#i finally got the second story done whew

[mannatea]

when you're writing someone else's blorbos it's always a weird and unnerving feeling to wonder if you're doing them justice.

[writingstoraes]

hello! for the ig imagine, can i request charles with a medical student reader? maybe she's in her final year before residency and even though charles has no clue about medic he still tries to help her with studying. thank you!

patient 🩺

pairing: charles leclerc/fem!medstudent!reader

type: instagram imagine, social media au

notes: whew being a pre med student ngl this fueled my delusions a lil (jk) anyway i hope u like this, anon 🤍 thank you so much for requesting! i also tried to stick with ig posts since its been so long since i did one thats mostly ig posts hehe

about: supportive charles and his future doctor of a girlfriend!

yourusername

liked by charles_leclerc, isahernaez, franciscagomes, and 21,991 others

yourusername officially on my last hospital duty before graduation! can't believe i have spent 4 tiring yet meaningful years of medical school, still feels unreal. couldn't have done it without the love and support of the people i hold dear to me 🤍

charles_leclerc So proud of you, amoùr 😘 Je n'ai jamais douté de toi. I never doubted you

yourusername thanks for being my first patient, baby <3

pascale_leclerc Congratulations, dear! We miss you!

carlossainz55 The group finally has a doctor! That means unlimited recklessness 😎

pierregasly Remember how we always wanted to try riding a bike on the roof

yourusername

liked by pierregasly, arthurleclerc, carlossainz55, and 50,223 others

yourusername a seperate appreciation post for the love of my life — who's witnessed all my lowest lows and highest highs. despite his own busy schedule, he still managed to fetch me from uni/hospital, prepare breakfast for me, and even help me study.

i guess i owe you a ton for all the cancelled dates and postponed plans, charles_leclerc? 💋

ps. the second picture is charles asleep on my shoulder after he helped me study three subjects for a major exam that went on for HOURS. i think i underestimated just how much he loves me :)

carlosluvr GOD i need me a charles right now its bad enough my pre med is killing me

hamiltonmerc Charles out here setting standards ridiculously high there really is just one of him huh 🤨

charles_leclerc Would do anything for you and you know that ❤️ (Honestly got to a point where I memorized some of what you were studying)

carlossainz55 Woah there Mr. Doctor?

charles_leclerc I think I can give you an injection now, mate 😄

carlossainz55 No thanks I still love my life

charles_leclerc

liked by danielricciardo, maxverstappen, arthurleclerc and 1,445,211 others

charles_leclerc So incredibly lucky to be with someone as intelligent and hardworking as you. I promise to be with you every step of the way in full support and ready to shower you with love ❤️

Kinda afraid of needles but if you need to practice, I'm always available. Wake me up when you need someone to quiz you or make you coffee. I love you even when you're frustrated when you're practicing your sutures.

tagged: yourusername

charlossf23 You're telling me Y/N has Charles and all I got from medical school was anxiety

yourusername still need you when i study for the boards

charles_leclerc Working on the flashcards already, chèrie 😘

supermaxmax THE FLASHCARDS ARE SO REAL

pierregasly Carlos and I are on the roof tell Y/N to bring her medical supplies

yourusername please get down from there

charles_leclerc added to his instagram story!

-------

tagging: @slytherheign

notes: god pre med is hard wish i had someone like charles 😔 i hope you liked this, anon! thank you so much for reading 🤍

[fangirllena]

my summer Paris Olympics favs

the summer Olympics is coming to a close. and it's been a very eventful Olympics. ahh, like..it was too much going on.

it's a lot of sports happening at the same time, and a lot to keep up with.

some of my favs are the swimming, gymnastics, track & field, basketball, rowing, cycling, volleyball.

Let's talk about Katie Ledecky!!! The most decorated woman in U.S. Olympic history! WOWWWW She won 4 medals in Paris - for a total of 14. I think she broke the record for the 1500-meter freestyle. Go Katie! She's just incredible to watch.

Simone Biles - the most decorated gymnast of all time! Incredible!!! 11 Olympic medals - 7 gold medals. She won 3 gold medals in Paris and a silver. So happy for Simone. Especially after the Tokyo Olympics where she dropped out because of "the twisties". I was on pins and needles watching her on the vault. She did it and won gold! what a comeback journey for her.

Suni Lee! We have to talk about Suni. What a story. I know her family is in tears. She overcame kidney disease to compete again. She's a fighter. Suni won gold for the team event. Bronze for the all-around event, and bronze for the uneven bars. She is so good at uneven bars. I think she'll win gold next Olympics. She's just incredible to watch. Everyone was so glad to see her compete and win 3 medals. After all she's been through. What a journey.

Noah Lyles and Sha'Carri Richardson both took home a gold medal. But- it wasn't what I had in mind. Noah won the gold by five THOUSANDTHS of a second in the 100m race. What an insane finish. he was a able to get a lean in over the line. holy moly. are you kidding me- this was a wild finish. Probably one of the most talked about events in the Paris Olympics. He raced in the 200m(which is his best race) and won Bronze----with covid. yes, covid! smh he had to be carried off the track after the race. Are you kidding me?

Sha'Carri did not win the gold in the 100m. I could not believe it! ughhh but she got the silver medal. But her run in the 4x100 relay was one to remember. She took the last leg and ran past everyone to bring the gold home. She did it!!! Won gold in the 4x100 relay. This is just the beginning for Sha'Carri. She's going to be back the next Olympics for the gold in the 100 meters.

BUT Gabby Thomas did it for me. 3 GOLD Medals in Paris. WOW, I'm so happy for her. I'm a big fan of her. So proud of what she did in Paris. 200-meter, 4x100 relay, 4x400 relay. yayyyy

History was made in the men's rowing. I was screaming, goooooo, come on y'all got this. really take some strength to row through all that water. i'm still amazed at that. Gold medal - for the U.S. men four rowing team. first U.S. men's four rowing team to win Olympic gold since 1960. way to go. This was one of the first events I watched. woohoo. they really set the tone for #teamUSA

OK- before this gets too long and no one will read all this, LOL, lets talk about team USA in Basketball.

It was USA vs France for the finals in both men and women teams. And it was soooo close in the women's game. The final score: 67-66. A'ja Wilson was the Olympic MVP. Whew- this was a close one. omg too close. they had us all partly covering our eyes. hahaha. France was not playing around, Gabby Williams was phenomenal. 19 points as she carried France all the way till the last buzzer. But team USA got it done.

Diana Taurasi earned her 6th gold medal - the only Olympic basketball player with 6 gold medals. another incredible stat. Could you imagine winning the most golds as an Olympic basketball player? It's a team sport, with the best of the best. This is pretty special.

A'ja Wilson had a double double with 21 PTS, 13 REB, 4 BLK She also won the MVP award. This doesn't surprise me. A'ja is an amazing player! I knew she wouldn't disappoint. I'm not sure if she ever has any bad games. LOL

Team USA men basketball team. They defeated France 98-87 GOLD - they beat France. Steph Curry - that's it!

LeBron James won the MVP award. LeBron was amazing the entire Olympics. I just can't believe the numbers LeBron is still putting up in his career. Just wow. So is LeBron really the goat? Over Jordan? smh---this is a debate for another time. ahhh

But Step Curry's "night night" is one to remember. The dagger. He is just incredible. The basket he made over Wemby is insane. Do y'all know how tall Wemby is??? Sheeshhh

Steph is just on another level. He is. He is one of the greatest PG's in the league - in the world. Maybe the greatest PG. whew. Y'all think GSW will win another championship without Klay Thompson?

Final notes: Congrats to team USA women's volleyball- they won silver vs Italy. the men won bronze.

Congrats to Kristen Faulkner for winning gold in the women's road race. This was after her making the team as a REPLACEMENT. Woahhh. This makes the win all the better. She is the first American cyclist in 40 years to win a medal in the event. woohoo - go Krsiten! This is so cool.

This Olympics is one for the books! So many other amazing stories to be told. Records being broke, the unfavored winning. Ahhh- love it all. Feel like it's going to be so boring on the internet now that the Olympics is coming to a close.

Let me know what you think about this Olympics. Did you watch? What were your favorite moments?

ttyl

[mysteryshoptls]

SR Ruggie Bucchi Lab Coat Personal Story: Part 2

"I went through a ton!"

(Part 1) Part 2

[Heartslabyul Dorm – Rose Maze]

Ruggie: Eh… What's going on. I know ya said you had somewhere ya wanted to swing by, but…

Trey: As you can see, all of Heartslabyul are painting the white roses red.

Trey: The paint I bought at the Mystery Shop a bit ago is for the first years who still haven't gotten the hang of color-changing magic.

Ruggie: I get it. So the reason why all the detergent was sold out was to wash all the clothes that got paint on 'em.

Trey: That's right. You're pretty perceptive.

Ruggie: Thanks… So, why're you shoving paint into my arms with that grin plastered on your face like that?

Trey: If you want the detergent, you can help us paint the roses too. Oh, but you're a second year, so maybe you've already mastered color-changing magic?

Ruggie: Wait, wait, wait, you said you'd give me the detergent. You didn't say nothin' 'bout a trade.

Trey: Well, you didn't ask, did you?

Ruggie: Don't try to play me, lookin' all cool like that!

Ruggie: Dammit～ So this was your plan all along…! I don't wanna help with somethin' as pointless as this!

Trey: I see. Then, sorry, I can't give you any detergent.

Ruggie: Ehhh～～～!?

Trey: I don't really care either, way, so… What will you do?

Ruggie: Tch. I don't wanna come all this way and go back empty-handed. Fine, I'll do it, 'kay?

Ruggie: I just gotta turn all the white roses red with magic, yeah?

Trey: Yeah. Not pink, not green, not aquamarine, but red, please.

Ruggie: Is that supposed to be from somethin'? Stop blabberin' and let's just get this over with!

Ruggie: Everything should be painted red now, right? Whew, it's finally over…

Trey: Good work. Thanks for helping out.

Ruggie: Only cause I was forced, yeah? Hurry and give me the detergent already.

Trey: Okay, okay. I'll go get it.

[Savanaclaw Dorm]

Ruggie: Woowee～ The sun's so nice～

Ruggie: Today's the best kinda weather for laundry. If I hadn't run out of detergent, I woulda done my lab coat, too.

Ruggie: 'Kay, gotta hang 'em up to dry. First up… Here's Leona-san's PE uniform.

Ruggie: Man, it's so huge～ Guess when you're raised on different food, ya grow bigger, huh?

Ruggie: Jack-kun eats a ton, too…

Ruggie: I wish I could grow a bit taller too, but I bet the bigger I grow, the more I'd hafta spend on food～

Leona: Huh, you're still doing laundry?

Ruggie: Gyaa!? Y-You surprised me～! Can ya not just show up outta nowhere?!

Ruggie: What're ya doin' here, anyway? What 'bout your afternoon nap?

Leona: It's nice out, so I'm gonna sleep here.

Ruggie: If the weather's so nice that even the lazy Leona-san decided to come outside, then I'm sure the laundry'll dry fast enough.

Ruggie: 'N I bet these clothes'll feel super nice once they're cleaned. 'Specially 'cause I went through a ton to get today's laundry one!

Leona: Uh-huh. Yaaawn～～

Ruggie: Ah, wait! One thing before you sleep!

Ruggie: We're out of detergent. I'll go buy some later, so please give me some money.

Leona: Hah…? Detergent…?

Ruggie: Yeah, detergent. Can't do laundry for free, y'know.

Leona: Sigh, fine… Here's my wallet.

Ruggie: Ack, don't just toss it at me all a sudden!

Leona: There's some money in there, so just take whatever. You can keep the change.

Ruggie: Okaaay… Hey, wait, there' just large bills in here. You sure I can keep the change?

Leona: Ugh, you're so picky… Don't make me repeat myself.

Leona: Anyway, I'm going to sleep. Yaaaawn…

Leona: Zzz… Zzz…

Ruggie: Ehhh～ Maybe I'm too picky, but aren't you a little too lax?

Ruggie: Maybe he hasn't realized that the change I'd get back is way more than the cost of the detergent?

Ruggie: How nice it must be to not know the cost of things.

Ruggie: …Well, he said I could have it, so whatever. I'll gladly take it.

(Part 1) Part 2

[livelovesimallways]

"Prayed Up....." 🎵

(Previous)

(Previous following Dana's story)

Moses and I finally arrived home a couple of days ago after an amazing honeymoon. We spent nearly three months traveling, relaxing and enjoying the best parts of what make us...us. After taking some time for ourselves, letting our friends and family know we were back became top priority. While I reached out on my end, Moses was reluctant to do the same. He says he wants to, "protect his peace", which leads me to believe something serious is going on. Although I fully understand where he is coming from, avoiding things never helps. I just hope that, "protecting his peace", doesn't make a situation worse or leave people in the dark.

Later on that day.....

"So hold on...Let me get this straight...Sean was messing around with that Julia chick outside of Dana's rules? Deanna found out and told her?"

"Basically..."

"Damn...I wonder why she didn't tell me? It seemed like everything was going well. She even sent me their finished wedding plan." *sounding confused*

"Maybe it is for her. She probably feels like what's done is done. Shit, my moms used to get like that whenever my father got caught."

"Humph...I remember having those days myself. You're probably right. Now I feel terrible. Dana isn't the type to come crying about her problems either. She'll tell you, but won't get emotional about it. She keeps a lot bottled up."

"Yeah she's a good ass person too. She don't deserve that shit." *looks down then shakes his head*

"So was this why you were avoiding calls?"

"I mean it's part of it. Sean's been like my brother since high school, but him still doing dumb shit just ain't sittin right with me. I thought he was makin progress but, that ain't the case. I don't know if I want to be around all that. Too much potential to have me in some shit."

"In some shit like?...."

"Being put on the spot to cover, or getting questioned over something he did."

"But that only happened once right?" *narrows her eyes*

"You really want me to answer that? Shit, we both know not to ask questions we really don't want the answers to. You're gonna feel obligated to tell her and neither one of us is trying to stir up past things. She knows what kind of dude she has. Obviously we want better for her, but she's sticking beside him. There's no need to dig."

*sighs* "Fine...I'll leave it alone. What's done in the dark always comes to light anyway, so..." *her phone starts ringing, cutting her off* "Oh look, it's Nica, another person you've been avoiding. I'll put it on speaker."

A Few Days Later.......

"I'm just not understanding why you won't tell your sister you're pregnant? Like, I know it's not ideal, but you're in a good place. You're starting your career at that tech giant and you can stay here as long as you want. It's nothing to be embarrassed about. Trust me, I've seen worse. The train wreck that is my father is a great example, and he's a multi-millionaire. You have a village: your sister, me and my family. You just have to embrace it. "

"Look...Mimi I get you're trying to help, but please leave it alone. That's not why..." *get choked up*

"Then what is it? I'm here for you, seriously..."

*whispers* "Fuck...."

"Damn...Umm...I didn't mean to upset you. You don't have to..."

"No, I do. Just please don't judge until you hear everything. The reason why I'm scared to tell her is because it's Sean's baby..." *tells her their entire history*

"Whew...That's a lot." *pauses for a few seconds* "Sleeping with your sister's man is foul as fuck, Dee. I get the whole college and first love thing before they met, but she's the one with him now...Has been for the past what, six years? And now a baby? You have to tell her before she marries this man."

"I know...I will..."

"This is crazy but, as much as I want to rant, I feel bad for you. He's manipulated this entire situation since you were eighteen. He was twenty-four and he knew to take advantage of your naivety. Now he says he loves you? He's full of shit and is using that as a way to keep you quiet and around." *pauses in thought* "Shit!..."

"What's wrong?"

"Remember a few days ago you were throwing up a lot?"

"Yeah?..."

"Well, I got scared and called Nica for advice. She had a rough first trimester so I figured she could help. I told her it was for you."

"Do you think she told anyone?" *extra concerned*

"I mean, it's possible, but that was a few days ago. I feel like if your sister knew she would've been knocking on the door. I'm gonna call Nica and check. But regardless, Dana's gonna find out sooner or later. You can't hide a baby bump and Sean's family has some strong genes. When the baby comes out looking like him..."

"Girl!...I get it. Can you please just call your sister for me? I'll figure it out from there."

To Be Continued......

Next

[udon-udon]

2022 recap

Let’s see... 2022 was a pretty wild ride, not gonna lie

Shall we start from the beginning? Hmmmm the beginning of 2022..... SheEEEESH. It was my last semester of my final year for my bachelor’s degree in graphic design for marketing (wait, I have a bachelors? LMAOOOO I forget that I have one now holy cow wait a sec). I also remember being very very stressed out about my 3 week practicum I had to do in Feb. Alongside that were a ton of projects like portfolio making, final projects for said portfolio, the grad show etc etc. It was VERY busy and stressful. Luckily, the practicum went on without a hitch, and school projects were done with, and one of the bigger projects was well received so YAY!! And then of course, graduation rolled around in April, and I finally made it!! And then I got hired right after graduation which im still super thankful for cause I got hella lucky, really. 

So work started in around late May/early June and it took a while to get used to things. I’ve never worked full time at an office before so there were many things I had to learn and stuff, but other than that I’m just glad I’m able to deliver the things I’m tasked to do, and they seem like they like me, so :’) Of course I still have my moments where I feel like I’m not cut out for the job or I think I’m doing horribly and for some reason think they’re going to fire me any time soon LOOL...  but anywho... I started a deskmat project (which is still delayed unfortunately, i don’t want to talk about it...) but hoping that can get picked back up sometime soon... I was also rushing on new prints as well for con season so that was pretty wild. 

Summer then came and WHEW. I got covid. Luckily it just felt like a regular cold, so I might have gotten a weaker strain of it. It was quite scary though since I live with family and I was afraid of spreading it to them (of course I ended up doing so cause we share the same bathroom, but they survived) Aside from that, I tabled for the first time in 3 years! AND I DID GREAT! I really missed tabling and honestly it might have been because of the turnout at the events but damn I did better than I’ve ever did, which is crazy. It really makes me want to get better and table more, but it do be pretty exhausting. Anyway, the summer was great imo, but jesus the fall took a nosedive.

September was alright, and for the second time, I didn’t have to worry about going back to school anymore which was kind of surreal again. I was finishing up the art commissions that I paused to work on the anime convention prints. I finished those up so I can focus on the Yuri Game Jam 2022 in Oct-Nov but little did I know.............. I would not be able to make it v n v. I underestimated the time management needed while working a 9-5 job and my lack of discipline... Also cause I didn’t have a clear vision of this year’s game which made me literally go in circles until I had no time left by the time I actually kind of had something down.... I became so stressed over the story that it branched out to other bad thoughts and I just spiraled really hard. Things that I said I would not let bother me had bothered me again and god I hated it so much. Why can’t I just... not think about those things. Hoping to stop those thoughts in 2023 though. So yeah I got really stressed so sadly I had to shelve the project and not release anything for this year’s game jam. I was very disappointed in myself, and it was a very tough decision to break my visual novel streak but I had to do what I had to do. After dropping the project I felt much much much much much better. Hoping to revisit the project again sometime though, now that I decided to release it whenever it’s ready (but will i have the proactiveness to go back to it? that is another story LOL)

So November was over with and December rolled around. December itself was stressful yet okay at the same time? Stressful in terms of spiraling at work again, but I also managed to just chill out and do whatever. And of course, the week-long break from work helped a ton (as I’m writing this thinking back I did absolutely nothing that week but that’s what I wanted most) Hopefully I’ll go back to work rejuvenated again cause I was clearly burnt out from work lmao. I should make use of my vacation days more man. Anyway since it was recent, I vividly remembering spiraling again over subject that shall not be mentioned, and I had no one to ground myself with so I had to try to ground myself somehow which I do try to do more so than rely on others. Luckily I recovered from the spiraling relatively quickly, so maybe it’s an improvement and if I ever encounter that subject again it’ll be an even faster recovery and soon it will be over? That’s what I’m hoping for 2023. Definitely a goal. Please let my 2023 self not let it bother me anymore please please please please (though i think i said that in 2022 no? hahaha) i jsut want to be loved v n v and not feel like my friends are leaving me one by one :’)))))))))))))))))))))))) 

ANYWAY Thank you for reading until the end. Ultimately, I want to worry less about subjects that make me go insane and just be happier. I’m a Bocchi that needs to find a close knit of supportive friends that can make me take another step in life :’)))))) LOOOOL And of course, I would like to draw more. Planning on opening art commissions in the new year some time soon so stay tuned. Hoping to table some more too! Though I don’t have much to sell hahahaha;;; Well then, until next year! 

[safflowerseason]

Ted Lasso, the OC!

Favourite character:

Funniest character:

Best-looking character:

3 favourite ships:

Least favourite character:

Least favourite ship: 

Reason why I watch it:

Why I started watching it:

Thanks so much for the ask!! This is a fun game!!

Ted Lasso

Favourite character: In season one it was Rebecca, but S2-3 Jamie Tartt (unexpectedly!) has earned the top-spot in my character ranking.

Funniest character: oh god, how can I choose...a tie between Roy and Jamie?? Although Higgins is also extra-delightful, and I love Kitman Will Kitman's little bits. OH WAIT NEVER MIND my answer is ISAAC.

Best-looking character: Jamie Tartt. Phil Dunster is...whew.

3 favourite ships: hmmmm!! this is hard, Ted Lasso is the rare show where I don't find myself super invested in one particular ship. Higgins/his wife are probably my Ted Lasso OTP to be honest. I do like Roy/Keeley although I think the writer bungled their break-up pretty badly this season.

Least favourite character: Besides Rupert who I feel is everybody's automatic least favorite, probably Nate, just because I think the show ultimately ruined all the interesting potential for his storyline.

Least favourite ship: idk, Nate/Jade, probably? Also Coach Beard/Jane never made much sense to me either. Give Beard a more compelling love interest!

Reason why I watch it: To see how it ends!! (Assuming S3 is the final season, which it may not be...increasingly it feels like they are going to continue just without Jason Sudeikis/Ted).

Why I started watching it: I started watching Ted Lasso in late December 2020...I had seen some chatter about it online, and I had an AppleTv+ subscription earlier than most of my friends/family because I got a new iPad at the time when Apple was giving out subscriptions for free ☠️ It was such an intense time...I spent most of that month just lying around and feeling sad about the state of the world, and the show's focus on kindness felt really revelatory in a time of such political turmoil, but also in general a really tightly written, well constructed show (I do not feel that way now, necessarily). I remember sobbing my eyes out at the end of "Tan Lines" where Ted says goodbye to Michelle and my dad was like "...what are you watching???"

The OC

Favourite character: Oh god, probably a tie between Marissa and Kirsten...two characters who I feel got screwed by Josh Schwartz (albeit to very different degrees).

Funniest character: Unfortunately because the character has aged so poorly, it is indeed Seth Cohen, although I think Sandy is a close second.

Best-looking character: MARISSA. S1 Marissa is just the EPITOME of California beauty to me.

3 favourite ships: Ryan x Marissa, Sandy x Kirsten, um...I *guess* Seth and Summer, their S1 story anyway. My favorite trash!ship is Jimmy x Julie. Smarter writers could have done something with their chemistry!

Least favourite character: Hmmm...of the main ensemble I have to say Jimmy, although among the rotating supporting cast I really don't like Rachel in S1. Trey, of course, for what he did to Marissa. Also Rebecca and Carter in S2. Basically everyone the writers invented in S2 and S3 for "drama" purposes, because they were all so poorly written!! (with the exception of Alex).

Least favourite ship: Ryan x Sadie and Marissa x Volchok. I only saw S3 once and I found both of those relationships offensive.

Reason why I watch it: S1 is prestige television!!! Especially through "The Best Chrismukkah Ever." Teen drama at its best!! The pilot is one of the best episodes of American network television ever produced, and I will go die on this hill.

Why I started watching it: The OC was so omnipresent in the early-mid 00's I honestly don't remember where I first heard about it. I do remember seeing a youtube clip (in youtube's earliest days when it was just fanvids and bootlegged movies) of the ending of The Countdown and Ryan and Marissa's iconic kiss and thinking "wow, I have to watch this show."

[victorluvsalice]

We’ve reached Spring Tuesday in the Chill Valicer Save, and -- as promised last week -- I have fixed the lighting situation in the house! And made a few other little tweaks and improvements while I was at it, because build mode is my passion. :p First though, please marvel over my very impressive shot of lightning striking the tree behind the greenhouse, because I basically NEVER pause the game in time to get a snap of lightning when it strikes in this game. :D

Okay, so -- first things first, the updates from my little trip into build mode:

1. The major update -- I have replaced ALMOST all electric lights in this house with candle chandeliers and sconces from Vampires! Mostly because those are the brightest and best off-the-grid lights I could find in the catalog. The only places that didn’t get this update were Smiler’s party on the upper level of the barn (as I felt it made more sense for that spot to have electric lights), and the greenhouse (as I couldn’t find any other good lights that would fit). Now, when the power inevitably goes out again, the house itself will stay lit, because candles work off-the-grid! My HOPE is that having fewer electric lights will also allow the household to rebuild its power surplus and thus have power for longer stretches.

2. I replaced Victor’s CC Bioshock Infinite upright piano with the actual upright piano from Growing Together -- while I like the CC one, I really liked the colorful swatches on the new “canonical” one, and wanted to use it. It even has slots on top, making it the perfect place to store that MySim trophy Smiler recently picked up. :) I also hung up a painting Victor did recently on his sketchpad, and put down a new rug -- one of the swatches available on Simularity’s new nursery rug set! Yes, okay, the rug is INTENDED for nurseries, as in the name, but the minute I saw that butterfly swatch, I knew it was perfect for Victor. XD

3. After talking to my friend Squid (@gaydragonwizards) about the new moon mirror from Werewolves, I realized it would be a good addition to the seance room, so I hung it up over the rocking chair. I also got the little moon salt lamp and stuck that in there too, atop the bizarre idol shelf. :)

4. And you can’t really see any of these in any of the pictures, but I added a couch to the back porch, made the greenhouse a little bit bigger to accommodate either more trees (or possibly stairs, if I decide I need a second level at some point) and rearranged the trees/plants on the grounds to accommodate that, and swapped out the games table in Smiler’s party room to one of the new Growing Together ones because it had better swatches.

Whew! Mostly little tweaks, like I said, but it did all take some time (especially the greenhouse thing, given I had to figure out where the tree that was in the corner was going). I also took a moment to turn off the Self Discovery mechanic (I mentioned this before, but unless you want the game to pester you on the regular about making Sims Paranoid, I wouldn’t recommend having it on in a Haunted House) and note down everyone’s conversational likes and dislikes:

-->Victor is a fan of Deep Thoughts, Stories, Affection, and talking about Hobbies

-->Alice is a fan of Deep Thoughts, Stories, and talking about Hobbies

-->Smiler is a fan of Compliments, Stories, being Silly, Pranks, and talking about Hobbies and Interests

*shrug* They all have something to talk about that they all like, at least!

Okay, so, now that building and preferencing is all done, what about gameplay? Well, after a bit of early Victor/Smiler flirting, Smiler took advantage of a brief burst of power to head upstairs and FINALLY upload their latest SimsTube video, while Alice did some painting and Victor went out to clear some creepy hands -- just in time for Temperance to appear! Well, we know what to do about HER, don’t we?

[sophia-sol]

Heaven Official’s Blessing, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Whew, I'm done reading TGCF!!! I read the first half in the officially published translation, and the second half in a fan translation since the official one isn't all published yet, but let me tell you I am ABSOLUTELY going to be rereading the whole dang thing once the official tl is all out.

Anyway! What a book! What a lot of book in which a lot of things happened! I've been reading this thing for over a month, fairly consistently, and it took me this long because I gather the english translation is something like 750,000 words long?!? That is Long.

But what this means is that I feel like I do NOT remember everything that happened well enough to feel like I have a good grasp on the Things that the book is trying to do as a whole. How do all the themes tie into each other? What ARE the themes? This is hard to say when I had trouble even keeping track of who was who amongst all the different secondary characters, because a book this size can fit SO many secondary characters in it, and most of them have at least two completely different names if not more.

(Mu Qing and Feng Xin were particularly bad for this because they go by those names, and also by Nan Yang and Xuan Zhen, and ALSO by pseudonyms where they're pretending to be their own underlings. I absolutely 100% could not keep track of them by all these different names and as a result have very little sense of which is which between them, which I can tell is Problems!)

Anyway anyway! This is a chinese danmei webnovel about a guy who becomes a god (and then stops being a god, and then goes through that cycle a few more times...), and about heavenly politics between all the different gods, and also about the ghost who loves him. And I LOVED it.

