#i feel so strongly about this for no reason

[xylatox]

Higher Than Heaven || csb

Told myself the first thing I'll do on this good Sunday was read Lexi's fic so hear I am hehe, Im so excited (❁´◡`❁)

Beomgyu may be your childhood friend, but habits hold on tight with him. It’s clear from the three years he’s worked at your animal shelter. Your parents always said he has good intentions, although he’s brash in decision-making. "The kid just asks for forgiveness more than permission most of the time," your dad would joke, and Beomgyu wouldn’t disagree.- something about this line warms my heart so much oh my god, I love Beomgyu so much hes so cute :(

It's customary on New Years to feel the ache of their absence so strongly. Your thoughts of them are as vivid as the pain of their loss. It seems to haunt you more with every year that passes. - and Lexi does it again with the beautiful explanation of loss

Five years of grief made the pain manageable, but on nights like tonight, it doesn’t feel like you’ve made much progress.- I felt this :((

Your animals greet you at your door with perky barks and whooshing tails. Mina and Minho, your two tabby cats, seem to be delighted that you’re back, but save the ecstatic greetings for their canine siblings. Key, your senior chihuahua, does what he can energy-wise compared to Bori, your labrador mix. - oh to have pets oh my god, and the fact that mc also has a hedgehog?? shes so cute

I love the comedic nature of how mc and soobin are first introduced to each other, like girl what is an umbrella going to do.

His soft palm meets yours and heats your skin, and you have to cut the parting short to not feel any more flustered. - screaming oh my god ALSO THE LOVE NICKNAME BYE.

I love that the dream gives us some kind of information of why Soobin is present along with his identity as an angel. - He showed you all you needed to know last night through your dreams, a miraculous loophole to the restrictions placed upon him. - like this is really cool I cant lie

He truly is an angel, you realize, and not just in the literal sense.- i giggled

Not Soobin coming to her because of her NYE wish 😭i would die

“I can find a date without your help. Beomgyu already took up that role a long time ago. He’s been pestering me about going out with his friend Heeseung for months. So there.” You stick your tongue out at him and continue sweeping.-HEESEUNG MENTION MY BABY AHHHH

“No, you don’t have to apologize. This is what I get for taking a smoke break when I have cupcakes to make, right?” The baker chuckles and releases you. Your heart thumps at a rapid tempo when he holds his hand out to you. “I’m Mingyu. Sorry I’m built like a mountain.” -OH MY GOD GYU😭So many of my favs are here. I feel sick for Soobin :( poor baby

Soobin’s tender smile makes you blush, and it stirs up all the feelings you’ve suppressed when you’re not in his presence. Mingyu’s a welcome distraction from it all. His looks and personality are undeniably attractive, but you always circle back to the angel in your midst. - oh my god

He’s definitely stewing. The animals must be saying to each other, conspiring about what will occur when their mother finally gets home. - oh this is a cute line

When you brush his mouth with your own, every being in the universe, heavenly or not, ceases to exist in your mind. It’s only you and Soobin in your own world. You want to kick yourself for taking so long to seize this moment, this kiss, with him. For all of the reasons Soobin supplies as to why it’s wrong for the two of you to be together, this could not feel more right. - oh good Lord, girl youre a poet

You crawl back into bed, naked and alone, tears streaming down your face. The only time you rise is to let the animals eat and use the bathroom. For the rest of the day, you remain in bed like a phantom. Half out of your body, half inside of it to feel every ounce of pain. Each shred of sadness reminds you that you still exist, and the man—angel—that you love is gone. - baby noooo :(((

You kiss his lips, all the I love you’s not enough to encapsulate every feeling and gift Soobin’s given you since he came into your life. You both may be on Earth, one old and one new human soul linked as one, but you know this is what it means to be higher than even the immensity of heaven. - oh my god, this was the most immaculate end oh my god

Lexi this was so good!!! Im sososo glad its the first thing I read for the day today :(((

HIGHER THAN HEAVEN | 최수빈

⟢ PAIRING: choi soobin x fem!reader ⟢ WORD COUNT: 10.3K ⟢ GENRE: fluff, angst, smut ⟢ TAGS: guardian angel!soobin, human!reader, mutual pining, sexual tension, dirty talking, nipple play, chest worship, fingering, unprotected sex ⟢ SYNOPSIS: Soobin, your devoted guardian angel, has one singular purpose in his ethereal existence: to bring your heart's deepest desires to life. Unbeknownst to him, his mere presence fulfills that desire. Yet, the lingering question remains— how can he effectively transform your most intimate dreams into reality? LINK TO PLAYLIST! ⟢ AUTHOR'S NOTE: First fic of 2025! I’d like to thank @lovetaroandtaemin, @chugging-antiseptic-dye, @ylangelegy, @gyubakeries, and @xomakara for beta-reading this fic for me, I know it was a quick journey and I appreciate every one of you who followed the story from the beginning to the end 🤍.

The time fills as plastic shot glasses and empty solo cups discarded into trash bags. Some stragglers of the party lay on the couch or floor, but you pass by them with ease. You sigh before Beomgyu stops you with a sharp tug. "Dude, you don't have to help me. You're supposed to be one of my guests!"

"I'm just avoiding the inevitable tomorrow. And if you come into the shelter late because you procrastinated cleaning your own apartment, I may just kill you."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it, boss.” He rolls his eyes and unfurls the empty bag you had between your hands moments before. You giggle in earnest.

“If I get a single text, Gyu–”

“Why don’t you enjoy the early morning hours of New Year's and get out of here?" He shoves you towards the door of his apartment with an "I love you” to follow you out, determined to do what you swear he won't without your help.

Beomgyu may be your childhood friend, but habits hold on tight with him. It’s clear from the three years he’s worked at your animal shelter. Your parents always said he has good intentions, although he’s brash in decision-making. "The kid just asks for forgiveness more than permission most of the time," your dad would joke, and Beomgyu wouldn’t disagree.

Your parents’ words replay in your head on the walk home. You hear every piece of parental advice with each step on the cobblestones, the clack or your heels accompanying every word. It's customary on New Years to feel the ache of their absence so strongly. Your thoughts of them are as vivid as the pain of their loss. It seems to haunt you more with every year that passes.

One day, you had been tagging new intakes and cleaning food bowls like normal. The next you were receiving the call that your parents had been in a fatal car accident. Every space they inhabited, including the shelter, felt colder, quieter, a little less like home. Even your own house twenty minutes from your job barely felt like your own.

Five years of grief made the pain manageable, but on nights like tonight, it doesn’t feel like you’ve made much progress..

The cold of January accompanies the repetitive emotional and mental cycle you're on. The weather bites with a hard set of teeth, almost more brutal than the traces of sadness you feel in your heart.

You don’t realize amid the somber trek home how close the surrounding shadows are, one of a stranger within an arm’s distance.

Your animals greet you at your door with perky barks and whooshing tails. Mina and Minho, your two tabby cats, seem to be delighted that you’re back, but save the ecstatic greetings for their canine siblings. Key, your senior chihuahua, does what he can energy-wise compared to Bori, your labrador mix.

“Bobo, please,” you beg as she jumps up on you when you kneel at her eye-level. It’s all a mess of slobbering tongue and eager pants with her. Once she’s done, you rub Key between the ears to give him some affection.

Even your hedgehog, Rio, taps against the glass of his enclosure to say hello to you. It’s almost like every pair of animal eyes asks you how the party went and why you left them alone for so long.

You can’t supply them with an answer, because you notice the person-shaped figure at your kitchen counter, silent and clouded in darkness. The sight makes you release a decibel-breaking scream.

You grab an umbrella from the iron wrack near your door and charge to the kitchen, expecting Key and Bori to follow you and bark aggressively at the intruder. They don’t, but they do pad behind you in curiosity at your strange actions.

They barely react at all when you turn on the light in the small kitchen. The new illumination reveals the black-haired stranger dressed in white. He says nothing, but holds a smile of mirth on his face at your line of defense. He's neither scrawny nor muscular, but towers over you to a surreal degree. 

You think you can take him if you have the element of surprise, but with the alcohol still buzzing through your veins, you may lack complete hand-eye coordination. It’s anyone’s guess.

“What do you want? If you’re looking for money, you got the wrong house, buddy.” You say with a steady voice, aiming the sharpest point of the umbrella in his direction.

He smiles wide, pearly teeth and a set of dimples almost blinding you. “I’m Soobin.”

His lack of an answer and warm smile throw you off. It’s definitely not the reaction anyone expects from a burglar. Maybe the guy's intoxication is even greater than yours, enabling him to enter someone's home without permission. No matter the reasons, you don’t release your hold on the umbrella. You stare him down hard despite your shaking hands.

“Well…Soobin…I don’t know what you want, but you’re not gonna find it here.”

“I’m in the exact place I need to be.” He says your name with the same level of warmth that remains in his smile, but your blood runs cold at the fact he is aware of who you are. Was he stalking you? Had he stopped by the animal shelter while you were too busy to make a mental note of him? “Put down the umbrella and we–”

“Get the fuck out of my house, you creep!” You raise the umbrella as high as you can before it falls on his head, shoulders, or any location on his body that will stun him. He knows it’s coming, though.

Soobin somehow materializes right in front of you before you can step forward, taking your wrists gently in one hand to stop you. “There’s no need for that. I’m not here to harm you.”

You struggle in his hold, trying your hardest to release yourself from his grip with all of your might. Then, you freeze, unsure of how both his speed and his lack of alarm to your furry animals makes any logical sense.

Soobin senses your lack of effort to go through with your attack and lets go of you, taking a small breath of air. “Will you drop the umbrella?”

“Once you tell me what you are,” you whisper. “My dogs would have ripped off your ankles by now, but they didn’t. Why?”

Soobin chuckles, but you feel anything but humorous. “The why to that question is a bit hard to explain. But I can tell you why I’m here.” He runs a hand through his hair, suddenly bashful. “Let’s just say I have a mission to complete.”

Soobin sits at one end of the couch, hands in his lap, while you sit on the other. Your dogs lay at the edge of the couch, snoring peacefully now that the chaos is over. Your knees sit tight against your chest, still guarding yourself from him or any potential advances he may make.

You may not think he wants to kill or rob you anymore, but that doesn’t mean you’re immediately trusting of the stranger. One that is no doubt breathtaking, but still hiding his intentions.

You size him up, still unsure how or why the guy is familiar with you when you’ve never seen him before. He can barely provide you with an adequate answer for the questions that pop into your head.

Where are you from? How do you know me? Have we ever met before?

He chuckles at each one, continuing on with the same reflexive response. “Proprietary information.”

You roll your eyes. “Every time you say that, you sound like some kind of spy.” You move closer to his spot on the couch, looking at him with more intensity than before. 

The analysis makes him laugh even more, his cheeks turning pink. “I’m not an alien, if that was your second guess.”

“That’s not what I was thinking!”

He quirks an eyebrow at you. “You look like you’re about to cut me open with a scalpel.”

Your lips transform into a firm line. “Should I want to, Soobin? Maybe you’re saying you’re not an alien to throw me off.”

“Trust me, I am not an extraterrestrial. Not cool enough.”

You can’t help but laugh at the ridiculous situation you find yourself in, matching the smile on Soobin’s face with your own. An hour ago, you were about to kill him in self-defense for what you assumed was a classic break-in scenario. Now, you’re laughing with your would-be victim. This has to be the most peculiar first day of the year you’ve ever had.

He claps his hands softly on his white denim jeans. “We should call it a night. You’re probably tired. I can explain more tomorrow, if you’d like.”

You look around your house, unsure where Soobin is planning to stay for the next few hours. The one-bed-and-bath cottage is anything but roomy, most of your space taken up by work supplies or your animals’ stuff.

He senses your trepidation and grins. “Don’t worry, I can come back in the morning.”

You suck in a breath. Most of you feels relief, but there’s a small inkling of sadness that pervades your emotions. You barely know Soobin, but his presence provides a warmth that your home has been missing.

It has to be the last traces of alcohol and the simmering grief still in your system.

“Okay. I have work in the morning, but–”

“I’ll be here before you have to leave,” Soobin cuts you off. He holds his hand out in a goodbye, and you take it. His soft palm meets yours and heats your skin, and you have to cut the parting short to not feel any more flustered.

“See you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, love.” He leaves you with one more grin before he exits, confusing you further. 

The touch of his fingertips on you follows you into sleep, his skin the last coherent sensation you have before it all goes black.

There is a murky quality to the dream you find yourself in. You’re surrounded by grey, the color’s opacity fading only partly as the details become clearer.

