then. Let’s go find some dinner.” 

- 

They found a Burger King with no trouble at all, and entered the restaurant, Charlie quickly heading to the counter and ordering, before moving off to the side to wait, while Margaux cuddled into his arms, her head on his shoulder as she watched the workers preparing the food. 

“Charlie?” A female voice came from behind them, and Charlie spun around to find a young girl, no older than 16, and who he assumed to be her mother. 

“Hi.” He smiled, suddenly very aware of the weight of Margaux on his hip. He really tried to avoid having interactions with fans with her around, he never knew what one of them might share about his daughter, and her safety was his first priority always. 

“Oh my gosh it’s really you! Hi! I’m such a big fan of Julie and the Phantoms.” The girl exclaimed, and Charlie grinned.

“Aw thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed it.” He said sincerely, 

“Oh she loves it. Made the whole family watch it. It’s all she ever talks about.” The girl’s mother chimed in and Charlie chuckled. 

“Mum.” The girl groaned slightly, but her mother was undeterred, shifting her attention to the four year old in Charlie’s arms, who had moved her head to continue watching the workers. 

“Is this little one yours? I didn’t know you had a child.” The mother asked, and Charlie bit his lip slightly at the question. 

“Yeah she is. I don’t like to bring her up much, I prefer to keep her life as private as possible.” Charlie told her and the woman nodded, an understanding smile on her face. As if she knew they were talking about her, Margaux lifted her head off Charlie’s shoulder, turning to look at her dad, before focusing on the two strange faces in front of her.  

“Oh you’re such a cutie.” The woman complimented and Margaux grinned, snuggling her head into Charlie’s neck.

“Thank you.” She mumbled, and Charlie grinned. It was a rare sight to see Margaux shy around strangers, the little girl was normally one to be confident. Clearly when she was sleepy it was a different story. 

“4341?” The girl behind the counter called and Charlie glanced down at the receipt in his hand, seeing it was his number. 

“That’s us, excuse me for a moment.” He said, before walking over to the counter to grab the food. 

“You keep this safe baby.” Charlie handed the bag to Margaux who nodded eagerly, clearly excited with the job she had been give. 

Charlie turned back to the girl serving, taking the drinks from her and smiling despite the fact she couldn’t see it through his mask. 

“Have a lovely evening.” She said, and he nodded. 

“You too.” He replied, walking back over to the young fan and her mother. 

“We’re gonna head out, but before I go, did you want to take a photo or something?” Charlie questioned, and the girl shook her head. 

“No it’s okay, she looks really comfy and I wouldn’t want to disrupt her.” She said, glancing at Margaux who had the bag clutched to her chest and her head back on Charlie’s shoulder. 

“Are you sure?” Charlie checked, and the girl nodded. 

“Yeah positive, I have the memories. And don’t worry, if I mention meeting you I won’t mention the little one.” She told him, and Charlie breathed a sigh of relief. 

“Thank you.” He said, and she smiled. 

“No problems at all. Have a good night.” She replied. 

“You too, it was lovely meeting you. Both of you.” Charlie said, his tone genuine. 

With one last goodbye Charlie and Margaux headed out of the restaurant and back to his car, placing the drinks on the front seat before moving to put Margaux in her car seat. 

“Who was that Daddy?” She asked as he buckled her in, placing the bag of food back on her lap so that she could continue her special job. 

“Just some friends baby.” He told her. Margaux nodded slightly. 

“Okay... Can I have my nuggets now?” She asked, and Charlie chuckled, shutting her door and climbing into the drivers seat. 

“As soon as we get back baby.” He promised. “As soon as we get back.”

- 

Charlie was up before the sun the next morning, packing the bag and putting it in the car before taking a still sleeping Margaux and checking out.

He clipped Margaux into her seat gently, trying not to disturb her, and decided to go live for a few minutes before he left the motel while he ate some breakfast quickly, angling the camera so that Margaux couldn’t be seen. And then as he pulled out of the car park he ended live, opting to play music quietly instead. 

Margaux slept for hours, and by the time she woke up they were only a couple of hours out of Oklahoma. 

“Daddy?” Her voice came from the backseat, and Charlie grinned, looking at her through the mirror. 

“Hey! Good morning baby. Did you sleep well?” He said, and Margaux nodded. 

“Yeah, I was dreaming that we were in a boat and there was a horsey there and he was really mean but then you told him not to be mean and he said sorry and I got to play with him.” Margaux rambled sleepily, and Charlie smiled softly.

“That sounds really good baby.” He said and Margaux made a noise in response. 

“Are we gonna be there soon?” She asked, and Charlie glanced at the GPS. 

“About two more hours.” He told her, and Margaux frowned. 

“Is that a small time?” She questioned. Charlie chuckled slightly before answering her. 

“It’s a little bit long but not much. We’ll be seeing Papa before you know it.”

-

Just over two hours and one late lunch and toilet break later, Charlie pulled into the parking garage of Owen’s apartment building, using the code that Owen had sent him, and parked in front of Owen’s new car.

“Ready?” He asked, turning in his seat only to find Margaux fast asleep again, her favourite toy penguin clutched in her arms. 

He chucked slightly, climbing out of the car and walking around to lift Margaux out of her seat gently, so that he wouldn’t wake her.

He shut the door and locked it, walking over to the stairwell and putting in a different code. He carried her up the stairs and wandered along a hallway until he reached the door of Owen’s apartment, knocking gently.

The door opened revealing Owen, and his eyes lit up when he saw Charlie and Margaux on the other side.

“Hey!” He whispered, and Charlie grinned.

“Hey, missed you.” He replied. Owen pulled them into the apartment.

“I have a room for Maggie, but I want you to see it when she sees it so we’ll put her on my bed for now.” Owen said, dragging Charlie down the hallway to his room, where Charlie placed Margaux down onto the bed, tucking her in and kissing the top of her head gently. 

“Sounds good. You can watch her and I’ll go grab the bags and bring them up.” Charlie said once he had stood back up. Owen smiled, glancing down at Margaux before looking back up at Charlie. 

“Okay.” He agreed, and Charlie turned to leave the room, but was stopped by Owen’s voice. 

“Hey Charlie?” He said, and Charlie turned back. 

“Yeah?” He questioned. 

Owen stepped closer, placing a soft kiss to Charlie’s cheek.

“I’m glad you’re here.” 

-

An hour later and Margaux was awake again and bouncing off the walls with excitement and energy. 

“Can I see it now?” She begged, jumping on the spot in front of Owen, and Charlie regretted letting her have a cup of Fanta with her late lunch. 

“Okay, you ready?” Owen agreed, and Margaux cheered. Owen led them to a door off to the side of where his bedroom was, and Charlie smiled at the clearly handmade name plate on the door, with Maggie written in a neat pink cursive. 

“Open it, open it!” Margaux begged, grabbing onto Charlie’s leg with excitement, and Owen obeyed, opening the door to reveal a small bedroom, painted a soft pastel pink. There was a white bed in the middle of the room, and fairy lights strung around, and a bookshelf filled with children’s books. And in the corner was a small wooden chest, clearly filled with toys. 

“Do you like it?” Owen asked nervously. Margaux’s face lit up and she rushed into the room, instantly jumping on the bed. 

“I wanna stay here forever!” She exclaimed, and Charlie grinned, wrapping an arm around Owen. 

“I’d say that’s a yes.” He joked, and Owen bit his lip. 

“But do you like it?” He asked, eyes full of hope. Charlie nodded. 

“I love it. You didn’t have to do this much for her though.” He said softly, glancing around the room as Margaux excitedly explored. 

“I wanted to. Remember what you told me in Hawaii? That I’m her parent too and that we’re a little family? Well this is what a parent would do.” Owen shrugged slightly and it took everything in Charlie not to kiss Owen in that moment. 

“Thank you.” He whispered instead, and Owen bit his lip, hesitating like he wanted to say something but ultimately decided against it. Eventually he settled on a small smile.

“Any time.” 

- 

Later that night Margaux was tucked into her new bed after finally coming down from the excitement and slight sugar high. Charlie and Owen had showered, and had made themselves comfortable in Owen’s bed, Charlie’s head on Owen’s chest as the younger boy flicked through Netflix, trying to find them something to watch. 

“This okay?” Owen asked after a moment and Charlie hummed in agreement, not even checking what Owen had decided on, too content with listening to Owen’s heartbeat. 

The movie started in the background, but Charlie’s whole focus was on Owen, and how much he had missed being snuggled up to the younger boy, the only scent a mixture of spearmint, body wash and something so uniquely Owen. It was intoxicating. 

“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Owen’s voice snapped him out of his daze, and he shifted slightly. 

“Just really fucking missed you, that’s all.” Charlie mumbled, instantly relaxing when Owen’s fingers threaded through his hair. 

“It was only a month.” Owen replied, and Charlie sighed. 

“I know, but still. I wanna be with you all the time.” He said. Owen took a deep breath. 

“About that...” He started. “I tried to tell you this at New Year’s but-”

“Daddy?” Margaux’s voice came, and Owen swore under his breath. Charlie sat up, whatever Owen was going to say would have to wait. 

“What’s up baby?” He asked, as Margaux climbed up onto Owen’s bed and into her father’s arms. 

“Missed you.” She mumbled, her face pressed into Charlie’s bare chest. “Wanna sleep here.” 

“Okay but only for tonight, okay?” Charlie compromised, and Margaux nodded. 

“Into bed then.” Charlie instructed, wriggling over to allow Margaux to slide into the bed between him and Owen. 

“Sorry O, we’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” Charlie said, and Owen sighed, but nodded nonetheless. 

“Sounds good.” He mumbled, flicking the TV off and laying down on Margaux’s other side. Charlie frowned at the sudden darkness, but laid down anyways, reaching across Margaux to grab Owen’s hand, linking their fingers. 

“Night O, love you.” He whispered. 

“Love you too.” Owen whispered back after a moment. “And love you Maggie.” 

“Love you Papa, love you Daddy.” Margaux chimed in. 

“Love you baby girl.” Charlie finished, placing a kiss on Margaux’s head as the four year old shifted to grab onto him like a koala. Charlie wrapped an arm around her before snuggling closer to Owen. 

This was it, he thought as he drifted off. This was his happy place. 

- 

The next day started with making pancakes, before moving into Margaux’s new room to play with some of her toys and get her used to the idea of sleeping in there alone. 

Not much later Margaux decided she was hungry, and Charlie and Owen stood up to go chop up some fruit for the little girl. 

Charlie trailed behind Owen as they headed into the kitchen, working in silence as they chopped the fruit up.

“I’m ready.” Owen blurted out. Charlie put down the knife and turned to him, confused. 

“Huh?” He questioned. Owen took a deep breath. 

“Staying with you at Christmas I realised that I’m ready. Ready to give this a shot, and call you my boyfriend, and kiss you whenever I feel like it and not just occasionally with an awkward apology afterwards. I was gonna tell you on New Years Eve but I got interrupted by the countdown, and then I left the next day and I lost the confidence to tell you, so I just didn’t. I didn’t realise it would be a whole month until I saw you again though. And then when I saw you yesterday I thought about telling you, but it felt like the wrong time. And then I tried to tell you last night but Maggie interrupted us and climbed into bed.” Owen paused. “So now I’m telling you, before anyone else can interrupt. I’m ready.” 

“You’re sure?” Charlie checked, and Owen nodded. 

“There is something I want to add but I’m gonna wait until you agree to be my boyfriend.” He said, and Charlie couldn’t stop the large smile that appeared on his face.

“Owen I’ve wanted to be your boyfriend since we were filming.” He replied, and Owen grinned.

“So that’s a yes then?” He asked.

Charlie stepped forward, crashing his lips against Owen’s. After a moment he pulled away, pressing their foreheads together.

“That’s a massive yes.” He whispered and Owen kissed him again, but pulled away just as Charlie tried to deepen the kiss, causing the older boy to whine.

“Before we get too caught up...” Owen trailed off. “I just want this to stay between us for a while, if that’s okay with you.” 

“That’s completely fine.” Charlie agreed, leaning in to kiss Owen once more but Owen pulled back.

“We can tell our families and friends when we’re ready, and I’d rather not tell the fans...” He rambled.

“Owen, I said it’s fine.” Charlie laughed, pulling Owen back in to kiss him again, a gentle peck on his lips. “Although I will warn you, Jeremy and Carolynn kinda already know that I’m in lo- that I liked you, and I’m pretty sure my mum knows too. Oh and Kenny was kinda cryptic in Hawaii, so I think he knows too.”

“My mum and sister know. I kinda had a breakdown one night and exploded the whole thing on them and admitted that I had feelings for you and that you had feelings for me and just told them everything.” Owen admitted. Charlie raised an eyebrow.

“What did they say?” He questioned.

“That they already knew. Luka said it was obvious, and Mum told me that she knew from the minute I met you that I had a crush on you. She said she figured it out after bootcamp. I wish she’d told me, cause I didn’t figure it out til the wrap party for filming.” Owen said, grabbing a bowl and putting the fruit they had already cut into it.

“I figured it out at the aquarium. You know when we spent the whole day holding hands? And my stomach was just constantly in knots. And then that night when you went to bed, you kissed my cheek and it was like it just hit me.” Charlie took the bowl from Owen, and turned to leave the kitchen when Owen spoke again. 

“Wait, are we gonna tell Margaux?” Owen questioned, and Charlie stopped, thinking. 

“I think we should.” He said after a moment, and Owen nodded. 

“Okay.” He agreed. “Let’s do it.” 

-

Trying to figure out how to explain a relationship to a four year old was a difficult thing to do. 

“Hey Mags? We have something to tell you.” Charlie started, once they were settled back into her room, the bowl of fruit in her lap. She looked up. 

“Yeah?” Charlie took a deep breath. 

“Papa and I are dating. Do you know what that means?” He asked. Margaux shook her head. 

“No.” She said, eating a piece of apple quietly, 

“It means Daddy is my boyfriend, and we like each other very much.” Owen tried to explain. 

“Oh, I know that.” Margaux said, and both Owen and Charlie exchanged confused looks. 

“How can you know? It only just happened.” Owen questioned. 

“But you kissed Daddy at the airport.” Margaux frowned.

“Well, yeah... But we weren’t dating then.” Charlie said. Margaux put the apple back into the bowl and grabbed a piece of banana instead. 

“Why?” She asked after a moment. 

“Why what?” Charlie questioned. 

“Why weren’t you?” She elaborated. 

“Um...” Charlie hesitated. “We just hadn’t decided to yet.”

“Okay.” She went silent. “Can I have a boyfriend?”

“Absolutely not.” Charlie said, as Owen cackled with laughter, the serious mood evaporating.

“Why not?” Margaux pouted. “I want a boyfriend too.”

“You’re four!” Charlie exclaimed. Margaux nodded. 

“Yeah! I’m a big girl now.” She stated. Charlie shook his head, trying to ignore Owen’s wheezing laughter beside him. 

“No boyfriends. Or girlfriends.” Charlie said, and Margaux frowned but accepted the answer. A moment later her eyes lit up again as she looked up at Charlie.

“Are you gonna get married like Mamie and Pépère? And Uncle Jer and Aunty Care?” She questioned, and Owen sobered up quickly. 

“Not yet.” He answered, and Charlie stared at him for a few moments, before shaking his head with a smile.

“Maybe one day.” Charlie added. Margaux seemed to like that answer. 

“Okay.” She said, grabbing a chunk of watermelon from the bowl. 

“Margaux you can’t tell anyone that we’re dating, okay? It’s a secret.” Charlie said seriously, and Margaux grinned, her mouth full of fruit. 

“Okay! I’m a good secret keeper.” She mumbled and Charlie smiled. 

“You are.” He agreed. 

“After my fruit can we watch Julie?” She questioned, and both boys smiled in agreement. 

“Of course we can.” Charlie agreed, taking Owen’s hand in his. 

His boyfriend’s hand. 

Charlie was never going to get tired of that. 

-

Jeremy arrived bright and early the next morning, bringing McDonalds breakfast for all of them.

“Uncle Jeremy!” Margaux squealed, jumping down from her spot on a chair at the bench, while Charlie made himself coffee, and rushing over to greet the third phantom. 

“Hey Little Gillespie!” Jeremy replied with just as much excitement, ruffling the four year old’s hair as she clung to his leg. “I missed you.”

“Look how big I got.” Margaux boasted, puffing her chest. 

“So much bigger, I almost didn’t recognise you.” Jeremy agreed, and Margaux giggled to herself.

“Daddy says I can’t have a boyfriend.” She informed Jeremy, who laughed.

“I don’t blame him.” He said, heading into the kitchen to place the food on the bench. 

“But I want a boyfriend.” Margaux whined, trailing after him. 

“Not happening.” Charlie stated, helping her back onto the chair and opening the McDonalds bag. 

“So Little Gillespie, if you did get a boyfriend who would it be?” Jeremy asked, taking food from Charlie to place on the bench. 

“Hmm...” Margaux paused, her eyes lighting up after a moment. “Tay!”

“Tay as in Taylor Kare?” Charlie questioned and Margaux nodded. 

“Yeah!” She giggled. Charlie sighed, dropping his head onto the bench. Jeremy laughed, patting him on the back. 

“Or Papa.” Margaux added, a thoughtful look on her face. 

“You’re gonna have to fight your dad for that one.” Jeremy joked, and Charlie shook his head, smiling, as he handed Margaux a hashbrown.

“Fight her dad for what?” Owen questioned, entering the room.

“To be your boyfriend.” Jeremy informed him as Owen grabbed one of the cups of orange juice.

“Oh, you told him?” Owen asked, and Charlie’s eyes widened.

“No.” He said softly and Owen choked on his juice.

“Fuck.” He muttered under his breath.

“Wait so you’re actually dating now?” Jeremy asked, eyes flicking between the two of them.

“Shh! Not allowed to tell.” Margaux exclaimed. Owen sighed.

“It’s okay Maggie, he knows now.” He told her. Margaux looked up at Charlie eagerly.

“Did I keep the secret good Daddy?” She questioned. Charlie smiled, placing a gentle kiss on her head.

“You did an amazing job baby.” He agreed.

“So, how long?” Jeremy asked, taking a bite of his bacon and egg McMuffin. 

“Yesterday. Although it would have been longer if the stupid New Years countdown didn’t interrupt me telling Charlie that I was ready to give things a shot.” Owen said, picking at the hotcakes he had chosen. 

“Wow, Care and I assumed it would happen a lot earlier than that, after how things were in Hawaii.” Jeremy told them, and Owen shook his head. 

“It was my fault, I wasn’t ready to commit to doing anything that might ruin our friendship. It wasn’t until after Christmas Eve when we fu...” Owen trailed off, realising what he was about to say probably wasn’t appropriate. “We uh, yeah, that I figured we were already too far gone and that I really didn’t want to wait any longer.” 

“And now I know far too much about your s-e-x life.” Jeremy groaned and Margaux squinted at him. 

“What does that spell?” She questioned, and Charlie grabbed another hashbrown for her. 

“Nothing important baby.” He said quickly, handing her the hashbrown and effectively distracting her. 

“Anyways, Jer, you can’t tell anyone. You’re the only one who knows, other than Maggie.” Owen told him seriously and Jeremy nodded. 

“You have my word for it. One condition though.” He said, and Charlie and Owen both raised an eyebrow. 

“Yeah?” 

“Please do not do any gross couple shit around me.” Jeremy sighed. “I do not need to see you two sucking each others faces.” 

“Ew.” Margaux mumbled through a mouthful of hashbrown. Charlie and Owen exchanged a look, clearly thinking the same thing. 

“We’ll try.” Owen started. 

“But we can’t make any promises.” Charlie finished. 

Jeremy groaned slightly, his head falling into his hands as Charlie snaked an arm around Owen’s waist. 

“It’s gonna be a long weekend, isn’t it?”

[ashiiixoxo]

“Just say it” Lucifer x reader

Thank you for the 100 followers I feel so grateful to everyone that helped my account grow in a little over 2 months❤️ so here is my 100 followers series! One word: A N G S T

Lucifer: “just say it”

Mammon: “final goodbye”

Leviathan: “game over”

Satan: “last chapter”

Asmodeus: “what is love at the first sight”

Beelzebub: “midnight snack”

Belphegor: “by my side”

You giggled as Asmodeus brushed your hair. Currently, you were sitting in Asmo’s room, getting ready for Diavolo’s party. This party was extra special because it would also be the last one you would be attending, which is why Asmodeus is helping you get ready for this special night.

“What do you think?” Asmodeus places another mirror behind you so you could see your hair. Gasping, you smiled at him. “It looks stunning!” Your bright eyes stared into his. “All eyes on us, Mc.” He beamed. You grinned, “do you think he’ll like it?” You asked. “Like it? I bet he’ll drag you off back home as soon as he sees you.” Asmodeus wiggles his eyebrows. You blushed at his words.

Asmodeus got dressed and helped you in your outfit. Your eyes widened when you looked at your reflection. Was that really you? “It’s such a shame you’re in love with Lucifer otherwise I would’ve taken you here on spot.” Asmodeus’ hands reached your waist as he stood behind you. Asmodeus sighed as his D.D.D went off. He picked up and left his room with you still standing in front of the mirror.

Posing in front of the mirror, you took a bunch of pictures to post on Devilgram. scrolling through the pictures and slightly editing them with nice lightning, you still weren't satisfied. maybe some pictures with the brothers? you grinned at the idea. 

you decided to look for mammon first, The Great Mammon would definitely take a picture with you. 

you giggled as you took some more photo’s, you had some with mammon, Asmo and later the twins joined as well in your little photoshoot session. everyone was looking good in their suits. only making you imagine what Lucifer would look like. 

unlike you and his brothers, he got ready at Diavolo’s castle. of course Diavolo wanted Lucifer to get ready at the castle, he is Diavolo’s right hand after all. and because of that, he needs to help with the preparations. 

the seven of you entered the gates of the demon lord palace. Barbatos was already waiting for your arrival and greeted the you and the brothers. Barbatos lead the way inside to the grand hall. Diavolo saw Barbatos leading you guys and immediately approached.