There were some parts that got a bit tedious (some of the fight scenes went on a bit long, I will not lie, but then I think this about MOST fight scenes, lol) but overall it was remarkably moreish for the entire very long length.

It's a book about how choices make you who you are, I think, and about the importance of having people in your life whom you can love and trust and rely on. And the way these themes are intertwined with the love story between our hero Xie Lian and the ghost king Hua Cheng is just completely delightful. I adore Xie Lian as a main character and a viewpoint character. He's so endlessly fascinating! He's 800 years old by the time of the main events of the novel, and he's been through a lot (understatement), and he's made very definite and deliberate choices about what kind of person he wants to be. But at the same time, he's spent most of those 800 years living a life where he prioritizes the well-being of pretty much everyone except himself, because he sees that as his job - and in his relationship with Hua Cheng, he finally is introduced to the idea that it doesn't have to be selfish for him to allow happiness into his life, and to have someone prioritize him. I love them both very very much.

I feel like there's a whole enormous thread of another theme I cannot comment on though because I do not know enough about either a) Chinese cosmology or b) cultivation novels as a genre. Which is that although it seems to be the goal of all cultivators to cultivate successfully enough to ascend into godhood, in this book godhood does not uhhhhhhhh seem to be that great. Heaven is full of petty squabbles, a lot of the gods kinda suck in an exciting variety of ways, and you still have jobs to do and paperwork to complete and roles to live up to and asshole coworkers to try to get along with, and so on and so forth. Basically: it doesn't seem to be any better than ordinary human life, except that you get fancy palaces and exclusive access to Brain Twitter (dubious prize). There definitely seems to be questioning of like, why is this the goal? Is this worthwhile? Should we be aiming for something else instead? But again! I do not have enough context for this entire thread of questions to be sure of WHAT it's saying with all this!

Other characters in this book I had strenuous feelings about:

- Ling Wen! I find her FASCINATING. A civil god who is really really really good at administrative work, such that when she rebels, the entirety of heaven is kind of lost without her! It was sooooo funny that when she and Xie Lian are fighting at one point, Xie Lian automatically goes to update Ling Wen about the situation because as the administrative manager of heaven she needs to know, and then is like. Uh. Right. She knows because she's HERE. FIGHTING ME. But we get remarkably little of her internal life and I want to know more about what's going on with her!

- He Xuan and Shi Qingxuan. Obviously! Beefleaf!!!!! God their story is so deliciously painful. One of those things where there is no way for there to be a happy ending but you can't help hoping anyway.

- Guzi - the poor kid! I spent so much of the book being like, auuuughhhhhhh this is so horrible that he's so attached to his dad but that asshole qi rong is possessing his dad and so he's running around after QI RONG endlessly, and then you get just this tiny info drop near the end that actually his dad was the worst and he's so attached to qi rong as his father because qi rong is actually the best dad he's ever had? (low, low bar) Anyway I still hate qi rong but. I want guzi to be able to have a better experience of family :(

[lotusbxtch]

Whew. Okay. If you all haven't read this fic by @for-a-longlongtime yet, you absolutely should.

It's devastatingly bleak but incredibly beautiful at the same time. The relationship between Santi and Frankie is so palpable, raw, vulnerable, and real, and for that reason alone, you should read it. The way magical realism is woven into the story as well as the plethora of references to Norse mythology is striking. And if you didn't know already, @for-a-longlongtime writes stunning works, always. I've been privy to her working so incredibly hard to get this out, and boy, was it worth the time!

I am usually a fluffy & spicy fic kind of gal, maybe with a splash of angst, but I will tell you -- the emotional gut-wrenches of this story are completely worth reading. My heart!

Okay, let me dive into some of the details I'd like to scream about (SPOILERS & EXCERPTS AFTER THE CUT):

First off, the way your writing morphs as you go along, mirroring the simplicity of being a child to the more complicated emotions of adulthood... amazing. Your writing as always is so immersive, and this is just another way of you doing that.

The way you explain what's going on outside of Santi and Frankie is very well done too. It bring a wholeness to the sense of the world you've built in there, and puts things into perspective.

The characters are all so separate and different as well. At no point did any of them seem to meld into the others unless it was intentionally done.

Finally, the dream sequences are phenomenal. The way that you weave them into the story, and how they increasingly become part of reality, until they meld together at a time when it makes total sense for them to mix with reality.

The second time Frankie read those words to you, about a year or so later, you realize it isn’t about going to hell for the work you do. It’s about not being alone in hell since you’ve got someone by your side.

Hi hello it's me and I'm crying. I love these babies.

Someone’s steel toe boot lands in your stomach, startling you with the hit of pain, and this time you yell at Frankie as they drag you away - that it will be okay, that he has to lay low and look after himself. The same way Joel had yelled at you when they had ripped you from your home and thrown you in the back of a van.

The way Joel and Santi both become protectors of those that they love!

Out of that cell, his warm body under yours, it really sinks in what you’ve known deep inside already for months, despite knowing the risks and consequences. There’s no way you can ever give this up. Give him up. Not even if they try to beat it out of you.

Crying again. THESE TWOOOO

Most people fear him and it doesn’t take you long to figure out why. The man moves and fights like a killer, striking without hesitation, and you can’t help but wonder if he has had military training. He was right about what he had told you at the start - he did make you better and stronger, in physical combat as well as verbal expressiveness.

Love how you talk about how dangerous, cunning, and smart Ezra is! I feel like that's overlooked a lot with him.

You know he tries to not show you that side of him because it scared you the first time; it was still Joel, but mostly just bones and muscles and tendons, someone who stands half in the world around you and half in the underworld. Worse than a ghost. But still Joel.

The details! The way you wove the mythology in is fanastic.

But Ezra will always opt for a much cleaner kill; out in the street, in a bar or at a roadstop when it’s least expected. If it didn’t all come down to the same thing - killing people and moving coke or arms -, you would almost call it more ethical.

Again with the mythology. You do such a great job at showing the differences between Ezra and Tovar/Lorenzano.

“What keeps happening here, buddy?” “Trusting the wrong people has consequences.” You look up when you think you hear Joel’s voice from nearby, except it’s not him - but your father leaning against another palm tree, his face solemn as he looks back at you.

Girl, the way I SCREAMED when I read this scene!

News spreads fast through the camp, and by the time you catch up with Frankie that evening, you can tell by the look in his eyes that he knows. Of course he does. He’s the only one you’ve never been able to lie to.

i STG every time these two get protective over each other, I squeal.

“Oh.” Her voice is light, tingles like icicles, and she laughs softly, sounding surprised. “Yes. You really are his.”

AGAIN: I cryyyyy

Okay I'm going to stop here because I could literally quote the entire fic, and really what i want to tell you is: YOU DID THE DAMN THING, BABE! I'm soooo proud of you!!!

Little Beast

Written for @perotovar 's writing challenge 'An Offering of Frith'. The P Boys they had planned were already taken, so I asked for Santiago Garcia and got Fenrir assigned! Pairing: Santiago 'Pope' Garcia x Francisco 'Catfish' Morales Word count: 18.5K Warnings: Explicit, 18+ only, MDNI. 🏳️‍🌈 (DDDNE) DARK fic, AU. Extreme angst from A to Z. Lots of violence (guns, knives, beating, kicking), swearing, hate crime, homophobia (repeated use of a slur), abuse, repeated assault and murder, kidnapping, many mentions of blood and injuries, raiding, (body) horror, nightmares, substance use/abuse (alcohol, cocaine), smoking, arms trafficking, sex work, mental health struggles, trauma. M/M pairing, frotting, masturbation. Norse mythology meets Santi + P Boys meets magic realism in Colombia in the early nineties (so: Narcos related references like Escobar, the Castaño brothers and the Cali cartel).

A/N's: Written in Second Person - not reader insert, but Santiago's POV (aka you are Santi). Not gonna lie, this one is A LOT; writing it turned into some out-of-body experience. More about the gods & characters (and thank you’s) in foot notes.

main masterlist | read on AO3

Bogota, Colombia. 

You’re five years old and your name is Santiago. The house you share with your brothers and parents is small, deep in the comunas, and most people know where to find it. Lots of them will stop by, because of papi’s work, sometimes very early in the morning or really late at night. When you ask what kind of work he does, mama hushes you, and your brother Jay looks away. Your brother Joel however will quietly stare at your dad - too calm, while his eyes are so angry.

You’re seven years old and you still don’t know what your father’s job is. Not a teacher, or someone at the market. Not one of the guys who cleans up the trash on your corner. For a while you thought that maybe he was a butcher, because mami was often cleaning the blood from his clothes. “It stains so bad.” But you’d never seen him in the market, selling his wares.

Every few weeks he is gone for a long time, and often the police will visit the house, which always makes your mom cry.

Every now and then a new face will show at the house, asking to speak to your mother. The girls are always very pretty, dressed in bright colors. The guys often have shiny guns; some of them will let you hold it when mami isn’t in the room.

You see your father all the time when you’re waiting with her at the store. Often he’ll wear a funny looking hat, and sometimes his face looks different. But you know it’s him, always, by the smile and wink he gives you. When you tell mami, she never sees him and starts crying again, so you stop telling her about it.

Jay doesn’t come home often anymore. When you ask Joel if that is your fault, if you made him cry too, he shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it. You’re okay.”

You’re not sure if you are.

When it’s your eighth birthday, your father suddenly shows up with presents that make you the envy of your friends. Boxing gloves, a large pocket knife - that your mom right away tries to take away from you -, and you all eat so much dulce de leche cake.

You wake up in the middle of the night because you hear your father arguing. The loud bangs that follow are unmistakingly gun shots, and you find one of the casings the next morning near the front door. When you ask your mami about it, she gets so angry that you run away from home for the afternoon to hide, until it gets dark and she’s had the drinks that make her happier.

When you got the boxing gloves, you didn’t know that they would also give you more time with your father - but they do. He teaches you how to throw a punch, how to avoid an attack, read someone’s body language. When to attack someone if you need to defend yourself. Which parts of the body are most vulnerable, and where to stab somebody to make them bleed out quickly.

He’s proud, always, as he tells people about how good of a fighter you’re becoming. “Takes after me.” You don’t - not really, but you do your best to make him continue to believe that. Until you start to believe it too and knock out a guy who is twice your age.

When you’re ten, they try to burn down your house. You don’t know exactly who ‘they’ are, but you’ve heard the name El Gran Señor Lorenzano often enough to know that you should fear him.

The first time it happens, your dad is just in time to stop the fire from escalating. The second time, he’s not home, so you do put out the flames together with Joel.

The third time starts with a flaming bottle being thrown through a window, and as you all stare at the sight, the door gets knocked down and men with masks on their faces storm into the house

Your father runs away, seems to escape the men somehow. Your mom is hysterical and won’t listen to anyone, not even when the tall guy hits her in the face, and you want to beg her to not cry because you know it makes men more angry at her. Not even with your fight training do you stand any chance, and all you hear when somebody shoves a bag over your head and drags you outside and into a van, is your brother’s voice - Joel yelling at you to not fight the men and just protect yourself.

You’ve been away from home for almost a year when you turn eleven, to the point that you don’t think of it anymore as an actual place you can go to. You think you’re still in Bogota but you’re not sure. Sometimes they make you get in a truck again, or a car. Almost always you have to hide; you know that they don’t want people to see you. Sometimes there are other people, or even kids, and you’re pretty sure that you’ve seen at least a dozen dead bodies over the past months.

It’s when they send you to training camp that you realize there’s no way they’re ever going to let you go. The training unit is not the army, but it feels like a military group somehow. Maybe this is like the guerilla fighters you’ve heard about, defending your country.

This time you fight without the boxing gloves, using only your hands or sticks, just like the other kids your age are also being trained.

There are five of you, and Ramiro explains to each of you how to get to the location. The white powder isn’t heavy, tightly packaged in plastic, and every step of the way to your contact person you’re terrified of losing it somehow. You know the consequences - have seen the boys who were shot in the head, and the ones who weren’t lucky enough to die so quickly.

The man who is waiting for you is tall, fat and smells like grease and blood. You don’t remember much of what he says, your heart thumps so loud that it feels like it’s inside of your ears as you accept the package he hands you in return.

You’re one of the four boys who make it back.

Gustavo, the fifth boy, shows up two days later. His lifeless body is covered in bruises and blood, and when someone dares to ask what happened, the answer is that rats will be dealt with accordingly. “Exterminated.”

After three nights of solid nightmares and another mutilated body that’s found outside as a warning, you stop trying to think of ways to escape.

You’re almost twelve when you meet Francisco.

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He’s quiet and keeps to himself, but he’s not shy. When some of the older boys mistake that for fear, deciding to taunt him, he doesn’t respond initially. Only once the biggest bully steps right up to him, a sneer on his face, does Francisco lift his eyes to him and stares him down - and you can feel the tension.

You see the twitch of Francisco’s jaw, and even before the other guy takes a swing you know this is not going to end well for the bully.

It’s impressive how fast the new kid tackles his attacker to the ground, blood streaming from the boy’s noise as he scrambles to get away. But Francisco’s hand closes around his throat, keeping him pinned down. In a flash you see a piece of glass held against the boy’s neck, and that’s when you know for sure Francisco learned to fight the way you did. Your father’s voice echoes in your head, “If you stab someone there, it’s all over.”

You want to be his friend.

Not because he’s a good fighter; he’s far from the only one around here. It’s because he seems to be one of the few kids who doesn’t want to fight, just like you.

By the time you’re twelve, you and Francisco - Frankie - have become inseparable. You know that he’s never known who his mother is and that his father was recently killed by Pero Tovar, one of Lorenzano’s most feared men.

While the other kids try to get their hands on cigarettes, or booze, Frankie is just interested in books.

You like watching him read. On the very rare occasion that nobody else is around, he’ll often read something out loud for you. Mark Twain. Something about going to heaven for the climate, and hell for the company.

The first time Frankie reads that aloud, you have your eyes closed while listening to his voice. It makes you think of the ‘business’ your dad would do, or the way Lorenzano’s men would refer to ‘the company’ and ‘the big boss’. Bullet casings and dried up blood, the smell of your mami cooking beans with pork, and how some nights you fell asleep listening to her cry when your father still hadn’t returned home.

The second time Frankie read those words to you, about a year or so later, you realize it isn’t about going to hell for the work you do. It’s about not being alone in hell since you’ve got someone by your side.

The runs you’re sent on to drop off the product are not that bad at first. It’s a relief to be able to walk the streets, not be holed up inside or be in training.

Most of the kids that work for the cartels still live with their families in the comunas. You, Frankie and the others don’t have that freedom.

There are curfews to follow, gun practice, different kinds of training. It’s not the army, but it might as well be.

There often is discussion about the ACCU, Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá run by the Castaño brothers. But when one of the other boys mentions FARC, he’s immediately silenced with a hard slap to his face by the instructor. “Those fucking communists. They’re the problem, you understand me?”

Pablo Escobar, however, turns out to be one of the few topics that’s welcomed for discussion by your instructors. Sometimes you have to think of the prayer candle your grandmother would light at the small altar in her living room, the framed picture of Escobar on the wall almost as large as the one of your late grandfather.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Frankie is the only person you confide in, and you listen to the stories he tells you about his father. In return, you tell him about your brothers, Joel in particular - but the nightmares you have that night are enough to stop you from bringing them up again. It’s better not to think of your family; keep them locked away in small boxes in the back of your mind, where you can pretend they’re okay.

You’re both still not sure how you ended up here. When Frankie points out Tovar one time in passing, you recognize the man with the scar on his face as one of your dad’s frequent visitors. And the person who tried to kill him that night they took you away.

You’ve been getting some attention from the girls, but it’s nothing to the amount that is directed at Francisco - not just the girls in your group, but even during a drop-off in the brothels at times.  That’s how you’re both urged to ‘take some time with a girl you like’ when you join Juan for a drop-off. While you’re fucking a brunette who is a few years older than you are, Frankie is getting busy with a pretty red head on the other side of the room. You try to sneak a peek every now and then, but you know you have to be careful. If anyone catches you looking, you’ll get your ass beaten up - but you still can’t keep your eyes off him. 

The girl - Rosa? - under you moans, calls you ‘papi’ as she asks you to fuck her harder, and you do so. She’s tight and wet around your cock, and pretty, and you like her small tits, but your head is too focused on not openly looking at Frankie, making it hard to come. Once you do, Rosa kisses your cheek as she gets up, gives you a towel and she tells you she’s gonna clean up. Frankie finishes up not long after that.

When you’re both waiting in the dark alley out back for Juan to wrap up business inside, sharing a cigarette with Frankie, you can’t help but ask him. “Was it good?” You’re hoping he says no - that you’re not the only one who barely got off. Because maybe you’re not the weirdo if there’s at least one other person who feels the same, who isn’t thrilled like you know the other boys would be. “The girl.”

Frankie shrugs as he inhales the smoke, closing his eyes. “She was friendly. Nice.”

You wait for more words, but they don’t come from Frankie. So you try to force your own words out. “Yeah. Friendly.”

When Frankie opens his eyes again, he looks tired and conflicted. Unsure perhaps. He lifts the cigarette to his lips again, and your guard is down too much to stop your eyes from following that movement. 

His mouth.

Fuck, now you’re really hard. 

“We’re friends, right?” Frankie’s voice is hoarse, and somehow that sound makes your dick throb even more. 

You nod, then clear your own throat when you realize it’s not really all that clear in this dark street. “Yeah, of course,” you manage, trying to remember how long it’s been since you two met. Four, five years?

More of Frankie’s lips around the cigarette, and more tiredness in his eyes. Perhaps the uncertainty in his expression is more like the fear you’ve had beating in your chest now for half an hour already.

“Good.” Frankie nods, and before you can ask him why, he pushes you back against the brick wall, covering your mouth with his. You groan softly, your breathing suddenly so fast as he kisses you in a way you’ve never experienced before - in a way that, until now, you’ve never wanted to kiss anyone.

The sigh that escapes from Frankie’s mouth into yours is quiet, but you can feel the relief in his body when you kiss him back, feel how he grabs your hips and presses closer against you. You’re so hard that for a moment you can’t think straight, not until you feel him grind his cock against you, and then everything just goes electric in your head, because he’s just as hard as you are, and there is no time, because anyone can walk in on you two right now. It’s such a fucking dumb thing to do here - or anywhere.

He whispers your name, making it sound like a question, and when you nod and suck on his tongue, his hands slip from your waist to your ass, grabbing you tight and oh - fuck. Fuuuck. 

It’s not even a minute of desperate kissing, panting, the uncomfortable but so fucking good rub of his cock against yours through your clothes, and before you know it you’re whispering his name too, the word turning into a plea, because please, Francisco, please - and then it’s no longer just rubbing against each other, it’s Frankie actually fucking you against that wall, right through your clothes, neither of you breaking the kiss until you both come just like this. Right in your pants, not even having put a hand on each other’s dick, just pressed so closely together while you’re drowning in the taste of his mouth.

“Hey, assholes. You ready to go?” 

Juan’s loud voice booms through the alley, and Frankie immediately lets go of you like he’s been burned by fire. He moves several steps away, nearly tripping over his own feet, and the fear in his eyes is as loud as the fear beating inside of your rib cage. 

You drop down to one knee and tug at the laces of your sneakers, pretending you’re tying them, giving you just a few more seconds to catch your breath before you need to look Juan in the face, who seems completely oblivious about what he almost walked in on.

“Shithead. Took you long enough to keep us waiting.”

You’re both eighteen when someone catches the two of you. Your hands and mouth on Francisco in places they shouldn’t be, and his hands and mouth all over you. The fact that you’re both still fully clothed is probably the only thing that saves you from a much worse treatment. 

You beg them not to hurt him, tell them to give you the beating twice, even swearing that you were the one forcing yourself on Francisco. 

Somehow you manage to convince them, and it’s the comfort of knowing Frankie isn’t hurt that helps just a little against the abuse. Against the ringing in your ear which lasts for almost a week, the bruises on your ribs where they kicked you. You let it happen, know that it would be better if you didn’t fight back even though you could probably take out at least three of them. It would be one thing if it were just some guys bothering you - but a few of them are part of the leadership, and there’s no going around that. 

You see the anger and helplessness in Frankie’s eyes, the way he balls his fists and looks like he’s ready any moment to tackle the guys. But you know there’s no point in letting him get in between them and you, because you know better than to show any sign of weakness.

It is only once the tallest and older guy grabs you by your jaw, his other hand undoing his dirty pants, that you fight back. In less time than it takes him to growl “let’s see how good you suck my dick”, you kick out another guy’s legs from under him and swipe his knife, knocking your assailant down in the same move. 

“You want me on your dick?”, you yell as you grab him by his balls, jerking his pants down roughly so his dick and balls flop out. Your knife is against the base of his cock before he can even blink, and you stare him down, pressing the razor sharp blade against his skin and not caring if it draws blood. “Dare me,” you hiss at him as you spit into his face. “I’ll fuckin’ cut it off you right now.”

The other men jump you before you can slice into the man’s sweaty pale skin, just a hair away from cutting off his pathetic excuse for a dick and shoving it into his mouth to choke on. Frankie meanwhile has had enough, now launching himself at the biggest men who are holding you back - and if these were any normal circumstances, you’d welcome the help. Instead you just shake your head, begging for him to see that you’re dead serious about not wanting him to interfere.

“No,” you mouth wordlessly, then gasp out loud as you bite your lip until you taste blood, working hard to swallow your cries as someone pulls your arm behind you and breaks at least two of your fingers. There’s no way you’ll give them the satisfaction of hearing you cry, so you just stare at Frankie until you trust your voice to not crack. “Fish, get out. Go back. I’ll be-...”

“Fuckin’ fag.”  

Someone’s steel toe boot lands in your stomach, startling you with the hit of pain, and this time you yell at Frankie as they drag you away - that it will be okay, that he has to lay low and look after himself. The same way Joel had yelled at you when they had ripped you from your home and thrown you in the back of a van.

“You need to be smarter.”

The voice is suddenly so close that it makes you wince. Especially after having been locked up in silence and darkness for two days, without anyone coming to let you out or even say a word to you. “Please, just stop, okay?”, you manage as you get up to your feet, leaning against the cement wall as your head won’t stop spinning. “I haven’t done anything since. Can you…”

“They feed you?”

You stare at the man who interrupted you, trying to focus on the vague outline of his body as you can see - no, feel - him move closer through the darkened cell. “What? Who are…”

“Esdras-... Ezra. I asked you something, boy.”

“No. They didn’t.” You raise your chin up in defiance, even if he can probably not even see it. “I’m fine.”

The stranger hums, pushing some food into your hand. “You need to stay strong. Get stronger, and smarter.”

You can’t help but shove it right into your mouth, and by the time you’ve swallowed all of it your stomach is already hurting. It was a stupid move, and you usually know better; small, slow bites are the best way to eat after having gone without for a while. But the hunger and loneliness had gnawed at you these past two days, making it hard to think straight.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

You’re locked up for a week, but Ezra keeps showing up daily with food. With conversation, too, even if it’s mostly him talking. It remains unclear how he fits into the organization you’ve been with for years now. When he mentions ‘El Gran Señor’, you suddenly remember Lorenzano, the fires at the house, your father as a fading face in the crowd. 

After they took you away, your father never showed up anywhere again for you. Not in your dreams either. You wonder if it’s because you failed him, because you didn’t fight well enough - even though Joel told you not to fight, keep yourself safe. Maybe if you’d been more like Jay, this wouldn’t have happened. 

You only get a decent look at Esdras’ face once. 

His eyes remind you of Francisco.

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Once you’re finally released and sent back to the barracks, it takes just a few hours for you and Frankie to sneak off somewhere. When he kisses you, both of you pretend to not notice the tears that are flooding your eyes. 

Out of that cell, his warm body under yours, it really sinks in what you’ve known deep inside already for months, despite knowing the risks and consequences. 

There’s no way you can ever give this up. Give him up. Not even if they try to beat it out of you.

When Ezra shows up one night, standing at the back of the communal dining area, Frankie tenses up in the seat next to you. He nudges your leg with his foot as he continues eating, then draws your attention to the other side of the room with a barely noticeable flick of his index finger. 

Even when you tell him this is the guy who gave you food when you were locked up, he won’t take his eyes off Ezra. Frankie has always been taller than you, broader, and when Ezra passes your table you can tell by the way he sizes him up that Frankie has already considered at least three ways to take him out.

“Santiago. Tell your guard dog to stand down.”

Slowly you close your fist around the fork you’re holding, your anger right under the surface, but the smirk tugging at Ezra’s lips makes it clear that his words were a test rather than a challenge.

“I can train you. An hour every night. You’re good - but I can make you great.” Ezra nods at Frankie without taking his eyes off you. “If anyone besides him finds out, we’re done and they’ll probably take you away.” 

“And do what?” Francisco is still staring at Ezra, and you’re sure he’s figured out at least one more way by now to take him out. 

“Kill me,” you say, with zero doubt about that outcome, at the exact moment Ezra also says, “Kill him”.

Frankie’s eyes narrow immediately, the muscle in his jaw flexing as he tries to control himself. “What if he says no?”

“He won’t,” Ezra replies simply, at the same moment that you nod and tell him you’re in.

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Ezra is a study in contrasts. He speaks like someone from Francisco’s books, with a slight accent that makes him stand out as much as his blond patch does, and often more candidly than most people are expecting. It’s only much later, when you hear him speak to an American guy, that you realize he’s likely not from Colombia.

“The origin of my story is fairly irrelevant, Santiago.” He waves off your question when you ask him about himself. “Besides, people are never quite so hard pressed to go find Parson on a map.”

He’s worked for Lorenzano for many years now, initially a mercenary who became one of the people highest up in the system. The nickname most people use for him is The Judge, or, if you are to believe the most wild stories about it, La Venganza - The One Who Brings Retribution. 

Lorenzano and Tovar primarily run the organization, neither of them shy about the opulence and violence around them. But Ezra is a third pillar whose sober green-brown clothing often makes him blend in anywhere. Anything but quiet, but focused on other things than his two partners. He’s not keen on having a public face as he prefers to move quietly, getting both the impossible and the unspeakable done.

Most people fear him and it doesn’t take you long to figure out why. The man moves and fights like a killer, striking without hesitation, and you can’t help but wonder if he has had military training. He was right about what he had told you at the start - he did make you better and stronger, in physical combat as well as verbal expressiveness.

Frankie notices it too, even only a few weeks in. “When you get back here, you always look like you’ve been fed,” he remarks one night as you sit on the rooftop with him, gazing out over the thousands of city lights sparkling in the dark sky. “He said yet what he wants in return for all the teachings?”

You shake your head. “I’m sure that’ll come later.” And see, that’s something you still haven’t learned in all those years. It’s hard to look ahead when you don’t know what to expect and don’t have something specific to look forward to.

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You’re still eighteen - or so you think, because it has become impossible to keep track of the days - when you realize that you actually love Francisco. 

As you slice the throat of the guy who tries to attack him, you know that you would do anything for him. It doesn’t matter that it takes you hours that night to wash your blood soaked clothes.

Your mother was right all those years ago. Blood stains are hard to get out of fabric.

Once killing becomes a regular thing of your work for the syndicate, so do the nightmares. It’s not like you didn’t have them before; they’ve always been there, ever since Lorenzano’s men took you away from home. But this time you keep seeing the faces of the men you’ve killed; sometimes one by one, other times all of them together in a room. 

They keep coming back, unwilling to let you rest. 

Sometimes they try to speak to you, other times they can’t. Occasionally you need to kill them again, but their screams get drowned out by Frankie yelling for him - but you can never find him, see him.

You see your brother Joel every night that you dream of the people who died by your hand. 

Half of him looks normal, even though he’s older now: a man instead of a boy, still several years ahead of you in age, and you wonder if this is really what he looks like now. The other half of his body he keeps out of your sight if he can help it, turned towards corpses or soon to be dead bodies that are bleeding out. 

You know he tries to not show you that side of him because it scared you the first time; it was still Joel, but mostly just bones and muscles and tendons, someone who stands half in the world around you and half in the underworld. Worse than a ghost. But still Joel.  

Every time you see him, he tells you to keep yourself safe. “It’s not your fault.” But unlike when you were little, he doesn’t try to tell you that you’re fine. You both know that you aren’t.

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Others also notice how good you’ve become over the past year. How training exercises are a breeze for you, how much faster you are at tactical planning than most others. Now you’re eighteen, both you and Frankie are being watched carefully to see if you have potential to move up in the ranks - something Ezra had already mentioned and prepared you for. 

“Beat them at their own game, little beast. You’re smarter than almost any of them.”