The room around you looks more like a cavern than a traditional room. It’s made of stone, cavelike and primitive. The entrance to the area is too vast for a normal door. It’s almost as if you could step out and fall into nothing but clouds. The world outside is a mixture of inky blacks and dark blues, signifying nighttime outside the four rocky walls.

You look back to the inside of the space. It holds a desk covered with paperwork and photographs. You’re alone, standing in the center of it all, but too far away from the papers on the table to see any information.

Before you can step closer, Soobin enters with a blonde man hot on his heels. They both walk right through you, seemingly not noticing your presence at all as they continue their discussion. 

They emit their own light somehow, the room nowhere near as dark as when you were alone inside of it.

“If you fail at this, Yeonjun will demote you and have no qualms about doing it.” The blonde man ruffles his hair in frustration, and inches closer to Soobin. They clearly have a close relationship, from the concern on the stranger’s face to the hand that he rests on Soobin's shoulder. “You’ve worked too hard to lose everything, Soobin.”

“I know, Hyuka,” Soobin says in a somber tone, sorting through the papers on his desk. “But she needs me now more than ever. And I know I can help. And if I succeed, I can actually—“

“I get it. We’re just not supposed to get involved unless we’re certain about it. You know this.”

Soobin sighs. “You didn’t see her, Kai. I have to.”

The man named Kai exhales a deep breath and walks away, his pleas seeming to hit a brick wall. The last thing he says, “I hope you know what you’re risking,” barely makes it to your ears. All you notice before Kai’s departure is the unfurling of wings from his back, the white and gray feathers spouting from the tendons just below his shoulders.

You scream when he drops from the entrance, his wings carrying him away. You don’t care if the sound alerts either of the two men, not after witnessing such an unrealistic moment.

You scream again when you hear the unfurling of Soobin’s wings, the sound almost whipping you onto your back from the gust his wings emit. They’re dark grey, larger than Kai’s are. They create such long-casting shadows that you have no question now what Soobin is or where he comes from.

The word replays in your mind as the surrounding scene dematerializes and you wake up with a rapid heartbeat: an angel.

Soobin waits at your door in the same white button-up and jeans he had on the night prior. You welcome him inside, and he looks more ethereal somehow in daylight. 

The dream hits you again with its full force, the image of his grey wings flashing across your memory.

“So, you’re an angel,” You say, filling the space between you both with a new tension. The anxiety only permeates from you; Soobin exudes an air of calm instead, despite your accusation.

He almost ticks his head down in a nod as he responds with the words, “Proprietary information.”

You nod your head and gulp hard. Somehow, the aura around you and the subtext in his expression tells you what you know to be true.

He showed you all you needed to know last night through your dreams, a miraculous loophole to the restrictions placed upon him.

When you’re finally ready to go to work, the morning chores around the house finished before Soobin even made it to your doorstep, you look over at the man in front of you again with trepidation. The white attire may lead to a multitude of questions that you and Soobin cannot answer.

“What? Is there something on my face?” Soobin asks, confused.

You laugh and shake your head, any residual tension from your realization broken. “You look a bit too…uniform for the shelter.”

“Oh! Well…” He blushes, unsure how to respond.

An idea pops into your head when his words come up short. “I may have some old stuff that’ll fit you.”

“Why is the rando wearing your dad’s windbreaker?” Beomgyu asks while cleaning Jin, the newest adoptee at the shelter. His eyes peer over at Soobin filling some food bowls with kibble. Soobin’s presence fills the space the same way it did in your house.

He wears your dad’s long-sleeve shirt, windbreaker, and khaki pants well. Despite his freakishly tall height, the clothes don’t look small on him, and you’re relieved he’s able to fit in like any normal guy with the change in wardrobe.

You scoff, continuing to fill out the documents for Jin’s tag and vaccinations without looking up at your friend. “Soobin’s new in town and lost everything on the plane ride here. He just needed to borrow some stuff until his luggage gets delivered.”

Beomgyu nods, still concerned. He goes back to scrubbing Jin’s coat with the anti-tick shampoo, and you leave his spot at the cleaning station to stand beside Soobin.

“You do this every day? These bags are heavy, even for me.” Soobin grunts and clips the bag closed.

“I usually make Gyu or another volunteer do it. But you saved me the trouble of asking.” You smirk and take two of the bowls in your hands. “Want to help me feed the dogs?”

Soobin’s eyes light up, and he nods. You wonder as you walk to the cages if he’s ever interacted with animals before he left his home in the skies.

Since you were a kid, the shelter has always been a part of your daily regimen. Once college was out of the way, you had a stable job waiting for you to practice your veterinary degree on. While some could only handle so many cat scratches, dog poops, and absurd origin stories, it made every day worth it in your eyes. And the fact that you had a history with tending to furry friends with your parents only made it more worthwhile to continue doing.

The second you open the cages to let the dogs eat, you recognize how natural Soobin is at the job. He talks to them in a childlike voice and rubs their bellies as they munch on kibble and necessary medicines you give in between feeding. Even the dogs with the rougher backgrounds take to Soobin like a bee to honey, the warmth he naturally exudes relaxing them.

He truly is an angel, you realize, and not just in the literal sense.

You lock up the shelter for the day with a lot less weight on your shoulders thanks to Soobin. “I might as well give you the keys to this place. It suits you well,” you joke.

Soobin tucks his hands into his windbreaker, smiling hard. “It just came easy, I guess. Animals aren’t like people. They don’t have to hide behind words. It’s all about energy.”

You look at him as you walk away from the building together, your face softened from his words. “My mom always used to say stuff like that. To her, animals were the bestest friends you could ever ask for. She’d say it’s like they see into your soul.”

Soobin grins. “She seems lovely.”

You swallow hard, balling your hands into fists inside your jacket. It’s not anger that permeates your body now, not the way it used to. All that exists is the reality that their words are simply memories. “She was. My dad too. That place was their second home.” You wave your arm in the direction of the shelter. The building diminishes from view as you round the corner to head home. “And mine, too.”

“Did you envision this being your life?” Soobin asks, the question taking you by surprise. “I don’t mean to pry.”

“No, it’s okay!” You laugh. “I mean—I love working with the animals every day, and I have great friends. It just can be very routine sometimes, like there’s this gap that I can’t fill.” You hold back the more intimate details of your desires to Soobin, still guarded and uncertain of being so vulnerable so soon.

He steps closer, the walk becoming more intimate with his shoulder almost brushing yours. “You’ve been alone for quite a while. It’s understandable to want to share your life with someone.”

You blush hard, a mixture of the January cold and his correct assumptions building a steady heat on your cheeks. “That’s what most people want, I guess.”

Eyes widening, you realize now why Soobin may be discussing these things with you. Could his super secret mission, which he discussed the night you met, relate to right now?

“No fucking way,” you whisper to yourself, stopping on the stone street. Soobin only gets a few paces farther than you before he stops.

“Is there something wrong?” He asks, his eyebrows drawn up and his mouth in a small O that you would normally giggle at.

Now, you have no time for humor.

“Did you come here because of the stupid wish I made on New Year’s Eve?”

“Taehyun, if you give me another shot, I will throw up!” You exclaim in a fit of giggles, three drinks already in your system over the last hour and a half. His girlfriend, Kazuha, stands by your side as she downs the shot in her hand, her mouth puckering as she swallows it down. “Zu, I thought you were the DD tonight!”

“Fuck it, I’ll call an Uber.” She winks and chases the shot with a sip of beer. Beomgyu wades through the throng of people in his living room to join all of you in the kitchen.

“Taking shots without me? That’s a party foul.”

“Whatever, man. It’s not like we can’t make more.” Taehyun passes him one filled with tequila to catch up, and Beomgyu downs it in the next second. By the time the buzz of the drinks hits your head, Jungwon barrels into the kitchen with his own girlfriend Yeri to tell you all that the ball is dropping.

Everyone crowds around the television to watch the remaining minute of the year play out. The strangers around you scream out the last seconds, others speak in a drunken lilt.

You turn to your friends, somehow the only person without someone attached to their hip. Beomgyu is holding a random girl's shoulder, while your other friends stand closely together in their respective couples, watching the countdown..

“Four, three, two, one! Happy New Year!” Beomgyu says the words into his date’s neck before kissing her roughly on the lips. Your other friends have their own celebratory make-out sessions. You feel like an intruder as they all enjoy the moment in their respective couples.

You’ve never been a grouch about your single status, not once. But it felt like a part of you was missing out with little of a choice in the matter. Whether by the confines of chance or love simply not being meant for you for the past twenty-seven years, you can only be comfortable for so long before the pain of solitude drains you dry.

Was it so awful to want to find someone to share funny videos with? To talk to about days at the shelter when a cute animal comes in and needs a loving home? When days are heavy on your heart and you need the one you love the most to lift you up and make it all evaporate with a simple “I love you”? To make every struggle and hardship, no matter how big or small, worth it?

And so, with only a drunken mind and heart to listen to your deepest whims, you wish for what seems the most out of reach as your eyes line with tears: a soulmate to bridge the gap between your loneliness and true fulfillment.

When the reality of why Soobin’s here hits you, you can’t help but release one of the loudest laughs you’ve ever emitted before.

“You have to be fucking kidding me,” you say with exasperated breaths, all the air in your lungs saved mostly for your laughter. “You came all the way from up there to play matchmaker?”

Soobin chuckles to himself, the sounds that leave his lips a lot quieter than yours. “You make it sound so childish.”

“Can you blame me?” You ask. “I don’t need help in that department!”

Soobin gives you a knowing look, hitting you somewhere deep in the chest. “Then I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

“Okay, don’t speak in riddles to me!”

“I’m just stating facts, love.”

You roll your eyes, and Soobin laughs again. “So you’re magically going to find me the perfect partner after only knowing me for 48 hours?”

“I’ve known you for much longer than that.” He steps even closer to you, your fingers brushing his as he stands a few inches from you. “But again, it’s—“

“Proprietary information, I get it,” you whisper. You cough into your fist and glide past him, the moment broken. “Either way, I am just fine with or without a boyfriend, Soobin.”

He follows behind without a word, but you sense his smile without looking at him. Jerk.

Soobin has helped many people in his immortal life. It’s an existence he couldn’t fill in just one book. He’d have to go back centuries to the very moment he started his work as a guardian. His life began long before that, but his true merits came when he started helping those who needed supernatural guidance.

He’s seen from his eagle’s eye view many heartbreaks, losses, successes, and love stories, but nothing as encapsulating as the story of your life.

You were a vision to see the first time you held an animal in your hands, hands tepid but heart full from the creature giving all of its affection to you for you to reciprocate wholeheartedly. He was in awe of you when you stepped across the stage with your degree, eager to put all the knowledge you gained about medicine to a good use. And his ever-still heart ached with yours the second you got that phone call in November five years ago, wanting nothing more than to catch you before your knees hit the tile below.

You’re the one assignment he’s kept too close an eye on, the others in his caseload not holding his focus so strongly. He succumbed to forbidden desires, wishes he knew were unattainable.

But the second he felt your heart break on the one night he knew he could seize the chance to step over the border between Heaven and Earth, he chose the only option that felt right: he had to leave home and heal what needed to be mended inside of you a long time ago.

He watches you help the teenage girl adopting her first pet with immense adoration. 

You check off the supplies needed for Jin and all the vaccines the dog will need moving forward with clinical focus. It’s admirable how dedicated you are to your work, not caring if it went beyond the bounds of a traditional work-life balance.

And when you wave the teenager and her parents out the door and turn to him with a signature eye-roll, he can’t stop the way his skin heats. Your gaze in his direction screams: How long are you going to keep pestering me?

Forever, he says to himself with a hell of a lot of hope.

When you’re both alone in the shelter, one hour after you’re closed for the day, you sweep the floors in a huff. “I am telling you I do not need you to play matchmaker for me.”

“You keep saying that and yet I’m still here, love,” Soobin tuts, flipping through the magazine on top of your desk. He sits at the chair opposite from the receptionist counter so casually, feet crossed and casual despite his heart yearning to explain everything to you.

I’m here because I can’t take any more of your pain. Because someone deserves to know how special you are. Because I—

“I can find a date without your help. Beomgyu already took up that role a long time ago. He’s been pestering me about going out with his friend Heeseung for months. So there.” You stick your tongue out at him and continue sweeping.

Soobin chuckles to himself and flips to another page of the magazine, but he can’t deny how his focus remains on you, the center of his attention, for longer than he expected.

“Lee Heeseung, twenty-two. Works at the ramen shop downtown. Entirely incompatible with you. Just for your information.”