“welcome! its wonderful having you all here!” diavolo grinned and gave you a tight hug before greeting the brothers. you looked around but there was no sign of the oldest brother being here. you spotted Luke, Simeon and Solomon who waved at you. Luke ran to your side to greet you. over the past months you had become real close to the young angel, who you considered as a little brother and sometimes jokingly your son. 

the young angel dragged you to his fellow angel and Solomon. “you look stunning tonight MC.” Simeon complimented, followed by a nod from Luke and Solomon. you thanked them for the compliment and complimented their attire as well. 

“our last party here, huh?” you heard Solomon. “yeah, imagine what Devildom will be like without us here.” you said. “we’re finally going back! no more demons!” Luke cheered. the only demons he got along with were Barbatos and Beelzebub.

your eyes were still scanning through the place looking for that one demon. “hm, guessing from your expression, you must be looking for Lucifer.” you heard a voice behind you. turning around, you saw Diavolo standing. you nodded slightly. he’s near the stairs, talking to some demons.” you pursed your lip. you didn't want to interrupt him if he was having a conversation but you wanted to see him so badly. and you wanted to show off your outfit.

“MC! wanna go outside?” Asmodeus came up to you. you nodded. “can we walk past the stairs first?” you asked. “of course, dear!” he agreed so easily. the two of you walked past the stairs, and there a was, looking good in his demon form. he was talking to female demons, more laughing actually. in the past year you had been here, you had never seen him smile the way he did now. he looked so happy. and there it was, that piercing feeling in your heart.

you saw him glance at Asmo, but never lay his eyes on you. the demon beside you tugged you towards the entrance. once outside, you sighed. “how cold of him, he didn't even look at you.” Asmo whined. “all the effort I put in looking nice.” you sighed. “well you still look like a whole babe” asmodeus grinned and tried to brighten up your mood.

things weren't okay between you and Lucifer, especially since you were going back to the human world soon. he had been ignoring you since the past two days. despite your apologies, your efforts in making things right again, he was still ignoring you. 

all of this had happened because, just like usually he was stressed, there was no end to the piles of paper stacked on his desk. you respected his work, but his working hours were just... abnormal. and so you decided to give him a midnight snack and a nice cup of tea. he needed a break, just to relax and let all the tension go. sadly, your efforts had no effect on him as he ignored the snack and the tea.

by the time you woke up again to check on him it was 3AM. the food and his cup were left untouched. you rubbed your eyes to look again, “you aren't going to drink something?” you asked him. he kept looking at his paperwork, “no, go sleep in your own room.” he was stressed, you understood. but he never used this harsh tone on you. 

you blinked a few times, trying to process what happened. then you frowned “you dont want me here?” you asked quietly. he sighed and answered, “no, now get out and take the food with you.” you stared at him speechless but decided to do as he said. taking your phone, the food and the cup of tea, you headed back to your own room.

at breakfast, he didn't talk to you, heck, he didn't even look at you. everyone noticed the shift in his behaviour. after apologising for bothering him the nigh before, he still ignored you. 

sitting on your bed, you started thinking about taking your stuff out of his room. but in your head it sounded too dramatic, yet, you wanted him to know that his cold behaviour hurt you. until Asmo came barging into your room. “you have no idea who I just spotted at jewellery store!” your head snapped into the direction of his voice. “huh?” hoping he would repeat what he just said. “I saw Lucifer at the jewellery store! he was looking at some rings!” asmodeus started shaking you. 

his words only made you pinch the bridge of your nose. “please dont tell me this now.” you groaned. “aren't you supposed to be happy?” he asked. “if he’s looking at some rings, it doesn't mean that he’s going to propose or whatever.” asmodeus sighed at your words. “Lucifer would never look at rings. maybe that's why he has been acting so strange lately.” you only shook your head. “let it be, we never spoke about marriage anyway.” you shrugged making the demon in front of you gasp.

“Asmo, can you leave... im not in the mood to make up scenarios in my head.” the demon only frowned and patted your head before walking out of the door again. you laid back on your bed, covering your face. 

you looked at the floor and covered your face again. “I can't believe he’s still ignoring me..” asmodeus rubbed your back. “maybe if you try talking to him again?” he suggested. “maybe..” you breathed. asmodeus took your hands away from your face and wiped your tears away. “look, I didn't spend an hour doing your make up only to have you cry here again. so go get your man and show him how gorgeous you are, honey.” you sniffed and giggled at his words. 

the two of you walked back inside, only to find one of the women from before, leaning against Lucifer. you sighed and shook your head. your reaction made Asmodeus walk up to the lady and ask her for a dance and redirected Lucifer your way with a clear “go talk to your lovely MC.” Lucifer shrugged it off. 

he wasn't going to talk to you, so you had to make the first step. you walked over to him, “Lucifer, can we talk?” you gave him a side glance. he sighed “not here.” he murmured. “then where? you won't talk to me at home so..” you bit your lip and glared at him. 

lucifer dragged you off to a much quieter place. “what is so important to you that you and Asmodeus need to interrupt me?” he glared. “you really can't tell?” you asked and furrowed your eyebrows. he fell silent. “look I know you’re stressed and you dont want my help, but the way you've acting really made me question-” “dont give me this bullshit now.” he growled. “then what do you expect me to do? sniff the goddamn answer out of the air?” you blinked the tears away. 

“just say it.” “say what?” he asked. “just say how you really feel about me. so I won't be wasting my last weeks here being sad..” your voice cracked making Lucifer stared at you before speaking.

“I can't give you that answer here.” with that he turned around and walked off. 

[bokutosbiceps]

This will be kinda silly so i dont know if you'll write it, but here goes! Headcanons for Midorima, Aomine, Kagami, Hanamiya and Fukui(solely bc i find him hilarious) where their gf fits makeup on them when they are sleeping? Who will not realise until pointed out? Thanks anyway!

listen, anon, you don’t have to give me a reason why you’re requesting fukui. i would pay YOU so i could write for him. he needs more love i would die for him. anyway, ESKETIT

i hope you enjoy :)

aomine daiki

you enlist satsuki to help you with this one

we love our dark skinned bitch, but i’m not sure if either you or momoi would have appropriate makeup (unless you’re dark skinned thEN GO FOR IT)

but if you are successful in your endeavors, you will have drawn a beautiful pair of eyes on aomine’s eyelids + brightened up his cheeks with pink blush

if you’ve seen that one part of NG shuu yOULL KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT

aomine doesn not care about his appearance WHATSOEVER so he ain’t even glance in that mirror before he leaves for the day

you tell the basketball team what you’ve done + tell them they should take photos during his nap time since that’s when they’ll be able to see it

the basketball team is so grateful to you for letting them in on this little secret, so when aomine goes up on the roof to take his nap during practice, the whole team takes a field trip to the roof + fills their phones’ photos with photos of aomine’s done up face

aomine wakes up long after all of you are gone + he notices over FIFTY texts from the team + he assumes its just them asking where he is + if he was coming to practice, but when he sees the various photos of him + the eyes on his eyelids, he just wants to die

he immediately suspects you + momoi

fukui kensuke

okay, lowkey, fukui is a prank god so i feel like he’d be super proud of you if you managed to pull this off

but, the curse of being a good prankster is that he’s always on the alert for when people would try to prank him

he’s a super light sleeper so he MIGHT wake up when you’re trying to give him a makeover, but if you get away with it, you’d better stick around + film the whole thing so that you can always bring it up the next time he tries to prank you

“ken, remember when i put makeup all over your face ?? yeah ?? don’t you dare bother me again”

it is a light hearted prank tho + he’s proud that you were able to pull it off

though, he does immediately notice something feels off when he wakes up, so you don’t get far

hanamiya makoto

mako is a super light sleeper so i doubt you’d even be able to even fit some mascara on him

if you did, however, manage to put some makeup on him--you’d be caught in the act + he would come up with some sort of torture to pay you back

he puts glue in your body wash :)

kagami taiga

like daiki, taiga is kind of dead in the morning so even if he did manage to look in a mirror, which he rarely does (we love a humble man) he wouldn’t even notice

you struggle to contain yourself while you sit with him during breakfast + walk with him to school--you just resort to not looking @ him too much

he makes it ALL THE WAY TO SCHOOL before kuroko points out what has happened to him

he RUNS to the bathroom + immediately starts f r e a k i n g out

while he’s in the bathroom, you mAKE A BREAK FOR IT

you make kuroko + the rest of the team promise you that they won’t tell kagami where you are + you hide from kagami for the rest of the day

you spot him @ lunch + have to slap your hand over your mouth @ the site of runny mascara + eyeliner

looks like kagami doesn’t know that your makeup is waterproof

you decide to visit him before practice (you bring your makeup wipes, you’re not cruel) + half heartedly apologize to the grumpy boi

he’s grateful that you’re able to get it all off but he’s still kinda upset that you’d leave him the whole day ,,, he missed you :(

midorima shintarou

he’s got his whole night routine so that he can get a real good sleep at night, that being said, this guy could sleep through a tornado

though he is a light sleeper AT TIMES, but only when he’s feeling particularly stressed

his morning routine does not involve him looking in a mirror for quite some time, not until after he eats his breakfast + watches oha asa anyway

he wakes up, kisses you lightly on the cheek (a new + very necessary addition to his morning routine), and immediately puts on his glasses

you should be grateful that the lipstick you put on him did not rub off on your cheek lolol

he makes it all the way through getting dressed + on his way to the kitchen for breakfast before he catches a glimpse of something bright in the hallway mirror

an anguished scream wakes you from your slumber + you immediately remember what you’ve done

he’d be so pissed dude you better run out the house so fast save yourself

[asphalt-cocktail]

For the Sake of content- Chapter 10

Chapter 10- Uncertainty and the Test of Time.

Summary: After walking in on your long-term boyfriend, Harrison, cheating on you and then losing your job the following day; your find yourself broke, jobless, and single for the first time in a long while. In order to make ends meet, your best friend since college, Freddie, suggests you start soliciting explicit photos of yourself, not only to help boost your confidence but to help pay the rent for his band mate’s apartment you just moved into.

A/N: Hi friends! I know this took me forever but honestly this chapter hit a little too close to home for me to begin to feel comfortable writing. But today I finally worked up the courage to write it and oh boy let me tell you it is SAD. But dont worry this fic will have a happy ending! Also if you can figure out the era of Roger I am transitioning too bonus points to you! Sorry it is so short, it was  difficult for me to write this emotionally and took a lot out of me. 

Pairing: Roger Taylor x F!Reader

Warnings: Language, ANGST, longing, just a lot of sad feels, (dont worry there will be a happy ending), Mentions of smut but no actual smut in this chapter, alcohol mentions, not proof read

Word Count: 1.9k

The following morning you woke up, your sinuses feeling gummy and throat dry.

Glancing at the clock you made a mental note of the time, much too late for you to still be in bed. Your stomach clenched when you heard the door open and despite want to stay in the warm cocoon of your bed you felt yourself moving on your own. The sudden urge to see Roger flooded over your body and you shuffled out the bedroom, quickly thinking of some excuse you could make to be out here with him. Fluidly you moved to the kitchen and poured yourself a glass of water out of the tap.

“Hey.” You said setting your cup down and watching him set his keys on the kitchen table.

He grinned up at you “Hey,” he responded back. Your gaze watched him as he moved through the house with out much of a second thought before he retreated to his room, “Hey I’m going to be gone for a few days.” His muffled voice called.

“Where are you going to be?” You called back sitting on the kitchen table. You didn’t know if your stomach hurt from being hungry or from what you knew Roger’s answer was going to be.

He came out with a backpack slung over his shoulder “Oh, I’m going to stay at Dominique’s for a little while.”

You pursed your lips and nodded your head, “Oh, well have fun.” You said flashing him a closed mouth smile.

He didn’t give you a second glance before leaving the house.

Your heart clenched, why would you be so upset over your friend leaving for a few days? Roger had his own life and you needed to respect that. Those thought played over and over in your brain for the remainder of the day and it seemed like no matter how often you thought them they never seemed to get through to you and the more you felt nauseous.

You didn’t know how many days passed until Fred had showed up pounding on your door.

You opened it and were immediately met with a grimace “You look like you haven’t left your bed in three days.” He said pushing his way past you and letting himself in to your ‘shared’ apartment.

“Well how many days has it been since Sunday?” You asked rubbing your tired and slightly swollen eyes.

“Three.” Fred said pointedly.

You plopped on the couch, “Well then you’re right.”

Your friend’s eyes narrowed as he looked at you, “What do you mean I’m right?” He said sitting next to you, “What’s got you in a funk?”

You felt his intense gaze as you averted your eyes from him, looking down at your feet and playing with the hem of your shirt. “It’s nothing.” You responded before letting out deep sigh. “What brings you over?” You asked lightly slapping your hands on your thighs.

Fred gave you a weird look, his brow eyes intently taking in every bit of your body language, “I you haven’t talked to anyone since Saturday night.” He said a light frown gracing his sharp features.

You shifted awkwardly, “Wow, crazy,” you remember your phone, sitting on your nightstand and on do not disturb, “Are you sure?” you asked knowing the answer.

Fred stood up, “Get up.” He said grabbing your limp arm and tugging you reluctantly to your feet, “Go shower and then we’ll continue talking.” He said pushing you towards the bathroom not caring you had no change of clothes.

The bathroom door shut behind you and you looked in the mirror, you really did look like shit. Your skin looked dry and dark bags hung under your eyes and your hair looked dirty. You frowned and turned the water on hot, as hot as it could go, undressed and stepped in.

The hot water soaked your body and burnt your skin, yet it didn’t hurt; it felt strangely cathartic. You inhaled deeply and let it out slowly, feeling tears beginning to well in your eyes. You covered your face with your hand and a sob wrecked through you, shaking your body and causing you to lean forward.

Your shoulders shook with sobs and your tears mixed with the water, washing away the evidence of your crying. You tried your best to curb your sobs but choked them out anyways. It hurt. Knowing Roger had sex with you and dropped you the moment he saw someone better come along. Like always, you were second best.

Your brain processed what had happened in the last few months of your life. Walking in on your boyfriend Harrison, breaking up with him, moving in with Roger, becoming a cam girl, having sex with Roger a lot, sharing soft intimate moments with him, and now sitting here on the floor of your shower crying with your knees into your chest as the cold water ran out.

This was a new low moment to say the least.

A knock on the door shook you from your endless thoughts, you sniffed and rubbed your face before standing up, “What?” You called back.

“What’s taking you so long? There’s no way you still have hot water.” Fred shouted back.

He was right, you didn’t and you hadn’t even started washing yourself. You suffered through the cold water and washed your hair and body, cleaning it of the filth and emotions.

As soon as you had your towel wrapped around you Fred opened the door and tossed a bottle of his nice moisturizer at you, “You always feel better after you moisturize.” He said and shut the door one again.

He was right, your skin looked dewy and no longer crusted with sleep and sweat. You felt clean like a breath of fresh air, but your mind continued to remind you of how alone you were in this apartment. The two of you sat on your couch once again, this time you were clean and in fresh clothes.

Freddie splayed his hands on his pants, “So,” He started out, “When were you going tell me that you and Roger have been sleeping together?”

You felt like the wind had been knocked out of you “What are you talking about?” You asked trying to hide your nerves.

“I saw a picture. I know what the both of you look like naked it isn’t hard to tell.”

Heat crept up the back of your neck and spread from your face to the tips of your ears and your mouth opened and closed as you tried to find your words, “Is that what this is all about?” Freddie asked maintaining his intense gaze.

You averted your gaze from his and stared hard at the floor. Fred grabbed you and forced you look at him, “Listen, [Y/N], Dominique is a manipulative witch that knows how to wrap Roger around her finger” You stared into his intense brown eyes, “She doesn’t have shit on you and never will.” He let go of your face and you didn’t move, “She sweeps in and sinks her dirty claws into Roger’ soft heart and takes advantage of him.” He picked some lint off his pants and paused before he continued, “No one likes her.” He added.

You took Freddie’s words to heart, he seemed genuine and you had already learned previously that Dom was not well liked among the boys. At the end of the week Roger returned, presumably to get a new bag of clothes.

To say you were shocked to see him was honestly an understatement. You gaped at him when he walked through the door “What the fuck happened to your hair?” You asked looking at him.

His long choppy hair was now short and wild on his head, Roger rushed past you, “Do you like it? Dominique said it looked better this way.” He said moving to his room.

You couldn’t help but follow him and lean on his doorway, “Dominique told you to cut your hair short so you did?” your voice was laced with disbelief.

Roger glanced back and you and nodded his head, “Yeah.”

You rubbed your face with your hand, “Do you know how insane that sounds? She is literally telling you how to dress, Roger.” You frowned deeply, “What happened to changing your clothes three times a day and not wearing the same pair of shoes every week, or waking up an two hours before you need to open the store to style your hair.”

Roger didn’t look back at you and continued to stuff clothes into his duffle bag, “I know, but that isn’t efficient.”

An audible scoff left your mouth, “Efficient?” You gaped at him, “Since when did you care about efficiency?”

Roger’s head whipped towards you, “Since when did you care about what I do with my life?” He said, a nasty tone dripping from his words.

You didn’t like this. Not one bit. “What is that supposed to mean?” You asked following with your arms crossed over your chest.

Roger turned on his heel and looked at you, “It is supposed to mean that you shouldn’t care about the other women in my life.”

You clenched your fists, “Roger, Dominique doesn’t care about you and by the end of next week you’ll be back here sulking in your room and bitter like you first were.”

Roger clenched his teeth, his blue eyes now ignited with fire, “Why do you care? We aren’t together and we never were. Get over it.” He hissed before slamming the door behind him.

Your stomach tightened as his words as they rammed into you like a truck. Your mind flashed back to the moments to intimate to be just sex.

Roger cupped your face as you clung to him, your body trembling as he leaned against your headboard with you on his lap. He kissed your face, your nose, eyes, and cheeks. “God, you are so fucking beautiful.” He said pressing his lips fully against yours as the two of you clung to each other.

---

You laid your head in Roger’s lap as the two of you laid across the couch while some shitty movie played in the background. You had a bowl of popcorn in your lap and threw pieces as Roger tried to catch them, every time he missed, they would lightly plop on your face. You didn’t care about the salty butter dirtying your skin. Roger awkwardly craned his head down, his long dyed hair framing the sides of your face and tickling the skin. Your nose scrunched and Roger laughed softly before kissing the tip of your nose.

---

Another night at the bar, spent dancing until it was either very early or very late. The two of you clung to each other with an arm wrapped around the other’s waist, your steps swaying and causing the two of you to stumble and laugh.

---

The first time Roger slept in your bed; you woke up to his already wild hair looking now untamable while soft snores left slightly ajar mouth. You brushed his hair back and he pulled you into his chest as he kissed your shoulder and buried his face into your back.

These moments were far too intimate to be just sex or to be just two friends. Your brain felt muddied; did he not feel the same? Did he still think of this as a business arrangement?

You felt dizzy from all of the questions that flooded your brain and soon began to feel helpless.

If Freddie was right, Roger would be back within the next week saying ‘you were right [y/n]’

But until then, your feelings could only stand against the test of time and uncertainty.

[baekhvuns]

Bad boy | Baekhyun XII

( series masterlist )

part twelve.

word count : above 1.5k

pairing : baekhyun x reader

theme ( s ) : ANGST.

“What’s going in here huh?”

Yuna asked as she twirled her glass of champagne, I looked at Baekhyun in shock and he did not utter a word.

“Ah Yuna don’t worry! We were just playing a game we used to play when we all were in high school!” Eunhye came to our rescue, I but my lip and looked at Eunhye as she gave me a sly wink.

“A game? This close? Baekhyun?” She looked at Baekhyun who smiled softly, “That’s the whole point of the game, you make the other embarrassed.” He said as we all nodded, catching on to whatever he was narrating.

“Yea!” We all said simultaneously as Yuna rose her eyebrows before looking at me, eyes gazing up and down.

“Ah Yuna, don’t worry! I wasn’t planning on playing anyway!” I said, I wasn’t wrong, he came up to me

She walked away but before she did, she looked at each and everyone of us. But I know she looked at me with an unreadable expression.

“I’ll go up early.” I said before walking out this hall with my mind all over the place.

What is Byun Baekhyun doing?

Okay but do you mind it?

I quickly shut the thoughts away before walking towards the car, “Joohyun! Joohyun! Wait!”

I turned around to see Baekhyun running towards me, “What?” I snapped as he catches his breath and leaned his hand on the car.

“I’m sorry for whatever I did today and for well . . Yuna.”

“That’s fine, I understand it’s weird to see someone’s fiancé with a different women.”

“Yea but you are not a different women..” Baekhyun muttered as you catched onto this words.

“Then what am I Byun Baekhyun? The girl who you fired? Huh? Why did you invite me here! At your wedding? In the country I told you was my dream?!” I yelled, not caring the fact that tears threatened to fall out of my eyes.

He stayed quiet as I scoffed, “Baekhyun, answer me!” I yelled as he his hardened gaze looked at my face.

“Can we please forget the pas—“

“NO! Let me make it clear to you Baekhyun, you left me when I told you who I was! You didn’t even contact me, message me or even stop me from going that day! and heck you sent me your marriage invitation?!”

“Byun Baekhyun answer me!” My tears were all over my face as I held onto both of Baekhyun’s shoulders demanding for an answer

“I DID!” He looked at me, “I did try to reach you, I asked everyone where you went! Where your address was! Where you worked but nothing worked!” He ran his hand through his hair and took a few steps back.