At first you hate the nickname, because it feels like he is mocking you. But that was not Ezra’s style; he is always upfront and open, at times to a fault. Too many years in this place have made you hyper vigilant and protective, quick to attack with bared teeth and intention to take the other person down. But around him that’s not necessary. So you reluctantly accept the nickname, work to do justice to it.  

Once they start sending you off on serious engagements, you find that Ezra tends to be in charge of many of them - the raids, the more undercover missions, occasionally dealing with conflict among stakeholders rather than just being there to clean up a mess. It’s not surprising that you and Frankie work well together in the field whenever you’re teamed up; you both know each other so well, including limits and strength, to the point that you can easily anticipate each other’s moves, and that puts you front and center for effectiveness. 

On the rare occasion the two of you are split up in different teams, Ezra is always assigned to Frankie’s group - something none of you comments on. They’re not exactly on friendly terms with each other, particularly to Frankie always being cautious, but then again they don’t need to be. The mutual respect is reassuring, especially because you’re sure Ezra knows there’s more going on between you and Frankie than the syndicate allows for.

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The next time you dream of Joel, there’s a black wolf cub playing at his feet, gentle and even tempered, playfully nipping at Joel’s fingers. When he sees you, he immediately bounces over to smell you, then happily paws at your legs - just like he’s just any other stray puppy, excited to get your attention and become familiar with your scent. His joy is contagious, and it’s not long until you’re sitting down on the ground to play with him, where eventually he falls asleep in your lap.

When something in the darkness catches your eye, the pup stirs almost immediately from his sleep, picking up on your body language. In the blink of an eye he’s put himself in front of you and Joel, suspiciously eyeing the wisps of smoke that curl from the darkness. He growls low, baring his small fangs as he tries to make himself bigger than he is to face the unknown.

Joel hushes it gently, assuringly. “Little Beast, you’re okay.” When both you and the cub simultaneously look at him, you wonder which one of you two he is talking to. 

Even if the days have become more bearable and lighter since you met Francisco, you still don’t think you’re the one who is okay - and sometimes you wonder if you ever will be again.

Ezra fights dirty. 

Knives, guns, hand-to-hand combat; he always has an extra card up his sleeve somehow. But it’s not the moves or weapon mastery you learn from him that make you better and faster. 

It’s the resilience he teaches you. Clearing your mind, striking without hesitation. Thinking ten steps ahead and not giving away what your next move is. You’ve seen him out on the streets or during raids, and unlike Lorenzano and Tovar he tends to hang back, take a moment to take in the scene. While they go in guns blazing, often blasting an actual path through people to get what they want, Ezra is more deliberate. If he can take out just a single target to get the job done, he’ll opt for that - he knows that other syndicate members will deal with the rest of a DEA team, guerilla fighters or a competing cartel. 

He’s also one of the few in leadership who makes calculated decisions regarding the location that he will take out a target. You’ve seen Gilberto kill more than a few sicarios by simply showing up at their houses - no regard for any wives, children or elderly people who either get into the crossfire or are witness to it. But Ezra will always opt for a much cleaner kill; out in the street, in a bar or at a roadstop when it’s least expected. If it didn’t all come down to the same thing - killing people and moving coke or arms -, you would almost call it more ethical.

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One night, you hear the pup whining before you see it - a low, unhappy sound that chills your blood. It takes too long to find him in the darkness, and you’re tripping over things in front of you, something telling you it’s probably for the best that you can’t quite see what or who they are.

You finally find the pup when his eyes open and look right at you, the golden pupils and white of his eyes a stark contrast to the darkness around you. As you kneel down to examine him, you see the golden cords wrapped around his fur, and a wave of terror washes over you. He didn’t just get tangled up in them; somebody deliberately put those bindings on him. 

You hush him softly as your fingers slide over the cords, trying to find any knots or weak spots where you can start prying them off him. “I’ll help you, okay? We’ll get you out of this.” But as you do so, the wolf starts wriggling around, his sharp teeth snapping at the cords around until they all break and disappear into the darkness, along with the rest of your dream.

“I’m moving to Cali in a few weeks.” 

Ezra offers you a cigarette, and you take it from him, your head working overtime as you digest the news dropped on you. “Shit. Alone?”

He shakes his head, sharing his lighter with you as he brings his own cigarette to his lips. “There are some relocations happening in the structure of - well. You’ve seen it out here,” he gestures at the city you’re overlooking from the hill you’re standing on. “The Army is withdrawing support from ACCU. Some new government people are acting surprised about the Field Workers Self-Defenders ties with the Castaños, which is bullshit. But dynamics are changing in Córdoba and Urabá, which also affects Cali.”

“Does that mean-...”

“Do you want to come along, Santiago?” Ezra blows out the smoke before he looks at you. “You can stay here, of course. Nothing much should change aside from my… influence.” You both know that means Lorenzano will make the decisions, and that without Ezra’s influence, life becomes a lot more unpredictable in the syndicate. “But Cali will give both of you the opportunity to move up. Be in charge of operations, eventually.”

You don’t miss the casual reference of ‘both’ that he uses, and you feel relieved that you don’t have to ask the question out loud - if Frankie would be able to join you, too. Part of you wants to say no, because leaving Bogota would also mean leaving behind the scraps of life you remember before the syndicate kidnapped you that night and roped you into their organization.

“Think about it,” Ezra interrupts your thoughts before you can respond. “Your choice to make, your consequences to bear. I know you never asked for all of this - neither of you did, of course. But owning your choices and what results from them makes all the difference.” 

When you ask Frankie later that night, he doesn’t hesitate for a second. “I’m in.”

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The move to Cali is uneventful in a good way, and the new living space is both brighter and larger than Bogota. Some things don’t change though: there are still about ten of you per sleeping quarters, but at least the beds are better and the facilities aren’t as old. 

It surprises you how it feels a little easier to breathe. You hadn’t expected it, but there’s a relief in just seeing the city as it is - not thinking about who had died on that corner, which house is a drop off spot or a brothel, or where you’d gotten beaten up. Even when you know it won’t last long.

The warmer weather means longer evenings outside, too. New spots that you and Frankie discover, where there’s just enough privacy to be together for a few minutes. You kiss him in new alleyways, let him press you against the wall behind a quiet church. Let your hands roam and grab when you’re on the rooftop and you’re sure that nobody is around. 

It’s never enough, and the waiting in between opportunities is torturous. Sometimes it takes weeks until you can take him in your mouth again, have him slide inside of you, or when you can fuck him - rushed and hard and frantic -, leaving marks that were made within minutes but that last for days as dark bruises on your hips and shoulders and thighs.

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Your nightmares remain the same in Cali as they were in Bogota. A constant every single night, at times in different settings than before, matching the buildings and streets of this new city. 

You dread all of them, but Joel’s presence in those dreams makes it manageable. Even when he’s not around, the wolf cub is always there with you. Protective and affectionate, at times bigger than you - but never intimidating.

Part of you wants to tell Frankie about your dreams. Not just about the cub, but Joel too. You just don’t know where you’d even begin to explain it without sounding insane.

Ezra gives you more space those first couple of weeks in Cali, training only every other day with you, then informs you that you and Frankie will be joining him on an assignment out of town. You’ve done this before and know that lodging is always together with leadership in the same room. Except this time that seems to be different.

“It appears there has been a miscommunication. They didn’t have any rooms with two beds, only singles,” he informs you, his face uncharacteristically neutral as he hands you a room key. “You two are across the hallway from me and will have to share a bed.” 

Your jaw nearly drops as you stare at him, and you can feel the disbelief radiating from Frankie, too. But Ezra pretends to not notice it as he turns away. “I trust there will be no disappearing, Little Beast. You know the fatal consequences of that.”

The room is shitty, there are only three channels that work on the tv, and there’s a concerning smell coming from the toilet if you don’t close the lid completely. The bed is a full size though instead of a twin, creaks every time you move, and has some threadbare sheets and two thin pillows.

It’s perfect.

It has never happened before that you and Francisco had more than half an hour of privacy to yourself in a locked room - let alone nine hours in one that also has a bed.

You fuck so, so very much that night. 

It’s deliriously intoxicating, having each other in every possible way you can imagine - and a few more ways you hadn’t even considered before. By the time it’s 5:30 am, neither of you can move anymore. Sore, exhausted and beyond spent you fall asleep, curled up against each other.

For the first time in eight years you don’t have any dreams, let alone nightmares.

The newness of Cali lasts about three months. By then, the city has gained the same marks and blood all over it that you had left behind in Bogota; the drugs, fights, but this time there are also bombs. 

It’s a lot more damage than you’re used to, the number of victims making your stomach turn when the news reports on it later those nights. Some of the other guys are thrilled when they see the result of their work on tv, bragging about it, but it sickens you every single time.

It’s bad for you, but it hits Frankie even harder. He has lost family and friends in the past because of bomb attacks, and you know that when he wakes up at night screaming, it often tends to be exactly that which replays in his mind.

You’re both used to helping each other through hard times, but you see his eyes become more distant as the weeks pass. You do what you can, from stupid jokes to trying to find him new books, but you can’t help but feel it’s your fault.

Maybe he wouldn’t be in such bad shape if you two had stayed in Bogota.

Maybe you did this all wrong.

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Frankie is fast. Really fucking fast.

Not when it comes to running, although he does well if needed. But it’s when you see him behind the wheel of a truck, with Ezra, you and a handful of other guys, that you realize just how good he is. Driving a getaway car, chasing down another truck through the city, diversion techniques. You don’t know where he even learned them, because it’s not that often that any of you get to drive. 

It’s Ezra who decides that this is going to be a regular thing for Frankie. “I want you as our transportation guy next time we venture out on an endeavor,” he says, eyes sharp as he observes Frankie switch gears, avoid a child who runs out into the road, then rev the engine to catch up with the other vehicle in your party. “Are you interested in cars?”

Frankie just nods affirmatively, his eyes locked on the terrain in front of him. You can’t help but chime in, also realizing this could mean that the two of you won’t be assigned to different teams anymore. “His uncle had a garage, so he grew up in it. Learned how to work on cars before he was eight,” you offer. 

It earns you a warning look by Frankie, who is clearly not thrilled about you offering that information - but you know it only helps his case. Ezra only asks things for a reason, and you know it would not be to fuck Frankie over. “He really knows his shit.”

“Good. That will get you far.” Ezra pulls out two guns, checking the ammo, then suddenly looks at Frankie like he just got a bright idea. “Francisco. Did you ever fly a helicopter before?”

This time Frankie actually takes his eyes off the road, and you can tell by the twitch in his jaw that he’s very hard trying to not show his enthusiasm. You know him well though, and his eyes suddenly look more radiant than you’ve seen in a long time.

“Not yet. But I bet I can with some training.”

The first time they put you in charge of a raid, you end up puking behind a bush once everything is over. More than just a few bodies are scattered across the property that’s about to be set on fire, and that’s not new - but being the leader of a raid hits so much harder than any time you had to merely participate. The only relief you have is that you don’t need to deal directly with the losses, or gather the money and drugs. 

When one of your men calls you over, he points his rifle at the three kids huddled against each other on the back porch, and you can only get yourself to look right at them once you feel Francisco’s hand on your back.

“Not worth the trouble,” you inform the guy who called you over, ignoring the way your stomach turns, and you turn back to the children once he has left. A six year old girl is the oldest of the kids, her eyes blank as she holds a baby in her lap and a four year old boy pressed against her side. Something about that look in her eyes reminds you of Joel - not the brother you grew up with, but the one in your dreams with that side he tries to show you as little as possible. 

“Are they dead?”, she asks you, still not showing any emotion despite the crying boys clinging onto her, and you nod. Whether it’s her parents or someone else she’s referring to, none of the adults in the raided house are still alive. 

She nods back at you, no sign of surprise on her face. “Please don’t hurt the boys,” she then says, sounding so much older than her age. “They didn’t–...”

“We won’t.” 

You breathe in deeply when Francisco speaks for you, then reach for the wad of money that you had put into your pocket a few minutes earlier. Stealing from El Gran Senor always ended badly, but these raids were the only options you had to get your hands on anything of value. 

The girl flinches when you reach for her, and once again it’s Frankie who reassures her. “We’re not gonna hurt you.”

“Do you know how to get to the village?”, you ask her as you put the money in her hand. She nods, and for a moment you could swear that you see a wolf cub staring at you from the trees. “Find someone to help you. Don’t show them the money.” You bite back the words of apology that are on your tongue, knowing that they won’t help or would even be believed. “You can do it. Be brave.”

“We have to go.” Francisco’s voice is tight but decisive, and you nod as you let him tug you along, back to the men who have loaded up their cars with all the valuables they could gather. Drugs, money, guns. 

Like the next raid will be. And the next. And the next.

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“You exceeded expectations, little beast. A mission well planned and executed. Congratulations are in order.” The look on Ezra’s face is one of pride as you debrief him. As he scribbles down some more notes to wrap up his report, you hesitate for a moment, considering one last thing.

“There were three kids.”

Ezra’s eyes flick up at you much faster than you expect, but then he shakes his head. “It appears that you are mistaken about this,” he says as he resolutely puts away his paper and pen. 

“I saw them. I…”

“You’re exhausted.” Ezra’s voice cut you off sharply, the tension in his jaw suddenly clear and reminding you of Frankie. “I appreciate you doing the debrief at this late hour, but you should probably rest. There’s nothing more I need for the final report.”

You know when to take a hint; know that the walls have ears, too, so you take the dismissal in stride. The walk back to the barracks is short, and most of the other guys are already fast asleep as you get in.

Francisco’s bed is only a few feet away from yours, one of about a dozen in the room. The moonlight offers just a small stream of light into the room, and as you start to take your clothes off, you can feel Frankie’s eyes on you. You’re both showered and cleaned up hours earlier, but somehow you still feel the smoke in your lungs and ashes on your skin, like some kind of phantom feeling.

Frankie watches you quietly as you strip down to your underwear. He knows that you’re aware of him looking at you, and you swallow hard when you see him shift under the blanket - see his hand move down to touch himself.

There’s no privacy here - there never is, maybe even less so than there was in Bogota. But at least there’s this, knowing your bed is just a few feet away from his. Being able to see glimpses of him in the moonlight. His hand moving further down, still under that blanket, and when his eyes close momentarily you know he’s got his hand on his cock. 

You get into bed and pull the sheets up over yourself, laying on your side so you can still see Frankie. When his eyes flutter open again, you slip your hand into your underwear to touch yourself too, and you see his eyes flick over your body as he realizes you’re joining him. 

It’s hard to control your breathing, especially when it’s so quiet at night, but you’re both experts at this by now. Hungry eyes focused on eachother in the mostly dark sleeping quarters. You pretending your fingers are his - him pretending his fingers are yours. It’s not much, but it’s something; anything to make you feel alive during nights like these. 

Frankie is in your dream.

And Joel is looking at him. 

Right at him - both Joel’s living half as well as the one that is in decay. It chills you in a way that’s so startling that the fear grabs you by your throat out of nowhere.

This isn’t supposed to happen. Frankie isn’t supposed to be in any of your dreams that are also occupied by Joel. It happens all the time that you hear Frankie scream in your dreams, but it is always separate from where you are - like he’s in a different space and the sound just happens to carry.

Not now. At least he’s not screaming, but he and Joel are looking at each other from a distance, before Frankie’s glance meets yours. Full of questions. 

You try to keep your voice calm, but you hear the trembling when you speak. “Don’t take him from me.” 

You don’t know how you would do it; prevent Joel from taking Frankie with him the way he does with the other people, the other bodies. All you know is that it can’t happen.

“I never would.” Joel shakes his head. “Besides, he’s a warrior. And she wouldn’t allow me to. She’s the one who owns his head.”

“What does that even mean?”, you ask, suddenly noticing the woman behind Frankie. She’s taller than he is, dressed in a style that seems very out of place, not in the least because of the brown fur that’s a prominent part of the outfit. But something is familiar about her.

When she puts her hand on Frankie’s shoulder, he glances at it for a second before he brings his eyes back to you.

“Nothing for you to worry about,” Joel says, and you shiver from the cold wind that blows past you.

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By the third raid you lead, you understand why Ezra assigns you to these missions. You’re good at planning, leading your team, getting the work done, taking down the people that need to be eliminated - but you’re pretty sure that it’s really about the children. 

There never is any mention of them in the information you get beforehand; those reports are only about the adults, the snitches, dealers who don’t hold up their end of the deal, or the sicarios who have taken wrong steps. And you’ve seen what happens at other raids. Many of the others won’t hesitate to shoot a child, use them as collateral, and you don’t doubt that there are situations that end even worse than those two options.

You quickly develop the habit to let the others chase the targets while you - and most often Frankie too - will explore the premises to find any children. In some cases, they’re barely teenagers, the fear in their eyes clear enough to indicate that they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Other times, they’re infants, toddlers, held close by siblings who are barely older than them.

Getting them out becomes a priority for you, particularly when after every mission you see Ezra’s relief when you make a subtle remark about any kids. There’s a lot he can’t say out loud, not just because of his position in the syndicate, but also because wiretaps have become frequent these days. So you keep it very brief, often will only mention it when the two of you are alone - a quick update on what happened to the kids.

“She was brought to her older sister.” 

“They ended up at the neighbor's house.”

“Someone knows where her other relatives live.”

You always swipe money from raids when given the chance, stashing it away in an air vent in your sleeping quarters that only you and Frankie know about. But as the raids occur more often, each leaving behind an even bigger impact than the one prior, you start to put most of the money in the children’s pockets before whisking them off to safety.

It never stops feeling like you’re trying to fix a broken dam with a band-aid, but it feels like the best possible option. Especially when you think back of how you landed in this position, and how you’d been taken away from your home. In an ideal world, you could decide to defect – find a way out for you and Frankie, take the money and run. But throughout the years you’ve seen that almost every single person who attempts to get out of this world will end up dead; not just murdered, but tortured first, before it’s all inflicted on the people closest to them, too. 

So you run the raids. Find a way to get the kids out. Have nightmares - then repeat. And repeat. And repeat some more.

The problem is that you’ve gotten really good at this.

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The next time you see the tall woman covered in furs, you’re not dreaming. 

It’s the middle of a raid, and you and Frankie are chasing down a guy who is trying to escape from the rooftop. He jumps over to the next building, and Frankie is about to leap the same distance between the roofs, when you suddenly see that woman right next to him. 

Calmly she puts her hand on his shoulder and Frankie stops abruptly, turning around to look behind him with a bewildered expression. “Santi, we-...”

A terrible scream sounds from the other roof, and when you look over, you see your target scrambling to hold onto something, while the roof shingles under his feet are slipping away. With a loud noise, the foundation of the roof falls apart, yanking the man’s body down with brute violence and you hear him scream more until a loud bang silences him.

“Fuck,” Frankie croaks, staring at the destruction, and you grab his untouched shoulder tightly, needing to feel him under your hands, that he’s really still here by the grace of not having made that same jump as the man did. “I think he’s impaled.”

The tall woman on his other side looks right at you, then nods as she steps away, disappearing into thin air in that same move. 

These days, when Tovar and Lorenzano make a stop in Cali, it happens more often than not that one or both of them will talk to you; an extremely rare occurrence for somebody in your position. 

Sometimes they’re there for a debriefing with Ezra, other times one of them will remark that bigger things are waiting for you in the near future. Trying to find a balance between doing the work that’s expected from you and keeping your head straight has become increasingly difficult, and you’re not the only one struggling with it.

Francisco oscillates between extremes most of the time. As a co-pilot, he’s mastered skills that very few in the syndicate actually have to offer, not to mention his skills when it comes to engineering and fixing up vehicles. Flying clears his head, grounds him in his body in the best possible way it seems. But once he’s back on the ground, especially when they need to go on raids and he’s dealing with anything but transportation, you often see him shut down and try to dissociate, something that’s hard to bring him back from. It gets even worse during moments when he decides to partake in the cocaine that’s always easily available.

A year later, you still haven’t figured out a way to get the two of you away from all of this. The money in your stash isn’t enough, and you know Lorenzano has men everywhere across the country - there was no way to make it anywhere without being shot in the head sooner or later. So you work. You learn from Ezra. You take the praise. And the nightmares - during the nights and during the days - keep getting worse.

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Leaving Cali happens in a rush, with none of you expecting it - including Ezra. ‘Reassignment to a rural area’ is the official message, which in practice means a camp right in the middle of the jungle. 

“We’re here to take out those fuckin’ communist guerillas,” was the more extended explanation that everybody who relocated from Cali to officially join ACCU. Also known as ‘Peasant Self-Defenders of Córdoba and Urabá’, the group had been founded by the Castaño brothers after their father was kidnapped and killed, in retaliation to the left-wing Marxist guerillas. ACCU was knee deep into the drug trade, and, as you had discovered years earlier, a lot of people fighting for them got here the same way you and Frankie had.

FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia known as the guerillas, stood out because they did employ tactics like kidnapping, but weren’t involved in the drug trade. Instead they fought for ‘social justice and the rights of the poor’, which in practice meant a whole lot of enemies.

“These aren’t the usual raids,” Ezra told you in the first couple of days on the ground, as he’d been filling you, Frankie and the others in on the different stations, people in charge, and what to expect. “This is a lot of combat, sometimes involving hostages.”

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‘A lot of combat’ is an understatement, as you and Frankie find out right from the start. The amount of assault rifles was overwhelming, as were the number of casualties per week. No more flights for Frankie for the time being, now mostly driving trucks of various sizes. What perhaps is the worst of it all is the complete and utter lack of privacy, even by the low expectations you already had.

With all the communal areas even more exposed than in Cali, there barely was any opportunity to sneak off. Here, finding a good hiding spot meant doing so in the jungle, risking death, because the odds were too high that you’d run into FARC members.

At times there were reports coming in from the major cities. Whispers about a pact between the DEA and some narcos, competing cartels. American reports on what was happening in Colombia, which often had barely anything to do with what was really going on. Rumors about the commies having grown massively in numbers. Everything is urgent, all the time, but now with a constant threat of being hit severely worse than would be the case in the city. 

Sometimes you wonder if you and Frankie should’ve stayed in Bogota all along.

The second time you dream of the wolf cub in bindings, you immediately notice something is wrong - even before it cries out for you. This time they look like proper chains, the metal scraping against the cub’s fur and skin, and your first thought is that these are going to be much harder to remove than the first ones.

They’re also not merely restraining the wolf; this time it has properly been captured, the chains secured to a palm tree like the ones you see every single day around you. The pup howls, clearly more agitated this time, and you hush it gently, petting his fur while examining the restraints. “What keeps happening here, buddy?”

“Trusting the wrong people has consequences.”

You look up when you think you hear Joel’s voice from nearby, except it’s not him - but your father leaning against another palm tree, his face solemn as he looks back at you.

Your FATHER?

The wolf cub growls, and this time it’s not the usual angry growl of caution that he tends to make — it’s more like a snarl, layers of rage and destruction underneath. It yanks hard at the chain that has him tethered to the tree, sharp teeth biting at it until the chain breaks, and before you can do anything, it bolts over to where your father is standing, leaping up to attack him viciously.

You wake up screaming so loudly that you wake up all the others in the sleeping quarters, only calming down somewhat once Frankie physically shakes you out of it.

Going back to sleep turns out to be impossible, and it’s only after you try to skip sleep for the next two nights that your body finally caves in, knocking you out into a deep sleep, while you’re exhausted and scared of the dreams that might come back to you.

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Choices have never been an option with the syndicate. Either you do what you’re being told, or chances are that someone puts a bullet into you. That’s how you find yourself leading a team that is much bigger than you’re used to, not to mention with more challenging missions than you’ve done before.

Running drugs or arms in a city is pretty easy - even collecting it by force, or dealing with money. When raiding a building, there’s always a clear plan beforehand: assign people to specific spots, have a backup plan, keep the escape routes in mind, and make sure there’s enough ammunition.

Taking over a small FARC outpost is an entirely different thing. The unpredictability of the jungle, poorer communication methods, and with sightlines often being blocked, it’s not all that straightforward to take out a group of guerillas.

If it hadn’t been for Ezra’s training over the past years, you wouldn’t know where to start. But as always, you adjust - particularly with Frankie by your sight. The outpost gets conquered, another group of armed fighters elsewhere is taken down. But the guilt you were sort of able to remedy in Bogota and Cali, by helping to get some of the kids out, gnaws at you constantly here in the jungle. When twelve year olds are as heavily armed as you are, and even more eager to put a bullet in between your eyes, there’s not much of a chance to find some redemption.

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Just because Ezra is a good killer doesn’t mean he’s comfortable with it, you’ve noticed. You can see it eating away at him, just as it does with you. He still talks plenty to you about everything, but you can tell the isolation out here in the jungle is getting to him as well.

“I did a lot of work as a freelancer, Little Beast,” he replies when you ask him one day while you’re training with him. “I’m a floater, and some might say a merch, but I’m not merely a hit man. To be completely candid, this situation out here has… proven to disappoint.”

You want to ask him if he’s ever thought about getting out, but you don’t dare to - not with the lack of privacy around you. It’s not like you expect him to just offer you a way out; you know it’s not that simple, but throughout the years you’ve considered every possible option. Being here in the jungle has led you to consider defecting and joining FARC’s side, but you’re not naive enough to believe that will be a solution in the long run.

The one thing you’ve been able to keep secret out here is the money you’ve saved throughout the years. You carry it on you most days, as there is no proper hiding spot out here, carefully folded into a small pocket bible as that’s the one thing that won’t get searched during inspection.

Sometimes you try to remember the prayers your mother would say as she’d ask for help and protection. Even when you’re pretty sure none of her saints would listen to you, after everything you’ve done.

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Something snaps inside of you when you find Frankie doing coke.

He swears it’s not a common thing, that it has only happened ‘two or three times’, that one of the guys - that bastard David - just offered it to him to be able to make it through a mission he was dreading. You know Frankie has been struggling, has just as many nightmares as you do, and the complete lack of privacy here is making it so much harder to find moments to sneak away and find a moment of peace together. But you also know it always ends very badly when anyone starts doing coke to be able to make it through the days.

The next day it’s hard to control your anger - not at Francisco, but at everything regarding ACCU. You make him stay back in the camp, despite his protesting, leading your team on an afternoon attack, and the blind rage that takes hold of you in the heat of the battle is all consuming. It takes less time than expected to carry out the siege with your team, with more casualties due to wrongly estimating how many rebels you were attacking, and just when you shoot their leader you suddenly realize David is on your left, fighting someone else.

Fucking David who gave Francisco that coke.

You aim your gun without even thinking twice and shoot him straight through the head.

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Tovar is not amused when he finds out David didn’t make it. “He was one of our best. What the fuck happened?”

“I’m not sure. Didn’t have eyes on him.” You calmly look at him, giving him an opportunity to respond, and you know that you’re too good of a liar to give anything away. When he doesn’t say anything, you continue with the rest of your briefing. News spreads fast through the camp, and by the time you catch up with Frankie that evening, you can tell by the look in his eyes that he knows. Of course he does. He’s the only one you’ve never been able to lie to.

Ezra also doesn’t ask you what happened.

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When you were younger, running around with Joel and Jay in the neighborhood, your grandmother would always be the one to tell you boys to get home before dark. “It’s not that I don’t trust you - I don’t trust others to not get you into trouble,” she’d say.

You trust Frankie when he told you he wouldn’t take coke again. But now, you understand what your grandmother meant.

David’s buddy Arturo is the next person who offers some coke to Francisco, clearly hoping to make a deal. When Frankie turns it down, he keeps pushing, then eventually tries to persuade you.

You give it six days. Then, when you’re out in the field, you send him into a situation that you know is going to get him killed. He gets ambushed by two kids who take him out with their knives. Even though you could’ve taken down both of them with your rifle, you don’t shoot, and you see the relief in their eyes as they run away.

Arturo is still breathing when you check on him, but your own knife quickly deals with that before anyone else finds him.

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This time when you dream, you don’t see the wolf cub in chains. It’s you who is tied up, and after struggling in disoriented panic, you realize that you are the wolf. Thick dark fur where there should be your arms and legs, claws instead of your fingers, but the overwhelming feeling are the bindings wrapped around all of your limbs and the rest of your body - so thin that you can barely see the golden shimmer, but so sharp that it feels like it’s made from razors, pressing into your skin. 

You can’t scream - or howl -, you can’t even move. And all you see in front of you are Lorenzano and Tovar, each heavily armed, dragging your human body along with them up a mountain, leaving a trail of blood on the rocks.