You stop sweeping and aim an accusatory eye at him. “And that’s not proprietary information how?”

“I’m not looking out for him. And that only took a couple of Google searches to figure out, love.”

By the time you lock up the store, Soobin is in the habit of checking the door behind you to make sure you didn’t miss the back door or forget to close the play-gate on the way out. Two weeks of observing your routine up close has given him incredible intel, and not just into your schedule.

“Let’s walk past downtown,” Soobin suggests, taking your hand and walking through a new pattern of alleyways and cobblestone paths. 

You’re unsure why this route that adds another ten minutes to your walk is worth the trouble, but you take his advice, anyway. He’s your angel for a reason, after all.

“Soobin, unless you suddenly got a hankering for human food, we really should—“

You knock into someone’s shoulders hard; the impact sends you to the gravel. Soobin vanishes from view, his name on your tongue the second you recognize that you’re on the ground.

A pair of hands that aren’t Soobin’s, more calloused and robust, lift you up off the ground.

“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have been standing so close to the alleyway.”

A beautiful pair of brown eyes gaze at yours, and it stops you dead in your tracks. The stranger’s brown hair falls over his face in a mess of free curls, some of them tinged with sweat. He wears a baking apron around his waist; flour and, you presume, icing cover his shirt.

You look at the building next to you, the pastel pink sign reading “Gyu’s Baked Goods” beaming over your head. And you turn back to the man in question, the baker himself as his hands keep you sturdy on your scraped feet.

“It’s totally fine. I’m the one who should be sorry. I mean, I wasn’t looking anyway and I—“

“No, you don’t have to apologize. This is what I get for taking a smoke break when I have cupcakes to make, right?” The baker chuckles and releases you. Your heart thumps at a rapid tempo when he holds his hand out to you. “I’m Mingyu. Sorry I’m built like a mountain.”

You chuckle and take his hand, the handshake gentle for the size of his palm. It reminds you of a sturdy fireplace, strong but tender. “Pleased to meet you. Apologies for having the build of a leaf.”

Soobin looks on with a knot in his stomach from an opposite alleyway. The process has begun, and he cannot halt its progress. No matter if he wants to be the one in the human male’s place.

Soobin watches on as Mingyu stands with you by the kennels, acid simmering on his tongue from watching the two of you in such a chummy position.

He clutches the novel in his hands with intense pressure, on the edge of ripping pages between his fingers. For the past week and a half, you and Mingyu have spent time together as new acquaintances, giving Sobbing time to read mortal literature.

He should be happy for you; his initial plan to find someone who fits your life and wishes so well is going perfectly. Yet why does he wish he could rewind time and take it back?

To your pleasure and Soobin’s secret dismay, Mingyu’s surprise gift of homemade mini animal treats made the day an amazing experience for all three of you.

You pay no mind to Soobin’s sudden and off-putting sulking as you show Mingyu around the animal shelter, your new friend interested in your job as much as you’re intrigued by him.

Beomgyu saunters up to Soobin with a bag of kibble in his hands, clicking his tongue. “It’s tough, isn’t it, man?”

Soobin huffs and looks at the younger man, the aura around your friend similar to his back home. If only Kai could see him now, grumbling and pouting like a kicked puppy. 

“What is?”

“Seeing the girl you like with someone else. I mean, she’s pretty great so I get it.”

Soobin rolls his eyes and goes back to the novel in his hands to distract himself. His jaw ticks when he hears your laughter. The sound creates such a beautiful symphony to his ears, but it’s not reserved for him at the moment, and it makes his stomach turn. “You’re wrong.”

“Okay, dude. I get it. None of my business.” Beomgyu lifts the bag over his shoulder and starts walking, but looks back at Soobin with a smirk. “But maybe it might be mutual if you gave it a shot.”

Soobin scoffs at the kid, and then at himself for the split second he entertains the idiot’s idea. Soobin can pine all he wants, but he knows the boundaries. A multitude of reasons prevent this line from ever being crossed.

He may have incredibly powerful feelings for you, but they’re hidden away and unable to reach the light of day. Not just because he has a strategy for you and Mingyu, but he is not an acceptable suitor because he doesn’t belong here, simply put. Earth is only a temporary stay on his list. And when he goes back and reports to Yeonjun of his success, who knows what will happen?

All he knows is that your paths will cross only once in his and your lifetime, and never again.

Soobin almost remains stuck in his misery until you walk up to him with an orange icing-colored dog bone treat in your hands. You hold it out to him with a shy smile. “For you.”

He smirks, taking the snack from you and rotating it between his fingers. “Isn’t this for the dogs, love?”

And the signature eye roll comes, your bottom lip between your teeth as you do it. “They’re organic. Anyone can eat them.” You look back at him directly, suddenly concerned. “You can eat, right?”

He chuckles. Nodding his head, he looks back at the snack. “Just not sure if I’ll like it.”

You stick your tongue out at him. “Just try it, please?”

Reluctantly, he bites down. Sweet potatoes and carrots, harmoniously blended, flood his mouth. The icing and pinch of cinnamon provides the perfect level of sweetness to round it all out, and Soobin groans. Even the dog treats the guy makes are perfect.

“Okay, it’s pretty great,” Soobin admits, taking another bite. “Even if they’re meant for dogs.”

You laugh and take a tiny corner for yourself. “At least you can say you’ve eaten a dog bone.”

Soobin’s tender smile makes you blush, and it stirs up all the feelings you’ve suppressed when you’re not in his presence. Mingyu’s a welcome distraction from it all. His looks and personality are undeniably attractive, but you always circle back to the angel in your midst.

Who can blame you? He’s ethereal, his magnetism undeniable. But that warmth he’s had from the first day you met is why you can only stay away for so long. He’s a part of your world now, and you can’t imagine that changing in the foreseeable future.

He’s made his place on Earth with you, and you dread the day he has to go back to where he belongs.

The end of January brings the last time for branches to stay vacant of leaves. You notice the small sprouts of leaves amidst the brown limbs as you and Soobin walk back to your house. You bite back a smile, and Soobin comments on it.

It’s like he clenches your heart between his fingers as he says it. “You always hide your excitement like nobody should be watching. Like it’s wrong to be happy about the little things.”

You blush while strolling beside him. “It’s not that I’m hiding it. Maybe I just don’t think anyone will get why I’m happy about certain things.”

Soobin bumps you with his shoulder, a close-mouthed smile on his lips. “Try me.”

You exhale a breath to get your bearings. “Okay, so everyone is always excited about the start of the new year. But then it’s like the excitement dies down and we just go on our merry way until the next holiday comes up. It’s not in the days for me. It’s the environment that always makes me feel the shift, you know?

“Like with animals, almost. The energy is unique, and I feel it when I see the colors and feel the temperature fluctuate.” You shake your head and tuck a stray hair behind your ear. “That may sound stupid, but—“

Soobin stops you on the open sidewalk, taking your hand in his. He looks into your eyes earnestly, wanting you to take his words to heart before he says them. “Nothing you’ve ever said to me is stupid, love. Every thought you have is beautiful because it’s yours.”

Like the town greenery, something shifts inside of you then. Even on the rest of the walk home and the talk over dinner about the day at the shelter, you sense an unfamiliar emotion swirling in the air between you and Soobin. You can’t name it, but it reminds you of the first blooms of spring, brimming with promise.

The first week of February comes in a tidal wave. Many people flood the animal shelter looking for the perfect furry friend to complete their family on the cusp of Valentine’s Day.

All you can hope for is that a majority of them, or at least fifty percent, don’t come back to the shelter after the holiday is over to return the animals looking for forever homes. 

That was the one thing that bugged you the most about this job: biting your tongue at the obvious lack of responsibility people put into owning pets.

It holds more weight than anyone knows, bringing another being in your home to tend to like a child. The only difference is that many of them have histories that deserve more care than normal, and some don’t want to put in the right amount of effort.

You sit on these thoughts as Soobin holds the newest cat to the shelter in his hands. “Have you thought of a name for Mr. Cat yet?” Soobin inspects the spot near the cat’s tail. “Or Missus?”

You giggle and grab the clipboard with the cat’s information on it. “He’s a he, Soob. You can come up with a name.”

He ponders the choices, before his smile grows and he presses his nose to the cat’s. “How about Hyuka?” He rubs the back of the cat’s ears tenderly.

You grin at Soobin and brush your fingers over Hyuka’s fur. “I think it’s a perfect fit.”

Soobin looks over at you with bright eyes, his expression transforming into one that feels like the one you held that day so long ago when he called your thoughts beautiful. A question forms on his tongue, but it flits away the second Mingyu walks through the double doors of the animal shelter with a bouquet of daisies.

At least the jerk knows your favorite flowers, Soobin thinks to himself as he walks with Hyuka back to his block in the back room.

You smile at Mingyu and thank him for the flowers, immediately pressing your nose to them to inhale their smell. “They’re amazing, thank you.”

“My buddy Wonwoo is a florist, so don’t thank me too much. I got a discount even though I should’ve paid full price.”

“Can’t beat a couple bucks off.” You set the bundle down on your desk and cross your arms over the countertop. “I take it you’re not just here to deliver flowers?”

Mingyu chuckles and presses a hand to his neck, his toned biceps stretching out his shirt. “Actually, I was going to ask if you had any plans for Valentine’s.”

You stumble on your explanation, discussing the closure of the shelter for the holiday. “Well,” Mingyu starts, “I was thinking you could come by for dinner. And I promise it won’t just be me making you taste test cupcakes again.”

You laugh, but the sound falls flat. You had always been the one pining, yearning for the boy you liked to like you back. Being on the other side of the coin was not exactly ideal. “Mingyu, you know I appreciate you and I am flattered, but…”

Soobin.

You’re unsure how to continue, but Mingyu holds a hand up in understanding. “I get it. How about I make you a meal, anyway? Consider it a friend treating a friend for all of her hard work.”

You blush and nod. “I’d like that very much.”

You’re washing dried-up wet food from the cat bowls when Soobin walks up to you, his face red. By the time Mingyu left, you expected Soobin to come back to your side so you could wash the dishes together. You did it yourself, seeing as he took forever to come back. Soobin asks with a tone of authority, “What the hell are you thinking?”

You poke your cheek with your tongue, contemplating. “I’m thinking Hyuka’s chances of getting adopted before Valentine’s is about—“

“You know that wasn’t what I meant, love.” He says the pet name with annoyance as he drops one bowl into the sink next to you. His tone catches you off guard, not expecting to see Soobin angry for the first time like this.

“You asked me what I was thinking, and I’m telling you.”

“Why did you say no to the date?” Soobin asks, his eyes blazing with fury. Something without a name sits below though, you can tell.

“I, technically, didn’t say no. It’s just more friendly than romantic.”

“Do you expect me to find you another soulmate like this?” Soobin drops another dirty plate in the sink for you to clean up. You don’t know if the question is exactly for you or for himself.

The tension sits thickly in the air, the running tap the only sound for a good minute or two. “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” you respond, hoping to ease the awkwardness.

Your cheekiness makes Soobin chuckle deeply. You missed his laugh, you realize, not hearing the sound in a while. Not since before Mingyu came around. “What am I gonna do with you, love?”

You shrug and go back to washing the bowls, hiding your smile behind soap suds and dishwater.

Soobin’s leg shakes as he sits on your couch, watching the clock on the spot above your door. 10:49 PM. He’s been waiting for hours to welcome you home from your “friendly” date with Mingyu. Admittedly, he’s been waiting since the second you left, the night of Valentine’s Day on the forefront of his brain since he heard the meathead ask you to have dinner.

Minho and Key keep him company, the older animals in your horde understanding and patient while Soobin mopes around. The angel feels as impatient as Bori can be when she has to wait for dinner.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Soobin says to Key, the chihuahua’s overbite hanging almost like a taunt. “I’m not stewing.”

He’s definitely stewing. The animals must be saying to each other, conspiring about what will occur when their mother finally gets home.

And on the cusp of eleven, you walk into the house and unbuckle your heels. You watch Soobin on the couch, his hands fidgeting on his lap. “Have you been sitting there for three hours?” You ask in a cute tone that drives Soobin nuts.

“No, I made the animals dinner.” You set your bag on the iron wrack where your coats lie, and throw your shoes in some corner of the living room before Soobin continues with, “So, how was the date?”

You stride to the mirror, beginning to unclasp the flashy studs in your ears. “It was fine. Nothing special. Just two friends having dinner.”

“That’s all it was? No candles at the table, no romantic music, nothing?”