“What are you saying?” I asked looking at him with widened eyes, he scoffed before continuing.

“I looked at everywhere you possibly could be, but I couldn’t find you! It’s like you wiped your existence out my world!”

“I begged and begged everyone where you were! But there was no avail!” He yelled, he took a deep breathe, “So I thought you had moved on, a deep mistake.”

“I moved to Greece because it would make me feel closer to you! And then I found Yuna, and I got to know her well. I thought since you had moved in, I would too.”

“So I started to go on dates with her, every date with her would remind me the things you did. Every little action or an intimate moment.”

I scoffed, “And then one day, I decided to ask her to marry me. That’s when I found out that Eunhye was in contacts with you, but it was too late. . . I was engaged.”

“—and the only thing you could do was call me here for your wedding. . . . So you could see me one last time?” I said as he nodded slowly

“You thought I moved on from you, truth is, I tried too. But I couldn’t help and remember you and what you would and wouldn’t have done!” I said before wiping the tear that rolled over my cheeks, his teary eyes now exchanging looks with me

“Tell me what to do Joohyun, tell me what to do.”

I sat inside the car and closed the door, “Nothing Baekhyun, it’s too late now.” I motioned the diver to start driving, as the car started to move.

I could see his lifeless face looking at me through the mirror, wiping all the tears that had rolled down. I leaned backwards and closed my eyes.

I can’t do this anymore.

***

Next day.

I hadn’t left my room since I came back. I decided that I would leave for Korea on the 27, on the day of his wedding. So that I wouldn’t be there after, to see his face again.

“Joohyun? Can I come in?”

“Hi, yea come in.” I looked towards the door as Sehun walked through them and jumped on the bed.

“You.” He pointed his finger to me, “And Baekhyun.” Oh no, did he hear us yesterday?

“What’s wrong with you guys?! You haven’t come downstairs and he hasn’t stepped inside the house!” He sat on the bed huffing as I chuckled at his complaint.

“There’s nothing wrong, I was too tired to get out of bed.” He looked at me and gave me the stare, we called it the “I-dont-believe-you” face

“I don’t know about him, he probably has work.”

“Joohyun, you can’t lie to me you know?” He looked at me as I smiled at him, he sighed in defeat and kicked the floor.

“All I’ll say is, don’t leave what was meant for you.”

***

In the span of two days, I avoided Baekhyun. Sometimes when I was thirsty at night, I’d make my way towards the kitchen to grab a drink but instead bumped into him.

He tried to talk to me, but I would move past him. Other times, everyone would play random games which would sometimes put us in the same team.

“Ah Joohyun! That’s not how you do it! Follow what Baekhyun is doing!”

I looked up to see his face, expressionless, before he started to do the steps and I copied.

Moments like these only hurt me, and hurtled him too. Yuna would give me her constant glares and cling on to his arm whenever I was in the room.

And now, today was the day. It was Baekhyun’s wedding day.

Eunhye had came to my room and got ready here, “YAH Joohyun! Are you okay? I’ve called you like five times?” She looked at me as I smiled,

“Of course, I’m good!” She looked at me, before hugging me

“I know, I know. You and him aren’t on the best terms, heck everyone noticed. But Joohyun, remember that now it’s not too late to change your mind.” You looked at her in shock,

“What? They Haven’t gotten married yet?” She smiled sheepishly as I slapped her arm playing before continuing to apply my eyeliner.

Biting my lip, “I don’t think we both want that Eunhye.” I muttered before walking out of the washroom.

***

Now we all waited downstairs, for the groom to come downstairs so we could congratulate him.

“Yah what is this? The groom seems like he’s turning into a bride!”

“He’s making us wait too long”

“Baekhyun! hurry up!”

“We know you’re handsome! hurry up already you bride!” Chanyeol shouted as everyone laughed, Jongdae gave me a glance and went upstairs to his room.

“Oh Joohyun, are you okay?”

“Hm? What why?” I frowned, as junmyeon continued, “Ah never mind, you know—“

Chanyeol jabbed his stomach before laughing out loudly, as everyone made random jokes I couldn’t help but notice where Jongdae was, and why wasn’t Baekhyun coming downstairs?

“Joohyun.” Suddenly I heard Jongdae call me from up the stairs, motioning me to come upstairs.

I but my lip, as he pleaded. Nodding I made my way upstairs, “I’ll be back, I left my gift box in my room!”

As I reached upstairs, jongdae pulled me into the hallway, “Yah kim Jongdae what is this?” I asked slightly irritated.

“Talk to him.” He said as my eyes widened, my mouth opened to answer—

“Please. I think it’s only right for you guys to talk.” He forced me inside his room, as the door flung open.

I saw Baekhyun standing at the balcony, Jongdae whispered to go near him and closed the door.

“Baek—“

“Joohyun! I can’t do this.” He looked at him as I looked at him up and down, admiring the way he liked. My heart fluttering at the way he looked, his jet black tux and black tie, his hair slicked back.

“What do you mea—“ he suddenly engulfed me into a hug, nuzzling his face into the crook of my neck. Bringing my hands to his shoulders I pushed him back.

“Joohyun, I love you. I fucking love you! And I can’t let go of you.” His eyes teared as my heart broke

“Baekhyun what are you saying. . .” I whispered out, he suddenly cupped my cheeks and looked at me right in the eye.

“I love you Joohyun.” He said before kissing me as my tears rolled down my cheeks, I sobbed between the kiss as we both pulled back.

“Baekhyun, I’m sorry I can’t do this, you’re getting married. Yuna’s waiting for you.”

“And you’ve been waiting for me since years.” He caught me off guard as I looked up at him

“Baekhyun listen to me, today is the day your life I’ll change! You’ll be married to the love of your life, so please forget about me.” I sobbed as I leaned into this chest, one last time.

“Baekhyun! hurry!

“Now let’s go, they’re all waiting for you.” I said as I avoided eye contact with him and took his hand in mine before walking downstairs.

“The groom Byun Baekhyun has arrived!” I said as I smiled and looked over at Baekhyun and walked him down

“woah, as expected from our man!”

“That’s my boy! Lemme take his photo! Sehun move away!”

I let Baekhyun join the boys before telling him to “be happy”

“Sir the car is ready.” The chauffeur suddenly came in as we all nodded and made our way towards the party bus.

During the bus ride, everyone was dancing and enjoying as songs were being blasted. As for me, I sat and drank the champagne that was provided to us. Glancing at Baekhyun who I didn’t realize was looking at me with a sad expression.

I made a smiling gesture towards him and nodded, “Enjoy!” I mouthed as I drank the liquid not realizing that a tear had dropped down my cheek, and I quickly wiped it away before Eunhye pulled me to dance.

Suddenly the bus came on a halt, telling us that we had reached the hall. Everyone got out quickly but Baekhyun stopped me, “Let’s go.” I squeezed his hand and got out, and made my way towards the the wedding hall.

Gulping I made way inside, I could see Yuna’s friends look at me as I greeted Baekhyun’s parents and took a seat in the front row with all of us sitting together.

My heart hammered against my ribcage, my hand flew to my chest, “It’s going to be okay, please calm down.” I whispered to myself before biting the inside of my cheek to prevent any water pouring out of my eyes.

“Ah! Now can we please welcome the groom!”

Everyone stood up, as we all looked back towards Baekhyun walking in. His eyes never leaving mine, my lip quivering as I bit the insides of my lip.

I hope she treats you right, hope she buys you your favourite flower, stay up and watch your nerdy movies with you, feeds and gives you all the love in the world.

The piano had started playing, not helping in the environment I was in. I smiled at Baekhyun, a big bright smile as I could see his jaw clenched.

I’m sorry Baekhyun, I ruined our chances.

Soon after, Yuna had walked in looking like and absolute goddess in the white gown. Realizing she was the one for him, I was just someone hard to forget. As I was looking at her, I could feel Baekhyun’s gaze one me.

“Congrats!” I whispered to Yuna as she walked down that aisle beside me, raising her hands she met Baekhyun’s before muttering something that made her smile and for Baekhyun to crack a smile.

There, that looked like the perfect couple.

We all sat down as the priest had entered, I could hear him congratulate the couple. Smiling I bit back my tears, before my phone buzzed.

“Eunhye, I gotta go.” I said as Eunhye looked at me in confusion before nodding.

I walked away, from all this mess. As I stood in the back of the hallway, standing in the middle of the entrance. I saw him take the ring from the flower girl and he looked at me, I smiled.

His eyes widened at my sight, he opened his mouth as I motioned him to look at Yuna who had the expression of a five year old getting candy.

Tears burst out as I cupped my mouth. Turning backwards, I started to walked out. I gave a glance back to see him looking at me with his tears rolling down his face and Yuna wiping them. Giving him a sad smile, I walked out.

Tag list: @strawbaeri-s @forbyun

[wildsorcerer]

put your lips close to mine, as long as they dont touch

penelope everpetal/sam nightingale, penelope character study, lots of repressed lesbianism, betrayal, and angst. ~1.5k words. 

read it on ao3 (or leave a kudos/comment lol)

How selfish it is, to doom someone to imprisonment and death and yet to seek them out around every corner. Penelope can neither be free from Sam nor take back what she had done. There will never be another movie night, there will never be another whispered conversation as they sat on the bleachers and watched the bloodrush practice. There will be no more fights about Johnny Spells. No more twinges of jealousy as Penelope looks at them together, Sam fawning over some guy who didn’t care about her, not really, the weight of her silent anger mixing with the weight of Dayne’s arm around her shoulder until her skin was flushed and crawling with alcohol and frustration, doomed to misunderstand her own desire. There will be no more friendship. And maybe if they could have never been more, that’s for the best.

Penelope Everpetal has a box under her bed where she keeps her photos. There is a planner tucked away in a drawer with a five year plan, “stay friends with Sam forever” just below “become prom queen”. There is a crystal sitting on her desk that she has to give to Johnny Spells tomorrow, his girlfriend inside. Penelope can’t even look towards it. She paces around her room, the adrenaline still racing through her veins from the fight minutes ago. Penelope knows that she had to trap Sam. They needed another maiden soon to stay on schedule and Sam was a candidate, so when Sam asked to come over tonight she knew what she needed to do. It was stupid to be worried anyway, if Penelope could just make herself forget about Sam then it wouldn’t matter, and she would be Prom Queen, the first in a century. Nothing was more important than that, not even the sweet smell of the lotion that Sam used after her showers or the moments when their hands would brush when sharing a shake at Krom’s Diner.

And Penelope had trapped her. Just like that. Sam’s back was turned, both of them on her bed, scrolling on their crystals, when Penelope had gotten up, looking over her shoulder at the slender form on her bed, frowning at Sam, and grabbing the palimpsest from her backpack. There was one moment where she could have stopped. The palimpsest was in her hands but she hadn’t recited the spell yet. She could have confessed everything to Sam, tried to get her in on their plan, but the throne was only big enough for one. Deep in her heart, she knew that Sam would have chosen her over the crown, and that knowledge only stoked the fire in her stomach. She was not that noble.

She gripped the palimpsest so tightly that the rough surface dug into her palm, and as she turned around, Sam had looked up at her, the smile on her light blue face fading as Penelope started reciting the spell, tears blurring her vision. Before Sam had enough time to feel betrayed, there was a flash of arcane light that forced Penelope to close her eyes. When she opened them again, Sam was gone. And she was crying.

Now she isn’t crying, but trembling all the same, with the crystal on her desk and the photos under her bed. She looks around at the walls of her bedroom. They are speckled with a photo collage, and so many of them are of Sam. So many of them are of her and Sam together.

Penelope’s breathing accelerates as all of the Sams look at her from their mount on the walls. She walks slowly to the collage over her mirror, which she always privately thought of as the photos where she and Sam looked the best. A dozen or so printed photos bluetacked onto the wall, taken with various crystals, all of Penelope and Sam decked out in party attire, laughing together and holding each other to varying degrees. They always liked to take at least one candid photo like this whenever they went out, and Penelope mounted them over her full length mirror where she could always see them. She felt sick looking at the rainbow glitter on Sam’s cheekbones and the points where they were touching in the photo, knowing that there would never be another moment like that.

She turns away, tears welling again, and grabs her crystal, texting Johnny Spells and Aelwyn Abernant that she has a new maiden but can’t keep the palimpsest. She blinks, seeing Sam’s confusion behind her eyelids, the trust that Sam put in her so strong that her face never even registered betrayal.

Penelope manages to get ready for bed, the normality of her routine keeping the guilt at bay for the minutes that it takes to wash her face and turn off her lights. But in the dark there is nothing but her thoughts, and she has trouble sleeping, but even as she can feel the regret taking root, she tries to pull it out, Sam is a necessary casualty for her to become who she was always meant to be: the perfect person.

If she wasn’t the perfect girl, the perfect teenager, and eventually the perfect woman, then there was no worth to her life. Being Prom Queen meant showing everyone at Augefort how flawless she was, in her dress with a crown atop her head. Penelope’s heart beat faster at the mental image. That was why it was for the best that Sam was gone.

People who fall in love with their best friends are not perfect.

People who feel nauseous when their best friend video called them, people who ache to reach out and touch her shoulder, people who leave their boyfriends at parties to go sit together outside around the side of the house, leaning on each other and laughing with their faces too close, those people are wrong, and Penelope cannot handle a world where she isn’t on top.

She sleeps fitfully.

Penelope wakes up the next morning (after Sam, day one), and gets ready without thinking. She pushes her emotions away, refusing to feel any of the guilt that is clawing at the edges of her psyche. She grabs the palimpsest and roughly throws it into her backpack. It’s just a thing. The sight of the photos over her mirror stops her. Penelope has no way to express the profoundness of the self-loathing that overtakes her. She knows that she can’t look at Sam ever again, and so, before she gives away the crystal that holds her best friend’s soul in it away forever to be imprisoned and kept away from Elmville, she rips the photos down meticulously, leaving behind a graveyard of bluetack. She walks around the entire room, ridding her walls of any evidence that Sam had ever existed as a part of her life. She pulls out the dusty box under her bed of old photos and deposits the photos of Sam there, the thick stack of photos fanning out on impact and giving Penelope one last glimpse of the love that she once had. She shuts the box and slides it out of sight.

It is a long drive to Aguefort.

Penelope’s bag feels unusually heavy as she steps out of her car, three parking spaces over from where Johnny Spells sits astride his motorcycle, lighting up a cigarette. She forces her legs to move, one step at a time, as she crosses the space between them and pulls out the palimpsest. Sam. She thrusts it out to Johnny, like it was burning her, and he takes it without looking at her.

“It’s Sam,” Penelope says without thinking, wildly hoping that someone would share in her grief and assure her that this was what she had to do.

Johnny didn’t even glance at her. “Figured. I knew she was going to have to go eventually.” He tossed the palimpsest up and down for a moment. Careless.

Penelope doesn’t say another word to him. She walks into the halls of Augefort Adventuring Academy, ready to play the part of an upset and concerned best friend.

It barely feels like an act.

There is no moment in Penelope’s life after Sam. She thought that there could be, that maybe the ghost of Sam would leave her once she achieved enough of her other goals, but there is no moment that is free from the look on Sam’s face as Penelope imprisoned her within the crystal. There is no moment after Aelwyn Abernant clocked Sam as a potential maiden, dooming Penelope to her internal hurricane. There is no moment after Penelope rips the photo of her and Sam from where it was taped to the inside of her locker and shoves it deep beneath her textbooks. There are only moments before she met Sam and before she betrayed her. There is no after.

[arckook]

around and around - five

pairing: cho seungyoun x reader, kim wooseok x reader

au: idolverse

warnings: none

wordcount: 4.6k

description: you’ve had a one-sided crush on your close friend seungyoun for who knows how long, but things don’t stay so black and white when he introduces you to his new groupmate kim wooseok.

next

Jamiezzz

*sent image*

everyone look at our baby seungyoun at this photoshoot manz looks a fool

Beoneon

I think hyung looks good though?

Hyunggu🤪

Hansol can you read the mood. She’s trashing Seungyoun-hyung because he actually looks good

Beoneon

Oh ya I see it now

Jamiezzz

y/n y/n y/n where are you 

respond 

dont leave me alone here with these boring men

You sigh, reading over the recent messages in your friends’ group chat. Shaking your head slightly, you set your phone down in your lap, watching through the large mirror in front of you as your hairdresser lays the bleach onto your hair.

“I’m surprised you finally agreed to going blonde!” she says, looking excited to do something more interesting with your head. You tend to stick with a darker look, because it’s easier to take care of.

“I just want a change,” you tell her, smiling. 

And it’s true.

You almost feel like one of those girls who has gone through a crazy breakup, and does something drastic to her hair to try and cope emotionally. 

You’re just not going through a breakup, and also not doing it yourself so you don’t piss off your management.

You glance down at your phone again and see a few more texts.

Hyunggu🤪

Boring? BORING?

Jamiezzz

boring boys can you tell me if it’s just me who thinks seungyoun and y/n are acting weird

this is a necessary callout bc its making me feel uncomfy

Beoneon

Do you have to make them feel awkward…

Jamiezzz

so you DO agree

Beoneon

I never said that

Hyunggu🤪

I agree

They keep ignoring us in the gc 

Whichever one of you shows up here first is not a loser

Jamiezzz

boy are you 12? tf kind of tactic is that

Youn

There’s nothing wrong. Sorry I haven’t kept up much with you guys the past couple of weeks!

Hyunggu🤪

“tF kInD oF tAcTiC iS tHaT”

You read over Seungyoun’s message a few times, your eyes drawn to his name, to his contact image. It’s one of the only pictures of him that you’ve taken yourself- from one of the first times you’d even met him. He put on these dumb sunglasses and pushed his hair all the way back and flat against his head. It looked stupid, but at the time you thought it was funny and endearing enough to set at his photo.

There’s nothing wrong.

For some reason, you can’t bring yourself to believe that he actually feels that way.

You still feel sick to your stomach when you think back to his expression that night, when you told him you didn’t want him to take you home. Not that you didn’t want to be taken home… that it was him that was the problem.

He’s probably confused.

But you can’t explain it. You can’t. 

“I think a more silvery blonde will look good on you,” your hairdresser chirps, cutting into your thoughts. “Would you be open to that?”

“Oh, sure,” you answer, knowing your voice sounds a little half-hearted. “Can you cut some layers too? I’m curious what that would look like on me.”

“Totally!” she says, folding up a foil. “It’s going to look so good!”

A few hours later, when your new hair is completely bleached, toned, colored, cut, and blow-dried into a flowy and shiny curtain of silver-blonde, you post a picture of the new look on your instagram, feeling a little better from seeing yourself look so different.

“Y/N-ah!”

You turn to see your group members, who all came from the dorm to get you from the salon so you can all get lunch together. 

Eunmi oohs and ahhs at your hair, running her fingers through it. “It actually looks soft!”

“That’s what happens when you don’t bleach the shit out of it like me,” Jiseo says, pinching a piece of her own hair, currently a faded minty green color, and cringing at it.

“Yeah, you should cut it, Unnie. Your ends look bad.” Soohyun says to the oldest, who sticks out her tongue. 

“Now three of us are basically blondes,” Eunmi pats your head. “I’m the only brunette left.”

“Don’t worry, Y/N won’t last long,” Jiseo jokes as she takes your hand, slotting her fingers in the spaces between yours. “She’s just going through emotional turmoil.”

“I am so not,” you mutter as the four of you start walking through the building towards the parking garage. 

“Y/N-unnie isn’t going through emotional turmoil, she’s just trying to look good for her new man,” Soohyun says, snickering even before Eunmi and Jiseo snap towards you, eyes wide.

“What?” Jiseo exclaims, and all you can do is glare intensely at Soohyun.

“That is also not accurate,” you grit your teeth as you talk.

“It so is,” she sing-songs, swinging her bag in front of her as you all keep walking. “His name is Kim Wooseok. Don’t worry, he’s handsomer than Cho Seungyoun.”

“Don’t say that about Seungyoun,” you tell her with a frown, but she just shrugs.

“It’s not like I called him ugly.”

“Isn’t Kim Wooseok his groupmate?” Eunmi wonders aloud, seemingly over the fact that Soohyun referred to him as your man. 

“Yeah,” you answer simply.

“Is that who you’ve been meeting up with the past few weeks?” Jiseo asks, which nearly makes you jump out of your skin, stopping in your tracks with wide eyes. Your leader glances over at you, a knowing smile on her face. “Y/N, did you think I didn’t notice you sneaking out whenever we had time?”

“I…” you trail off, a little embarrassed. “Um… yeah… I thought that.”

“Ooo-hoo-hoo!” Eunmi grins, and shoves you gently. “So it is like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like that,” she says suggestively, and you smack her arm.

“No, it’s-”

“Y/N-unnie sends him selfies,” Soohyun adds, making you groan and the other girls ooh and ahh even more.

“Yah, L/N Y/N!” Jiseo physically grabs and shakes you, her lips pulled into a wide smile. “I know as a leader I should scold you, but this is great news. You can finally get over Seungyoun.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” you whine, throwing your head back in frustration. “We are just friends!”

“Oooookay,” Jiseo hums, as you all exit the building into the parking garage. “Anyway, check out this spot I got. Someone was leaving right as we came in.”

“Lucky,” you comment as the car comes into view, glad of the change of topic.

The four of you get into the car, you and Soohyun automatically going to the backseat as you have done since the very first time you all went somewhere together. 

You glance down at your phone as the girls start discussing where you should go to eat, and are surprised to see another notification from your groupchat.

Jamiezzz

*sent image*

so y/n can post on insta but not respond to her best friends i see how it is😔

Beoneon

Woahhhh Y/N your hair

Jamiezzz

you can compliment but she’s not gonna respond😭😤

You sigh, your front teeth latching onto your bottom lip. 

You feel bad, to put it plainly. 