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“I want them all DEAD.” Tovar nearly spits the words out at the group of you, banging his hand on the table with the map that has several FARC camps drawn onto it. “All of them. I don’t know how the fuck they got their hands on the product, but if it doesn’t all come back here…”

He’s terrifying like this, especially because you know he won’t hesitate to act on his threats. Somehow FARC had gotten a hold of internal intel, it seemed, not only being able to avoid being attacked for almost a week now but also having confiscated a massive amount of Lorenzano’s cocaine that was being packed and processed at a nearby facility.

The first two missions that week are done from the sky, and unsurprisingly Frankie is the co-pilot. You have a select team that goes up in the air with you and Ezra, two of your crew each armed with a M60E4 machine gun and one person with a Mk 153 SMAW launcher. It’s not your first time running an attack with this kind of artillery from the sky, but it still makes your stomach turn to see the damage that’s inflicted, the only small relief being that at least it’s not happening up close like would be the case with a ground attack.

On the third day, it’s back to the ground with your team, and you manage to overtake a building that holds at least half of the missing cocaine. At least half of the FARC fighters that are assassinated are still practically kids, who had been repackaging the drugs in the building. You and Frankie, as always, try to focus on the adults rather than the young teens, and at the end of the day you see Ezra’s expression is similar to how you feel: not just empty, but hollowed out.

Whether it’s the exhaustion setting in or bad strategizing, you’re not sure, but on day four the mission goes awry, and your team barely manages to pull through. Tovar is with the group though and aggressively moves in on the remaining cocaine that someone finds, but seeing how a large amount of it got shot up during the attack makes him absolutely furious. Eventually, he splits the team, sending half of your crew back to your camp with the repossessed drugs, while you have to do another sweep of the premises to make sure everything got covered.

It’s when Frankie pulls open a side door that seems to have been overlooked, and you step in with your gun ready, that you stumble into her. She’s young, younger than you, bruised and bloodied, but what stands out the most is that she’s pregnant - and very far along, it seems. It’s extremely unusual to come across someone in her position, here out in the jungle, because you all know that FARC does not exactly allow any of their fighters to start a family.

You see the hysteria on her face as she realizes that she’s been discovered, know she’s about to scream and fight, so you move on instinct, putting your gun behind you as you hush her and urge her to not yell. “You’re okay, you’re okay- I’m not gonna hurt you, alright? We’re not…”

She stares at the both of you with wide eyes as she nods, and you hear Frankie curse behind you. “Fuck, Santi, no – they’re gonna fucking see her, man. This place is going to get torched in five minutes from now.”

“Please, don’t hurt my baby, I’ll do anything.” She’s sobbing, on her knees now, and you turn to face Frankie as your head is working overtime.

“But we can’t– she’s pregnant,” you say to him, and he nods sadly, his jaw clenching as you can see him think. You curse, peering outside to check if anybody is watching, then close your eyes as you say a quick prayer. Please let this work. Not for me, but for her. “You need to get to the others and tell them it’s clear,” you tell Frankie as you nod to the front of the building. “I’ll get her out of here and to the back of the premises. Just tell them… something, okay? I’ll join you soon.”

“I don’t fucking like this.” But Frankie nods and disappears back outside, while you help the girl to her feet and explain to her how you’re gonna get her out.

“You can’t make a sound. You can’t trip. If they catch us, we’re both dead, okay?”

She nods as tears are rolling down her face, then tries to take a few deep breaths to calm herself. Meanwhile you listen closely to what’s happening outside, hear Frankie’s voice louder than usual - but not exaggerated - as he’s calling out to some of the team members. There’s no time to overthink matters, so you grab the young woman’s hand as you tug her outside, making sure to keep her covered with your own body as you rush her towards the trees that are at a small distance from the building.

Your heart is thumping so loudly that you feel like everybody in the vicinity must be able to hear it - but finally you get her there, pushing her behind a palm tree as you press the handle of a small knife in her hand. “Stay out of sight until we’re gone. Not a fucking sound,” you hiss at her, and she nods again at you, tears brimming in her eyes. She mouths a silent thank you before you turn around, and you don’t look back as you rush back to the property.

Somehow you manage to make it back to the front without raising any questions. Tovar is directing some people around, distributing gasoline, and mere minutes later the whole place is on fire. You’re exhausted, and not fully aware of how you all get back to the base camp, where you do a quick briefing with Ezra, then go find your sleeping spot in the tent to pass out even though it’s still early.

You wake up by Frankie sitting down on your makeshift bed, his hand on your back briefly as he hands you a plate with food. “Told them you got hurt getting back here and needed to rest,” he says, and you’re so grateful that you could almost cry. “Good job.”

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The next two days Ezra puts you, Frankie and the team on rest, giving you the opportunity to catch up on sleep and deal with the bruises and injuries most of you have. Then there is patrol duty, and you’re separated into pairs to guard between your camp and the other ACCU location. It’s hot, as always, but the vegetation mostly offers some shade which makes it more bearable.

Once you’re at least twenty minutes away from your camp, you tug Frankie behind a large tree and kiss him, unable to go on any longer without feeling him against you. You can feel him sigh in relief as he returns your kiss, his tongue eager as he takes over your kiss and presses you against the tree trunk.

“I thought this week was gonna fuckin’ kill us,” he whispers, and you nod as you brush his curls back, twirling a few around your index finger. You want him, in each and every way, but at the same time you feel so utterly drained that you can’t even imagine doing more than kissing and letting your hands roam for now - and you can tell he feels the same way.

You stay like that for a few minutes, just kissing each other, glad to have the slightest bit of time together. The tiredness ebbs away eventually, comforted by the touch of his body against yours, and just when you start to feel his hands drift lower, you realize that you need to stop this now before it gets to the point that neither of you can dial it down anymore.

“We gotta get going,” you make yourself say, and he groans softly, not happy about it, but he lets go after giving you one more deep kiss.

The path to the other camp is mostly easy to follow as you’ve walked it so many times before, a few tree trunks in the way here and there, and eventually the scenery around you changes, going up a hill to higher ground. Francisco talks about the helicopter maintenance that’s scheduled later this week, and you’re glad that they’re keen on keeping him in that aviation position - he really is good at it and still enjoying it, a welcome change from most of the field work.

You halt when you suddenly hear a sound that isn’t common around these parts, and you look around at you try to locate the sound. “Did you hear that?”

Frankie shakes his head. “What?”

“I heard a… Almost like some kind of howling.” You stop abruptly at the edge of the path, grabbing Frankie’s arm as you stare at the sight thirty, forty - maybe fifty - feet away from you, at the bottom of a steep slope. Surrounded by the lush rainforest vegetation stands a large adult wolf, eyes locked on you but not showing any signs of intending to approach you. You blink repeatedly, for a moment wondering if you’re making things up. “You see that?”

You stop abruptly at the edge of the path, grabbing Frankie’s arm as you stare at the sight 30 or maybe 50 feet away from you, at the bottom of a steep slope. Surrounded by the lush rainforest vegetation stands a large adult wolf, eyes locked on you but not showing any signs of intending to approach you. “You see that?”

Francisco gives you a questioning look, then follows your line of sight. “No. Somebody there?”

“The wolf, Frankie.” You have a hard time taking your eyes off the animal; you’ve never before seen one in real life. Meanwhile Frankie is looking at you as if you’ve grown three heads.

“A wo-… Santi, there are no wolves in Colombia.”

“Yes there are, look.”

Frankie smacks the back of his hand against your cheek, the frown on his face growing deeper. “Oye, pendejo. There’s nothing over there. You sure you’re okay?”

“No,” you say absentmindedly as the wolf tilts his head, and for a moment you wonder if it will attack you. Then you hear it; the sound of branches breaking behind the two of you, several pairs of footsteps, and you realize the wolf is not a threat but a warning. And for some reason you can’t explain, you just know that one of the guys behind you will be Tovar.

You take a deep breath as you take one more look at Frankie, drinking in every detail of his face and presence next to you. You wish that you could kiss him one more time, but you don’t dare to risk it.

“Something is very wrong, go back and find Ezra,” you say quietly, and you see his eyes widen as he reaches for his gun, but you stop him immediately as you shake your head. “No. You can’t win this, I’m so sorry - I love you.” Then you shove him, hard, so he trips over the edge and falls down the slope of dirt and vegetation, towards where you saw the wolf moments earlier.

You turn around while you pull out your spare gun, shooting down the guy closest to you without even blinking, then aim at a second and third person. You’re determined to do as much damage as possible to give Frankie a chance to get away.

Tovar’s eyes are dark and furious when they meet yours, and within moments he has overpowered you, dragging you away from the edge of the slope as he bangs the metal of his gun against your fingers. The pain is so sharp and hard that it makes you scream, and you drop your guns involuntarily, blindly reaching for your knife.

“You son of a bitch,” he hisses at you, but your fingers close around the hilt of your knife and you sink it into his leg with all of your strength, before you get hit over the head and lose consciousness.

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When you regain consciousness again, there’s arguing, loud banging against things, and yelling happening all around you. It takes effort to focus when you open your eyes, but finally you can make out some of the faces around you. Tovar, unsurprisingly, a gun in his hand as he’s leaning against the wall. Lorenzano, also armed. And surprisingly - Ezra. On the floor, half kneeling, and with Lorenzano’s gun pressed against his head.

“You made him this way!” Lorenzano practically spat at him, looking like he’s about to have an aneurism out of rage, but Ezra merely looks at him all calm. “You… you conspired. With those faggot boys. And now you’re trying to take me-…”

Tovar cleared his throat. “Us,” he said sharply.

“Yeah, and now you’re trying to take us down,” Lorenzano continued, moving the gun from Ezra’s temple to his forehead.

“I’m afraid I must interject. I did no such thing, boss. Neither did Sant–” Ezra’s words are cut off as Lorenzano hits him hard across his face, and you wince at the sound of what possibly is a broken nose.

“Don’t. Lie. To. Me.”

Ezra takes a moment to compose himself, then shakes his head again, wincing as it seems to hurt him. “I am not a greedy man. You of all people should know that after all this time.”

“Then how did those fuckin commies get their hands on that stash?” Tovar speaks up, looking irritated. “They clearly had intel. Not to mention that ambush the other day.” He wanders over to you, and you groan as you try to sit up on the floor, but your hands are cuffed behind your back and your ankles also tied together. “And you. You let that whore escape the other day. Did you really think you could get away with that?”, he sneers. “Did you deliver Esdras’ messages to her or something?”

Your head is spinning as you’re trying to follow the conversation even though the pain is making it hard to listen and speak. “I didn’t do — I never tried anything like that,” you manage, trying to keep your eyes open. “Please. You have to believe me. Ezra never…”

Tovar grabs you by your neck, pressing his gun up against your chin. “We found your money stash,” he hisses. “Do you know how many of your comrades were eager to speak about the shit you pulled in Cali and Bogota? Letting people get away from raids while they should’ve been six feet under?”

You fight the urge to argue that it wasn’t just people, that it was mostly children and some women, because you know that’s not gonna help your case. “I’ve done as I’ve been told to do. All of my missions. Every single one of them was successful and profitable…,” you wince when you hear Tovar take the safety off the gun, and you close your eyes as you speak faster, trying to focus more on convincing him. “Ezra was just training me so I would be better working for the syndicate. That’s all, I swear. He never… we wouldn’t.”

“What about your faggot boyfriend, huh?”

“What about him, gentle man?” Ezra speaks up before you can even begin to think of an answer. “He didn’t do anything. Neither of them did, nor did I. If we had, you’d have concrete evidence, my friend.”

Tovar ignores his words, and you feel the gun barrel press even harder into your chin. “Where is he? That pilot boy.”

“I don’t know,” you say honestly. Clearly that’s not a good enough answer, because a moment later you’re kicked in the stomach and collapse, gasping for air. “God, I swear, I don’t…”

“Are you religious, Santiago?” Lorenzano walks over to you with slow, menacing steps. “Because you’d better pray to your god that they won’t carry you out of here in a body bag.”

Nausea rolls around your stomach, and you brace yourself for what you know is going to be another kick or punch. You manage to hang in there at first, but when another blow lands on your head, your dizziness quickly overtakes you while the sound of an electric tool whizzes in the background. You hear Ezra scream as the smell of burnt flesh fills the room, and then everything goes dark again.

It’s so dark.

You’re not sure where you are, but you know you haven’t been here before. It doesn’t feel like a dream either, not with the briny ocean air that you smell all around you.

Painfully slowly the darkness begins to clear eventually, showing that you’re standing somewhere high up on a cliff. There’s a man near the end of the cliff, his back turned to you, dripping wet like he just got out of the ocean. 

It’s your brother Jay.

This is the first time you’ve ever seen him in a dream. You know it’s him, even from the back, and even if that looks nothing like how you remember him. When he turns around to face you, something wells inside of your chest and crowds your throat - tears of fear or relief, it’s hard to tell. You just know you’re exhausted, and in pain, and bleeding profusely.

Jay reaches out to you, seemingly offering something he’s holding, but when you take a step closer to him you see it move and realize it’s an animal. A snake, or - no, a sea serpent, biting its own tail, immersed in water that Jay is able to hold in his hands somehow. 

“Brother. It is time. Come join me.” You hear Jay say the words, even though his lips don’t move, and you notice that his eyes are swirls of blue and white. Like waves in the ocean, or a stormy sky.

You know this is Jay, but none of it feels like when you’ve been seeing Joel in your dreams. Something is seriously wrong. 

All of a sudden the choked up feeling in your throat turns into a sharp, blinding pain. It’s like someone jammed a knife into it, or a sword, that goes all the way up to the roof of your mouth. The taste of blood takes over your senses as an alarming amount of it begins to pool into your mouth.

“Were you not looking for me?” Jay’s voice grows louder while the serpent in his hands grows bigger, wriggling in the water. Again offers it to you, stepping even closer, and the ocean smell grows stronger. “Come. Take its tail out so he can breathe and live.”

The words are a bitter irony since you’re nearly choking on your own blood. You feel delirious, your head spinning as you’re already nauseous from the pain. Right when you’re about to reach out and grab the creature from Jay, you hear someone screaming behind you - loudly. 

It’s Frankie. And it’s not even the screams that you would normally hear in your dreams with Joel. This is much, much worse. It reminds you of raids gone wrong, sicarios going after you, and that time the both of you almost died falling off a roof. It’s the kind of screaming that’s full of despair instead of just fear, only rivaled in intensity by the sudden sound of a helicopter that you can’t see. It’s so foreign in this setting that it shakes you out of your delirium, just long enough to see three men step out from behind Jay’s back. 

Tovar. On the right. Teeth bared, the scar on his face looking an angry red color, a M16 in his hands that’s aimed at Jay’s head.

Lorenzano is standing behind Jay, the expression in his eyes dead and vacant as always, with a barely concealed sneer on his face. There’s a Beretta in his hand that’s aimed at the back of Jay’s head, and for some reason you know that if there’s anyone who wants to kill Jay - it’s gonna be Lorenzano.

“Little Beast.”

Your attention gets pulled to the left of your brother, where the third man stands: tall, a familiar shock of blond in his hair, green brown clothing. Ezra. Unarmed and chillingly calm in contrast to Lorenzano, Tovar and your brother, he extends his left hand to you.

"Every moment of our lives is filled with choices, Little Beast. Your choice and your consequence to bear."

“BROTHER.” Jay’s eyes flash in anger at you, the blue of his pupils turning almost black. “Do not ignore me. Come join me. Kill him as it has been prophesied in word and song.” 

Somehow you know ‘him’ isn’t about the men on either side of him. It’s about Lorenzano, still behind Jay, now staring at you as his finger rests against the trigger of his handgun. But before you can respond to Jay, something soft pushes firmly against your leg, followed by the low warning growl of your wolf cub.

You can feel the bindings around the cub before you even look down. It’s like they’re chaining you too, the pressure thin and sharp around your chest and legs, feeling both impossibly delicate and permanent in how strong they are. For a second it shifts your focus of pain away from the blade that’s still lodged into your throat and mouth, but as the wolf cub looks up at you, you can tell that you’re not going to be able to help him with these bindings - and it feels like the biggest failure.

The cub isn’t deterred though, his eyes locked on Jay as he grows loudly at him, and you wince when you feel the wolf’s claws scrape over your leg - you know it doesn’t intend to hurt you, it just wants to protect and be close to you. 

Jay furiously yells at you, the expression on his face asinine and enraged, and Lorenzano suddenly no longer standing behind him. So you don’t think - you just reach out for the hand Ezra is offering you, clutching on to him for dear life as you also swoop up the wolf pup in your other arm. 

The screams of your brother turn into the roaring sound of the ocean, overtaking all the other sounds around you, and you watch in horror as water starts pouring from his mouth in excessive amounts, in the same way you feel blood pouring from yours.

Jay’s fingers wrap themselves around each side of the serpent, scraping over its scales as he pulls and pulls and pulls with all his might. It doesn’t work initially, nor the second time - but the third time proves to be a charm at last. He forcefully rips the snake’s tail out of its mouth, releasing a loud hissing sound from the creature as it contorts and starts to grow bigger.

Several claps of thunder sound in the air at the same time, and as Ezra’s hand closes around yours and pulls you over to him, you see the assault weapon in Tovar’s hand has turned into a massive hammer.

When the hammer hits Jay, the flash of lightning on impact is almost blinding, cracking his skull, and Jay screams as he throws the serpent at his attacker. The creature immediately wraps itself around his calves, and when its teeth sink deep into Tovar’s leg, it pulls a scream from him that rivals all the other deafening sounds around you. 

Tovar stumbles away from Jay and the snake - four, five, six steps, and when his eyes meet yours, you feel another wave of nausea rolling through you.The rage in his eyes when he sees you with Ezra is terrifying, and his path abruptly changes and he moves towards you, one step followed by another. But as he takes one more step, he suddenly pales, grabbing at his leg where the serpent bit him moments earlier. 

The creature still has its fangs sunk into Tovar’s leg, acidic looking venom now dripping out of the wound, and it seems like all of a sudden Tovar realizes that this is not something he can beat. 

He is a tall, broad man, his right hand still gripping tight onto the large hammer - but when he falls, you can tell there is no way that man is getting up again. The massive hammer hits the ground, making everything shake as a crack forms into the ground, zipping from left to right as more additional cracks happen faster than you can even count.

Then, the tip of the cliff just… breaks off. A moment of complete destruction, happening much faster than seems possible, because within seconds it just plummets all the way down, dragging Tovar and Jay along with it. So fast that you don’t even hear them scream; the only sound you hear is the massive thud as everything crashes down into the ocean, being swallowed up whole by roaring waves that pull it down into its depths to never be seen again.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

This time you're not sure that you are even fully conscious when the room around you comes into focus for a moment. The air smells metallic, like blood and burnt things, and the floor around you is red.

"Little Beast," you hear Ezra gasp, and you want to look at him, but the darkness pulls you under again.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Everything around you turns red. Dripping with blood, which then turns into bright orange flames, leaping up to the sky like it was their only purpose in life. But the wolf cub is now taller than you, wrapping its tail around you and Ezra as he tosses you onto his back.

You scramble to hold onto his fur as you grab Ezra’s shirt, making sure he won’t slide off. But then you see his right arm is missing, he’s bleeding out all over the three of you - and you don’t know what to do.

“It’s the consequences, Little Beast.” Ezra is calm as ever as he looks at you, the blond streak barely visible in his hair as it’s also covered in blood. “The choice was mine to make. Certain actions ferment the threat of appropriate reactions.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

Somewhere there’s the sound of guns. There’s screaming, and then you hear a voice that you’d recognize anywhere. 

Francisco.

“Is that…” Ezra’s voice is shaking, unable to talk without wincing and gasping from pain. “Fuck. Frankie?”

More gunshots sound and just when the door is slammed open, you once again lose consciousness, your head hurting so much that you wonder if this is the end of it all.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

You’re cold.

Everything is white, but you can still smell the flames.

You know the fire is finally gone when the white begins to weigh heavy on you like snow.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

When you open your eyes, brought back to consciousness by the sound of the wolf cub whimpering against you, there’s a large wolf standing across from you two. Not black, like your cub - brown, like the color of trees, and Frankie’s eyes and hair.

Francisco.

You black out again. 

When you finally come to your senses again and open your eyes, there’s a small arctic fox standing next to the brown wolf in the snow. It raises its head when it sees you move, then looks at something behind it in the distance.

It’s only when you see the bloody knife in the crisp snow in front of you that you realize it’s no longer lodged into your throat, and that there’s no blood pooling in your mouth anymore.

Heaven for the climate, hell for the company. 

“Frankie.” His name slips from your lips as you start to cry, and the wolf cub whines softly, now  curled up against your chest. His paws are bloody, and you’re not sure if it’s his blood or yours, nor where the large piece of bloody meat came from that’s staining the snow between you and the brown wolf who is still standing in front of you.

Brown fur.

Brown curls.

The tall woman in front of you is covered in brown furs, keeping her warm against the snow. She kneels down in front of you as she picks up the piece of bloody meat and puts it in her pocket. Then she reaches out of you, and as you feel the wet brush of her hand on your forehead, pushing back your hair, you feel yourself starting to lose consciousness again.

“Oh.” Her voice is light, tingles like icicles, and she laughs softly, sounding surprised. “Yes. You really are his.”

There’s even more blood than before. Your hands, all the way up your forearms. In your mouth. Hair.

Frankie’s face. His legs. So much blood, and he’s crying.

Someone’s dismembered arm lays on the floor, not too far away from you. You try to figure out if it’s yours, but everything hurts too much - you’re just not sure.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

You’re not sure how you make it to the truck, delirious from blood loss - you just know that somehow you do, Francisco’s hands on you almost the entire time. Once you’re in the vehicle, you promptly black out, coming to your senses later while Frankie drives the truck like he is possessed, several guns in the passenger seat next to him.

You want to ask him what happened - how he found you, and where Ezra is, but every time you think you’ve found the words to ask him that out loud, you black out again, and again, and again. Sometimes you wake up screaming, other times the pain throughout your entire body and head is almost too much to stand - but each and every time, there’s Frankie’s reassuring hand on you.

Somewhere between reality and dreams, or maybe even a worse place than that, you’re drowning in a river of foaming blood. The current is rough, making it incredibly hard to hold on anything  as you try to hold onto rocks, a tree trunk, and anything else that’s near you. 

The pain in your head is stabbing, overwhelming, and you can’t tell if the blood around you tastes the same as the blood in your mouth - whether it’s both yours, or if some of it is Frankie’s, or maybe even Ezra's.

After what seems like hours it starts to rain, while you’re still trying to stay afloat. At first you’re convinced it’s going to be the final push that’ll make you drown, but somehow as the rain mingles with the bloody river, it starts to dilute the thick red blood little by little, until eventually the blood has disappeared and there’s only water surrounding you, while the sun breaks through the clouds, warming your skin at last. You grit your teeth as you try to make it to the shore once again, and this time you’re successful, finally getting your body out of the water as you lay down into a wheat field, the wolf pup suddenly by your side.

You lurch up when the truck Frankie is driving comes to an abrupt stop, gasping for air as you’re jostled into consciousness for a moment. The wolf cub whines softly, licking your face, and you can’t figure out if you’re actually in the car or in that field next to the river. You hear voices somewhere nearby, and when somebody talks who is clearly not Frankie, the pup bolts up with his teeth bared.

That’s when you see the horse in front of you, just a few steps away, his dark brown coat looking almost black as it shines in the sun. You don’t understand how it’s possible, but you can swear that the horse smells like freshly baked bread and some grain alcohol - maybe it’s whiskey. The horse slowly starts to change shape, and eventually looks like a man wearing yellow aviators and tight jeans, standing there with a cocked hip and an expression somewhere in between annoyance and concern.

“Peña,” you hear Frankie say, but some part of your brain struggles to accept that name for the man. 

“Freyr,” you mutter as you close your eyes again, burying your face against the soft fur of the wolf cub curled up against you. You’ve seen that man before, you just don’t remember where. Bogota? Medellin? Maybe talking to Ezra? Fuck - Ezra. Where is he? Is he still alive? “Esdr-...Tyr.” Your head hurts so much that it feels like it’s going to explode.

“Santiago. You’re going to be okay.” 

Your eyes fly open when you recognize Joel’s voice, so nearby that for a moment it feels like he is right next to you. Until everything goes black again.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Every time you dream of Joel, you ask him.

Every time you ask him, he has no answer for you.

“He’s not here, Santiago.”

“Please. You must be able to find out somehow.”

“I don’t know where Esdras is, hermano.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The medication that Javier and Frankie got for you makes it hard to focus on anything, but at least it keeps the pain away. It makes the nightmares worse though, so you find yourself desperately trying to stay awake. 

This is what you understand: 

You’re at the El Dorado airport in Bogota, with Francisco and Javier Peña, who is a DEA agent. The three of you are getting on a small plane that’s headed to the United States, but you’re not quite sure where. At some point, you’ll be testifying anonymously about Lorenzano, Tovar and the rest of the syndicate.

“Ezra set this up a year ago,” Javier tells the two of you as he hands you each a passport and some paperwork. “Residency and work permits. The rest will come.” 

Francisco is staring at him, looking just as confused as you are feeling. “I don’t understand.”

“Ezra is an American citizen. Was.” Javier hesitates, and you can tell by his expression that the man genuinely doesn’t seem to know whether Ezra is still alive as he looks at you. “When Frankie found you two… well. He should tell you about that some time. But Ezra sent him to me, so I got things moving. Most of this was already set up.” 

“Why?”, you manage to ask, and Javier sighs as he takes his yellow aviators off.

“Insurance policy. I know Ezra wanted out, but he didn’t quite seem to think that he would survive that,” he then says. “He figured that if shit hit the fan, at least you two could get out and start over.”

You close your eyes, trying to process the words, but it’s impossible to understand. The idea that Ezra is probably dead is just as unbearable as the thought of what state he might be in if he is still alive. 

“Did he lose his arm?”, you ask, and you don’t recognize your own voice - but you can tell the words sound slightly hysterical. “Frankie, where…”

“You should rest. Both of you,” Javier gently but firmly interrupts you, then gives you some pills and a bottle of water. “These will help. You’re safe for now.”

The woman, Lydia, apologizes for the small apartment, saying that’s all she was able to arrange on such short notice. Javier and Francisco assure her it’s perfectly fine, and you can only nod, your tongue and brain still heavy from the medications.

Once Javier had checked all the entrances and exits, feeling good about how secure it is, he leaves you and Frankie alone, saying something about Lydia picking up groceries and clothes for you soon. Only when he’s gone, you’re able to take in the apartment. Lydia may have apologized for its size, but to you it feels like a palace - and you can tell by the expression on Frankie’s face that he feels the same way.

Somehow it reminds you of your childhood home, and when you two sit down at the small kitchen table, you suddenly don’t feel twenty-two anymore but only ten years old at the most. You’ve never had someone give you a place to call home, even if it would be temporary. Hell, you’re never even been in a place that had locks and was intended for only you and Frankie, with exception of that one motel night a long time ago. 

You watch Frankie get up from the table and grab two glasses, filling them from a bottle of water in the fridge - the only thing that’s in there. As you drink from it, you take in his appearance. He looks as exhausted as you feel, some cuts and bruises on him, but not as many as you have fortunately.

He lets you look at him, the soft smile on his face indicating he understands you’re still loopy from the drugs, then touches your hand softly as he gets up. “This looks nice,” he says, gesturing around him, and you laugh without meaning to - because if there’s one thing Frankie normally doesn’t do, it’s small talk.

“Shut up, pendejo,” he says as he rolls his eyes at you, but you can tell that he doesn’t mean it. “I just mean - well, this is fucking huge.”

You shower together, mostly because you can’t stand up straight without swaying, but you realize that you quite like it. The water is hot and plentiful, neither of you having soap or anything, but just washing the dirt off your skin already feels like a blessing.

“I can walk,” you object when he seems inclined to help you to the bedroom, and you do so, ignoring when you almost fall twice. The sheets seem old but are so soft against your bare skin, and you drift off so fast while you hear Frankie moving around and letting someone inside the apartment. When he returns, it’s with a small pile of clothes and a bag with deliciously smelling food.

You’re both starving and eat mostly in silence, still trying to understand what happened in the past forty eight hours. When your eyes become too heavy, you curl up under the sheets and breathe a sigh of relief when Frankie does so as well. His naked body is so warm against yours as he wraps an arm around you, laying against your back, and you both fall asleep this way.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“America.” A smile tugs at Joel’s lips, and for a moment you’re not sure if you are actually dreaming. Everything indicates that you are, except for the way Joel looks. There is no decaying half to his face, or his body - he’s all in one piece, standing in front of you. Even looking relaxed, which is not exactly a characteristic you associate with him. 

There are no dead bodies anywhere near the two of you. 