“Why are you so concerned, Soobin? I went out, I had fun, now I’m home.” Soobin’s not prepared to hear your voice so clipped and direct. Your frustration is usually a mask of humor or concern. Not genuine anger, like right now. You don’t look at him directly, continuing to remove your jewelry as your ire grows.

You try to de-escalate the argument by retreating to the kitchen, but he only follows you there. And moving back into the living doesn’t help either. “Stop following me, Soobin!”

“Stop running away,” he barks back.

“I will when you stop making a big deal out of this.”

“It is a big deal,” he says with a scoff. “And am I not allowed to worry about you and who you’re with?” He asks with a bite that matches your irritation.

“Why are you so concerned if Mingyu’s the person you wanted to set me up with in the first place?”

“Don’t ask me that question,” he whispers. His jaw tightens and his hands clam up, but you don’t give in. If he wants to finish the discussion, then you’ll continue to press him for an answer.

“Why? What kind of ‘proprietary information’ relates to how you feel about this? What does me going out with Mingyu and you being a complete ass about it have anything to do with top-secret intel?”

“I love you, alright?!” He yells, standing stock still as his veins pulse in his head and neck. His hands go to the messy strands of his hair, almost like he feels himself going crazy at his own confession. “I did not mean to, and it’s awful. I can’t give you the life you deserve. Someone like Mingyu or any other human man would be lucky to have you, yet I can barely stomach the thought of someone else getting to touch you in all the ways I wish I could. And it’s driving me insane.”

The confession knocks something loose inside of you, remaining inhibitions be damned if it means now that the feelings Soobin harbors mirror your own without a doubt. 

You step closer to him, the tension almost too much to bear any longer. You press your hands to his neck, and bring him closer until your lips are a mere inch apart. “Nothing and nobody’s stopping you, Soobin.”

He takes a deep breath to hold himself back,  grounding himself so he doesn’t do something that will upend both of your worlds. “You don’t know that, love.”

You chuckle softly. “Maybe not, but I do know that I love you too.”

When you brush his mouth with your own, every being in the universe, heavenly or not, ceases to exist in your mind. It’s only you and Soobin in your own world. You want to kick yourself for taking so long to seize this moment, this kiss, with him. For all of the reasons Soobin supplies as to why it’s wrong for the two of you to be together, this could not feel more right.

Soobin only gives himself a second of separation from you to catch his breath before he dives back in for one, two, three more kisses. He moans eagerly into your mouth. He tugs on the fabric of your dress to occupy his hands, his body hungry for any contact he can get.

Heavens do be damned, if it means he can keep you between his arms and against his lips. 

Your back hits the bed as Soobin attaches his lips to your neck. The dogs scratch at the locked door of your bedroom, but you know they’ll give up after another minute of waiting for a result that will never come. You have other priorities to tend to.

Soobin’s lips and teeth mark you up as he travels along your skin with his mouth. He removes your dress and his shirt so your skin is in closer contact, the feeling of his every present warmth lighting you from the inside out. Your undergarments are still in the way, but you know they’ll be discarded soon.

“You do not know how many days I wished for this,” he mumbles into the spot between your breasts, his kisses setting you on fire to the point you can barely tell where he’s going next. He unclasps the clips holding your bra together, your top half now bare for his eyes to witness.

He marvels at the fullness of your chest before he takes one of your nipples into his mouth. He licks at the skin as he suckles. The action pulls a moan from your lips, your body thrusting up at nothing but open air.

“You can touch me in other ways, Soobin,” you gasp, taking his hand in yours and intertwining your fingers.

He blushes a deep crimson, releasing your nipple from his lips. “I don’t know how,” he admits.

You take his hand to guide lower to the top of your underwear, urging him to slip his hand inside. He does so, immediately finding the wetness of your folds against his fingertips. “You can move them around—just like that.” 

He takes your advice and expertly finds your clit to take between his thumb and index finger. Your hips buck up into his touch, and he smirks against your lips. He asks, “Is this what you like?”

“Yes, please.” He takes your underwear off to freely glide his fingers in and out of you, three of the digits simultaneously filling you but leaving you aching for more. “Please, Soobin, please,” you beg.

“What do you want, my love? Don’t hold back.”

“I want you inside of me,” you confess. He listens to your request without question. Unbuckling his pants, his cock springs free to make your eyes linger to the bottom half of his body. You don’t guess for long what it feels like, as he immediately sinks into you to make your eyelids flutter.

“Holy shit,” you exclaim, pressing your hands to his lower back, pushing him in deeper until he’s filling you to the hilt.

“You feel amazing.” Soobin says the words against your lips as he thrusts for the first time. He pulls completely before slipping back in, groaning the entire way.

While you appreciate the slow movement of his body against yours, not too eager to rush the experience, you cling to him with eager fingers, hoping the message will come across. “Soobin, go faster.”

You’ve only ever been with two other men in your life, two lackluster experiences in college you wished to forget. All the time between now was just a waiting game, you only willing to go the distance when you felt it was with the right person. And it seems like all the failures in your history have led you to this perfect blip in time.

Like Soobin can read your mind, he slows down just enough so he can whisper to you, “It’s always been you. It’s only ever been you.”

You can’t help the tear that forms in your eye, but it’s quickly kissed away with Soobin’s lips on your cheek and, subsequently, your mouth.

“I’m gonna come, Soobin. Please don’t stop.” His hips work faster, his thumb pressing down and rubbing your clit harder, and you can barely feel your body before it lights up in every area.

Your toes curl, your mouth slacks, and your soul explodes as the pleasure overtakes you. You feel empty yet so full from the endorphins released from your orgasm.

Soobin continues to move his hips against yours. His pace stutters, signaling his own release. He captures his lips with yours as he spills inside of you, your body his to claim completely. Nobody has ever had you in this way—emotionally, mentally, physically.

When you tell Soobin “I love you,” you mean it in every facet of reality, your soul intimately linked with his otherworldly one.

“I love you too, my love.” He smiles like a bashful child, taking you into his arms and pulling you closer as the night continues on outside. When you again, bodies intertwined between your sheets, all that you wish for now is for the moment to last forever.

And when you fall asleep that night in his arms a few hours later, you pray to every god you can name that it never ends.

The expectation of waking up to the warmth of Soobin’s arms and kisses dies when you feel his empty side of the bed. You search the entire house , your dogs padding behind you as you search every corner for him. 

To your terror and slowly breaking heart, he remains to be seen. Soobin is gone like he was never there to begin with, your house flooding with a chill that hits you to the core.

You crawl back into bed, naked and alone, tears streaming down your face. The only time you rise is to let the animals eat and use the bathroom. For the rest of the day, you remain in bed like a phantom. Half out of your body, half inside of it to feel every ounce of pain. Each shred of sadness reminds you that you still exist, and the man—angel—that you love is gone.

Yeonjun has his head in his hand when another pair of associates throw Soobin in front of his desk. Soobin put up an intense fight in the resulting scuffle to bring him back to the office above Earth, but he doesn’t regret it. The only thing he regrets is not leaving you with some sort of explanation, even something as little as a minute to tell you he loves you.

“When I approved your descent, I expected you to help your assignment. Not sleep with her.” Yeonjun sighs and reads over the paperwork at his desk. “The guys above me are gonna love this.”

“Jun, please.” Soobin falls down on his scraped knees and raises his hands in a prayer. “Let me just tell her—”

“What else is there to explain? You’ve clearly done enough.”

“I’m begging you—”

“You think I’m going to let you spend another second with her and make me look like an idiot? No.” He slams his hand on the desk. “If you’re lucky, Soobin, all the archangels will do is send you to the second circle of Hell. I’m surprised they’re not reprimanding me as your superior. You broke our greatest oath.”

Do not consort with humans, Soobin reminds himself as tears stream down his face. “I love her, Yeonjun. And you know she loves me. Didn’t I do my job? I found her a soulmate, just like she wished for.”

Yeonjun shakes his head with a sad smirk. “Don’t think you can get around our rules this time, Soobin. I just called you here to tell you the council will see you in the morning. Be grateful they’re giving you a chance to explain yourself.”

The angels that brought Soobin in drag him away to the lower cells of the building. As he’s pushed and pulled through dark hallways, Soobin has barely enough time to come up with a plan to fix what he’s ruined. Barely.

Your dream is almost the same as the one you envisioned months ago, the dark cavern welcoming you like an old friend. The fog of your transition from sleep to dreaming still pervades your senses. You barely have time to make out the details before Soobin has you wrapped in his arms, holding you so tightly that you feel the air knocked out of your lungs. “Thank God it worked.”

You sob immediately when you recognize Soobin’s voice and his arms around you. It’s like a magnet the way you gravitate to one another, not worrying if the dream will last a second or into eternity. You can barely remember the pain of being without him now that he’s in front of you.

You call his name as he kisses the crown of your hair. He backs you into the desk at the far end of the room, lifting you up by the legs to sit on its marble top. He trails his lips down until they meet your own, and he says so tenderly, “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there when you woke up.”

Breaking into a fit of sad laughter, you run your hands through the hair at the nape of his neck. “I’m just happy you’re here with me now.” You kiss him again and again, until your lips feel bruised and sore.

Soobin sheds a tear and looks back into the night outside of his office door. “I don’t have long. They’ll bring me back to my cell soon. But I wanted to tell you I love you. And I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

“W-Why are you being punished? You did what you were s-supposed to,” you stutter, a mournful knot building in your throat.

“I fell in love with a human when I shouldn’t have,” he answers, another tear welling in his eye. “But it was worth every rule I broke. How could I regret finding my best friend?” Soobin smiles despite the pain that you two share. 

You hiccup into his neck. “When will I see you again?”

“I-I don't know. But I’ll fix this,” he assures you, a steadfast determination in his expression.

“You don’t know that for sure, though,” you cry, heart ripping deeper at the seams with each word. 

“I don’t, but for now, know that I love you. I love you more than my existence allows.” He kisses you one more time as the edges of your dream blur. “It’s only for now, I promise.”

When you wake tangled in the comforter on your bed, the morning sky bleeding through your window, you begin the torture of waiting for the person you love most in the world to come back to you.

TWO MONTHS LATER

For the past seven Fridays since Soobin left, you’ve stayed in and waited for the phone to ring or the doorbell to sound, any way to signify that he hasn’t broken his promise. You don’t bother going into work, trying to find any excuse to stay in the house.

Beomgyu tries to get you out, go on dates, avoid the aching hole in your chest, but he doesn’t understand. None of your friends do. They think he’s left without an explanation like another random asshole would, but they don’t understand how wrong they are.

They’ll never understand you’re waiting for the one who took your heart between his hands and still holds it to this day, even if you can’t see him for now.

For now. The words play in your mind on a loop, the sound of Soobin’s voice as vivid as the day he said them between kisses in your dream. It’s only for now, I promise.

This Friday, you take his words to heart and decide to go out. You walk Key and Bori, the morning sun turning into an afternoon sky clear of clouds. The warmer weather signals winter is giving way to spring, although you can still feel the chill in your bones.

When you bring the dogs back home, you’re still too restless to stay inside, too many memories in the house haunting you with Soobin’s presence.

You walk around the town streets, the memories of those you love the most filling your heart with a solemn nostalgia that edges out the parts of you that are still miserable. You and Beomgyu learning to ride bikes around the animal shelter. Your parents treating you to your first scoop of mint chocolate ice cream after you won gold at your spelling contest. The kiss you shared with Soobin in your living room, and all the kisses that followed.

Each one contains longing for the past, yet offers some hope for making fresh memories in the same spots. And even locations you haven’t discovered yet.

By the second trip around the blocks you know too well, nighttime rears its head. The city lights mark the street names and numbers with a yellow glow, the heavens above pitch black.

Your legs are sluggish, ankles sore from continuing through the world around you without stopping for rest, but no physical excursion compared to the mental expedition you’ve been on today, a microcosm for all of your tangled emotions for the past two months.

 You almost give into the demands of your body when you hear the faintest sound of your name behind you. Turning on shaking limbs, you see the perfect contours and edges of the man you love in crystal clarity. His shoulders heave as his face remains wet with tears, his body on the verge of convulsing from the travel back to you.

Although every muscle strains and screams inside of you, you run towards him with all of your might and crash into his arms. The water on your cheeks mixes with his when your skin touches. He kisses each tear before he reaches your lips, his mouth tasting of salt and peppermint.

“I’m here. I’m here, my love.” He strokes your hair with his hand and runs the other across your back.

“I didn’t get to say I love you too, last time I saw you,” you say, the words tumbling over one another as you try getting them about. You’re crying and mumbling and it all feels incoherent, but you know every sound you emit is true.