It’s not like you’re intentionally trying to ignore all of your friends… you just feel uncomfortable talking when you know Seungyoun will read it.

You

thanks vernon :)

sorry weve had a lot of shoots and stuff recently i dont have much time to be on my phone

Hyunggu🤪

She’s alive

Jamiezzz

wait y/n are you sleeping and eating :(

you were sick

You

im ok

Jamiezzz

take care of urself and ur new awesome hair girlie

You

sure thing

“Y/N-unnie,” 

You turn your head to see Soohyun looking over at you, her brows furrowed. “You look stressed.”

“...No,” you smile, shaking your head. You reach over and take her hand, squeezing it. “I’m totally fine.”

“And then they made me wear this,” you find the picture you’d been looking for in your camera roll and turn your phone around, displaying the bizarre outfit you’d had to wear for a recent magazine spread. “Like, what is that? I’m embarrassed that documentation of this even exists.”

“It’s not that bad,” Wooseok hums, taking a bite of his cake. He does it delicately, and with a degree of elegance, like he does pretty much everything.

You huff, turning your phone off and setting it down on the table. “Well, thanks, I guess. I’m still in shock though.”

“By the way, Y/N,” Wooseok starts as you dig your fork into your own dessert, lifting a sizable chunk of the cheesecake to your mouth. “Why do you keep asking for me to meet up with you?”

You frown as soon as the words leave his mouth, setting the fork with your cake back down on the plate. “What?”

He shrugs, but it almost looks tense. Wooseok avoids meeting your eyes as he talks, instead trailing his fork around on the plate in front of him. “We agreed on me not spying on Seungyoun for you anymore. That was the whole reason we met up and ate together, but you’ve still been contacting me.”

You lean back in your chair, regarding him with furrowed brows and teeth latching onto your lower lip. “I don’t… are you saying it’s bothersome to meet up with me?”

Wooseok’s eyes flash up. “I didn’t say that. I’m just-”

“Well it feels like you’re saying that.” you cut him off, grip on your fork tightening as you look down at the table. “You could have just turned me down if you don’t like seeing me.”

“You’re not a bother, Y/N,” Wooseok says, and since you can practically hear the apology in his voice, you glance up to meet his gaze. It’s one of the few times you’ve seen him truly frown. “I shouldn’t have said it that way. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t really know what you’re trying to say,” you mutter, looking away again. “I didn’t just cut you off after the ‘no more Seungyoun updates’ thing because I like you and I want to be friends with you. Sorry if you didn’t feel that way.”

“Y/N-ah,” Wooseok says, clearly trying to get your attention, but you ignore him, because you feel a little hurt. “Y/N-ah. That’s not what I meant.”

“Okay, then what did you mean?” you ask, knowing bitterness is seeping into your tone. 

“I just thought that… you might be trying to make up for asking me that favor in the first place.” at this, you look up, confused. Wooseok fidgets a little, which is uncharacteristic for him. “I could tell that you were feeling uncomfortable about it that day that I came to get you from Jimin-ssi’s place. I thought you might be feeling guilty, so I was going to tell you that you didn’t have to be.”

“...Oh.” you say. 

It’s quiet for a second, because as a somewhat emotional person, you need a moment to recover from what you thought was about to become a total betrayal of your friendship with Wooseok, and you think he might feel a little awkward.

After you’ve had a minute to contemplate what he just told you, you sit up and take that bite of cheesecake you’d been preparing before, looking at Wooseok with all (probably not all, realistically… but most) of the distress wiped from your face. “You’re kind of right. I did feel guilty about it due to certain circumstances, but that’s not why I keep in touch with you. I just like you. And it’s fun having a friend that isn’t friends with the rest of my friends.”

One corner of Wooseok’s lips turns up, in that almost smirky way that he often does. Subconsciously, you think. “I’m glad to hear that.”

“...Can you apologize one more time though? Because that kind of upset me for a second.”

At this, he chuckles quietly. “I’m sorry, Y/N.”

About twenty minutes later, after Wooseok has documented the outing with a picture of you and the food (he says he likes doing that because he can’t post pictures of most of his idol friends on social media) you leave the dessert cafe and head out onto the streets of Seoul together. You’re in a quieter area with a lot of parks, but since it’s nighttime, there’s not many people around aside from the occasional group of teenagers or drunk couple.

Eunmi is currently covering for you by having told your manager that the two of you went out for dinner together even though she’s actually just at her brother’s house, so you’ll have to meet up with her soon and go home. But for now, you’re enjoying walking around in the cold air with Wooseok.

He’s been quiet for a few minutes, though, and you’re considering questioning it when he finally speaks up.

“I know you said that day that you didn’t want to talk about it,” Wooseok starts, looking straight ahead as you two walk through a park. “But I can’t lie that I’m not curious. What made you not want to hear about Seungyoun anymore?”

You glance over at Wooseok, biting hard on your lower lip. You’re not sure if you really want to say.

He looks to the side to meet your gaze, and holds it. “He’s seemed uncomfortable too, the past couple of weeks. He was in his room when I got back after taking you home that night, and Seungwoo-hyung said he went straight there when he came back to the dorm. Did something happen between you two?”

You tug on your fingers, pulling at the fabric of your gloves, and look away from Wooseok, coming to a stop. “Not really. I mean, a little bit, but it wasn’t like…” 

You sigh, feeling without being able to see the judgemental look Wooseok is definitely giving you right now. “Basically, Seungyoun-oppa brought a girl with him to this get-together thing. I didn’t even know he was coming so it was kinda a shock, but she seemed nice and Jimin-unnie even said they were friends so I went with it. But this girl got me alone with her at one point and asked…” you sigh again, clasping your hands together. “She wanted me to pretty much do what you were doing for me. See what Seungyoun was saying about her, get him to like her and make her look good to him. I guess that… it just made me regret having asked that of you. Maybe it’s also because I was kind of drunk, but I almost threw up, too.”

“...Oh. I see.” Wooseok says plainly. You glance up to see his expression, expecting the judgemental look, but he just looks… concerned? “You never asked me to make you look good to Seungyoun, though. You just asked me to tell you what he says about you. Those are different.”

You shrug. “I guess. It felt the same, though. That’s why I wanted to tell you that you don’t have to anymore right away. And I really wanted to leave. There was no way I was going to be able to hang out with this girl after she told me that she’s in love with him.”

“In love with him?” Wooseok scoffs. “What’s her name? That seems dramatic to me.”

You crack a smile. “Her name was Sahee.”

Wooseok gives an unimpressed look. “Well he’s never even mentioned her, so I doubt that she’s that important to him.”

You shrug again.

After a moment, Wooseok continues. “So nothing happened at all between you and Seungyoun?”

You rub your arm, sending a grim smile his way. “Geez, you really want to know, don’t you?”

He tucks his hands in his pockets. “It’s just that I can tell something is weird between you two, and I don’t even see you at the same time.”

“Well, it wasn’t much,” you say, accepting your fate and just deciding to tell him. “Sahee must have told him I was feeling sick, so he came to check on me, and wanted to take me home. I told him I’d take a taxi… that was after I texted you. He was insisting at least on taking me downstairs but I didn’t really want to see him in that moment, plus it’s not like I was actually planning on a taxi, so…” you shake your head, sighing once again. “I don’t know. I guess I kind of hurt his feelings in the process.”

“If you were rude to him you should think about apologizing,” Wooseok says bluntly.

Wow. Absolutely no mercy.

“Yeah, I mean… I figured…” you mumble, crossing your arms. “I don’t really know if it was rude though. It was more like… uncalled for.”

“That means rude in most people’s vocabulary,” Wooseok says with a sigh, then starts walking again, which means you have to as well to keep up. “Anyway, he keeps being mopey so even if you don’t apologize, text him or something.”

“Can’t you tell him to text me first?” you mutter, not intending for Wooseok to hear, but you guess that he does by the glare you see him shoot you from your peripherals.

“No.”

You groan. “Okay, maybe tomorrow. No promises though.”

“You’re such a kid,” Wooseok says, but when you look over, he’s smiling. “Want a ride home?”

“You don’t have to,” you say, but he shakes his head. 

“Just accept. I’m avoiding going back to the dorm for as long as possible because Eunsang and Dohyon decided they wanted to host a ‘video game night’, and I don’t want my ears to bleed from the inevitable noise.”

You laugh loudly, already being able to imagine how much that would get on a lowkey person like Wooseok’s nerves. “Alright then. I’ll accept the ride home.”

You have a preliminary recording session the next day for your group’s next album, which is set to come out in March. Jiseo wanted you all to come in just to check out the current tracklist the company has agreed on and maybe start recording some vocals to see if it feels right.

You’ve been at it since the morning, and now that it’s lunchtime, you’re sitting in the room connected to the studio with the girls, who are all on their phones like you. You finished eating a while ago, and now you’re just staring at the messages you have with Seungyoun. You’ve never deleted his tab on your phone, so if you scroll up far enough, you’d be able to read the first ever text you sent him. Which was, if you remember correctly: “Hi Seungyoun-sunbaenim! It was nice to meet you :)”. That was the day after you were first introduced.

You sigh, setting your phone down and dropping your forehead to the table.

“What’s up with her?” Jiseo says with her mouth full. 

“Maybe you were right about emotional turmoil,” Eunmi muses. 

You lift your head up. “Do you have to gossip about me when I’m right here?”

“Duh.” Soohyun says, so you reach over and smack her arm (gently, you may add), which she whines dramatically at. 

“What? Did something happen with Kim Wooseok yesterday night?” Eunmi asks, and you groan.

“No, unnie. Can you stop trying to act like he’s my boyfriend?”

“No, I cannot,” she responds, sticking out her tongue.

“Leave her to her emotional issues,” Jiseo says, once again through her chewing. “Eunmi-yah, Soohyun-ah, let’s go back in since you’re done eating. Y/N-ah, just come when you’re ready.”

“Thanks, unnie,” you tell her honestly as she leads the other girls out of the room, Soohyun scrunching up her nose at you before she closes the door.

You grab your phone again and look at the screen.

It’s been a while since you last texted Seungyoun. Not since November. It hits you that it’s been months since you had a real conversation with him, and you feel bad all over again.

Hey :) I just wanted to say sorry if I was acting weird at Jimin-unnie’s house that one time. I felt really sick and I think the alcohol was getting to me.

You type out the message, but your thumb hovers hesitantly over the send button. You end up pressing and holding on delete until the whole thing is gone.

Oppa, sorry for being rude that night. I wasn’t feeling well. 

You read that one over a few times, and delete it too. 

Seungyoun-oppa, I can’t remember well, but I think I was kind of rude to you that day at Jimin-unnie’s house. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it

You bite your lip, and then in a sudden moment of “who gives a fuck”, just hit send.

And then immediately groan at what you’ve done. 

“Dumbass,” you mutter to yourself. “You remember everything.”

With a shake of your head, you get up and start gathering the takeout your group members had left on the table, probably thinking they’d just clean it up after. You throw everything that’s empty away, and then close up the containers of what isn’t done, stacking it in the middle of the table.

And then your phone starts ringing.

You nearly knock over the stack of styrofoam boxes it surprises you so much. You hurriedly walk back to where you were sitting, and pick up your phone, going cold when you see who’s calling.

“Fuck,” you whisper, your screen enveloped by that dumb picture of Seungyoun in the glasses. At least he’s just calling and it’s not Facetime.

You hit answer, unable to actually miss his call on purpose, and bring the phone up to your ear. “Hello?”

“Y/N-ah?” Seungyoun’s voice sounds out immediately, and the tension in your body skyrockets as you sit back down in your chair. “Is this a bad time?”

“No, I have a few minutes,” you answer, glancing through the window in the door to the recording studio, where you can barely see Jiseo and Soohyun with headphones on, Eunmi most likely recording some background vocals.

“Oh, good,” he breathes. “You… you got home okay that night?”

“Yeah, um, there were tons of taxis around,” you nod even though he can’t see you.

“Good,” Seungyoun repeats. “Were you really sick? Or did it pass the next day?”

“I think it was just the alcohol,” you try to reassure him. “I hadn’t drank for at least a month before that.”

“You don’t always drink like that, right?” he asks, then sighs, almost sounding a little strained. “It kind of worries me.”

“Why would you worry about that kind of stuff?” you ask, frowning. “You know I don’t get drunk easily.”

“Yeah, but look at what happened,” Seungyoun retorts. “You looked like you were about to pass out but you didn’t even want me to take you home. Someone in their right mind doesn’t act like that if they’re not totally wasted.”

You nearly let the words slip out: “There was more to it than that”.

But you snap your mouth shut before they do.

“I just feel like…” Seungyoun sighs again, sharper this time. “You never let me be worried about you. You brush it off every single time. It’s frustrating, Y/N.”

You’re at a loss for words.

Just... what?

“That’s not-” you start, then let out your own sharp sigh. “I don’t see how that’s a bad thing, though. You already have so many things going on, and I don’t want to be a burden, so-”

“When did I ever say that you’re a burden?” Seungyoun exclaims, interrupting. “You just assumed that! It’s like you want to be friends, but you don’t want me to actually care about you or be there for you!”

“That is not true,” you snap, your grip on your phone tightening. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Seungyoun.”

“I know exactly what I’m talking about,” he responds, note of frustration evident in his voice. “You haven’t been the same the past few months. You just haven’t.”

“Whatever,” you say, knowing it’s bratty. “You think you know everything but you can’t even see how oblivious you are.”

You know you’re edging on dangerous territory here, but the way he’s talking to you is making a frustration at him swell up that you’ve never felt before.

“Oblivious?” Seungyoun scoffs, a sharp laugh following. “Come on, Y/N.”

“What, you think it’s funny?” you question, hearing the hostility in your voice. “Did you stop to wonder what your friend Sahee was saying to me on the balcony? Did you even notice we were out there together before she went to tell you I was sick?”

“What are you even talking about?” he asks. “This isn’t the point right now-”

“It’s exactly the point, you don’t think you’re oblivious, but you were friends with her for years and never noticed that she’s in love with you!” you snap, your voice rising in volume over the sentence. 

Seungyoun is silent after that, and the sense of regret starts to seep in instantly as you realize what you’ve done.

“...What did you say?” he asks, his voice quiet this time. “Sahee told you that she’s in love with me?”

You don’t answer, but he must take it as a yes.

Seungyoun is quiet still, but you can picture him, wherever he is, throwing his head back, pushing his hair through his fingers in agitation.

“Fuck,” he finally mumbles.

“I’m sorry,” you say, your voice small as your throat starts to close up. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No fucking kidding, Y/N,” Seungyoun says sharply. You can hear his grit teeth through the closed sound of his words.

You breathe in a heavy breath, trying not to start crying even though you can feel the tears welling up. “I’m sorry. Oppa, just pretend I didn’t say that-”

“L/N F/N,” he says, and you stop immediately. “Just don’t.”

You sniffle, holding the phone away from you so he can’t hear you as the tears start rolling down your cheeks. 

“Fuck,” you hear Seungyoun repeat. “Fuck, I can’t believe this… all that time and she never told me?”

You hold back a sob, almost choking on it.

It almost sounds like he’s talking about you.

This is why he can never find out.

This is why you’ll never be able to tell him.

You let out just the first broken part of the kind of shuddering breath you take when you’re crying, and Seungyoun’s mumbling stops.

“Shit, Y/N-ah? Are you crying?”

You can’t find the voice to answer him, just trying hard not to openly cry.

“Y/N-ah,” he repeats. You hear Wooseok’s voice in your head from yesterday. Y/N-ah. That’s not what I meant.

“Y/N-ah, please don’t cry. Fuck, fuck.”

“I’m sorry,” you manage to get out, your voice tight and thin. 

“No, it’s okay,” Seungyoun says quickly. “Don’t cry. I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you, I’m just shocked, listen, it’s okay, okay? Y/N-ah, don’t cry. I swear I’m not mad.”

“I’ll hang up now,” you say, taking another shuddering breath. “Please don’t tell Sahee I told you.”

“Don’t hang up,” Seungyoun scrambles to tell you. “L/N F/N, please don’t hang up right now-”

You pull the phone away from your face and tap the red button, and set it facedown on the table. It starts ringing again right away.

“What the hell is going on in here?” Jiseo’s voice sounds out from the doorway to the recording studio. You look up, and she gasps. “Yah, Y/N! Why are you crying?”

“Unnie,” you whimper, wiping at your eyes. “My heart really hurts right now.”

“Hey!” Jiseo shouts into the other room. “Everyone get in here!”

She walks over to your, pulling another chair up and quickly wrapping her arms around you, the ringing of your phone becoming background noise. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

It doesn’t feel okay to you.

You are still in love with Cho Seungyoun.

And he will never know.

[fpwrites]

hey again! is it possible for you to write a tamaki amajiki x reader hcs where the reader is low key insecure about her weight and tamaki cuddles her and it’s real soft?? i am in NEED of cuddles at this point. THANK YOU SO MUCH AND YOU DONT HAVE TO DO IT IF YOU DONT WANT TO. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️💖💖💖💖❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Everything About You - Tamaki Amajiki

pairing: Tamaki Amajiki/Fem!Reader

word count: 705

song insp: I Am Yours and You Are Mine - GOT Soundtrack ( don’t judge ya’ll )

fun fact: did you know that if you pinch fat, it doesn’t hurt? so if you’re ever feeling really insecure about yourself and you think you’re fat, pinch what you think is fat. if it hurts, it’s not fat. my friend did this to me a while ago and guess what? a lot of what i have isn’t fat. it’s muscle :)

If there was anyone who understood being insecure, it was Tamaki - he who got anxious anytime anyone even looked at him, or he had to look at anyone. Attention wasn’t Tamaki’s thing, but he appreciated yours and only yours. If only it was the same for you. You were almost even more anxious and self-conscious whenever he looked at you.

You worried he didn’t like the way you looked, how heavy you were, how you weren’t as thin and fit as other heroes. You often would look at magazines and see the women, especially heroes like Uwabami. You wondered, how could you achieve a body like that?

When Tamaki wasn’t around (which was a rarity and was almost always when he was doing hero work), you’d read up on dieting, exercises to tighten your belly or lose belly fat, but no matter what you tried, your body rejected it. You frequently stared at yourself in the mirror, poking the roundness that was your belly and thinking hateful thoughts that eventually snowballed and left you feeling dejected.

You couldn’t help it. Everyone else thought it. You just knew - Tamaki had to think it too. He never said anything, though, but that was probably just to preserve your feelings, right?

“Babe...what’s up?” The voice of Tamaki suddenly cut through your thoughts and you put the magazine down to rest against your plush thighs, continuing to stare down at the photo of the woman who was so impossibly skinny. How had she gotten that way? The photo was captioned, “you can look like this too!” and the words just bore into your brain, echoing like a bad joke.

Tamaki seemed to notice what you were looking at and frowned. He moved to lay beside you on the bed, laying his head on your shoulder, his eyes trailing over the image of the woman. Then, he surprised you by grabbing the magazine from you and tossing it aside.

“Tamaki! I was reading that!” No, you weren’t actually, but you were a bit annoyed with his sudden behavior.

“S-she wasn’t that pretty anyway.” He mumbles, burying his face into your neck. “No one’s p-prettier than you.”

You can feel your face flush redder than a rose, and you try to glance down at him, but his face is hidden by his hair. (Likely because he was blushing as red as you were). Tamaki wasn’t often one to compliment -- he tried, but his anxiety wouldn’t let him. He’d stumble his way through it and then end up burying his face in something, face red as a tomato, much like this moment.

“That’s not true, Tamaki. I’m-” You started, feeling tears brim your eyes.

“Fat?” He asked, pulling his head out of your neck. The word stung, it stung deeper than any word in any language. How could one word hurt so much? It defied all logic. You felt yourself sniffle before tears began to spill down your cheeks. Large hands encompassed your cheeks and kisses littered your face.

“I don’t care. I don’t care if you’re thin, huge, short, tall, white, black, or an alien. I love you, everything about you. And I mean everything.” He says, pushing your hair from your face to stare into your eyes. It’s hard to see through the blur of your tears, but the little that you can see makes your heart swell. There’s an intensity in Tamaki’s eyes that you’ve never seen, that’s only matched by the warmth and love in your heart for him and somehow, it eases the pain of that word. That awful word.

“Everything? Even how I snore?” You ask, sniffling. He smiles, chuckling a little, rubbing his thumb along your chin.

“Yes, especially how you snore. It’s adorable.”

With that, he laid down half on top of you and half against you, burying his face back into your neck and inhaling your sweet scent. It wasn’t long before you were able to regain your composure, but you found yourself feeling tired, especially with him against you and so you opted for a nap.

“Mhm...I love you, Tamaki...” You murmured as you closed your eyes and buried your fingers into his soft hair.

“I love you too.”

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Beat of my Heart, part 2 of 2

I blame @sango-blep and her anon for this.