Nobody is bleeding out on the ground, or screaming. 

It should be comforting, a relief, but after so many years of always having dreamt of Joel one way, your brain is struggling to understand what’s happening.

“Are you okay?”, you ask Joel, feeling stupid asking the question when he’s clearly looking better than he has before. “I mean…”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Santiago.” The expression on Joel’s face softens further, looking almost wistful, and suddenly you know with alarming clarity that this is the last time you’re going to be dreaming about him like this. “You got out.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The footsteps down the hallway are firm and moving closer to the room where you and Frankie are seated. He gives you a short nod as you both get up from the chairs, standing straight as you wait for the door to swing open.

A tall blond man dressed in uniform enters the room, and you can tell that it takes him just a second to size up the two of you - make a quick judgment about what he sees too, probably. 

He closes the door behind him, then walks over to shake your hands briefly. He gestures at the chairs you were seated earlier as he takes a seat of his own, behind the desk.

“Mr. Garcia, Mr. Morales. My name is Captain William Miller. What can I do for you?”

A/N II: I need to give a nod to @oliveksmoked’s incredible 'Nothing That We Need' (Narcos x Supernatural with Javi x OFC) and @ohforficsake’s The Margay' (Frankie x Audrey, POC OFC) which ended up influencing this fic a lot, and are both absolute must reads. Finally, thank you to @sin-djarin @lotusbxtch @qveerthe0ry @mountainsandmayhem and @magpiepills for all the support and feedback (and letting me cry when I needed to for many reasons). Dividers by @saradika!

Here’s a little overview of Santi + the PPCU characters in this fic, plus and the Norse Gods that Erin assigned to them. Click on their names to go read the other Frith stories written by some amazing writers! @perotovar, thank you so much once again for organizing this incredible event, love you so much!

Santiago Garcia → Fenrir. Most famous of all the wolves in Norse Mythology, bringer of Ragnarok a.k.a. the end of the world. Joel Miller/Santi’s brother → Hel. Goddess of death and guide to the underworld.  Jay/Santi’s (oldest) brother -> Jormungand. The serpent banished to the ocean, will rise at the end of the world. 

Francisco Morales → Skadi. Goddess of winter, skiing, bow-hunting, and mountains. Ezra / Esrads → Týr. God of victory, law, and justice.

Maxwell Lord/Lorenzano → Odin. The All-Father. God of wisdom, magic, war, death and trickery. Pero Tovar → Thor. God of thunder, lightning and the protection of humankind. Max Phillips/Santi’s father → Loki. The Trickster God of mischief and chaos. Javier Peña → Freyr. God of fertility, harvests, and peace. Rules over weather.

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[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 301: All My Todorokis

Previously on BnHA: We learned that when a bunch of superpowered villains are suddenly set loose with nobody around to stop them, things get fucked pretty quickly. Old Man Samurai and a bunch of other useless people decided to make “I pretend I do not see it” their new mantra, and resigned. Endeavor had a moment of despair on account of being crushed by the guilt of having ruined the lives of himself, his family, and basically everyone else in the entire world. For various reasons the heretical notion of “person who has done bad things feels sorry for doing them” sent fandom spiraling into a meltdown, so that was fun. The chapter ended with the entire Todoroki clan descending upon Enji’s hospital room to have a dramatic chat about Touya and All That General Fuckery.

Today on BnHA: Horikoshi is all “here’s the story of how Baby Touya slowly went insane trying to win his father’s love.” It’s a tale full of subverted expectations and heartbreaking inevitability, and also like twenty panels of the cutest fucking kids who ever existed on planet earth, who are so fucking cute that I can’t stop thinking about their cuteness even with all of the horrifying family tragedy unfolding around them. It is absolutely ridiculous how cute they are. Touya is out here pushing his tiny body past its limits because he inherited the same obsession as his dad and neither of them can put it aside even though it’s destroying them, and yet all I can think about is Baby Shouto’s (。･o･｡) face. Anyways what a chapter.

so I have to confess that even though I managed to avoid being caught off-guard by the early leaks, the number of people reblogging my Endeavor posts from earlier this week and using the tag “bnha 301” kind of gave me an inkling that this chapter will include more Tododrama lol. that said, I don’t know anything else about it, so we’re still good spoiler-wise

AHHHHH FLAHSBAKC AHHHH. omg I know I typoed the shit out of that, but I’m just going to leave it lol I think it’s fitting

holy shit holy fuck. so this is Rei and Enji’s first meeting, then??

yepppp, oh shit

so wait, I know this is not even the slightest bit important, but are they meeting at Enji’s home or Rei’s? because I always figured that Enji was the one with the super-Japanese aesthetic, but maybe that was Rei’s side of the family all along

(ETA: from what I found during my very brief google search, omiai meetings are often held at fancy hotels or restaurants, so maybe that’s what this is.)

there’s such a period drama feel to this setting. like it’s so outrageously formal fff how can anyone stand this kind of atmosphere though seriously

OH THANK GOD

I mean they’re still stiff af but at least they’re not rigidly sitting in seiza and staring at each other unblinkingly anymore lol. Enji’s actually got his hands in his pockets now. why is this somehow almost cute

oh damn it’s the flowers

Rei seems so subdued and it’s so hard to get any idea of what she’s actually thinking. I want to see her side of this dammit

but anyway, so at least from Enji’s perspective it seems like even though the marriage was arranged and he picked her because of her quirk, he still loved his wife and wanted to do right by her. the fact that he was watching her and noticed that she liked the flowers, and remembered that detail for all these years -- there’s a reason why Horikoshi’s showing us this. we know what’s going to happen later on; we know how much fear and violence and breaking of trust is coming up ahead, and while it may seem like this scene is serving to soften Enji’s character further -- which to be fair it is -- it also helps drive home the full impact of his abuse. that it’s so terrible not only because of the trauma of the abuse itself, but also because of the way it retroactively destroys all of the good things as well. this could have potentially been such a sweet scene, but it’s inescapably tainted by the knowledge of what’s to come, at least for me. and that’s just brutal

anyways, shit. is the whole chapter going to be like this?? feel free to toss in something I can actually make a joke about sometime, Horikoshi

oop, back to the present

omfg lol

“are you all right” “NO I’M NOT ALL RIGHT WHAT THE FUCK.” “oh, right, because of all the stuff that’s happened with me abusing you and you having a mental breakdown and being hospitalized for ten years and then our son coming back to life and killing thirty people, right, right. I almost forgot.” whoops

omfg you guys I’m loving this new and improved steely-eyed Rei. I’m loving her a lot

and what do you mean “part one” fkjds how long is this going to be. TOO MUCH DRAMA FOR ONE CHAPTER TO HANDLE

oh, hello

yeah I’ll say you did. didn’t seem to bother you much at the time, though

HMMMMMMMMMMMM

Dabi Is A Noumu intensifies even further. anyways though would you fucking look at this boy lounging on this moth-eaten couch doing his best DRAW ME LIKE YOUR FRENCH GIRLS impression wtf

Dabi what if you actually had killed him??? what would you feel?? satisfaction?? regret?? anything at all?? tell me your secrets goddammit

who are you talking to buddy

Fuyumi-chan, Natsu-kun (is it common for brothers to address each other as -kun?? can’t recall seeing that in many other anime, but hey), and “dot dot dot,,,,,, SHOUTO” lol thank you so much for this bountiful heaping of Tododrama Horikoshi we are blessed

AH, WHAT DID I SAY THE OTHER DAY

ULTIMATE MELODRAMATIC THEATER CHILD. “I’M JUST GOING TO LIE ON THIS COUCH SHIRTLESS AND ALONE AND MAKE SPEECHES TO MY FAMILY MEMBERS WHO AREN’T THERE AND SAY THINGS LIKE ‘WATCH ME IN THE PITS OF HELL’ WITH A STRAIGHT FACE BECAUSE NO ONE’S THERE TO JUDGE ME.” WELL JOKE’S ON YOU MISTER CHATTERBOX BECAUSE I AM IN FACT JUDGING THE SHIT OUT OF YOU LOL

(ETA: and on a more serious note, it’s interesting to see that “look at me”/”watch me” theme being used again though, because we see that same sentiment uttered repeatedly by the younger Touya in the flashback. well kid, you definitely got your wish at last. don’t know what else to say.)

OKAY HORIKOSHI HAS DECIDED THAT’S ENOUGH FUN, TIME FOR MORE FLASHBACKS

oh my sweet precious lord

just as cute as we left him. giving us a child this cute when we all know full well what’s going to happen to him is just unspeakably cruel though

HOMG

I’m fucking speechless. you broke me, congratulations. what am I even supposed to do with this

I can’t get over this. moving forward my life will be split into two distinct parts, B.P. (Before the Pout) and A.P. (After the Pout)

and meanwhile there’s ALL THIS BACKGROUND ANGST BUILDING UP, AND I CAN’T EVEN FOCUS ON IT. Touya’s arm and cheek are covered in bandages (I’m guessing this is shortly after that “ouch!” panel we got some chapters back), and Enji is deliberately avoiding training with him because he doesn’t want him to hurt himself further. I can’t fucking get over the irony that all this time everyone thought Touya had died because Enji pushed him too far in his training, and it turns out that it’s the opposite -- the tragedy ultimately happened because he didn’t want to push him. but I’m jumping ahead of myself though I guess

by the way,

remember this?? just wanted to remind you that it exists just in case you forgot

so now someone is talking and basically saying that Touya is the exact opposite of what Enji was hoping for when he decided to start playing with quirk genetics

-- okay hold up

...lol no, never mind. for a second I thought “holy shit he looks kind of familiar WHAT IF IT’S UJIKO OMG” before I remembered that Enji would have recognized him during the hospital capture mission if that was the case. so NEVER MIND, PROCEED

IMAGINE THAT, ENJI DOESN’T QUITE SEEM SATISFIED WITH THIS SUGGESTION OF QUITTING NOW

(ETA: how the fuck did this man go around saving 62 towns in a single day what even is All Might.)

[clicks tongue several times] trouble a’brewin’

MEANWHILE BABY TOUYA HAS UNFORTUNATELY INHERITED HIS DAD’S STUBBORN STREAK

KLDIHWOEIJFL:KSDJ

!!!!!!!!!!!

oh my god. oh my god. what is this chapter. WHAT IS IT

so now Touya is all “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND MY MANLY DESIRE TO BURN MYSELF ALIVE” well you got her there champ

THEY’RE TOO CUTE. OH MY GOD. HIS FURIOUS LITTLE TEARS. HER CHUBBY LIL FACE. HIS STUBBY LIL FISTS. SOMEONE HELP ME

also are they just home alone lol or what. “hey Touya, you’re what, like six now?? do us a favor and look after your baby sister for a couple hours for us would you? make sure not to set yourself on fire or anything.” WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG!!

now it’s nighttime and Enji and Rei are arguing, presumably about his decision not to train Touya anymore

whew. okay. so, a couple of things here

1. first of all I think this conclusively shows that Enji really was trying to do the best he could for Touya. he stopped training him as soon as he realized it was hurting him, but Touya was still determined so he tried to make it work anyway, and even visited doctors to try and figure out if there was anything they could do. then, once they were absolutely sure that it wasn’t going to work, he tried multiple times to explain to Touya why they had to stop. he didn’t just abandon him out of the blue, which is really important to note. “no matter how much I tried telling him...”

so yeah, that debunks another common fandom accusation. so by the time he finally makes this decision, which we all know is going to turn out horribly, it’s basically because he’s already tried everything else he could think of. which, by the way, still doesn’t mean he handled this right. but at the very least he was taking Touya’s feelings into account and he was trying, and he didn’t just abruptly toss his son aside (at least not yet)

2. buuuut, then there’s this panel right below all that

which is the other side of it. if he’d just quit like the doctor person advised him to, that would have been the end of it. Touya would still have been upset, but he would have eventually gotten over it and the family would have moved on and possibly even been happy. but what happens next happens because Enji can’t let go. he still has this maddening urge to surpass All Might, and so he and Rei keep having more children, and then Shouto is born, and Enji finally has a kid he can start projecting all of his hysterical ambitions onto once again, and everything starts spiraling out of control soon after

though p.s. none of that is Shouto’s fault though!! he’s one of the few good things to come out of this whole mess and I’m very happy that he exists. the tragedy is that his dad fucking lost his mind over his quirk and fucked everything up. but that’s on him, not Touya or Shouto

anyways, SLKFJLSHGLKJL

I CAN’T FUCKING TAKE THIS YOU GUYS??? LOOK AT THAT LIL BUTTON OF A NOSE??? I’M LOSING IT HERE???

AND TOUYA JUST SEEMS DEVASTATED OMG

because children aren’t stupid, after all. he understands that his dad is still looking to surpass All Might. and so he feels like a failure, and feels like his dad is trying to replace him because he wasn’t good enough. and even now, isn’t that what the adult Touya is trying to prove?? that he was good enough after all?? “I’ll show you what happens when you give up on me, dad”?? “I’ll show you what I can do”?? fuck my life fuck everything

AND YOU CAN SEE THE TOLL THAT IT’S ALL TAKING ON REI GETTING WORSE AND WORSE AS WELL OH GOD

really nice touch here with the panel outlines becoming all shimmery from the heat of Endeavor’s flames (and/or becoming more unstable as the family gets closer and closer to their breaking point). but man, Horikoshi I can’t handle this, please show us more cute kids or something I can’t

GKELKWFJLDKSHFLKL

WITTLE BABE. BEEB. BUBS. SMOL. lkj; oh ouch a piece of my heart just detached and latched onto him huh look at that

TODOROKI “I’M SO SMALL AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT’S GOING ON AND I DIDN’T ASK TO BE HERE” SHOUTO AHHHHH

crazy how they all just seem to know right off the bat lol. kid doesn’t even have object permanence yet, let alone a quirk. but do they care?? IT’S THE HAIR, RIGHT. WE’RE ALL THINKING IT, I’M JUST GONNA COME OUT AND SAY IT. they knew the minute they looked at him lol

AND MEANWHILE TOUYA IS OFF HAVING UNSUPERVISED TRAINING/CRYING SESSIONS IN THE MOUNTAINS OR WHATEVER, AND, UH OH

are those blue flames yet?? they seem pretty close

(ETA: this is one of the few cases where the manga being in black and white is infuriating lol.)

OH MY GOD AND STILL

so it’s not like he was so disinterested that he didn’t notice what was happening, and he was still trying to stop it and get through to him. trying to reassure him that it wasn’t the end of the world and there were other things he could do with his life, but this one particular thing just wasn’t going to happen

fucking hell. it’s agonizing seeing how close they actually were to fixing it. if he’d only said the right words, or if he’d realized at this point how destructive his obsession could be to his kids, and backed off from putting that same pressure on Shouto. we came so close to possibly having a happy ending

AND ALSO THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING BUT PLEASE LOOK AT HOW TOUYA IS LIKE THREE AND A HALF FEET TALL AND HIS DAD IS LIKE NINE AND A HALF FEET. Touya barely comes past his knees flkjlkg. the Todoroki household must have been so filled with like plastic stepstools to reach the bathroom sink and all the little baby toothbrushes, and baby gates to keep the kiddos out of the important grown-up rooms and stuff. and also days-old half-empty cups of water and stale crackers and hot wheels and my little ponies strewn everywhere

“BUT EVERYONE AT SCHOOL SAYS THEY’RE GONNA BE HEROES” a wild Deku parallel appears?? how bout that

I know this is like a pivotal moment in the Todo Tragedy and all, but fucking look at this lil dumpling

“sup bro, it’s me, the manifestation of your fears of inadequacy and lack of fatherly affections. a GAAA. ba-baAA-baa [gurgling baby sounds]”

OHHHHH IT’S THE SOUND OF MY HEART BREAKING OH NO

HE WANTS TO BE LIKE YOU ENJI. good lord somebody please just get this family some therapy

“DAD YOU IGNITED IT IN ME” flkjslkj nope, nope. not ready for this pain here

baby Shouto, would you like to weigh in on this affair? “DA!! ba-ga-daaa, [pacifier chewing noises]” oh my, you don’t say. so insightful for one so young

OH MY GODDDDDD

IT’S SO DRAMATIC BUT ALL I CAN THINK ABOUT ARE THE SHOUNEN WOOSH LINES SURROUNDING FOUR-MONTH-OLD SHOUTO LOL HE WAS LIKE THIS FROM BIRTH OH MY GOD I AM DYING HELP

SHOUTO YOU’RE RUINING THIS ENTIRE CHAPTER!?!?!

“yo, the fuck kind of family was I fucking born into” oh, son. if you only knew. IF YOU ONLY KNEW!!

(ETA: lmao I got so distracted by the ridiculous cuteness that I glossed over the fact that Baby Touya seems to possibly be aiming at him?? it’s hard to tell because he’s also super out of it from heatstroke and may just be losing control in his attempt to show off his upgrade.)

ANYWAY THAT’S THE END EXCEPT WHAT’S THIS LAST LINE OMG

ffffff. and we’re in for ANOTHER chapter of this next week?? MORE drama?? MORE BABIES?? MORE OF EIGHT-YEAR-OLD TOUYA’S SLOW DESCENT INTO MADNESS. MY HEART CAN’T TAKE IT, BUT ALSO YES PLEASE SIGN ME UP

[jiminrings]

omg omg omg... what if jk sees yn WALKING TAE HOME?? like it looks like that but they’re just passing by his place or something and he’s actually walking yn home ?? and to make matters worse jk THOUGHT it wasn’t like that but someone told him “oh yeah she’s walking him home, she’s always done that with him” sorry if it’s not an original idea

cold senior!y/n x stem major!koo masterlist :D

it’s raining at a party and jungkook gets the wrong idea

“good evening.”

yoongi sQUAWKS at the shock that’s mere inches away from his face, having only woken up from his afternoon nap that ended up with him waking right before dinner

why were you all up in his face

what the fuck was that for ://

“god, never do that to me again,” he grumbles at the abrupt awakening even if it’s his system that told him to, only a convenience that you happen to be there when he was starting to shift in his now-shallow slumber

“guess what!!!”

oh you’re squealinG??? alright that must be good

it’s nice to hear you excited anyways because you haven’t been for a long time ever since j*ngkook lol

“just show me,” yoongi sits up fully from his position on the couch, rubbing the remaining sleep off his eyes

normally, you would be pissed instantly because him not guessing just spoils your whole excitement

but tHIS time you don’t look bothered at the slightest, proceeding to take his faux disinterest in stride

the door clicks open and seokjin strides in like he owns the place, trying to immerse himself in the situation he’s walked on as fast as possible

you squeal in regard, eyes now switching between him and yoongi before you whip out something from behind your back

“i got a lunchbox!!!!”

you thrust the lunchbox (you recreated it in the way you receiver it) to yoongi’s face and he flinches momentarily, eyes focusing on the lunchbox first before his mind processes your words

“that is a really shiny scarf it’s — wait what??”

you,,, gOT A LUNCHBOX????

..... and it’s not from him??

yoongi looks at seokjin and the way he looks perplex but definitely sure confirms that it isn’t him either

“so someone — you received a lunchbox. huh.”

WOOOOOOW

you nod earnestly, admiring the shiny scarf and the handiwork of an embroidery that’s your name on it

“yup! i was with taehyung when i noticed it on the corner of the room.”

oh god

seokjin scratches the back of his head and it’s a dead giveaway that yoongi notices, something sketchy definitely up in the air that shouldn’t be there

“yoongi! come here for a sec. i have a uh, question about weed :-)”

jin is nOT good when it comes to segues

he takes the liberty to pull aside a yoongi who has question marks knitted on his eyebrows, his gaze immediately trained on him once they’re far enough away from you

“long story but!!!!! that jungkook kid gave y/n the lunchbox. taehyung just happened to be there.”

you see

yoongi could only digest multiple things from a single sentence at once

but the problem is, he’s digesting EVERYTHING from jin’s sentence and he didn’t want to

he’s just gonna omit the parts he hates the most :D

“y/n. taehyung gave you that lunchbox. say thank you to him tomorrow morning.”

NO??????

jin sputters because that is clearly not the truth he’s just said

and apparently, you seem to think so to because you just laughed at his cutthroat statement

“no he didn’t,” you heartily laugh, putting down the lunchbox before crossing your arms across his chest

no way

both jin and yoongs freeze this time because does that mean you already know who gave the lunchbox to you??

and if you know who, and if you’re laughing right now,,,, does that mean you’ve already forgiven jungkook????

pls say no

“i already thanked taehyung, yoongs,” you smile at the fresh memory, “but two seconds later, he told me that he WASN’T the one who made it for me. he said he’s good at baking, but horrendous at cooking!!!!”

...

.....

“....... so you really don’t know who it is?”

“nope! not a clue :D”

whew

yoongi thinks you should never get to know who it is

jin thinks you shouldn’t know who it is tHIS early

yoongi dodges the topic easily to refrain from dwelling on it any longer, about to send an angry text full of queries to jin later on

“mmm. what was the lunch?”

“my favorite!!!” you beam and even whip out your phone to show them the picture of the food you ravaged hours ago

you turn your eyes to jin, giddy in excitement while yoongi’s holding your phone-holding hand to zoom into the picture

“and it’s just like your recipe!!!”

.. hehe

..... that’s because it his

goddamn jungkook managed to recreate it like his recipe???? hmm commendable

alright yoongi’s angrily looking at him rn

maybe he’ll send an angry paragraph text this time >:(

“weren’t you concerned like... since you don’t know the person? what if they poisoned your lunch?”

yoongi suggests in an attempt to make you think rationally, away from his insistence that you should nEVER know that jungkook made you your favorite

“then i got a good meal out of it.”

:O

that’s not,,,, that’s not a good answer

b-bestie ??????

both yoongi and jin are speechless and the former takes the lead once more, clearing his throat because the conflict of this lunchbox thing is presenting makes his head ache

“anyways, there’s another party tonight.”

you raise your hand quick in the prospect of unwinding for free

“i’m in!!”

“you should be. hoseok’s the host.”

that makes it even better!!!

it apparently doesn’t for mr. student affairs because jin groans in annoyance, not really digging his school official position because he’d need to sit this one out forcibly :///

“goddamn it. jung’s throwing it? his parties are sO good that it even reached our radar when i was still a senior!”

it it reaches senior-level status of approval then that’s like,,,, the only seal of approval you’d ever need

“no way,” you’re awed at the newfound fact, not expecting that hoseok was already an A+ party-thrower even before he became a senior this year

“even namjoon liked his parties.”

namjoon THEE student registrar??? the same namjoon as in your friend by extension because he’s sort of a friend to seokjin???? :O

“really? even namjoon found his parties great??? BUT HE’S LIKE-“ yoongi finds the right substitute words to a stick up his ass in the most respectful way possible because he’s sort of friends with the guy too, “he’s like namjoon,, he’s the antithesis to hoseok.”

jin shrugs because everyone knows the saying at this point

there’s something for everyone at jung’s

“wear a face mask?” yoongi suggests to jin so he wouldn’t be recognized, knowing he’s a lil upset that he can’t come to this party because the face he boasts about is known by everybody

“no. i’m gonna look like a fucking narc, yoongi.”

alright that makes sense

he bounces back from that, waving his hand to shoo you and yoongi off

“sucks. yeah whatever. i’ll hold the fort down, just don’t do anything stupid enough for me to pick you up.”

:)

you’re not gonna do anything stupid!! :)

jungkook’s too down to even focus at the moment

he’s at his desk and he’s supposed to study for a test tomorrow, and all the material needed for it is engraved in his mind already, but well

yeah his mind’s only fixed on you right now and not chemistry

“she thought it was someone else who gave her the lunchbox.”

jin flinches as his door bursts open, his lunch break sign posted rIGHT outside the door to avoid things like these happening

oh it’s jungkook

oh. it’s jungkook ://

“i keep telling you that counseling’s right next door, kid.”

jin himself digs the running joke but jungkook apparently doesn’t, a sorrowed look to his face that can’t be fixed by some teasing

jin ignored that obviously because it’s not like he’s on jeon’s side!! he’s just here to be as neutral and realistic as much as possible

“and besides, it’s not like you put your name on it, right?? wasn’t that your whole purpose? do it to her like she did to you?

”m-my name...,. i’ll put my name...?”

WAIT HOLD ON

jungkook jolts from his desk, an epiphany forming in his mind

he may not have understood the interaction he had with mr. kim hours ago, but after replaying it in his head for hours now (along with that part of you mistaking taehyung to be the giver), he fINALLY gets an idea

he rushes out of his room and right to the couch where jimin’s sprawled out and watching a movie

“hi jimin!!! is there a party tonight?”

jimin almost falls out of his seat from the surprise of seeing jungkook altogether, gripping his chest

“f-fuck! — yeah. yeah dude, there’s a party tonight...?”

wait why is he asking

“o-okay!! take me with you.”

WHAT

jimin’s surprised that jungkook wants to come with, let alone even ask in the first place

buuuut jimin’s a good friend and he’ll say his assurances first before he gets to asking the why aspect to this

“alright. by the way about last time, kook — i swear i won’t leave you alone this time!! i’m gonna hold my alcohol in and-“

“no, no!” jungkook interrupts and shakes his head strongly, spooking jimin for a second with how determined he looks

“you can leave me alone at the party!! i-i’ll be there on my own.”

this is his idea

he’s a man with a plan!!! he’s also a man who has your eyedrops and the various containers he made with it inside his gigantic hoodie pocket

he’s more comfortable now than he was the first time he came around at a party

he knows you’re here somewhere along the crowd and that alone brings him comfort :-)

“i’m gonna go outside. these vape juices are annoying.”

you huff the moment you get a whiff of sriracha-flavored vape juice one more time, the whole area where you happen to sit in being the most annoyingly-scented room in the whole house

who does that!!!!! who gets condiments as their fucking vape juice!!!!!

yoongi waves you off as he’s also nearing his limit too, his peeve being mint chocolate juice and he’s gonna dip as sOON as this dude at the corner tries blowing it into laughable smoke rings again

yeah that’s what fresh air smells like alright

.... and rain??

it’s raining???

wow you haven’t even noticed and practically no one else did

hoseok’s sound system must be too good for none of you to notice that it’s raining outside!! a light shower that looks like it’s gonna turn into buckets within a matter of minutes

“Y/N!!!”

a voice yells into the street and your eyes widen with how loud it is, squinting your eyes hard to try and see the source

is that-

“TAEHYUNG?!?!”

is he running towards you??

wait why is he running towards you

(tae actually found out about this party through yoongi and he heard that there were non-alcoholic jello shots and mini cake hors d’oeuvres which are his favorites so he’s sprinting)

the way that he’s running towards you and the water that puddles when he steps gives you anxiety, a worried lilt to your yell

“TAE?? BE CAREFUL IT’S-“

taehyung can’t register what you just yelled out because before he knows it, he slips

he slips suddenly in the rain and there’s a harsh twist to his ankle in doing so that makes him choke out

“WHAT DID YOU — FUCK!!^]%{^]”

oh my god

you grab the nearest umbrella in the rack from your right, speed-walking to where taehyung’s fallen on the ground

he’s visibly startled, blubbering when you get to him

“i-i’m not crying. it’s the rain.”

of course :-)

you lift taehyung without much help from him since it’s hard for him to shift his body weight into one foot, putting yourself underneath his arm

“yeah, i believe you,” you smile as to comfort him and he returns it in relief, knocking the side of his head to the top of yours because his adrenaline’s through the roof

“i’ll walk you home. or to the emergency room. your call.”

“ER please??? god, m-my roommate’s into crystals and i don’t think amethyst can help me with this.”

yeah lmao that’s your cue to start walking

you text seokjin to meet you at the hospital instead of here, having to consider the fact that an official from student affairs is picking you up and is indeed your best friend being enough of a shock for poor taehyung at the moment

jungkook’s been looking for you for the past minute ever since you stood up from the couch, following you out the door but uh,,, you’re not here??

who is here?

oh wait!!! that’s vernon at the bench by the front foor!!! he’s from his stem class :D

“was that y/n? a-and taehyung?”

jungkook doesn’t beat around the bush because he’s sort of friends with the guy too, the same guy who’s a lil giggly with the daiquiris at the moment

“hey jimin!! what’s up dude? yeah, that was y/n and taehyung.”

uhm what

jimin’s BLONDE!! how could he get mistaken for jimin?

jungkook ignores the mistaken identity, eyes anxiously pointing towards the road again

“she’s walking him home?”