Soobin chuckles, and you’re reminded how beautiful the sound of his laughter is. “You never had to say it back, my love. I already knew.”

Your heartbeat is erratic, but it doesn’t distract you from the fact Soobin’s heart seems to beat as well. A strong, even-tempered rhythm, one you’ve never heard before. You look him deep in the eyes, needing to hear the words on his lips. “Are you—“

His voice is still hoarse and tattered, but his smile is like the salve to all of your wounds. “I told you I would come back to you.”

You whimper, another tear escaping from your eyes. “You gave up everything for me? Your immortality, your friends, your—”

He presses a finger to your lips before running it over your cheek, his expression soft. “I completed my mission. And my everything is right here with me.”

You kiss his lips, all the I love you’s not enough to encapsulate every feeling and gift Soobin’s given you since he came into your life. You both may be on Earth, one old and one new human soul linked as one, but you know this is what it means to be higher than even the immensity of heaven.

@yvnempire @sjylouvre @mini-mews @jayparked @heesuncore @yoursjaeyun @sungbeams @jenoslutie @loserlvrss @pars-ley @lovetaroandtaemin @wonwovy @biteyoubiteme @jjunbug

𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 ౨ৎ˚₊

@kstrucknet @k-films @kvanity-main @lapydiaries @moadiarynet @sweetvenomnet @onedoornet @sayxonet @violetanet @svthub @whipped-kpop-creators

[theunholyvirginemilyprentiss]

In the case of Canon vs. Jemily, I submit to the court:

A GAY JEMILY ESSAY WITH SUPPORTING GIFs BECAUSE I’M UNHINGED —>

Holy SHIT, I did not realise just how SUS early seasons Jemily were?!? When I first watched the show in 2015 I was 12. I didn’t know I was gay yet and wasn’t watching the show through that lens. Rewatching now, the way JJ behaves around Emily and Will and the way she talks about homosexuality is INSANE, especially in episodes 3x16 and 3x17. Take a seat, I’mma break it down.

Will and JJ’s chemistry was pretty… flat. JJ barely seemed interested. Will himself said JJ had “one foot out the door of this relationship.”

Their interactions are SO uncomfortable. JJ refuses to tell her team about their relationship, and I noticed that when they meet again on the case in 3x16, JJ makes a point to look at Emily when she clarifies that their relationship is purely ‘professional.’

I mean come on, Emily seems to find Will more appealing than JJ:

JJ doesn’t even want him to touch her, it actually pisses her off even though, as Will points out, they’re at the crime scene of his murdered friend and he obviously isn’t going to use this moment to make a move.

This case is about gay victims, and JJ seems to relate to it so strongly. What really made me go ‘damn,’ is that right after JJ admits that she wants to break up with Will:

IMMEDIATELY after this conversation, JJ goes inside to talk to Hotch suddenly having an epiphany about the case, SPECIFICALLY how the victims felt. She says to Hotch, while on the verge of tears:

JJ: You said in the profile the UnSub was targeting gay males, possibly due to his struggles with his own sexuality, right?

HOTCH: Right.

JJ: Well, what if the reason Luvet let his guard down is because he could finally… be who he is? No judgements, no fear. *She zones out for a few seconds.* What if the UnSub is seeing a freedom in his victims that… he wishes he had himself?

COME ON. That is an INSANE epiphany to have 2 minutes after practically breaking up with your boyfriend.

But wait, I’m not done. Because we’ve all seen that GIF set a hundred times at the end of this episode where Emily says to JJ “you should go for him,” and then Emily IMMEDIATELY regrets it and walks off:

It’s almost like JJ needed Emily’s permission to be with Will. Like she was subconsciously holding out for Emily and her saying ‘you should go for him’ cemented in her head that her and Emily couldn’t happen. Working a case where the UnSub and the victims were being punished for being gay, it really feels like JJ eventually went with Will because she felt like she was supposed to, not because she was in love with him.

The excuse she gave to Will for why she didn’t want to reveal their relationship felt so weak as well, that ‘if people know then it becomes too real and people get hurt.’ Like, miss girl, that excuse is weaker than a nun’s piss, come on now.

In 3x17 one of the first scenes is in JJ’s office. She has chosen Emily to confide in about a stalking case, coming to her before anyone else on the team—weird, since Emily has only been on the team for a year, and Morgan literally specialises in obsessional crimes. Those two are together the whole episode, but it is the cliffhanger that was crazy.

The episode ends with Emily of course in JJ’s office, making sure she’s okay. JJ watches Emily leave her office sullenly, and then retreives a doctor’s note from her desk once she’s gone. She calls Will, and reveals she’s pregnant. And she does not seem all that happy about it. It gives the impression of this being the final nail in the coffin—she’s stuck in this relationship now, and she knows it. Emily has walked away, and she’s left with Will. I had to cut out a 10 second long longing stare from the GIF below because the file size was too big 💀

Upon rewatching, it really feels like JJ got cornered into this relationship with Will. Rewatch those two episodes and you’ll see what I mean. It’s just… so weird.

The defence rests.

[miaoua3]

hii ! could you do a jeonghan drabble where like hes cuddling reader and soothing her period cramps away ? also could u make it 600 words+ (if u can!!) becus i LOVE jeonghan fluff and i only can find those short ones ☹️ thank you !

hii! ofc i can do it, i just don’t know if i can make it 600+ words as that is quite long and i have 20+ requests in my inbox atm😭 still, i hope that you like it!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••

(pairing: bf! jeonghan x f! reader)

warning: mentions of cramps and blood

you twist your whole body until your face ends up buried inside your pillow, eyebrows furrowed as you try to brave for another wave of pain and cramps.

you really hated surprises, especially when it’s a surprise period that we are talking about. you weren’t supposed to get it for another few days, usually somewhat on time. to say that you were completely unprepared for this is an understatement.

the cramps are so bad this time, you can’t honestly remember the last time they were this bad. unfortunately for you, the medicine doesn’t seem to be kicking in for some reason, leave you at mercy of the strong pain in your tummy.

you hold onto your tummy strongly, pushing your hands into your skin as you moan and groan in pain. you peak with one eye at the bloody sheets that you only had the strength to peel them off and throw them onto the floor, mentally making a note to put them to wash later, once your cramps stop feeling as if you are getting stabbed.

it is at moments like this you wish your boyfriend had a more flexible job, just so you could call him and ask him to come home.

almost like a prayer getting answered, you hear the front door unlocking, opening and closing, before you hear hannie’s sweet voice calling for you.

“angel? are you there? i’m home!”

you groan as you weakly call out “in the bedroom”.

in the matter of seconds, hannie appears, his joyful mood immediately souring at your state, cooing in empathy.

“oh baby why didn’t you say anything? i would’ve been home much earlier had i known that you got your period.”, he slowly approaches you before he sits down beside you, pushing the messy and frizzy hair out of your face as he looks at you with sad eyes.

you close your eyes as another wave of pain and nausea hits you, before you answer him through gritted teeth “didn’t want to bother you…plus you are here earlier either way so..”

jeonghan frowns at your words for a second before he bends down to kiss your temple, softly mumbling against your warm skin “you are never a bother to me, baby. next time, whatever the case-if you need me, call me.”

from there on, you completely shut your brain off, because jeonghan takes over and does everything he can think of to help you relax. takes a shower with you where he makes sure that the water is hot enough that it burns his skin off but he ignores the pain because he can see that it helps you with your pain. changes the sheets and puts the bloody ones into the washing machine. boils the water for the hot water bottle for you to hold onto.

and lastly, he gets into bed with you, his strong chest pressed deeply into your back as he hugs you from behind.

it seems that the painkiller finally started to kick in, or maybe your boyfriend has a magic touch, because the moment he stuck his hand under your shirt and started to softly massage and rub your tummy, your cramps started to get better, finally allowing you to relax and enjoy your boyfriends presence.

you close your eyes as you enjoy the series of kisses jeonghan softly presses into the nape of your neck, his lips taking time as he presses them into your skin. although you can feel how they are a bit scratchy, probably due to him biting them from all the stress he had to endure during the day, you just ignore the feeling and just…let his presence calm yours down.

his big and strong hand on your tummy continues to rub slow circles on it, the warm water bottle completely abandoned by you in the name of feeling the warmth jeonghan provides to you. his other hand (the one you are laying on) is intertwined with one of yours, thumb rubbing soft circles on the back of your hand.

you two don’t speak, whatever show playing on your tv providing the only sounds within the four walls of your shared bedroom.

you feel yourself slowly drifting off to dreamland, but before you can fully succumb to the sweet dreams, jeonghan presses one soft kiss onto your cheek, waking you up immediately upon feeling the touch on your skin.

his tired yet soft voice gently asks you “feeling better, my angel?”

you only have it in yourself to nod and whisper a small ‘thank you’ before you feel your eyes slowly close again, all on their own.

as you drift away, almost pain free and completely comfortable in your lover’s embrace, you hear his voice softly say

“nothing to thank me for. anything for you, baby. anything for you.”

[chaosblast]

sorry if that's an insensitive question, but you're one of the zcp members that i know has been by kc's side for the longest so idk who to ask besides you, was kc always like this?

the incest fetish, i mean. i know sheilding bad people has always been something she did but for the incest, had she planned to fetishize it in her future works/was she already doing it in private or did it REALLY kick post covid (asking this because most leaked CC drawings and comics seem to be from 2020-2022 according to kittycorn's artstyle but she started sc in 2016 so idk)

kc was not always like this from what i know. and again as far as i know, secret canon was NEVER going to be public, she was strongly against publicizing those kinds of things and giving them a fandom. the public has no idea about this because it was kept so hush-hush, but in 2020 casey and i caused a bunch of proshippers to leave the crew. and yeah, that's the "we removed jay" kc liked to talk about, jay actually left on their own terms, because we found out one of them was and they left and a bunch of other people followed. kc reconnected with almost all of those people in secret, and began drawing incest sometime in 2021. it's anyone's guess what happened there, but probably not anything good, because in the big 2020 conversation kit was strongly an "anti". i wasn't told about secret canon until 2024.

and that 2020 incident is a huge reason people didn't like me, by the way. just thought that would be fun to mention. they had near zero issues with casey because they were of the opinion that i manipulated him into doing it? as if casey isn't his own person with thoughts and feelings. they were only mean to him because people treated him as just an accessory to me a LOT. it was messed up.

[zane-master-of-ice]

Hi Zane! This might be a bit of a personal question, but since I am autistic, I couldn't help but notice you displaying some symptoms yourself, like not understanding social rules (the text messages), being overly uncomfortable with Smalltalk in the restaurant, overstimulated by their kitchen and (forgive me for looking through your likes) incredibly passionate about birds.

Since you're a robot, I am admittedly not sure if you CAN be autistic, but since you're obviously something else entirely from, say, a floor cleaner or a coffee machine, meaning that you have a consciousness and all (which I am quite fascinated by!!) I don't think it is all that unlikely?

Er, anyway, I have debated asking this for some time now, and you can of course ignore this question if it makes you uncomfortable. I guess it would just be really incredible if one of the heroes of Ninjago was, in some way, like me.

OOC: Chuckling evilly like the dastardly fellow I am. Does this boy need another crisis? No. However, I believe it's funny. Give that nindroid another identity crisis!

thank you for the message. i have received several just like it since starting this blog, and for good reason.

i am... incredibly aware of all of this, and i had been strongly considering the possibility prior to discovering that i am a nindroid. that discovery made things much more confusing for me... the signs are there, and it would make a lot of sense, but as you said, is it even a possibility? i do not have a human brain, or even an organic one at that. it is all just programming, so how would i even go about getting something like this diagnosed? would it even make a difference if i did? there is also the possibility that it would make life harder for me. i already feel very alienated from other people, and i feel like this may only make that worse.

admittedly i am feeling very confused at the moment. any advice that you have would be greatly appreciated...

[butterflydm]

Rewatching 3x01 & 3x08 together (for fic purposes)

Spoilers for the whole season and some general spoilers for the books through, idk, I'll say Winter's Heart.

It really does feel like 3x01 set up some strong conflicts that were resolved in 3x08 -- Egwene's misgivings about Rand being about the madness as opposed to only about ~cheating~ comes across much more successfully if you only watch the first and last episodes of the season, lol.