---

Continued from Part 1

It takes time for Lena and Rowena to reclaim their ease. The truth hangs over them, a perpetual reminder that every moment means so much more than the one before. But they try. Their progress is made in little moments. The first time Rowena reaches out in conversation, her fingers brushing Lena's arm without reaction, her heart thunders with alarm. What if she's ruined it already? But Lena carries on as though she never even noticed. When Rowena shares a story-- she doesn't even remember which one-- Lena throws her head back and laughs. This time, her heart soars, to see the same scrunched nose smile that Lena always had. She reclaims her daughter, a little at a time. ---

Their bond is still in its infancy when Lena walks into Rowena's gallery to find Lillian looming over her mother with an arch brow. "Get away from her!" Lena snarls, planting herself between them with her arms outstretched. Kara is close at her heels-- they'd come for brunch, and Rowena still feels blessed to be included in at least one more aspect of Lena's life-- but hangs back, clearly ready to let Lena set the tone of whatever came next. Lillian, for her part, is less than concerned to see her daughter's fiercety. "Don't be so overdramatic, Lena," she replies, stepping back as though to show her lack of interest. "I'm not here to murder anyone. We were just having a conversation." "You don't get to have a conversation with her," Lena snaps back. Lillian's head tilts in bemusement. "Even as a customer?" "Oh, bullSHIT." "Lena..." Kara tries to place a hand on her shoulder, only to be shrugged away. "Did you know?" Lena demands, voice rising with fury. "Calm down--" "Did. You. Know." Lillian blinks, jaw firming. "Ye--" Lena's palm cracks across Lillian's cheek before the word fully leaves her mouth. Lillian reels, out of surprise more than anything else, even as Lena lunges for her again, only to be hauled back by Kara and Rowena both. "How DARE you!" "Lena, stop--!" "You fucking bitch--" Rowena lends her voice to the chaos, hoping to calm her daughter. "Lena, it was Lionel's doing-- she wasn't the one who wanted you--" "You think I don't KNOW THAT?" Lena cries, rounding on Rowena so swiftly that the artist shrinks back instinctively. She doesn't know this Lena. From Kara's alarm, she's not sure anyone does. "Every single DAY for the past twenty years she has made sure I knew exactly how much she DIDN'T want me!" Lena whirls back to Lillian, bumping against Kara still running interference. She glares at her adoptive mother, as hot angry tears pinch from the corners of her eyes. "Did you even think about her? All those years that you made me grovel for every shred of affection you deigned to give me, knowing all along there was someone out there who loved me-- did you EVER think about her?" A chiseled jaw lifts, somehow still retaining Lillian's moral superiority. "Of course I did," she says. From her tone, Rowena knows whats coming next, and internally braces as Lillian's head gives a smug tilt. "Who do you think sent the Christmas cards?" All the air seems to suck from the room, leaving deafening silence in its wake. Lena is the first to recover. "What?" "Every Christmas, your mother received the Luthor family christmas card, detailing your biggest accomplishments and a photo of you." Lillian gazes at her. "I sent them." As her rage shifted rapidly to confusion, Lena started to tremble. "But... why?" "Because I pitied her." It's clear that pity was all it was, because there's no trace of compassion in her now. Lena has nothing else to stay. She simply stares, unable to formulate a response. In the end, Lillian reaches into her purse, and though Kara stiffens in alarm, all she pulls from it is a stack of envelopes, bound six inches deep, all sealed. "I came to deliver these," she says. Rowena recognizes each and every one, sent by her own hand to express her pride and love for the daughter who never responded. She'd always wondered if she'd ever gotten them. Now she knows. 

"You understand why I withheld them," she says, this time to Rowena directly. Rowena nods stiffly, but Lena snatches them from Lillian's hand, radiating with new rage. "No," she growls. "I don't understand. I thought I did-- I thought I understood why you were so cruel. Because I wasn't yours, because my fa--" She trips over the word. "Because he forced you to accept me into your home, when I had nowhere else to go." Lena hugs the stack of envelopes to her chest, as though they could somehow steady her shaking voice. "But I did have somewhere else. I had someone-- who cared for me, who WANTED me, and I-- never understood just how cruel you truly were." Her jaw tightens, mirroring Lillian as she lifts her chin. "You knew. And you knew it was wrong. But you let him do it anyway." Disgust turns Lena's gaze haughty. "You're a bigger monster than he ever was." Though Lillian doesn't move, Rowena catches the flicker of hurt that flashes behind the woman's eyes. Rowena almost feels guilty, aching for a woman losing a daughter, but Lena's trembling rage halts that in its tracks. This woman did not love Lena. Not the way, Lena needed. Rowena has no idea what Lena's survived, and now for the first time truly wonders just how much she might have endured. She reaches out, and places her hand at the small of Lena's back. She can't do much in the face of that trademark Luthor might-- she never could. But she can stand with Lena. That much she can do. "Get out," Lena snaps, daring Lillian to protest, to feign interest in reconciliation. Lillian does neither. She lingers for only a heartbeat before departing without another word. They watch her leave in silence, a quiet that persists long after the tall woman disappears from sight. "Lena..." Rowena starts, only to freeze when Lena pulls away sharply. "I can't do this." Lena leaves without a second glance. Kara trots after her, only to return after a short exchange at the door. "I'm going to hang with you for a bit," the reporter delivers casually. "No, Lena needs--" "Lena's the one who asked," Kara explains gently. "Just in case Lillian changes her mind." "Changes her mind about what?" "Not killing you." Rowena doesn't even have it in her to be alarmed at the potential threat, or alarmed at the woman's casual nonchalance about it. All she can think about is the fact that Lena took the letters with her. --- Rowena knows Lena needs space. She's heeded Kara's advice thus far and it's worked out well enough. But the thought of Lena struggling with the same pain she felt, without her, proved to be unbearable. She asked the doorman for Lena's apartment number, but isn't surprised when she isn't given it. "Someone's on their way down," he tells her instead. It's Kara. "How is she?" Rowena asks. The reporter shrugs solemnly. "Not good." "I'll leave," she promises, "I just needed to know--" "Actually," Kara interjects. "Don't." Rowena can scarcely dare to breathe. "Really?" "I dont know how to help her with this," she confesses. "But maybe you can." Kara speaks briefly with the doorman, then comes back with a key. "You're cleared to go up. I'm going to go grab some food, so... take as much time as you need." ---- When Rowena unlocks the door with a faint knock, she steps into an apartment bigger than her studio and workspace combined. She can tell it usually lives its life in pristine order, but today Lena sits on the couch admist a sea of chaos. Letters fill every inch of space within arms reach, and Lena herself has one in each hand, reading with tears streaming down her cheeks. "Oh, honey..." Lena's head snaps up, her teary eyes focusing on Rowena in an instant. But instead of the anger she anticipates, Rowena gets only a perilous moment of utter stillness, before Lena's features crumple, and she begins to sob in earnest. Rowena is at her side in an instant, and Lena folds into her arms as though she'd never left them. The sobs that pour out of Lena carry the weight of the years strewn around them, marked in the pages of letters documenting their life apart. They're huge, and wracking and leave Rowena's shirt damp with tears and mucus, but Rowena holds her daughter tight, murmuring soft words she'd thought she'd never have the chance to say again. "I love you so, so much, acushla," Rowena soothes. "I have loved you all your life. I will love you for the rest of mine." --- Kara doesn't return that night. Rowena is grateful for the time alone with Lena, because when Lena has no more tears she falls into an exhausted sleep, head pillowed in Rowena's lap. And Rowena is permitted a brief time to savor the intimacy, as her fingers stroke Lena's dark hair, and an old lullaby rises to a hum in her throat. "I didn't know." Lena announces her wakefulness with a dull voice to break the quiet. "I looked for you. I found your death certificate. Or-- someone's death certificate. If I had known-- I wouldn't have stopped looking. You have to believe that." Her daughter's voice cracks ominously in the growing shadows. "I do, acushla." Of course she does. Lena hiccups, a small smile easing the anguish in her voice. "You know, I used to imagine talking to you. I would imagine you sitting next to me on my bed, and I'd talk to the air like you were really there, telling you everything that was happening in my life." Rowena takes a deep breath, and tucks away the deep and unhelpful wish that she had been there too. She tucks it away, and pulls up an honest smile, tucking Lena's hair behind a pale ear. "Tell me now," Rowena urges. "Tell me everything." --- Lena does. She starts as far back as she can remember of first living with the Luthors-- being nervous in ballet and rubbish at the piano, sneaking treats from the dessert table at the society functions she was brought to-- and takes Rowena through everything that followed. Boarding school with Veronica Sinclair, who had made Lena's life hell, until Lena learned that all it took was one devastating blow to get the villainous Ronnie off her back for good. What that revenge was, Rowena doesn't quite know, because Lena is already spinning off into her college years, and the joy of being distanced from her family, being challenged and stimulated in ways she never had been before. Rowena learns about Jack and Sam and Ruby. She's aware when Lena neatly dodges the subject of Lex's arrest and trial and conviction, but she doesn't much mind because suddenly her daughter is giggling in her lap, telling her about the time Kara Danvers challenged three college football stars to a cheeseburger eating contest-- and out-ate all three of them. Combined. The moment Rowena hears that tinkle of mirth, something inside clicks back into place, and warmth pours from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. She can't change what they've lost. But Rowena knows in that moment that she will never lose her daughter again. --- The months that follow are the happiest of Rowena's life, and from the sly smiles that Kara gives her at their weekly brunch while Lena rambles enthusiastically about developments in her latest projects, she imagines Lena was never quite so happy either. She celebrates Christmas with Lena and the Danvers family in Kara's apartment. She sips eggnog with Eliza and revels in the warmth that fills the room as the kids play game after game with reckless enthusiasm. "I understand that your relationship with Lena is complicated," Eliza says softly. "But I hope you don't mind me saying that Lena is an extraordinary woman. And that as a mother, I am thrilled that my daughters have her in their lives." Since the confrontation with Lillian Luthor, things between Lena and Rowena have actually felt less complicated. As though they both have accepted that while they will never recover their missing years, they can make the most of their future, and will do so with all their might.

Still, Rowena smiles with pride and gratitude. 

Because she still feels very lucky indeed. --- Lena and Rowena do brunch with Kara every week, but they also start having tea, just the two of them. Same tea house, same table, same time and day every week. It's a time just for them, and Rowena cherishes every second of it. Which is why when Lena flounces into her seat one Sunday morning with coy smile and expectation in her eyes, Rowena immediately knows something is up. Lena's smile grows when Rowena's gaze catches on the diamond ring dazzling brightly on her left hand. "Is that--?" Rowena breathes. "It happened last night," Lena says in a rush, scooting to the edge of her seat in excitement. "Which is good because I wanted you to be the first person I told and I don't think I could have waited much longer than that!" "Oh, honey!!" Rowena captures Lena's face with both hands and kisses her cheek soundly. "I am so, so happy for you, acushla." Lena's smile turns quiet, and her eyes start to shine with moisture. Rowena doesn't release her, searching her daughter's gaze intently. "What's wrong, sweetheart?" "Will--" Lena's voice breaks, and she swallows audibly before trying again. "Will you walk me down the aisle?" The world seems to still, and Rowena blinks as it rights itself back onto its axis. "We don't really know when or where the ceremony will be, but--" "Yes." Lena blinks at her, and a tears shakes free. "You will?" The tear meets a swift end under Rowena's thumb as she dries it away. "I would be honored just to be there, acushla," she rasps against her own imminent tears. "Of course I will walk you down the aisle." When Lena answers her with a hug, Rowena's ribs creak under the force of it. Rowena kisses Lena's hair, and squeezes her just as tightly. --- The night of Lena's wedding, Rowena can barely bring herself to breathe for fear of dispelling the dream she suddenly inhabits. Lena looks stunning, and Kara is beautiful bride, and every moment is the one Rowena is certain she'll wake up at the gates of St. Peter with an angel telling her she's already in heaven. But she remains grounded to the living world and is filled to brimming with the good spirits that permeate the reception hall. Lena is breathless with happiness almost the entire night, and Rowena can't tear her eyes away. After the couple's first dance, Eliza takes Kara, and Rowena takes Lena, and the four of them dance to a long, slow song. It gives them all a chance to catch their breath. Others soon join them, and in the crowd they almost find a little bit of privacy. Rowena is still trying to find the right words to say when Lena drifts to a stop, standing silent and still in a sea of swaying bodies. But she doesn't pull away. Lena stands in her mother's arms, face pressed into her shoulder, and holds her tightly. The quickening of her breath is the only outward sign of Lena's silent tears. Rowena nods against her daughter's head, rubbing soft circles against her back. "I know, honey," she murmurs. She nearly pulls back, desperate to dry Lena's tears, but allows Lena her moment to release whatever emotion had overwhelmed her. Rowena catches Kara's eye, and gets a nod of reassurance along with a soft smile. "It's okay, acushla." They had all the time in the world. --- Lena's request to visit the lake is unexpected. Rowena stares as though her daughter's grown a second head. "Why on Earth would you want to go back?" It might have been Lena's favorite place, once upon a time, but now Rowena only knows it as a place of loss. First, as she scoured it for weeks for any trace of Lena, and then later as the place she visited to mourn. The painting in her workshop was as close as she ever cared to go again. But Lena doesn't have a reason. At least, not one she can articulate. "I don't know," she said solemnly. "It's just... something I need to do. And I want you there with me." Which is how Rowena finds herself on the shore of that glassy lake surrounded by trees. There's the rock in the sand Lena used to play behind. There's the platform that always teemed with children-- the one Lena always tried to paddle towards, only to get distracted halfway there. And here is the spot she last saw her daughter twenty years ago, four years old and waving happily at her, pinching her own nose despite being on dry land. They stand on the shore hand-in-hand, and Rowena wants to know what Lena sees as she stares mutely across the water. She said she saw Rowena drown-- is she trying to spot discrepancies between her memory of that day with what she sees now, searching for further evidence that it never happened? Or is Rowena's hand in hers enough? Before she can ask, Lena's hand slips from hers. Rowena watches her daughter kick off her sneakers, and calmly remove her clothes until she's in nothing but her bra and panties. "Lena!" The haunt in Lena's eyes vanishes beneath a devilish smile, as she climbs onto the giant boulder. "Lena, dont-- be careful--!" Rowena's warning is drowned out by the slap of bare feet on rock as Lena dashes towards the water. She launches herself off the furthest point of the rock, hanging briefly in mid-air before crashing into the lake with a deafening splash. Heart thundering in her chest, Rowena stares as Lena surfaces a moment later, laughing with delight. "Come on in, mom! The water's great!" "Not a chance." Lena's lips twist in a pout, before turning lazily to float on her back. "Fine, if you're too scared..." "Scared?" Rowena's pride kicked in, and ohhhhh Lena's smirk of triumph is almost enough to keep her out of the water in oure spite. Almost. "Oh, you're on." She ditches her shoes and clothes and climbs onto the rock. The stone is cold beneath her feet, but worn smooth by the elements and the countless feet that have traversed this very same sprint. "TAWANDA!" Rowena crows, running full speed towards the drop. Ice cold water closes over her head, and she surfaces with a cough of surprise to the sound of Lena laughing. "Lena Kieran Luthor!" Rowena scolds, splashing water into her daughter's giggling face with every syllable. "This. Water. Is. Freezing!" "Ack!" Lena splutters. "Okay, okay! I'm sorry!" Rowena ceases her onslaught, and for a long moment they tread water in the quiet of their solitude. It really is beautiful here. Rowena had forgotten how beautiful. "You know," Lena says in a low voice. Rowena turns to look at her. "I'm a lot bigger now-- I bet I could hold my breath as long as you can. Longer, even." Rowena can't help but smile. She gazes at her daughter's wet face and slicked hair, and thanks again whatever god exists that Lena has found her way back to her. "Long as you can, acushla." With a deep breath, they both sink below the surface, holding hands the whole way down.

[orengjijyuusu]

Articles of Clothing (A Jinguji Ren fanfic)

Okay so I wrote this prior to the release of Ren's new solo album, "Rose Rose Romance." It's basically about how Ren got his inspiration for the cover art of his *cough* strip tease *cough* album. The boys will all be in it so enjoy!

"We need to think of the concept art for your upcoming album, Jinguji." The visiting photographer ponders while pacing the room. 

The strawberry blonde idol looks attentively at the possible designs and themes of his latest single, "Rose Rose Romance." He retorts at the photographers various pitches, going back and forth with how the wardrobe would be drawn up.

Across the table, Nanami is busy composing her next arrangement for Syo's upcoming album. She scribbles notes on sheet music feverishly, not really paying attention to the two discussing their business. Despite being insistent on NOT needing to be present at a meeting involving photoshoots and album artwork, Ren had successfully convinced her to accompany him for, "moral support" reasons.

The composer automatically knew the role of being, "moral support" was poppycock, but how could she say no when he worked so hard on this project. Plus Ren could possibly draw some inspiration from the score now that she thought about it; so maybe she could be of non "moral support" use yet.

"My lady." His velvety voice breaks her concentration, causing her head to snap up in response. Ren's cheek is cupped into his palm while he smiles knowingly at her; it seems he had been calling her name for a bit.

Nanami blinks, "Sorry, I was in the zone. What's up?" She quickly straightens her stack of paperwork in her lap.

"May I see our arrangement?" He asks politely, with heavy emphasis on "our." "It would help a lot with the wardrobe theme I'm going for."

She nods and sifts through her folder, eventually finding the sheet music and handing it across the table to the idol. He gives her a wink before mouthing, "thank you." Nanami smiles bashfully and watches as Ren scans the piece.

The photographer waits expectantly as Ren begins humming the tune to himself, the gears of his mind turning as he thinks of the overall message of his album.

After a minute, he places the papers on the table and turns to the photographer. "This song is obviously very sensual, in composition and in lyrics. We definitely need roses in this. And we need something that epitomizes that message in terms of dress. We something daring, something passionate, something..." he purposefully glances over at Nanami with a teasing sultry gaze, "Something sexy."

Her face goes red at the comment and buries her growing blush in the paperwork.

Ren laughs at his composer exhibiting such an adorable reaction to his shameless flirts. He's still happy he can get a reaction like that from her despite using it numerous times during their development with Starish.

Meanwhile, the photographer ignores the underlying comment the idol made and took it as inspiration instead. "That's our Jinguji Ren for you! Always knowing what style to go for! This is plenty of ideas, thank you so much!!" They throw their hands in the air, "Oh I have so much to do now! I have to plan. I have to set up the wardrobe department. I have-I have to order all the fabrics!"

Ren chuckles and holds his hands up, "I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Thank you for your hard work." He and Nanami bow at the photographer.

"Yes! Thank you for your hard work!" The photographer scrambles to pick up their files, "I must be going now! I have IDEAS brewing! Come by the studio on Friday. I'll be in touch!!" They rush out of the room with enthusiasm, leaving the two clients alone.

Both Nanami and Ren breathe a sigh of relief once they leave. Who knew photographers had so much energy. Ren turns to Nanami with expectant eyes, "May I treat you to dinner, my lady?" Nanami shoulders her bag and places her folders inside, "Maybe next time, I just got a melody I could use for Syo's new song and I don't want to lose the thought."

Nanami could have swore she saw Ren's shoulders slump at her rejection to the invitation, however he smiles and gives her head a pat.

"That's our composer. Hard at work." He chuckles lightheartedly.

Nanami looks up at him and notices his naturally drooping eyelids. It's not that he was sad, that's just how Ren's eyes normally look. But goddangit it wasnt helping the feeling of guilt growing in her chest. She purses her lips and thinks for a hot moment. Then she looks back up with a smile, "But, I wouldn't be opposed to stopping somewhere and getting ice cream."

The idol's eyes upturn the second she offers. He gives her a teasing smirk, "Making time for me, hmm? You truly have a heart of gold, my lady."

"You offered in the first place." Nanami erupts in a fit of giggles as they leave to go back to the agency.

*Later...*

"I assume your meeting went alright?" Masato asks, not looking up from his calligraphy as Ren walks into the room. His roommate throws his bag onto his desk and stretches his arms out, "We have an idea. Our lady came quite in handy with the composition."

Masato's eyebrow twitches, "I swear, stop dragging Nanami everywhere. You're putting her through a lot of trouble what with all the important work she needs to do. Distractions won't help her in the slightest."

Ren plops himself on his bed and yawns, "You're no fun as usual. Lucky for me, we went out for ice cream to end our PRODUCTIVE day. Which was LOTS of fun by the way." 

The bluenette slaps his brush onto the rice paper in irritation, "Everytime you go somewhere with her, it always turns into date night for you." He growls.

"Jealous?" Ren scoffs, leaning on his elbow to look smugly at Masato.

His roommate rips away the ruined calligraphy and starts on a fresh piece, "Like I would ever want to stoop down to your level. Unlike you, I have impulse control."

Ren rolls his eyes so far back he swore he could see his brain, "Whatever. I'm not going to be irked by your party pooping attitude. Gotta put my best foot forward for the ladies when I do my photo shoot."

He sits up briefly and strips himself down to his briefs. After carelessly tossing his clothes to the floor, he turns on his side and shuts off his lamp, "Goodnight, bowlhead."

Masato makes a "Tch!" sound with his teeth before concentrating again. "At least shower in the morning, idiot." He mumbles.

*The Next Day*

"No no! It's all wrong!!" The photographer groans, walking up to Ren as he poses with some roses.

The idol sighs and places the flowers on the floor, "I agree, something feels off about the setting."

The photographer places his chin in his hand, "No it's not that...its the outfit. I...I dont know why but it doesn't look right. It looked fine before..."

The two wrack their brains trying to figure out another solution for the cover photo, however each idea seemed to stay farther from what they originally wanted for the theme.

"Let's mix it up a bit. Wardrobe, we need to discuss." The photographer snaps their fingers and two staff members come over with a rack of clothes and sketch pads.

Ren exhales exhaustingly and goes to sit in the makeup department to do touch ups. As he lets the staff do their work, he notices Nanami through the mirror followed closely by his superior, Ranmaru.

Without turning around, he raises a hand and stares straight at the two in the reflection, "Hey, what brings you two here?"

Nanami walks to the side of his chair and hands him a bento, "Courtesy of Kotobuki bento. Hijirikawa noticed you didn't really eat anything for breakfast so we brought it over."

Ren takes it with a loving smile, "I appreciate it, lady."

"Tch..." Ranmaru scoffs quietly, "I'm the one who actually got it from that idiot." He saunters off towards the snack table.

"Of course, thank you as well, Ran-chan." Ren chuckles before turning serious.

"I don't mean to have you both see me like this but...turns out my photo shoot isn't going as planned. I'm sorry I couldn't gather enough from your song, lady." He gives her a sad smile.