“totally. she’s always done that with him.”

what

..... what

he’s trying to trust it on good faith that vernon absolutely doesn’t know what he’s talking about

jungkook’s hurt but god does that pain shoot through him instantly, getting out of the porch wistlessly

wAIT

that’s you!!! that’s still you!!!!

and you’re-

????

you’re holding up taehyung and he’s limping

your ears pick up on the sudden running behind you and that pANICS you and in turn panics tae

but that doesn’t matter

it shouldn’t.

the cabs are atleast three more blocks away and neither of you brought a car because the dorms are walking-distance

everyone that’s left at the party has got to be too intoxicated to even put a key in the ignition

the weight on your shoulder eases and it makes you stop in your tracks to see if tae’s suddenly regrouped

is that —

jungkook lifts taehyung by his other arm, the light shower of rain making his hair damp without an umbrella like yours

“taehyung’s hurt.”

it only registers now that you’re seeing jungkook and he’s right here, surprising you as a whole

jungkook’s as startled as you are, swallowing the nervousness upon seeing you to get his words out

“a-and i wanna talk to you.”

[marbarmars]

OUGH WAIT THERE’S NO WAY IT’S BEEN OVER A YEAR SINCE I MADE A POST ABOUT THIS Mmhmm, buckle up you chucklefucks this girl, ya girl, has FINISHED THE FANFIC! DATS RIGHT, READ FRONT TO BACK…TWICE. I actually finished reading it the first time…..*checks discord*  June 26th! So a little under a year from the last time I reblogged this post which was…whew, June 7th last year. Time flies?! FUCK. But…I really wanted to get back to writing my final thoughts about this awesome piece of fanfic genius and post it here, to not leave everybody hangin! It’s gonna be a doozy, I have many thoughts. Apologies for not writing a summary at the time I finished Bean N’ Badge–but I’ll make it up to you now!

So without further ado, my most lengthy & formal rambling about Second Shroob Invasion yet! (THIS IS ALL SPOILER FREE TOO BTW DW, I hope this reaches new people and entices you to read it for yourself!)

Ooo! The plot! (Reanalysis)

In all honesty, what really hooked me into this fanfic in the first place is that it was a lengthy story with Fawful in it. Which brings me up to my first point: the characterization is ON POINT. Absolutely blown away by canon characters such as Fawful and Midbus having a really good dynamic and very intriguing headcanons that don't lessen my enjoyment in the slightest. But the more I read the more I was impressed with the OCs too! It was like I was getting to meet them for the first time, and the personalities felt distinct. No two characters felt the exact same. My only gripe is that I wish I got to know even more about certain characters before the story was over. Which isn't really a bad thing, if I'm desperate to know more then it means I've been hooked. :3

Rereading the fic for the 2nd time, oh Catwafers I wish you spent more time playing around with the surroundings of your setting! You're a total pro at it now, like what is written here is pleasing, it gets the job done for sure. Especially around the end of Bean N’ Badge (Part 3) & The Future's Last Stand (Part 4) it gets good. I also appreciate that most of the locations used are in PiT, as of right now I need to actually play that game but looking up the locations helped me get immersed. But gimme more! Especially more context around Shoob locations. Even if it would make the fanfic twice as long idc I love your writing prowess. xD

This series knows how to raise the stakes and the blood pressure of those who get attached to the characters. There are parts of the story I really wasn't sure what was going to happen, or I had my own theories I crafted, and it was fun to be wrong on some things. After all, a fic can get too boring if you already know what to expect~

Changing the perspectives once in a while was also really nice, Steven Universe is the first thing to come to mind because in that show some of the best episodes were not entirely from Steven’s perspective (like all the past Greg/Rose episodes or Garnet explaining her love story). Like tbh I really like seeing RuV33n’s perspective, but you just can’t get all the information you need in their perspective alone. I loved scenes from the Captains and Private to scenes with the villainous Regent Shroob.

Character Rambling Section! (You’ll know who’s my favorite!)

RuV33n (aka Veenie)

Eeee what a cool main character! A Shroob who stands out from the rest–and constantly learning alongside the reader! I really like how they’re both anxious but also not afraid to fight. I can tell that the RuV33n from the beginning of the story is not the same by the end–lots of character development and I’m all here for it. Their antics with Fawful and Midbus especially are a treat and it’s so heartwarming they find warmth and comfort with the ever-changing Earth.

RuG79v (aka Ivy)

I’m glad that out of the Shroob quartet, Veenie gets the chance to reconnect with at least one of them. I can really relate to their story of underappreciation, and as a fellow artist I like seeing characters with an art hobby hehe! Don’t wanna talk about Ivy too much as to spoil what happens but keep your tabs on em. <3

Fawful!!

My favorite guyyyy my favorite beeean! Talked about this earlier but this interpretation of him was my hook for the story. And I just LOVE the fact that even if he’s put into a more “heroic” role as a main character he’s still a bitchy prick and very insistent that he is a bad guy. I think what shocks me the most is that he’s only 17 in this fic? Which isn’t a bad thing–I guess that’s one more reason to add on top of the pile of just how incredible he is. I’m always in support with different headcanons and interpretations, it’s so cool to see what different flavors artists/writers add to make Fawful, well, Fawful. 

Captain Quartet (Goomba, Shy Guy, Boo, & Koopa)

I didn’t really expect the captains from the remakes to play such important roles as side characters but here we are! They’re a huge help to represent Bowser’s Kingdom that’s getting the brunt of this invasion in the story, besides it’s funny to have characters that have already interacted with Fawful once before. Unsurprisingly, Captain Goomba is my favorite here and is the most important in the story so yippee! I also appreciate the little things in the others like the shipping within the quartet (Goomba x Shy Guy, Boo x Koopa) their role as emotional plot devices later on in the fic.

Private Tortuga (aka Zelda)

She’s so badass…and another member from Bowser’s Army to accompany the plot and the characters. I didn’t really think too much about her at first but I liked her progression and stubborn attitude especially around Fawful. She’d be fun to share stories with at a bar, dunno why that came to mind but I’m gonna put it here. Even the less plot important characters feel real to me and she’s definitely one of them.

Midbus!

Out of all the canon characters in this story, Midbus has by far impressed me the most. I feel bad for saying this but I’ve always overlooked him–of course I want to change that with my own interpretation eventually but MAAAAN does Second Shroob Invasion Midbus inspire me so. He’s wise, stoic, and a good down-to-Earth character to bounce off of the more zany ones like Veenie and Fawful. I could read his conversations between these two and their dynamics all day. The backstory, even if he doesn’t like to disclose it very much in-universe, is jaw dropping and meshes well with his already established personality. Would not mind even more content with Midbus in the future :)

Toadmida & Toadiko

I love Toads…canon or OC, they’re both treats for me–plus Toadmida especially is the very kindhearted daughter of Toadiko and gives Veenie some much needed motivation. The implementation of Toadiko and her trauma with the shroobs is (chefs kiss) even as side characters I like their implementation to help further worldbuilding and connect some smaller plot elements together.

Regent Shroob (Aka Ben)

I’m already getting a little flustered as I’m writing this but it’s because he’s my favorite OC of the fic (Sorry Veenie /lh)….he’s just a super compelling villain to me. The lore helps a lot with this, as both Shroob Princesses are gone; somebody needs to fill in the role of leader, but he’s higher than a Commander. He dealt with a lot of survival and has to make decisions to save the shroobs from going to extinction, but is too stubborn in the old ways to see a more peaceful outcome where Earthlings and Shroobs can reside together. I like his optimism and how he can make a scene go from chill to OH CRAP! 

Gagen

So last but not least is Gagen, and I think he’s a really nice character for Ben to bounce off of. He’s your main science guy, and a lot of the higher stakes near the end of the story couldn’t have happened without him. I like just how apathetic he is about Earthlings just like his Regency. As it stands this is an interesting villain and what happens after it’s all over is even more intriguing.

Closing Thoughts! (Aka I gush about my friend CatWafers)

I think the thing I really love the most about Catwafers’ work is her skill in worldbuilding; that it changed how I look at the Shroobs. Her way of reintroducing the species and looking into their potential perspectives, their own culture, it totally entranced me. Like AUGH I’m so impressed and blown away, and things just get even better when I talk to Catwafers herself. I'm proud to be her friend and I LOVE to bounce ideas and concepts around.

In fact, speaking of that one day I’m gonna blow y’all away with a reintroduction to a certain AU that Cat and I have been working on–but I’m gonna work on a script for what I wanna say and consult my writer in crime first.

But anyways! The TLDR of this I suppose is that I’m passionate about my friends, I love fanfics about my favorite characters, and that you should really check out the Second Shroob Invasion series!! Thanks for listening~

The Second Shroob Invasion Series

Hi everyone!

I'm happy to announce that I completed my longest fan-fiction ever. I started this a year ago, and it is at 90 chapters!

Premise: During the Shroob Invasion during Partners in Time, not all the Shroobs left their dying planet. Some Shroobs were too young and many others were in development in the last batch. (It took 10 years for the batch to sprout). Regent Shrooben, third in command to Princess Shroob and Elder Princess Shroob, stayed behind due to injuries to care for the Shroobs back home. Now that the last batch has grown, and the Regent learns of the Princess' defeat, he starts the Second Shroob Invasion.

One Shroob, RuV33n, is skeptical of the Regent's plans and how successful they will be. After their ship is downed during the first battle, they run into Fawful and Midbus. RuV33n meets other faces along the way and learns more and more about Planet Earth. When the Regent threatens RuV33n's Earth family, the Shroob takes a stand.

Content Warnings: Graphic Depiction of Violence

Also contains:

Character Death

Lots of swearing (the Shroobs' swears are similar to real-life swears as a way to distinguish them as different from the Mario World)

Forceful Worm Ingestion

Lots of injuries and recovery

Colonization

Limb Loss

Medical Experimentation and Procedures

Other notes:

Language Barriers play a major role as the Shroobs/Sunnycides and Earthlings speak different languages.

Will constantly switch between different perspectives.

RuV33n, being the main character, has their thoughts shown (marked by -- ... --- ). This is less prevalent as RuV33n learns more Mushroomish (common language spoken by everyone).

Whenever a scene only has Shroobs, there are no word changes to indicate that a different language is being spoken.

If a scene has people who speak Shroob and those that don’t, the Shroob speech is signaled with “[_~_~_~_~_~]” while the Mushroomish speech is regular. This was done to show the language barrier and differences in understanding.

Criticism:

I am open to feedback! Criticism helps as it allows me to improve as a writer. This is my first long-fic. As such, I did my best but would like to know what I can improve on moving forward.

Here is everything in its four parts:

The order goes as follows:

The Start of the Second Shroob Invasion

Actions Have Consequences (Backstory piece for Regent Shrooben)

Bean 'n' Badge

The Future's Last Stand

Thank you for your time!

[miraeluc]

his jump swerve hits you in the face

prompt: “when you said hit it ‘til it breaks, i didn’t think you meant my nose!”

pairing: tooru oikawa x reader

word count: 745

warnings: reader passes out for a hot second lmao whew,, and their nose is broken??

genre: fluff, i guess angst but i wouldnt really label it as such 

NOTE: also kind of short but it was fun to write :)

you usually were there when your boyfriend practiced

firstly because it was just fun hanging around a bunch of funny guys lol 

and to prevent oikawa from overworking himself, trying to break that bad habit of his 

and it usually went well too!

you just hung around and cracked jokes with everyone, often also helping them practice by throwing balls and cleaning up after 

today, you were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

you were picking up a few balls that had rolled around, standing up when mad dog called out your name 

what you both failed to realise, is that oikawa, was currently practicing his jump swerve

and it was too late because he had already hit the ball before he could stop himself, the ball now flying full force at you 

you were also too slow to react and it hit you right in the face

a loud cracking noise sounding through the school sports hall and you just plopped down, passing out 

by the time anyone got to you, you were already waking up, a hand coming up to shield your eyes from any type of light 

“holy shit, y/n, i’m so sorry-” oikawa began rambling, being cut off by coach irihata

“keep the apologies for later, she needs to get to a hospital!” he snarled

stupid tooru to apologise when you’re not even fully conscious

he was high-key panicking right now

he tried to not let it show but he picked you up, shoving past the people that surrounded you, running out and leaving the school grounds

he decided that jogging there would be faster than waiting for an ambulance 

(and its good exercise lol)

he, thankfully, arrived there in less than 10 minutes, slightly out of breath

“when you said hit it ‘til it breaks, i didn’t think you meant my nose!”

you suddenly spoke up and he looked down at you, wincing when he saw that yes, your nose was slightly crooked

a nurse there came and picked you up, leading you into another room where you were told you had to under-go surgery in order to,, fix your nose and you were like 

“heck yeah free nosejob”

in your head, of course

you honestly weren’t that upset, it gets the best of us and what’s done is done, it’s not like tooru did it on purpose 

but when said tooru heard you were under-going surgery because of him, he made such a big deal out of it 

he’s such a softie when it comes to you, he couldn’t help but shed a few tears whilst he waited

he even called iwaizumi, telling him about the situation and his best friend was like 

“damn.”

he didn’t even know what to say lKJASLASL

when you came out of surgery you were so loopy from the anesthesia, sending your boyfriend a thumbs up when you saw him and he literally sprinted to you, a permanent frown embedded into his face 

he immediately started apologizing again

you giggled and went “don’t worry, baby, you didn’t do it on purpose - plus, i got a free nosejob!”

he was like :((( why would you think like that and then he got even sadder because he didnt get to kiss your “original” nose goodbye lol

overall the whole situation made him sad and he felt really guilty so he made up for it by taking lotsa care of you during your recovery

he seriously acted like you were dying,, he barely let you get out of bed, opting to get what you needed himself instead

he only really let you out of bed when you used the bathroom or begged him because you needed some fresh air or you would ‘suffocate under your own covers’

when the cast from your nose came off, there wasnt much off a difference, except a little bump you previously had being gone, you were real happy about that lol

he wasn’t

he was like 

“i was the one that ruined your nose!!”

and you were like 

“no, i like it better now, i should be thanking you”

when he got over his sulking state it sorta became like an insider, the whole team always, at the most random times, saying

“yo, oikawa, remember when you broke y/n’s nose?”

it took a lot of comforting oikawa to finally get over his guilt though 

nonetheless, it is a funny story to tell your kids in the future 

requests: open

read rules before requesting

[bookishofalder]

Pretty Girl - Blurb 4

A/N: I just hit 300 followers HOLY CRAP so here’s a fluffy, final blurb for Pretty Girl. I love you guys, thank you for enjoying this story and sticking around. Also, I mention miscarriage and fertility issues in this blurb. I myself experienced a miscarriage at 18 weeks with twins and am still grieving and trying to get pregnant again. I wish for my rainbow baby every day. 🤍

Summary: Pretty Girl and Flip are having a baby.

Warnings: Pregnancy, language, fertility issues, miscarriage mention, grief, labour, fluff. 

Flip was busy typing away at his desk, trying to stay on top of all of his paperwork. As much as (Y/N) helped him, there were still sections of the reports he had to complete himself, and falling behind wasn’t an option right now. He sat back in his chair, taking a brief break to roll his neck when movement by the doors to the bullpen caught his eyes.

A large, round belly preceded his wife into view, and as always she took Flip off guard; seeing her glowing, beautiful face. Some baser instinct within him enjoyed seeing (Y/N) round with his child; it caused a ripple of satisfaction to course through him. When she kept moving toward him, her eyes bright, Flip jumped up, frantic.

“Darling,” He hurried to her side, hands hovering around her unnecessarily, “You promised you’d keep off your feet at much as possible. I told you I’d come to check on you shortly.” Flip watched as she laughed, rolling her eyes affectionately. She had one hand placed absentmindedly over her bump, gently rubbing circles.

At thirty-eight weeks pregnant, Flip’s wife had impressed him every day with her unwillingness to give up routine and work simply because she was with child. She insisted on staying on at the station until the baby came. And while he didn’t like her working too hard, it was nice to have her close by. This way, he could keep an eye on her and take care of her as much as possible. And she had reduced her duties at work, agreeing with Flip that overdoing things wouldn’t be good for her or the baby.

They had been married a few years now, the best of his life for the most part. Marrying your best friend had a way of making every day an adventure. Of course, not everything was sunshine for them; but they had one another and they knew they could get through anything. They always did.

When Flip had been shot in the arm the previous year, (Y/N) had marched into the hospital and, surprising everyone, punched the rookie cop in the face who left Flip open when he should have been watching his six.

Flip had never been prouder of her.

They’d stopped using protection early on in the marriage, agreeing they were both ready to start a family. But it hadn’t come easy for them, months turned into a year of no success and the light that he took for granted in his wife started to waver, just a little. When they got pregnant the first time, Flip had overcome with emotion and he nearly left the parking lot of the doctor’s office without (Y/N), who had run to the bathroom before coming outside. When he realized what he’d done and turned around, he found her standing outside laughing so hard she was crying. That had been a damn good day.

At just nine weeks pregnant, they found out that they had lost the baby. Things had changed for (Y/N) and Flip. He left the doctor's office with the heavy weight of grief, and he knew his perfect, lovely wife was more crushed than she was letting on. She had taken a leave from work, and it had been a rough few months of coming home to a quiet house, (Y/N) asleep on the couch most days. They had stopped having sex, which didn't bother Flip in itself, it was just the reasoning that worried him.

The night that (Y/N) broke down and admitted she felt like a huge failure still replayed in Flip’s mind every once in a while. The raw, excruciating pain had been so evident on her face, his pretty girl so heartbroken she felt like she was failing him. Like she could ever do anything wrong. Flip had comforted her, but more importantly, he made it clear that nothing about their pregnancy troubles or the loss of their baby was her fault. He had cried with her that night. As they clung to one another in the bath and the sun set outside. He cried for their loss. He cried for her pain. He cried with his wife and they promised each other they would have no regrets. Life was what it was. Having each other meant they could do anything, could get through anything.

The next time she got pregnant was just after he had been shot. He’d had a few weeks leave, but (Y/N) had long since returned to work, so he spent long days at home alone trying to pass the time. On one such day, he had been sitting in his favourite chair in their living room, his hand stroking over his hard length as he sought to escape, frantic and needy and so consumed in himself that he hadn’t heard her come home. What he didn't miss was the way her hand suddenly wrapped around him; his eyes had flown open and found her gazing at him with such hunger as she gripped him that he only just managed to launch himself forward, toppling them onto the floor, and take her right there.

A few weeks later, they had found out they were pregnant.

And now, (Y/N) was fully and unmistakably pregnant or, as she liked to say, ready to pop any moment. Though relatively good-natured, Flip had been a witness or victim to many mood swings, including one that had involved an ashtray being thrown at his head because he forgot to buy pickles. Christ, he never made that mistake again.

“I’ve been taking it easy, detective, don’t worry.” (Y/N) patted Flip’s arm with her free hand, smiling up at him as he fretted at her side.

Flip tried to steer her to his seat, “I know, but you could go into labour at any time and being on your feet too much-“

“Oh, well,” She was giving Flip a funny smile now, her eyes glinting, “That’s actually why I came back here. My water broke a few minutes ago.”

Flip stared down at his wife as though she’d suddenly sprouted a second head. He went entirely rigid, and all conscious thought slid out of his head, replaced with a faint ringing.

“Flip, honey, come back to me.”

“I-uh, what?” He shook his head, attempting to assemble his thoughts, “What’s going on?”

(Y/N) was giggling now, “Flip Zimmerman, my water broke.”

“Pretty girl,” He murmured, suddenly reaching out to grip her shoulders, “Are you saying...are we having a baby?”

Before she could answer, (Y/N) suddenly winced, the hand on her belly stilling and her eyes closing and she took a few deep, slow breaths. This was all it took to bring reality slamming into Flip and he instantly began grabbing his things. Shrugging his jacket on, tucking his keys and wallet into his pockets. His mind was now racing at a mile a minute. But they’d planned for this, going so far as to bring their hospital bag to work every day just in case.

“Whew, that’s a fun feeling.” (Y/N) mumbled, eyes still closed.

“Darling, are you okay to walk for me?” Flip leaned down and pressed a firm kiss to her lips, smiling at her when she opened her eyes and nodded. Taking it slow, they made their way out of the bullpen and down the hall. Flip raced behind the reception desk to grab the go-bag and (Y/N)‘s jacket.

Donna came out of the washroom as he hurried back out from behind it, her eyes spotting Flip before moving to where (Y/N) was slightly hunched over, breathing through more contractions.

“OH!” Donna cried out, clapping her hands excitedly. “Oh, it’s time! Go, go, I’ll let the Sarge know. Good luck you two, and Flip drive safely to the hospital!” She raced over and gave (Y/N) a quick hug, before turning on Flip and embracing him with happy tears in her eyes.

With a quick thank you, they were on the move again. Flip hurried ahead and got the truck, pulling it up out front of the station as his wife waddled out, looking more relaxed now that her contraction had eased up. He helped slide her into her seat, carefully buckling her in before breaking the speed limit to get the few blocks away to the hospital.

One of the perks of being a detective was that most of the hospital staff knew Flip already. So when he walked in the doors, an arm around (Y/N)‘s shoulders and a frantic look on his face, about eight nurses rushed over and began to dote on them both, one settling (Y/N) into a wheelchair while they helped Flip check them in.

In no time at all, they were settling into labour and delivery, (Y/N) now wearing the open-backed hospital gown that gave Flip a pretty nice view every time she stood at the side of her bed and leaned over to breathe through contractions. The woman couldn’t sit still; the pain and nervousness rendering her ability to relax null.

Flip rubbed her lower back, standing behind her and appreciating the strength his wife had. “What are you staring at, detective?” She asked, breaking him from his thoughts. (Y/N) was staring over her shoulder at Flip, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

“Just, thinking about how incredible you are, darling.” He admitted, hands still kneading her skin gently.

(Y/N) hummed appreciatively, “Funny, I was going to say the same about you.”

“Ah, well, I’m not the one about to do all the hard work here, so I’ll defer all compliments for now,” Flip joked, and she laughed before hissing a breath as her next contraction took over.

“Fuck,” She focused on her breathing for a few moments, “Flip, promise you’ll stay here with me the whole time?” Her voice was surprisingly small at that moment, and he knew if he could see her face, it would be twisted in a vulnerable grimace.

He reached up and smoothed her hair back, “Pretty girl, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be at your side the whole time,” Flip leaned down and pressed a kiss to her shoulder, “You don’t worry about a thing, alright? I’ll take care of you.”

And he did, in as much as he could. Never leaving her side once, Flip witnessed every moment of labour. Labour lasted about six hours, and then he experienced every moment of the birth of their child. He held her hand throughout, rubbing her shoulder with his free hand and ignoring the pain in the one she had a vice-like grip on. Flip pressed a cool cloth to her forehead between pushing, whispering sweet nothings and praise in her ear as she cried out in pain, until suddenly (Y/N) was slumping into the pillows propped up behind her with a sigh of relief, and then the brief silence filled with a cry.

Their newborn baby gave a shrill shriek of displeasure, and Flip and (Y/N) were entirely overcome with emotion. Flip stepped forward to cut the umbilical cord. With the help of the doctor, he took hold of the baby to lay them on (Y/N)‘s chest. The baby's cries dulled somewhat then, as she clutched their baby to her skin and gazed down with so much affection he felt hot tears rolling down his cheeks, his heart so full of joy it nearly hurt.

“Congratulations, mommy and daddy!” The doctor said a few minutes later. He then took the baby to be checked over and cleaned up, across the room.

Flip leaned down and pressed his lips to (Y/N)‘s forehead, “You doing alright, pretty girl?” When she nodded sleepily, he raised his hands to cup her cheeks, thumbs brushing across her soft, damp skin. “You did so well, darling. You were so strong and brave, I’m so proud of you. I love you.” He kissed her again, this time capturing her lips briefly.

(Y/N) sighed with content, “I love you too, Flip,” Her eyes were fluttering now, exhaustion pulling her toward a much-deserved slumber, though he saw them flicker to where the nurses were standing with the baby, working at swaddling them. “Will you stay with the baby?”

“Course I will, darling. Now get some sleep,” He reached down for her blankets and pulled them up, tucking her in better as the nurses that had been tidying up her lower body finished up. “Baby and I will be right here when you wake up, pretty girl.”

With one last smile, (Y/N) slipped off to sleep, her breathing evening out as Flip watched. He didn’t even feel tired, and true to his word he didn’t go anywhere, staying with her and the baby, whom he was holding when she woke back up a few hours later.

Flip slid onto the bed next to her and together they held their little bundle of joy, each staring into the little, scrunched up face with huge grins. Their little rainbow baby.

Tag list ✨

@tashastrange89 @finn-ray-nal-beads @fizzywoohoo @iamnotthecatladynextdoor @morby @pradaxstyles @10blurredsmoke10 @mermaidxatxheart @paintballkid711

[ificanthaveu]

August || Shawn Mendes

Description: {Based off the teenage love triangle on Folklore: August, Betty and Cardigan} After months of silence and an apology, you find yourself falling for Shawn Mendes all over again, giving him second chances, but you’re running out of forgiveness. He was never yours to lose.

A/N: WHEW, this took me AGES to write because i wanted to include so many aspects of the three songs (that being said please listen to them and be familiar with them because there are a TON of nods to the songs and their lyrics) and i kept coming up with new ideas that just made the story way longer. BUT after nearly two months, she’s done. She’s beautiful. Please enjoy

Word count: 13.4k

You tried to ignore the old woman’s scoff as you picked up her hamburger that was “too cold” to bring it back to the kitchen to grab a new one. You locked eyes with the chef as he rolled his eyes. 

“It’s too cold,” you said with a fake smile. 

Scotty returned the smile to you as he pointed at it. 

“There’s steam coming off it,” he whispered. 

“Don’t you love summer in Virginia Beach?” You said in a fake dreamy voice as you leaned your head onto your hand. 

“I hate it almost as much as I hate this job,” he returned as he placed a new hamburger on the plate. 

“Same here,” you sighed as you grabbed the plate, bringing it back to the old woman with a profuse apology and a silent prayer that she’d still tip well. 

You glanced at your watch and let out a breath of relief as you threw your apron on the hook and grabbed a plate with your name on it. 

“Going on my break,” you called out as you made your way out to the back to eat your lunch and take a breath. 

You appreciated the silence as you enjoyed the warm weather and the gentle breeze off the shore. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” an unmistakable voice said from behind you as you felt your shoulder tense. 

“Shawn,” you said as he walked in front of you and plopped down across from you at the picnic table. 

“First shift back?” He asked as you swallowed hard and tried to shake the feeling. 

“No, no, I got here a week ago,” you said quietly. 

Shawn gave you a confused look before glancing down at his phone and sighing. 

“My shift started two minutes ago, but we’ll catch up tonight?” He asked as he walked through the back door. 

You didn’t have a chance to respond before the door slammed behind him. 

You pulled your knees up to your chest and took a deep breath, trying to calm your breathing that threatened to falter again. 

You weren’t going to fall for him again this summer. 

Last summer was a different story. 

You begged the summer memories in your head to stop flooding your senses and tried to remember the past eight months where he barely said a word to you. 

Shawn Mendes was not worth wasting another summer on. 

You choked down a few more bites of your lunch before going back in and throwing your apron back on. 

You stood next to Scotty as you watched Shawn charm the same table of ladies that definitely hated you now. 

“You good?” He asked quietly. 

You simply nodded your head, not meeting his eyes, still staring at Shawn. He followed your eyesight and nodded his head. 

“Not letting that happen again?” He questioned. 

“No,” you said flatly, putting plates on a tray as he finished them. 

You met his eyes as he tried to hide his smile. 

“We’ll see,” he whispered. 

You rolled your eyes and grabbed the tray, making your way to a table in the back. 

“I can take that,” Shawn said as he came out of nowhere, grabbing the tray while you grabbed a stand for it. 

“Thanks,” you said quickly, him following you to the table, leaving you with a touch on your shoulder after he set it down. 

You catch him watching you as you take a table’s order, stumbling over the specials and pretending you didn’t hear the teenage boy laugh at you. 

You speed walked back into the kitchen to grab the food that was ready for your next table when Shawn cut you off. 

“Are you ok?” He asked with a confused look on his face. 

You tried not to roll your eyes. 

“Yeah, just in a hurry,” you said as you rushed past him and grabbed the tray, making your way to the designated table. 

Shawn stayed out of your way for the rest of your shift, and you were able to sneak out without saying goodbye to anyone but Scotty. 

The sun was just starting to set outside of your parents’ beach house you were staying in all summer. They would usually be here with you, but your dad’s decision to teach a summer college course ruined that for them this summer. But you definitely didn’t mind having the place to yourself. 

You showered quickly and changed into comfortable clothes before grabbing a blanket, crossing the sidewalk and sitting on the shore right outside your house, admiring your view of the Atlantic Ocean, watching the colors in the sky change. 