I do personally feel like dragging Randgwene out for so long muddled the narrative that they were going for with them (from my own feelings and a sampling of what other people said -- some people picked up on them being mis-aligned but a lot of people basically attributed it all to Rand being A Bad Cheater Boyfriend, with Egwene essentially only being a passive victim instead of an active part of the relationship), because the themes that I've seen Rafe, Josha, and Maddy talk about in interviews (about Randgwene being about nostalgia and trying to keep in place a relationship that really doesn't exist anymore) feels like it comes across a lot more strongly without any of the intervening episodes between 3x01 and 3x08.

imo, 3x01 is also really the only episode where we get to see that Egwene is still ambitious, I think, and even then, it's only during her 3x01 Arches viewing (where mad!Rand tells her that she got 'what she always wanted' by becoming the Amyrlin, and so was potentially dismissed by viewers simply because it came out of Rand's mouth). And she never talks about it to anyone! It's all couched in her protecting Rand or being devoted to the Light (or protecting herself, once she realizes that there's an actual living person messing with her dreams). She never admits to any ambition in herself in s3, and she's never called out on it by anyone that the narrative tells us should be trusted on the matter (aka someone other than Rand).

What we needed was something like the scene with Elayne in early s2, where Elayne calls Egwene out on her jealousy of Nynaeve and it's obvious in Egwene's reaction that she hit on a sore spot and that Elayne is reading her accurately. Though, minor sidebar, now I kinda want to go back and see if Egwene ever admits to any faults, because it could be that that is supposed to be one of Egwene's flaws in the show -- we know from what was said in 1x07 that the pattern of the Randgwene pre-canon relationship was that if they had a fight, Rand (and only Rand) would apologize and that would 'fix' the fight, so Egwene never admitting to any faults or mistakes seems true for pre-canon Egwene; and when Randgwene 'resolve' their 1x07 fight, iirc Egwene never admits to there being any reason that Rand might doubt her devotion to Mat, a character who she has NEVER had a one-on-one conversation with on-screen and who she, in fact, did openly doubt when it came to his moral character. But it could be that I'm forgetting some lines that show!Egwene has had that would contradict this theory?

(I just went back and watched that Egwene & Elayne scene and Egwene never actually admits that Elayne was right and that she was feeling jealous; she straight-up denies it, in fact, just like she constantly denies in s3 that she's worried Rand might go mad -- it's just obvious in her reactions that what Elayne is saying is the truth. Plus it being about a friendship and not about a romance also helps un-cloud the issue, imo. As we also see in how Nynaeve gets more sympathy for wanting to 'save' Liandrin from the Shadow than Rand gets for wanting to 'save' Lanfear. So, yeah, that makes me lean towards 'this is an intentional flaw in Egwene's character' but I do feel like we needed something more in s3 to make that clear to viewers)

That is actually something that Mat could have potentially done if he'd gone into the Waste storyline the way that he does in the books -- been a contrast against/sounding board for Egwene. There's a bit of distance there, because he's one of Rand's best friends, but also a level of trust, because he's from the Two Rivers. I really do feel like we needed more of Egwene actually expressing her own feelings over the course of s3, because after 3x01, basically everything is other people telling Egwene how she feels while she either loudly denies it or looks off into the distance and says nothing. But according to the interviews, everyone else was right about Egwene's feelings and she was just in denial the whole time, but we never get anything validating that on-screen, imo. She just stays silent. So I really hope that we do get some conversations in s4 where Egwene expresses her own feelings instead of other people doing it for her.

Rewatching these two episodes so closely together also (as @markantonys recently talked about) really shows the contrast between the mad!Rand or the euphoric!Rand that we see in 3x01 vs the determined Rand that we see in 3x08, but we can also see that Egwene seems to feel like these are the same Rand, which means that she's not seeing him clearly. All that intervening space and the way that the Randfear relationship intersects with the relationship throughline makes it easier to go along with Egwene's viewpoint in 3x08, imo, and it's not as clear as it could be that she's not seeing the actual Rand who is standing in front of her but is instead seeing him through the lens of Arches!Rand who is screaming at her to bow to him. Everyone else is witnessing a prophecy coming to life, while Egwene is re-living one of her worst fears that she was forced to confront.

I feel like a conversation, or maybe more just showing us that Egwene is being affected by her visions, would have been good. Because it feels like Nynaeve's conversation about how deeply the Arches visions affects a person could be used to show that it's supposed to affecting Egwene too, even if she never talks about it but a) Elayne's visions aren't even shown on-screen and don't appear to have affected her at all and b) Nynaeve's talk sets up how her final vision in the Arches powers her own arc this season, so it's easy to mentally go "well, that's true for Nynaeve but it doesn't appear to be true for Elayne or Egwene".

So yeah, my general feeling is still that we either should have had Randgwene have their final relationship talk in 3x01 and had the rest of the season them resolving into a complex exes situation, or cut out some of the Liandrin backstory from 3x03 in order to put in some kind of Egwene scene where we can see how clearly she's seeing mad!Rand in the not-mad!Rand who is standing in front of her. Because it really feels like the way the narrative was played out disguises any issues that Egwene was bringing to the table in s3, and makes it look like the dissolution of their relationship was entirely Rand's fault. Especially since when Egwene talks about their 'relationship' to Elayne & Nynaeve, she says, "it's just as it was back home, like nothing's changed" while Rand says to Mat & Perrin, "we haven't really talked about [whether or not we're back in a relationship]" and we never get any kind of open and honest read from Egwene's perspective the entire season.

But, again, just watching 3x01 vs 3x08 does make the change in the relationship clear (even if Egwene still won't admit to Aviendha in 3x08 that they are no longer in a relationship! which is so wild to me!), and shows that Rand and Egwene have strongly conflicting points of view on how Rand needs to approach being the Dragon (especially now that Rand has fully embraced Moiraine's perspective, which contrasts sharply against Egwene's) and that this is, at this point in time, an irreconcilable difference in them that means that their relationship will never again be what it once was.

Egwene: "We could have kept you (Nynaeve) safe." vs Rand: "Safe's not possible anymore."

Egwene is trying to keep Rand 'safe' (from others? from himself?) all season but safety is not possible. But that might be what lies inside Egwene's refusal to commit to a break-up, even in 3x08? Because she believes that Rand 'needs' her in order to have the strength to pull himself back from the madness? idk she never talks about it! if that's the case, then maybe Rand not listening to her at the end of 3x08 means that she'll finally admit that they're not in a relationship anymore. We can only hope!

I do think that in the context of Egwene believing that she might need to 'stop' Rand, then her reaction to Aviendha asking if Rand ~deserves~ her strength is more interesting, because Rand's 'worthiness' is beside the point, if it's not about romance but instead potentially needing her strength to stop a 'mad!Rand' situation.

Rand absolutely is trying for a soft break-up in 3x01, though, with his assumption that Egwene is going to stay at the White Tower with Nynaeve and Mat, and she is not having any of it. And they're kinda stuck there until 3x06 though, again, it's wild that even in 3x08, Egwene will not verbally commit to no longer being in a relationship with Rand! (but Rand does, and it feels like the scene in 3x06 was clear enough to make the viewers feels that they're 'broken up enough' too, even if Egwene still won't say the words).

But by those same standards (was the 3x01 conflict resolved in 3x08?) -- it feels like Mat didn't go much of anywhere this season. He had some fan favorite scenes but the conflict that appears to be set up in his opening scenes -- not being able to help his friends because he's caught up in his own struggles -- remains the situation that he's in at the end of the season. Instead of being able to help Elayne or Nynaeve against the Black Ajah, he's caught up in his own struggles and taken out of the picture. He's struggling with memories in 3x01 and is now struggling with memories in the opposite direction in 3x08 (lost memories instead of new memories). He moved laterally but didn't actually resolve anything.

...that does line up with how Nynaeve's struggle with her block was essentially 'on hold' during s2 and then tee'd up to get knocked out in s3, so it could be that Mat was put on hold so that he can get the resolution to his current character struggle in s4 (fingers crossed for renewal, as always).

Taking Mat out of the Waste kinda feels like being put 'on hold' for Mat's own storyline but it has a MASSIVE impact on Rand's storyline.

Because everyone else who was already inclined to treat Rand like a person and also not be personally hurt by his relationship with Lanfear were already naturally leaving his plotline (Perrin, Elayne, and Nynaeve) so deliberately removing Mat -- who is the person who has been set up by the show to be the MOST sympathetic to Rand's concerns, as someone who a) has committed a similar 'crime' of abandonment that Rand did (1x06 Waygate abandonment vs 1x08 pretending to be dead), b) worried for weeks in s1 that he himself was the Dragon and was going mad, c) has already shown himself willing to support and uplift Rand (amateur therapy session in s2), d) has no reason to feel personally betrayed by Rand having feelings for Lanfear -- feeds into them wanting to play into Rand being more vulnerable to Lanfear when he's isolated.

And then that implies that bringing (some of) those people back into Rand's storyline in s4 would naturally/narratively give us a chance to get the other side of the story. Lanfear, the person who was trying to convince Rand that no one (but her) could genuinely care about him if they knew who he truly was, is now out of his life in a romantic way, and we are now free to bring back in the people who prove that she's wrong, because part of the point of s3 was to show us a Rand that would make the audience genuinely worry that he might pick Lanfear over the Light (but ultimately, I feel like the show would want to make it clear that Lanfear isn't actually correct and people are capable of loving and caring for all of who Rand is).

So it might have all been intentionally done to put us into Egwene's perspective to worry over Rand's mental state only to then bring in some characters in s4 who will be able to show us that part of that reaction was Egwene writing her own fears and worries onto Rand even though those fears aren't actually present (yet) in Rand's behavior.

It felt so significant to me that there was no Rand & Lanfear scene in the premiere and that really did play out throughout the season - Lanfear's primary dynamic this season, the one that mattered the most, was the one with Moiraine. Rand mentions Selene to Perrin and Mat -- that's the woman that he misses, the woman that he wanted. A woman who never existed. Moiraine is the one dealing with the woman who actually exists -- Lanfear. Just as it's Moiraine and Lan who deal with Lanfear in the season premiere, they are the ones who deal with her in the finale, while Rand has moved on from his ex and is dealing with things that matter more to him than holding on to a dead relationship with a cruel and manipulative woman.

The Randfear relationship is really well done on its own, but yeah I do feel like pulling the Randgwene relationship out so long kinda dilutes the power of what we see with Randfear, where Lanfear spends so long manipulating Rand and trying to convince him that no one but her can truly love him, only for Rand to go through the same realization that Lews Therin went through with her -- where she did something that accidentally revealed her cruelty and malice to him, and it make him realize the truth about her as a person. Because Egwene is mixed up in it, it gets dismissed as ~cheating~ instead of the abuse and manipulation of Rand that it is (otoh, it's entirely possible that even if Egwene weren't mixed up in it, it would still get dismissed the same way that the Mat-Tylin abusive dynamic is dismissed by some book!fans -- because some people genuinely believe that it's impossible for women to abuse men).

Randfear only have four (and a half, if you count Charn and Mierin) scenes together this season but each scene moves the story of their relationship's downfall forward in a powerful way -- we have the baseline of 3x02, which establishes that Lanfear is trying to tempt Rand and telling him that no one but her is capable of loving him because he's secretly just as awful as she is (peak abusive manipulation); we have 3x03, where Lanfear does her best to play on Rand's heartstrings and make him want to save her; we have 3x04, where Rand is given his hope that maybe Lanfear CAN be saved (and it's key that his hope comes from something that Lanfear herself had no way to manipulate); we have 3x05, where he momentarily gives in to temptation because he thinks there's a chance that 'Selene' really was a real version of Lanfear; and then we have 3x08, where Rand has learned who Lanfear really is and takes control of their relationship in order to finally end it. That is very economical and efficient storytelling! And the body language is all the Randfear scenes is just... excellently done. You can see the whole story just in the way they react to each other, without needing the words.

I will say, it feels very much like a warning sign that Moiraine and Lanfear agree that Rand's friends are 'holding him back' from 'the man that he must become' and then Rand comes around to agreeing with Moiraine (and, by extension, Lanfear) in the finale, and no longer objects to their methods (of hurting his friends to try to drive them away). Lanfear is maybe not the person that we should be agreeing with when it comes to how Rand's mental state should be handled.

That being said, the two parallel scenes of Rand and Moiraine's conversations in 3x01 vs 3x08 are very good -- we get them completely unable to connect and agree in 3x01, and when Moiraine crouches down to Rand's level, it feels like she's treating him like a child. While the 3x08 scene is both of them being willing to meet in the middle -- Moiraine admits she was wrong to try to force Rand to go to Tear, while otoh Rand has come fully to terms with the idea of embracing Moiraine's (unhealthy) policy of cutting himself off from his loved ones in order to embrace being the Dragon. And when Rand gets on her level in that second scene, it marks them seeing each other with vulnerability and mutual honesty, and they stand up together to fight their separate (yet linked) battles.