The composer clutches her folders to her chest, "That's not true, Jinguji-san. You always have an amazing sense of style. That's a fact."

"My lady..." Ren's eyes widen slightly in surprise.

"When I saw you look at the score the other day, you looked so focused." Nanami puts her folders on the makeup table and squeezes his arm resting on the chair, "I could see the ideas churning in your head. So I know you can do it!"

The idol smirks, then brings his lips to the hand on his arm for a quick kiss.

Nanami briefly feels her soul leave her body before recovering.

"Always so encouraging. Where would we be without you, lady?" He hums.

Nanami clears her throat at her sudden outburst and looks away, "A-Anyways, what are you having trouble with, Jinguji-san? Maybe Kurosaki-senpai and I could help." She looks over to Ranmaru stuffing his face with bananas over by the snack table. Or just me, she thinks with a helpless smile.

Ren leans back in his chair, "Well that's what we are trying to find out. It's the clothing that was picked out for me." He turns his head to the photographer looking through his pictures, "Excuse me, is it alright if I take a look at what we have so far?"

The photographer sighs and brings over the camera while still looking at the screen, "Go ahead. Good luck trying to find something." They hand Ren the camera and walk off elsewhere.

He tilts the screen so Nanami can see as he clicks through each photo.

She hums to herself while analyzing Ren's outfit, "I'm no fashion expert but…" she gently tugs the camera away from his grip, "Aren't there too many clothing articles?"

Ren raises an eyebrow, "Oh, how so?"

The composer peers closer, "I mean--you have two jackets here. One around your waist and one you are actually wearing. And there's a loose scarf…"

"Looks more like winter wear than the passionate look you're going for." Ranmaru says over Nanami's shoulder, causing her to jump a little.

He ignores her reaction and bites into a banana, "If you want passion, you could stand to show some skin, ya know." He grunts before walking off again.

Nanami taps her chin with her finger, "That could work…"

Skin… Ren snaps his head up, "That's it!! I got it!" He jumps up out of his chair and walks over to the photographer. He whispers something to them before their face lights up with inspiration.

"BRILLIANT!! Alright we have a lead! Jinguji, head to the dressing room. I need the makeup department on him, stat! This photo shoot can be saved yet!"

Nanami's face lights up at the good news, "What's the idea, Jinguji-san?"

He shrugs off his jackets and turns to her with a wink, "That you'll have to find out for yourself, lady. I'm going to embrace what Ran-chan said earlier about 'showing some skin.' Wish me luck!"

He gives her head a pat and walks to the dressing room. At that point, Ranmaru makes his way back over to Nanami.

"He get an idea?" He asks, taking a sip from his water bottle.

"Yes, apparently Jinguji is heeding your advice, Kurosaki-san." Nanami chirps happily.

Ranmaru nearly chokes on his drink, "*cough* *cough* Say what now?!" He sputters.

The composer gives the idol a confused look, "Is something wrong?"

"I dont know why, but I got a feeling he's going to do something extremely stupid." He shudders while wiping his mouth.

Nanami chuckles nervously, "I-Is that so…?"

*A week later*

Ren let's out a yawn as he makes his way over to the lounging area. The photo shoot continued without a hitch, and by now the CDs should already be out on the shelves. He honestly couldn't wait to see the others reactions to his album.

The first thing he notices is the usual gaggle of guys gathered tightly around the coffee table, talking feverishly amongst themselves. As Ren approaches, the shortest member of Starish hears him first and jumps up in a fury.

"Ren!! What the hell is THIS!?" Syo shouts in disbelief, poking a finger aggressively at the album.

Bingo, Ren says with a devilish smile, Just the reaction I was hoping for. He smiles innocently, "Whatever could you mean, Shorty?"

"Cut the crap!! You know what I'm talking about! This!!" Syo shoves the CD album in his face, his face as red as a tomato.

There he was, printed for all the lovely ladies to see, completely shirtless...and pantless.

"Well, as you can plainly see, THAT is a CD cover." Ren retorts with a playful smirk.

"Why you-!" Before Syo can blow a fuse, Otoya steps in.

"Now now, let's not get too overworked." He laughs nervously before doing a complete 180 on Ren. "Ren, you are clearly NAKED! What--Just wha--I can't…" He clutches the album in disbelief, unable to form proper sentences.

"Hey now, they made sure to cut out the more 'daring' parts. Even I have standards." Ren winks lightheartedly at the group.

"The whole CONCEPT is daring!" Tokiya blurts before covering the blush on his face.

"That's our Ren! Always going the extra mile. So cool!!" Natsuki exclaims with a beaming face.

Cecil looks down in disappointment, "Aww, we could have done stuff like that? No fair!"

"No! One Ren is enough for this group!!" Syo shouts in response.

The strawberry blonde can't stop grinning from ear to ear. He was SO enjoying this. Suddenly, a copy of the album hits him in the face. He topples backward and onto the floor, wincing at the stinging sensation erupting on his forehead. Ren looks up to see Masato on his feet, looking the most pissed of them all.

"THANK YOU, Hijirikawa!" Syo raises his hands up.

"M-Masa, that was a bit unnecessary…" Otoya says nervously.

Masato's face is still stoic, however he failed to hide the red tint on his ears. "You...I can't believe you!" He has the most trouble forming words.

"I know, it's SO shocking. Honestly Hijirikawa, I thought you knew me better." His roommate says sarcastically.

"Yeah but I didn't think you'd actually be crazy enough to DO it. You think I'M shocked, look at poor Nanami!" He gestures to the sofa behind the idols. Nanami lay curled up with her face buried in a pillow. One could almost imagine steam rising off the top of her head. "She's been like that for 15 minutes!"

Ren bashfully scratches the back of his head, "She DID say I had too many articles of clothing on my body." 

Otoya and Syo sit down beside her and copy her position with their own pillows, "It's okay Nanami, we are just as shocked!!" Otoya whimpers while holding Syo in his arms.

"Guys, I think we are overreacting. Don't worry, Ren! I support you!" Natsuki places a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

Tokiya does the same, "I do too. I'm sorry. I was overcome with shock earlier."

Their fellow colleague sighs, "I'm glad to hear it. But I have a feeling you all won't be able to let this go so easily."

"Definitely not." Tokiya chides.

"It's blackmail material now." Syo mutters, looking up from the pillow.

"We won't ever let you live this down." Cecil smiles at Ren.

"We'll tease you about this until the day you die." Ittoki laughs evilly.

"Because we love you, though." Natsuki adds on.

Masato discreetly shakes his head and makes a face.

Ren laughs and walks over to Nanami, "You saved me again, lady. Don't ever forget it." He ruffles her hair.

Nanami curls up tighter, "I don't think I can, Jinguji-san." She mutters in the pillow.

*elsewhere*

"Whoo! That's our sexy kouhai! Show off that skin!" Reiji whoops as he watches a coverage of Ren's album on TV.

"The bastard went and did it!" Ranmaru cringes and buries his face in his hands,"I should have kept my damn mouth shut!"

Camus' stares distastefully at the screen while a pile of sugar forms in his tea cup and onto the table. He throws a glare Ranmaru's way, "Figures you would be the one to give him such immature ideas. Have you no shame?"

"Okay first off, fuck you! No one was talking to you, damn butler!" Ranmaru growls, not even turning to directly return fire at his colleague.

"I imagine the other members of Starish are quite shocked as well." Ai adds quietly, "Though I can imagine the ratings will rise 112% because of him."

"Ne ne! We should do a nude photo shoot with all four of us! It'll be super fun and sexy!" Reiji winks at them with excitement.

"No. Do it yourself." All three respond immediately.

"You're so mean!!!"

[lizzieraindrops]

Your chance to make the sun rise thrice (Chapter 2)

a river that still runs (8803 words)

Beth Childs has come to Helsinki to meet her best friend Veera for the first time in the Herbs on the windowsill universe, an alternate timeline where the original Helsinki massacre was prevented and DYAD routed by Clone Club Alpha’s successful publicity stunt back in 2001. Veera Suominen and Niki Lintula survived and decided to live in a little apartment together as qpp’s. Numerous Leda clones worldwide are now in contact via a secure online network that Veera maintains. 

Note: This chapter is a bit heavier than the rest of the AU. Beth is still struggling with a lot of the same challenges in this universe, even if the events causing them are somewhat different because of such early canon divergence. But the whole point of this story is that things can end up okay no matter how rough it's been. She's getting the help she needs and she's gonna be alright. That said, warning for soft discussion of past abuse, the effects of trauma, depression and anxiety, and some suicidal ideation. And of course, lots of love and learning how to heal, with support from her best friend.

Fun fact: Veera's username is 3mika, and she always sets her font to the precise warm turquoise of hex color #2299aa. She thinks she's hilarious, and she's right. 

Also on AO3  |  Playlist  |  Aesthetic sideblog

Part 1: Herbs on the windowsill

Part 2: Someday colors

Part 3: Your chance to make the sun rise thrice  |  Chapter 1  |  Chapter 2  |  Chapter 3

***

Beth wakes on a squashy couch that isn't hers. Morning-soft sunlight pours through the window above her, bouncing back off the walls to fill even the shady corners with a warm secondhand glow. Her limbs are soft, splayed under unfamiliar blankets and sinking into the cushions. She doesn't move yet.

The apartment. Helsinki. Beth's really here. She holds herself still, letting the truth sink into her. She half expects the usual anxious tension to clench her into a ball the instant she moves a muscle, but it isn't there. Neither is the invisible weight that so often pins her immobile. She still wakes frequently with both of them holding her body hostage, keeping her muscles unmoving but restless, even in sleep. Right now though, they're gone. She just lies there, soft beneath the window.

It's quiet but not silent. The occasional car on the little road outside chuckles as it passes. A soft rush of water echoes through pipes in the walls, running toward an early riser in another unit. These sounds fall strangely on Beth's Toronto-bred ears, isolated in the stillness of this of this little apartment on the outskirts of the city. Still, the early-morning atmosphere settles comfortably into her jet-lagged bones, murmuring a rhythm for her to sink into. The temporal upheaval of a transcontinental red-eye and a series of exhausted naps yesterday have left her a little unbalanced. And yet, here she is waking up with the day, and the ground under her feels so much more stable than she’s used to.

Beth breaks her stillness with a deep, deep breath that she can feel expanding all the way down to her feet. She stretches, too, but soon pulls the toes that get exposed back underneath the warm, scratchy blanket. The cushions of the old couch creak a little in complaint as she shifts, but her limbs remain supple. For a time, she just observes the sensations. Then, her awareness spreads beyond the couch and the window to the rest of the room.

All around her, an oddly blocky pattern covers the walls. It's one of the first things she noticed when she walked into the apartment yesterday afternoon. The pattern isn't wallpaper like it appears at first glance, but actually a multitude of small photographs. Most of them are unframed, but taped up in crisply aligned rows. In them, she sees the same face infused with a hundred different lives. Just above her, a sleeping, slack-jawed redhead with bulky headphones around her neck sprawls on the very same couch Beth's laying on now. A few rows down, a brunette and a blonde with their long hair in matching wild waves are leaning all over each other and grinning like devils. One of the few framed photos shows a girl with a hospital-short buzz cut and a delighted expression, sitting in front of what looks like a mouthwatering strawberry shortcake. Beth can see at least six others in the background behind strawberry girl. Among them are Mika with her unmistakable scars and Niki with her bright blonde hair, their arms around each other's shoulders.

Morning light glances off the glossy surfaces of the photos on the west wall. The particularly bright reflection off one of the framed photos draws Beth's eye. With a tiny jolt, Beth recognizes one of her own selfies beneath the glass. In it, she's wearing the same old turquoise blue sweatshirt that's spilling out of her suitcase next to the couch right now. Underneath it, she's wearing her track gear, so the photo is at least two years old. She'd had to quit cross-country so she could try to get the shitshow her life had become under control. She vaguely recalls sending it to Mika a long time ago. It's strange to think that her presence has been in this apartment for so long.

She's here. In Finland. Staying with Mika – Mika - and Niki. Far, far away from everything.

Sprawling on the couch she slept on with a sigh as if she hadn’t a care in the world, Beth can't believe she's really gone and done it. She's run so far away that there's an ocean between her and her problems. It’s so much better than she's dreamed, even if it's only for a little while. It’s worth it, even though she'll be going back far too soon. For the first time in years, it feels like she’s where she’s supposed to be right now.

It had all started out as foolish idea she'd floated one Saturday morning, months ago. She hadn't been serious at all. She'd woken up so relieved at not having to get up and go to work, until she remembered her weekly therapy appointment with a hopeless groan.

Putting off the genuinely daunting prospect of hauling herself out of bed, she reached out to snag her phone from on top of her dresser, checking to see if she'd heard from Mika overnight. After all, Helsinki was nine hours ahead, so Mika had already seen most of the day that was just beginning for Beth. They talked so often these days, since they'd first made contact over two years ago. Rarely a day passed without touching base. But there wasn’t anything since Beth had checked last night. She took it upon herself to send the first message of the day.

runwaterblue: god, i dont wanna get up and deal with any of thsi shit today

After her world fell apart, after finding out about Project Leda, after realizing that all her nightmares and more were real, after her father...

runwaterblue: wish i could come visit u and get away form everything for awhile

Mika replied almost immediately.

3mika: you can

It was evening in her time zone, but to be honest, Beth had no idea if she had anything resembling a regular sleep schedule. The girl was always online.

3mika: though you really should go to your appointment. you always feel better afterward

runwaterblue: howd you know i have therapy today

3mika: you always have an appointment saturday afternoons

runwaterblue: yes but how do you remember that? i cant evne remember my own appts lmao

3mika: you mentioned it months ago when you switched from sundays to saturdays

Beth shook her head with a smile. Mika was so good with details.

3mika: anyway. you’re welcome here, if you can get here

3mika:  it would be great to see you

3mika: Niki wouldn't mind. we've had a bunch of Ledas visit us here, it's always fun

3mika: except that one time Dani and Ary got into a fight over football. some French-Italian team rivalry thing. that was not fun.

Beth laughed. It was funny how Mika was so good at making her do that, even on days like these. She leaned back against her pillow and held her phone over her head without sitting up, being careful not to drop it on her own face. She'd done that before. More times than she'd admit.

runwaterblue: i was kidding. id love to visit, but idk how id get there

runwaterblue: u should see the americans go off abt their football lmao. they're nerly as bad as the hockey freaks here

3mika: pls no

3mika: no more sports. it was a year ago and I’m still exhausted

3mika: sports are banned in this apartment.

Beth snorted. Mika wanted nothing to do with sports of any kind, and with Beth's athletic record, the topic had become a point of mutual teasing between them.

In so many ways, they were such different people, DNA be damned. Mika was reticent where Beth was outgoing. (Or at least, Beth had been. She was never quite sure how to think of herself these days.) Clone drama aside, Beth had been a pretty average Canadian high schooler. She got reasonable grades, played a few sports, and kept mostly out of trouble because there would be hell to pay if she didn’t. Mika was a brilliant homeschooled autistic orphan who had been raised in near isolation by her guardian after surviving the hospital fire that marked her skin for life. Beth mostly listened to pop music, and where no one else could hear, the occasional classical symphony. Mika held fast to Finland's weird obsession with death metal and dabbled in literally everything else.

And yet, Mika understands Beth like no one else does. And it's not just because they've both been through all this Project Leda bullshit. Though Beth doesn't know what she would have done without Mika to help her through that, too.

Beth won't ever be able to forget the moment that everything changed. Recognizing a her own face from the mirror on the evening news stopped her in her tracks, as something in her gut caved in with the hollow certainty that it wasn't her. Then face after face flickered before her, a flipbook barrage of déja vu. Blonde and smiling. Scarred and pensive. Braids and piercings and a rakish grin. Beth was rooted in place as people she had never been wearing things she had never worn said things she was never supposed to know.

That utter strangeness on the screen immediately seeped into her life like an oil slick into a river, tainting every thing she thought she knew with clinging uncertainty. Her father was inexplicably even more upset about it than Beth was, yet adamant that they shouldn't look into the matter. But it was already too late to stop herself from thinking. With slow horror, the truth of what exactly his behavior must mean dawned on her. And yet, even with the desperate growing certainty about who her Leda monitor must be, it was hard to believe that he could be anything other than her plain stern father.

He was always a bit strict and overprotective - probably well more than a bit, she realizes these days. But she’d thought that's just what it was like to be a cop's daughter. He'd never done anything really extreme, nothing beyond the firm discipline any kid could expect. He was just not a man to be trifled with, that was all. So until everything she thought she knew shifted that day and threatened to topple every assumption she’d built her life on, she had never truly dared to cross him.

Outright daring him to say to her face that he wasn't her monitor was probably considered a step beyond trifling. He did not take it kindly.

Two months later, Beth and her mother were living in an apartment on the opposite side of the city. It took two months for the two of them to lay plans to leave together, for good. For two months, her every move was watched. She spent two months knowing there would be hell to pay if she didn't give the performance of a lifetime pretending everything was fine, even while sirens blared inside her day and night. Two months was more than enough to teach her things she never wanted to know about the hidden marks fear leaves on the body.

Even after she finally escaped, her life was in tatters and nothing made sense. It wasn’t just the sudden jarring discovery of Project Leda, or the crisis it had forced her to confront. It was learning that, deep down, she had known that she’d never once felt free. She’d unconsciously kept herself from knowing to avoid exactly that conflict of wills that she’d known she would lose.

Trying to come to terms with what had happened and how it changed everything, Beth was continuously losing her balance. Questioning which parts of her life had been screwed over by her father and which by being part of some ridiculous supervillain science experiment was like trying to stand on two kickboards in a pool. She couldn't find her footing, and all she could do was try and stay afloat. She had to repeat her whole junior year of high school that she lost to this shitshow, while starting over at a new school, and only barely scraped her way into senior year. Now that she knew how honestly terrible she'd been at judging who in her life she could trust, it was as hard to talk to old friends as it was to make new ones.

Therapy helped her start sorting out what she was feeling, and how the environment she’d grown up in was really not the healthiest. She hadn’t realized how much she’d learned to doubt her own perceptions. That made constructing any kind of new understanding of her situation an uphill struggle. And of course, her therapist couldn’t help her confirm anything about a human experiment that was so illegal it had been an international secret. As she continued to stumble forward, Beth even started doubting her former certainty of the identity of her Leda monitor. She questioned herself and everything she knew until she wanted to scream with frustration or weep with confusion. The floor of the counselor’s office could have been mopped with her tears. It was, quite literally, driving her mad.

So, finally, Beth had taken up the invitation on the banner of every Leda news feature to "Contact the secure, clone-run Clone Youth Group Network (CYGNet) for answers by emailing info@cygnet.org."

She wanted something concrete that would help convince her brain to stop reenacting these head games that warped her reality. It still insisted on playing through the patterns it had been taught, even in its teacher’s absence. She needed something that could brace her against the ideas that she was really just paranoid, overreacting, accusing, that this was all her fault for making a big deal out of nothing. Even with his other faults (cruelties, her mind whispered) aside, at least his involvement with Project Leda was unforgivable, and she wanted proof of it. Maybe if she had that, she could stop being mad at herself for not wanting to forgive. And if anyone had that proof, CYGNet would.

Maybe it was just because of the sheer blunt honesty about her motives, or the inescapable vulnerability of the message Beth sent, but Mika had replied to her within a day. And she'd been so gentle about it, too, enough to make Beth later question where the stereotype of autistic brashness came from. Then again, over email, Mika had all the time she needed to compose her thoughts and lay them out as softly as she wanted. She didn't have to spit them out as fast as she could to keep pace with a quick and painfully overwhelming world.

Hi Beth Childs,

I'm so sorry for what you had to go through. I still don't know how they got away with doing things like this for so long. I suppose people will always find ways to be cruel. But we've survived this long, and the whole point of CYGNet is to help us all heal. The experimental network has been dismantled, and we are assembling resources to help us. We've brought mental health professionals on to the project to develop custom programs for our needs. We can make them available to you, if you are interested.

I attached scans of some of your files that we recovered from DYAD. There are a few case reports with the signature of the person you asked about, spaced throughout your lifetime. There are also financial records with his name in the list of paid employees. He was without a doubt part of the Leda monitor program. I can provide all of the documentation that we have related to you, if you like, but I thought that would be too much all at once. I know these are hard to look at, but I hope they help let your mind rest. They are very real, and every awful thing we have experienced was also real, no matter how they tried to convince everyone that we were making it all up.

Please take your time with these, and stay in contact if you want to. You can join our mailing list, if you want to know when we have new information or new resources available. We're here for you.

And hey, if you just want to talk to someone who knows what it's like to deal with all of this, I'm here, too. You can reach my personal inbox or IM me at wiz.of.dos@cygnet.org. It'll be okay.

-Veera

Beth had started crying before she even finished reading the letter, much less opened the attachments. She cried so often these days. She only knew why half the time. But this time, it felt like the tears were extracting some of her pain as they left her, instead of just overflowing from the unending wellspring of her directionless distress. All of this was real, and someone else knew it.

Though she was grateful beyond measure for her mother’s untiring support, they were each other’s too-close, ever-present reminders of what they’d survived, trying to act like they weren’t, trying to convince each other and themselves that they were okay. Beth had needed something else, too, something until now unnamed.

This was a handhold, a backstop Beth didn't know she'd been desperate to find. It wasn't just the confirmation of what she’d concluded about her father. The ability speak plainly to someone she didn't feel the need to pretend around was an exhale of a breath held too long. At least one person in the world not only understood, but really and truly didn't want or expect her to act like any of this was normal or okay, or that she would ever be the same again.

Veera – or Mika, as she often went by online – made good on her offer of a sympathetic ear. Their correspondence started off with awkward, grammatically correct messages about the less painful details of their lives. Mika told her about the farmer’s market three blocks away where she went walking early in the morning before it got busy, and the plant stand there that her best friend and roommate Niki (also a Leda) had to ask her to stop buying so many succulents from.