You leaned back on your elbows as you heard a crunch in the grass behind you. 

You whipped your head around to see Shawn walking up to you, his hands buried in the pockets of his work uniform. 

“Hey,” he said softly, sitting next to you. 

“Hey,” you returned. 

“Can we talk? What’s up with you?” He asked as if he genuinely had no idea, turning to face you. 

You didn’t move your eyes from the waves washing up on the shore as you sighed and ran your hands over your face. 

“You never called.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Twice. In eight months,” you said as you finally turned to him. “More like twice within the first month, and then you didn’t call for seven months.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he said. 

“I want an explanation,” you said, begging your voice not to raise. “We spent a whole summer together where I assumed we would keep that up and then you pretty much ghosted me.”

“I didn’t ghost you.”

“Then what would you call that happened?” You tested. 

Shawn sighed and turned to look at the water, resting his chin on his knees. 

The next question danced on the tip of your tongue, and you tried to choke it down but to no avail. 

“Was there someone else?”

The sigh that left his lips was enough of an answer for you. 

“You could’ve told me,” you said quietly, no wanting the tears to get caught in your throat. 

“How?” He asked as he turned to you with a soft smile. “The world we live in in the summer and the world we live in back at school are two very different worlds. Telling you would mean this world would end.”

It was a pathetic excuse. 

“So you were just going to stop talking to me and then expect to get the same thing this summer?” You tested. 

“I don’t expect anything from you, [Y/N].”

“Because you have a girl back at school.”

“Not anymore,” he snapped. 

Your heart leapt and got caught in your stomach as you sat in silence. 

“She’s out of the picture,” he said quietly. “She wasn’t ever really at school anyway. At some training program elsewhere.”

You didn’t say anything, not wanting to pry into something he didn’t want you to know. 

“We had been fighting all week while she visited,” he started, not meeting your eyes. “And there was this stupid end of the year party she wanted us to go to. So I went. Just to see her dance with the quarterback of the football team to her favorite song that I assumed she’d come find me for.”

He paused and took a deep breath. 

“At least, I was trying to find her for it.”

You still stayed quiet, not being able to find the words to say. 

You weren’t sorry for him. You didn’t feel bad. 

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said, almost in a way that was inviting you to say something. 

“I don’t think you want to hear what I have to say,” you said, turning to look at him. 

“I deserved it?” He questioned with a smirk on his face. 

“You said it, not me,” you said as you let yourself smile. 

“I did,” he said simply. “I did deserve it.”

“Glad we can agree.”

It went silent again as you watched the waves crash on the rocks. There was room for conversation, but you didn’t have anything left to say. You were mad, but you were still crazy about him. 

“Can we pretend the last 8 months never happened?” he said. 

You sighed as you buried your head in your blanket. 

“No,” you said with a laugh. 

He returned a smile, enjoying the sound of your laugh. 

“Stupid question?”

“The stupidest.”

“Can we at least start over?” He asked. “Can I at least get another chance?”

You took a minute to stare at the intricate stitching of your blanket, trying to ignore his intense stare. 

You finally looked up at him, admiring how the setting sun made his eyes look they had flicks of honey in them. 

It was crazy how quickly he got you to forget.

“Yeah,” you said with a nod. 

He smiled, and damn, you missed that smile. 

“But we take it slow,” you said as you pointed at him. “So damn slow, and I still can’t promise anything is going to happen.”

He kept the smile as he nodded his head, somehow already knowing that would be out the window by the end of next week. 

“Deal,” he said as you draped the rest of the blanket over him and he moved closer to you. 

You both laid down, your shoulders touching as you stared at the sky. Eventually, your head found its way to his shoulder and your hand to his wrist as his hand found its place on your knee. 

“Can I stay over-“

“Absolutely not.”

“It was worth a shot.”

And you let him continue to take shots. And one after the other you either brushed them off or just let them happen. You were trying your hardest to put this past year behind you. Yet there were moments you remembered tearing down his picture from your desk and then moments after you were remembering skinny dipping at midnight. 

“What are you up to tonight?” Shawn whispered to you, his arm holding up his weight against the counter as you arranged plates onto a tray. 

“Mm, depends who’s asking,” you said softly back to him, looking up for a brief moment to meet his eyes. 

“Scotty,” he said with a crinkled eyebrow and a smirk. 

“Well, then I’m very free,” you said with a small smile, boosting the tray up as you walked away. 

“You’re too much,” he said louder as you pushed the kitchen door open with your hip and looked back at him with a shrug of your shoulders. 

“I know.”

So he showed up at your front door with takeout from your favorite restaurant and a bottle of wine along with a bouquet of flowers. 

You leaned against the doorframe as you looked at him, your arms crossed across your chest as you scanned over the items in his hands. 

“You’re really pulling out all the stops, huh?” You asked, letting him in. 

“Only for you,” he said softly. 

You turned around and looked at him as he continued to walk towards you. 

“You don’t want to hear what I have to say to that one,” you warned. 

“You’re right, I don’t,” he said. 

He set everything on the counter, going straight for your cabinet where he knew the plates were, instantly falling into his old routine. 

You sat on one of the stools and leaned your elbows on the counter as you watched him wander around the kitchen grabbing utensils and wine glasses. You tried to calm your heart beat as he slid you your plate and wine and sat next to you. 

He clinked his glass against yours before you both took a drink, silence falling between the two of you as you began to eat. 

You glanced out the window, watching the sunset on the water. You could feel his eyes on the back of your head. 

You turned around to meet his eyes, the sun illuminating his features in indescribable ways. Your eyes stayed locked with his as you took a sip, setting the glass back down and turning to look at him fully. 

“Why are you doing this?” you asked. 

He cocked his head to the side as he took a bite, lightly shaking his head. 

“What do you mean?”

You gestured to the meal in front of you and to the flowers in a vase in the middle of the counter. 

“Because I fucked up,” he said, meeting your eyes again. 

You stayed silent, urging him to say more. 

“I should have called. I know that. And I knew that then, but I just didn’t want to hear your voice. I knew the moment I heard it, I wouldn’t even tell you,” he paused, his eyes leaving yours for a moment to watch the sun. “But I’m going to do whatever I can to prove to you how I feel. Because I’m crazy about you, and only you.”

Your hand gripped onto the counter as you played his words in your head, trying not to picture who this other girl even was, praying the image of him with someone else would just go away. 

You poured more wine into your glass, swishing the liquid soft back and forth as Shawn waited for you to say something.

“I’m trying, Shawn,” you said softly. “I’m trying to start over, but it’s hard.”

“I know,” he said quickly. “And I know that’s my fault, and I’ll do whatever I can to make it right.”

You sat in silence staring down at your hands. You had a million other things to shoot back at him. Like how you were drunk one night and couldn’t stop thinking about him so you cried until you threw up. Or the fact that your roommate hates the name Shawn just because of what she had to deal with the last school year. Or how you almost blocked his phone number just so you could blame that on the lack of calls. 

But that all fell short when his hand came into your downward-facing view, delicately setting it atop yours, forcing you to look back up at him as he laced his with yours, the sparks returning. 

“Ok,” you whispered, not having the heart to say anything else. 

With that, Shawn nodded his head and took your plate from you, bringing your dishes to the sink to wash them quickly. You poured the two of you another glass, noticing how quickly the bottle of wine had slipped away as you felt light. 

Without another word, Shawn opened the back door, and you stood up to follow him out, handing him his glass as the two of you sat down on the swing on your back porch. You weren’t really thinking as you swung your legs over his, his hand resting on your knees as you rested your head on his shoulder, your body curling around his. 

You could feel Shawn looking down at you as you watched the sunset. You let out a breath before looking up at him, his nose nearly brushing against yours as his thumb rubbed circles into your knee, his other arm around you, still gripping his wine glass. 

“I forgive you,” you whispered without so much as a second thought, just saying whatever came to mind. 

Shawn didn’t hesitate to press his lips against yours. Your hand found its way to his cheek, pulling his face closer to yours before you pulled back, your forehead resting against his. 

“I missed that,” he said softly, nudging his nose against yours before pressing another quick kiss to your lips. 

You simply hummed in response, leaning your head on his shoulder once again, moving closer to him to the point where you were almost completely on his lap. 

Both of your glasses were abandoned onto the table in front of you as you fully curled into him, feeling like it was last summer all over again. 

The feeling of his finger drawing patterns on your shoulder was more intoxicating than the half bottle of wine you’d drank. 

“Can you stay?” You asked as you looked up at him. 

He smiled a soft smile that made your heart leap as he nodded his head. 

“Of course.”

You woke up the next morning twisted in bedsheets as his arm weighed on your waist and your legs tangled together. 

You turned in his arms, causing him to wake up as you traced your finger down his jaw. 

“Do you work?” You whispered. 

“Good morning to you, too,” he said sarcastically as he blinked the tiredness out of his eyes. 

“Good morning,” you said. “So do you work?”

He smiled at you and shook his head. 

“No, I’m off today.”

“Me too.”

“But we have that thing.”

“What thing?”

“The festival downtown. Everyone is going tonight,” Shawn reminded you. 

You groaned as you buried your head into his chest as he laughed at you. 

“I forgot I promised I’d go,” you mumbled. 

“Come on, it’ll be fun,” he encouraged. 

You looked up at him before he continued. 

“And I’ll be there, and that’s really all you need,” he said with a grin. 

You hit his chest softly before rolling out of bed and tossing a pillow in his face. He caught it before it could actually hit him and tossed it to the end of the bed. He sat up against the headboard, watching you gather a few things around your room to get ready. 

You turned to meet his wandering eyes as he smiled at you. 

“Go home,” you said simply. 

His jaw dropped in a joking manner as he cuddled into the sheets instead. 

“No,” he mumbled. 

“Well, I’m going to go get ready. Whether you’re here or not when I’m back, I really don’t care,” you whispered before you pressed a kiss to his forehead. 

“You’re breaking my heart, [Y/L/N],” he called after you as you turned to look back at him once you reached the door to the bathroom, an eyebrow raised. 

“You don’t have to say anything. I walked into that one,” he said before you could say anything. 

You simply hummed in response before slipping into the bathroom and closing the door behind you. 

You got ready fairly quickly, trying to listen to see if Shawn was still in the room or not. You slipped on the sundress you had picked out and opened the bathroom door to an empty room. 

But that was long abandoned once you saw him sitting on the balcony. 

He must have heard the door open, so he turned around to look at you and smiled. 

“You’re gorgeous,” he said softly as you walked up to him. 

“Mm, I know,” you said as you sat next to him. 

“You’re making this hard,” he said through a laugh. 

“I know,” you said, this time a little sterner before he rolled his eyes and stood up. 

“Well, I made you coffee. It’s sitting on the counter downstairs. I’ll pick you up in a few hours?” He asked as he stood up and walked back into the room and you followed. 

“Maybe not,” you said slowly. 

He turned around and shot you a confused look. 

“I can just meet you there,” you said as casually as you could, running your hand against the back of the chair to distract yourself. 

You heard him snicker and could see him shaking his head out of the corner of your eye. 

“You don’t want anyone to know,” he said quietly. 

You finally looked up to meet his eyes, seeing the hurt from across the room, but you didn’t falter. 

“I’m still figuring things out,” you started. “And everyone knew last summer which made it that much harder when they asked about you.”

He nodded his head in response, looking down at his feet. 

“I just think it should stay between us right now,” you whispered. 

“Will that change?” He asked softly. 

You shrugged your shoulders and crinkled your nose as Shawn just nodded. 

“Then I’ll see you there,” he said with a sad smile as he walked out of your room. 

You waited a moment before following after him, meeting him at the front door as he slipped his shoes on. 

You were face to face as he stood up, and you stood on your tiptoes to press a quick kiss to his lips before resting your forehead against yours. 

“I trust you,” you whispered. 

“I know,” he said back at the same volume. “I trust you, too.”

Without another word and a quick hand squeeze, Shawn walked out and went home. 

You leaned your back against the door, hitting your head against it a little too hard, overthinking what just happened. You shook the feeling quickly as you found the mug he had set out for you on the kitchen counter, sipping it and instantly knowing he still knew how to make your coffee. You faltered yet again in your thinking but still didn’t change your mind. 

You grabbed your laptop and made your way to the back porch to go through emails you knew you had forgotten about, skimming through responses to your job applications for fall internships. 

You deleted a bunch, most of them saying they were still in the interview process until one caught your eye. 

You opened it up quickly and read through it carefully. 

This was your dream internship, a year in New York City studying fashion. It started this September and went until the next. 

And you had made the next round of interviews. 

You shot your parents and your best friend a quick text with an update and emailed them back with your available times within the next week, quickly setting out the times in your planner. 

You tried to calm your beating heart, trying to not let your hopes get up only to come crashing down once you didn’t get it. 

You weren’t even sure you’d make it this far, and now you’re at the final stage of phone interviews before you fly out to New York for the final interview at the end of August. 

You let Shawn wander back into your head again after you sent the email back to them. The lingering thought of not spending next summer with him stuck in your head, but you pushed it back. You were putting you first. This was a big deal, and you wouldn’t let the thought of Shawn ruin it. 

You had to remind yourself continuously how different this summer was from last summer. You weren’t the same, and you knew he wasn’t either. 

Your thoughts made you lose track of time, the reminder on your phone popping up and reminding you to leave. 

You parked your car behind the mall across the street from the summer festival and walked over to the sign everyone was meeting at. 

Shawn was already there, and you smiled at him quickly before standing over by Scotty. Shawn was across the circle from you as he kept his eyes on you. You shot him a look, and he rolled his eyes before turning to whoever was next to him. 

When you looked at Scotty, he was already looking at you, his eyebrows shot up. 

“I did not see what I think I just saw,” he said through a forced smile. 

“You’re right, you didn’t,” you said with the same smile. 

He sighed before you all started walking to the games. You bought some tickets and made your way to the ring toss along with another one of your coworkers Sydney. 

Shawn walked up from behind you, his hand skimming yours before moving away. 

“Bet I can beat you,” he said slyly as he walked backward in front of you. 

You scoffed as you rolled your eyes. 

“You’re on.”

The two of you stood on the opposite sides of the booth as Sydney cheered you on. 

Just as you knew you would, you kicked his ass. 

You tucked your new bear underneath your arm as the three of you walked to the next game. 

“Aren’t you embarrassed?” Sydney tested as Shawn groaned. 

“No one asked you, Syd,” Shawn shot back. 

You held in your laugh as you made your way to the food tents and Sydney wandered off to find someone else. 

It was just the two of you, and you knew Shawn was moments away from reaching for your hand. So you switched your bear into the other hand, blocking his attempt. 

You heard him sigh as you held your giggle back. 

You both bought some food, finding the others at the picnic tables in the middle. You sat next to Shawn and across from Scotty as he sent you another look. 

Everyone ate and talked as you listened to the live music being played. Bitching about customers as you sipped at cheep beer was one of your favorite things to do. 

You felt Shawn’s hand periodically graze against your leg, prompting you to cross them every time and push at his hand. You earned a scoff from him every time with a look of knowing disapproval from Scotty. 

“Where are you parked?” Shawn whispered in your ear. 

You rolled your eyes at him before glancing around the table and leaning back into him. 

“Behind the mall.”

Shawn simply nodded his head, dodging the look from Scotty and looking back to the band on stage. You let his hand graze across yours that time. 

Eventually your group made their way to standing with everyone else along the side of the stage, swaying and dancing to the local band. 

After a half hour, you felt Shawn’s hand press against your hip and his chest against your back. 

“Meet me behind the mall,” he whispered before his body left yours. 

You quickly turned around only to see his back as he walked away, making his way towards the exit. 

You turned back around to see Sydney looking at you, seeing the whole thing. 

You simply shook your head at her, hoping that would silence her for now, and you could talk to her later. And it worked, but you saw the look of worry in her eyes. She was another one you’d call late at night and ask why he wasn’t calling. 

You waited a few moments before saying goodbye to everyone and slowly backing away from the group, trying not to get roped up into a conversation with Scotty and Sydney. You knew what they were doing. 

You hugged Scotty tight and whispered in his ear, “I’ll explain to you and Syd later.”

He pulled away and let out his breath of air. “You’re damn right you will.”

You waved at both of them before jogging towards the exit, your sandals and bear held tightly in your hand. 

The sun was setting as you rounded the corner of the mall to see Shawn leaning against your car, the sun illuminating him perfectly once again. 

“Took you long enough,” he said as he pushed off your car and stood in front of you. 

You looked up at him with a stern look on your face. 

“Both Scotty and Sydney know something is up because you can’t keep your hands to yourself for two seconds,” you said before unlocking your car and climbing in. You waited for him to climb into the passenger seat before you started it and drove home. 

“They’re your best friends. I’m sure it’s fine,” he said casually. 

You scoffed as you shook your head, turning sharply down your street. 

“You don’t get it,” you said before parking and turning to him. “They were cursing your name a few months ago. Telling me how they’d do everything to make sure we didn’t have to interact this summer. They were the people I called at 2:00 am when I couldn’t think straight. They’re not happy, Shawn.”

He stayed silent as you both climbed out of the car and he followed you inside. 

“I don’t know how many more times I can say I’m sorry for this last year,” he said, the anger rising in his voice. 

You slammed your keys onto the counter, making him jump slightly. 

“I’m not asking for an apology. I already forgave you for that. I’m telling you that I asked you to act normal for one fucking night, and you couldn’t even do that for me,” you snapped, begging your voice not to falter. 

Shawn leaned on the counter with his arms folded and his jaw set tight, staying silent. 

“I’m trying really hard, Shawn, and I know you are, too. But there are moments like tonight where I think you’re still just living for the hope of it all instead of thinking rationally for three hours,” you said, tugging at the roots of your hair. 

“I am trying, and I have changed. I would not have tried this hard last summer,” he snapped back at you. 

“I’m starting to think you’re not really changing for the better,” you said without a second thought. 

“And you’re one to talk?” he fired back.

Your face went emotionless as you stared at him. You could tell he regretted saying that. 

“You want to explain that one?” You questioned. 

He stayed silent, not meeting your eyes. 

“I’m just saying-“

“I don’t want to hear it. Just because I’m not taking your bullshit anymore doesn’t mean I’m somehow worse,” you interrupted him. 

You heard him sigh as he leaned his elbows on the counter and ran his hands through his hair. 

You took a few deep breaths, staring at the top of his head and waiting for him to look back up. 

“I went too far tonight, and I’m sorry,” he finally said as he looked up at you. 

You tried to hide the shocked look on your face, not expecting him to even apologize for what happened tonight. 

He rounded the counter, trapping you between him and the counter with his arms on either side of you, your arms still crossed. 

“We gotta stop this, [Y/N],” he said softly. 

You nodded, letting your head fall forward and rest on his shoulder. 

“I’m trying,” you whispered. 

You could feel him nod his head as he wrapped his arms tightly around your back. 

“Me too,” he responded. “And I’m going to start trying a lot harder.”

You stood in his embrace for a few minutes, listening to his heartbeat as he rocked the both of you back and forth. 

“I’m still crazy about you,” he whispered. “And that’s not going to change, no matter how fucking stupid I can be.”

You let yourself giggle at that as you pulled back and rested your hands on his cheeks, taking in this moment. 

You just nodded your head before giving him a quick kiss and falling back into his embrace. 

—

The next morning you jog into your shift with your hair half done and ten minutes late. You punched in quickly before pinning back a few pieced of hair in the reflection off a pot. 

“You’re late,” Syd said as she whisked past you. She set down her tray next to Scotty as they both looked at you with nearly identical looks. 

“I slept through my alarm,” you mumbled as you threw on your open and moved closer to them. 

“Is that a me or a we?” Scotty asked quietly. 

“Not important,” you replied, sorting the plates Scotty was finishing onto the tray. 

“Well, that answers it,” Scotty said as he raised an eyebrow at Syd. 

“Drinks tonight at Bobby’s?” Syd asked, refilling a few glasses. 

“Yeah, you have a hell of a lot of explaining to do,” Scotty cut in. 

You sighed as you boosted the tray up onto your shoulder. 

“Works for me,” you said before walking into the dining room and delivering the food to a family in the corner. 

Your shift went by quickly as the restaurant was way busier than usual. 

Syd helped fill a table full of glasses with you as you both tried to catch your breath. 

“Scotty and I were thinking of doing the drive-in after drinks, you in?” She asked. 

“Of course I’m in, I can’t believe I haven’t gone yet this summer,” you replied.

“Well, you’ve obviously been busy,” she teased. 

“You’re killing me, Syd,” you said through a sigh as the two of you left the kitchen to bring the drinks back to the table. 

A few hours later and you happily hung up your apron and almost skipped out the back door before running into Shawn. 

“Hey,” he said softly before pressing a kiss to your forehead. “Were you late this morning?”

“Ten minutes, and I didn’t hear the end of it,” you replied, walking backwards to your car to keep talking to him. 

“Are you doing anything tonight?” He asked. 

“Yeah, kind of, why?” You asked as you leaned against your car. 

He shrugged his shoulders as he reached for the door handle. 

“I’m just not doing anything, but I’ll call you later, maybe,” he said before shooting you one last smile and disappearing inside. 

You pushed off your car and drove home to shower and get ready to meet Scotty and Syd at the bar. 

They were both waiting for you with a drink at a secluded table in the corner. 

“So, first, may I say, what the fuck are you thinking?” Scotty started. 

“No idea,” you said simply. “Not a single damn clue.”

“How’d he sweet talk you this time? It has to be different since he had a fucking girlfriend to explain,” he asked. 

You shrugged your shoulders, swirling your straw in your drink. 

“We talked that first night. Just about everything. And he was honest about it all, which I guess was a good sign for me. I said I’d give him a second chance, but we’d have to take it slow, and he respected that,” you explained.

“But I’m guessing it was no longer slow after like three weeks?” Syd asked. 

“Two,” you said back.

“Jesus Christ,” Scotty mumbled as he took a big drink. 

“Just please, for the love of God, be careful,” Syd said as she clasped onto your hand from across the table. “I can’t do this one more summer. This is the last one.”

“There might not be a next summer,” you said quietly as their eyes bore into you. 

“What?” They both said at the same time. 

“I applied for this fashion program in New York,” you started. “It’s literally the best of the best, and I didn’t think I’d get this far in the process. I have a phone interview tomorrow, and if they like me, I fly to New York for the final interview in August.”

“When does it start and end and everything?” Syd asked quickly. 

“It would start this September and end next September,” you said. “Thus eliminating me coming back here for work next summer.”

“Shit,” Scotty mumbled. “I mean that’s amazing, and I know you’ll get it. You have to. But it’ll just be weird.”

You smile softly at him and whisk your hand in front of you. 

“That’s an August thing. We have time before any of that,” you explained. 

“Does Shawn know?” Syd asked. 

You just shook your head, finishing the last sip of your drink. 

“Why not?”

“It’ll complicate things,” you said. “And I just don’t know where we’ll even be in September.”

“Not a lot of hope in that statement,” Scotty pointed out. 

“Just trying to be realistic,” you said quietly. “I feel like I’m just a summer thing. And if there’s no summer here, then there’s no us.”

Syd sighed as she leaned her head back against the booth. 

“I hate to say this,” she started. “Like it physically pains me to say this, but I don’t think Shawn would’ve gone through the measures to get you back and to keep you if you were just a summer thing. I saw the way he was looking at you, [Y/N], and that isn’t a summer fling type of look.”

You stayed quiet as Scotty nodded in agreement, choosing to stare at the table instead of meeting their eyes. 

“Stay hopeful, but be careful,” Syd reminded you. 

“I know. I’m trying,” you said. 

“Alright, this is kind of sad. Ready to go?” Syd asked as she slung her purse over her shoulder. 

“Don’t hate me,” you said with a scrunched face. 

“You are not about to cancel on us,” Scotty said, a hand on his hip. 

“I have that interview tomorrow morning, and I don’t want to risk sleeping in again,” you gave a weak explanation. 

“Fine,” Scotty sighed. “But I’m only okay with it because I want you to get your dream job.”

You hugged both of them goodbye before hopping in your car and driving home. 

You pulled our your phone the minute you got home, going to text Shawn that you were in for the night if he wanted to come over. 

You almost sent the message before hesitating as you remembered Syd telling you to be careful and Shawn saying he’d call you. 

You stared at it for a moment before shaking your head at yourself and deleting the text. 

If he wants to see you, he’ll call. 

You applied a face mask and sat in the living room to watch Netflix, periodically peaking at your phone just to see nothing. 

Shortly before midnight, you gave up and went to bed. 

You tried not to feel disappointed. 

—

You interview went as perfectly as it could, and you felt buzzed as you cleaned up your house in the early afternoon. 

Shawn showed up shortly after his shift was done with sandwiches from work and set them in front of you on the counter before kissing you quickly. 

“You’re in a good mood,” he pointed out with a smile as you unpackaged the food. 

You shrugged your shoulders with a small smile, taking a quick bite. You quickly thought about whether or not you should tell him but decided against it. 

“Just feeling happy,” you said simply. 

The call the next morning telling you they’d love to see you in New York in three weeks nearly sent you through the roof. 

Syd and Scotty came over that night to celebrate with a bottle or two of wine on your porch as the sun set. 

“And Shawn still doesn’t know?” Scotty asked carefully after you told them about the interview and the recent phone call. 

You shook your head. 

“Why not?” Syd asked. 

“I don’t want to get distracted,” you started as you stared at your glass. “I don’t want to get caught up in him and stumble through an interview or something. I think it’s just better if I focus on me when it comes to this.”

“That’s good,” Scotty said. “That’s really good.”

“Yeah, but how do you explain New York for a few days?” Syd cut in. 

“I’ll figure it out. Who knows, I might just tell him by that point. I never know with us,” you said through a sigh. 

You heard your front door slam as Shawn walked in, all three of you watching him walk with his head in his phone. He stopped at the counter and leaned on it as he finished typing something, his eyebrows furrowed. 

After a few minutes, he looked up and walked outside by the three of you. 

“Hey, guys,” he said through a sigh as he waved to Syd and Scotty and pressed a quick kiss to your forehead before sitting down next to you on the swing. 

“Everything ok?” You whispered. 

He nodded his head quickly. 

“Yeah, it’s fine. Just school stuff,” he said with a quick smile. 

“What were you guys talking about?” Shawn asked. 

“School,” you said quickly. “Syd changed her major again.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Shawn said as he took a sip out of your glass. 

“Oh, shut up, Mendes,” she said with an eyeroll. “You’ve changed yours twice, and you settled on business. I’ve never met a man in business that I’ve liked.”

Shawn feigned offense as he handed your glass back to you. 

“Says the elementary education major,” he tested. 

“Nuh-uh,” she said quickly back, holding a band up to him. “Communications now.”

“Even better!” Shawn practically yelled. 

You all laughed as you leaned your head on Shawn’s shoulder, feeling him stiffen slightly before slinging his arm around your shoulder and resting his head against yours. 

Scotty sent you an approving smile as Shawn and Syd argued. 

You couldn’t ask for anything more. 

— 

The weeks flew by as the days came closer to your trip to New York. Your plane and hotel were both booked, and you doubled checked everything at least twice a day. You left tomorrow, and you couldn’t help but worry something still wasn’t in place. 

You guessed you could blame the fight you and Shawn were currently having on that. 

He had stormed out a few minutes ago, and you don’t even remember what started the fight but you knew it ended with you saying you felt like you were just a summer thing. 

The look on his face was one you couldn’t quite put your finger on before he told you that you knew that wasn’t it and left with his keys. 

You curled your legs into your chest as you sat on the shore, watching the reflection of the moon bounce off the water as you twisted the corner of the blanket in your hand. 

You heard the soft crunch of sand under shoes before you felt Shawn sit next to you. 

You didn’t say anything, sick of being the one who has to resolve the argument. 

“I shouldn’t have snapped like that,” he said after a few moments of silence. 

You just nodded your head, feeling too numb to say anything. 

“And you’re not just a summer thing, and I’m sorry that I ever made you feel like that. This isn’t the same thing it was last year,” he explained. 

You rested your head on your knees and took a deep breath, trying to calm your heart. 

“Ok,” you choked out. 

“That’s it?” He asked softly. 

“That’s really all I can muster up right now,” you said, stuffing the sob that wanted to come out to the bottom of your throat. 

“I just don’t know if I can keep doing this,” you said, letting a tear slip out. “All we do is fight, and summer is going to end and we’ll be right back to last year, and I know I can’t take that again.”

Shawn pulled you into him, and you buried your head in his chest, feeling his rampant heartbeat. 