It cracks me up that Elayne gets kicked out of the ~serious conversation~ about the danger that Rand poses to the people he loves that Siuan wants to have with Egwene and Nynaeve... only to go talk to Rand and actually be the one person who has the greatest impact on him this entire season, by setting in motion his choice to go to the Aiel Waste and becoming the Car'a'carn to earn the Aiel as an army. Her advice here saves Rand's life (per what the Wise Ones told Moiraine in 3x03) and is key to him fulfilling the prophecies and the only people who know about it are her and Rand.

But that really does point out that Elayne gets left out of all of the "oh no, Rand is super-dangerous and is going to go mad" conversations that Egwene gets hammered with this season, so she's not bringing that with her everywhere she goes the way that Egwene is. But, yeah, this is another scene where Egwene has this instant denial and push-back against the idea that she might need to 'stop' Rand but apparently (from what was said in interviews and actually also the synopsis for the season that was put out) -- worrying about needing to 'stop' Rand was part of Egwene's struggle this season! I know I've mentioned it before but I really really feel like it needed some more attention and I feel like we could have sacrificed some of Liandrin's backstory in order to put a spotlight on this struggle of Egwene's.

Again, if you only watch 3x01 and 3x08 back to back, then I think that theme does come through successfully, but when you have all those intervening episodes, I feel like it gets kinda lost, especially since it's something that Egwene is never willing to admit out loud.

"Rand isn't used to having power. Command doesn't sit easily on his shoulders. But he will learn his duties and responsibilities to your people." Much like Elayne sets Rand's journey into motion, we see here that she has faith in his ability to become the Aiel's Car'a'carn. When Egwene is with Rand, she is always trying to see the boy that she once knew (the way that Lanfear is always trying to see Lews Therin? the way that Rand is trying to see Selene?), but Elayne sees the person that Rand actually is -- his challenges and his struggles included.

So I'm really hoping that we're going to see that when Elayne comes back into s4 and hopefully gets back into Rand's storyline relatively quickly -- Egwene will now be looking at Rand through the lens of mad!Rand from the Arches since she's decided he's not the boy that she used to know, while Elayne looks at him and sees the person that's really there.

Plus we see that Elayne is fully willing to wield dangerous power for the sake of the Light when she grabs the balefire rod from Jeaine and murders her with it without even the slightest bit of hesitation. So that's another place where it seems like she can understand the position that Rand is in.

There is also a very subtle and in-the-background Randlayne hug in the 3x01 goodbye scene. They definitely kept the Randlayne vibes low-key but present -- she's incredibly important to his story this season but not in a way that trips 'cheating' bells the way that his interactions with Lanfear did. The subtitles also say that Rand is telling Elayne "Thank you" here! It is VERY quiet though, because that's right when the music is kicking up. But I can hear it when I turn the sound up. So yeah, Elayne goes from saying goodbye to Aviendha right to saying goodbye to Rand.

(and the ta'veren boys goodbye hug is also very nice, even if I remain sad that pretty much all Cauthor got stripped out of one of the biggest Cauthor books in the series)

Aviendha's "My duty is to you, as yours is to your people." really does reinforce the point that Elayne made to Rand about how even if Aviendha is grumpy over Rand being the Car'a'carn, she does still stick by him. And that plays out in 3x08 as well, even though I do wish they'd actually gotten their own scene together, instead of Aviendha's single one-on-one conversation being with Egwene.

The White Tower scenes in 3x01 vs 3x08 go full-circle so hard and so painfully. That what Siuan tries to do to Liandrin here -- denounce her as a Darkfriend -- comes around on her in the end. Tried, stilled, interrogated, and executed. That was the plan for Liandrin, before her Black Ajah allies in the Hall came to rescue her. And, of course, Elaida made sure to send away Siuan's allies before moving forward with her coup.

So out of the Black Ajah that are revealed here, Liandrin is the only survivor that we see on-screen at the end of the season. We also get a foretaste of vengeful Leane here, who will see likely see in full force in s4, with that need for revenge turned against Elaida. Leane doesn't interact with Egwene in this episode, but she is there to witness Egwene repudiating Siuan's authority and leaving immediately after her Accepted Test (and so is Alviarin, who becomes Leane's counterpart at the end of the season).

We have the contrast of helpless!Nynaeve in 3x01 (because she's blocked) and then she gets unblocked in 3x08... but too late to do anything except save her own life. That's something that I've been turning over in my head. Nynaeve doesn't get to 'protect the kids'. She doesn't make it in time when Egwene needs to be saved in s2 and Egwene has to rescue herself; she isn't the one to heal Rand when he gets his dagger injury; she's not the one to save Mat's life in 3x08 even though she promises to help him in 3x01.

Maybe something about Nynaeve learning how to put on her own life vest before helping with anyone else's? I really am curious if Nynaeve is going to be able to help any of the kids in s4, now that her block is broken and she's no longer afraid of/hating her own power anymore.

[freaky-flawless]

Hot take: Rochelle should have been in Jinafire's place in Freaky Fusion.

[lazylittledragon]

ok someone please correct me if i'm wrong but am i weird for thinking those 'audiobooks don't count as reading' posts are ableist as fuck????

[la-principessa-nuova]

this is what i ended up doing btw

which lead to this exchange:

and then he didn’t respond for a bit, and then a little over an hour later:

and responding to this was the hardest text message i’ve ever sent, even though it only took me 12 minutes:

if only that was the end of the story…

because one bit of context that is missing in all of this is that leading up to coming out to my dad, I had come out to the rest of my family, and my older sister wasn’t in a position to provide emotional support, and my mom and younger sister were not handling it particularly well, and I remember one day laying in bed and bawling my eyes out while thinking about how alone I felt in it, and realizing how badly I felt like I needed the support of a parent on my side

And even though my dad has always been bigoted and had said a lot of strongly anti-trans things, there is a part of me that was holding out on the hope that he might be that, because he was the only unknown, and therefore the only chance I have left at a family member filling that role for me. and despite his views, his deepest moral true north is being there for family.

but at the same time, he has never been particularly good at connecting emotionally, so my hopes were not super strong. So when I saw this, yeah, really meant something, but also I’d always struggled with telling my family that I love them and that made it really hard to respond on top of the strong feelings.

then like 20 minutes later i was just saying how he was handling it surprisingly well to someone and then i get this:

which i didn’t respond to for a couple reasons. one of them was that the choice of wording with “always being strong” just triggered some feelings of being misgendered even though it probably wasn’t intentional, but I was even more sensitive to it then than I am now

but then as much as i appreciate him taking responsibility for the effect his drinking had on me, there is some awkwardness in associating it with me being trans like as if it fucked me up into being trans. but maybe he only meant it as in why i didn’t tell him sooner, which to be fair is probably at least in part related.

but also like it’s not the first time my dad suddenly apologized with a long text at night and saying he was done drinking (although usually not referring to already being a few months in), and I know how those have gone before when I have engaged with them.

then i didn’t say anything for a few days because I was busy with other things, and the a few days later he sends me this:

And this part is where the difficult part of his reaction really began. because it’s really hard to respond to this in a way that doesn’t just escalate into arguing, because he is acting like it’s so unreasonable that I would have assumed that he might have a bad response to me being trans and that I would have kept this from him for so long, but he was saying horrible things about trans people on at least a weekly basis, and probably much more often recently had I been around to hear more.

Like to pick one of the worse examples, he has said that all trans people should be lined up and shot. And he has come home throwing a temper tantrum because he was so offended that he saw a trans woman at Jo-ann Fabrics.

Perhaps then it’s reasonable that I had gotten a bit more distant as I got the means to no longer live in that house.

and of course, following up the message with a photo of the two of us when I was little is just so hurtful because I don’t know how I’m supposed to read that other than look how happy we were when you played the part of a boy properly. and it might sound like I’m overly reading into it, but based on what my parents have said since then this seems like what their intention would’ve been, but it comes across to me like he’s trying to remind me what I‘m “really” like and how much happier I was as a boy, with a hint of “please don’t take my son from me”.

So it took me a day to respond, and in the meantime I must have talked to my mom and she mentioned that he was upset about the last name change, which I had completely forgot about at this point.

I responded with a very long text that I would like to include but it’s just so much so i’ll summarize it, but if you want to read the whole thing:

but basically, I went into how why i hadn’t been visiting as much and how AuDHD makes that more difficult, and how hearing him say awful things about trans people hurt so much, and how associations with some family trauma ruined the last name for me, as well as the practical reasons I had started using it as a last name that lead to me getting used to the new last name.

my dad responded a reasonable amount of time later for the length of the message and his reading ability not being great, with a positive and supportive response

then the next day just as i was wrapping up my therapy session and saying how well it was going…

as you can see in that screenshot, it was almost a week before i was able to say anything to him after that and I never responded to it directly. but yeah, not just the horrible phrasing and overreaching but also just the thing about researching it and people being depressed as if there isn’t empirical research showing the opposite effect. yeah… i did not respond and i feel justified in that

I probably did see him in person at some point that week, but I’m pretty sure I would have said the bare minimum, and I definitely did not address that

funny thing is, I made the decision that if my parents ask me about it at this point that I will pretend that I’ve already had bottom surgery and see how long I could get away with them believing that, but it hasn’t really come up in a way where I could try to pull that off, haha

well, i guess this is going to be an interesting weekend

fuckin yolo i guess

[arttsuka]

Based on somewhat real events

I spent way too much time drawing this...

But yeah, Ford finally saying thank you

A continuation (kinda)

[cravesunconditionallove]

Forgive my rant here, I can get wordy when I'm passionate about a topic :)

[Mild TW here for mentions of institutional abuse and explanations of brainwashing and trauma bonding.]

People talk a lot about trauma bonds and Stockholm Syndrome (which are one in the same), but I'm not sure I've ever seen a truly accurate representation—I talk as a survivor of brainwashing/coercive control and other various flavors of physical/psychological/emotional abuse in an institutional setting, for a year and a half. I became attached to my abuser(s).

Trauma bonding often thrives in situations where you're already isolated, emotionally fragile, and looking for guidance or care. Trauma bonds mimic attachment bonds, but are built on fear, shame, and intermittent positive reinforcement. They can feel as strong or even stronger than healthy bonds because of the emotional extremes involved.

At least in my experience:

You get attached to the people who hurt you, ESPECIALLY if they drop bits of validation or love here and there between the abuse and erosion of your self-confidence and attacks on your self-concept. It's like a lifeline; it's fully intentional. You begin to crave their care, maybe even their abuse, like a drug. Sometimes, you devolve into thinking, "any attention is good attention."

The small crumbs of approval or recognition can feel intensely rewarding in contexts where rejection, humiliation, or criticism is the norm. Their unpredictability keeps you tethered to them, always on your toes, hoping for positive reinforcement.

This is especially strengthened if the person is an authority figure (like my abuser was), in contexts where their approval is quite literally necessary, where you're literally dependent on them for everything—of course you'd want to do anything to make them like you.

You begin to believe them—you DO deserve the pain. You're fundamentally flawed, you're the one in the wrong. You also think that if you could just placate them, they'd stop being so bad to you. If you could just try harder, do it right, finally be what they want, it would be better. You'd do anything to get on their good side. You need it.

It's far from rational, but you have to understand, the brain does a lot of seemingly strange things to cope with traumatic environments. When your brain views the trauma as an existential threat, and you have to choose between staying sane and your identity? Well, there goes your identity.

I can't put a finger on why exactly I wanted my abuser's approval so bad, it was never a single, distinct, or tangible reason. It was and still is very confusing to me. I didn't consciously try to think this way—I just so strongly felt if I could just finally do what she wanted, be the obedient little thing she tried so hard to mold me into (and succeeded), she'd leave me alone (she did not). I started to wish to be punished by her, because if I got punished, in a twisted way it would garner her approval.

Something I also didn't consciously do—but realized later on—is that I put a lot of her into my interrogator character, their similarities are likely due to the fact that Bella's story is basically a bunch of my trauma responses in a trench coat.

My abuser was as evil as one can get without her physically harming another human being. Everything about her just screamed "wrong." Her smiles were predatory, calculated, fake. If you'd sharpened her teeth, it would have fit her character. I half thought that one day she was going to start seeping black ooze, as if her awfulness could reach a point where it breached containment. She was creepy, a sadist, someone who made it her goal to make me miserable. She enjoyed seeing me scared, hurt, begging. She was always so eerily calm, because she had to poise herself as the rational one. Because she was a therapist, she knew well how to weaponize her knowledge to break me. I trusted her, I was fifteen and still naive. Adults know best, right?