At first, Beth tried to chatter like she used to, but there were no safe subjects. What had happened had touched all of her life. Normally, she’d talk about school, or sports, or her friends. But she was trying to start all over again at a new school with all the struggles that came with it. She didn’t have the time or energy for sports anymore, and talking about them hurt, now. Running used to make her heart sing. But no matter how she tried, there was no joy in the motion anymore. To top it all off, it was as hard to connect with old friends from her old life as it was to try and make new ones. She spent most interactions either doubting her own character judgement or dreading the moment people recognized her Leda face from the news.

She didn’t know how to talk about any of it to anyone. Maybe she could have if it had been just the clone thing or just the dad thing. But the two were inextricably entangled, and she still couldn’t even explain it to herself. It was all unbelievably horrifying, and any time she tried to be honest about it, people ended up disbelieving or horrified. Shocker.

Maybe, though, it wouldn’t be weird to talk about it with Mika. Mika already knew the worst. Beth didn’t have to hide that hurt from her to keep from shaking her world, or to keep her dismissal from hurting Beth. Maybe that’s what was hurting the most: the feeling that even after escaping, she still had to pretend to be okay. That compulsive stifling feeling choked her whenever it bubbled back up. On her bad days, a simple “how are you?” could reduce her to a blank face plastered over a raw tangle of emotions held motionless her own iron grip.

But Mika mentioned having bad days, too. Days came where she was too scared and nightmare-weary to do anything but make herself some tea and soak up some sunlight in the safety of home. Beth could casually say things like after those two months, i still twitch every time i hear a door open, and i wish my body would quit feeling like it doesn’t exist, my legs feel numb. It barely broke the surface of what it was like in her head, but was discomfiting enough for people that she held her tongue at school.

Sometimes, Beth got tired of constantly thinking about all this shit and tried to lighten things up. On one comically disastrous occasion of cultural exchange, she liveblogged Mika her attempt at eating the infamous Scandinavian lutefisk, along with an audio recording of the incoherent horrified noises she made after tasting it. In return, she received a recording of someone, presumably Mika, laughing harder than she’d ever heard anyone laugh before. It made Beth smile. Not many things did, back then.

Slowly, as the formality fell away from their transcontinental conversations, their heavier stories seething below the surface seeped in. Beth had been in therapy long enough now to know that she couldn't just recklessly unload on people the way she did in counseling sessions. But a counselor couldn't always provide the same kind of unspoken solidarity that someone in the same boat could.

Bit by bit, slipped into the chats that were becoming a daily occurrence, they talked about monitors, about what the experiment had really all been for, why that both was and wasn’t important, and how they'd discovered they were a part of Project Leda. Putting words to the pain hurt, a lot. But the ability to lay out long-unspoken truths in front of each other, knowing they were believed in the way that only people who have shared something can, was a healing kind of pain instead of the festering one Beth had been living with.

The two of them had more in common than they'd thought, growing up a world apart. Beth's experience raised under the subconscious wariness of her father's hovering thumb felt a lot like what Mika described growing up largely isolated with her former guardian. But sometimes, whenever they realized that something they'd both thought was normal was pretty not, they got a good laugh out of it despite the weight of their pasts. Mika seemed somewhat accustomed to her normal being considered pretty weird, so she usually took the revelations in stride better than Beth did. Beth wouldn't find out for at least a year after meeting her that it was because of her Asperger's, since it was a topic Mika seemed quite sensitive about.

Mika explained it once, in a conversation full of long pauses on her part and watching the typing icon disappear and reappear on Beth’s. The way she put it, it just meant that her brain worked a bit differently than most people's, processing sounds and sights and all the information it took in at different speeds and with different emphases. The difference could turn everyday things like the sound of a refrigerator running into a splitting headache, or something as simple as the soft texture of her favorite jacket into a kind of bliss. That alternative way of processing also extended to things like words and emotions as well. Sometimes, it took her longer than the world was willing to wait to process them into something that made sense. It often made communication tricky, trying to compensate for the gap in mutual understanding with most people. The world and the people in it could be so overwhelming sometimes, so fast and bright and full of noise and uncertainty and bewilderingly arbitrary social conventions. But the biggest challenge was other people expecting her to do everything the same way they did, ignorant of the fact there were any ways to exist other than their own, and completely oblivious to the fact that she was already putting in at least twice as much effort to communicate with them as they were with her.

And yet, even coming from such a different perspective, Mika gets it. Beth says sometimes i dream of drowning and its not a nightmare and i wake up not knowing how to feel, and Mika says I still dream of burning and wake up not knowing which fires are real, and they both say yeah. And they sit there across the world from each other knowing these things, knowing that it doesn't fix anything. And yet, it does change something. Nothing's any better, really. But somehow, the knowledge that someone else understands makes it a little easier to bear.

And that's just it. Somehow, without ever even having seen her face, Mika sees Beth clearer than anyone. All of her, all the ugly parts she hides so that they can't hurt anyone, and all the good parts that she also hides so that nobody can hurt them or take them away from her. Mika sees all of that and then just tells Beth another story about the Northern Lights she sees on the regular. Apparently, in Finnish, they’re called "fox fires." Beth hardly ever sees the aurora, living relatively far south in a bright city. But her stories about life in the metropolis by the lake intrigue Mika as much as the tales of the twisting green lights do her. And Beth can talk about something lighter again while not having to pretend that the heaviness isn’t there, too, even while she’s just once more trying and failing to explain poutine. For her, the weight never really goes away. But the effort of pretending she’s not carrying it takes more out of her than the weight itself. Mika understands that.

Maybe that’s why Beth had talked it over with Mika first, even before her mom, when she was considering taking a gap year after she hopefully managed to finish her senior year of high school. (God, it was so hard to think about English or math or whatever when just that morning she’d woken from a nightmare about being back in a not-home house that she never escaped.) Beth's mom had been so unbelievably supportive of Beth's recovery, even while she herself was adjusting to the wrenching change in both of their lives. It was both inspiring and a little intimidating. If her mom managed to run a household and raise a daughter all on her own, even while trying to heal from her own trauma, how could Beth not do her utmost, too? She was grateful to be able to talk to Mika about it, to get a reality check from someone who both understood her situation intimately and didn't make Beth feel that pressure of expectation. In the end, Beth did decide to take a year or two off before considering college, and her mom was again nothing if not supportive. Beth figured, after this entire mess, she deserved some time to herself to work on sorting her shit out, and her mom agreed.

After graduating with reasonable if not flying colors, Beth worked a series of part-time and odd jobs that didn't stress her out too much, letting herself focus on her own healing. In between her mom's support, seeing a counselor regularly, and the security of having a friend she could really trust, Beth felt like she was making progress. Slow progress, sure, but progress, nonetheless. Considering that she had seventeen years' worth of lies to unbelieve and emotional trauma to finally acknowledge, Beth figured that there was only so much she could do in the three years she'd had.

Her days were still hard. Getting sleep and waking up and eating and even just existing were still so fucking hard sometimes, and it was horrible. Some days, the thinnest sheet trapped her in bed like it was a car pinning her down. It felt so stupid for such simple things to be so hard. But then her therapist would remind her that that’s what mental illness and trauma was, that this was what the wounds in her mind and heart made her feel like. And once in awhile, sun broke through the shadows, and she had a day that reminded her what an okay day felt like – that okay days existed. That more might.

Now, she’s here, lying in a bright living room so far from home, with her dearest friend in the next room. She’s comfortable, except for the knot in her neck from sleeping oddly on the couch. The soreness pales in comparison to the usual tensions that are so strangely absent. Beth can’t remember the last time she felt this okay. She’s not steeling herself to go to work. She’s not dreading the next conversation with her mother that goes quiet as they both remember awful things they don’t mention. She’s not bracing herself for the next time her brain runs rampant worrying about whether she’ll run into the subject of her restraining order somewhere in the city and have to wonder if he'll honor it.

None of that reaches her here. There’s something about this quiet little pocket of space. It’s overrun with a proliferation of potted plants, from the sprawling lacy-leafed monster in the corner, to the fern peeping out of the kitchen, to the vine cuttings spilling out of an oddly familiar leaf-shaped glass bottle on the sill. Sunlight streaks through leaves and windowpanes and across the colorful patchwork of rugs on the floor. In the midst of it all, Beth is held by a palpable aura of gentleness. It holds her so softly that she doesn't need to hold herself in. It's like the layer of caution that she always keeps wrapped between herself and the rest of the world has simply dissolved away. In this moment suspended in morning light, she is okay.

She feels safe.

The realization undoes something in her. She feels the tears starting, and she expects the taut tension of involuntary stifling that always comes with them to return. But it doesn’t. She lies still and soft on the couch with the water creeping over her cheeks, breath occasionally catching but flowing freely. She savors it in the quiet.

The soft thunk of an ill-fitted door opening breaks into her odd reverie. Mika’s up. Beth sniffs and scrubs at her eyes halfheartedly, but she can’t hide them right now and she doesn’t want to. Mika notices immediately, and comes trotting over with quiet steps, leaning forward all concern.

"Beth," she says softly. She shifts from foot to foot like a nervous cat, watching Beth with enormous eyes. Beth has never met anyone else with such an intense stare. Or maybe it's just the fact that Beth knows beyond all doubt that she's being looked at by somebody who really sees her in her entirety. It's like she's staring right into Beth's soul. But Mika was able to do that long before they saw each others' faces. They've shared so many thousands of words over screens and seas, so many emotions that have gone otherwise unspoken, so many too-early mornings and too-late nights on the fringes of each other's dawns and dusks.

“What’s wrong?”

Finally, a flash of that sick tension runs through Beth’s body. It’s been okay when Mika has asked that before, when it was just silent letters on a screen. But out loud, the question falls on her ears like every well-meaning inquiry she’s ever had to scramble to find an acceptable answer for. The strain begins to cinch tight around her again like coarse ropes across barely-healed skin, ready to compel her to replace the truth with something safer. Her arms and legs tied, she begins to freeze, railing against herself for tainting the softness, the safety of this place.

"Beth." Mika says again, softer but more urgent.

In the gap between thoughts created by hearing her name, Beth seizes the chance to redirect them to the present. She clings to the welling in the corners of her eyes, the warmth of the sun caressing her back. The leaves of trees whisper outside the third-floor window in a mild breeze. The brightness spills over the sill and across Mika’s asymmetrical, half-craggy face and lights up tufts of her short hair as she steps closer. The couch dips as Mika sits down next to her, tilting Beth toward her.

Without meeting her eyes, Mika lifts a hesitant hand that hovers in the air between them, uncertain yet reaching. Her gentle palm falls onto Beth's forearm as softly as a floating leaf. The fingers curl around Beth’s arm just below the wrist, firm but not tight. Comforting.

The softness surrounding Beth seeps back into her, saturating her. As the memory fades like a ripple into water, the tension slackens. But it leaves her shaky, with traces of a familiar ache in her neck muscles, one that goes deeper than the simple stiffness from the couch. She sucks in a few unsteady breaths while Mika gives her arm a gentle squeeze.

“Sorry,” Beth says in a small, awkward voice.

Mika tilts her head. “Why?”

“Uh, I didn’t mean to bring all – this mess, in here.” Beth rubs the back of her neck with her free hand. “It’s so... soft, and okay, and – I don’t wanna ruin it,” she says, trailing off into a mumble.

“Hey.” Mika moves her hand from Beth’s arm to her shoulder. When Beth looks at her, she’s looking right back. Mika's eyes dart down to the floor for a moment, but then return to hold Beth’s with deliberate steadiness. “It’s alright. It’s like this here because we wanted it to be safe to be messy. You’re not ruining anything.”

“... Oh.” She’s steadied by Mika’s fingers curling around her shoulder, by the tendrils of sunlight spreading across her head and back and arms. Mika’s voice is small but steady, and somehow it comes from the same throat that makes that huge pealing laugh. It’s so strange how they sound nothing alike. Until yesterday, Beth hadn’t heard her voice since the lutefisk incident. They’d mostly kept to text and pictures. It had seemed easier, the way it gave them both plenty time to think before they spoke through their different uncertainties. Beth was already planning her trip before they realized that they’d never actually called each other. By that point, it sounded like more fun to meet in person the old-fashioned way.

"I'll make you some tea." Mika abruptly stands and lets go of her. Beth is sad to lose the contact. She flits across the room toward the kitchen in her soft cotton pajama pants, complemented by yet another black graphic tee for yet another Scandinavian metal band Beth's never heard of. Or at least, she'd never heard of them before Mika, who has something to say about all of them, and now Beth knows more than she'll ever need to.

Mika moves in and out of view behind the half-wall that separates the little living room from the kitchen. The fronds of the fern on the counter make a green rustling as she brushes by them. It sends soft feathered shadows waving across the wall opposite the window. Beth hears the rush of water boiling out of sight, and soon sees steam rising from the mug that's being handed to her.

"It's hot," Mika says unnecessarily. She sits down next to her again, this time leaning into Beth with her arm. Beth’s glad for it.

"Have you ditched the bags and gone loose leaf?" Beth says, eyeing the fragments of bright green leaf free floating in her mug.

"It didn't come in a bag. It came from the window."

"The window?"

"It's basil tea. For the fear and pain. Five large fresh leaves in two hundred and fifty milliliters water. We grew it here."

Beth takes a cautious sip. It's surprisingly sweet, and the savory smell of the steam rising from it curls into her sinuses. The aching in her head and neck begin to relax. It's unfamiliar, but it feels like home should, just like everything else here.

"Thanks," Beth says. On an impulse of craving closeness, she leans her head onto Mika's shoulder with a sigh. The sensation of contact deepens as Mika leans against her, too.

Beth holds the cup close, fingers wrapping around its warmth. She takes another sip and gets a bit of leaf stuck in her teeth. The way she scrunches up her face trying to dislodge it pulls a tiny laugh out of Mika.

“You don’t have to be okay here,” Mika whispers. “You can just be. That’s what we do.”

Beth finds her eyes wet again, but she smiles while she sets her mug down and wipes them away. “Kinda already wish I could stay here,” she says with a chuckle.

“... That’s probably not impossible.”

“Really?” Beth asks wryly. “Not even twenty-four hours, and you’d already be willing to put up with me?”

“Twenty-four hours and twenty-seven months.”

Beth melts a little even while waving the idea aside. “I wasn’t serious.”

“I know, but... weren’t you looking at the school here?”

“I mean, yeah, but... really, my mom just thought I deserved a break to get away for a little while. She’d saved up a bit, and I didn’t want to make it a big deal or anything, but she really wanted me to. She knew I wanted to come see you. Checking out the school was mostly an excuse. I know it’s a great place, but... I don’t really think it’ll help with what I wanna do.”

“What do you want to do?”

Beth sighs and leans back, looking at the ceiling. Mika follows her so that they’re still shoulder to shoulder, and pulls her feet up to tuck them in cross-legged.

She flounders for a moment, trying to find where to begin. She hasn’t told anyone this yet.

“This Leda crap has been kind of awful, right? It’s screwed so many of us up. But there’s only, what, a few hundred of us? And that’s not the only reason things get messed up.” She swallows. Her eyes trace irregularities in the ceiling: a knot in an exposed wooden beam here, a sealed and repainted crack there. “Kids like me are a dime a dozen. There’s so many people out there going through hell, just because they got stuck with people who are hurting so much that they hurt other people. And then they go on and hurt more people. It’s a cycle that’s really fucking hard to break.”

Breaths that have become harsh force her to pause and let them lengthen again. A touch on her knee draws her eyes down to a hand resting on it palm up, offering. Beth takes it. Mika squeezes her fingers in reassurance.

“When I was little, I wanted to be a cop like my dad, did you know that?” Mika, eyes wide, shakes her head. “Yeah. That was always my plan. I used to think he was so brave. Wanted to be just like him.” She shudders. Mika grips her hand, steady. “Even if I could do it better than he did, the system is still full of people like him. It’s broken. I couldn’t – I can’t end up like that. I can’t keep being a part of this shit. I want to actually help people.

“I never thought about it before I met you, but the people you brought in to do therapy programs and all for CYGNet? They’re amazing. The stuff I’ve gotten from them has helped me so much. And I don’t know what I’d do without my regular therapist. These people really help people like me. Like all of us. Those are the kind of people I wanna be like.”

Beth’s voice drops and becomes small and secretive, but firm. “I’ve been looking at the social work programs at home. There’s some really good ones at the uni near where mom and I live now. And that’s the city where I grew up. I know how things work there. I know it won’t be easy, but. I could really... do stuff.”

Silence stretches. Beth looks at Mika, only to be completely thrown off by an expression she can’t make heads or tails of. “What?”

Mika’s face is blank yet soft, only barely hinting at her thoughts in the faintest crinkling of her eyes. It’s funny, how quiet her face is most of the time. Beth never would have guessed, going off her online impressions of her. Mika’s so expressive and eloquent with her written words. In person, she is much more subtle. But even after only a day spent around her, Beth is already starting to see how her movements speak volumes in a language of their own. The flickering of her hands flares to life with excitement. The casual shake of her head tosses her hair out of her eyes even when it’s not in the way, like she’s clearing the slate of her mind. And much like Beth these days, she goes very still and tense when she’s getting uncomfortable or overwhelmed, the way she did after a particularly loud whistle at the train station. It shows in her shoulders. They’re soft now though, and she just watches Beth and squeezes her hand once more.

“You’re really amazing, you know,” Mika says.

“Wh- huh?”

“Well.” She looks away and turns their hands over, but doesn’t let go. “After the awful things you’ve been through – nnnh! Don’t pretend,” she says, looking back sharply as Beth begins to protest that she didn’t have it that bad. Mika knows her so well. Beth can’t help but laugh a little. “After all that, you just want to help people. All I ever want to do is get away from them, most of the time.”

Beth quirks a brow at her with a bemused grin. “Really? Because setting up and running an organization that provides mental health resources and extremely important information to a few hundred people is a really shit way to not help people.”

“I never talk to most of them! And CYGNet only has one hundred and thirteen members, not hundreds.”

Beth rolls her eyes with an exaggerated motion. “Yeah, so, you’ve somehow convinced, what, a whole freaking third of a huge group of scared strangers to trust you?”

“A lot of that was Niki and the press team, she’s way better at talking to people th–”

“And you’ve been careful enough and clever enough to keep them and all the information you got from DYAD safe and secure? I can’t even imagine the organization and, and cyber-security and whatever the hell else you put into all this. That you still put in. And look what you’ve done. You’re helping so many people. You found something only you could do, and do it really damn well.”

Mika looks down into her lap, half her face flushed. The raised ridges and swirls of the scarred side are pink, but not as dark. Her shoulders curl in a little, but she doesn’t pull her hand away from Beth’s. If anything, she holds on a little tighter.

“You don’t have to like talking to people to help them. You don’t have to be someone you’re not,” Beth says gently, then pauses as a new thought occurs to her. “Why did you talk to me?”

Mika gives a tiny shrug, eyes still downcast. “You reached out to me. Most people are scared, or suspicious, or hard to talk to, but you were just... honest. You told me exactly what you needed, even if that meant sharing your painful secrets with a stranger. I...” She trails off, looking toward the closed door of Niki’s bedroom. She blinks slowly.

“It reminded me of something Niki said a long time ago. When we first met. We didn’t trust each other at first. But when things got bad, we needed to, and she just... We’d only known each other for a day. She told me a true story that people had called her crazy for, and trusted me to believe her. And when I told her about... my Asperger’s, about being autistic, she just told me something about herself, too, another thing that a lot of people get cruel about when they know. This was back before she came out, too. She was hardly out to herself, then, really. But she told me anyway. ‘Secret for a secret,’ she said.”

“She’s really special to you.” It’s not a question. How could it be, with the sheer softness of love rounding out every syllable and making Mika melt into the couch and into Beth’s shoulder.

“She’s... yes. She’s my family.” Mika looks out the window, and the bright light dances over her nose. “I don’t remember ever having one.”

Beth slings an arm around Mika’s shoulders and smiles as she curls closer into Beth’s side. “Looks like you’re part of a pretty big one, now,” she says, waving a hand at the dozens of photos on the walls circling them.

“I guess so.”

“No need to guess. The evidence is right there. And I’m right here.”

Mika turns those huge eyes on her again. She’s done that multiple times now, even though Beth knows she rarely looks people in the eye. Eye contact is too much, most of the time. She describes it as too intense, too distracting, too intimate. Meeting those eyes – so like Beth’s own, but filled with such a different kind of light – Beth thinks she understands a glimmer of it. If every eye she met were as overwhelmingly expressive as Mika’s, Beth probably wouldn’t meet them all either. It keeps taking her by surprise, coming across their eloquence in an otherwise quiet face. Caught by that gaze, every emotion that lives in it touches Beth. Right now, it’s soft with adoration but shaded with a gradient of doubt. The width and depth of Mika’s eyes reveal a clear view of a vulnerable, aching, healing heart that spent eleven years starving for the love it needs and still hasn’t forgotten the famine.

It might be breaking Beth’s heart. No wonder Niki is always showering her with hugs and kind words and gentle hands on rounded shoulders. Maybe one of these days, Mika will have spent long enough finally getting to soak up all that affection that she won’t look at Beth like this when she says the simple truth.

“Hey. Here I am. Really.” Beth’s voice is a little choked up. She pulls Mika into a proper hug with both arms. Mika squeaks in surprise at being squeezed so emphatically, but returns it all the same. God, but she gives the best hugs of anyone Beth’s ever met. All contact and even, firm pressure and steadiness. “It’s so damn good to see you. I can’t believe you’re...” real, Beth thinks but doesn’t say. I can’t believe I didn’t imagine you. I can’t believe you’re just as kind as your words. I can’t believe how good it feels to be around you. “I can’t believe I’m really here.”