“Please don’t say that, [Y/N],” he said quickly, rocking you carefully back and forth. “This is different. This is so different.”

“It just doesn’t feel like that all the time,” you said quietly. 

“I know, I get it,” he whispered, pressing kisses onto the back of your head. 

You left it at that, letting him hold you tightly as you stared at the water. 

“We’re going to be okay,” he reminded you as he pressed a soft kiss to the tip of your nose. 

You softened at the gesture and nodded your head. 

“I leave tomorrow,” you said, remembering you never told him. 

“Where?” He asked. 

“Just going home for a little bit,” you said casually. “It’s just been weird not seeing my parents as much during the summer.”

“Yeah, makes sense. They’ll be happy to see you.”

You nodded your head, trying not to feel bad about the lie but knowing it was the right thing to do. 

“Need a ride to the airport?” He asked. 

You pulled back and looked at him, admiring the way the moon made him look before you leaned forward and pressed your lips to his. 

You pulled away a moment later and nodded your head. 

“That would be great,” you whispered. 

Shawn pulled you back in, your lips crashing against his as he fell back on the blanket, your legs falling to either side of his waist as you couldn’t help the smile that wanted to interrupt the kiss. 

—

Shawn dropped you off bright and early at the airport leaving you with your coffee and a kiss. You could feel his eyes on your back before you turned around at the door and blew him a kiss. He dramatically caught it and tucked it into his jacket pocket. You watched his face turn serious as his phone rang, offering you one last wave before answering it.  You watched his car pull away before finally walking into the airport. 

After going through security, you found a bathroom to look more like a professional fashion major instead of a girl going home to see her parents. The guilt and anxiety in your stomach ate away at your insides, but you continued to convince yourself that this was for the better. 

Your flight was short, and before you knew it, you were dragging your carry-on behind you and searching for the sign with your name on it.

You scanned the email quickly with the details saying one of the current fashion interns would pick you up and bring you to your hotel before bringing you to the interview. 

You found a patch of people with signs, finally finding one with your name sprawled across it. Your eyes wandered from the sign to the person holding it. 

You let a laugh leave your mouth as the two of you made eye contact, and she smiled at you. 

“Inez Miller, you have got to be joking,” you said as you pulled her into a hug, and she laughed into your shoulder. 

“The second they gave me your name I knew it had to be my [Y/N] [Y/L/N] who I fashioned barbies with in the second grade, but I just had to surprise you,” she said as you followed her towards the exit. 

“So you’re currently in the program?” You asked. “What the hell? How did I not know this?”

She nodded her head as she dumped the sign in the nearest trash can. 

“Yeah, I am. It’s honestly one of the best things I’ve ever done. I have learned so much and have had so much fun in the process,” she said with a genuine smile across her face. “And you know me, I stay quiet on social media so I can soak in everyone else’s tea. And I’ve been far too busy to call anyone except my dad.”

You signed as you put your bag in her back seat. 

“You’re going to make this hurt so much more if I don’t get it,” you taunted as you climbed in the car. 

She shook her head at you as she started the car and dodged through the traffic.

“I’m not supposed to say anything, but I’m going to anyway,” she said as she looked at you briefly. “One of the candidates already dropped out. They’re down to three.”

“Holy shit,” you breathed out.

“You just have to beat one of them, and I think you have a really good chance. They’re excited about you,” she encouraged. 

“That’s still scary,” you said softly. 

“I know, hun. I did the same thing this time last year. But you’re phenomenal. Look at you in your lavender power suit. You were born for this,” she said. 

You laughed at her compliment and looked down at your feet. 

“But enough about that. You have to destress. How’s life? How’s Virginia Beach for the summer?” She fired questions at you. 

“Really good,” you said softly. “Honestly, it’s been different and a little weird, but I’m finally feeling good about that.”

She side-eyed you as she stopped at a red light. 

“There’s a guy isn’t there,” she said as she raised her eyebrows. 

You felt your cheeks heat up as you glanced down at his picture in your lock screen, flipping your phone over when Inez leans over to get a closer look. 

“Yeah, I guess you can say that,” you said slowly. 

“It’s complicated?’

“So complicated.”

“Come on, girl. You’ve gotta say more. We’re in NYC traffic,” she pried.

“We kind of dated last summer. Then he ghosted when he went back to school. Only to find out he started seeing someone. He came back-“ you started explaining before she cut you off. 

“Hold up,” she said as she held her hand up. “He ghosted you? After being with you for an entire summer? And then he started seeing another girl? And you’re about to tell me that you took him back?” She questioned. 

“I told you. It’s complicated,” you said through a laugh. 

“Oh dear God. What kind of bullshit did he pull for that to happen?”

“Honestly didn’t take much,” you admitted. 

“I knew it. You’re such a pushover,” she said as she shook her head. 

“He just does things to me that I can’t explain,” you said as you shook your head. 

“But if he does this again, I’ll be down there in record time to kick his ass,” she said, glancing over at you. “Just please be careful, [Y/N].”

“I am,” you said. “I’m well aware of the possibility that I won’t be in Virginia Beach next summer, but that’s a bridge I’ll cross if I get there.”

“When you get there,” Inez corrected. 

“We’ll see,” you said. “But enough about me, how’s your summer been? All work no play?”

“Ugh, don’t even get me started,” she said as she hit her head against the seat. “I love this job. I really do. It’s the best thing to ever happen to me, so I don’t mind that I worked full time with over time all summer. But beyond that, the other intern has been going through the weirdest breakup ever.”

“How so?”

“So they went to high school together, but never really knew each other then. She was the star of her high school, and he wasn’t. The way she made it sound, he could never get her back then. They went to the same college, flirted freshman year and started kind of dating at the end but not really. They went their separate ways for the summer and then she gets this job. And she didn’t tell him until she didn’t show up to school for the fall semester. He literally flew here to see her,” she said. 

“Oh my God,” you said. “This hurts even more knowing that this story isn’t going to end well.”

“You have no idea,” she said. “So they start dating long distance. She would fly out to see him almost once a month. Sometimes more. He rarely flew here, though. I’ve maybe seen him twice in the past year. So his school year ends. And before he goes off to some small ass town on the east coast, he tells her they should take a fucking break.”

“He tried that hard for nine months and couldn’t do three more?” You questioned. 

“Oh, honey, it gets so much worse,” she warns. “He’s unreachable for like a month. Then suddenly he’s messaging her again. And then he’d go missing, and then two weeks later message her. It was insane. Every time she healed, he sucked her right back in.”

“Oh, poor thing,” you said with a head shake. 

“My theory is that there’s obviously a girl back home which would explain the no commitment summers. I’m assuming the other girl knows nothing though. It sounds like this guy is pretty good at hiding shit,” Inez said. “And I’m not saying she’s not at fault, too. I just don’t think the two of them are ever meant to work, but they still keep doing this.”

“Damn. So you’ve just been dealing with trying to get her to stop talking to him?” You asked. 

“Pretty much. I work so hard to help her get over it, and then he calls her. And we’re back to square one. It’s like they’re stuck in high school.”

“I mean I get it,” you said softly. 

“I know you do. That’s why I’m telling you to be careful with this guy,” she warns one final time as she pulls into the parking garage of the hotel. 

You nod your head before climbing out of the car.

“Trust me. I’ve got friends breathing down our backs to make sure he doesn’t try anything,” you explained as the two of you walked in. 

“Good.”

After settling into your hotel room and listening to Inez ramble on about what she’s heard about your former elementary school friends, the two of you made your way to the office just down the block. 

She squeezed your hand once before letting you into the office and leading you to the interview. 

You swore you blacked out because it began and ended before you even knew it. 

You walked back to your hotel alone, feeling like you did a good enough job, but still almost convincing yourself you didn’t. 

You laid on the hotel bed in sweatpants and stared at the ceiling. You knew you had to go to sleep since you were supposed to go to the office tomorrow at 8 to find out if you got the job or not. 

But sleep did not feel like coming. 

And in perfect timing, your phone rang from your nightstand. You scooped it up and hit answer after seeing the contact. 

“Hey, hun,” Shawn’s voice came from the other line. You could hear waves crashing.

“Hey,” you said as you settled into your bed. 

“How’s home? How are your parents?” He asked. 

You swallowed down the guilt before answering, “It’s good. They’re good.”

“You ok?” He asked, being able to read you like a book even through the phone. 

“Yeah, just can’t sleep,” you said. “My parents wanted to get an early breakfast tomorrow.”

“Want me to stay on the phone with you?” He offered. 

“Yes, please,” you whispered. 

You put your phone on speakerphone and set it back on the nightstand, curling back into the covers. 

You could hear the gentleness of his breath with the waves crashing, and you wanted nothing more than to be there. 

“I miss you,” you said after a moment. 

“I miss you, too, love,” he said. “But you’ll be home tomorrow. We’ll get Sandy’s.”

“That sounds perfect,” you mumbled, feeling sleep sneak up on you. 

“Let yourself fall asleep. I can hear it in your voice,” he said through a gentle laugh. 

“Can you still stay on until I’m asleep?” You asked, letting your eyes drift shut. 

“Of course.”

You were startled awake by your alarm, quickly turning it off and staring at the ceiling for another moment. You took a few deep breaths, gave yourself a pep talk and got up to get ready. 

You pulled on your best dress and got ready before chugging a cup of cheap, hotel coffee. You walked quickly to the office and made your way to the waiting room.

You fiddled with your thumbs and tapped your foot as you waited for someone to come get you.

“[Y/N] [Y/L/N],” someone called. 

You quickly stood up and followed them to a conference room down the hall. 

There waited three people who offered you a smile as you took a seat across from them. 

“[Y/N], we were extremely impressed by your resume and your interview yesterday,” the lead person said as she looked down at the sheets in her hands, her expression unreadable.

“Thank you,” you said.

“So we would like to offer you the position in this year’s program,” she said with a smile. 

You pinched your leg and tried not to literally jump out of your seat. 

“I accept. Wow, thank you so much,” you said as they slid you an envelope.

“We’ll send these home with you. Just some preliminary paperwork, housing stuff and the basics. And we’ll see you September 2,” she said as they stood up to shake your hand and walk you out. 

Once you were out of the building, you called Syd immediately. 

“I got the job,” you yelled before she could even say anything. 

“I fucking knew you would!” She yelled right back. “Now get back here so we can celebrate.”

“Yes, yes, holy shit, Syd,” you said as you forced yourself to take a breath. 

“Bitch, go call your parents,” she said through a laugh before she hung up and you called the rest of the people you had to let know. 

You packed in record time, eager to get back to see everyone again. 

It wasn’t until you were on the plane that it hit you.

Shawn didn’t know.

It consumed your thoughts on the way home, and you felt the guilt hit you as Shawn waited for you with flowers just outside the airport. 

You hugged him tightly, burying your head in his chest as he rocked you back and forth. 

“Let’s go home,” he whispered before pressing a kiss to the side of your head. 

You stayed silent on the way home, not wanting to fill it with lies about your trip. 

Shawn set your bag down by the door as you walked in and sat on the couch. 

“Ok, what’s going on?” Shawn asked as he carefully sat down next to you. 

“I lied to you,” you said quickly. “I didn’t visit my parents. I had an interview in New York for an internship program.”

Shawn’s eyebrows knit together as he looked at you and shook his head. 

“Why wouldn’t you want me to know that?” He asked, hurt evident in his voice. 

“I just,” you started before taking a moment. “I got the job.”

“Ok?” He said, still confused. “That’s amazing. I’m so damn proud of you, but why didn’t you just tell me you were going to this interview?”

“I won’t be in Virginia Beach next summer,” you said. 

“Oh.”

“And I was scared you’d try to change my mind or you wouldn’t want to waste your summer on me-“ 

“Stop,” he said, cutting you off. “[Y/N], I want you to be happy. I want you to follow your dreams. I would never do anything to prevent that, and I certainly wouldn’t leave you because of it.”

You hung your head as he talked. He didn’t even sound mad. He just sounded hurt. 

“I am so sorry that I gave you any reason to think those things,” he said as he reached for your hand. 

“I’m sorry, too,” you offered. 

He gently tugged on your hand, and you curled into his side. 

“Wow, fashion in New York?” Shawn asked as you nodded your head. 

You could feel his heartbeat speed up as you traced shapes along his shirt. 

“Yeah, it’s pretty insane,” you said.

“You’re going to kill it,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to your head. “I’m so proud of you.”

—

The days ticked by as you consumed yourself with paper work and phone calls while trying to spend as much time as you could with Shawn, even if most of your hangouts consisted of you doing work during it. 

“I leave tomorrow,” you reminded Shawn as you laid on the beach to watch the sunset. 

“I know,” he said softly. 

You rested your head on his shoulder and willed yourself not to cry. 

“Let’s not talk about it,” he said, pulling you down and into his side. 

So you didn’t talk about it, instead letting yourself pretend it wasn’t happening as you enjoyed your last sunset of the summer. 

After a night of almost no sleep, Shawn drove you to the airport. 

He held you tightly in the lobby, running his hands up and down your back. 

“Call when you get home,” he whispered. 

“I will,” you said. 

He didn’t let go, simply holding you higher. 

You pressed one last kiss to his lips before walking to security, not turning around in fears you’d start crying. 

Your few days at home flew by as you packed and prepared for the next year in New York. You were buzzing with excitement as you packed up nearly everything you had and shipped it to your apartment. 

You were lucky enough to secure a studio apartment to yourself since the other intern was from NYC and didn’t need housing. 

Once everything was set up, you pressed Shawn’s contact on your phone and fell back onto your bed. 

“Hey there,” he said as he answered, a busy street evident behind him. 

“I am calling you from my completely unpacked and decorated apartment,” you bragged. 

“Absolutely everything is unpacked?” He tested. 

“Ok, there might be one box in the kitchen, but I swear that’s it,” you said. 

You could hear his laugh, and it just made your heart ache. 

“You know, I’ve got space here for a visitor,” you said carefully. 

“You’ve sent me pictures. There’s barely room for yourself.”

“Oh, shut up,” you said through a laugh. 

“We’ll see,” he said after a moment. “This year is going to be tough.”

“That’s junior year, baby,” you said.

“It’s going to kill me,” he said. “I’m two days in and already swamped.”

“Well I’ll let you get to that homework, and I’m going to unpack my one box,” you said through a laugh. 

“Have fun with that. I’ll talk to you soon,” he said before you said your goodbyes and hung up. 

You pulled yourself out of your bed and found the one box left, filled with dishes and kitchen essentials. You tried organizing as quickly as you could just to get it done with. 

Once that was finished, you moved back to your desk and pulled out the newest stack of paperwork to finish reading through it before orientation the next day. 

Your phone buzzed next to you, and you answered and put it on speakerphone. 

“This is [Y/N],” you said. 

“Hey, babe, it’s Inez,” you heard her voice ring from the other end. 

“Ugh, I’m so glad it’s you. I’m finishing up my orientation paperwork right now,” you squealed. 

“That’s great,” she said. 

“You don’t sound nearly as excited as I do,” you said. 

“[Y/N], I have something to tell you,” she said a little too quickly. 

“What’s up?” You said, setting your pen down. 

“I know Shawn,” she said. 

You looked at your phone in confusion. 

“I never told you his name.”

“I know you didn’t. I saw a glimpse of his picture on your lock screen, and I wish I would’ve put it together way before this moment,” she scrambled. 

“Inez, how do you know Shawn?” You said.

You could hear her sigh on the other side. 

“[Y/N], there’s no easy way to say this, but I told you about the other intern, Betty?”

“Yeah.”

“The guy Betty was seeing was Shawn.”

You went silent as you stared at the wall. Piecing together the story in your head from what Inez and Shawn both told you.

“They never broke up,” you whispered to yourself. 

“Well, depends how you look at it, but that part doesn’t really matter,” she said before she paused. “I’m literally at Betty’s right now since I don’t start school for another week, so I decided to visit before I got swamped.”

She paused as you felt tears begging to prickle at the corners of your eyes. 

“He just showed up at her doorstep like she’d drop everything for him, and damnit [Y/N], if I could’ve called you right there I would have when it all clicked together, and I hated that I didn’t catch it sooner. Betty has no idea you even exist. She has no idea I know you,” she rushed out. 

Your tears began to fall as you buried your head in your hands, trying to hold back the sobs. 

“I’m so sorry, [Y/N],” you heard Inez say in the distance. 

“I have to go,” you said, hanging up before she could say anything else. 

You stood up and paced back and forth, feeling like you had nothing else to do as you tugged at the ends of your hair. You snatched the picture of Shawn off your desk and threw it in the garbage can without another thought. 

You should’ve seen this coming. 

You took a moment to pull yourself together before you called Shawn. 

“Hey, babe,” he said. “I’m kind of busy right now, can I call you later?”

You could hear noise in the background. Noise that certainly wasn’t his homework. 

“You know my friend Inez?” You said quickly. 

He didn’t say anything, but you could hear rustling as the noise slowly disappeared. 

“What are you talking about, [Y/N]?” He asked. 

“My friend Inez, the one I told you about from the New York program,” you said, beginning to pace again. 

“We might’ve crossed paths before,” he tried to cover. 

You scoffed, and Shawn knew he was done. 

“I know everything,” you said softly. “Every piece of it, Shawn. I know you’re at her party right now. I know how the two of you got together and how you just wanted to take a break for the summer.”

Shawn didn’t say anything for a moment, trying to figure out how he could possibly come back from this.

“Listen, I’ll call you tomorrow, and we’ll sort this out. [Y/N], I promise it isn’t as bad as it sounds. Please just-“ he paused and sighed and you could practically see him running his hand through his hair. 

“No,” you said before he could finish. “There’s no way you can spin this, Shawn.”

“Baby, please. I’ll call you later-“

“You were never mine.”

“Don’t say that, please. Don’t say that.”

“I wasn’t,” you snapped. “I have waited for you and forgiven you a time too many and to think this whole time I was just a summer thing when the real one was back at school.”

“You know you were so much more than that to me.”

“No, I don’t,” you yelled. “This whole time you played me like I was clueless. But I know everything now, Shawn.”

You paused, hearing his heavy breathing on the other end. 

“We’re done, Shawn,” you said. “Please don’t contact me ever again,” you choked out, the tears coming back. 

“Don’t cry, baby. Please we’ll talk-“

You hung up before he could finish. 

—

You buried yourself in your work for the next week, doing whatever you could to know the ins and outs of this place as soon as possible.

When anyone asked why you seemed off, you shrugged and told them you were just stressed. 

Scotty and Syd were each calling every day, and you stopped answering after the second day. Inez called a few times, and you ignored those, too.

You didn’t want to talk about it. You wanted to forget you ever let Shawn Mendes ruin you multiple times. 

After a night of staying late to help one of the head stylists, an opportunity not presented to many, you arrived back at your building at 11:00, taking your heels off the second you stepped into the lobby. 

You leaned against the wall of the elevator, closing your eyes for a few minutes before it dinged at your floor. 

You watched the floor as you walked. 

Until two feet stood in front of your door. 

You followed them up to see him standing there, bags under his eyes and one thrown over his shoulder. 

“Shawn,” you said, just louder than a whisper. 

He didn’t say anything for a moment, the solemn look on his face speaking volumes until he cracked a half-smile. 

“Heard your room has space for a visitor,” he said, his eyes darting to meet yours.

You looked up at him, hesitating to let him in, but after remembering the time and his college across the country, you decided you didn’t have much of a choice. 

You moved past him, unlocking your door and leaving it open behind you. He waited a moment before walking in and softly shutting the door behind him. 

“I really don’t have the energy to talk about this tonight,” you said as you set your bag on your desk, turning to look at him still standing by the door. 

“Then we’ll talk in the morning,” he said. 

You just nodded, moving past him to go into the bathroom and get ready for bed. You shut the door and leaned your forehead against it, questioning why you even let him in. You let a few tears fall as you washed your face and threw your hair up. You pulled on your pajamas and took one more deep breath before opening the door. 

Shawn sat on the edge of your bed, looking uncomfortable. Your apartment was far too small for a couch, so besides your bed and your desk, you just had a chair in the corner. 

You didn’t say anything as you waked to the other side of the bed and pulled your covers back, pulling them back on his side as well. 

He took the silent cue and climbed in slowly next to you. A few inches laid between the two of you as you both laid on your backs and stared at your ceiling fan. 

You turned to your side after a moment, not wanting Shawn to take the opportunity to start talking. Had it have been any other night, there’s no way you would’ve fallen asleep with him this close to you, but after a long day, you drifted off to the steady sounds of his breathing, imagining for a second you were back to just a few weeks ago.

You woke up the next morning with a startle as you sat up abruptly after a nightmare. The sixth one you’d had this week. You caught your breath as Shawn shifted next to you. 

“Are you ok?” He mumbled. 

“‘m fine,” you mumbled back as you climbed out of bed and shuffled into the kitchen.

You downed a glass of water as you watched Shawn slowly wake up and sit up, his eyes scanning over your pictures along your wall. You watched his eyes settle on one of the two of you that you hadn’t had the time to replace yet. 

You moved back into the main room, sitting in the chair in the corner and pulling your feet underneath you. 

“I’ve decided that I don’t want to talk,” you said with confidence as Shawn’s face dropped. 

He moved to say something, but you cut him off before he could. 

“I won’t be the other woman. I won’t be the second choice. I shouldn’t have to give you any other reason,” you said. 

Shawn simply nodded his head. You tried to ignore his eyes beginning to turn red. 

“I think you should go,” you choked out. 

Shawn got up slowly, grabbing his backpack and moving to the door. You followed closely behind him. He turned the doorknob before turning back to you. 

“I know I have begged for a second chance a time too many, but I promise this’ll be the last time I ever need one,” he said desperately, a tear falling. 

You let out a breath before reaching forward and grabbing his hand softly one last time and giving it a gentle squeeze before you leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his cheek. 

“You know I can’t do that,” you said as you faced him again. 

Shawn nodded and walked out the door. You leaned against the doorframe as he began to walk away. 

“Shawn,” you said before you could stop yourself. He turned around, a desperate look still in his eyes. 

“I did love you,” you said, swallowing the lump in your throat. “And maybe one day, I’ll be able to again. But that’s up to you at this point.”

He nodded his head almost frantically as his hand gripped his backpack desperately. 

“Goodbye, Shawn,” you said, him waving back, not trusting his voice before you slipped back into your apartment. 

You leaned against the door, your head hitting it softly. 

The tugging in your heart stopped, and your head stopped racing. 

You felt content. 

—

It felt refreshing to wake up to the sound of gentle waves in the morning. You sat up in bed for a moment, admiring the morning light with the mixture of the reflection of the Christmas lights. You could hear your mom and dad bustling in the kitchen to make Christmas Eve breakfast for just the three of you before your extended family came over for dinner.

You pulled yourself out of bed and threw on a cardigan before meeting your parents in the kitchen, sitting down at the island, and biting into a piece of bacon. 

You stood up and walked to the sliding doors, wanting to watch the shore while you drank your coffee. 

But once your eyes scanned the shore, you were met with an unmistakable figure. 

You set your coffee down and curled your sweater tighter to you as you opened the door and walked across the broken cobblestones, sitting down next to him. He turned to you after a second, offering you a soft smile. 

“Didn’t know you’d be here,” he said. 

“Change of plans this year,” you returned. 

“I always liked your view better,” he said, gesturing to the shore. 

“I know.”

There was no worry in your heart anymore. You were able to sit next to him like it was the first time, yet like he was a completely different person, yet like you’d known him your whole life. 

You rested your head on his shoulder, feeling him relax underneath your touch. 

“I haven’t talked to her since that night,” Shawn said. “I told her everything, and I ended things. I’ve done a lot of thinking these past few months, and I know where I stand.”

He paused, looking down at you as your eyes stayed glued to the waves. 

“I always wanted her in high school, a child-like crush, really. So when college came around and she’d want to be with me, I’d go back to this idealized version of my high school self when I should’ve been a freaking adult. It’s like I could finally be the guy she wanted to be with,” he started to explain. 

“I guess a part of me was unaware that I had grown up, that I didn’t really want her like that anymore,” he said, exhaling the stress pent up in his chest.

“I don’t want to be the guy who hurt anyone like that,” he whispered. “And I’m not him anymore. And I know that might not be enough and it isn’t an excuse, but I just need you to know.”

You nodded your head against his shoulder, not feeling the pit in your stomach you assumed you’d feel when you talked to him again. 

“You were never just a summer thing,” he finally said, the desperation evident in his voice. “You were so much more than that.”

“I know,” you said softly. 

You removed your head from his shoulder as you looked up at him. His eyes met yours, and you cupped his cheek, running your thumb across his cheekbone as he leaned into your touch. 

“You messed up,” you reminded him, offering him a soft smile. 

“I know,” he said as you could feel his smile against your hand. 

“You’re going to have a lot of proving wrong to do.”

“I know.”

You couldn’t tear your eyes from his. The look in them being more sincere than you’d ever seen them.

“I’m not him anymore,” he reminded you again.

“I know,” you said softly with a nod of your head. “But I’ve also done a lot of thinking these past few months.”

You felt his smile fall as you closed your eyes for a moment to gather yourself. 

“I love you, Shawn. And I think I always will,” you paused. “But I think we both need more time.”

He nodded his head as you withdrew your hand from his cheek. 

“I love you,” he said for the first time, meaning every ounce of it. “And I’ll be here if or when you’re ready.”

You nodded your head, standing up slowly before helping him up. You wrapped your arms around his torso and held him tightly as he wrapped his around your shoulders. You pressed a kiss to his cheek before turning around and walking back to your house. 

You turned around once you reached the door, seeing him watch you from the shore. 

You closed the door behind you and went to sit down with your parents. You could still see him from your spot at the table.

He had sat back down, and you could see the relaxation in his shoulders. 

You felt content.

—

As you packed up the last of your apartment, you took a step back and scanned the room, looking for anything you might’ve missed. You grabbed your keys and purse before shutting the door behind you. 

“Are we finally done?” Scotty sighed from behind you. 

“Yeah, yeah. We’re done,” you said as Scotty grabbed your suitcase and the two of you made your way to the elevator. “You didn’t have to come to help me move,” you reminded him. 

“Oh and have you move out on your own since the middle of September is inconvenient for literally every other human in your life? Yeah, what a great friend I’d be,” he scoffed. 

The two of you rode down in silence before setting the last of your stuff to be shipped back home. 

You walked up the street to a cafe for lunch before flying back home. 

As you began to eat in silence, you had to ask the question nagging in the back of your head. 

“Shawn was really good this summer,” Scotty said before you could even ask. 

“How’d you know I was going to ask that?” You asked with a laugh. 

“I can read you like a book, Ms. [Y/N],” he reminded you. 

He paused, leaning back in his chair and setting his napkin on the table.

“[Y/N], it was like he was a completely different person,” he said with an exhale, like he couldn’t even believe his own words. “I swear on my life, I actually enjoyed being around him. We hung out all the time. And he didn’t incessantly ask about you like I was afraid he would. He’d ask when you came up, but that was it. But it was still so sincere every time.”

“I saw him over Christmas,” you admitted. 

His eyes nearly bulged out of his head as he leaned forward, urging you to continue. 

“He was different, and I could tell. But I was so scared that it was just a front,” you said. 

“It’s not,” Scotty said simply. 

You nodded in response, running out of words.

“I never thought I’d be the one to say this,” he paused. “But if you told me that the two of you were together, I’d be thrilled.”

He rested his hand on top of yours. 

“He really has changed, and I think you need to give him another chance,” he said softly. 

—

You knocked gently on the door, the nerves in your stomach disappearing as you finally arrived. 

He creaked the door open and smiled once he saw it was you. 

“What are you doing here, [Y/L/N]?” Shawn asked as he leaned against the doorframe.

“I’m ready,” you said simply. 

His smile grew as he grabbed your hand and tugged you into his apartment, pressing your back against the door once it closed. 

“Are you sure?” He whispered. 

You nodded your head, leaning it to the side. 

“I’ve never been more sure,” you said confidently before he finally leaned forward, pressing his lips to yours. 

You separated moments later, your smiles coming between you. 

“I love you,” he whispered, his lips still centimeters from yours. 

“I love you,” you replied, pulling him in once more. 

“Take it slow?” He offered. 

“That never worked anyway,” you said, pulling his body tightly against yours as his lips met yours again, the memory of August drifting away into a moment in time. 

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Real talk though: i have so many origin ideas, side ideas and developmental things that go along with this fic so i want you to send me all your thoughts, theories and opinions to see if anyone gets where my head was coming from with how i chose to end it. so if you hated that they got back together or loved or aren’t sure PLEASE come talk to me!!

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