She used that trust against me.

It makes me sad to think about it, sometimes. I was not her first victim, nor was I her last. It's been a a good chunk of time since this all originally happened, and I can talk about it now and still feel okay. However, I'm still undoing the damage done, and will be for years to come.

Anyways, I hope this adds a bit of context to the topic of brainwashing/Stockholm Syndrome.

Whumpees do not love their whumpers, they've just developed Stockholm syndrome!

[danwhobrowses]

I'm not sure how much good this vent will do, I'm not even sure I want to post this vent after my last one, but I'm writing it just so it's out of my head and into words because it seems once again fandom has chosen to send vitriol Ashton Greymoore's way.

What for? They talked to a 'specter' of the primordial titan within them, through their connection to the earth, the natural flow of creation and destruction. They ask what will happen to the world, it responds that it'll endure, they ask what of the people, it responds that the strong will survive and the weak will be remade into something stronger, to which Ashton replies they think they understand. To fandom this means that Ashton is becoming a fascist, that they have a 'Make Exandria Great Again' attitude for wanting the Primordials back, that they need to be beaten up or 'get what's coming to them' in order to change their mind, and I can only sit here and stew and wonder if this hate is really well-founded? Ashton is among my favourite characters in C3, I get frustrated by them at times too but if I think about it a big percentage of my frustrations is more towards people disliking them than me disliking things they do, or Matt setting up scenarios that doesn't do them any favours towards the fandom that hates them. Some of these are knee-jerk reactions of course, but for others it does feel like they have it out for Ashton, and I don't wanna engage with that, which makes it quite lonely when most of the fandom hones in on it.

For the most part I can understand how the whole 'the weak will be remade' bit can be taken badly; it's definitely iffy, but every other plan we have is also very iffy. The Release Predathos option literally involves unleashing an entity that wants to genocide the gods, the Maintain Status Quo option ('option' the status quo imo is impossible, in my mind the Gods can stay but the dynamic will still have to change) maintains a relationship where the gods pick and choose who they feel deserves help, using their power to covet more power, strongarm and demand loyalty, and overall choose fellow gods over mortals when the chips are down and not owning up to it. We should also remember that entities can speak in riddles, 'remade into something stronger' doesn't necessarily mean death; it could mean to adapt and grow, to become strong enough to bear and overcome it as many of the PCs of Critical Role have done with their hardships and trauma. It's worth reminding that the sad truth is that people will die whatever outcome happens - the aim is always to lessen the amount but if the Gods leave it's a power vacuum, if we linger too long it's a Calamity, and if the Gods stay it's a holy war on a more wild and less organized scale - and that Ashton isn't saying they approve of such death, merely that they think they understand. The commune doesn't tell Ashton which way to go; it only tells them that the world will endure, there will be change and it will change people, trees will still grow, the wind will still blow, the waves will still flow along the coasts of the sea, and people will survive. I know the interpretation can differ from people thanks to Matt's patented vague or riddle-mounted choices in phrase, but I also think if it was the Wildmother who told Orym or some other follower that 'nature is a cycle, everything must adapt to change or else it'll die - this world will change, but it will also survive' nobody would be calling Orym a fascist, people would accept it because the Wildmother's domain is nature, and nature is not always kind.

While we're mentioning Orym - and because this is gonna come off as critical I must preface that I like and enjoy All of the Hells, that's not changed - I also gotta call it out here because it does very much feel like the people who hate Ashton hate them for the reasons they love Orym. Both are stubborn, they're diligent in their personal code, they care deeply for their friends and would give their whole being just to keep them safe, they believe in the Hells' power and greatness more than each member does and more than they believe in their own, but Ashton gets the hate mainly because these fans agree more with Orym on the god stuff. What confuses me though is how these same haters can despise Ashton for being consistent but love Braius, the literal Devil Worshipper who secretly is on board with the Chase Away plan only so he can help the Devil rule the world, the compulsive liar. Where's Braius' scrutiny? A world under Asmodeus will be a far worse 'survival of the fittest' scenario, why does Braius get a pass in all this stuff huh? Because he's funny? Seems people ignore the whole morality talk when they're discussing Braius' dedication to Exandrian Satan.

I find it irksome too that even the group seem to criticize Ashton reaching out to Primordials too - as if that wasn't what we wanted them and Fearne to do anyway. They don't dislike the gods simply because they're a 'great entity', it's because they're a great entity that holds power and doesn't use it equally or fairly; they pick and choose who to help, a lot of the time in Ashton's experience for their own self-service, but they won't prioritize mortals over another god no matter who cruel or heinous the god is being, and the following of these gods are so intertwined with politics that most religious motivation also ends up being political. Ashton has no connection to the gods, they reached out and got nothing, an Angel looked at them and made them feel like nothing, but they do have a connection to the Primordials; from the Earth Golem to the Titan Empress they're literally a vessel of, they experienced something significant in their connection to the Earth, so I don't like how that they're almost mocked for having it. In addition, Ashton's behaviour during this commune differs because of that connection, but also because the titans are a natural flow; they don't demand or test or politic or prejudice, and despite being a Great Entity in its own right it never made sure Ashton felt small for their own satisfaction, they asked a question and got an answer, it's the same reason Ashton has disdain for most political leaders but likes and respects Keyleth, Allura, Kima, Pike, and (eventually) Percy despite also being people in power. To call on Orym and the Wildmother as an example again; Orym's an Air Ashari, the Ashari are guardians of the Elemental Planes - made from the Primordials - not tied to a god, but nobody criticizes his connection to the Wildmother despite both not being a follower and his culture being more tethered to Primordials and their descendants. I'm not saying it's all correct for Ashton to want things to go back to how Primordials ruled, but we must remind ourselves also that we only know a story written by victors when it comes to the Schism - a story which could very easily have been altered and edited to make it feel more justified for the Primes and mortals to actively genocide all the Primordials, the native species and creators of this world, and desecrate their remains to make weapons, soul anchors, and cities - the specter didn't say 'fuck em, all mortals should die' after all, if they believe mortals would survive then they must be at the least tolerant of mortal existence. Why is it okay for god followers to say they wanna keep the world with the gods they have a connection to (and I'm not saying they aren't) but Ashton is out of line for wanting to have a world which has something active that they also have a connection to? It seems rather unfair to allow one side to have and the other to have not, picking and choosing because our audience's bias has spent more time with the gods, Ashton wanting something they can connect to doesn't feel all wrong either, the Eidolons still exist with faint worship hiding away so they're not smited by the gods, why can't faith exist so they're not in hiding? I sincerely doubt the Punk Rock that is Ashton is asking for the Primordials to fill the Gods' roles the same way the Gods have been running things either, they want to break the throne remember? There needs to be a balance in ideals and practice of course, and in an ideal world there could even be a more fluid and all-inclusive Exandria where gods and Eidolons live harmoniously with mortals without hierarchy and class systems, I think Ashton could happily live with something like that, they did say the world needs 'a little chaos' to call back to Matt hinting that the current world doesn't have enough.

Which leads us to those wishing violence upon Ashton - and I really don't like that. People who say 'hitting them over the head is the only language they understand' seem to misinterpret Ashton as if everyone around them have been on their hands and knees begging Ashton to reconsider and them ignoring valid points and pulling a Leroy Jenkins. In reality, nobody is actually talking to Ashton about it, a lot of the frustration with Bells Hells right now is that they aren't talking to each other, even about the end goal! Ashton has valid reasons for their thinking, so being violent isn't gonna change their mind; undermining, dehumanizing and trying to effectively bully anyone let alone someone with chronic pain and low self worth will never truly convince them to your way of thinking. All people understand the language of violence, but that language is not used justly, those who truly wish violence upon Ashton don't want it in hopes it'll force Ashton to change their mind, they want it for their own satisfaction of seeing them in pain; so they can further push them away from the rest of the group and go 'that guy's not one of us', make it so the people Ashton calls family after a lifetime of loneliness, confusion and abandonment - the people they promised they won't abandon, and have kept true on that promise even at their lowest - make them feel small and worthless, and force them into box where they can't be themselves, and I hate that people would want to treat them that way. Ashton IS capable of listening; they've stepped back and trusted the other Hells to do their own thing even when it's ridiculous like staging a play where they pretend to be Ludinus to trick Unseelie emissaries into thinking that he attacked them, they listened to the gods even when they didn't have to like they promised they would and despite it being very personal they held themselves back for the benefit of the group, and if the group talked to them calmly where they were all allowed to healthily discuss the pros and cons, the ideals and compromises, and the risk and reward of all plans that have been proposed then they would listen, and they would try - you don't need to slice bread with a broadsword.

Will Ashton 'get what's coming to them'? Maybe, but what is that exactly? We only assume to know the full vision of what Ashton wants to act on. All of Bells Hells are gonna face the consequences of the choice they make on Ruidus - when they finally make one that is - in and out of the world they live in, so won't that apply to everyone? So what for Ashton? do people want Fractures 2.0? Does everything Ashton wants in life have to blow up violently in their face? Family, Closure, their best friend's safety, why does 'what's coming to them' have to be something aggressive and harmful? People change through positive reinforcement and good experiences too! Caduceus Clay would remind you that it's love that makes people. Don't mistake this rant as me wanting Ashton to be exactly as they are now, I too want to see growth from Ashton and we ARE seeing it happen; I see it in small instances where they think twice about rash actions and try not to fly off the handle, when they sit just to listen or understand or to defuse tension, and that when they're going somewhere or doing something they let the group know in advance, those who think Ashton hasn't changed since ep. 1 aren't paying close attention, but that doesn't mean that they don't still have more ground to cover. I believe that Ashton grows the most through kindness; when they're treated like a person and not a blunt instrument or a nuisance, and I hope what's 'coming' for Ashton isn't rejection, bitterness, and isolation, but acceptance, empathy, and for someone - if you know me you'd know who I'd want it to be - to convince them that they are worthy of living, that they're special not because of their powers or blood or because they have died and been put back together again (honestly, it does irk me a little that both Keyleth and Imogen chose that for titles and to brag to the Matron, I know it isn't intended this way but sometimes it feels like saying 'your best defining quality is that you've died a lot') but because while they have every reason to hate everything they still chose to be kind to those who deserve kindness, they have a good heart and they mean well. Are they perfect? No! They're in their 20s very few people irl have their lives together at even twice that age, but I want them to have good things in their life; things that help them feel happy and safe and like they can still feel comfortable in their own skin without having to appear more 'palatable' for people who've already decided that they don't like them. I want them to know that they've always deserved to live and they still deserve it now, I want that not just for Ashton but for all the Hells, and hopefully they'll all live to have it.

And most of all I want the people who hate them to be wrong about Ashton Greymoore, and I want Taliesin to prove them wrong.

[loosethreadsofyoursoul]

you know what no. this scene actually flabbergasts me

by which i mean it’s absolutely fucking adorable and i watched it about 5 times over before i had the brain capacity to move on but like. i’m literally throwing my arms up in exasperation because we know this bit. we’ve seen it in all its forms. we’ve seen it as a plot device with hetero couples and we’ve seen it as a joke when it’s between two guys. and we know that when it’s like this, where it’s not the butt of a joke, it’s where one half of the “we’re just really good friends” situationship starts to realize they have romantic feelings for the other person. that is the purpose of this bit when only one of them is in earshot of the comment and they don’t immediately laugh it off. that’s what it’s designed for and what it’s used for in romantic plots!!! and here they are, using it for buck and eddie, as though that’s not gonna make the audience’s romantic alarm bells start blaring. like. objectively, this is the part of the narrative where buck realizes he’s in love with eddie. that’s what that means. and it’s driving me insane bc i know that they do nothing with it

[palamedespoetry]

trojan war where everything is the same but paris is a femme lesbian

[darcyolsson]

i think tiktok is maybe the worst place for beauty advice in the entirety of human history BUT there's this one woman who shows celebs with their natural hair colour in an effort to convince the world that you will always look better with your own natural hair and it's actually working. there's this filter going around that shows you with a bunch of different hair colours and so often the comments are all "you look so much better with brown hair, your natural colour always looks best!!" and i know tiktok specifically curates echo chambers but still, seeing these random girls be influenced away from their blonde highlights is so healing to me

[sergle]

Worth mentioning that I'm partially switching doctors bc when I was running all over the place trying to get my surgery shit set up in time, and I went to the bloodwork lab for the second time, I vented just a little bit to the woman who's been working there a long time. being like. I've had to do this and that and my doctor said this and that he can't find this... and she was like Hmm. You have Dr. (name of my doctor), don't you?