Mika doesn’t say anything. For a moment, one of her hands leaves Beth’s back to fiddle with something, then comes back to give her a little squeeze that Beth returns.

Beth’s phone buzzes a notification behind her on the little glass-top table next to the couch. The table’s wooden base is a round blob carved into the shape of a very fluffy and very ugly sheep with curly horns. Beth’s arms loosen from their embrace as she turns to look at it, bemused. No one but Mika really messages her except for her mom. But if it’s morning here, it’s about time for bed at home. She checks it, just to be sure she’s okay.

But it’s not from her mom.

Mika reaches out to gently grasp her forearm again as Beth shoots her a quizzical look and opens the message.

3mika: I'm glad you're here.

Beth's heart quails.

To think, that her darker days might have kept her from ever being in this moment. Beth might never have gotten to this point, hurt but healing and here. Here, she's seven time zones and an ocean away from the cycle of pain she grew up in, barely aware she needed to escape. She might well feel safer right here in this crossroads of time and place than she has at any other in her entire life. It's a realization that's as humbling as it is nourishing.

Already, the distance this journey has taken her has given her so much perspective. She wasn’t sure, before, whether the work she’s been considering was just a response to what she’s been through – or just a way for the cycle to keep her within its spiral. But she’s seen what Mika can do, what Beth could do one day, if she keeps on.

It won’t be easy. She’ll go back, and deep-seated memories will try to drag her back into small dark places. But being here, even for only a few hours, has already changed her. She can change, and she can grow, and she is already tapping into new strengths that her past has yet to reckon with. She is here, right now, in spite of all of it. And today is not a dark day.

“Me too, Mika. I’m glad to be here, too.” Beth’s tongue stumbles over the name, because she’s never said it out loud before, only read it on a screen.

Surprise sends Mika’s eyebrows up and her eyes wide again, like she’s never heard it before, either. Maybe she hasn’t. She tilts her head again like a question, touching her ear and looking at Beth.

Beth grins. “Mika.” A smile blooms on that curious face, lighting it up. She’s the one who pulls Beth into a hug this time, and it’s both fierce and soft. When she lets go, she leans into Beth’s side again and they stay like that, arms over shoulders and comfortably curled up together, soaking in the warmth of each other’s presence like leaves drink in light. The simple sweetness and companionship of it soothes Beth’s heart, seeking its way into the aching crevices. It’s an odd feeling, both seeping inward and flowing outward, trickling all the way through her until it warms her cold toes in a way that feels both new and strangely familiar.

A long, sleepy yawn announces that Niki’s awake now, too. Soon, she comes out of her room stretching her arms over her head. Mika reaches a hand out toward her to wave in greeting, though she leaves the other arm draped over Beth’s shoulders. Niki smiles at them. That kind smile, too, adds to the warmth washing through Beth. Her feet practically itch with it, and with a growing sensation of déja vu. She fidgets her toes against the floor as Niki walks over to brush Mika’s outstretched hand like a touchstone.

“How'd you sleep? Isn’t that couch the comfiest?” she says to Beth.

“Well, I’ve got a crick in my neck, but I still slept better than I have in years.”

Niki turns her sunny smile on Beth. “Good to hear it. Weird, though, I nap there all the time and my neck’s always fine. Huh. Anyway, I think I might make waffles. You two want some breakfast?”

Mika nods, but doesn’t let go of Beth yet. Beth is lost in thought, trying to remember what that light, floating feeling in her feet reminds her of.

“Sweet.” Niki ambles toward the kitchen and bends down with pursed lips to peer at the fern perched on the counter. “Hmm. You still look a little pale. Let’s get you some more sun.” She brings the plant over to the living room and is fussing over settling it on the sheep table when it clicks for Beth. A physical memory washes over her, for once welcome. She lets it fill her, refreshing like a deep breath of cold morning air her lungs are suddenly hungry for. She flexes her calves and ankles, her legs remembering the joy and freedom of stride and strike. Her bones are finally recalling how they once carried her with ease, even while they're adjusting to the new weight of who she's become. Fully alive again for at least this moment, her soles are practically prickling with the desire to eat up ground.

“How about you, Beth? Do you like waffles?” Niki asks, fluffing the fern’s crinkly green leaves. Mika squeezes her shoulder.

Beth grins and plants steady feet on the blue rug in front of the couch. “Save a few for me? I think I might actually go for a run first.”

[priyaghoshblog-blog]

MEETING

1st September,2019

Dear diary,

I dont know how will you react on knowing what is happening with me. You may have found yourself in some tough situations with gossiping, judging, and more.But believe me, it’s difficult for me too, for an 18 year old girl to stay alone in a room in an old bungalow.

As I have said earlier also,my parents has planned a trip to an old bungalow in Madhyamgram for 1 day-2 night stay,but forced by me(I was challenged by Amit to pressurize my parents to say yes for the trip).we went to the bungalow yesterday on 31st August.2019.

We reached outside the gate of that mansion at 11 pm.I glanced at the bungalow for once from the car. It was just like all the other red-bricks on the street.We came out of the car. As I stood, gazing at the dilapidated house. I shivered, as though, ice had replaced my spine. The cold air enveloped the entire body. The  layer of clothing could not protect against the shiver. The walkway leading up to house were cracked. Weeds and dandelions poked out from these cracks. Red roses grown wildly in thick batches by the gate. The moonlight cast a ghoulish glow on the house. Vines formed a twisted maze upon the side of house, reaching their tentacles towards the roof. The house's walls showed black decay by neglect. Splotches of original paint hinted at the house former prosperity. Cobwebs covered the corners of the doors, tiny black spiders threading towards their prey. I felt as if the house is fit for the kings and queens of the supernatural.As i was approaching nearer, I realised why people used to say that this house was haunted.It was different from other houses.My heart said it well.I tried to open the door but the door was locked.I said” Dad,where’s the key?”Dad said” I don’t know. I don”t have it.”Amit”s Mom got a reason and she started taunting my parents.Suddenly a manly voice broke the atmosphere full of taunting.”May I help you, sir” said someone.I turned around. 

The man seemed to be around 25.He wasn’t a male model but he should have been. The lush, mother lode-gold hair he groomed so carefully had a rippling quality, a sign of his rude health. His only blemish was that he was beetle-browed and they sometimes knitted in frustration.The aquiline nose he sported complemented his prominent cheekbones. Handsome in an understated way, his basalt jaw and Spartan shoulders spoke of strength. He possessed a latent, leonine power and always walked with purpose and authority.His best feature was his entrancing, wayfarer-blue eyes. Sloe shaped, they could shine as bright as the evening stars when they were a-light with joy. At other times, they could resemble two liquid-blue pools of flashing fire. Flamboyant of character, the atmosphere got filled with his sonorous, rumbling voice. His tattered clothes were a source of amusement to me, not least because they didn’t match with his model- like personality.” Sir, I am the watchman of this bungalow.Can i help you in anyway?” he said. My dad said” I don’t have the key.So if could do something, it would be a great favour for us.”He took something out from his pocket and went near the door.He did something with the lock and it happened The door begrudgingly creaked open. A musty, dank order creep into my nose. The house was dead silence except for the intermittent creaks and moans. The deadly silence was broken by him.He parted his lips to say” Hope you all have a good sleep tonight and i request you all not to come out of your room at night”I wanted to ask him what he meant by his last sentence but before i could say something, he turned around and started walking away.I turned around and glanced.

Black and brown mold dotted the ceiling in clusters, evident of rain seeping through the roof. I quietly entered the dark living room. Windows covered with grime and dirt, the calm moonlight struggled to penetrate the darkness in thin thread rays. Sharp shadows roamed around the room. The sofa and chairs overturned revealing deep grooves on the ground where they used to sit. Wallpaper lay curled on the floor. A large jagged hole dug through the wall stood as though daring any to enter. Picture frames hanged off-centered. Sharp shadows roamed around the room. A misplaced grand bookcase stood the corner of the room, undisturbed for a long time. Selecting the correct book could reveal a secret doorway into a labyrinth. I made my way back into the hallway, Dad announced” Come here once and see”.I quickly followed his voice and came where dad was.He was pointing towards a room. Amit however, at that moment could find the switch and switched it on and  a slimmer of light came from behind the door. I approached and opened the door. I had reached the bathroom. The single window was mildly dirty, a flood of light flowed into the room. Dust swirled around the room as I made my way inside. The medicine cabinet mirror lay shattered in pieces on the floor tile. Empty medicine bottle lay in the porcelain sink. The only sound to be heard is the drip, drip of the faucet. A closer look revealed the discoloration of the water, a brownish concoction. A lone mouse stood sentry at the bottom of the tub. Never having a visitor in a while, it curiously eyed me before scuttling away. Approaching the bathtub, a violent odor made it way to my nose. Pinching my nose, I leaned over and peered inside. Crusty rags filled the bathtub, little hints of movement underneath them. It would be inadvisable to see what is under the rags. I arrived at the foot of the staircase. I stood and peered at the top, wondering when a twisted head person will crawl down and have me for dinner. I summoned strength and tiptoed my way up the stairs. Each step intensified the moaning and creaking as if the steps could collapse at any moment. I turned to the right, and met my final destination. The door did not give way easier, a forceful push was needed. Stepping inside, a dresser seem to have been pushed against the door, attempting to deny anyone entry. I could make out the silhouette of bed, edging in closer for a better look. A toy dinosaur lay missing its head on the bed. The sheet was splattered with a dark color. The wind intensified outside, the rustling of the leaves and branches were louder. In the corner, a little chair began to rock slowly.I felt that  the room may  had once belonged to a boy. The thin strips of wallpaper showed little trucks. Crayon markings scrambled upon the wall where wallpaper used to stick. The carpet squished as I walked. Little picture frames remained face-down on the carpet. Near the top of the right wall, there  was a big photo-frame of the portrait of a tiger’s family.It was so big enough that i felt that it may hide the entrance of a mysterious secret room.I glanced at the watch.It was 11:30 pm.I was feeling dizzy.It was a tiring journey.I quickly cleaned the bed,laid the bed-sheet that I brought with me and laid it.I closed the door and went to bed.Since it was a new place,I kept the light on.

Good Night   

love you

priya

[sainadazai]

When your crush is angry all the time

Ch.5

"I don't think fire's all that bad, you know"

3rd person pov

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As the sun hung high in the sky the h/t haired girl stumbled around the train station in search of a restroom. Y/n had never experienced the mundane tasks a commoner would usually persue on a daily. Things like public transit, or any transit for that matter, were an enigma to her.

So while elder men stared a little too long and young children pointed at her in recognition, she spun in circles like a lost puppy.

"Its just a fucking bathroom, should there be someone here to direct people or something! Ugh and whats with the school girl fetish, these old guy are creeps..." she mumbled to herself continuing to get more and more lost on the platform.

Meanwhile, the rest of 1-A were making their way to internships as well, Midoriya scrolled into some old guys house, Kirishima bumped into his metal replica, and Bakugou held his grump posture and nonchilauntly entered the top 3 heros agency. He was expecting to at least learn something from this guy, or gain real life experience with villains. He never anticipated being scrutinized for his personality. No shit I'm scary, Im trying to kill shitty villains not make teenage girls put a picture of me on their wall.

For the first day of this new challenged everbody seemed to be having a ridiculously mundane time. Not y/n, though. No our main character was going through it, once she made it to the restroom, she got confused by how easily the toilet paper ripped in her hand and spent 20 minutes trying to get at least one whole time out of the stubborn roll. Then, when she opened up her bag to view the new hero-suot her mother helped design...she found strings¿

She ended up having to look at an example picture and read a guide on how to put what where. It took an additional hour considering the tightness of everpiece of fabric and when she stepped out of the stall to look in the mirror, she deadpanned. How could her mother hate her this much? It was already a burden being so sexy, but this? This was crazy.

She wasnt sure weather she should take a million photos, or never leave the bathroom and cry all day. However when her phone rang, a call from Mr.Woods agency, she realized how late she already must be.

In her rush, y/n also forgot about the creeps men and was recieving many stares, that went unnoticed. Until somebody had the audacity to touch her. It was just a ghost of his finger tips on the underneath of her ass that was no doubt on full display. That would not go accepted, as a girl who had turned her past trauma into nothing but a small personality traits, she wasnt scared. Still, as a woman who absolutely idolizes herself, or so she says, no one in this train station deserved the touch of her perfect, shiny, s/c skin.

The last error that secured her terrible first day was how y/n spun around and grabbed the mans fingertips. When she took a glance at him, he was smiling as if he had acomplished something. Boy was he wrong, only coming to realized so when the y/h girl suddenly had sprouted a vine from his finger.

He watched in fear as it began to grow and wrap around him, all the while the young girl he'd never met before let out a sickening aura that couldve suffocate him then and there. The vine continued to curl up around his middle and ring finger, slowly meeting the flash of his palm.

Once the growing stopped, y/n had almost decided to let him go. A part of her new that her plan wasn't well thought through, and he could be an innocent guy that accidentally touched her.

However, aggression outwayed logic and she looked him deep in the eye.

"You like using these fingers to touch things your not supposed to?"

"N-n-"

"Shhh, dont worry, im just gonna make sure you dont go touching things that arnt yours, okay?" She made an aggresive fist with the hand not touching him and the vine squeezed in. Anyone a foot away would be able to tell, but the both of them could hear how his two fingers snapped and bent under the pressure.

With a satisfied grin at the whispering man, y/n decided he had learned his lesson. Wow look at that, and I didnt even need some manly hero to come save me. Atta girl y/n.

Little did she know that not only did her pro-hero boss come to look for her, but je also saw the whole disaster. He was not pleased to say the least.

Y/n pov

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As the tree like man sat down in his office chair across from me, all I could do was look to my feet. I didnt feel particularily had about my actions, however, I did feel bad about being late.

While it is fun to be spontanious and act like theres nothing to lose, I wasn't lying when I said I wanted to control the earth aspect of my quirk. Ill never admit it if someone asks, but sometimes the only way I can sleep at night is knowing how strong my quirk is. Knowing that they cant hurt me if I stay strong.

Still, it just seems that as I grow older, the people trying to get to be get bolder and more powerful. Some might even say...they get smarter, too. Thats a scary thought; that if I want to stay alive at all I need to be constantly improving. I am not sure if I want to stay alive or not, but Ill be damned if dying or living isnt my choice.

Feeling the need to break the silence, I began my rant on all the reasons I had come up with that justify my actions. I was planning it on the way out here.

"Look, im sorry mr.woods. I know im not very heroic and shit, but when perverts to pervert things somebody has to do something, and its not like anybody else there would have scared a glance if I didnt save myself-"

"Your wrong."

"Huh- I wasnt done. Anyways i-"

"L/n you are wrong."

"Dude im trying to-"

"There was heroes on patrol, how else did you think i found you? There were real heroes ready to protect you, if you had simply shouted people would have been alarmed of such. I dont understand kids and their need to do everything alone." He rolled his eyes behind his mask and continued to stare at me.

"Excuse me but I dont think your in a place to comment on how I react to myself being touched. He was gonna get my skin dirty and for what, two seconds of his school girl fantasy. Ew."

"Your skin....dirty?"

"Yes, he is nowhere near my standards on someone who should be allowed to touch me...not even a brush of the fingers..ugh!"

"Alright well, I cant get you in trouble because then I get in trouble...so, tell me about your quirk while we go on patrol."

His chair sqeaked against the floor as he stood up and it slid back. Then he motioned for me to follow by painting out the door.

Relieved that I didn't have to talk about all the fake reasons people aren't allowed to touch me, and that I could finally get outside so my quirk would stop suffocating me, I was quick to exit the building.

I'm not sure if its the fact that ive only been using a forth of her, but my quirks side effects have been so shitty recently. To the point that our school nurse estimsted my new rate for being inside for an extended period of time was about three hours.

I havent actually combusted in years, but I've been close and god does it hurt. My chest starts to squeeze and I can feel all the energy drain from my body, then pieces of me start to get hold and cold at the same time.

"So what really is your quirk?"

I looked up at the hero next to me as we continued on down the street of the inner City.

"How much did Aizawa tell you?"

"I-he said...she has all the right elements? And told me I'd figure it out.." He scratched the back of his head.

I smirked at that. Who knew aizawa actually listened to the words I said. I was pretty sure after the whole sulking chrollos dick thing, he would have permanently tuned me out.

"Heh, that raggedy ann bastard" I smile smugly.

"So, what does it mean?"

"Ahh, okay so, did you go to U.A?"

"Um yes kid, why?"

Then im certain je knows of my family, explaining my quirk will be easier. God, this really is my favorite part.

I reached my left hand out, knowing he was right handedly and would respond well to it and then spoke.

"Hi, nice to meet you, im y/n l/n of the elementus royal quirk family."

Once he shook my hand I did a polite curtsey, as I learned in ballet to do that instead of bowing. Its much more fun to do this at family event, where I get to wear big dresses and pretend im important...but this'll have to do.

"The-i-oh shit..." He mumbled the last part in defeat, likely just figuring out what he'd gotten himself in to.

"So, im guessing you've got ...."

"Total control, yup" I confirmed.

"And you wanna focus on earth elements, like what flowers?"

I smirk up at him allowing my aura to put an intimidating facade.

"Actually I was thing more like venus fly traps" as I said traps I let my hands clap together mimicking the plant and bit at the air with my teeth.

He stopped walking and just glanced from side to side, waiting for me to start making sense again.

Until we heard some crying in the distance.

The two of our heads shot over and were met with a strange sight. There were three young boys, looked about 8¿ and a man, hero maybe? Crouched in front of them not looking all that nice. He had spike blonde hair, red eyes, gauntlets on his wris-

"Oh my god its bakugou, look sir! Thats the hot guy I switched schools for!"

"Wha-"

"BAKUGOUUUU!! HEYYY!"

his head slowly shifted from the kids to me and it seemed to only make him more angry. Then, once again I couldn't help but bask in the pure aggression...in his eyes.

They were red, fitting for the anger thry held, but it was beautiful. It was passionate, the way he could yell for hours about god knows what because he cares. He may care about petty things, or silly things, but he always cares so much. So passionately. That I can see it in his eyes.

"Oh my, whAt is this costume deary?"best jeanist spoke from ahead of us as we approach.

"Hi sir, sorry about the skin showing, my quirk is heavily enhanced the more my pours are exposed to the natural elements, especially oxygen. If I was more covered parts of my body would begin to go completely numb. Also doesnt my body look amazing! Im a lot more in shape since you saved me last"

I blamed happily at jeanist. Though we arent neceserilly close, he is definitely a great hero and has always been someone who easily sees through my façaude. Plus his fashion sense is wonderful and I often send him pictures of my outfits. Although he doesnt respond I know he sees them and if they were bad he would be mean about it instead of ignoring it.

"Well. It definitely gives your body..access to that. And the sword?"

Ahh...the sword that I liked to carry. It was now stored in its place on my back.

"Call it a good luck charm, plus, we cant rely only on our quirks, then we are just weak people with strong powers. Rather than strong people."

I was always one to put on a show for him, as I do for lost of pro heroes. Its a lot more fun to say things like your all serious and fancy and smart sometimes. Its my little inside joke with myself, like to laugh at how easily people are awed by it.

Like how even though children were still crying bakgou was staring at me face void of emotion, completely struck at my words.

Definitely not..staring at my body that was exposed. Not eyeing the tight strap that wraps my left leg, that he doesnt know is a funcional lasso.

Noticing him, im quick to avert my attention.

"Hey bakugou~"

"Tch you really went from shitty princess to slutty princess huh?"

"You really went from telling deku you'd be number one hero, to making kids cry on the street, huh?" I challenged

I heard the crying boys laugh a little, just the age reminded me of my brother, Im sure they have nothing in common, but I havent seen any of my brothers in quite some time so I suppose a small part of me was just projecting.

I hated that they were crying, though. Ussually I dont like kids, they are stinky and gross and the main reason people have been ruining my life up til now. However, noticing these three reacting to bakugou in a way I wish emotionally available enough for, it made me feel obligated to help them. Wierd, huh.

"Hey, did that guy use his fire all scary?"

"Yeah, he was gonna kill us"

"Fires scary."

I giggled a bit, I knew fire like the back of my hand. It was the first thing I mastered as a child and the way I see bakugou use it doesnt to the element justice.

"Hm, well, I dont think so...can I show you something?"

The kid in the middle, apparently the braver of them, lifted his gaze from the concrete to meet my eyes. Just as I crouched down to my knees in front of them he nodded up at me.

I smiled at this, proud that I earned his trust for...some odd reason.

My hands formed a cup shape in front of him and I focused my ears so I could hear the blood rushing through my own brain, like waves. This was how I learned to use elements singularly: by using my internally noise to block out everything else.

I first allowed a small line of fire to dance around, now bigger than a candle wick. Then through another, and another as the boy watched carefully. Not yet impressed his face was still caustious. However I continued focusing my energy, feeling my body, the air around me, the heat of the sun, even remember the passion from bakugous crimson eyes.

I as I did so the many small flames twirled and twisted within eachother forming into a beautiful blue and orange fluctuating flower.

The boy looked into my hands mouth now agape, tears dried, fear gone. Then, again, for some reasons unbeknownst to me... I felt a sense of pride.

He tapped his friends so they would look up and I continued making my fire into different things, birds, planes, people. The kids were entranced.

I looked back to see the two pros staring at me with a certain level of pride mixer with shock. While bakugou seemed at a loss for words. God knows why this time?

"I don't think fire is all that bad you know..."

"Pft, yeah, I know kid," with that I threw my little flames above their heads and let the sparks fall down of them like shiny glitter. Then, overwhelmed with this horrible feeling in my chest. I retreatdd to my boss for the weak. Was that..happiness? Ew.